Disclaimer: All characters and The Outsiders belong to S. E. Hinton.
Warning: Will eventually contain Johnny/Dally slash, so please don't read if that offends or disturbs you. Also contains some mature language.
This story begins when Dally is in the hospital after the fire and is about to sneak out to fight in the rumble. I hope you enjoy!
Lying there in that hospital bed, Dally was consumed with the sickest of feelings, feelings that he just couldn't quite place. Dallas had always hated things that confused him, things that he couldn't be fully prepared for. School, for instance, with all those meaningless problems and questions that made him look like some kind of idiot. But things like that he easilly got rid of- he quit going to school and beat up anything else that interfered with him.
A benefit, if there was any of life on the streets, was that he always knew how it would go. He knew the rules of any kind of fight, be it with skin, knives, or guns, knew how to pick up girls, knew how to fool the fuzz and how to make it through jail time if he didn't. He knew how to feel in any of these situations, which was to not.
But this, right here, was something different. He was glad Two-Bit and Pony had left him alone, not that he couldn't have made them if he wanted to. Gripping the icey metal of Two-Bit's switch, he tried with all his might to keep his thoughts focused on nothing but the pending rumble. He fought to find that familiar mix of hatred and anticipation that he always experienced before fights. Man, would he give it to those socs. He couldn't wait to see those pieces of shit go down, to watch them pay for what they had done to his Johnny.
His Johnny.
Dammit, he thought. He wasn't his Johnny. He was just some dumb kid, no different than any other dumb kid. But Dally knew that that was a lie. Dallas had always loathed how he could lie to anyone else in the world, except for himself.
He felt almost apologetic, because Johnny wasn't just any kid. Johnny was special to Dally. Johnny was everything to Dally. He was his best friend, the reason he woke up in the morning, and he quite possibly could be the reason the world turned and all that other crap.
But also, he was the reason Dally was here right now in this hospital. The reason he had that sick feeling in the pit of what someone else could call their heart. Because Johnny wasn't well. As much as he fought against it, the thought still came: His Johnny might die.
No. He wouldn't die. He couldn't die. What kind of world do we live in, if the kindest, most specialist person in it would die for something as heroic as this?
But then Dally gagged and nearly vomited, because he knew all too well what kind of world we lived in. He needed to stop feeling, to stop thinking about Johnny. He looked desperately at the clock. Damn. Six o'clock. Too early to head to the rumble. He was getting as close to frantic as he had gotten in a long time. His hand flew to his St. Christopher necklace, the thing that always sort of calmed him to hold. He would never admit that, though, because Dallas Winston didn't need comfort.
Just for a second, he did almost feel relatively peaceful, until he realized why. It was the necklace that Johnny had given him. Only now did he realize that that was why he dug it so much. He saw it as a kind of token of Johnny's love, something that said "hey world, somebody cares about me". Not that he would ever let anyone know he got it from Johnny.
Oh great, he mumbled under his breath, remembering that 6 o'clock meant that they'd soon be bringing him his shitty hospital "dinner", if you could call it that. He heard the nurse outside his door, and thinking it was in his best interest and also because he just didn't want to deal with people at the moment, went limp and pretended to be asleep.
He listened as the nurse walked in. Once it hit her he wasn't awake, she let out a sigh of relief. Dallas mentally cussed her out, and almost considered "waking up" just to piss her off. But he didn't, and after she left he still kept his eyes shut. He wasn't trying to doze off or anything, mostly because he couldn't- he just wanted to rest up before the rumble. That's what he told himself.
He did get a little bit sleepy though, probably from those crap pills they kept giving him, and that he'd been spitting out when they left up until a few hours ago, when he took them in a futile attempt to calm himself down. In his tired state, he let his guard down just enough to let his mind wander. Normally, he wouldn't allow himself to get nostalgic, but it seemed pointless now.
His thoughts brought him to the day that Johnny gave him that necklace. It had only been about a month since he'd hopped that train back to Tulsa from New York to get away from that whole murder rap that had been falsey pinned on him, and two weeks since he met Johnny. He had just told Johnny that he was thinking about heading back to New York.
"But why," Johnny had exclaimed, his big black eyes swelling with tears- a reaction a little too emotional to have with someone he'd just met.
"I don't know, there ain't nothing to do here. New York, man, now that's something else. They have real gangs there, real rivalries, not just a few groups of friends that think they're all that," Dallas had replied matter-of-factly.
"But... you said that there was no one that cared about you in New York," Johnny pleaded, giving what Dallas had already come to know as the puppy-dog eyes look. Those hadn't quite been Dally's words, but it was true nonetheless.
"So? Nobody cares about me anywhere. You think I give a shit," Dally sneered.
Johnny looked deep into his icey blue eyes, with such tenderness that you never would have known he was glaring daggers at him. "I care about you."
Dally hadn't known what to say. He had seen Johnny's eyes as he said it, he had known he meant it. It filled Dally with this emotion that he didn't think he had ever felt before.
And it pissed him off. "Why the hell would you do that for," he asked bitterly. "Huh? It's just stupid. Why would you go and let yourself get attached to someone you just met? Don't you know that it's only gonna get you hurt? After all the shit that you go through, and you still haven't learned your lesson. Ya know what? You deserve everything that's ever happened to you, and more. Maybe this will get you to toughen up, because obviously you're too dumb to do it on your own."
Dally wasn't quite sure why he reacted so hostilly, but it was for the best. The kid was a freak. He had lived on the streets for 13 years at that point and still hadn't had the common sense to get hard like any normal kid. What he went through, getting the hell beat out of him on daily basis and maybe worse from his folks and getting pushed around by the socs would make anyone bitter and mean. It had with Dally, and what he went through had probably shyed in comparison to Johnny's life.
The first time Dally had seen him getting clobbered around by his old man, he was furious that he hadn't even tried to fight back. It was the first of many times Dallas had explained to him that if you get tough and hit back, nothing can touch you.
"But I don't want to hurt anyone. If I did then I would be the exact thing I was defending myself from," he had responded softly.
While this concept wasn't new to Dallas, he saw no reason to care about hurting others. No on gave a shit about him, so why should he give a shit about them?
There was one person who cared about him though, and that person was still standing in front of him, looking sadly at the ground. He thought about apologizing to him, but knew that by being nice to this kid he would be doing the same thing he had called stupid moments ago.
Besides, it was foolish to believe Johnny could actually genuinely love him. He only thought he did. No one could love Dallas, he was a hood. A cold, unfeeling hood, and nothing more.
"I'll be on a train to New York by the time you wake up tomorrow," he had said to Johnny, and started walking away from the corner they were standing on, and away from Johnny.
"See," he thought to himself bitterly. "He isn't even gonna try and stop me."
He was a little too relieved when Johnny appeared by his side moments later. Johnny had almost startled him, and he vaguely wondered why he hadn't turned and punched him for it.
"I can't stop you if you're set on going to New York, Dal. But I want you to have this." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a necklace that had a gold circle with a picture engraved in it. Dally cocked his head to the side and stared at him. "I found this when I was a litte kid, and it's always been sort of a good luck charm to me. St. Christopher is the saint of safe travel, so I want you to have it on your trip to New York. You can just throw it away if you don't want it."
He didn't move, so Johnny dropped it in the pocket of his leather jacket. "If you ever need anything, anything, come find me. I'll always be there for you." He left the lot, disappearing into the shadows of the street.
Dallas remained standing where he was for a long time. He wanted to protest- to give it back to Johnny and tell him he didn't need safety and how ridiculous it was to give his most prized possession to him because he was just gonna pawn it or trash it or loser it- but he couldn't.
The next day, Dally strolled passed the lot, where Johnny was sleeping.
"Hey man, you wanna go see a movie or something," Dally asked nonchalantly. Johnny sprung awake with a wide grin on his face.
And for the first time in years, Dally had actually enjoyed going to a movie. Especially after he found a train scedual in Johnny's back pocket.
This story had always brought a smile to Dally's face, and it did today, even under these circumstances. The smile faded quickly though, as he was brought back to reality as he noticed it was now 6:45. The rumble would be starting soon.
Thank you for reading! This is supposed to be a multi-chapter story about what I think would have happened at the end of The Outsiders, involving Johnny and Dally not dying. I have put alot of thought into this and I think the plot I have come up with is going to be really interesting. Any comments and reviews will be greatly appreciated, because this is the first fanfiction I have ever published. Thanks so much!