A/N: Remember us? People have been asking for five years now if we ever planned to post more in this story, and the answer is finally a yes! For those of you who waited and asked for so long, this is definitely for you. We're so sorry it took so long, but life gets in the way and sometimes the groove is just lost. We hope you enjoy this, and if this doesn't wrap everything up, we promise to not wait so long for the next one (as everything has been planned out for years, and years).
Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders and The Gaslight Anthem owns "Underneath the Ground."
I'd like to know if you could see through the soul
Like I could see to your soul back then.
And reach your hands through all the hurt and defenses,
Would you still try if you knew I was gone?
December 31, 1969
Dear Sodapop,
I hope this letter finds you well and safe. It's been a few weeks since I've heard from you, but I know the mail is slow. Hopefully, you're getting my letters on the regular.
Things around here are certainly changing, mostly for the good, so please don't worry about that. Darry, Allison, and Lizzie are doing great. Darry's been fixing up the house a lot lately, always starting a new project before he's completely finished with the old one, but Allison gets on him about it and he does manage to finish. He started with the roof in the fall and right now is working on the kitchen. All he's really managed to do is put in a new floor, but it looks really good. I think he just wants the best for Allison.
Pony is home right now! He came home for Christmas and is staying a few more days. His visit went by so fast, I'm already sad about his leaving again. Despite that, I think he loves New York. He looks like he's grown at least four feet and aged three years since he left in August. He talks about everything he's been doing (I'm sure he's written you all about it) and he seems like he can't wait to get back. I'm happy for him, but I miss him like crazy, too.
I know that everyone has written you that Two-Bit and Carolyn are getting married today! It's still so hard to believe he grew up enough to be so responsible. He's so happy and doing so great as a new dad. It's really something to see. I wish you were here for it, and so does he. And you should see him with Frankie - she's the sweetest. He's such a good father, but like he tells me, he has to make up for his father being such a coward.
Speaking of the wedding, I invited Dallas. I wasn't sure I was going to, but he's been home since September and I barely see him. This just feels like something he should be around for. I'm nervous about it, but I'm happy too. I can't say if he's changed or not, but he's been staying up at Buck's and kind of even works for him. I'm not sure what he does, but it sounds like he does a lot of odd jobs and errands, and some of that involves working up at the stables Buck's rodeo guys run. Buck won't let him ride in a rodeo yet, but Dally says he'll eventually cave. It's not a real job, but he's trying. Sometimes he shows up wanting to see me, but mostly he gives me my space.
Those are all the big things happening right now. I'll write you again soon, and hopefully I'll have some pictures to send you from the wedding.
Please take care of yourself and stay safe. We all miss you.
Yours,
Ellie
xxx
Stray hairs on the top of her head blew around in the breeze and seemed to turn blonde in the light from the porch as she pulled the back door shut behind her. Dally stumbled over his own feet and nearly crashed down the two cement steps, but he caught himself before he fell. When he faced her, she was standing on the bottom step frowning at him.
"Gimme my keys."
She crossed her arms across her chest and said, "You're drunk."
"Gimme my fucking keys, Ellie."
He stumbled forward, and she stepped out of his way. Fuck, he couldn't walk straight.
"Either go back inside and calm down, or leave," she said.
"Fine, I'm gone. Give me my keys."
Slowly, she shook her head. "You drive like a lunatic when you're sober. You think I'm letting you drive like this?"
The world was spinning ever so slightly, but he wasn't nearly as drunk as she was accusing him of being. He'd been drunker and fine to drive, this was no different. He sized her up, trying to call her bluff and then took two steps closer. Ellie stood her ground, and he was close enough now to watch her shiver in the cold breeze.
"Where the fuck am I gonna go if you don't give them to me?"
"I don't care where you go so long as you don't wrap that truck around a tree," she replied, looking him square in the eye.
Fuck this broad, he thought. He grabbed at her arms, uncrossing them and fumbling for her clenched hands. He had no idea where his fucking keys were, but she had have them because he certainly didn't.
"Fucking give them to me, Ellie."
She tried to pry his hands off. Her fingernails were digging into his arm, and she shouted at him. Dally didn't care. He just wanted the keys to get the fuck away from that house. He kept trying, kept fending off her pathetic fight against him and the way she cried out a little when he dug his fingers into her arm to force her hand open. When the back door opened, he ignored it until two meaty hands pried his off Ellie's and forced him back. Once again, he caught himself before he toppled over.
Now Darry was standing between him and Ellie and his keys. He was silhouetted against the house and the yellow porch light. If anything, he looked twice as big as he usually did.
"How about you get out of here now?" he suggested.
Dally pointed at Ellie. "Tell her to give me the keys, and I'll be fucking glad to leave."
Darry didn't even look at her. All he said was, "Go walk it off, Dal."
His palms itched for the keys, but sometimes even Dally knew when to admit defeat. It was downright stupid to pick a fight right now , sober or drunk, Darry would kick his ass. Darrel Curtis was the only person Dally didn't doubt could do that.
"Fuck you both," he grumbled, admitting defeat. He turned away from them and took off down the alley.
The night air was cold, and the wind pushed at his back as he walked the neighborhood. Dally popped the collar of his bomber jacket and stuck a cigarette between his lips. The scratched silver lighter in his pocket was empty, so he fumbled with a pack of matches and stopped on the dark sidewalk. Huddled up to block the wind, he struck the match on his St. Christopher medal and lit up his Kool. He inhaled deeply and looked up as he exhaled the smoke into the clouds above his head. He stuck the cancer stick back between his lips and kept walking. The medal bounced against his chest.
He had no idea where he was going. It was 10 o'clock on New Year's Eve 1969, and he had no fucking place to be. Ellie begged him to come to the house after the wedding. Begged. In three months she had barely even flashed him a smile, and she pleaded with him to come to the wedding and to celebrate after. She was different and he knew it was his fault, but he stayed around knowing she would warm up to him again.
Within three minutes of walking into the Curtises, he knew he had to get out. Two-Bit stood up for him well enough, but everyone else just stared at him. He could handle all of them, save for Ponyboy. He hadn't said one word to that kid in three years, and Dally learned that the two of them didn't quite dig each other anymore. All he could think about was Johnny when he looked at Pony. The two of them running into that burning church like some damn heroes. If Pony hadn't done that, then maybe Johnny wouldn't have either, and maybe he would still be alive.
He was drunk and two blocks from the Curtises, and he knew he was coming up on the lot. In the three months he'd been back, he hadn't even looked at the damn place. He gave it thought, though. Lord, did he ever think about it.
Picking up his pace, he crossed the street and cut through a few back yards until he came to the street with the empty lot on the other side. It seemed endless in the dark. A couple of street lights were out, but he could see the spot he'd tried to end it. Sometimes he still wished he had but not as much as he wished it lately.
Flicking the end of his smoke, he crossed the street and into the grass. He walked up the small hill and just stood there. The night was ominously quiet for New Year's Eve, but he stood there trying to remember where it had all gone wrong. A gun, even unloaded, should have been enough. It almost was enough. Three shots didn't end it when they should have. Johnny died with a broken back and he, Dallas Fucking Winston, took three bullets and lived to tell the tale. It kept him up at night when he let himself think about it.
XXX
They were all counting down, but Ellie sat on the couch in a sour mood. It was a good day, a great day even, until Dally spoiled it. She shouldn't have been surprised, but she still couldn't help it. The whole night had turned a blue shade of melancholy she couldn't shake.
As the last seconds of 1969 ticked down, she looked around at all of the people in the room and remembered those who weren't there. Pony had brought up the fact that it was already the new year in Vietnam. She took a deep breath in 1969 and let it out in 1970.
The room was practically spinning from the two very happy couples, with Lizzie and Lucy dancing around, blowing a horn to ring in the new year. The couples parted and Two-Bit pulled Ellie to her feet and enveloped her in a bear hug, crushing her and forcing a laugh.
"Happy New Year, darlin'," he said, before he held her at arm's length.
Kissing his cheek, she returned the sentiment.
Pony came up to them, and Two-Bit pulled both of them into a crushing hug. "I'm so glad y'all are here!"
Two-Bit smiled so wide she thought his face might crack, hugged them again, and released them. He pulled his mother and Lucy into a hug and then spun his sister in a big circle.
"Happy 1970," Pony said, looking down at her.
"Thanks," she said, threading her arm through his. She was so happy he was home, she cried when he got off the bus a couple of days before Christmas Eve. Just seeing his face was the best Christmas present she could have received.
"Don't let Dally get you down," he said.
She just shrugged. "It was my own fault for inviting him. I thought it might be good for him, but I was wrong again."
It wasn't the first time Dally brought down an evening, but it was first time she was planning to spend a New Year's with him and he bailed. She wasn't even sure she was going to kiss him, but after three months of getting used to him being home, she was certainly thinking about it.
"He's not ok, is he?" Pony asked.
Ellie replied, "I don't really know, but don't worry about him."
Pony seemed happy to drop the conversation. Besides, worrying about Dallas was her job. She didn't think about him for too long, though, as they sat back down on the couch and Lizzie handed them both noisemakers. All together, they made such a ruckus that Darry ordered the three of them outside.
XXX
Ellie lay in her bed for all of ten minutes before she got dressed again and climbed out her bedroom window. She started up Dally's truck and drove around the neighborhood a few times looking for him. She didn't know why she bothered. Even if she found him, she knew he'd still be drunk and probably looking for a fight. He'd want a fist fight, but sparring words with her would work just as well for him.
She drove by the lot and up and down the Ribbon. For a minute, she thought about driving out toward Buck's, thinking he might have hitched a ride back, but on a gut feeling, she decided to try one more place.
The cemetery was as dark as anything when she stopped the truck on the street. From safely inside the truck, she scanned the headstones as far as she could see but came up empty. If he was at Johnny's grave, she would never see him from the street.
She hated to leave warmth of the truck to scale a fence, maybe even fall and break her neck, to walk through a dark cemetery alone, but when she saw the tiny red embers of a cigarette at Johnny's grave, she couldn't turn back. The moon cast a silver edge to his hair as she stood at the top of the small hill. She hated to disturb him, but he saw her anyway.
"Hi," she said, timidly.
"Happy fucking New Year."
She ignored his attitude and looked at the headstone with the painfully short span of years. Johnny had been dead more than three years now.
"I didn't know you knew where he was buried," she said.
"I found it," he said, without emotion.
Dally hadn't looked at her yet. He was looking at Johnny's headstone and smoking. She noticed the new cigarette resting on the top of the stone.
"How long have you been out here?"
He finally looked at her. "Since you kicked me out without a ride."
"You wanted to leave, I didn't kick you out."
He shook his head and looked away from her again. "What do you want?"
Honestly, she didn't know. Part of her couldn't stand the thought of him drunk in a gutter and the other part knew how much he was hurting. It hadn't escaped her that this was the first time he'd been in a room with Ponyboy since the night he got shot. She couldn't just tell him that, though.
"I don't know."
"Then I don't know either. So why don't you fucking leave me alone?"
Only because he sounded so serious, so terribly fraught, did she nod and turn away. Down the hill a little way she turned around and caught sight of him crouched on the ground, one hand supporting himself on the headstone. When he pinched the bridge of his nose, Ellie forced herself to wait back by the truck. As much as she wanted to help him through his grief and all of the demons she was only just realizing he still had to face, it wasn't for her to witness. Not this.
When he finally came back, she watched silently as he climbed over the fence and landed on the sidewalk with a quiet thud. He stood in front of her where she leaned against his truck. His hands were in his jacket pockets, his hair haloed from the streetlamp. Right then, she could see every vulnerable part of him.
"Did I hurt you earlier?"
Ellie shook her head and asked, "Are you okay?"
"I'm Fine."
But he wasn't, she knew that. Ellie had kept her distance from him since he'd been back, but it was a short distance. Her chest still ached when she thought about how much Wade hated her, but it was nothing compared to how her heart ached when she got close enough to Dally. She knew he had never faced anything from that September night three years ago; all he had ever done was run from it. Suddenly, she felt bad for being so angry with him at the party. Face-to-face with Ponyboy and Dally was reliving something the rest of them had learned to live with while he was still stuck in 1966.
When he touched her face as they stood shivering in the middle of the night, she couldn't pull away. When he leaned in close enough she could feel his breath warm on her cheeks, she was drunk with it. Reflexively, she put her hands on his chest, but only to stop him. She didn't push him away.
"Dally," she said, unsure what she wanted to say.
"I need you," he said.
This was the Dallas she'd always known that the others didn't, but still she kept her hands pressed against his chest.
"You can't hate me forever, Dollface."
Her elbows unlocked, and he was closer. She said, "I don't hate you. I just don't ... I can't."
But it wasn't enough of a protest for him or for her. She let him kiss her, and she kissed him back. Their first New Year's kiss three hours late and outside of a cemetery, with whisky and Kools on his tongue.
When he pulled away he whispered, "Stay with me."
This is when her senses came crashing back, and she felt a cold hole in her stomach.
"I can't."
His eyes narrowed, but not threateningly, just as though he were trying to figure her out.
Deftly, she worked her way around him and got into the driver's seat of his truck. Dally looked at her from outside, just staring at her with an amused look on his face and shook his head. Ellie motioned to the passenger side and was surprised when he walked around and got in without a fight.
"You're damn lucky you're cute and it's so damn late ain't nobody gonna see you driving me around in my own damn truck," he said.
Ellie started up the engine, smiling a little. Dally lit up a cigarette and then tapped the gear shift when she didn't put it into drive.
"Are we just going to sit here?"
"Where am I taking you?" she asked, her eyes on the pavement ahead. This was why she never should have went looking for him.
"All my shit is at Buck's."
The plan was, she decided, to drive him to Buck's, drop him off without getting out of the truck, and then drive all the way back home. That might end up with her in bed before dawn. It wasn't going to be that easy, though. She knew that.
When the roadhouse was in view, Dally yawned and laid his arm across her shoulders. Ellie ignored it and pulled into the gravel parking lot and parked in a spot near the door. Slowly, she put the truck in park and sat there staring forward through the windshield.
"There you go," she said.
"There I go?"
"I'll come get you sometime tomorrow so you have your truck, okay?"
Dally leaned in close and turned off the engine, pulling the keys from the ignition and putting them in his coat pocket.
"Dally, don't."
"It's the middle of the night. You're tired and I ain't about to let you drive all the way back in the fucking dark," he said.
This was exactly what she was afraid of. This was exactly what she had avoided the last three months, but this time she led herself right to it. Dally had always been able to talk her into anything, and even though now she was completely aware of that, she still couldn't do anything about it sometimes.
"Come on, Dollface," he said.
Finally, she looked at him, her eyes pleading. He touched her face, and she took his hand and pulled it away.
"I need to go home."
"El, I'm fucking serious about you driving back by yourself," he said. "It's late, okay? I won't even try nothing, I swear."
Looking at him, her heart and her mind combated inside of her. Knowing it was a stupid idea to stay with him because even if nothing happened, it opened the door to everything. Dally took her hand in his and kissed it softly.
"I swear," he said again, softer this time.
Going against her better judgment, Ellie quietly said, "Fine."
XXX
The first thing he did when they got upstairs was open the window and pull off his shirt. The first thing she did was look around at a room that looked perfectly preserved from the last time she was in it ages ago. It was still dirty and reeked of beer and cigarette smoke.
Dally climbed into the bed, the springs creaking, and laid flat on his back under the blankets. There was space for her, and he turned his head a little, watching her. Nervously, she untied her shoes and set them neatly against the wall. She flicked off the lights and climbed into the bed, her back to him. He set his arm over her and pulled her against his chest. Before she ever had a chance to warn him to not try anything, he was snoring softly. For three months, she had done everything she could to avoid this, but as she settled back against his chest, his steady breath warming her neck and rocking her to sleep, she thought that things might be just fine.
Or would you talk about if I loved her now?
Tell my sins to God out loud.
Would you cry, cry 'cause I was gone?
Would you hiss and spit and curse my name,
Embarrass me to the other graves?
Would you lay right own with me,
Underneath the ground?
