#lmk if it doesn’t make sense pls 🙏🏾🙏🏾

[specific-dreamer]

“because you’re our little brother and we love you… did you hear what i just said? i said i love you”

whatever you do don’t think about how before everything ponyboy would have been ecstatic to hear that.

don’t think about how ponyboy tried to convince himself that since darry didn’t love him, he in turn didn’t care about him but he failed everytime.

don’t think about how ponyboy stayed up some nights asking soda how come darry changed and why he didn’t like pony no more. and soda doing his best to convince pony that darry does still love he’s just tired all the time and he’s still having trouble adjusting to their new dynamic too but pony just doesn’t get it.

don’t think about how if darry just said i love you a little more often they wouldn’t have been in this mess. if he said it a little more than maybe he and ponyboy wouldn’t have gotten in so many arguments and soda wouldn’t have to have been caught playing middle man

definitely don’t think about how upsetting it must’ve been for darry to finally bare his soul and tell pony he loves him only to be met with silence in return.

dont think about how he darry might’ve thought that a simple i love you is what would’ve brought them back to normal, because he didn’t realise just how bad their relationship got to the point of him needing that olive branch later.

except (and definitely don’t think about this part) ponyboy knows atp that his brothers love him. but he still thinks they love him but don’t really accept all of him. because up til this point his friends hated darry for nearly going soc, so to a kid his age the message he got was “we don’t want all of you; we just want the part of you that’s a greaser”. so when darry asks to read his story, when darry extends that branch, he asking to understand/get to know all of ponyboy. something nobody else did except for johnny (and maybe cherry for that one night).

sure soda asked to, but when pony said he wasn’t too sure about reading it too them, soda was seemed as if he was going to let the conversation drop. he was going to let pony keep hiding so to speak. but darry wasn’t. well he might’ve if only to keep the peace, but darry asking to read the story himself shows that he’s willing to think things through rather than instantly being worried/shouting at ponyboy in the future. it shoes that he’s trying to put himself in ponyboy’s shoes to he can figure out where his head is at (something that darry previously made fun of)