part of "the otherside" wherein ponyboy was a soc. previous installments are on my profile, and as always, this is omegaverse.
Whenever he's on the edge of a rut, his senses sharpen so much that a lot of normal things become unbearable to Dallas. Scents get a lot stronger, some fabrics begin to feel awful on his skin, and he usually can't stand being in a place he doesn't feel is safe, secure.
Waking up on a quiet winter morning in bed alone makes his skin erupt into gooseflesh automatically when he can't find Ponyboy's body beside him, scent not nearly as strong. Every part of him that's keyed into his omega, his mate needs to be soothed, needs to have him there. In short order, Dallas is awake, eyes turning to a sleet gray sky in the small sliver left by the window, a draft of cold seeping through the house. He sits up with a feeling of annoyance, want, as he casts around their mostly dark room for Ponyboy, for a hint of where he is.
The room is mostly still tidy, the bathroom door open, the laundry basket in the corner half full, the shelf of Ponyboy's books still mostly arranged the way Dallas put them. Dallas wipes the sleep from his eyes, swinging his legs out of the bed, feet landing on the carpet, hearing the pipes as they're used.
He goes to the bathroom first, just to clean his mouth, try and get the sleep out. It's not exactly something that works as he yawns, flicking water from his fingers. The pipes rattle again.
It's easy to follow the sound to the kitchen, where Ponyboy seems to be. Dallas shuffles forward, eyes still blurred by sleep. He rubs at them as he makes his way down the hallway; the house still feels a little strange even if the add ons to it were about, what, seven years old now? Along the way, he'd gotten used to the old layout, the old way things were even though they've been in Union for damn near two decades now.
When he turns the corner to the kitchen, Dallas pauses at the doorway, watching Ponyboy from the door frame as Ponyboy shuts off the faucet with his elbow. The kid was always happy to get up early to see a sunrise or lingering outside to see a sunset. For someone who'd grown up relatively pampered, not supposed to be headed towards a life working with his hands, he'd adapted easily in the years to the hours meant for a country, farmer life that they'd been made to settle into.
Dallas had adjusted too in his own way; he'd always been on his own since he was young. That wasn't a surprise.
If you'd told him in 1965 that he'd be leaning against a door, at thirty-four years old, watching his mate watching a sunrise, he'd have laughed. Particularly at the fact that said mate was Ponyboy Curtis, heir to all that Curtis money and empire.
Yet here he was, head against the door jamb, watching Ponyboy look out the kitchen window, a smile playing on his lips as the sun begins to pierce the gray morning. His hands are absentmindedly moving, working the dough that Dallas can scent is going to be buttermilk biscuits, the ones that he learned from his mother. He's made them so many times that Dallas can predict every movement: the way he rolls out the dough, knowing on instinct when it's thick enough, the bottom of his palms rolling against the dough to keep it even enough. The sunlight illuminates Ponyboy's eyes, turning them from a dark brown to a pretty hazel that Dallas can see a sliver of. The sunlight does even more though: it highlights some strands of the gray hair that have crept into one side of his temple, that Dallas loves to tug at when he can.
The sunlight illuminates other things: Ponyboy's pretty shoulders, the mating mark on his neck that looks a little too light for Dallas' taste, the way that the residue of flour looks halfway up his elbows, the sort of dusted gold that settles on Ponyboy as he reaches for the biscuit cutter that he'd gotten as a gift from Dallas seven years ago.
Who thought that'd be him, doing that for a mate? That stories he hadn't believed — that having a mate could calm him, that being near them could really make him feel that he was exactly where he needed to be — were all true. All of it is real, Dallas feeling that calm he hadn't experienced until Ponyboy settling on him all at once as he watches.
Attention not there, Ponyboy gropes around for the biscuit cutter, fingers coming up with nothing. The cutter is still glinting on the kitchen table where he left it.
That's time for Dallas to cross the kitchen silently, picking it up with a scrape that startles Ponyboy out of his reverie. He turns around, the sunlight still catching his eyes, mouth opening in surprise, the sunlight turning it less dusted gold and more of a little pink that makes Dallas' mouth water. "Dally! Fuck, you scared me."
"Yeah, you're too busy getting lost in the clouds," Dallas walks over, offering the cutter with a finger. Ponyboy huffs with a half smile, taking it from Dallas easily. Not that Dallas lets him get to the task at hand: he captures Ponyboy's lips with his own, claims him exactly as he wants.
The cutter gets placed right beside the dough. Ponyboy seems to agree that kissing Dallas good morning is much, much more interesting than biscuits. His scent washes over Dallas as he kisses him: it's home, it's heady, it reminds Dallas that in a few hours, he's going to have Ponyboy writhing beneath him, begging for Dallas to bite him, beg for him to knot him.
He's not surprised when Dallas nips at his lips, and he only smiles with those pretty crooked, sharp teeth of his when he draws back. "Good morning, honey. You wanna get those chores before you get your fill?"
"No," Dallas says bluntly, even as he hears one of the roosters crow, even as he knows that calling in a farm hand on short notice is gonna cost them. He doesn't care though, hand coming up, brushing against Ponyboy's mating mark, making him visibly shiver. "I'm just hungry for you."
And Ponyboy looks over him, clearly hungry for something other than biscuits, too. He twists half away anyway, voice low, "You can't have a rut without enough food. C'mon. Breakfast first, and then you can have me all you want later."
He finally grasps the cutter again and Dallas growls low enough in his throat that seconds later, Ponyboy slicks up in response. "That better be a promise," he slaps Ponyboy's ass smugly, going over to the refrigerator.
Ponyboy doesn't respond verbally; he doesn't need to.