Hide or Fight

Chapter 16 - You're an Idiot.

Dally's POV

"Why didn't you tell me?" Soda's voice pounded in my ear.

"Babe, will you please stop yelling in my ear? I can't hear a thing."

"You knew my brother was gay and you didn't tell me! You knew he and Johnny were dating!"

"Soda, if I told you, neither of them would have been happy with me. I would have broken their trust, especially Johnny's."

"But I'm your boyfriend!"

"Technically we never made that official!"

Soda leaned back in his seat, away from me, with a hurt look spread across his beautiful face.

"No, no, no, I didn't mean it like that, Babe! You know I care about you, don't be upset, please, Sodapop!"

He didn't answer me. Soda stood with teary eyes that ripped my heart out and walked across the hospital's waiting room to sit next to Darry. I had fucked up. Big time.

"What did you just do?" Two-Bit whispered as I sunk down in the uncomfortable blue chair. When I only made a small whine, he quickly stood from his seat on the wall to the left of me and moved to where Soda was moments before.

"Come on, Dal, it couldn't have been that bad."

"He called himself my boyfriend and I told him we never made it official," I grumbled.

"You're an idiot."

"Trust me, I know."

_-_-_-_

"You okay?"

Pony looked up from where he was leaning against the outside wall of the hospital, staring down at his tattered shoes.

"You find your shoes that fascinating, huh?"

"My shoes?" he questioned.

"Yeah, you've been staring at them for the past ten minutes."

"Oh." He looked back at his white shoes. "Johnny bought them for me."

Silently, I walked over to Pony and leaned against the wall next to him.

"He worked a couple odd jobs for a month last year just to buy them for me. You know, for Christmas." A small smile crawled onto his lips, but slipped away just as quick. "I could only afford to get him a pack of cancer sticks."

"Yeah, but you also weren't old enough to get a job." He pulled a face that made him look like he wanted to agree, but couldn't.

As we both looked down, I noticed he wasn't looking at his shoes. He was looking at a puddle that was inches away from our shoes. The angle we were at allowed us to see ourselves. I glanced back to Pony.

"You weren't looking at your shoes, were you?"

"I bleached my damn hair for that boy... I'm in love with him." His voice was starting to crack. I kept my eyes on him, but he didn't look up at me. "I couldn't save him though."

"Pony, you can't blame yourself for that. Not even security could stop what happened and that's their actual job!"

"Yeah... I know. I just... I wish I could have done something. Anything, really."

"Don't worry. I think he'll forgive you."

"He's up," Sodapop's smooth voice called out from the entrance of the hospital just to the left of us. He didn't look at me. He went back inside.

"What about him? Soda gonna forgive you?" Pony asked as we headed back inside.

"Uh..." I hung my head. "That's going to take a bit more work."

"Good luck. Knowing my brother, you're going to need it." Pony began walking towards Johnny's room, but I didn't follow, wanting to give them time to talk.

"Thanks, but don't act as if I'm not going to rope you into helping me!"

"Already roped, Dally!"