Chapter Text
Ponyboy’s eyes fly open as a terrified cry builds in his throat. He swallows it back down, trying to breathe in spite of the tightness of his chest. It hurts, a physical sensation that makes it feel as if he weren’t able to get in any air at all.
Pony’s fingers move to feel around his neck, searching, because only moments ago, bruises were beginning to form there from the hands that were so tightly wrapped around his throat. It feels like they should still be there, because there is a harsh, choking noise now, and it sounds an awful lot like the one he struggled to get out as Soda had tightened his grip.
He wants those hands away from him, wants to pry them off. His nails dig into his skin, but it isn’t important. The pain isn’t either, it hardly registers. All that matters is freeing himself.
But then, warm hands, in sharp contrast to his own cold, clammy ones are being wrapped around his wrists. They tug at them gently, and Ponyboy is too scared to look at who they belong to. He keeps his eyes tightly shut, even when a soft voice calls his name.
Struggling does little to loosen the grip that keeps him from scratching at himself anymore, and can’t this person see? Can’t they see that he’s dying?
“Pony,” he says again, “breathe, you gotta breathe.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, really, Ponyboy would if he could.
“It was just a dream, baby, you’re safe now.”
That is enough to give him pause. There are only two people in the world that are allowed to call him that, and anyone he sees in his nightmares only ever calls him by his name with varying notes of disgust.
“It’s me, it’s Soda. C’mon, Pone, snap out of it.”
Pony goes still. He’s still wheezing, though, and it’s so loud, it’s all he can hear until his brother is breaking through in that same soothing tone.
“That’s it, honey, just breathe. I ain’t gonna leave ya.”
That’s the problem, in part, because old fears still linger, waiting to spring back to life every time he closes his eyes. Soda was choking him. It was his hands, devoid of any warmth that tightened around him until Ponyboy saw stars and could hear nothing save for the rush of blood in his ears.
Equally, Ponyboy finds with only minimal surprise that he doesn’t want Soda to leave. He waits eagerly for those arms to fold him to his chest.
He waits, and when there's nothing, when Soda isn't touching him at all anymore, Pony opens his eyes.
It's still dark save for the bedside lamp Soda had flicked on, but it's enough light for him to be able to see the desperately worried look on his older brother's face. Soda still manages a small smile, though it's impossible to tell whose benefit it's for.
“You with me?” Soda's hand rises an inch or so before he freezes. “Sorry, I-”
Ponyboy thinks about it, going against his every instinct and reaching for him himself, needing so badly that physical reminders of just how different that version of Soda is from his brother.
“‘S okay,” Pony's voice breaks with emotion, and none of this feels okay. So, and pushing down the feeling of discomfort the idea brings, Pony does what he remembers helped the last time he had a dream like this. He talks about it.
“It hurt,” he starts to explain, but for all the progress the two of them have made, he still has trouble looking Soda in the eyes. “You were-you were choking me.”
The corners of Soda's eyes pinch with obvious pain, but a look of dawning realization comes over him and he gives a nod of encouragement.
“I tried to scream.” Ponyboy shivers at the memory of his windpipe being crushed. “You were so cold.”
He knows that Soda's hands will be just as soft, just as warm as they were minutes ago when they'd held his wrists. Ponyboy knows this. He still needs to be able to feel that for himself.
So he does. Pony lets his fingers graze Soda's as hesitantly, he meets his eyes, wide with surprise. He doesn't pull away, though, and slowly, Ponyboy moves his hand to rest on his brother's forearm. He can feel the lean muscle and the heat radiating off his skin.
The monster of his dreams, his flesh is always hard beneath his palm, unyielding to any sort of pressure. He may as well be fighting a marble statue.
But this isn’t a statue in front of him now. This is Soda, his Soda, that Ponyboy has been working so hard to get to know again over these last few weeks.
“It was awful,” Pony says, his hand beginning to tremble where it rests on Soda's arm. “You just kept squeezing.”
He goes to pull away, suddenly needing a sense of distance from it all, but Soda doesn't let him. He covers Pony's hand with his own before locking their fingers together.
“It was too much like the-that night at the fountain, not being able to breathe like that.”
A sob bubbles up in his throat, but Pony figures it says a lot about how far they've come, that Soda doesn't seem to feel the need to say how he would never do that to him. They are past that now, Ponyboy knows that too, and all he really needs from his brother is for him not to leave.
Soda doesn't move a muscle, except for his free hand that comes up to cup the back of Pony's head so as to bring their foreheads together.
Ponyboy lets him, the touch coaxing out a sigh of relief.
“I ain’t going nowhere.”
Things have been going…not well, but better. Better, because Ponyboy can hear the front door open, can hear the tell-tale sound of footsteps that are unmistakably Soda's, and not flinch. He can sit in the same room as him, sit on the same couch as him without acting on the urge to leave the room.
It still feels so impossibly hard sometimes. But, on a good day, Ponyboy can even find it within himself to make conversation with his brother. And maybe it's not much, but it's better.
It was. Until tonight, the first night in nearly a week since Pony had had a nightmare.
He had woken up screaming this time, and the sound was so loud that Soda had at once jolted up with him. Pony wasn't quick enough to muffle the sound this time, and he hates himself for it, because this one dream, it seems, has shattered the pillars of their relationship that the two of them were working to rebuild.
Soda had killed him.
Pony probably shouldn't have been surprised at that, but it still caught him off guard, the realness of it all. It was as if suddenly, upon waking, none of the progress Ponyboy had so clinged to had been made. They were back to square one, where Pony couldn't even look at Soda without his vision blurring.
But then, his brother's lips are next to his ear, his soft voice filtering through the dense haze of fear that clouds his every thought.
“It’s not real, honey, not real.” And just like that, Pony remembers. He remembers, and allows himself to feel it all.
He lets the waves of anxiety crash over him, and all the feelings he has so tried to repress, because this is familiar, this is safe. Soda is safe.
“What was it this time?”
“You were stabbing me.” Again and again, until Pony's torso was little more than ground meat. Like all of his nightmares, it was all so life-like. Soda was merciless and without care as he raised the blade against him. Until Ponyboy’s breaths transitioned from shallow and strained to nonexistent.
‘Not real.’
It's become a sort of mantra between them. Ponyboy craves the truth more than anything when it's so easy anymore to confuse dreams for reality. And when he wakes to sweat soaked sheets, unsure of where he is or what is real, Soda is there to remind him.
He's a constant, when nothing else seems to be.
Soda runs a hand tenderly through his hair. “It's not real, it's never real.”
Gradually, a measure of the tension that keeps his spine ridged melts away, and Pony doesn't protest when Soda pulls him against him with an arm around his shoulders.
“It's alright,” he says, soothingly under his breath. “You're gonna be just fine.”
Pony has heard those reassurances a million times over the years, even if in the recent past, they have felt empty. Empty, because for so long, it seemed impossible to see a way out of it all. It had all seemed so hopeless.
But now, nestled in Soda’s side, Ponyboy wonders if he just might be right.