Five for Fighting
Rated: PG-13
Disclaimer: I still don't own much.
T.W.E.N.T.Y. F.I.V.E.
I lived this masquerade for over two months, a much longer sum of time than you originally asked me to outline I know.
However it hardly seemed fair sir, to leave you wondering as to whether I ever figured myself out, and I think you knew that which is why you gave me this extension.
I wanted so badly to be happy, I suppose most people just want to be happy, but it's just not that easy is it?
Johnny continued to be faithful to me, and I to him.
Physically anyway.
I couldn't keep my mind from wandering from deep brown eyes to brooding blues at night.
I couldn't stop myself from pretending every so often that the arms around me belonged to a tow-headed boy with an elfish, reckless face as opposed to the soft and timid brown ones that held me so softly.
His kisses were like a summer breeze but I yearned for the crushing force of the angry boy's lips that had kissed me once, with such passion in the rain haloed by headlights for just a brief moment in time.
Despite myself, I clung to that moment. It was, metaphorically, my life raft in the flood of love for Dallas that constantly threatened to overcome me.
But I couldn't hurt Johnny, not when he cared so much and Dallas so little.
I could never do anything to hurt Johnny.
Instead, I put on a happy face, and wondered, plaintively while we watched the stars cross the night sky on a warm May evening, if I would ever really be able to be myself.
Johnny tightened his embrace and kissed me on the cheek, whispering the words that chained me to him, "I love you"
I knew then, with some sort of horrible certainty that being myself was out of the question.
I would rather lie in front of a train and be run over than hurt Johnny who had managed to overcome his horrible home life and see that someone could love him even if his parents didn't.
I had to be that person, it was my destiny.
Dallas was not.
He would go on living without the supreme knowledge that Johnny had possessed for so long and finally shed upon me.
That love could overcome anything.
I could see the startling evidence of it in every other member of the gang.
Johnny had learned to walk again for love of not only me, but for his love of life and all that it had to offer.
Darry was willing to give up his dreams of college and work mercilessly, making him old before his time because he loved us, his family. His love was strong enough to smother, if not dissolve completely the bitter feelings he harbored over his unnoted intelligence and overemphasized brawn.
Two-Bit made his way through his tough life by his love for seeing the humor in everything. For his love of making us laugh even when we're at our lowest point. Two-Bit loved to laugh, and in my opinion a sense of humor coupled with the ability to love is unbeatable.
Steve Randle, who I had reconciled my bad feelings towards, loved to work hard, and to show off his skills. He loved his girlfriend (for reasons still unfathomable to me) and though he would never admit it, he really loved his father. It was because of this that he kept himself out of the gang fights that otherwise called appealingly to him.
Soda, god, what could one really say about Soda except that he really and truly loved life and along with Johnny, is the only one who has known all along what took me so long to learn.
And Ponyboy, my twin, my best friend, I don't feel I did our relationship justice in this composition. Without him I never would have made it, and he told me the same thing. He told me one night, after the gang had all gone home and I had come in from the porch where I'd been saying goodnight to Johnny, his troubled secret that I had set out to discover months before when I'd noticed his strange behavior.
I had assumed, after reading Ponyboy's composition that what I had been noticing was the continuing effects of what Pony himself had described at the end of his assignment.
He was in shock, and who wouldn't be.
His best friend a cripple, a murderer, he himself nearly drowned and the self accused person to blame for the whole affair.
It was amazing he wasn't in therapy in my opinion.
But it was more than that, he couldn't understand how bad things happened to good people, even though he had lived it his whole life.
He looked at me that night though, and he smiled, "Good things happen to good people too Amber, that's what I know now. Because I have you, and Johnny does too."
Dallas would never know how it felt to be loved so dearly.
I tried to tell myself that it wasn't my fault, I had tried, but I had failed.
I had to count my losses and move on, and I renewed the vow I made to myself that first night that Johnny told me he loved me and snuggled closer to him still, "I love you too Johnny."
He smiled at me then, but it was a real sad smile and he sat up leaving me alone on the grass, "no you don't."
I got real cold then despite the warm night and sat up too, taking his face in my hands and staring at him for a minute before kissing him with all of the emotion I could produce.
He didn't argue again, just lay me back down and kissed each of my eyelids slowly, deliberately, causing a chill to run up my spine.
I lay my head on his chest that night and listened to his heart beat strong, rhythmically and thought fleetingly that at fifteen I should not have to be faced with these sort of feelings.
I thought of Fred and the daisy he had brought me when I was recovering from my scare in the alley, I wanted that sort of childish relationship of daisies, not roses.
I knew though, that Ponyboy and I were cursed beings, we felt things deeper than most people, daisies weren't an option.
Things were different after that night, Johnny and I continued to play a couple falling more in love with every passing day. We still went to school and congratulated each other on our triumphs and consoled the others failures. We went out with Pony and Patty, who really were in the midst of a budding romance and acted like we were also in that blissful state of happy.
But that night in the grass stayed with us, at the strangest times his words would come back to me, "no you don't" and I had to wonder why, if he knew, he continued to pretend.
Or why I continued to pretend, why I continued with such vigor that I nearly convinced myself that I did love him and ran to him one night to tell him so.
I found him out in the lot, staring at my house, and came skidding to a halt.
I had planned on going over to his, risking the wrath of his mother so as to march up to him and tell him that I loved him.
I never got the chance, I found him staring, not making a move to come in.
He seemed startled with my presence, and even more disturbed with my abrupt motion to throw my arms around him.
He grabbed my wrists and placed my arms gently back at my sides, "No, Amber"
I looked at him strangely, "Johnny, I have to tell you something," I started, stepping closer to him.
He didn't object, "I love…"
"Dallas," he finished for me.
"You…" the words died on my lips and I shook my head, "No, Johnny, No."
"Yes, Amber," he said looking at me and looking stronger and more confident than I had ever seen him.
"Johnny, why are you doing this?" I asked wanting nothing more than to throw my arms around him, to feel his arms around me.
"Because," he said slowly, looking me square in the eye, "I could never live with myself knowing that I was keeping you with me out of guilt."
"It's not guilt, Johnny,"
"It's not love, Amber,"
Tears started to gather in my eyes, "What are you trying to say Johnny, you don't love me?" I asked
He shook his head, a wry smile on his face, "Amber, I will love you forever, and because I love you, I know that we can't be together."
The tears began to fall and rushed down my face, cascading down my nose which had not stopped turning up despite my pressing down.
He brushed them aside with his thumb, gently and looked at me with those deep brown eyes, "Go to Dallas, Amber, he has your heart, not me."
He let me encircle his neck with my arms and hug him close, kissing him on the cheek before he pulled away, "Either get your heart back Amber, or make him value it as much as I would have, either way, make sure you're happy."
"Thank you, Johnny," I whispered
"Goodbye, Amber," He said before turning and walking off into the night.
Nobody could dare to say Johnny wasn't gallant, he was as gallant as they came and I stood watching him as a shadow emerged out of the night and stepped into the moonlight almost as soon as he had disappeared out of sight.
I stifled a gasp as Dallas' form became clear, he stopped a few feet away from me and we watched each other while I wondered briefly if this was fate's divine way of intervening.
I didn't know what to say to him, what was really left to say, I couldn't make him love me any easier than Johnny could make me love him.
I shivered, the wind was picking up and my hair flew into hectic curls and wrapped around me mimicking my hectic feelings.
Dallas didn't make a move to get any closer nor did he speak and I wondered if maybe he just wanted to get into the house and talk to my brothers and I was holding him there.
I tried to move but found myself rooted to where I stood.
Another gust of wind nearly choked me as my hair flew wildly around my neck and whipped my face but something in that moment brought back a whirl of memories and I was defenseless as they flooded my mind.
My first night in Tulsa, meeting Dallas, those eyes and how they captivated me with their troubled depths and brilliant color.
Dallas, coming to get me from the Masters' to bring me to my brothers in one of my worst times of loneliness, risking getting caught because he 'had the least to lose' and they way he continued to come and get me everyday that I was stuck there.
The way I had felt when Cherry had told me she was in love with Dallas Winston, like all the air had gone out of me. And what I did to try and avenge my ignored feelings when I saw Dallas and Cherry in the alley, when Dallas had saved my life and I turned my brothers against him ruthlessly.
The way he forgave me, and defended my reputation by beating up Jake and then helped me perfect my back handsprings, coming to my game and actually looking proud.
How he looked at me that night outside when he was drunk and gave me his coat and asked me about Johnny, his smile that night when I told him nothing was going on between us and tucked him into the couch and watched him fall asleep.
And then that night, when he had saved my life again, our fight in the lot and our kiss.
I don't know why I never put these events into any successive order, but it seemed plain to me now, Dallas loved me, he had to.
I looked at him evenly, and he started back from across the lot unblinkingly.
The next gust of wind seemed to push us together as if nature wanted to hurry up the inevitable and the next second he had swept me up in his arms crushing me against his chest, his face buried in my hair.
He didn't need to speak the words, I knew he felt them, and having said them would have seemed unreal and highly uncharacteristic.
His lips against mine felt like fireworks and he picked me up, my arms and legs circling his torso as I kissed him again, no force of emotion needed.
We settled down onto the grass some time after that, I have no concept of the minutes and hours that passed that night from the time Johnny left and Dallas entered, I didn't need to know, I was utterly happy and time didn't hold much importance.
I shivered again, despite his embrace and he kissed my neck before peeling off his jacket and wrapping it around me, "Never will remember your jacket," he mumbled with a soft laugh.
I shrugged carelessly and moved closer to him knowing we were both entering into something we'd never encountered.
I could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew I wasn't like the other girls he had dated, it was what had kept us apart in the first place. I was different, and he had to treat me differently. For the first time in his life, he wanted to care about something other than himself, and I tingled with pleasure knowing that it was me.
I guess you might be wondering what my love overcame, I think it should be fairly obvious now. My love overcame Dallas' animosity, his uncertainty, and my own fear of being different.
His overcame the same.
That night as Dallas and I said goodnight on the porch I made to take off his jacket, he stopped me and with a smirk kissed me quickly, "Keep it," he said striding off the porch and back across the lot, but this time he turned around and with another signature smirk watched as I disappeared into the one place I could finally call home and to the people I could call family.
The End