A/N: Here's chapter three! Again, I'd like to thank everyone that reviewed. I love feedback, the more the better. : I think this chapter's been the hardest one to write so far; I'm still not too happy with the way this one turned out, but I wanted to get it posted.
Seriously, let me know what you think of this. I feel like I went a little OOC in this chapter.
Since he was already there, Dally decided to crash on the Curtis's couch that night. He ended up having to fight Steve for it—his dad had kicked him out again, and the dark-haired mechanic had turned up a little before midnight with a rapidly-blackening eye and a split lip—but since he'd been too sleepy to put up much of a fight at the time, he'd ended up sleeping on the floor in front of the TV instead.
The upside to having to sleep on the floor was that when Two-Bit showed up in the morning and went to flop down on the couch, it was Steve that got sat on instead of him. Grumbling, the dark-haired Greaser shoved Two-Bit off of him onto the floor, narrowly missing the coffee table.
Cussing loudly, Two-Bit picked himself up. He pushed Steve's legs out of the way before sitting back down and asked loudly, "What was that for, man?"
"What do you think it was for?" Steve muttered back, shooting him a look that could only be described as a death-glare.
He kicked Two-Bit's thigh for emphasis, just to make sure that the red-haired Greaser had gotten the hint. Leave me the fuck alone, I'm trying to sleep here.
Two-Bit made a face, scrunching up his nose comically, and retorted, "Y'know, I don't think I like it when my questions get answered with more questions."
"Yeah? Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?" Steve mumbled irritably, shifting onto his side so that he could glare (somewhat blearily) at Two-Bit without having to lift his head up. Two-Bit didn't say anything in reply, but grinned wickedly, propping his feet up on the edge of the coffee table slowly and deliberately.
"I'll think of somethin'," he drawled, grinning so cheerfully that it was actually kind of unnerving. (It reminded Dally of a clown's smile—he'd seen one at the circus once, when he was a little kid, and he'd always thought they were creepy, especially the way they smiled really wide and it looked so goddamn fake.)
Steve eyed him warily, having just realized exactly what his last words had opened him up to. He swallowed thickly and started to sit up, keeping his eyes trained on Two-Bit the entire time like he thought that something terrible would happen if he looked away for even a second. Which, considering the fact that it was Two-Bit, was entirely possible.
Dally smirked. He wanted to stick around and watch Two-Bit get his revenge, but his bladder was also vying for his attention, and he figured the Curtises wouldn't be too happy if he started laughing so hard that he pissed all over their floor. Disentangling himself from the blanket he'd somehow managed to cocoon himself in, he stood up and headed for the stairs. He'd only gotten about halfway up, though, when he heard a loud crash and a startled yelp from down below.
Damn. He'd missed it. He'd been kind of hoping that Two-Bit would wait until he came back to hand out whatever revenge he'd apparently just had…
Shrugging to himself, he wandered into the bathroom and took care of 'business'. Then, after shaving off his days-old stubble using one of Darry's razors, he headed back downstairs. He could hear loud voices down below—Steve sounded pissed, and Two-Bit was laughing about something.
A third voice joined in a moment later. It was Johnny from the sounds of it, no one else in the gang talked that softly, with the possible exception of Ponyboy, but Johnny's voice was a little bit deeper so he could usually tell them apart. Things were quiet for a long moment before someone tripped over something—probably the coffee table—and knocked it over with a loud crash.
Someone started swearing, and he couldn't help but grin. It sounded like it was shaping up to be a typical day at the Curtis household.
Dally left after lunch, deciding that he was bored and wanted to go "hunt some action".
"You guys wanna come with?" he asked Steve and Soda, both of whom were sitting on the couch playing poker. Dally wasn't really sure why they even bothered; neither of them were very good at it. Soda in particular sucked at bluffing.
"Nah, me and Steve are meetin' up with Sandy and Evie later," Soda replied, biting his lip as he examined the cards he was holding. Judging from the look on his face, it was a pretty bad hand. "Maybe we'll catch up with ya afterwards."
"Alright," Dallas said, shrugging. "I guess I'll see y'all later then."
He started to grab his jacket off of the back of the couch, where he usually put it, before remembering that his jacket was still at his dad's house.
He drew his hand back with a frown; that was the second time in as many days that he'd done that. Maybe it was a reflex or something; get up, get his jacket, get out. He'd have to stop by and grab it before he did anything else—he knew he had a wad of cash stuffed in one of the pockets, and he could really use the money, seeing as he was flat broke at the moment—but he didn't want to have another run-in with his dad.
It wasn't that he was scared of him; Dally had stopped being scared of his father a long time ago. No, he just didn't want to hear anything his dad had to say to him, since most of it was bullshit and all of it was insulting.
He didn't want to listen to that, knowing that there was probably a grain of truth to all of his father's rants about how he was stupid and worthless and a waste of space.
(He would never admit it, but Dally knew deep down that some of the shit he did was just plain bad. Even that knowledge wasn't enough to change him, though. He'd lived his entire life lying, cheating, and stealing to keep from dying in a gutter somewhere, and he wasn't about to let what few morals he possessed get in the way of his survival.)
He shoved those self-depreciating thoughts to the back of his mind and turned to go.
Steve gave him a half-assed wave before turning back to their card game. Before he turned away, Dally caught sight of a triumphant gleam in Steve's eyes—apparently he could tell that Soda didn't have any good cards, too. It was written all over Soda's face, and while Steve wasn't the most perceptive of people, Soda had been his best friend since grade school and he'd learned to read him pretty well.
Actually, pretty much everybody in the gang could read each other pretty accurately—maybe because they'd all grown up together, "thick as thieves" and "making like brothers" and all that. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that most of them couldn't bluff to save their lives, with the possible exceptions of Two-Bit and Darry, and of course Dallas himself.
Dally walked out the door and across the front porch, letting the screen door bang shut behind him. He started off in the direction of his dad's house, hoping that he wasn't home, or at least if he was that he was already drunk and passed out in front of the TV and wouldn't even notice Dallas's presence.
Dally's luck wasn't really that good, though. Chances were slim to none that he'd be able to just grab his stuff and go without his dad putting in an appearance.
He kicked half-heartedly at a booze bottle lying in the gutter; it rolled away and came to rest a few feet farther down, right in the middle of the entrance to somebody's driveway. Shrugging, he left it there. If somebody got a flat tire because they weren't watching out for stuff on the ground, well, then it was their own fault, wasn't it?
He walked slowly, taking as many detours as possible, stopping to talk to random people on the streets—most of whom he didn't even know—and just generally dicking around, but soon enough—far too soon, in Dally's opinion—he found himself standing at the end of his own driveway, trying to gauge whether or not there was anybody home. His dad's truck wasn't in the driveway, but that didn't guarantee that no one was there.
Dallas slipped inside quietly, keeping his footsteps light and closing the door softly. 'Glory', he thought to himself with disgust, 'you know it's bad when you're scared to make noise in your own goddamn house.'
Glass shards crunched under his feet as he made his way silently through the kitchen and past the living room, deftly avoiding the empty booze bottles littering the floor. His father didn't clean up much, and when he did it could hardly be called cleaning, so it was no surprise that there was still the same busted glass all over the floor that had been there for weeks already.
His father was nowhere in sight—that meant that he was probably out somewhere, most likely doing something thatinvolved getting high, drunk, or arrested.
James Winston was just as bad, if not worse, than his son was when it came to fighting, drinking, and drugs—the last of which was one of the few things that Dally didn't do. He wasn't into drugs, preferring to keep a semi-clear head and stay in control of himself.
He was borderline alcoholic, true, but he rarely drank enough to not remember what had happened the night before, and when he did get that smashed it was usually because he was seriously pissed off and needed something to help him relax.
He went into his room, navigating his way through the mess on the floor—even though he didn't even really live there, there was still a ton of stuff all over the floor for some reason, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the majority of it had been "borrowed" from someone else's house, or car, or garage, hell, maybe even their pockets—over to his bed, where his prized jacket was lying on top of the rumpled covers.
He picked it up and slipped it on, then patted the pockets down in search of the wad of money he knew was in one of them. He couldn't recall which one it was, though; probably the left one, that was the one he always seemed to find money in even if he didn't remember putting any in there.
Finding a lump in the left pocket, he pulled it out and stuffed the wad of bills into his wallet, then got down on his hands and knees to look under the bed. Shoving a stack of dirty magazines out of the way—in any other situation he would've stopped to glance at them, but he was sort of in a hurry—Dally pulled out a battered-looking shoebox. Biting his lip, he took off the lid and looked through what was inside.
There wasn't much in it, mostly just legal documents and crap like that, a few other odds and ends that might come in handy, and some money he'd been saving, but then again, he didn't really need much. Dallas had learned the lessons of survival the hard way—through experience—and he'd grown used to not having much besides the clothes on his back and the stuff in his pockets.
The sound of someone pulling into the driveway startled him; he'd hoped that he could get in and out without running into Winston Sr. but it looked like it wasn't going to turn out that way. He rushed over to the window and looked out. His dad's truck, a battered old Ford, was parked in the driveway and a very familiar figure was sitting in the driver's seat.
'What the hell did you just get yourself into, you idiot?' he thought to himself. 'Why the fuck didn't you just sneak in once he was passed out on the couch or something?' He felt like hitting himself for his stupidity; this wouldn't even be happening if he had just waited until nightfall.
Letting loose a string of swearwords that probably would've made even Two-Bit blush (and that was no easy feat), Dally stuck the lid back on the shoebox and shoved it back under the bed.
Dally stood up quickly and glanced out the window again, checking to see if Winston Sr. had made it out of the truck yet. The big, hulking man was still sitting there in the driver's seat, fumbling with something in the passenger's seat next to him. Dallas couldn't make out what it was, but it looked like a cardboard box of some sort.
Dally ruthlessly squashed the panic that was starting to well up within him and started towards the front of the house, knowing that hiding in his room would do him no good. He'd still have to get past his father, who would more than likely park himself in the living room and stay there for the rest of the day, and then there'd be the added 'bonus' of having to wait for a chance to leave unnoticed.
He would've just climbed out the window, but a) that might have worked when he was younger, but he'd grown a lot and there was no way in hell he was going to be able to fit through that ridiculously tiny window, and b) his father was still sitting there in his truck, which was in perfect view of said window. There was no way he was going to get out that way and not get caught.
Running his hand through his hair, Dally stalked into the living room and over to the big window behind the couch. Pulling back the smoke-stained curtain, he looked out the window and swore; Winston Sr. was nowhere in sight.
He started to walk quickly back towards his room, which was probably the one room in the house his father never went in without a damn good reason, but froze mid-step at the sound of the front door opening. He started to bolt for his room, where at least he could lock the door, but it was too late.
"What the fuck are you doin' here?! I thought I told ya to get the fuck outta my house, you stupid little bastard!" James Winston snarled, slamming the door hard enough that it bounced a couple of times before going still. He threw the big cardboard box he was holding on the floor carelessly and advanced on his son, his face darkened in anger.
Dallas started to back up in the direction of the kitchen, trying to put some distance between himself and his father. He had no qualms about throwing a few punches, but he knew that in his current state there was a good chance he'd just get his face bashed in.
Face twisted into an ugly scowl—the expression certainly didn't do anything to improve his looks, quite the opposite in fact—the huge, hulking man crossed the space between them in only a couple of long strides and grabbed him roughly by the arm, his fingers squeezing mercilessly on the hand print-shaped bruises that were already there.
Snarling, Dally pried his arm out of his father's bruising grip. "Get the fuck off of me!"
"Don't you fucking talk to me like that!" his father bellowed angrily, stalking forward. Dallas tried to get past his father, to get out before things turned even uglier, but James was standing in the way, blocking the path to the door.
Angrily, he tried to shoulder his way past the much larger man. It was pointless though. James just grabbed him by the shoulder, fingers sliding on the slick surface of Dally's leather jacket, and spun him around, slamming him into the wall beside the door with enough force to knock the air out of him. Not even pausing to catch his breath, Dally squirmed wildly, thrashing around like a wild animal in his desperation to escape.
He almost—almost—got away, but James grabbed him by the neck and shoved him back against the wall before he could get more than a couple of steps, lifting him so that his feet weren't even touching the ground.
Sometimes it really sucked being so short.
Snarling, Dallas hauled off and slugged his father, catching him in the stomach with enough force to rock him back on his heels. Howling in pain, James dropped him abruptly, so quickly that he didn't have a chance to get his feet all the way under him before he hit the floor. He landed heavily with one leg still bent at an awkward angle, and red-hot fire jolted through his knee, making him gasp in pain.
Pushing himself to his feet, using the wall for support, he half-walked, half-staggered towards his father, who was still clutching at his stomach with his face screwed up in pain. His father was still trying to get his breathing under control—apparently Dally had punched him even harder than he'd thought he had. While James was distracted, Dally used the opportunity to slug him in the face a couple of times.
Hopped up on adrenaline, Dally smashed his fists into his father's face, over and over again, reigning down blow after blow on the man that had caused him so much misery over the years. He knew that if he didn't keep at it, not giving his father a chance to punch him back, then James would pound him into the floor without a second thought. If he let his father get the upper hand, then he was as good as dead.
He thought it was a little ironic, that he was widely acknowledged—along with Tim Shepard, of course—as one of the two toughest hoods in Tulsa, and yet here he was scared half to death of his own father when he'd handled bigger, meaner guys before without so much as a second thought.
He felt a distinct crunch under his fist as James's nose broke. Blood gushed down his face and smeared across Dallas's knuckles, but the blond-haired hood paid it no mind and kept on swinging.
After a couple more solid punches, Dally backed off and watched as his father slumped to the floor, holding his head in his hands and breathing raggedly. Blood dripped from his face onto the stained carpet below him.
Panting, Dally stumbled towards the door. He had to get out before his father recovered enough to come after him, because he had no doubt that his father would kill him for what he'd just done if he got his hands on him. At the doorway, he paused just long enough to look back at the crumpled form of his father, who was lying, nearly unconscious, in a slowly spreading pool of his own blood.
Expression blank, he turned and limped away, out into the street.
Halfway down the block he started to stumble; his knee was throbbing mercilessly and his head hurt so badly it felt like it was about to explode. Not wanting anyone to be witness to him collapsing out in the middle of the street, he forced himself to keep walking and staggered over to the nearest car, a beat-up old Plymouth with the taillights busted out.
Yanking the door open—he was a little surprised it wasn't locked, what with the fact that cars getting stolen happened on a daily basis on the East Side, but then again who'd want to steal a piece of junk like this?—he slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut again. He just sat there for a long moment, trying to get back in control of himself and force down the panic.
He'd have to go back later on and get all of his stuff out of his room, before his dad decided to burn all of it or something. He didn't really have anywhere else to go, besides Buck's—where he could only stay if he paid for a room full-time, which he didn't want to do—or the Curtis's place, and he didn't want to freeload off of them when Darry was having so much trouble paying the bills and everything as it was, without having another mouth to feed.
Swearing under his breath, he tried to think of somewhere he could go, if only to have somewhere to keep his stuff. He could leave all of his shit at the Curtis's house until he found somewhere to stay—not that there was much of it, most of his stuff wasn't important enough to him for him to pack it up and bring it with him, seeing as a lot of it was useless junk anyway—after all Darry wouldn't mind helping him out so long as he wasn't causing any trouble.
Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly and ran it through his hair. He leaned his head back against the headrest on the seat and stared blankly up at the ceiling, examining the mold spots he could see forming. There must be a leak in the roof somewhere or something.
Once his hands stopped shaking and his legs didn't feel weak and rubbery anymore, he got out of the car and started walking again, this time with a destination in mind.
Dallas walked slowly into the vacant lot, glancing around to make sure no one else was there. He just wanted to be alone for a while, without everyone watching him and judging him and asking him questions he wasn't in the mood to answer.
Whenever there were other people around he felt like he had to act tough and unfazed by everything. He had to protect his rep, after all; he couldn't go around letting his guard down around anybody, even the gang, or else people might get the wrong idea and think that—God forbid—he was a decent human being capable of feeling hurt, or scared, or depressed, just like everyone else. Most people only saw the emotions he kept on the surface, the ones he deemed safe to show to the world—anger, hatred, bitterness.
No one ever tried to see past that, to the worry, the fear, even that tiny spark of hope he kept hidden away deep down inside himself where nobody but himself could see or feel it. Maybe nobody was looking for those kinds of emotions from him.
Maybe everyone thought he was a selfish, bitter, cold-hearted bastard.
Maybe they were right.
He sat down in the grass at the back of the lot, as far from the street as he could get. There was a building there, and he leaned back against it with a sigh. Resting his head against the wall, he closed his eyes and tried to block out the rest of the world.
It didn't work all that well.
He just couldn't stop thinking. What was he going to do now? Where was he going to go? Why did he even care? It wasn't like he'd ever spent much time there, two or three days a month at the very most, and it was more of a place to keep all of the shit he didn't want to lug around with him than a home, anyway.
Dallas thought about all the times he'd wished that his dad would just kick him out or something so that he wouldn't have to keep his pride intact by going back to that house even though it was the last place he wanted to be, just because his father didn't want him there and he would do just about anything to spite his father, including doing something he hated.
And he definitely hated going back there, to that house, so that his dad could scream and yell at him and throw things and punch him and shove him around like he was nothing more than something to take his frustrations out on.
When he'd thought about what it would take for his dad to finally just kick him out, he'd never pictured it being him beating the shit out of his dad. No, he'd always figured it would be him coming home drunk or escorted by the police one too many times, or one too many phone calls from the local police station about the latest Bad Shit he'd done.
Now that it had finally happened, and he wouldn't have to ever go back there again for the sole reason of preserving what pride he had left, he wasn't sure how he really felt about it. In a way he was glad, but another, smaller part of him… well, it kind of hurt, knowing that his dad honestly didn't give a fuck about him and probably wouldn't have hesitated to beat the living hell out of him.
Taking a shuddering breath, he tried not to think about anything anymore. It didn't work though. He could never seem to stop thinking when he wanted to.
He sat for hours like that, head tilted back and eyes closed, soaking up the sun's warmth. He'd probably end up with a sunburn because of that later, but at the moment he didn't care enough to move. He'd dealt with broken bones, stab wounds, just about any kind of injury you could think of—barring most of the especially gruesome or fatal ones—and he could deal with a little sunburn, too.
The events of the day eventually caught up to him, and he drifted off to sleep there, slouching up against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him. He looked younger, peaceful, even relaxed, maybe, in sleep, like he was a little kid and hadn't been beaten up and shoved around and dragged through the muddle—metaphorically speaking—for most, if not all, of his life.
When he was sleeping, and if you didn't know him, it was easy to think that he was still a naïve, innocent kid, only seventeen years old.
Dallas Winston hadn't been innocent in a long, long time.