It was the dead of night when Cherry saw him. He was sprinting down the sidewalk like a bat out of hell, just having left the hospital. When he got to the street corner, he slowed, stopped, paced for a moment, then dropped down to sit on the curb, head in his hands. There was hardly a soul around besides Cherry, who was only out because she was on her way home from Marcia's at a ridiculously late hour. But really, her parents were too caught up in themselves to care. Go figure.
Cherry stopped on the other side of the street, at the corner across from him. There weren't any cars around, so it's not like she had to wait to cross, but the words she had said to Ponyboy all that time ago echoed in her head.
"I could fall in love with Dallas Winston. I hope I never see him again, or I will."
She hadn't kept her word for even a day. After all, she went back when Johnny shot Bob to talk to him and his gang. But this was different. This was just them.
Now, faced with the choice... Could she really walk away? If she had stopped him messing around or with his friends, maybe. Definitely. But like this? So... lost? She didn't think she could.
Before she could even think about calling out to Dallas, he leapt to his feet again. He didn't seem to notice her presence as he started back down the sidewalk, rage written plain as day across his face. Sighing, Cherry only hesitated for a moment before hurrying after him.
He looked like a bomb with a lit fuse, and she didn't want anyone caught in the explosion.
After what seemed like hours, Dallas finally stopped outside of a grocery store. Cherry waited across the street, trying desperately not to let him know she was there. Even if he did seem like the kind of guy who could tell if a mouse was trailing him.
Out of nowhere, Dallas suddenly stormed into the store, holding something out in front of him. Something slim and black.
A gun.
Dallas was shouting, but Cherry was too far away to make out any words. She rushed across the street, no longer caring if he saw her. Forget her hopes; protecting the people inside that store from the tornado that was Dallas Winston was far more important.
"...on the ground, now! Open the register! Do it!"
Cherry grabbed the door handle, throwing it open. The bell chimed, and Dallas whipped around to aim the gun at her. The redhead stood her ground, staring coolly at him. A flicker of shock flashed across his face before anger overtook it again.
"On the floor! I'm not messin' around!"
"No."
The other people in the store stared at Cherry. She recognized an older couple from church, and a young girl from her sister's class. All of them seemed to have the same thought running through their head: "What the hell does this girl think she's doing?"
"Blast it, Cherry! On the floor!"
"No. I won't."
Dallas's grip on the gun tightened. Cherry's heart was hammering in her chest so loudly she was sure even he could hear it. But she wasn't about to back down.
"Something happened, didn't it? Something bad happened to someone you care about, and you're angry about it, so you're being reckless. Causing trouble."
She was just speculating at that point. But there was no mistaking the twinge of sadness that settled in Dallas's eyes at her words.
"Come on. Put the gun down. You're not helping anyone by doing this."
"...What the hell do you know about me?"
"More than you think."
Cherry tried to keep her voice calm and soothing, but she could feel herself growing anxious. She could see Dallas's hands starting to shake, and knew she was getting through to him.
Then she heard the sirens.
Eyes widening, Cherry opened the door again, holding her hand out.
"One chance. Are you taking it, or would you rather get stuck behind bars?"
It only took a split second for Dallas to sprint towards her, sliding his gun back into his waistband. His hand closed around hers, and they took off, ducking into an alleyway to avoid the approaching sirens. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping Cherry upright, and she was praying that would last her until they were at a safe distance.
It was another three or four blocks before Dallas yanked Cherry down a side street and up the back stairs of a brick building. Dallas produced a key from his pocket, unlocking the door and pulling Cherry inside behind him. They were plunged into darkness in the stead of the door's stream of light.
"...Dallas?"
"One second."
Cherry stood completely still as noises of shuffling and thudding surrounded her. Then, there was the unmistakable sound of a light's chain being pulled, and a single bulb flickered to life above her.
Glancing around the room, Cherry tried to absorb as much as she could as quickly as she could. One side of the expansive space was piled with boxes and crates of all shapes and sizes. In the corner closest to them stood an antique desk smattered with pieces of paper. The rest of the room was divided away with large, haphazardly hung drop cloths.
Cherry approached the desk, ignoring Dallas's protests. Her eyes flitted over the sketches, her shock growing with each new one her eyes fell upon. Pencil shaded drawings of dozens of different guns, a horse that looked ready to jump off of the page, the backs of women with skin that looked like you could feel it...
"Amazing. Did you do these?"
Dallas appeared next to Cherry, pushing her back. Before she could say anything else, he'd already gathered up the drawings and turned them upside down on the desk. His eyes bore into her.
"They're good. Does anyone else know about them?"
Scoffing, Dallas crossed the room to the crates. He popped one open, pulling out a bottle of some alcohol Cherry didn't recognize. He held it up as an offering, but she shook her head. The last thing she needed was to be any level of incapacitated right now. Dallas shrugged, then closed the crate again and took a swig.
"You kiddin' me? In what hellish world would I tell anyone I do art? The only art I look like I would be doin' is street art. Which, incidentally, I also do."
Cherry's eyes flitted to the section of the room hidden by drop cloths, and before Dallas could even think of stopping her, she took off like a shot for the nearest split in the fabric. She had already slipped inside by the time Dallas caught up with her, and was marveling at her surroundings.
The brick walls were covered in spray paint and small murals of random words and cityscapes, respectively. Canvases with a variety of different subjects littered the area, and bucket upon bucket of paint lined the walls. Cherry crouched in front of the nearest canvas, a painting of a man with three different faces and a gun in each mouth by arms reaching in from out of the frame. Her fingers brushed over one of the guns, running along the top edge.
"So, the angry criminal dropout is an angry and artsy criminal dropout. Good to know."
When Cherry turned back around, she saw a smidge of vulnerability in Dallas's eyes for the first time since they fled the store. Standing up again, Cherry approached an easel with a blank canvas and picked up a brush from an empty paint can full of them. She turned to face Dallas again.
"Teach me?"
He shook his head firmly.
"First of all, you can't just learn how to paint out of nowhere in a few hours. Second, even if we had weeks or months, I still wouldn't teach you. Know why? Because this is my thing. So cut out."
Ah, so that was his secret. Anytime Dallas felt threatened or vulnerable, he would lash out and put up defenses. Cherry knew that strategy all too well. She did the same thing sometimes.
"Fine. Then paint me."
"What?"
Sighing, Cherry stuck the brush back in the can and approached Dallas. He tensed up, clenching the bottle of alcohol tighter in his hand.
"You heard me. Paint me. I don't care how many hours it takes you to do it either. Nobody's gonna miss me."
"Bullshit. I could disappear for weeks and nobody would notice, but you..."
Cherry frowned, crossing her arms.
"Right, because as always, us Socs have such perfect lives. White picket fences and purebred lap dogs and such. It's not like I only see my parents three hours a week and yet they still find time to chew my ass for not getting 100 percent on every single school assignment that crosses my path. Now like I said, paint me."
Dallas's eyes flashed with anger, and Cherry honestly wasn't even sure why. She did make the split second decision, though, to snatch the gun from Dallas's waistband and start backing away.
"No need to get testy. You've got some serious anger issues, huh?"
He didn't say anything, just stood in place and glared daggers at Cherry. She rolled her eyes and sat down on a stool in the center of the room, leaning forward with her arms on her legs. The gun was still tight in her grip, the safety on. Without a word, Dallas walked over to the easel and repositioned it so its back was to Cherry. He wheeled over a cart of paints, then glanced back up at her.
"Okay, fixin' some things. Face me, left foot on top rung, right foot on bottom rung, and muzzle of the gun to your chin. Tilt your head up a bit, too."
Sighing, Cherry did as he asked. After all, she was the one who had asked him to paint her. It wasn't good form for her to refuse what he asked her when it was his art.
"Look-"
"Shut it, Cherry. Not gonna paint you if you move."
Her mouth twitched in frustration, but Cherry kept silent and closed her eyes, focusing on holding absolutely still. It lasted all of maybe ten minutes.
"But silence is-"
"No."
"Dallas-"
"Shut up!"
"...No."
Dallas sighed loudly, running his fingers through his hair. Cherry smirked, watching him grow more and more angry.
If she weren't holding his gun, she might've been more concerned. But she was.
"Fine. Let's make a deal. You keep your mouth shut, I'll tell you what I'm sure you've been dyin' to know anyway: the bullshit that drove me to act out and rob a store."
Cherry's smirk fell from her face, and she nodded slightly before closing her eyes and freezing again. For the first period of time-Cherry wasn't sure how long it was-the only sounds were the city outside and Dallas's brush tapping against the edge of the paint cans. Then he started talking.
"...Johnny saved from kids from burnin' in a church, but he got roughed up too badly tryin' to get out. He died... what, less than an hour ago? Not sure."
As much as Dallas tried to sound indifferent, Cherry could hear the raw pain in his voice. Her heart broke for him.
"...I'm so sorry, Dallas."
"What did I say about keepin' your mouth shut?"
He was trying to sound angry, but it came out more wounded than anything. Without a second thought, Cherry hopped down from the stool, setting the gun down as she approached Dallas once again. This time, he didn't look at her like she was going to attack him. As if she would even have stood a chance.
"I know what he meant to you. You pretend like it's just you against the world, but I saw how much you cared about Johnny. I mean, I only knew him for one night, and I could tell he was something special. The world lost someone truly good."
Dallas scoffed.
"Yeah, right. I just needed to look out for the kid. The whole gang did. He's an honest danger magnet is what he is. Was."
He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair again. What was it with him and doing that?
"Shit. Don't know if I'm gonna get used to that."
Cherry raised a hand up to touch Dallas's arm, but he stepped back, staring at her with that same wary expression from before.
"Maybe it'll help to talk about it. Get your words somewhere other than your head, you know?"
Dallas backed up again, glaring at Cherry. One step forward, two steps back. Literally and figuratively.
"I don't need to talk about anything. Johnny was an alright kid, but I don't give a damn if he's dead or not."
The words seemed to fall from Dallas's tongue like acid. Cherry shook her head and crossed her arms.
"You obviously do. So get your head out of your ass and admit it to yourself!"
"Blast it, Cherry, shut up!"
"No! I don't get it! I don't get you, and I certainly don't get what's so bad about admitting Johnny's death actually hurt you!"
"BECAUSE I DON'T DO THAT!"
Cherry's mouth snapped shut again, the anger draining from her body. Dallas's body was shaking, his shoulders heaving up and down. The bomb had finally gone off, and the explosion was so much less destructive than Cherry could've hoped.
"You're right, you don't get it, and you don't get me. I don't get attached to people or places, I don't feel like the rest of you and your uppity friends. Like I told you when we met, Cherry, I'm not nice. Then Johnny wandered into my life, like a three-legged dog begging for someone to give him any single goddamn sign that he'd be alright. And I did. The one person I let in, and he's dead, Cherry, he's just dead."
The room fell silent again, the only sounds being the pair's shallow breathing. They just stared at each other for what felt like hours, but was probably only a few minutes.
"...Then maybe it's time to let someone else in."
At this point, her head was so deeply in war with her heart that she could feel it in every inch of her body. She'd been breaking her promise to herself since the moment she started following him that night. What was giving him a little more going to do?
Cherry found her answer when Dallas suddenly took off like a shot for the door into the room. Before Cherry could say even a single word, he was lost into the night, the door slamming shut behind him. She stood in silence for a moment, shell-shocked. Then something warm hit her cheek, and she swiped it away. No, there was no way she was going to cry over Dallas Winston. Absolutely not.
This is exactly why she never should've followed him tonight. She should've kept her promise to herself. But it was too late to take it all back, and it was too late to pretend it never happened.
Because she had already fallen in love with Dallas Winston. And knowing that, not being able to ignore that blaring truth, she hoped to God that she would see him again.
AN: Okay, so let me give you a little bit of backstory. This is my final assignment for my YA Lit class (pretty cool assignment, right?). We had to write a fanfiction about one of the novels we read during the semester, and the first thought that came to my mind was, "Oh my God, I want to save Dally in The Outsiders." Because, as I told my prof when she asked why I chose this idea, I have a habit of falling in love the broken characters, much like Cherry. It's a horrible track record, really. Moriarty from Sherlock, Damon and Katherine from The Vampire Diaries, Judal from Magi, the Undertaker from Black Butler, Draco from Harry Potter, JD from Heathers... The list goes on and on. So yeah, I really wanted to do something with Dally. And Cherry doesn't get nearly enough time on the page in Hinton's novel, so I wanted to include her. Because they are my favorite ship in the book, hands down.
One more thing. Should I write another ending and publish is as a second chapter? I was actually going to end with them ending up together, but I changed my mind after Cherry said, "...Then maybe it's time to let someone else in." I knew I wanted to relate the ending statement back to the quote from the text, and this seemed like the best option, so I made the split-second decision to change it.
So would that be something you guys would like to see? Because I'm totally up for writing those last few bits again.
Oh, and is it just me or does Put the Gun Gown by Andy Black seem like a killer theme song for this section of the book / Dally's character? I was listening to it a bit ago, and it hit me like a bullet train. XD And if you're sitting there like, "Who on earth is Andy Black?" do yourself a favor and listen to his music. Because there is a good chance that you actually do know him and just don't know it. (Hint: if you've ever listened to Black Veil Brides, you'll know him.)
Thanks so much for reading, and if you liked this, feel free to check out my other stories on this site or my Wattpad stories (my user is 3_1_19_Fangirl)!