Filler fluff. Inserted to keep the writer from having to actually figure out what she wants to happen. I know how I want this to end, in fact I already have it written (somewhere…..) I just don't know what I want to happen between then and now.
Chapter 9
Dally woke up the next morning with sun in his face. Cursing the light, he rolled over, away from the window, and through his slitted eyes, he saw Johnny. He was startled, but only for a moment, until he remembered.
Johnny was awake, sitting on the bed, his legs folded in front of him. He'd put his jeans on again, Dally noted with some disappointment, but he was still shirtless, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette and watching Dally.
He looked embarrassed to be caught staring when Dally met his eyes. The older boy didn't mind being stared at, really, but he knew if he tried to tell Johnny the boy would only blush more. Instead, he settled for kissing the only part of Johnny he could reach- the boy's jean covered knee.
Johnny grinned, a little sleepily, and Dally liked it—it didn't have any mistrust leaking out of the corners. "C'mere," Dally ordered, hooking his finger in the boy's jeans pocket and gently tugging. Johnny leaned over to put his cigarette out in the ashtray balanced—rather precariously—on the too narrow windowsill, then obeyed, stretching out next to the older greaser.
They kissed for a while, and it was nice. Usually the other people he slept with were gone by the time he woke up, or shortly thereafter. Sylvia was the exception, but it was better with Johnny anyway, even if he wasn't sure why. He decided not to think about it.
Johnny finally pulled away, rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. There was a spider there, right above his head, dangling by invisible means. Johnny grinned, and Dally decided that maybe they should get out of the room before he remembered why it was cheap enough that he could afford it.
"Hungry?" he asked. It didn't really matter what Johnny replied, Dally had already decided that he was hungry, and Johnny was always so skinny, it wouldn't hurt him to eat something, even if he wasn't hungry. Couldn't be to healthy to be breathing in smoke instead of eating something. Nevermind that that's what Johnny's always done, and it wasn't like Dally's eating habits were much better, or that he'd ever even shown any interest in eating habits, anyway.
"Yeah," said Johnny, and Dally stopped his derailing train of thought and got up instead, because Johnny was hungry anyway and it didn't matter because he didn't need to think of a reason to drag the kid to get something to eat. Not that he really ever had needed to—Johnny would've followed him, anyway.
They went to the Dingo. It wasn't crowded, not in the morning, and the lone waitress brought them platefuls of food, and the sheer size of the meal made up for what it was lacking in taste, which was quite a bit.
It was quiet, there were only a couple of greasers there, and most of them had hangovers, slumped in the seats, cradling their coffee in both hands, squinting at the floor tiles. Johnny and Dally ate, the older boy watching approvingly as the younger worked his way through most of the plate of hashbrowns and greasy bacon and sausage. They didn't talk much, the silence was broken only by the wince of a fork as it skittered across a plate, or the clink of metal on metal when one of them bothered to use a knife.
"You want this?" Johnny asked, nudging his plate across the Formica table at Dally. There were two pieces of bacon and a sausage link, looking small and pitiful in comparison to the mountain of food that the waitress had originally plunked down in front of them.
"You should eat it," Dally said, feeling a little stupid for arguing over a couple pieces of bacon when the kid had just downed an entire plateful of food, but at the same time feeling as though he should be firm about it. He could still picture Johnny earlier that morning, shirtless, and the slanting sunlight had thrown thin shadows under each individual rib.
Johnny looked puzzled, but then shrugged, pulling the plate back over to his side of the table but not touching the leftover food. Dally felt stupid enough already that he didn't press things.
They left the diner, and the meat, and strolled aimlessly down the street. Johnny should have been in school, but neither of them said anything about it, he skipped enough that it was pretty commonplace, and the teachers would look down their noses at him whether he showed up or not. Dally should have had a job, but he didn't, besides the odd jobs that he found, or, more often, found him.
They both liked not doing what they should have been doing much more than they would have liked doing what they should have been doing, or at least they did until they passed the DX and Soda flagged them down, looking uncomfortable by the standards of most people, which was very uncomfortable for Sodapop.
"Hey," he said, wiping greasy hands on his jeans. "Uh, Pony said something this morning and I wanted to ask you two, just because…" He sighed, paused and started again. "I mean, I don't believe it or nuthin', but he said he walked in on you two and you were…. He said you two were kissing?"
Dally focused on keeping his face in its same position. Next to him, he heard Johnny breathe in real quick, and thanked God that Soda wasn't the most observant person.
Soda stared at their faces and after a moment or two of silence, he broken into uneasy laughter. "Like I said, I didn't believe it or nuthin'." He looked real embarrassed, and turned around and went right back into the gas station, mumbling a goodbye on his way.
Johnny and Dally watched him go, a little puzzled, and a lot relieved. Dally couldn't help it, he grinned. He'd been feeling close to throwing up when Soda had first cornered them, nausea in his stomach like a hurricane, but now, he couldn't help but see the humor. Johnny was looking a little pale, but he tried a weak grin and after a moment he was laughing, too, and it was okay, everything was okay. They went into the DX to buy Pepsis and continued down the street.
