"Hey, kid."

A wave of panic rolled through Johnny's body as he realized that someone was talking to him—someone with a voice he didn't recognize. His hand automatically crept to the switchblade that he had taken to carrying in his back pocket, the tips of his fingers prickling angrily with the loss of feeling from the cold February air. He looked up, trying to discern the person who was speaking to him from the darkness. God, it was cold. His eyes finally adjusting, Johnny could see a gangly looking boy with dark hair staring down at him questioningly, his hair slicked back in an oily sheen which reflected the moonlight of the exposed night sky above him. Greaser. Johnny felt relief flood through his body as he took his hand off the outline of his switchblade. What time was it?

The boy started again. "I was comin' down the…I mean, I was comin' back from the…" He waved his hands vaguely to the left. "From the…bar up the road, and I almost tripped over ya." He swayed lightly, looking around indistinctly as if he had forgotten what he had been going to say. As his eyes made their way back to where Johnny was sitting again, he gave a little start as he seemed to remember. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay." He shoved his hands in his pockets.

Johnny felt a vague discomfort clamp down on his brain as he realized that this guy was drunk. "Erm..." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just takin' a nap." He trailed off listlessly looking away from the stranger's gaze.

"Can't ya find somewhere better to sleep than out here? I'm fucking freezing."

Johnny felt a dull ache of pain throb through the right side of his face. Not tonight. He lied. "It…don't bug me much." He moved to sit up, struggling slightly as his jacket was stiff from the crusted over beginnings of frost. "I don't really get cold that easy."

The boy shrugged underneath a worn leather jacket. "Whatever, kid. You got a cigarette?"

"Sure…" He mumbled, his hand moving deftly to the pocket of his jean jacket where he kept his pack and dug out two of his cigarettes. Well, technically, they weren't his cigarettes—he never really had any money to buy any—but Pony had forfeited him his pack since Darry had been gettin' on him about it lately with track season coming up. Pony said it might help him to calm his nerves. Yeah…right.

The stranger sat down next to him, falling down a little heavily, as they both lit up. They sat in silence for a while, the glowing embers of the cigarettes casting a warm glow onto their faces as the heat of the cigarette began to bring some feeling back into the tips of Johnny's fingers. Johnny could feel the other boy staring at him and knew he was going to ask. He felt his shoulders tense up and nervously began messing with the ends of the hair falling in his eyes. The stranger motioned towards the side of Johnny's face, breaking the silence. "What happened there?"

Johnny was sure he flushed red—good thing it was dark. "Fight…" Johnny said lamely. Self-consciously he lifted his hand to the raised portion of broken skin along the side of his cheek-bone where he had been punched. It throbbed dully to the touch, but it didn't feel like it was bleeding anymore. The unpleasant mixture of fear and shame crept into his mind as he was tempted to remember the bad mood his father had been in a couple hours ago, but he tried hard to stifle it. Don't think about it. He focused on the smoke drifting lazily out of the end of his cigarette. Don't think about it.

Realizing Johnny wasn't going to explain further, the boy took a long draw from his cigarette. He looked back towards from the direction he had been walking from. "Fight, huh? Yeah, me too." He leaned backward, puffing a circle of smoke into the night sky. "My buddy…my buddy Tim was supposed to give me a ride home, but uh…I kinda got thrown out before I could find him. So I just, just started walkin' towards home." He pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around his knees and looked back at Johnny. "You don't, uh, know which direction Woodland Acres is do you?"

Johnny had heard of it before; some run-down apartment complex a couple miles away; he was pretty sure Dally's gal Sylvia lived there. This kid was pretty far from home if he lived in Woodland Acres. And to get there, you had to cross that part of the lot where the Soc's occasionally liked to hang out. Where that Blue Mustang had been driving around that one time, where the Soc's had found him and…

Don't think about it.

Johnny felt his hands shaking as he took another long drag from his cigarette.

"You said you were with your buddy Tim." Johnny's voice came out weakly into the darkness. The other boy looked at him and nodded blankly. "Tim…Tim Shepard?"

The drunk stranger broke into a smile. "Yeah. You know him?"

"Yeah, he hangs around with us sometimes." Making a decision, Johnny stood up. He offered the other boy a hand. "Why don't you come with back with me? I got a couch you can crash on if ya need a place for the night. I don't think you want to try walkin' back home this late."

The other boy hesitated a second, then grabbed his hand and swung himself up, accidentally pitching into Johnny's side—he was a good deal taller than Johnny and unsteady on his feet. A sharp pain radiated through Johnny's ribs where he had been hit earlier, making his vision go red for a moment. He put an arm around the stranger, trying to steady him. "Yeah, okay." The boy mumbled.

Johnny helping to prop him up, the two started towards the Curtis' house in this weird procession, Johnny silently praying that this stranger would have the good sense to be quiet and not wake everyone up. Darry usually worked pretty early and the last thing Johnny wanted to do was to piss him off.