#ik not everyone perceives this song/moment the way i do and that’s Fine this is just

[qprpbj]

cw about ponyboy and his suicidal thoughts/ideation under the cut re: deaths at my door/throwing in the towel staging and my lil opinions!!!!

tonight i am thinking about how the staging & connotations of deaths at my door vaguely implies pony contemplating suicide/having suicidal thoughts (or. idk that’s how i read it anyway) particularly provoked by the lines like “i swear that [death] it’s following me / death’s shadow is long and it grows all around me ” “you should move on / you’d be better off without me” etc and how he fiddles and stares down with his open switchblade the entire song, held tight in his hand till the end when johnny convinces him to close the blade and finally hand it over, finalized by johnny holding pony’s hand/shoulder and grounding him

this is Particularly insane to me because not five minutes later, the next time we see pony, it’s him still upstage singing the final verse to throwing in the towel with darry and soda, the highest harmony, which reads like “this is the darkest hour of the darkest night / looking overhead, you don’t see no light / […] there ain’t no letting go” and “that’s what love is all about […] / there ain’t no throwing in the towel”.

pony’s night of contemplating suicide in deaths at my door is his literal self-proclaimed “darkest hour of the darkest night” but it’s his brothers and family — johnny who talks him down, and soda & darry’s spirit he can still feel within him — that save him and convince him not to “throw in the towel”. which, of course, is directly paralleling soda talking darry down from doing the same damn thing (i could talk for Ages about how parallel of characters pony and darry are, but that’s. an entirely different Thing).

idk i just think it’s SO interesting that they have pony sing this verse with both of them right after DAMD bc that literally quite WAS his “darkest hour of the darkest night”, in fact it very well could’ve been his final hour of his final night, but he was talked down and convinced by family and love and brotherhood that he fuckin needs to be here still. that he’s got people who love him, people who need him, and he can’t give up on them and leave them alone because they never gave up on him, not even when things got unimaginably hard or when they felt like “giving out” with their “heads full of doubt” etc. yk. idk sorry this is probably sooo incoherent but. idk i just have so many thoughts about ponyboy ughhh

[idkanametoputhere]

MID!!!!

CONGRATS U LIL BUNDLE OF CHAOS !!! MAY MANY MORE FOLLOWERS COME YOUR WAY!!!

*balloons an streamers an confetti galore*

may I request Deuce Spade w/ Young by Vacations? surprise me u chaotic child

AHHHHH THANK U LOVE<33

tbh idk the song so I will leave space here for me to say my thoughts on it after I've listened to it:

OMG IK THIS SONG!!!!

ALSO I am SO SORRY for the delay, the wifi in my village has been out since Saturday morning and now they're trying to fix it but yeah enough with my rambling, ahem

type: angst

pronouns: they/them

character: deuce spade

song inspo: Young by Vacations

tw: cussing, me taking inspiration from real life, how I imagine delinquent deuce

this fic is part of my 100 followers event

masterlist&lt;3

if you ask anyone if they have a childhood best friend, the majority of people will say that they did

deuce spade is one of them, a guy with an oh so supportive best friend who managed to get him out of trouble while still having fun

or well, at least he had a friend like that, you know, before he pushed them away

"Another day goes by

And where was I?"

it was sad to be honest, or more specifically lonely. the friend they had supported all their life, the friend they had turned to whenever they were sad, the friend whose side they stood by through thick and thin had pushed them aside

their blue haired friend was going through a "phase" as you could call it, he wanted to be perceived as a troublemaker, a tough guy who did mischevious deeds. and being friends with someone who had the reputation of a sweetheart was not really fitting for that reputation. and so the two unspeakable friends were suddenly separated

meanwhile the friend kept coming back

"Didn't think I'd still be here

Just to make things clear"

they were a fool to put it simply. a fool attached to their childhood dream of having a close friend. and they tried so hard to stay by his side. to keep supporting him through every one of his decisions

but in every relationship, friendship or not, there needs to be mutual affection for it to work. not just one sad fool, a jester in their own castle, who clings to every pice of affection shown towards them as if they'll fall into the abyss if they let go

"What's the use?"

they considered themselves a smart person. someone who can realise when they are unwanted and yet, they couldn't seem to be able to step away from their friend. they were unable to stop themself from checking at their phone, waiting for a text that would signal them hanging out with deuce

"I'm not talking sense"

everyone was worried about them. "it's fine" they claimed. "he's just been busy, so have i" they said. how many excuses have they come up with so they could lie to the ones who cared about them? or maybe they were lying to themself, they needed those lies to be happy

imagine a flower hidden from the sun. it needs the sunlight, but it is not given to the flower. it tried to find it, but someone placed it in the shadows and therefore it can do nothing but try to get close to its beloved sunlight before it dies

except their sun was not rising just so he wouldn't give sunlight to them

"Call it a ruse

On myself"

"hi" one time, they greeted him and he just quicly and awkwardly greeted them back

"hi deuce" another time, this time they got answered with just a small wave

"hi"

"hello"

"hi"

time and time again, they were greeted back by a quick wave and a roll of the eyes, until one day he just started ignoring them, not even sparing them a glance

and all the lies they had been feeding themself to feel better suddenly disappeared and they were able to see the truth

the truth was quite simple, once they were friends, shared every moment together, sad or not, they had made plans together for the future. and now? now they were nothing more than mere strangers, just like they had started

years of friendship down the drain for the sake of being "cool". pretty funny, isn't it?

"I wanted to go"

the worst thing in all of this was probably watching him with his friends at school or outside

for so long it had been them standing by his side, only for them to be replaced?

call them dramatic but losing such a close friend of theirs affected them a lot. it was as if their whole world had crashed down around them and someone was keeping them from rebuilding it

and the years passed like that, with the well-known sweetheart avoiding one person in particular as they focused on everything but him

and then it was time for both of them to be enrolled at the same college, NRC. and -you wouldn't guess- their luck is so good that they were put in the same dorm as deuce

but speaking of deuce, what about him?

"I wanted to say

All things come to pass

With time"

deuce knew he had fucked up. he knew that what he did was horrible, and now that he had gone out of that delinquent phase of his, he wanted to do nothing more than apologise to his old friend

he missed how they took care of any injuries he had after falling, he missed them sharing their lunch cause he forgot his, he missed them listening to him talking. and most of all, he missed their presence. he missed the warm smile they gave him and their melodic laugh

he thought that enough time had passed so that they would move over what happened, forgive and forget and all that. except he hadn't considered how hurt his old friend was, and how stuck on the past they were, for a good reason that is

and so every time he tried approaching them they turned away, avoiding him like that plague

"But I want everything now

To be all mine"

was he asking for too much? he just wanted his friend back! he knew he had wronged them but they could talk it over and make up, just like that! they weren't children anymore, were they? there was no need for petty arguments!

except of course if one of the two had years of pent up anger and pain caused by the other, then petty arguments were the way to go I suppose

"You think it's all over

Get up and try again"

and so it went, argument after argument, one each day. there were countless times when they were collared by their dorm leader because they were causing a ruckus, and he was right to do that

their fights were messy. no insults were thrown at eachother, there was a time when they cared for eachother so they didn't have the heart to be mean to eachother

but there were some ugly remarks being made

"You've got to act your age, darling"

"can't you just listen to me for one second?"

"couldn't you have, you know, not pushed me aside for literally no reason?"

"grow up"

yet another screaming match between the two. not the first one, and probably not the last one either

they say that, if two people are trying to solve a problem, there needs to be proper communication between them. can you see what the two heroes of our story are lacking? just that, exactly

"I was a kid, I was dumb, I get it and I'm sorry" yelled the ravenette, desperate to have his friend back. "good thing you realised you were dumb, but I was also a kid! and I was there for you since we were babies! you pushed me aside deuce, without any reason. you looked at me as if I was a stranger! you ignored me and never even gave me a reason why!" they screamed at his face, their eyes glossy, tears threatening to spill from their anger.

"do you k own how much that hurt? I was lying to everyone -i was lying to my own self for seven's sake- saying that 'oh no we're still friends. he still cares about me'. bullshit!" they kept on yelling as tears started running down their face

and then he realised how much he had hurt them. how much his own stupid actions had fucked up his most valued friendship

"Before you fall back in"

"I'm sorry" was the inky thing he could say the feeling of guilt running through his mind, like a virus infecting a body and making it weak, only able to respond to said virus

guilt, shame, regret, despair

he realised he had opened pandora's box, and he didn't know if there was hope at the bottom of it.

a/n: okay I got a bit carried away BUT CAN U BLAME ME? ITS A GOOD SONG THAT GIVES ME GREAT INSPIRATION AND I HAD NO INTERNET