OMG SO when Darry was friends with all those socs he would bully Sodapop so bad in the halls with them. Sodapop would be against the wall sitting on the floor from being shoved by Paul, looking at his big brother expecting him to help him. Darry felt a pang in his heart but he laughed with his friends and called him dumb and stupid, just like everyone else. Soda cried so hard.
They wouldn’t pick on Pony as much (mostly because Darry was to embarrassed for his friends to go to his house) but when they did it was so horrible. Pony, who was so small being in the middle on a circle of big soc boys and his big brother. Being shoved around. Eventually Soda would try and help him but still-
Darry feels so horrible for what he did when he was a “dumb teen”
DUDE i could talk about this for HOURS-be careful or you might open the floodgates
He’d make sure to be “lighter” but he also always told his brother if h they told their parents he’d kill them and it got to the point where Soda would purposefully avoid going the same routes in school as Darry beating he didn’t want him or his Soc friends beating him up. Soda would cry so hard his throat hurt and he wouldn’t speak to darry for days, no matter how many times he apologized. Soda was already depressed in school and he didn’t need his own flesh and blood telling him that too. They never told their parents, but he also wouldn’t let his parents near his soc friends because he found his dad’s happy and goofy personality embarrassing and he found his mom to be “too much” around his friends so he’d always either go out or sneak out.
Little twelve year old Pony too just being in the middle of this ring of Soc boys, Darry could see the fear in Pony’s eyes too and just felt horrible. But he just went along with it and told Pony to not be so weak and to stick up for himself…it got to the point he let one of his friends burn Pony’s favorite book and didn’t do a thing about it as Pony wailed for his big brother to make it all stop and Darry just stood there.
He does everything he can yo make it up to them now. He’s VERY careful with his words now with them (Pony isn’t a reliable source so there’s some wiggle room between canon and not) and he’ll sometimes randomly jsut ask his brothers like “you know I’m sorry? You know I never meant it..? You know I love you, right..?” and he gets so close to just crying. It literally keeps him up at night sometimes.
I will ramble about this.
