"That sonuvabitch," Steve barks out furiously, banging his hand on the door. The cold November air makes his breath fog as he goes on, "He's sitting on the stand lying. Can't you fucking object or something?"

Johnny's fingers flick the lighter he has stiffly, shaking his head. "I don't think you can," he inhales as soon as the cigarette is lit, eyes shutting. "I don't know how that all works."

Soda looks pale too, unsteady as they stay where they were in the parking lot. Eugene stayed inside, and Ponyboy's hand had been shaking for a smoke. Darry is pacing the lot himself, running his hands on his jeans, trying to clearly muster something up. Beside Ponyboy, Dallas offers him a Kool with a steady hand, not saying anything.

Whatever he's thinking beneath his eyes, Ponyboy isn't privy to. Dallas has opted to offer him a cigarette, Ponyboy clenching his teeth on the filter side. Dallas lights his cigarette, Johnny going on, "They'll catch him in a lie. I know they will." Ponyboy takes a long inhale of the cigarette, unsure of where his mind was at the moment.

Ten minutes didn't seem like enough time to process what Randy had said, to sit with his own anger and disbelief. The Randy that had appealed to him in the car before the rumble had seemingly collapsed beneath the Randy that was in the courtroom at the moment.

It makes him dig his fingers into his thighs, makes him take a longer drag of the cigarette. Dallas' hand comes around to touch his neck, right against the mating mark.

He shuts his eyes. Steve continues on angrily, Johnny saying something else, and Soda following up weakly. Everyone's scents are aggravated, upset around him and all Ponyboy can do is concentrate on the cigarette, on the feeling of smoking burning his nostrils, on the weight of Dallas' hand on his neck, on his scent. It's all he can do to stay attached to the ground beneath him, to try and not to give into the panic.

That feeling he had before the rumble threatens to take over: the wave of nausea, something creeping at the very edge of his mind that this wasn't all going to turn out right. Everything was on a precipice and if Ponyboy wasn't careful, they'd knock off the edge into something worse.

Dallas was here though, Soda was here, Johnny was here. The feeling of Dallas' body against his, the scent of his brothers, the rest of his pack all were settling on him, trying to ground him to the cold outside. They were here, they weren't leaving, they were pack.

And still, still: the chasm of fear is there, the uncertainty remains as Steve rants, Darry paces. In the corner of his eye, he can see Two-Bit in one corner, playing with his switchblade, not saying anything.

No one is feeling good now and Ponyboy wishes it was different. He shuts his eyes, trying to push away the buzzing sound in his head, trying to fold into Dallas more, trying to get away from everything.

The world goes into a fuzzy haze, and Ponyboy doesn't fight it, doesn't fight the feeling that maybe his body isn't his body. That everything was further and further —

"Pony," Soda's voice pushes against the attempt to shut things out. Ponyboy tips his head away from his voice.

A hand tugs on his hair, pain flaring up and Ponyboy's eyes snap open to focus on Dallas' harsh gaze, cheeks pink. "You gotta go back inside, kid." Behind him, the sky is a duller blue than what Ponyboy remembered, Dallas' mouth turned in a frown. "C'mon."

The words, I wanna stay with you, gets stuck in Ponyboy's throat. His whole body feels unsure for a moment, and then Dallas is helping him stand up, Soda is flanking him on the other side as they walk back into the courtroom.

It feels as if he's blinked, and then he's seated again, looking at Randy in his suit, Eugene moving around the desk in slow motion. Ponyboy's hands feel clammy, and he reaches for the glass of water in front of him, taking a long, slow pull of the cold drink, Eugene's voice piercing through:

"I would like to know your relationship with Mr. Sheldon. The previous witness stated that they were best friends with him, and that he was a good guy, in his words. What, exactly, does that mean?"

The other lawyer looks as if he wants to say something. Randy leans into the mic as he speaks, "It means he was a good guy. He showed up when I needed him, he went out on dates with our girls, he always backed me up in a fight. We did a lot together." Randy pauses. "Sir."

"Including the drinking, which you admit happened," Eugene touches his chin. "You seem to have been drinking for some time, Mr. Adderson. Given what happened, we also know that the drinking this time turned out differently. Can you tell me if Bob often got into fights, provoked or not, when drinking?"

"It didn't always happen," there's an edge of a snarl at the end of Randy's voice, Ponyboy unsure of where it was pointed. "We didn't just take things lying down, though."

Eugene hums. "Still — fights did happen among you, correct?" When Randy nods, Eugene taps his finger against his chin again. "Can you give us an idea of what those fights were about, Mr. Adderson?"

"It was the gre – kids most of the time," Randy's gaze flicks towards Ponyboy and Johnny briefly — the sight of flashing rings, the glint of the bottle of alcohol rises to Ponyboy's mind — then back towards Eugene. "They used to get mad at us, threaten us. With knives, things like that."

"And why did you never say anything about these alleged threats to an adult before?"

Because they never happened, Ponyboy thinks.

Randy's face flushes. "It didn't seem — I wouldn't have known who to say it came from."

Ponyboy thinks Eugene will point out the fact that Randy said they had. Instead Eugene paces in front of Randy. "You said that the night went crazy, all of a sudden. What do you mean by crazy, exactly? What made that night unusual for you and your friends?"

"It was them bothering us," Randy fidges again. "The bottle, all of that. We never had that kind of thing, where they hit on our women."

"Was it unusual that they bothered you or unusual that they showed an interest in the girls? You said that fights occurred, and that normally it was them bothering you. So, which is it, Mr. Adderson?"

Beside him, Johnny perks up. Randy fumbles, but no one says anything else. He leans forward, adjusting his tie. "Maybe it was because we were drinking. That – That made it unusual, I guess." His voice falters towards the end, his eyes looking at the other end of the court, then back to Eugene. "We didn't normally drink the strong stuff. Bob usually was in charge of getting it from his parent's cabinet, we drank what he brought which was normally, uh, beers. Not that night, though."

Eugene nods. "You drank something different, something stronger. That was unusual for Bob. So you can say that his acts, after he started drinking, weren't in his normal character? It wouldn't have been within his usual temperament to have a fight?"

Again, hesitation sets on Randy's face. Ponyboy finds it difficult to concentrate on anything except the way his scent mingles with a familiar cologne that he can catch on the other end of the courtroom, a sick feeling washing over him again.

"Not — not exactly," Randy mumbles out. "Sometimes if we had a little much, we got a little agitated. Bob did it sometimes, get all mad when he got drunk. Used to pick fights with people — not me," there's a weak film over the words not me as they come out of his mouth. "Mostly with Cherry or David. He didn't like it, sometimes, how things were. Only when he was drinking."

Eugene presses on. "So that night – there's a fight. You said that when he was drinking sometimes he picked fights." He points to Ponyboy and Johnny. "Did he pick a fight with my clients, that night, Mr. Adderson?"

Randy licks at his lips. Ponyboy stares down at him, feeling a wave of anger battling against the nausea, against the sick in his belly. He tries to stare him down the way he's seen Dallas stare down an ornery horse or Tim Shepard when he got mouthy, tries to get that bitterness and anger and defiance he's seen on Dallas before reflecting on his own.

"It —," Randy takes a breath, shrinking away. "It was their fault at the movies. At - At the park, you could say it. Maybe. That kid, the blonde, he spat at Bob, though. We chased him, cause he spat at Bob, called us white trash."

"And what did you do after you chased him?"

Eugene says the words calmy, simply.

Randy can't look at anyone except his hands.

Ponyboy doesn't have to hear him speak, doesn't have to see him mouth the words. He knows what that night was, the cold stinging at his skin, the sound of the Soc's feet behind him, the feeling of several pairs of hands locking onto him, screaming for Johnny to run, the shocking cold of the fountain water...

Randy talks, even though it's distorted in Ponyboy's ears: he keeps saying things like We had to and They were coming at us first and That kid with the scar we met him before and I just meant to scare them.

"Meant to scare them?" Eugene asks incredulously. "You meant to scare them by chasing them around a fountain at three in the morning? To achieve what? What did you want to do after you scared them?"

"I don't know," the words fall out weakly, defensively. "I don't know what we were doing — we just didn't want them around, didn't want them near our girls anymore. We – I just – We were trying to teach them a lesson. About hitting on girls that don't belong to them, about being around. I – Bob was shoving him in, and I was throwing some of the alcohol out. That- That kid, with the scar was behind us and then he just wasn't anymore. He had that blade out, and I didn't know what to do when Bob gave this – that noise." His voice grows thick, saddened. To his discomfort, Randy's voice breaks. "I didn't know what to do when he had all that blood on him, and I just — I ran. We all ran, and it wasn't his fault he got killed. He was my friend —"

The tears cascading down Randy's face feel real. The pain in his voice feels real.

Ponyboy doesn't look away from it, as the judge says, "I think we'll end today's proceedings here."

No one talks much during lunch. Ponyboy finds himself eating his food mechanically, and when it's over, he finds himself pressed against Soda in the truck, heading towards school. Dallas isn't there, gone to run an errand he doesn't name.

Ponyboy misses him as they drive to the school in silence. Soda keeps a warm, steady arm around him, and it's what he's reluctant to pull himself away from once they make their way to the front of the school.

He wants to beg to stay, and knows that Soda and Darry won't allow it. Getting out of the truck is stiff, and when Soda pulls away with Darry, Ponyboy considers cutting class altogether. Just sneaking out, going to Buck's and lying on the bed and sleeping beneath Dallas' clothes there until he came back.

The thought leaves him when he sees Johnny at the other end of the parking lot, being driven up by Mrs. Mathews and Two-Bit. What kind of friend would he be to leave them here alone?

Ponyboy watches as Johnny adjusts himself with the crutches — there was no ability for him to get the wheelchair up inside without going around back to the singular ramp the school had. Johnny struggles up, steadies himself, and he and Two-Bit come over.

Together, they walk inside, guards up.

All Day, Ponyboy thinks he can scent cologne, aftershave, chlorine. In the hallways, in packs of Soc kids that seem to form around corners he isn't watching for, in the amount of people who pop up all of a sudden with glares aimed at him, with mouths moving with gossip.

No once does he see Randy, Cherry or any of the other Socs who were at the trial. He can snatch bits of their scents, can guess where they've fled to, but they never cross paths.

All day, he thinks about the sluice of cold water on his skin, about how Randy looked when he'd been drinking beside Bob, about Give the dirty omega a bath. His hands itch, and his skin feels grimy whenever he touches it, despite knowing he'd showered the night before. Randy's pained face seems to impress itself in his mind and Ponyboy finds himself moving without knowing where he's supposed to go, staring into nothing at times.

He and Johnny meet up in study hall together, the second to last period. Johnny's face looks pinched when Ponyboy sits beside him, both of them with assignments in front of them. Ponyboy thinks about asking him a question, about what to do or say.

He can see something similar is on Johnny's face, uneasy and upset as he looks at his assignments. A sort of bleakness to his face that Ponyboy wants to break.

Except he doesn't know what to say or how to say it.

So they work in silence, punctuated only at times by the sound of their pencils on paper.

"Can we go somewhere else for awhile?" Ponyboy asks, glancing at Dallas when track practice finishes that evening. Like before, Dallas is there, and his eyes are dark. He must've known what was said in court, holding it in all day. "I don't wanna keep going straight home."

"I ain't taking you to the bonfire," wrapping an arm around his shoulders, Dallas steers him to the parking lot where lights are starting to come on. It's not dark just yet, even though the days are starting to hit autumn dark. "Darry'll kill me."

Resentment washes hot over Ponyboy's face, mouth firing out, "The electric chair'll kill me if this trial goes bad. So who cares if we go to the bonfire tonight?" He bites out the words, resentment growing. "No one else has to worry about it! Why do you care about the rules now?"

Quick as a snake, Dallas' hand comes to grasp the back of Ponyboy's neck, squeezing down on him the way he would when scruffing someone. "'Cause I ain't dumb enough to get my mate in trouble, is what," Dallas snaps out. "I don't wanna have to worry about some cops dropping in to be an asshole and hauling you off!"

Ponyboy squirms beneath his hand, tears welling up unexpectedly. "We can just go for one night! Just —"

"Friday, and that's a maybe," Dallas shakes him, forcing Ponyboy to shut his eyes, with how harsh his voice is. "Jesus kid, you need to use your head!"

I reckon it never occurred to you that your brothers might be worrying their heads off and afraid to call the police because something like that could get you two thrown in a boys' home so quick it'd make your head spin!

All at once the memory crashes down on him, of Darry pointing his finger, at the thunderous tone of his voice, of how small Ponyboy had felt. Ponyboy, what on earth is the matter with you? Can't you use your head?

A dam bursts in his chest and Ponyboy breaks into a sob in the parking lot.

Everything comes crashing down on him all at once, every moment from the night in vivid color and the only person there with him, the only one who pulls him close is Dallas.

Weeks ago, he'd never have considered it'd be Dallas trying to calm him down, that it would be Dallas trying to soothe him, that it would be Dallas he'd be clinging to in the encroaching dark of night.