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myokk · 4 months ago

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It's a clear, beautiful summer's day, the type of day that starts out bright and full of birdsong, that ends looking up at the stars and the moon while crickets chirp and fireflies show soft bursts of light. When the air is warm and full of life and the smell of hot grass and lavender and honey permeates everything.

The whole summer had been like that, really. Running outside with abandon, chasing each other through the tall grass deliriously happy and lying down in the fields surrounding their village, watching the clouds float by while they eat cucumber sandwiches. It's the summer before their first year at Hogwarts; the Sallow twins know that their life's about to change and are determined to enjoy their last summer of childhood.

Maybe they're too old for this sort of thing - they are eleven, after all, but both of them know that this summer is a turning point for them and they want to cherish every moment for as long as possible. Their parents have been encouraging them, often sending them out for the whole day, piling journals and ink and quills and picnic baskets full of food in their hands, encouraging them to research and be curious about the world around them as they had always done.

This day, however, their parents are almost eager to push the twins out of the house. Their mum's smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. Sebastian feels nervous about this, but doesn't realize why until much later, when the memory is analyzed and remembered during his dreams. (definitely not while awake). When they leave the house in the morning, she makes sure to kiss each of them on the cheeks which she normally never does and Sebastian pushes her away in disgust, much to his future horror. In the moment, all he can think is that he might still be holding on to the last moments of his childhood, but he's too old to be kissed by his mum.

(but now, Sebastian doesn't know if his memory is faulty and he is adding moments that never actually existed in the first place. the mind is a tricky place)

He never allows himself to think about these halcyon days, the perfect-until-it-wasn't summer before they went to Hogwarts; this day in particular is forbidden to remember. His unconscious mind rebels against his iron will.

They spend the morning looking for the fairies that Anne had dreamed about the night before. She's convinced that it's a prophetic dream and they march around in circles in the little copse of trees - a forest to the two children, who haven't really ventured out of their village - as Anne tries to remember where she had seen the fairies in her dream.

Sebastian is happy to follow her even if (maybe especially if) he thinks it's a futile adventure - what else are summer days for?

They're in that strange junction between childhood and adolescence; desperate to just grow up already and become the people they were always meant to be, and yet just wanting to spend their days being kids, without a care in the world.

"Come on, Sebastian," Anne calls to him, a tiny stream gurgling between them. In one hand, she's holding the map that she drew as soon as she woke up; in the other, boots stuffed with her stockings.

Sebastian huffs as he trudges behind her, arms full with their bags, his shoes, and the picnic basket. Anne had offered to help him carry things, but he refused on principle. Their dad is always doing small things like this for the women in his life, and Sebastian wants to be just like him.

Anyways, Anne has her own role as the leader today, and it won't do to have her bogged down.

And he's eleven, more than old enough to carry everything.

He steps through the tiny creek, mud and slush squishing through his toes, and he smiles. There isn't anything he loves more than being outside, except maybe being outside with a good book.

"Keep your eyes peeled for a tree with a knobby trunk, with lots of knots that look like faces," Anne tells him, glancing over her shoulder, then turns her face back to her map and scrunches up her face. "In my dream, the fairies lived nearby."

They spend the rest of the morning continuing their fruitless search, laughing as they walk in circles, then set up their picnic in the field next to their house.

"What do you think Hogwarts will be like?" Anne asks, a dreamy look on her face.

Sebastian doesn't look at her when he answers. He lies back and stares at the clouds. They've already had this conversation hundreds of times since their Hogwarts letters arrived, both of them have their parts memorized. "Amazing. I can't wait to actually be able to use our magic instead of just reading about it."

Anne rolls to her side and props herself up on her elbow, getting a better look at her brother's face. With a smirk, she says, "I think I'll like Transfiguration the best. I can't wait to be able to turn you into a -"

A huge noise interrupts her before she can continue. Sebastian sees the confusion in her face before he truly registers that something has happened. It's like everything's moving in slow motion and all he remembers clearly whenever he dreams of this day are his feelings of confusion and disbelief and the smell of fire.

There's a huge explosion and the air is full of smoke and he and Anne are scrambling up, the picnic blanket tangled up around their bare feet and -

Hand in hand they run in the direction of the huge black smoke that is billowing up. It coats the air - they can't see anything and the smell of burning fills their noses and the smoke fills their lungs and they're coughing coughing coughing -

Sebastian doesn't want his sister anywhere near the blackened husk of their former house but he is also terribly afraid to be alone. They stand in the middle of what used to be their house, blackened half-walls, charred wood that used to be their table, the old couch they read on every night, it's all smoldering, all gone, the thick black smoke making his eyes water and choking and smothering everything in its wake. His mind can't comprehend what he's seeing. Everything is so familiar and yet so wrong.

He doesn't know how long he and Anne stand there, clutching each others' hands like they are a tether to reality. Which, he supposes, they are. They might be there thirty seconds, ten minutes, one hour, an eternity...

Then, neighbors are running to the twins, coughing, covering their faces in the crooks of their elbows as they conjure blankets with their wands and wrap Sebastian and Anne up and drag them out of what is - was - their home.

This part is always hazy. Sebastian can't remember if he cries. Or if he even says anything. He just stands there with Anne, the smoke thick and oppressive as it pours out of their house. Everything is crumbling apart.

(A hand gently caresses his scalp, fingers light and reassuring as they dance through his hair)

Their neighbors try their hardest to salvage what they can. The daguerrotype that their mother had cherished more than anything, taken a few years before, miraculously survives. Sebastian stares at it, the tiny figures moving and laughing and smiling as though everything is perfect. He wants to throw it and break it or maybe rip it up to shreds but he can't bring himself to do anything but stare.

Their father's wand is also shoved into Sebastian's hand, unscathed. It was found just outside of his father's curled fingers, lying pristine on the ground as if mocking the destruction that it caused.

At some point, their Uncle Solomon, who they've only really seen once a year growing up, shows up with a loud crack and tears through the rubble, tears carving wet tracks through the soot on his face. His voice goes rough with desperation and when he walks up to the two orphans, he is almost unrecognizable.

As if in slow motion - maybe an after-effect of the curse that has destroyed their lives is that the air has turned into molasses - Sebastian watches his uncle stagger over to them. He looks much older than Sebastian remembers.

Later, when Sebastian looks at his reflection in the mirror of his new home, the boy staring back at him also looks much older than he remembers.

Before It Felt Like A Sin, Chapter 14

#i was rereading through random chapters of my fic (as one does) and I really like this scene #it always makes me a bit weepy ngl bc I’m a crybaby #but I like it😔🫶#anyways my low-effort post of the day #im not sure if I ever put these two drawings in the same post??#anyways here they are…my two little rascals💓#i literally LOVE this drawing of Sebastian so so much it holds a special place in my heart #and I’ve gotten like 200 followers since I posted this give or take so if you haven’t seen these drawings yet!!!!#that’s one thing I hate about social media tbh. everything immediate and then we move onto the next #create create create & these drawings take me a long time (even though I draw like crazy😆) so to just have them be a one-day thing…idk…#so maybe sometimes I repost old art I like a lot😌😌😌#hogwarts legacy #hogwarts legacy fanart #hphl #sebastian sallow #sebastian sallow fanart #anne sallow #hogwarts legacy fanfic

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damthosefandoms · 2 months ago

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clothes, shoes, diamond rings, stuff that's driving me insane

(ao3 link) (based on this post)

Summary:

Soda is allowing himself to be selfish, just this once. Just about this. Because they promised, okay?

The diamond’s burning a hole in his pocket.

Soda’s parents have been dead for all of thirteen days, and he doesn’t really feel like a person anymore. He’s had a smile plastered on his face, the same one he’s always got on when the going gets rough—he once grinned his way to the hospital after he fell off a horse and tore his ACL. He kept it going after Mickey Mouse got shipped off to that ranch out in Garyville. He smiles every morning even though he dreads nothing more than going to school.

Finally he’s found something he hates more than school, but he’s still got to keep smiling, because the alternative—the way Darry’s working himself to death or how Ponyboy hasn’t spoken to anyone since they got the news—doesn’t really seem like an option. Their parents wouldn’t want that, Soda thinks… but he’ll never get to ask them what they want ever again.

The hospital sent Darry home with whatever they could salvage from the wreck, when he went to identify them. He and Dally walked back into the house, and Darry ran to the bathroom to throw up—who could blame him, after that?—and Dally wordlessly handed the small package over to Soda.

Their mom’s purse, their dad’s wallet, the rings—the first thing Soda pulled out was his dad’s dogtags, from Korea, where he spent all of the year after Soda was born. He hung the chain around his neck, sat back on the couch, and cried. He doesn’t really remember much else, and hasn't taken them off since. He knows Ponyboy dug through the rest. He probably found the rings in there, Soda assumes, and put it all back in their parents’ room for Darry to pick through later on. At this point, he kind of wishes they’d been lost in the accident, because it would’ve saved him so much grief.

“Why’d you go?” Soda asks him today, as they’re standing out in the stable Buck Merrill keeps his rodeo horses in. His parents—and by extension, now Darry—never allow Soda to come out to Buck’s, not unless they’re going to pick up or drop off Dally, but again: Soda’s parents are dead, and who the hell is going to care? So now he’s spent every afternoon here, the only place he can think when he needs to be alone, while Darry’s distracted trying to do everything all at once, and Ponyboy chainsmokes on the front porch with Johnny.

“Go where?”

“To the hospital. With Darry.”

Dally doesn’t respond for a second. He hands Soda a brush and motions for him to get to work, if he’s going to hang around. The horses aren’t going to groom themselves, and he knows damn well that Soda needs it, in the moment.

“I don’t know, man. He sure as hell wasn’t gonna drive himself that night, was he?”

But Dallas Winston is more complicated than that, and Soda knows it. Dally—by his own admission, if he wasn’t making it up for street cred—has seen a dead body before, and there was one time—once, in the dead of night, in the first few weeks after Dally got back from New York and was sleeping off that whole horrible experience on Soda’s living room couch—where he told Soda about it. Lifeless eyes, and the smell, the cold hands… Soda had forgotten about his midnight snack in favor of forcing a hug on somebody who might’ve stabbed him for it, had he not been at his lowest point. Dally might not be the most mentally stable kid around, but Soda is sure he wouldn’t just willingly put himself through that kind of conversation again.

He has no idea why he even got to hear any of it. He and Dally probably wouldn’t even be friends if they didn’t share a love of horses, or for those times Soda would get so frustrated doing his homework he’d run all the way to the playground and sit on the swings until someone came to find him. Dally would always be there, leaning against the post as Soda swung back and forth, and they’d talk about everything and nothing until Soda’s mom would come marching through the park to them, and would tell—not ask—Dally to come home with them for dinner. And he would.

“You’ve got quite a mom. She knows the score.”

Soda knows that if his parents had a say, Dally wouldn’t be living above a glorified bar at seventeen years old. They’d also probably not have gotten hit by that train, but you know, semantics.

“That’s a load of bull. You know exactly why you went.”

“Well, if you’re already so sure, don’t ask stupid questions you know the stupid answers to, Curtis.”

The horse he’s brushing lets out a contented whinny, and Soda treasures it. There is some good still left in the world, he tells himself. There are so many things worth keeping your head up for. Like horses, and brothers, even if they’re tearing you apart.

“For what it’s worth, Dal, my mama really—”

“Why’re you here?”

Straight to the point, then. Soda reaches into his pocket and pulls out his treasure.

“Shit, man, is that a real diamond?”

“It’s worth more than my whole house.”

And it is. His mom’s engagement ring is a family heirloom; Soda doesn’t know how far back it goes, but it’s been in his dad’s family for generations, and somewhere—very far—back, somebody must’ve had some money, because the stone on his mom’s engagement ring might not be very big, but it’s just as real as anything sitting collecting dust in a soc’s jewelry box. It’s the most precious thing their family owns. Soda closes his fist around the ring and holds it against his chest. It is worth more than his whole house. It’s worth everything… to him.

“My brothers want to bury her with it,” Soda says, trying not to let his voice shake. “They wanna put their rings back on them. But I can’t… they promised me I could have them, one day. Not just this one, the wedding rings too, to use however I see fit. But they’re mine and I just can’t let them go like that. I don’t give a damn what Ponyboy or Darrel want, if there’s no Will… they’re mine.”

Soda’s dad proposed to his mother after a few months of dating. It kind of came with the territory of getting a girl knocked up at twenty years old, and they sure didn’t have any kind of dream wedding. His mother and father had a marriage license and a tiny ceremony at the church his father grew up going to, with Grandpa Pat and his dad’s brothers as the only witnesses.

His mom’s family wanted nothing to do with her after they found out she was pregnant. Darry’s never even met any of them, and he’s met basically everybody—partially because most of their extended family who stuck around died before Pony was even born, or at least before Soda can remember. Soda keeps wondering to himself these days if his mom’s family will come to the funeral, or if Darry’s wasting stamps on the invitations.

The wedding rings are cheap and probably not worth much at all, but Soda treasures them with his whole heart because he knows what they meant to his parents.

His dad had come home from work on a bright sunny day in April, and Soda had never heard the word anniversary before, but it made his mama smile when his dad brought it up. He’d brought her flowers and a small box and Soda remembers Ponyboy—two and half years old at the time—was pulling at their mom’s skirt to try to get her attention, but she couldn’t take her eyes off their dad. How Dad had made a whole scene, getting down on one knee. Darry had rolled his eyes and said, “but you’re already married!” as if either of their parents cared.

It wasn’t about that. It was about the gesture. It was about the symbol of their love that they’d gone ten years without, and even if they didn’t need it, it was something they wanted anyway. They were being selfish, but they didn’t care.

In hindsight, Soda thinks that’s the first time he ever realized what true love looks like.

Today, his parents are sitting in a hospital morgue, or maybe a funeral home, or somewhere between—Darry knows the details and Sodapop’s too afraid to ask for specifics—and Soda’s got their rings in his pocket.

And Darry wants to take them from him. The last bit of their parents’ love, and he wants to bury that with their cold, dead bodies. It makes Soda sick.

“Why’d you come to me?” Dallas asks, and this time he’s looking directly at Soda, which is odd, because usually if Dally’s going to help you, he’s at least going to pretend he doesn’t want to. But these days, everyone seems to have lost their minds, so Soda figures it’s just the grief.

“Darry told me to quit bein’ a baby about it. So I am. You’re gonna hide ‘em for me,” Soda says, handing him the rings, “and then we’re gonna go get in a fight, and I’m gonna lie to my brothers.”

Dallas, ever true to himself, doesn’t blink an eye.

---

Soda can’t focus on much of anything, between the feeling of adrenaline coursing through his veins, the pounding feeling in his head from being punched right square in the eye, and Dally’s maniacal laughter as he slams the door behind them.

It’s not long before Ponyboy’s leaping up from the couch, crying out, “Who hit ya?!?” and Darry’s stomping through the doorway from the kitchen and demanding to know what the hell happened.

Dally regales Soda’s brothers (and the rest of the gang who seem to have all gathered under their roof just in time for dinner) with a tale that Soda’s sure is only partially accurate to how the rest of their day had gone since they left Buck’s.

It’s the first time any of them have gotten into any sort of trouble since the accident, and to his credit, Ponyboy seems only sort of shaken up at the sight of his brother’s bruised face. He grabs Soda’s hand and leads him into the kitchen, snatches a bag of frozen peas out of the good ol’ ice box and plants it against Soda’s eye.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Ponyboy starts to mutter, but Soda ignores him. He doesn’t want to hear it. He has to focus all his energy right now into lying to Darry—the only person he’s never lied to before. Not even a little fib.

His older brother is his hero and his confidant, and it’s hard to look someone like that in the eye and say anything but the truth. Ponyboy, on the other hand, might be Soda’s closest friend and mean everything to him, but god—sometimes you have to lie to your little brother. You know, about things like Santa Claus, and how many girls you’ve kissed, and that he doesn’t look silly when he tucks his shirt in like that.

It’s for Pony’s own good, really. Besides, the kid backed Darry (something he never does!) on the one thing Soda’s wanted for himself since that horrible night, and it’s not fair they chose that moment to agree on something.

“Soda, I know what those rings mean to you, but I just feel like—”

“Do me a favor and can it, Pony.”

Maybe it’s cruel, and he knows that he’s the only reason Ponyboy’s been getting out of bed in the morning lately, but god, they’re still brothers and he’s still angry, and the guilt of being selfish about this is eating him alive. Sue him for snapping. Their parents are fucking dead. He’ll get it together some other time and spend the rest of his life trying to make up for the look on his little brother’s face now.

He hears Dally in the living room, getting to the part where he says they got jumped—and Soda pushes up from his seat at the kitchen table and calls out: “We didn’t get jumped, we got mugged.”

The whole gang is looking at him now, standing in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the door frame that all the Curtis kids have been measuring their heights on since Grandpa Pat was still in diapers. The whole gang’s marked on there now, too.

It’s not really something anyone talks about, because at the end of the day the result is just the same, but there’s a difference between getting jumped and being mugged. Getting jumped is greasers blowing off steam or socs having fun. Getting mugged is a real crime, somebody dangerous trying to hurt you and take away anything from your wallet to your dignity. It’s something you could actually go to the cops about, because if you word it right, they might even give half a shit. And today Soda’s using that phrasing to get his brothers to believe him. He feels like shit for it. But at least he’s feeling something other than grief.

He’s allowing himself to be selfish after all these years—and an especially hard past thirteen days— of existing solely for others.

“Dal’s just tryna hype me up,” Soda says, and he can feel Pony’s eyes searing into his skin from behind him. “Like he said, he was with me ‘cause I stopped at Buck’s to see the horses before we went to get the rings cleaned. This guy came up when we were walkin’ back, we got in a fight—but he had a heater and you don’t mess around with that.”

Soda has to sell this. He looks at Darry, at his older brother who has just told them a few days earlier how he’s going to sacrifice everything he’s ever worked towards, everything he’s ever held dear or dreamed of, to take care of Sodapop and Ponyboy so they can stay together, and his guilt overtakes him. Suddenly, the tears—familiar as they are—come easily.

“The rings are gone, Dar.”

And Soda gets his way.

---

It doesn’t matter who the father is. Soda has known what true love looks like since he was five years old and his dad asked his mother to remarry him at home in their tiny kitchen while Darry complained they were being ridiculous and that he was going to be late for football practice. He knows how he feels about Sandy and he doesn’t really care what she did. But he knows what he needs to do to try to make things right.

And maybe that’s why he went to Buck’s that day, stomping right past the old cowboy and up to Dally’s room. Maybe that’s why he picked the lock—hanging out with Two-Bit Mathews kinda lends itself towards learning skills like that—and maybe that’s why Dally finds Soda there, when he should be behind the counter at the DX, tearing his friend’s room apart.

“Hey! You got a death wish or somethin’?” Dally yells, and Soda should probably care more, because he’s got a point—you’ve got to have officially lost it to go digging through Dallas Winston’s stuff.

“Where’re the rings?”

“What?”

“The rings, Dal, my parents’ rings, I need them.”

“You need ‘em.”

“Yeah,” Soda says. “I’m gonna marry Sandy.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dally laughs. “Marry her. You are nuts. What’re you doing that for? Don’t you got more to worry about right now?”

“Her parents are makin’ her move to Florida! I oughta make things right, maybe if I do, she’ll stay, you dig?” Soda crosses his arms as he tries to defend himself, and when he notices the look on Soda’s face, Dally’s laughter trails off, like something else has occurred to him.

“…No fuckin’ way, Sodapop Curtis, you did not.”

Dally’s got his signature shit-eating grin spreading across his face, and even with everything going on in the last week, he’s got the nerve to laugh.

“No, I didn’t, and don’t you start judgin’ me, Dallas, ‘cause it ain’t like you didn’t go back to your girl after she did the same damn thing, an’—and Sandy—she…”

Soda’s voice trails off when his eyes land on a navy-blue sweatshirt thrown over the back of Dally’s relatively-unused desk chair.

The sleeves are cut off, just like the tags.

The color drains from Soda’s face. He feels sick.

“You know where they are.”

“The rings? Yeah, yeah, they’re in—”

Soda snatches the sweatshirt off the chair—the one that used to be his, that Ponyboy wears everywhere now that it fits him better, the one that he was wearing on Friday night—and holds it up with two shaking hands.

“Ponyboy was here, wasn’t he? He— where is he, Dally?”

Dally doesn’t answer, just lights another cigarette, and Soda’s lip starts to tremble. His stomach twists. He can’t help it, and he’s been accused of faking it before, to get out of going to school, or because he didn’t want whatever was being made for dinner and he’s picky, or because of a million other reasons. It’s exhausting being the local crybaby when you genuinely can’t help it. When you’re a nearly seventeen-year-old boy and you shouldn’t ever shed a tear over anything but your body can’t seem to get the memo.

Crying is as cathartic for him as fighting is. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to stop, and the thing is, he’s so insanely jealous of people like Johnny Cade, who in all their years of knowing each other Soda’s only ever seen cry once—when those socs beat the living hell out of him—and Dallas, who makes the thought of it seem laughable. Real hard to break the kid who’s beyond broken.

“Don’t fuckin’—hey, Sodapop, don’t you fuckin’ cry, man.”

He tries. He sniffs. Dally groans and presses his palms into his eyes exasperatedly. Soda wipes at his face with his sleeve.

“Can’t help it.”

“Would you just—ugh.” Dally looks around the room, and then walks over to the desk, ripping the drawer open and digging around for something. He throws whatever it is on the desk, and grabs Soda, shoving him into the chair.

“Write him a letter, or some shit. I’ll make sure it gets to him, but I’m only doin’ this once, so make it count, man. I’ll go find those rings for you so you can get the hell out.”

Dally turns on his heel and walks out, and Soda hears him mutter something along the lines of “fuckin’ Crybaby Curtis over here” as he walks out.

Soda reaches for the pen with his right hand, puts it on the paper and prints his brother’s name in shaky chicken scratch. He sniffs again and bites back some tears, switching the pen to his left and getting comfortable.

Well, I guess you got into some trouble, huh?

Dally comes back twenty minutes later and asks if Soda can read his own handwriting.

Doesn’t matter, because he knows Ponyboy can figure it out, backwards letters and all.

Soda heads back home, fidgeting with his parents’ rings in his coat pocket. He daydreams about proposing to Sandy, twirling her around with the sun shining through the kitchen window. She’s supposed to look like an angel. She’s supposed to look like there’s nothing else in the world but the two of them. But in his mind she doesn’t, she won’t meet his eyes, and the kids at the dinner table laughing at them don’t look anything like him.

---

The holidays are coming up. It doesn’t feel like it, not with so many people missing from their lives.

Soda kicks off his sneakers by the door, takes in the sight of his poor little brother, laying back on the couch with cartoons blaring on the television set. Soda figures it could be worse; this time a month ago, he was still in a borderline catatonic state over what happened to their friends, and now he’s got his sketchbook back out. Soda pretends he can’t see the extra attention Pony’s paying to the shape of Johnny’s big, dark eyes and hangs his coat up.

He slips into the kitchen and expects dinner to be getting cold already, since Darry’s getting out early these days due to the weather and lack of light, but instead there’s nothing in there but Darry with his head down on the table.

“You feelin’ alright?” Soda asks, and he goes to feel Darry’s forehead, but his brother just lifts his head, and shakes it.

“I wish Santa Claus was real,” Darry mumbles, and Soda tries to feel his forehead again, ‘cause that’s quite a statement for the almost twenty-one-year-old, and Darry bats his hand away.

“You know what I really wish, Soda? I wish we still had Mom and Dad’s rings. Especially Mom’s engagement ring.”

Soda hopes he doesn’t look as green as he feels.

“You’re the one who wanted to bury them,” he mutters, and he hopes Darry doesn’t see him swallow.

“An’ now I think you had the right idea. I mean, glory, selling that diamond alone could go a long way.” Darry laughs humorlessly.

“I ain’t got a clue how in the hell I’m supposed to get y’all presents this year. We got the hospital bill today, you know. From when Pony got sick after Windrixville, and… I think I can get help from the state for some of it, but it’s cutting it close, Soda. Ain’t gonna be no spending money, even with you helpin’ out. I mean, it’s gonna be so close—with the electric bill, the hot water—”

Soda thinks about the rings, sitting buried in an old shoebox underneath his bed, in his old room just down the hall. He thinks about how horrible he felt last January, looking Darry in the eyes and lying to him, saying he lost part of their parents forever. How that diamond ring, their only real family heirloom, burned a hole in his pocket as he asked Dally to help him keep it safe where his brothers couldn’t take it from him, because you couldn’t trust Dallas Winston for little things but he was always, always good for his word when it came to something that mattered.

Soda’s given everything to his brothers this last year, and maybe he’s given all of himself to everyone his whole life, but today—today he’s still going to be selfish, because he deserves it, just for this one thing.

“The holidays ain’t really about presents, Darrel,” he says, sitting down and putting a hand on his brother's shoulder.

“We oughta just be glad we have each other, ‘cause god knows we don’t have much of anything else.”

Except their parents’ rings. But he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to convince himself he deserves this. Even if it makes him sick.

Because his parents loved each other, and they loved him, and they promised.

#sodapop curtis #ponyboy curtis #darry curtis #dallas winston #the outsiders #curtis brothers #the outsiders broadway #the outsiders musical #the outsiders book #the outsiders 1983 #this one is honestly much more book canon lol #soda dally friendship my beloved #horse girl soda my beloved #I’m pushing Crybaby Curtis so hard #julie writes stuff #my post

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