A/N: This is set a little while before the start of the book, a few months after the Curtis parents have died.
This is my first Outsiders fic, so if my characterization's a little off let me know. Feedback is much appreciated, constructive criticism especially.
Warning: There will be mild slash in this fic—nothing explicit, though, and (hopefully) no one will be acting like a lovestruck 12-year-old girl unless s/he actually is a lovestruck 12-year-old girl.
Dallas Winston was not having a good morning.
"OUT! GET OUTTA MY HOUSE!" There was the sound of something shattering as it was thrown at him, hitting the wall less than a foot above Dally's white-blond head. Probably a beer bottle; there were at least a dozen of them all over the floor, and there weren't too many other things in the house that were glass and not already broken. Well, unless you counted the windows, but technically they weren't really in the house.
It wouldn't have hit him anyway, but he ducked instinctively, making a run for the door. If he was lucky, he'd be outside before his dad could stumble his way over to the front door, and he could get away without having anything else thrown at him.
No such luck—Dally had barely made it to the doorway when a second, more accurately aimed bottle hit him in the back of the head and shattered, sending chunks and slivers of glass flying everywhere. He stumbled, one hand automatically flying up to clutch at his throbbing head, but he kept going, shoving his way out the door and tripping over the welcome mat. He landed flat on his face, cussing loudly, and pushed himself back up.
His dad, a big, ugly-looking guy that didn't look a thing like him—with the possible exception of the cold, hard look in his eyes—appeared in the doorway but stopped there, swaying drunkenly. He took a long swig from the half-empty beer bottle in his hand, glaring venomously at the retreating form of his son.
"AND DON'T YOU COME BACK, NEITHER, YOU GOOD-FOR-NOTHING LITTLE BASTARD!"
Dally snarled and yelled something that sounded a lot like, "Fuck you!" except with a few more expletives added on, and stormed down the driveway towards the street.
He didn't give a damn about his dad, anyway, he told himself firmly as he walked up the street, away from his father's house. His father's, not his. It wasn't often that Dally went home—a couple of times a month, at the most, usually when he didn't have anywhere else to crash or he needed to get something from his room—but it seemed like every time he did, he ended up getting thrown out again within a day or so. Usually less, because when he got mad he couldn't keep his mouth shut to save his life, and his dad didn't take well to being yelled back at.
That—the complete and total inability to keep his trap shut when someone said something to him—wasn't usually a problem for him, since he loved a good fight and could handle just about anybody, but sometimes—like now—he regretted opening his mouth, no matter how much his dad deserved it. He'd learned a long time ago that talking back to James Winston didn't do anything but earn him a beating, and sometimes worse. He still had nightmares about the time his father had locked him in a closet.
It had been three—almost four—days before he'd gotten so sick of listening to Dally begging him to be let out that he'd unlocked the door.
He was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice that someone had stepped out of an alleyway right in front of him until he slammed into something way too soft to be a wall, sending the both of them tumbling to the ground. They landed in a mess of flailing limbs, cussing loudly.
Swearing, Dally started to get up, but froze when he realized whom it was exactly that he'd run into. "Hey, Tim," he said, eyeing the older boy warily.
"Dally," Tim replied from his position flat on his back on the pavement, with Dally lying half on top of him. "What're you up so early for? Usually you're still passed out somewhere, sleepin' off the night before," he said, sounding vaguely amused.
After a long moment, he added, "You mind gettin' offa me?" He raised an eyebrow questioningly.
"Nah, I'm kinda comfy here," Dallas muttered sarcastically, before rolling off of the other hood and getting to his feet slowly. He held in the wince when he straightened up, but he could tell that Tim had noticed something was up; he was watching the blond-haired hood with something akin to concern in his eyes. Dally almost laughed out loud at that thought—Tim, concerned? About him? Yeah, right. Tim wasn't concerned about anybody besides himself, with the possible exceptions of Curly and Angela. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that Tim was concerned about him, except maybe over the fact that Dally threatened his title as the 'toughest hood in Tulsa'.
He held out his hand and, after a moment, Tim accepted it and let the younger boy pull him to his feet, making absolutely no effort to help out. After all, Dally had run into him, not the other way around.
"Whatta 'bout you?"
"Huh?" Tim asked intelligently. He hadn't really been listening, too busy looking Dally over for injuries to keep an ear on the conversation—so far he'd spotted a rapidly developing black eye, a split lip, a scrape above his left eyebrow, and several shadows on his forearms that would be nasty bruises by the next morning. The way that Dallas had been so careful standing up told of some kind of damage to his ribs, too. It was obvious he'd been in a skin fight of some kind.
"Glory, you sure are a bright one, Shepard." Dally rolled his eyes. "Ain't you supposed to be gettin' your beauty sleep or somethin'? You sure look like ya need it." He made a show of examining the older boy's face. "Can't get much uglier then that."
"Well at least my face don't look like my ass," Tim grumbled, taking a half-hearted swing at him. It was more for show than anything; the two of them teased and insulted each other all the time, and 'ugly' wasn't even at the bottom of the list of stuff they usually called each other.
Feeling something running down the back of his neck, Dally rubbed the back of his head. He was startled when something wet came away on his hand. Looking down at the blood glistening on his fingers, he swore loudly and started trying to wipe it off on his jeans.
Tim eyed him with a neutral expression on his face. "You OK, Winston?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. It's nothin'. Just a little cut."
"Sure it is," Shepard snorted. "Lemme have a look at it, blondie." Dallas growled at him; he hated it when Tim—or anyone else, for that matter—called him that.
He grabbed the blond by the arm none-too-gently and turned him around so he could look at the back of his head. When he saw the source of the blood, he could feel his eyes widen. Almost the entire bottom half of Dally's white-blond hair was bright red from blood, and it had soaked into the back of his shirt collar, too. At the rate it was bleeding, the entire back of his shirt would be soaked pretty soon.
He could see small pieces of glass glinting in the boy's hair, too. Little chunks were sticking out of the back of his neck, too, and after a close look at it he identified it as coming from a liquor bottle—he couldn't think of anything else that was that same shade of bottle-green.
Thankfully, it didn't look like it was anything too major. Head wounds tended to bleed a lot.
"Ouch. What the hell happened to ya?" he asked, picking a sliver of glass out of one of the larger wounds.
"Nothin'. Just got in a fight. Who knew gettin' wacked with a beer bottle hurt that much?" he answered flippantly, trying not so sound like he was lying—which, technically, he wasn't. Tim, however, knew him well enough to see right through the act and just stared at him with his best I-can-tell-you're-not-tellin'-me-something-Winston-so-you'd-better-fess-up-or-I'll-bash-your-head-in look on his face, cocking an eyebrow. It was the same one he'd used when Dally had slashed his car tires, and it got about the same reaction as it had before—absolutely nothing.
"C'mon, Dally. What really happened?"
"That is what really happened."
"Bullshit. You're not tellin' me somethin'." Tim glared at Dally, waiting for an answer. The two of them stood there for a long moment, Tim staring Dally down in an attempt to get him to talk.
Finally, after an almost painfully long pause, Dally muttered reluctantly, "It was my dad."
"What?" Tim's expression was confused, although he quickly tried to mask it with a neutral expression. He hadn't even known that Dally had a father. He'd sure as hell never mentioned him before, and Tim had known him for years. It made him wonder what else he didn't know about Dallas…
"Was he drunk?"
"Yeah, thankfully." Tim shot him a confused look. (He seemed to be doing that a lot lately…) "He's even worse when he's sober," Dally explained, shrugging.
"Oh." Tim cleared his throat awkwardly, not really sure what to say to that. Pity flickered momentarily across his face before he masked it quickly behind an indifferent look. Having a stepdad that only beat up on you when he was drunk and having a dad that bashed you up even when he was sober were two totally different things—Tim counted himself lucky that he had the former, and not the latter.
Unfortunately, Dally had caught the look on Tim's face before he'd masked it. "I don't want your fuckin' pity, Shepard," he snarled, turning around quickly to storm away. Tim grabbed his arm—woah, déjà vu— to stop him before he got more than a couple of steps, though.
"Shit, Dally," he murmured, running his hand through his curly black hair with a frustrated look on his face, "it ain't like that. I just… I didn't know you had it so bad. At home, I mean."
Dally stood there for an agonizingly long time, seemingly frozen in place, before he said anything. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, with only traces of the anger that had been in it only moments before.
"It's alright, man." He looked down at his shoes, suddenly very interested in them. They were looking pretty rough, just like the rest of him, it seemed—the left one was almost completely ripped out on one side, and the laces were knotted up so badly that he'd never get them untangled. Absently, he made a mental note to scope out a new pair of shoes the next time he was in a store. (So he could steal them, of course. There was no way in hell he was gonna buy them.)
There was a long moment of awkward silence in which both of them looked at anything but each other, desperately trying to think of something to say. Finally, Dally couldn't take it anymore and blurted out a rushed goodbye before hurrying off down the street.
Dally had only been walking for a few minutes before his stomach started to growl. He hadn't had anything to eat last night, and what with his dad kicking him out again first thing this morning, he hadn't even had breakfast yet.
Groping in his pocket for some money, his hand closed over empty space. Cussing, he checked the rest of his pockets before conceding defeat. He knew he had some money stashed away under his bed back at home, but there was no way he was going back there until his dad had had a chance to pass out on the couch, or go to work—if he even had a job, which Dally seriously doubted—or something, whatever it was he did during the day. Dally usually didn't stick around long enough to find out.
It looked like he'd be going hungry, then, unless he felt like heading over to the Curtis's place for breakfast—hopefully Soda wasn't the one making it this morning, because he wasn't in the mood to eat anything that was undercooked, overcooked, or a color that it wasn't supposed to be.
He really didn't feel like having them freak out about the big chunks of glass stuck in the back of his head, but a) he was hungry, and b) he figured he'd better do something about them before he passed out from blood loss or something equally humiliating, so he adjusted his course to head for the Curtis's house where food, medical attention, and a bunch of irritatingly cheerful Greasers awaited him.
When he got there, he trudged up to the door and opened it, not bothering to knock. Dally, Steve, Two-Bit, and Johnny had long ago stopped knocking before they went inside, since the four of them were practically family, anyway. Stepping inside, he could hear voices in the kitchen and, slamming the door behind him, he walked across the living room into the kitchen. It looked like the whole gang was here today—Steve and Two-Bit were sitting at the table talking about some girl they'd seen at the movie house—"Did you see her tits? I mean, seriously, they were huge!"—while Soda leaned against the counter trying to put his socks on one-handed. Johnny and Pony were sitting at the other end of the table, talking about something in quiet voices and Darry was making pancakes.
"Mornin', Dally," Darry said, looking up from the stove.
"Mornin'," Dally replied, yawning loudly. There was a chorus of "morning"s and "hey"s, and he answered them all with a half-hearted grin and a quick "hey".
Flopping down into an empty chair, he propped his feet up on the edge of Steve's chair and leaned back, closing his eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. There was a sharp intake of breath behind him, and a voice that he identified immediately as Soda's exclaimed, "Glory, Dally, what happened to ya? You're bleedin' all over the place!"
Groaning in defeat—he'd already known they were gonna make a big deal out of it—he pushed himself up and muttered, "It's nothin'."
"Like hell it ain't!" Darry snapped, setting the last pancake on top of the stack he'd already made and turning off the burner hurriedly before turning away from the stove. "Lemme have a look."
Dallas rolled his eyes but didn't refuse. It really was hurting like a bitch and, although he would never admit it, he needed the help. If the injury had been anywhere else, he would've just dealt with it by himself, but it's a little difficult to deal with stuff like that when it's on the back of your head.
"Fine." Darry's hands prodded gently at the wounded area, brushing his hair out of the way to get a better look at it.
After several long moments, he sighed and said, "I can't even see anything, there's too much blood. Go wash your hair, see if you can get some of it off."
Normally Dally would've bristled at being told what to do—after all, Dallas Winston doesn't take orders from anyone—but since it was in his best interests to do as Darry said, he didn't say anything about it. Dally got to his feet slowly, using the edge of the table for support, and headed for the stairs.
Darry followed him without a word, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure no one else was coming with. He wanted a chance to talk to Dally about it in private—the blond, when asked about any injuries he was sporting, usually went into a blow-by-blow account of how he'd beaten the shit out of whoever'd given it to him, complete with hand motions and demonstrations.
Dally half-walked, half-staggered up the stairs and into the bathroom, leaning on the wall occasionally when he started to feel dizzy. The blood loss was really starting to affect him.
He made a beeline for the shower. Adjusting the taps so that the water was warm but not hot, he peeled off his shirt, tossed it on the floor, and ducked his head underneath the spray. He didn't even wince when the water hit the back of his head, although it had to've hurt something fierce.
Cussing in a low but pained voice, he carefully ran his hands through his hair. After a couple of minutes of scrubbing none-too-gently at the blood under his fingers, ignoring the stabs of pain when he accidentally rubbed over a piece of embedded glass and shoved it even deeper into his skin, he turned off the water.
He grabbed a towel to dry off with. In the process of getting the excess water out of his hair, he happened to glance into the tub. The water, still swirling in the drain, was tinged pink from all the blood.
Walking over to the sink, he leaned against the counter, cocking his hips to the left automatically in the same pose he used for leaning against cars or buildings when he was trying to look tuff.
…Not that he really needed to try. He could look tuff in his sleep, he told himself as he rubbed the towel through his hair.
Looking over his shoulder at Darry, who'd been standing in the doorway waiting for him to finish, he said, "Alright, Superman. Do whatever you gotta do."
Snorting, Darry took the towel from him and used it to wipe away the water on his shoulders and the back of his neck, as well as the blood that was already starting to well up from the cuts. He dug the first aid kit out from its place under the sink and put it on the countertop, rummaging through it in search of what he needed to get him patched up.
With the help of a pair of tweezers, he started to pick the pieces of glass out of Dally's neck and head, laying the bloody slivers on the edge of the sink and frowning at the size of some of the pieces that he was pulling out. A couple of them were over an inch long. Dally stood stiffly, unflinching, waiting for Darry to finish.
Darry picked out the last piece of glass and then pressed the already-bloody towel against the wounds, using it to help stop the bleeding.
"So…" the eldest Curtis brother began slowly as he uncapped a tube of antibiotic ointment and started smearing a thick layer of it onto all of the cuts and gashes. "…How exactly did this happen?"
"How did what happen? You picking chunks of glass outta my head? You should already know that, seein' as you was the one that insisted on lookin' at it and all—"
"Don't play dumb with me, Dallas," Darry said in a deceptively mild tone. "You know what I meant." He picked up the box of Band-Aids and started sticking them all over the back of Dally's neck, despite the lighter-haired boy's protests.
"Look, it ain't nothin' excitin', Darry," Dally snapped, getting sick of everyone asking about it.
"Well, it's somthin'," Darry snapped back, losing his patience. "Just tell me and I won't keep on asking about it."
"There ain't much ta tell." Dally finally gave in, realizing that if he wanted to eat breakfast anytime soon, he'd have to tell Darry what had happened. He wasn't in a lying mood, so he decided to just give Darry a quick explanation and then he could go have a couple of pancakes.
"My dad got mad at me an' started throwin' shit," he sighed. "Pegged me in the head with a bottle as I was makin' a break for it. Don't worry though, I still got my whole half a brain cell," he added coolly, turning away to pick up his shirt.
Darry saw what he was doing and said, "Don't bother with that, you can borrow one of Soda's shirts."
Dally made a face—anything of Soda's would be too big for him, after all he was the third shortest next to Johnny and Ponyboy—but left the bathroom without another word and went to grab a shirt out of Pony and Soda's closet. When he came back downstairs, everyone had already started eating, Darry included.
He flopped down onto the only open chair, at the end of the table between Steve and Johnny, and started piling pancakes and scrambled eggs onto his plate. When he ran out of room, he grabbed the syrup bottle and drowned his entire plate in it before he started eating. He wolfed the food down quickly, like it was going to disappear if he didn't eat it all fast enough. He was already halfway through his second pancake before he noticed that everyone had stopped talking. Looking up, he saw that everyone (everyone!) was staring at him with something akin to shock.
"Uh, Dally? Have you by any chance eaten anything in the last, oh, I dunno, three days?" Two-Bit asked slowly.
"Yeah," Dally said quickly before shoving another forkful of pancake into his mouth. Through a mouthful of food, he asked, "Why?"
"Cuz you're eatin' like a Curtis," Steve drawled, taking a bite of his eggs. Three voices yelped, "Hey!" in almost perfect unison. It was no secret that all three of the Curtis brothers ate like horses—constantly and in large quantities.
"It's not gonna crawl away if you don't cram it all in your mouth at once…then again, it is Darry's cookin' we're talkin' about…" Two-Bit trailed off with a teasing grin.
"Can it, greaser," Darry spoke up, eyes narrowed threateningly, "or I'll have y'all makin' your own breakfast from now on."
"NO!" everyone shouted nearly simultaneously. There was a long moment of silence before Soda started snickering, which set Steve off laughing, and pretty soon everybody was doubled over laughing, clutching at the table and/or each other for support.
After a little while they managed to settle down—sort of, anyway—and finish eating. Dally, yawning widely, got up from the table and headed into the living room. He collapsed onto the couch, rolled over onto his stomach so that his face was buried in the couch cushions, and fell asleep.
Watching this from the kitchen, Two-Bit commented, "You know, I've always wondered how he does that without suffocating himself…"
"It's a mystery," Darry replied dryly.
After Dally had fallen asleep—snoring loudly enough to wake the dead—everyone trooped outside so that they could talk without worrying about waking him up. They all sat down in the grass, leaning against the back of the house. Almost immediately, Two-Bit—who was stretched out on the ground, flat on his back with his arms folded behind his head—asked the question everyone was thinking about.
"So, did he tell you what happened?"
Darry nodded slowly, examining the paint on the house. It was faded and chipping, white with grime turning it a rather disgusting off-white/brownish color near the bottom. Grimacing, he turned his attention back to the five other Greasers, all of whom were watching him expectantly. "Yeah, he did. Sort of, anyway."
"And…?" Soda prompted, impatiently. Soda never could wait too long for anything.
In a low voice, Darry said, "Look, don't say nothin' about what I'm gonna tell y'all, OK? I don't think he wants everybody knowin'. Probably thinks it'll hurt his rep if everybody knew 'bout it." To anyone but the six of them, and possibly a few of the guys in Shepard's gang, it probably would've—Dallas Winston had a reputation for being the coldest, meanest, toughest hood in Tulsa, and knowing that his dad beat up on him—and didn't end up laying face-down on the floor with a knife in him—wouldn't have done anything but hurt his rep.
Everyone nodded in understanding, waiting for Darry to hurry up and spit it out. Two-Bit actually started to say something along those lines—"Hurry it up and tell us already, wouldya!"—but Pony elbowed him in the side to get him to shut up.
"It was his dad," Darry explained curtly. "From the looks of it, he threw a booze bottle at him, got him in the back of the head while he was makin' a break for it." Johnny and Steve both looked away at the announcement, thinking of the abuse they both suffered at their own fathers' hands. They were both used to having things—usually stuff that was very painful if it hit them—thrown at them by one or both of their parents.
There was a long moment of silence—a rarity at the Curtis's house, especially when Steve and/or Two-Bit were there—before Darry added, "It wasn't too bad, mostly just cuts an' nicks and all, but there were a couple of bigger ones that could probably use some stitches."
Sodapop, who was slouched against the corner of the house with one of his knees drawn up and both arms looped over it, raised an eyebrow at that and said, "There's no way he'll go to the hospital just for that."
Darry nodded. "I know he won't. He's too much of a stubborn cuss to do what's good for him." He picked at a blade of grass, twisting it in his fingers. "He don't have a concussion or nothin', thankfully. It'll hurt like a bitch for a while, though."
They sat there in silence for a while before Steve finally couldn't take it anymore and, looking slightly bewildered, burst out, "I didn't even know he hada dad! He never talks 'bout his family or nothin'."
"Hell, I don't even know where he lives," Soda snorted, sitting up abruptly. "He knows damn near everythin' 'bout us but we don't know spit about him…why is that?"
Ponyboy said quietly, "Probably 'cuz he don't want us knowin' what things're like for him there. You know Dally—he's always gotta be actin' tuff. He ain't gonna talk 'bout nothin' that he thinks makes him look bad."
Everyone sat there in silence, thinking about the truth in Ponyboy's statement. It made sense.
Finally, after a few minutes of sitting in near dead silence, Two-Bit asked, "So, who wants ta play some poker?"
Dallas woke up several hours later, at a ridiculously late time of day. Stretching languidly, he started to roll over onto his back but froze mid-motion when the back of his neck erupted in pain. Clenching his teeth, he pushed himself up into a sitting position, gingerly touching the back of his head.
Behind him, a voice exclaimed, "Dally! You're alive!"
Whipping around, he asked, "Whaddaya mean 'I'm alive'?"
Going slightly red, Johnny explained, "Oh, we were just talkin' earlier 'bout how… um, 'bout how you sleep like the dead. Soda and Steve were yellin' and wrestlin' around on the floor an' everythin' an' you didn't even wake up…"
"Oh."
"…yeah."
"What time is it?" The question was punctuated with a jaw-cracking yawn.
"It's 'round four, I think," Johnny answered quietly. "You've been sleepin' for a while."
"Damn. I ain't gonna sleep at all tonight. Why the hell didn't somebody come an' wake me up?" he demanded, rubbing his face with his hands.
Johnny, grinning, replied, "We tried. Two-Bit sat on ya an' everythin', an' ya just shoved him off 'n went back ta sleep." With that, he wandered back into the kitchen to tell the others that 'Sleeping Beauty' had finally woken up and was as ornery as ever.
A/N: Yes, I am the queen of run-on sentences.
My apologies if they're all a little OOC—I tried to stick to the book characterization as much as possible, but I think I made Dally a little too nice and I'm pretty sure Johnny never talked that much. So yeah, sorry 'bout that. The next chapter should be up soon, I'm not entirely sure when, though.