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Ponyboy wasn’t ready to face another Wednesday. A full day of classes with nothing absolutely pressing to get done—but a legal obligation to be there anyway—followed by a track practice focused on…conditioning. He shuddered just thinking about it.
He was going to go. He had to go.
That’s what he told himself anyway, as he dragged his feet down the hallway and wiped the last traces of sleep from his eyes.
He froze in the hallway when he heard a hacking cough echo from the kitchen. He winced. It sounded painful.
Ponyboy rounded the corner to find Darry hunched over the counter, gripping the cup in his hand like it was a lifeline. His shoulders shook once more before he did his best to straighten them and morph his face into something normal. Ponyboy wasn’t falling for it for a second.
“Darry?” he asked softly.
“I’m fine,” Darry replied too quickly, clearing his throat. “I think I just swallowed wrong.”
With his brother upright again, Ponyboy couldn’t ignore his flushed complexion and his tired eyes.
“You don’t look fine,” he said, not quite willing to meet his brother’s eyes as he delivered the news.
“I know,” Darry drew a shallow breath. “but I don’t have time to not be fine and I don’t feel too bad.”
“Darry,” Ponyboy stepped closer. “just sit down for a second.”
Darry shook his head. “I’ve worked through worse. As long as you and your brother are okay, someone’s gotta work to keep the lights on.”
Ponyboy sighed. He knew his big brother was stubborn, but he didn’t realize he was also stupid—willing to stay home to watch over his brothers, but not to give himself time to rest. Ponyboy had to resist the urge to laugh.
Before he could try again, Soda stumbled into the room, eyes barely open and leaning against the doorway like he needed it to remain upright.
“Morning,” Soda mumbled, wandering over to the coffee pot.
Darry’s eyes narrowed as he watched, his focus only breaking when a cough forced him to look away.
“Gee, Dar,” Soda began, “you sound terrible.”
“You’re one to talk,” Darry snapped back.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Soda said matter-of factly, pouring a cup of coffee with shaky hands.
Ponyboy wanted to laugh, but he stayed at the table, watching quietly to see who broke first.
Darry scoffed. “You only drink coffee if you’re trying to be polite or getting sick.” He paused. “And you sure as hell aren’t trying to be polite before seven am.”
Soda’s eyebrows furrowed, offended, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he opted to try to slip out of the kitchen, fleeing the conversation all together.
Darry wasn’t ready to let him go that easily. “Sodapop,” he said, voice hoarse yet firm. “Come here.”
Soda threw himself against the doorframe dramatically. “Darry, come onnn,” he whined.
“Come here,” he repeated with no room for argument.
Soda reluctantly shuffled over, cup still in hand. Darry laid a hand across his forehead before he had time to slip away again.
“You’re warm, little buddy,” he said sympathetically, flipping from annoyance to concern in a matter of seconds.
And that was all it took for his mask to crumble.
Soda’s shoulders fell forward, defeated. Small shivers racked his frame as his expression shifted to display his full discomfort. “Dar, I’m so cold,” he whispered.
Darry pulled him closer, running a hand across his back.
“You’re really warm,” Soda said with a hint of suspicion.
Ponyboy couldn’t take it anymore. “That sounds about right,” He said, appearing in the doorway. He grabbed his brothers’ arms pulling them toward the living room. “Come on, we’re done.”
Darry pulled back. “Pony, I’ve got work in half an hour.”
“You can’t go,” Pony told him, “you’re gonna hurt yourself. Just sit down.”
Darry didn’t budge.
“Please?”
Before Darry could resist again, Soda tackled him onto the couch with him. His limbs practically turned to a liquid the second he came in contact with the soft surface of the couch, trapping Darry beneath a sea of arms and legs.
“Ponyboy, Sodapop,” Darry said, attempting to be stern but interrupted by a sharp cough. “I can’t stop just because I have the sniffles. The world keeps turning and things need to be done.”
Ponyboy crossed his arms. “But the world can keep turning without you for a day,” he offered.
“Yeah, but work—“
Soda cut him off. “I’m going if you’re going.”
A puzzled look crossed Darry’s face. “You just spent the last five minutes whining about how crumby you feel.”
Soda tried to sit up a little straighter. “But it’s not that bad—you would know,” he pointed out, “I can stand through an eight hour shift.”
Darry looked at him again and knew his brothers had him trapped. He could drag himself through a day of work, but he just couldn’t bring himself to sentence a sickly Sodapop to the same fate.
Darry opened his mouth and let out a deep sigh. “Dammit,” he muttered, “you win.”
“Okay, so it’s settled then!” Ponyboy interjected quickly. “No one’s going to work.”
Ponyboy’s eyes met Soda’s as they shared a knowing look. Darry sighed and fell back against the couch.
_____
Ponyboy racked his brain to try to remember everything he’d watched his family do to take care of him over the years. The way his mother knew exactly what to do and the way his brothers tried their best.
Darry tried to alleviate his discomfort through scheduled doses of medicine, copious amounts of tea, warm, balanced meals; Soda threw caution and his own health to the wind and held him until he fell asleep, reading comics aloud, whispering about his day, running a hand through his hair, staying until his fever broke.
He’d seen it done a hundred times, yet this felt different. Lonelier. Like his role mattered a lot more. He was used to being on the other side— the one sinking into the couch cushions while someone pressed a mug of hot lemon water into his hand and he lay half-conscious with a movie in the background.
Once in a while—when one of his brothers fell ill—he’d help. He’d bring a blanket or a fresh cup of water or relay a message, but there was always someone else to tell him what came next.
He never had to be the one with the answers.
And he knew if he walked into the living room right now and asked Darry what to do, even sick and half-asleep, Darry would walk him through, step-by-step. But that wasn’t the point.
He was supposed to figure it out on his own. He needed to show them that he could. He needed to let them lean on him, just this once.
And dammit, he was going to do it.
He could practically hear his mother’s voice: when someone’s hurting, focus on fixing what you can.
He could do that. There were a lot of things he knew how to do that might help.
He started by filling the kettle with water and turning on the stove. They needed to drink something; he knew that. As soon as Darry sent him to bed, the first thing he did was bring a glass of water to his nightstand and make tea.
He filled two glasses with water and carefully carried them back to the living room. His brothers were sprawled across the couch. Darry sat in one corner with his arms crossed while Soda lay in the other, knees pulled close to his chest, falling against the pillows.
“You should drink something,” He told them, passing each of them a glass of water. “And you,” he turned to Darry, “need to relax. put your feet up, lie down—just…stop looking like you’re trying to find a time to bolt out of here.”
Ponyboy practically dragged his brother’s feet onto the coffee table.
“Brat,” Darry muttered with no bite. Ponyboy couldn’t help but grin when he saw a small smile on Darry’s face.
He pulled another blanket off the back of the armchair and draped it over Darry’s legs before scrambling to the closet to search for more. Moments later, he returned, arms full with blankets from the closet. He wrapped another around Soda’s shaking frame and set the other down in-between them, just in case.
Soda shifted uncomfortably. “Could I have that one too?” he croaked.
Ponyboy hesitated. For a second, he almost looked to Darry for permission. He could almost hear Darry’s voice in his head: you’re going to cook him alive, kid.
He shrugged and passed Soda the blanket anyway. Soda snuggled into it, sighing softly as his shivers began to subside.
He needed to combat the damage he might have done by enabling the growing blanket cocoon on the couch. He thought for a second, looking at his big brothers—eyes unfocused, mouths hanging open, faces pale, eye bags accentuated--trying to come up with what else they would do to help him.
Darry winced as the kettle screamed in the kitchen. Ponyboy rushed to stop it. His head poked out through the doorway.
“Does your head hurt?” Ponyboy asked his oldest brother when he returned to the room.
“Only a little. Don’t worry about it.”
Ponyboy was already halfway to the medicine cabinet before he could finish his sentence. He looked through everything they had, trying to narrow down what might actually be helpful: Aspirin, Tylenol, cough syrup.
He ran his fingers across the bottle like they would tell him which ones he was supposed to grab. They didn’t.
Instead, he started reading the labels, scouring them for lists of symptoms that matched his brothers.
“Darry’s coughing,” he muttered to himself as he read the back of the Tylenol bottle, “and Soda’s definitely—probably—got a fever.”
That seemed like a safe choice. By the time he returned to the living room, he was fairly certain he wasn’t going to kill his brothers with pills.
When he caught sight of them, he stopped in his tracks. Suddenly they looked so… young. Small. Fragile. He couldn’t see Darry’s muscles beneath the quilt he was enveloped in; Soda lay perfectly still in a way Ponyboy had never known him to be.
For once, his big brothers didn’t look a day over sixteen and twenty.
He quickly snapped back to reality—to the job before him. He placed the bottle down on the table. “You need medicine,” he told them confidently.
“I’ll be okay, Pony,” Darry tried to resist.
“Come on, Darry,” Ponyboy practically pouted. “It’ll make you feel better. That’s what you always tell me.”
Darry couldn’t argue with that. He grabbed the bottle off the table and shook two tablets into his hand.
He nudged Soda with a socked foot. “Hey, Pepsi-Cola, sit up for a second.”
Soda shifted groggily as Darry placed a pair of pills into his hand.
He grabbed his water from the table and held it up, locking eyes with Darry. “Bottoms up?”
A small smile broke out of Darry’s face as their glasses clinked and they threw the pills back, chasing them with Tulsa’s finest tap water.
Soda gagged as he set the cup down.
“Pull it together, kiddo,” Darry laughed as he dragged him to the other side of the couch. “You spend way too much time with Two-Bit and Steve to not be able to keep your water down.”
“It’s not so bad when there’re no pills,” Soda said, “and you know I don’t drink anything stronger than water.”
Ponyboy smirked. “Does chocolate milk count?”
He watched them laugh, then get comfortable again. Soda now lay on top of Darry like a human space heater. Pony wasn’t sure who benefited more from the new arrangement, but he wasn’t going to question it. He didn’t need Darry to try to tell him that he wasn’t cold and didn’t need anything and was mostly fine.
He grabbed one of the blankets in Soda’s now-abandoned blanket nest and pulled it over his brothers. He couldn’t help readjusting the one around Darry’s shoulders while he was at it.
Before he returned to the kitchen, he turned the TV on—volume low on reruns of something they weren’t actually going to watch and definitely weren’t going to complain about.
Ponyboy padded back to the kitchen, rummaging around in the cupboards for something they could eat. Soup—they needed soup. That’s what his mama would make.
He found a can in the back of the pantry. That would have to do. Digging a saucepan out of the cupboard, he got to work.
He couldn’t help but curse under his breath when he saw the kettle: forgotten on the stove. He’d been trying so hard to make sure everything went smoothly, but he’d forgotten.
Darry wouldn’t have forgotten, he thought.
Neither of them had mentioned it, so it probably wasn’t that important to them. He’d make up for it later. As he opened the can, he couldn’t help but listen in as his brothers whispered in the other room.
“…like a little adult,” was the first phrase he’d caught.
“It’s kind of… nice,” Soda’s voice whispered hoarsely.
Darry hummed in agreement. “I haven’t been tucked in since… I don’t know when.”
“We could start making that a habit.” Ponyboy could practically see the shit-eating grin on Soda’s face, sick or not.
“It’s not the same,” Darry paused. “Im proud of him,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.”
Ponyboy couldn’t help but smile. They didn’t care that he’d messed up more times than he could count already. They appreciated his effort and all the things he’d gotten right.
He was snapped out of his trance by the smell of something burning. Ponyboy cursed under his breath as he pulled the pot off the burner. He scraped a few burnt chunks off the bottom of the pot before declaring the soup inedible and throwing it away.
Back to the drawing board. He still had to feed them. Ponyboy drew a deep breath and opened the fridge. He couldn’t make soup, but he could make a damn good grilled cheese and that would have to do for now.
_____
By the time he returned to the living room, Soda was asleep and Darry was on the verge of joining him. Ponyboy thought for a minute—what is better to let them sleep or make sure they ate something? Their father would say they can go back to bed as soon as they eat, but they need nutrients to fight this thing off.
That settled it.
“Soda,” Ponyboy shook his shoulder gently. “Wake up.”
Darry stirred before him. “I wasn’t asleep, I was just—“
“Yeah, yeah,” Ponyboy cut him off, “just resting your eyes. I know. Eat this sandwich.”
Ponyboy grabbed Soda’s arm put two fingers against his wrist, searching for his pulse.
“Pretty sure he’s still alive, kiddo.” Darry’s laughter quickly turned into a cough.
“Just checking,” Ponyboy said as he dropped Soda’s arm limply back onto the couch.
Darry smiled, shaking his head as he took the plate. “We’ve gotta work on your bedside manner, little nurse.”
“What you just saw was a whole lot more pleasant than the ice cubes I’m about to drop down Soda’s back if he doesn’t get up,” Ponyboy threatened.
Soda bolted upright.
“That’s what I thought,” Ponyboy said, smirking as he slid the plate into his middle brother’s hands.
He watched from the armchair as they ate their sandwiches silently. Darry tried to eat the whole thing, taking slow bites and trying not to look miserable. Soda took two bites out of the middle of a slice and called it quits, falling back against Darry’s chest.
Ponyboy resisted the urge to say something, remembering all the times they’d made him food that he refused entirely and making a mental note to stop doing that.
Soda’s half-eaten sandwich laid in his lap as Darry set his empty plate on the arm of the couch and leaned back, no longer even trying to pretend that he wasn’t tired. They looked worn down to the bone—slumped against each other in a way that made Pony’s chest tighten.
He collected the plates from them. “Okay,” he whispered, “you two should rest now.”
“You got it,” Soda murmured into Darry’s shoulder.
By the time Ponyboy put the plates in the sink, his brothers had all but drifted to sleep. Soda lay sprawled across the couch, while Darry leaned forward just enough to rest his cheek against Soda’s hair. They finally looked peaceful.
Ponyboy hovered in the doorway a moment longer. Part of him wanted to let them sleep as they were. But part of him remembered all the times he’d been sick and the house seemed to magically rearrange itself around him: extra pillows propping him up, the TV turned at the best angle, the lights dimmed, everything perfect and safe and warm.
They deserved that too. Even if they were never going to ask for it.
He pondered for a while. The optimal way for them to rest comfortably, but be a little extra cozy. Somewhere they were never going to want to get up from.
Then it hit him.
A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he crept across the living room to prepare to execute his plan.
_____
Ponyboy reappeared with the last of the blankets from the linen closet, the comforters off all their beds, and more pillows than he could fit in his arms.
Darry laughed softly. “Pony, if you give him all those, he’s gonna overheat and you’re gonna have to figure out how to drive the car to the hospital.”
“They’re not for Soda,” Pony said. Soda looked up, disappointed. “I thought we’d make a fort. You know, proper resting conditions.”
All the disappointment left Soda’s face in an instant. Within seconds, he was invigorated with more energy than he’d had all day, eyes glowing with excitement.
Ponyboy dragged the dining chairs across the room as Soda secured the first blanket in the crevice of the couch. He haphazardly threw the other end to Ponyboy—who picked it up off the floor and secured it to the chair.
Darry held onto the final corner from the comfort of the couch, making no effort to move even as Soda climbed over him to secure another blanket.
“For the amount of effort y’all are putting in, this better be the best blanket fort west of the Mississippi,” he said to Soda.
“It will be if you hold this for a second.” Soda passed him to corner of the blanket.
“If you put another one over top, it’s going to collapse unless you put a support in the middle,” he offered.
“You only have to hold in the middle long enough to put pillows over there,” Soda said, gesturing to the other side of the fort.
Ponyboy nodded slowly, looking at his brothers. He noticed the way Darry’s head leaned against the couch cushions like it was too heavy for him to hold it up on his own. He noticed the glassiness returning to Soda’s eyes as the energy seeped out of him.
“Okay, you guys get in the fort and make sure it doesn’t fall. I’ll finish the exterior,” he instructed.
They didn’t argue, both happy to lay down for a minute. As soon as he was on the floor, Soda’s enthusiasm left as quickly as it had come. Ponyboy paused his fort construction long enough to tuck the blankets and pillows from the couch into the fort.
Darry gratefully accepted them from him. “You know,” he began, looking at the fort. “One more sheet across this side would turn that into a door and then you’re done.” He gestured to the side of the room where the TV sat with a blanket—or maybe a towel—thrown over it so it could be seen from inside the fort.
Ponyboy kept one foot on the chair as he reached over to throw another cover over the far side of the fort. Sure enough, that was exactly what it needed.
“Why are you guys so good at this?” Pony gritted his teeth, trying to secure the last pillow without letting the roof cave in.
“Because I’ve built a million blanket forts,” Soda said sleepily.
“And I build real roofs for a living,” Darry added, sniffling.
“And you thought you weren’t going to work today.” Soda nudged him playfully.
Ponyboy took a step back to admire the finished product. “I think it’s done,” he told his brothers as he poked his head past the flap they’d declared ‘the door.’
“We’ve done it,” Soda confirmed, “we’ve built a home.”
Darry snorted. “We’ve built a temporary structure that violates every safety regulation known to man.”
Soda reached up to touch the roof. “Still counts,” he decided, laying against a pile of pillows.
“Alright,” Ponyboy crawled into the fort. “Move over.”
He turned the TV back on before he slid in between them. The fort dimmed the afternoon light, creating exactly what Ponyboy had hoped for: the optimal conditions for rest.
Soda was first to go. One arm slung around Pony’s chest, two blankets, half the pillows off the couch, and five minutes were all it took.
A few minutes later, he felt Darry’s head land on his shoulder as his breaths softened. He tucked a pillow under Darry’s head so his neck wouldn’t hurt when he woke up, settling into his spot to stay a while.
Through the door of the fort, he could see dishes still sitting in the sink. He’d have to tend to them before his brothers were well enough to move about the house again, but he wasn’t going to deal with them now.
No, he had put too much work into making sure his brothers were comfortable and asleep that he was not about to risk waking them up to do the dishes. Besides, playing the roles of both his big brothers all day had been exhausting. He was done.
As he laid back against the couch wedged between his brothers, he could hear Soda’s voice echoing in his mind. A phrase he’d heard so many times when he’d been bedridden and his middle brother kept him company for hours: I got it, okay? You just sleep. I’ll keep watch.
Ponyboy pulled his brothers a little closer.
“Don’t worry,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “I got it.”