"You mind telling me what happened, or don't you want to talk about it?"
"Guess you wouldn't believe I fell, huh?" Dallas muttered. She dabbed his split lip with a cloth.
"Dallas, honey, you can tell me not to call DYFUS or the authorities, and I swear to you I won't - unless you want me to, of course - but I rather you tell me nothing than lie to my face about being fine." He found her angry expression to be somewhat of a shock.
"Thanks," he said, softly. She seemed to see what a big deal this was and gave him one of those nice smiles Johnny was always wearing.
The aforementioned boy leapt into the kitchen, clad in a T-shirt and flannel pants, face pale.
"What's all the commotion?" he demanded. "I was in the bathroom, but I swear to God I heard Dally's voice!"
"Nice to know you can't get me out of your mind," he said dryly. Johnny sucked in a loud gasp.
"Dally, what-" but he caught his mother's look and fell silent.
She sat Dallas at the kitchen table. "Nice of you to come, baby." She nodded at him to stay put when, in a last attempt to look macho, he tried to get up and dissent illness. She made him sit again. "Just in time, too. Wanted to know if you'd let him stay in your bed or not."
Dally's mouth fell open. He quickly protested, "This ain't my place. I wouldn't want you to take the couch 'cause of me." He never said anything about leaving, though. He'd rather sleep on the floor than go home.
"Who said I was taking the couch?"
It took Dally a full four minutes to process just what that meant.
Oh - oh! "You mean you wanna share?"
"Yeah, sure," Johnny said with a shrug, though Dally could see the innards of his sixteen-year-old mind at work. "I've shared a bed with cousins when they came to visit. Why're you any different?"
Yeah, real nice question to ask in front of Mommy, make her take back her offer. But she didn't.
"Why, Dallas," she chimed, "what is wrong with all that? You've had to share with relatives before, right? This isn't different. I'm not worried about that nonsense they talk about all the time nowadays because you're a sweet boy."
That was a long shot. He may be an "abuse" victim, but that sure as hell didn't mean he looked like some kicked puppy. Dallas was eighteen, for Cripe's sakes - he'd been shaving since thirteen, smoking since fourteen and drinking since sixteen. Not to mention he was having some pretty happy visions of sharing Johnny-boy's bed. And not ha ha happy. You know the kind.
"Naw, it's fine," he muttered, the wheels of his brain clanking like mad. How much about him had Johnny explained to his mother? Sure didn't seem like a whole lot.
Mrs. Cade carefully replaced the bandage on Dally's hand. "Then it's settled! Dally will stay with you in your bed. No funny business, now," she added, playfully. He felt as if he'd been smacked upside the head with a wrench.
Mrs. Cade finished tended to Dally's wounds, only whipping out the Neosporin for a particularly nasty cut (that wasn't long so much as deep) over his left eye. She looked at him not imploringly but sadly, and he felt obliged to explain. "Beer bottle," Dally said quietly. She nodded. "They seem to like to use those," she replied, and they let it drop.
Somehow, Dally found himself sitting on the end of Johnny's bed. He stared straight ahead, wondering not for the first time what the hell he was doing there.
"Don't got any bed clothes," Dallas said breezily. Johnny exited the bathroom and sat down beside him, shrugging.
"So? You can sleep in those if you want."
Dallas glanced at himself. "Jeans?"
He smiled a bit too vivaciously, Dallas thought. "Boxers, then?"
Dally didn't care about the kid watching him as he yanked it all off until he was down to boxers - and a shirt. (Puberty; he didn't want to tempt Johnny more than he already had.)
They settled down beneath the covers, Johnny switching off the light on his bedside dresser. The room fell deathly quiet, aside from the occasional rustle and Johnny's tossing and turning. Even if he was having nightmares, that moan just then had gotten Dallas sorely tempted.
Don't touch him, Dally thought. You've just decided you like Mrs. Cade as a mother-type, and the kid; boy, you like the kid. You want to keep him around, right? Don't ruin it.
However, in the heat of sleep Johnny flopped over, embracing Dally from behind. The older boy swallowed, begging himself not to notice the fragile arms wrapped about his waist, the face buried between his shoulders and the light, tranquil breathing...
He rolled over to take Johnny into his arms, deciding it wouldn't hurt as long as he hadn't been the one to engage it. The boy's eyelids twitched but they didn't open, and he spent the rest of the night without tossing or turning.
-
Dally awoke, feeling groggy and sorely missing the warmth that had spent the night beside him. He guessed Johnny had been too mortified to confront him about it, sneaking away instead. He shrugged it off.
After throwing on some new clothes (they looked just as beat up as they had yesterday), Dally stumbled into the kitchen with a disgruntled yawn. The time was ten in the afternoon; he almost considered feeling alarmed until he caught the note on the table.
Dally,
Johnny went to school a while ago and I'm just getting ready to leave for work. We didn't want to wake you, and I figured you could use a day off after such a tough night anyway. Please take it easy. My cell phone number's below if you need me. S. Cade
She looped her 'S's rather enthusiastically, Dally noted without real interest. "S. Cade" wasn't all that was written there. It looked as if she'd signed her first name as well, but he couldn't make the other letters out. Sinly? Hell no. Sindy, maybe. The point was she'd said to take it easy, but it wasn't as if he was sick and wasn't all that sore. Hurt mentally, maybe, but that was a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
He dug through the fridge, devouring an English muffin uncooked and drinking half the remaining orange juice cart in one gulp. On the second he put it back, empty.
Dallas left, not bothering to leave a note behind. He figured he'd be back before them and didn't want to look for paper, anyway.
-
Twilight. Sheets of rain cascaded gracefully in and out of the purplish light, casting hues and all that prettily described jazz along the undeserving and crumbling architecture that was Autumn in its least fine.
He didn't have to do this anymore, especially not in this weather, at this early time. He could turn away now and forget this crap, return to Johnny and Mrs. Cade, however something in his gut made him think he might go back home, to his "real" home. If you could call it that. He already had visited the house, but since his father wasn't there, he retrieved some clothes and a pair of pants for sleeping in for next time. He hadn't wanted to go back and actually found himself strangely excited when he found himself alone, no enemies to speak of. But in the case he did, which would come as it always did in a mixture of time, guilt, and his own liquor problems, he'd need a peace offering.
A man was heading towards him, ducking beneath someone's aged and forgotten laundry that hung from a sagging wire above the alley's entrance. Autumn was relatively large, for an unheard of sorta' town, but he could tell just by glancing that this man was foreign to these parts. His hair was an odd color, making Dallas wonder if it was natural or not; a dark, almost black red, like cherry pop. His eyes were the color of a Hershey bar but not quite as welcoming; they stared dead-like at Dallas, their expression hidden. They gave the impression of someone looking at another through a two-way mirror. He shivered at the stranger's arrival, but comprehended what he desired anyway.
"So, then - you want the standard suck-and-fuck, or are you a cop?" In Dallas's business it was usually unwise to speak first, but this man was giving him the chills. Not the cop or the creepy sort of chills, which he came across often in this profession. Just chills.
The man's impression didn't change, yet a motion not so much within as behind his eyes gave Dallas the impression he was laughing.
"The first sounds good, though if you don't mind I'd like to be the one fucking."
"Of course," Dallas replied breezily, despite the fact his heart was hammering in his chest. "Let's get a move-on, then."
He found himself sipping wine in a rather nice apartment he figured the man had borrowed from a friend (unwilling to admit he may be wrong about his tourist assumption, but then how would he know where to find people of Dallas's "profession" in this town?), and wishing anyone else would've picked him up. Foreplay made him feel like a woman, and he had long ago decided the guys who chose this over just fucking and leaving could just go to hell. And to tell the honest truth, the man made him more unnaturally uncomfortable than most. He reminded him, in short, of his childhood - the long rides to obscure cities with his father and what little they had between them. While being brutally enriching, however, it hadn't been a cozy experience.
And the meetings; the men with rough-skinned and ginger hands, the fingers that sifted through his hair and the odd-tasting lips that kissed him until, as a kid, a stupid and innocent kid, he had smiled and laughed. It was less than so now.
Speaking of now, now he was tipsy. He could drink a whole bottle of bourbon and feel good enough to drive, but red wine always made him painfully nostalgic.
The mysterious man now finished taking his damn time pouring himself some liquor and made his way over to Dallas, sitting on the couch beside him. The teen swung his legs over his lap and an arm about his neck without permission, downing the rest of his drink.
"Let's get this over-"
The man put two fingers to his lips. Dally shivered at the coldness of his skin as the opposite hand scaled his hip, slipping beneath the shirt to touch more bare skin.
"We could, except you have something on your mind."
Once again, Dallas felt the mocking, the smirk. He just couldn't see it.
"And what's it to you, if some prostitute you hire is distressed?" The words tumbled from his mouth without him meaning them to. It sounded weird when said out loud. Prostitute. He'd never denied it. But no one'd actually said it to his face, either.
The man blinked at him. "I want my full money's worth. I don't care too much for when my partner's distracted in the heart of sex."
The way he said it, Dallas could have laughed. The face with which he said it shook off the notion.
Normally, he wouldn't confide in a client - especially not if said client was this damn unnerving. He wanted to beg him to screw up or smile, but that might be more frightening than his permanent solemnity. Anyway, in this current situation, he was feeling a little desperate - and he'd never see the man again, right?
"A..." Oh, lord. The first rut. "A friend of mine recently asked me a question about fathers. He wanted to know if it was worth just having one, even if he did..." His voice trailed off.
The mysterious man took Dally's bandaged hand, kissing it boldly. "This?"
"Yeah," he said quickly, suddenly feeling nervous. "I know what he's getting at, but I don't know how to answer him."
The man slipped his hands further up his sides and Dallas gasped, unable to control himself. Amazing how such cold fingers could leave such a trail of fire.
"And not only did he make this," the man said, gesturing to a cropping of bruises, "but he makes you do this-" oh, god, his teeth were cold too as they sunk into the warm flesh where Dallas's shoulder met his neck, "-that you find it so hard to relate with such a situation."
"H-h... how'd you know?"
The man didn't seem to hear him, fumbling with his clothes and sucking on any bare skin he could find. Dallas figured he must be done giving out charity, however sparingly, so joined in. He didn't even think about it all again until they made their way to the man's bed, the covers overturned, their hair riled, and the smell of sex hanging in a sultry cloud all about them. It was then that Dally looked out the window and swore - the rain had stopped, and it was almost pitch black outside.
"Go to him," the man murmured, without opening his eyes or turning to face him. "Money's on the counter."
"Thanks-" Suddenly, Dally realized he didn't know his client's name, which wasn't all that uncommon. But in this case, he wanted to know. "What do I call you?"
But the man had fallen into another one of his bouts of silence. Perhaps, for that moment, he was deaf. It was an odd thought and probably a product of the wine.
Dallas worked quickly and quietly, pulling on his clothes. He stopped, halfway stuffing his pockets with the money, halfway out the door when he noticed the amount of motorcycle memorabilia the man owned. He thought of a name to call him by, if they ever saw one another again, though they probably wouldn't.
He left, mouthing the name, testing it on his tongue.
-
It was relatively dark when he got back, though it may have just been the product of an upcoming winter and daylight savings. Still, the legitimate time didn't matter; Dally had a feeling he should have come back before dark. With baited breath, he entered the Cade household.
Almost as soon as he opened the door, Johnny flung himself into Dally's arms, eyes squeezed shut.
"Where were you," he began to ask when he suddenly pulled off, and his mother stepped into the room, clad in robe. Was it that late? Dally fidgeted.
"I'm sorry," he said, softly. Johnny stood beside him flinchingly but refusing to back down.
Finally, she sighed.
"Please, just make it home earlier next time. Or at least leave a note?"
"I couldn't find any paper," Dally admitted sheepishly.
Johnny laughed. "You could've just written on the back of ours."
Dally looked genuinely surprised. Actually, he hadn't thought of that. It must've shown because Mrs. Cade smiled warmly at him.
"Come on," she said casually, wandering away. "Dinner's getting cold."
Dally followed, Johnny close at his side. No screaming? No throwing things, punches included? Speaking of which, no physical fighting period?
He could get used to this good family stuff.
Did you catch who the guest star of this chapter was? If you've read Hinton's other novels, you damn well should have. I-I mean, it was the Motorcycle Boy, from Rumble Fish. X'D
Anyway, characters from the original Outsiders and other Hinton books will be referred to and guest-starring, if only briefly, in chapters to come. You have to pick up on them, though. I'm not telling who they are, except Bryon and Cathy (That Was Then, This Is Now), and maybe two others...