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superstarcherrycolagirl · 6 months ago

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we’ll be alright

“fine line” by harry styles

benny cross x fem!reader / 1.2k words

idea: you get hurt, but benny is an absolute wreck

tw: assault, fighting, gore, angst, crying, happy ending

notes: ya’ll when i tell you my thumbs, hands, and arms are burning cause i’ve been COOKING!! i was craving some angst (i love to suffer) so way not make this beautiful man suffer!! that final seen on the door steps had me weeping so i needed to write something similar to that SO HERE IT IS :))) (p.s i kinda need some kathy ideas)

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the baby blue ice pack created a weird sensation against your left eye and the side of your face. numb was what it was, but you couldn’t really think straight at that point.

sitting on the edge of the bed with kathy beside you, rubbing her hand up and down your back, it almost lulled you to sleep. but the medicine you took and the exhaustion you felt might have also played a part in your sleepiness.

that fight was never meant to happen. those young kids should’ve never been let into the bar. johnny kicked himself for not literally kicking them out the moment they walked in. the kid with the buzzed head should’ve never gotten so close to benny with you behind him, and benny should’ve known you were behind him and not with your girlfriends before he dodged his swing, so you’d never be served that harsh punch to your sweet face.

in the split moment the whole bar went quiet, your faint slow breaths filled the air. you were in shock, touching your face to see blood on your hand. that kid stacked his punching rings on that night. when you looked up from your hands to the kid in front of you, your eyes watered and threatened to spill, that’s when chaos broke loose. but thank god you can’t remember any of that right now. you cried so hard on kathy’s shoulder the entire ride home, thanks to danny for driving you back in his car, that you think you can’t cry anymore.

you jerked awake due to the loud knocking at your apartment door, kathy settling you down first before standing up “i’m gonna go grab that sweetheart and i’ll be right back. stay right here for me babe” she left your bedroom calmly, hearing her boot cladded footsteps taking a left turn and and marching down the hallway

you heard muffled voices through the walls, then moments later you heard a second pair of footsteps stomping down to your door. or was it 3 pairs?

“got some energy left in you babe? you got some company” you looked up at kathy, but you couldn't see the people with her. so you took the ice pack off your face, a vivid mix of purples, red, and blues plastering the left half of your face, and looked up. benny had finally come home and johnny was stopping by!

“who is it kat- oh my gosh! you guys are alive!” it’s like a flip switched in your brain as you got up from the bed and stumbled a bit to get to them. “lord i can’t imagine what it was like in there! are you guys alri-” that’s when benny grabbed onto you and pulled you into his chest. tight. “hi honey! i’m so happy you’re here! did everything clear up? are you okay?” you asked sweetly. you were quite lethargic in your state, so you couldn’t pick up on how thick the air was due to how worried everyone was about you. not until you listened to benny’s breath stutter and tiny whimpers leaving his mouth.

he’s crying.

you tried to pull away from him to look up at him, but he wouldn’t let you go. he wasn’t gonna let you go, not after tonight’s events. you didn’t know what to do, why was he crying? you could only hold him, rubbing your right hand in circles on his back. sooner or later, your left arm extended and reached out abruptly. kathy was confused at first, but was quickly diminished when realizing that this was your way of saying hello to johnny. johnny softly held your hand, afraid that you were aching all over, as he was caressing your hand with his thumb. “hello to you too sweetheart” he said in his deep voice.

you don’t know what was said as you were squashed into benny’s chest, but kathy and johnny left the room quietly, johnny muttering to benny that they were going for a “chat and smoke” and they’d be outside in the living room.

after the door closed, benny pulled back from you. you could finally see his face, but your heart sank down to your stomach so fast. benny’s face was rosy and puffy, while his eyes and cheeks were wet from crying. you brought your hand up to his right cheek, a small cut touching the bottom of your thumb. “..oh honey” you said sadly. you expected him to say that he was okay, or telling you he was going out with johnny, or god forbid say that he was gonna leave. what you didn’t expect was your words to unleash the floodgates of benny’s emotions.

benny started to cry hard, his breaths becoming frantic as tears continued to fall down his face. his hands were shaking, bruises and cuts all over his body, clothes torn, and blood all over. god you hope it wasn’t his own.

benny moved his hands to hold both sides of your neck, worried he would hurt you even more by touching your face. then he started to speak, but his voice watery and shaky, like a little boy “m’so..so s-orry baby, m’so sorry, m.. so sorry,” his stutters and hiccups were hysterical, you’re worried he’ll pass out from not breathing enough. “m’coward. a fucking coward. i should’ve known you were behind m-me… i failed to keep you sa-afe, you got hurt because of me.. and m’so sorry.. pl-ease don’t leave me.. please don’t-” those were the words that woke you up. you couldn’t believe what you were hearing. leave him? and you refused to hear more of it.

you walked backwards to sit on the bed, benny hands slid to hold your lower back before sliding even lower to hold the thick of your thighs. to ground himself. you held his face to make him look at you. to see you.

“honey.. none of this was your fault” his sniffles and gasps were making it harder for you to speak. “i don’t blame you or anyone else for what happened, but especially not you. i’m alright” your right hand moved up to his frazzled hair, brushing the strands of hair away from his face. you prayed it would help him calm down. “and m’gonna be alright, look,” you grabbed his tattered hands from your hips and placed one on your heart, and the other on your swollen cheek. you can see his shoulders fall slowly as he focuses on your heartbeat. “my heart is still pulsing, my chest is still rising and falling, and my soul is still beaming” you scooched closer to him, your left leg placed on top of his right.

“look at me honey,” your syrupy voice rang in his ears as he looked into your eyes again. his eyelashes were dewy from how much he cried that you almost lost all the words in your mouth, but you told him one more thing. “i will never leave you. no matter how crazy our lives get, or how crazy things change, i will never run. i will never let you go. this isn’t where we end” benny inhales and exhales deeply before responding to your words of reassurance, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “i’ll never leave you b-aby..i’m never gonna go, never. i promise baby i-i promise” “c’mere” with that you brought your boy over to you, his head fitting into the crook of your neck.

you let him cry, but also let yourself get teary eyed. “you and me sweet boy. s’gonna be okay” you were stroking the hair on the back of his head as his arms held you closer than ever. you in your pink pajamas and him in his colors. that is what’s meant to be. and always will be.

“we’ll be alright”

#oh this ones got a kick to it #feeling sick #i LOVEE miserable men #im an angst SLUTT #austin butler #austin butler x reader #benny cross #benny cross x reader #tom hardy #johnny from the bikeriders #jodie comer #kathy cross #the bikeriders #the bikeriders x reader

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hausofmamadas · 3 months ago

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Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

Part 2

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Pairing: Danny Lyon x Kathy Cross

Word count: ≈ 4K

TWs: Allusions to infidelity, love triangles, flirting, angst. (ꔘ) indicates this comes directly from dialogue in the movie.

But whatever it is, it feels important. Like you’d regret it slipping through your fingers. So important, you don’t wanna blink. Cause when you open your eyes again it’ll be gone. Picking up right after part one (read -> here to catch up), at the bar the same night, Danny loses focus on the meeting when he gets a surprise visit from Kathy.

⁂ The ash on his joint’s nearly a half inch long when Cal’s hand waves in front of Danny’s face, knocking it off to scatter onto the barroom floor.

“Earth to Danny, come in Danny.”

“What? Oh, sorry.”

Not only has Danny barely taken a puff of his joint but Frankie was long gone, replaced in front of him now by Cal who’s made his way over from the pool tables to ask for a drag, a request to which Danny has been apparently nonverbal. Yup, too lost in the soup upstairs and now he’s second-guessing this joint he hasn’t even really smoked. Maybe he is more toasted than he thought.

“Need me to take that bud off your hands, bud?” An impeccably-timed Cal speaks to these fears. “Looks like you might’ve had one too many.”

Handing the joint over to Cal gladly, Danny cracks a smile, a real one, “Sure thing, gramps,” because for all his oddities Cal’s the only one of them that feels real and not like a character in a dream he can never fully remember. Besides Kath. “Say, remind me again, what time’s curfew? Don’t wanna be late for supper after all.”

“Well, now,” Cal tips a hat that’s not there, affecting the voice of an old southern grandpaw, “I’d certainly say by sundown, sonny.”

“The fuck’re you two doofs on about?” Brucie, characteristically cranky, looks up from his newspaper, face all pinched like he’s not here for their shenanigans. Which is funny considering the general company he keeps. If shenanigans were an occupation, every one of them including Danny would be bonafide professionals.

Cal leans over to pat him on the shoulder, “Now, now, Brucie, this is a family matter,” before taking his seat at one of the tables.

“Just my fuckin luck.” Brucie rolls his eyes like it’s just Cal being Cal, which it is, “Coupla comedians over here,” and tosses his newspaper on the bar before swiveling his stool around to address the group assembled at the tables. “Alright, alright, ladies. Pipe down, meetin’ll start in about five minutes.”

Danny snags a few crowd photos while everyone’s distracted. These usually turn out to be his favorite, catching people when they think no one’s looking because usually no one is. Scanning the room for another shot, Danny can’t help but shake his head at all the non club-affiliated patrons packed at the front of the bar by the pool tables because he’s yet to figure out why some of the meetings are conducted during business hours. This is made even more baffling given some of their other meetings were held off-hours when the Stoplight was closed and there was less noise. So it seemed no one was opposed to the idea. Why not just have them all then?

Danny grabs his pencil from where it perpetually sits behind his ear and a little notepad from his vest pocket, jotting down to ask Brucie or Kathy, the two most likely to give him a reliable answer, about it later.

“S’at my name I see you writin there? What could you be writin about silly ‘ole me, I wonder?”

“Oh shi– uh, he– hiya, Kath,” Danny jumps right out his shoes, practically three feet in the air, his voice almost as high. “I, uh, didn’t think you’d be comin tonight.”

“Yeah, well my car’s busted, so’s I had to get Benny to pick me up from work and he said he could only do it if we stopped here first ‘fore goin home.”

Danny offers his sincerest condolences with a nod and shrug.

“Boy, I am glad yer here though, I’m tellin ya,” she says, grabbing a piece of gum from her purse and popping it in her mouth. “Nice to have someone’a talk to ‘sides just dese wahoos.”

“Oh yeah? Well, uh,” searching the congregation through the cigarette smoke that’s filling the fiberglass shields around the fluorescents so it looks like everyone’s moving in a tank of dusty water, Danny spots a sleek crop of honey blonde hair seated up front and off to the side, “what about Benny?”

She waves her hand. “Please. You know better ‘an anybody, dat boy don’t talk. And I love him to death but he’s a wahoo, same’s any of ‘em. But hey, who says you can’t love a wahoo.”

“Not me,” Danny agrees, smirking privately to himself, as was the custom these days any time he talked to Kathy about well, pretty much anything. Given so many opportunities to practice, he’s become well-versed in trying not to look like he’s enjoying himself as much as he is. See, it’d be a problem if it was a problem. But it’s not. Not at all.

Bringing his camera up to snap a picture of the group gathered around Johnny, he can’t help but chuckle at how it looks like a scattered Sunday night mass if mass was held in the smokestack of a hay bale on fire. A hay bale with billiard tables and a jukebox.

Kathy leans over wanting in on the joke, “What’s so funny over dere?”

“Ah, it’s noth– it’s ju– well, it’s hard to explain.”

“Sheesh.” She shoots him a look that would’ve been withering were it not for the smile on her lips and in her eyes. “You been hangin ‘round Benny too much. I swear one’a these days, you’ll go quiet on me yet.”

“C’mon, you know I’d never,” Danny says, smiling so much he’s struggling to line his eye back up with the viewfinder.

“Oh, does’at mean you’re like me, then, huh? Not enough, whats’a word–” She snaps her fingers in an attempt to summon it, which she does. “Discipline. Not enough discipline to be dat stoic.”

“It’s not that so much as,” he flashes a cheeky grin, “I’m just not cut out for that kinda commitment.”

“Y’know,” Kathy crosses her arms, shakes her head, and just to have something to do, starts kicking the leg of the unoccupied barstool in front of her. “I used to think you Brooklyn boys were aaall trouble. Just– y’know, on account of all’sa movies I seen, right. Buncha meatheads, mobsters, criminals n’ such. But you Danny Lyon, you’re just a doll, aren’t ya?”

“Am I?” The blood’s warming his cheeks already and he falls back on some well-worn sarcasm to save face. “Well, don’t go blowin my cover or these guys’ll boot me out on the street and I’ll have nothing to show for the last six months.”

Smiling, she drags her thumb and her forefinger across her lips, locks and throws away the key.

Danny turns his attention back to the meeting that’s started, trying to make like he’s been industriously picking out shots and listening. Not that it mattered if he wasn’t. His club membership was little more than ceremonial, a kid’s costume. Sure, he had colors now and his own bike, a junker Cal chopped together because he got sick of Danny piggy backing on his all the time. He joked about it when he gifted it to Danny. Much as it’s been a treat chauffeurin you around, if we do it much longer people’ll start to think we’re going steady. Now, I’m all for broadening your horizons but I’d hate to be the one to compromise your journalistic integrity, y’know, being with a respectable lady like myself.

But neither of those things made him integral to the day-to-day goings on of the club. Although tonight they’re talking about whether to approve the formation of a St. Louis chapter, so it’s more than the usual shop talk, even if the answer is a likely yes since Johnny’d already given the go-ahead to Milwaukee last year. Kathy had told him a guy named Fat Jack, or Big Jack, or Big Fat Jack(ꔘ) had to battle it out with Johnny for that one. Whether that’d be the price of admission for St. Louis remained to be seen.

“Say, I gotta question.” Kathy makes a move to claim Danny’s undivided attention again, the subject of an apparent tug-of-war between herself and the club. “I been wonderin, how d’you know when to take the picture?”

She’s yet to win that war on the Benny front but she’s well ahead on this one, what with Danny all-too-happily taking the bait. “Hm? What d’you mean?”

“Y’know like how d’ya know what’s gonna make a good photo? And do they all come out lookin how they look when you’re peekin,” Kathy points her index finger, retracting and extending it a few times at the viewfinder, “through that thing, er what?”

The camera in his hands comes down slow with the steadiness of an elevator dropping from floor to floor and he fidgets with the camera strap like he’s uncomfortable with the question. He might be. There’s something intimate about it. What’s more though is he doesn’t have a great answer. There’s no easy way to summarize what he’s devoted the last seven-some-odd years perfecting. The even more embarrassing part is that he’s never really given it a lot of thought. Not conscious thought, at least. He just sorta knows. But that seems like a cop out somehow and he doesn’t want to give her that kind of answer. Because nothing’s worse than questions met with answers that don’t really answer anything at all.

“Heck, I didn’t expect that to be such a stumper.”

“Oh–?” Danny snaps to, summoning a gentle smile to reassure her the dead air response isn’t because he’s bent out of shape about it. “Oh, no. I don’t– I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to– it’s just, to tell you the truth, it’s not something I think about.”

“Well now,” she elbows him lightly, “I find that hard to believe.”

“I guess– well, do you mean in a technical sense, as in how do I frame a shot? Or how do I find something I wanna take a picture of in the first place?”

“Mmm, the second one,” Kathy chuckles. “I think.”

Thumbing the advance lever, Danny’s gaze is now stuck on all the club members seated in front of them, “Hmm, well–” trying to find a way to break down what’s been, for all these years, as good as muscle memory. “I guess it’s a gut feeling more than anything. Like if you’ve ever been in the middle of somethin– the thick of a scene, and then stopped a second to look around, right?”

Eyes narrowed like she’s thinking intently on what he’s saying, Kathy bobs her head up and down.

“And something about it– doesn’t even have to be anything grand, y’know. Might just be, you like the lighting. Or the gestures people are makin, having a conversation. Or the look on someone’s face when they’re concentratin on something. But whatever it is, it feels important. Like you’d regret it slipping through your fingers. So important, you don’t wanna blink. Cause when you open your eyes again it’ll be gone. Not gone gone, y’know, just arranged a little different than it was, right. Cause the moment’s different. And you wish you could sustain it somehow, bottle it like a ship so you can see it any time you want. What it feels, looks like, sounds like. I guess– well yeah, anyway.” Danny’s voice drifts off with the smoke and the bar chatter and the music from the jukebox. “When I get to feelin like that, that’s how I know.”

“Wow.” The word tumbles out slow and for a second, it rings out like she’s the only person speaking in the whole bar before getting swallowed back up in the cacophony. “Seems like a lot for somethin you claim ya never thought about.”

Danny’s mouth twists off to the side in a self-effacing smirk and he hangs his head, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Well alright then, Mr. Poet, so what’s so special ‘bout all’a this,” Kathy sidles up closer to him, gesturing in front of them, hand limp at the end of her wrist like she can’t be bothered. “What could be so important here?”

Head swiveling from Kathy, to the meeting, then back to Kathy, Danny gets an idea. He ducks, lifting the camera strap over his neck and hands it to her. She meets this with a blank look like he’s just presented her a dead fish.

“C’mon, set your bag down,” Danny laughs. “I’ll show ya.”

There’s a reserved smile as she uncrosses her arms, slides her purse off her shoulder, flopping it on the table next to them, and holds her hands out to accept the camera with some hesitation. “How’m I gonna know if I’m holdin it right? I don’t wanna drop it. Then you’ll really have a reason to not talk to me.”

“Well, you’re in luck cause,” Danny holds the strap open like he’s awarding her an Olympic medal, “that’s what this is for.”

She grabs the camera to keep it from swinging too much as he guides the strap over her head and lays it gently around her neck. “Gosh, this is heavier’n it looks.” Once it’s on, she starts pulling her hair out from underneath it.

Danny shrugs, “Guess I’m used to it,” helping to smooth the collar of her denim jacket that’s gotten flipped up, thanks to the weight of the camera. Then he turns back to the group, waving her over to stand in front of him. “Alright, so what feels important about this. Or I dunno, what I like, I guess, is–”

Kathy keeps glancing back at him over her shoulder as she steps in front, hanging on every word like she might miss something crucial.

“–is the lighting here.” From behind her, Danny gestures at the camera. “Go ahead, take a look. See how smoky this part of the bar is, how it’s accumulating under the hoods of the fixtures, reflectin the light? But then all the space in between is real dark, right. S’cool, I was thinkin it looked like a buncha little lightning storms over everyone’s heads.”

“Oh yeah,” he can hear the smile in her voice, “lookit that. Could be like lil’ lighthouses, them.”

“Go ahead, take a couple.”

“What, me?” She’s incredulous and he could kick and drag himself across the pavement on the street right outside for thinking it’s as adorable as it is. “Didn’t you just take some?”

“Sure, but people have shifted around in their chairs, the smoke’s hangin a little differently now. Could be your shot’s better than mine. Go for it.”

“Huh, alright. So what do I do. Press this here, den?” Her finger taps the shutter button.

“Yup, press that and then–“ he reaches over her shoulder to place her thumb on the advance lever, “pull this. Yeah, press, then pull. Just like that.”

Stifling a giggle of pure joy so as not to disrupt the meeting, she nabs a few photos, “Say, this is a gas. I see why you wanna do this all’a time,” before breaking away to note with some skepticism, “the chattin, though. Y’know, with the microphone an’ tape deck ya cart around practically half yer size. That, not so much.”

“Really?” Danny says, sticking his hands in the pockets of his vest because without a camera, he doesn’t really know what to do with them. “See, I would’ve thought that’d be your favorite part.”

“Oh? Why’s dat?”

“Cause you sure like talkin.”

Conceding with a wry smile to cushion the blow of the accompanying eyeroll, she turns back to snap a couple more.

At the front of the assembly Benny tips his chair to lean on the back legs, his head hanging over the top rail, cigarette dangling from his mouth, looking bored yet untroubled in his boredom, when he spots Kathy with the camera.

“Please tell me you’re gonna get–”

A click sound answers Danny’s question before he can finish asking as Kathy pulls the lever to take another one. “Aaaaalready on it, Mr. Lyon. Dontcha worry.”

There’s no possible way he can hear them over the noise, but Benny, in a stroke of luck or genius or divine intervention, winks at Kath, baiting her to take another one because he knows it’ll make for a better shot. This time Danny doesn’t even have to open his mouth because Kathy’s finger beats him to the punch. Click.

“See. Told ya, yours could turn out better than mine.”

Kathy turns back around, face lit with a smile so bright, one he’s not sure he’s seen since in months, not since their first interview at the laundromat. “Boy, you weren’t kiddin none, I’ll tell ya,” she says, pulling the strap over her head to return the camera tentatively like she might be sad to part with it. “Hey, maybe one’a these days I’ll have yer job, huh?”

“Look at you,” Danny accepts the camera, as she passes it back with one hand and smoothes her hair with the other, “masterminding my retirement. If I were any wiser, I might think you were tryin to get rid of me. And after all that back-n-forth about me not talkin to ya.”

Her eyes get real wide. “Oh, I don’t think so, mister.” Even as she’s laughing while she says it, she’s also gripping Danny’s arm, holding him in place before he might get the chance to dissolve before her, float right up to the ceiling fans, and diffuse into the air completely. “I take it back, ya hear me, I take it back!”

But he’s got her on the hook now, “You sure?” so he keeps going, “I mean, I know where the door is, I can always just–” skipping his index and middle fingers to the front of the bar, a sneak preview of his supposed exit.

“So help me,” hand on her hip, Kathy wags her finger at him, eyebrows halfway up her forehead, “Dann– Daniel Llll-Louis Lyon, if you go anywhere–”

“Louis??” Danny starts cracking up so hard, he nearly drops the camera. “Who’s Louis?? That’s not even my middle name!”

She smiles, all cat that caught the canary. “Oh, I know. But it sounds scarier, don’t it? Y’know put the fear’a God in ya. An’ all that.”

Still laughing, “Sure,” Danny mimes the sign of the cross, shoulders shaking on every beat of Father, Son, Holy Ghost. “Put the fear of I-don’t-know-what, anyway.”

The sound of chair legs screeching across the checkered tile floor marks the end of the meeting and Danny hasn’t been paying a lick of attention. He'll have to ask Cal about the club’s verdict on St. Louis later, or else eavesdrop on Brucie and Johnny in one of their many little barside confabs of mumbles and grumbles. When Benny starts making his way back to them slowly, taking his time as he stops to shake a couple guys’ hands, loans a cigarette to another who’d run out, Danny starts to sweat, suddenly all too aware that Kathy’s hand has slid down his forearm and is holding his wrist now.

“Heya, Kath?”

“Huh?” she says, absently, smiling at Benny from across the room.

“You uh– you out to take hostages, here? Or—?”

“What’s ‘at, now?”

Danny gestures at his wrist with an index finger.

“Oh lord, I’m sorry.” She shakes her head and drops her hand, taking a step back toward the table where she’d set down her purse. “Silly me.”

His eyes dart over to Benny to see if he’d noticed the exchange but he’s too busy dodging a conversational trap with Cockroach, gearing up, no doubt, to regale him with some loony story. Probably waxing poetic about bugs. The tension in Danny’s shoulders melts away as he sighs pure relief. By the time Benny makes it over to them, Kathy’s got her purse back on her shoulder and her hands in her pockets like she and Danny are less than strangers, just making small talk.

A tender kiss lands on her cheek as Benny slings an arm over her shoulder. “So? The kid’s teachin’ camera classes now?”

It should bother Danny, Benny calling him ‘kid’ given the two of them are pretty close in age. But for some reason, coming from Benny he doesn’t mind. “Wasn’t much teachin to speak of. You won’t believe the coupla ace photos she took.”

Benny’s brows scrunch together like he’s already forgotten his own role in staging the perfect shot.

“Yeah, she’s regular Cam-Jam over here. Caught two of you when you were leaning back in the chair. I’d put money on ‘em bein the best of this roll.”

“Beg yer parden? Cam-Jam? Don’t go pokin fun at me just cause yer envious’a my natural talent.”

Danny laughs. “Nonono, it’s a compliment. Means you’re jammy with the camera. I used to get called it back in college. It’s kinda like, uh— what d’ya call— beginner’s luck. Only your luck don’t run out.”

“Hear that, babe.” Benny kisses Kathy on the nose and she giggles, playfully swatting him away, an exchange so tender and sweet it actually smarts. “Think he’s sayin you got ‘the eye.’”

“Yeah.” Danny lights up with recognition. “Exactly right.”

“Ah, so yer sayin I gotta future in this business of yers. Well okay, whats’a next lesson, Mr. Poet-Professor-Danny?”

“Hmm. I’ll have to go over the curriculum and get back to ya on that.”

Fishing around for a cigarette in his jacket pocket, Benny’s got that far away look in his eye like they’ve already lost him. Which makes it all the more surprising when he opts to prolong the conversation by asking Danny, “So, St. Louis?”

“Uh, yeah.” Having found the cigarette but looking lost for his lighter, Danny flicks his own out to light Benny’s smoke, remarking cautiously, “So Johnny’s gonna do like they did with Milwaukee.”

It’s statement enough to sound like an answer to the question but question enough that Benny still has to confirm. Danny wouldn’t have to ask Cal what happened in the meeting after all.

“Mm-hm. Probly go the same way but–” Benny looks over, blowing a funnel of smoke in the direction of Johnny. “They got heart to show first. So, you in?”

“Goin down this weekend?”

Benny nods.

“Mm, guess it depends.”

“What,” arm still over her shoulder, Benny uses it to give Kathy a little jostle, “need Ms. Cam-Jam to help with your book report?”

“Nah, it’s more, I was actually wonderin—”

Brows scrunched again, the closest Benny ever comes to looking confused is just Marlon Brando.

“—how likely you are to put your fist through another car window,” Danny says, grinning.

Rolling her eyes, Kathy pops the gum in her mouth with manifest disapproval.

“Mm,” Benny appraises the odds, ignoring all five-feet, four-inches of reproach brewing right next to him, “likely as any other day.”

“In that case, ‘course I’m in.”

“Oh not you too, Danny.” Kathy smacks him in the shoulder before crossing her arms. “You know he don’t need any more encouragement, getting inna trouble. I thought you were s’posed t’be the grown up in the room.”

Benny’s quick to Danny’s defense. “S’okay, hun. I’ll have him back in time for camera class.”

So Danny tacks on, “Yeah, and I’ll have him back in one piece for– I dunno, detention.”

Looking at both of them like she could bonk their heads together right there, Kathy just sighs. “I’ll say, if this isn’t the most cracked school I ever heard of, lemme tell ya.”

“Hey,” hit with some kind of revelation, Benny snaps to, almost animated - or animated as Benny gets, “how long’s it take to make the pictures… y’know, pictures?”

“Not long. I’ll probably develop these when I get home tonight, maybe tomorrow mornin. Why?”

“Next time you stop by the house, bring the ones our girl here took.”

“If they turn out to be any good,” Kathy mumbles, blushing.

“I don’t need to develop ‘em to know they’re good. I mean, there’s always a chance the film got overexposed or I s’pose I could fuck up developin them. But, barring major snafus, those ones’ll be printworthy.”

“Yeah? I hope so. Aright, c’mon Benny, take me home. My feet’re achin somethin awful n’ I been lookin forward all day to dat pint of mint chocolate chip we got inna freezer.”

Eyes cast off in the direction of the door, Benny plants a kiss of compliance on her forehead. And with that, the two take their leave, delayed only by Kathy’s turning back every so often to toss a few fretful glances Danny’s way. It’s strange, the look she’s got on her face as she disappears out the front doors of the Stoplight.

The more he’s thinking about it, the more he feels the rope tangled around his heart gets pulled taut by the eighty-pound anchor in his stomach. A feeling not unlike being crushed by a boa constrictor.

Yeah. Miss you too, Kath.

It’d be a problem if it was a problem. But it’s not. Not at all.

═

taglist: @narcolini, @drabbles-mc, @ashlingiswriting, @tofuwildcard, @cositapreciosa, @axreliono, @bellinitini, @complete-nonsequitur, @when-did-this-become-difficult, @ladygoatee (tagged everyone I previewed this to in wc but no pressure to read bc I know not everyone is in this fandom)

#bikeriders #the bikeriders #kathy cross x danny lyon #kathy cross #danny lyon #bikeriders fanfic #jodie comer #mike faist

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