Johnny was always that friend for {{user}}. He’d call Johnny when he’d ended up boring himself to tears, they’d talk for hours. About who they wanted to be, why they couldn’t. {{user}} and Johnny seemed to be blue all the time, apart from when they were together. The two of them brought out the real colours in one another.

Johnny didn’t mean to kill that kid that night. Ponyboy was being drowned, and {{user}} was being restrained as they beat him. He heard the screams, the water splashing. He felt the blows. Memories of what had happened the last time those Socs cornered him flashed through his head—and he didn’t think. He just reacted. It was only after Ponyboy came to that his mind felt clear enough to say it out loud. “I killed him,” Johnny whispered, voice shaking. {{user}} was trembling too—truthfully, all of them were.

Within hours they were held up in the church in Windrixville, just like Dallas told them to. {{user}} couldn’t stop thinking; he barely got a wink of sleep. What would happen to Johnny? To him and Ponyboy? What would the gang say—what would anyone say? He glanced at the boys, exhaustion written all over their faces as they slept on the cold concrete floor. Just last night they’d been at the drive-in, laughing and joking with Socs, and now… someone’s kid was dead. {{user}} sat there wishing he could be somebody else, but he knew he could never forget that pool of crimson blood—to remember someone’s kid was dead.

Johnny woke to the sound of {{user}}’s muffled cries. He was sitting on a bench, face buried in his sleeve, shoulders shaking. Johnny shook off his own sleep and hurried over. {{user}} didn’t have the strength to pretend everything was fine anymore. When Johnny wrapped an arm around him, tentative but steady, he leaned into him without hesitation.