this takes in the immediate aftermath of this is your heart (can you feel it?) so please read that first!
When Dallas kisses Ponyboy there, beneath a full moon, Johnny Cade's blood freshly staining his hands and his face, he expects Ponyboy to pull away from him. Expects him to come to himself, to realize that Dallas has killed his best friend before he's killed a boy who's been trying to kill him. Even though his head is thick with anger, even though the blood is satiating a place inside of him that is more animal than human, even though Dallas doesn't mind the taste.
Instead of drawing away, instead of blaming Dallas, Ponyboy kisses him back, curls closer to Dallas in that cold night air. The taste of blood spreads between their lips, mingles with their tongues and Dallas feels that buzzy feeling in his head start to calm down, start to finally begin to recede in the back of his mind, and bring everything to the forefront in a way he knows isn't normal.
It's almost like parting through static to get to the real world when Ponyboy pulls back. To realize that this pretty Soc, who'd been fucking spotless hours ago, was covered in blood now. It was flecked on his face from his cheeks to the smear on his mouth, some in small drops, some in bigger rivulets against Ponyboy's pale, unblemished skin. Some of it is even slipping down his cheek and without thinking, Dallas leans closer, licking up the blood with his tongue, savoring what he'd done.
What he'd done.
The cold air seems to finally permeate: the stiffness of his fingers, the way that Johnny Cade's blood feels hot and slick on his hands, the scent of chlorine and Ponyboy's pheromones, a scattering of emotions and instinct.
In New York, Dallas had expected that at some point he'd get pulled into a murder rap, that one day the dead body that would hit the ground would be because of his own hand. He doesn't know what to do for a moment, realizing what he's done here and now.
He hadn't killed a gang member, he hadn't had a noble fight you see in movies and television. He had stalked up and stabbed Johnny Cade over and over again in the neck until he was dead – more than dead.
As he leans closer to Ponyboy again, nuzzling his nose against his tear and blood stained cheek, as he brings his bloodied hands up to cup his cheeks, he doesn't feel regret or remorse for what he's done. Just feels the need to kiss Ponyboy more, to claim him, to smear blood on him, to give into that feral instinct of a kill.
A dog barks in the distance, and just like that, it seems to bring everything into focus for him and for Ponyboy. His eyes lose that distant, shocked look, widening, looking at Dallas in shock. Dallas comes to himself as Ponyboy's scent fully settles on fear, on hesitance. All at once, he remembers that Ponyboy is covered in not just in blood but pool water, and they have to move, now.
"Stay right there," Dallas barks out the instruction and Ponyboy nods, unable to do anything. Why would he, when he's soaking wet? Dallas staggers to his feet, looking at Johnny's body. He doesn't think twice, ignoring the cooling blood on the grass and cement as he yanks the rings off of his hands, rifles through his pockets for money, checks for jewelry and finally finds the most important thing: his car keys.
Once he has that, he goes down the hill, picks up his brown jacket that he'd given Ponyboy earlier that night, shakes it off, and marches back up, past Johnny's body and wrapping it around Ponyboy's shivering shoulders. "C'mon." Ponyboy doesn't move — he seems frozen, eyes dark surrounded by stark white as he looks at Johnny's body, fingers stiff. "Come on, Ponyboy. We can't stay here."
"I c-c-can't m-m-ove," Ponyboy's teeth chatter.
Dallas doesn't wait for him, has no time to. Just slips his hands beneath his arm pits, and yanks Ponyboy to his feet. It helps that he's small, stumbling up, wavering before he vomits again. Dallas doesn't look away, keeping him steady as he throws up water, food and anything else he needs to. Once he's done sputtering and spitting, he keeps pulling Ponyboy to the car still banked on the curb, it's headlights off.
This car is something he's hated ever since Johnny Cade started driving it. It's enormous, awful, and Dallas has to push Ponyboy in rougher than he'd like. It gets Ponyboy in at least, his legs stiff as he goes. Once he's in, Dallas is pushing the door shut. He goes around to the driver's side, and grimaces when the blood on his hands — still so much fucking blood, just how much blood did that kid have in his body? — makes it difficult to grip the wheel of the car. It slips in places, harder to deal with than cloth as he jams the keys in, turns it over.
The best thing about this behemoth of a car being so new is that it turns on quickly. The lights are a blinding white, falling on the curb.
Dallas grits his teeth, takes it off of park and goes down the road, away from Johnny Cade's dead body, away from the fountain, away from the blood still pooling. The wheel is slippery, half unmanageable with all the blood on his hands as the car drives like a hot knife through butter down the night roads.
The blood is strong, seeping into every bit of him with how heavy it is. Turning on the radio isn't something either of them bother to do as Dallas turns down alleys, as he takes the back roads to Buck's. He glances over every now and then to see Ponyboy's face, at the way he's staring into nothing, at the blood flecked on his neck, at the way he's hardly remembering to breathe as they travel through the dark night.
What could Dallas even say at the moment? Sorry? He wasn't. Are you okay? Ponyboy clearly wasn't.
So he just drives. Drives until they're pulling up at the back of Buck's, the billiard's lights a bright red in the night as he throws the car into park again. "C'mon. We're going through the back, kid."
Mutely, Ponyboy opens the passenger side. Dallas doesn't move until he's climbing out, the cold air a blast against him. If he's cold, Ponyboy has to be freezing, something Dallas hates as he grips his elbow, guiding him away from the car to the back door. There's a party raging — of course fucking Hank Williams is blasting, that honky tonk fuck Buck loved his music — so loudly that it is making Dallas appreciate that most of his senses are scrambled with the blood scent.
It makes it all the easier to pull Ponyboy inside, going past the rooms teeming with bodies and booze. There's a bit of blood in the air from injuries, from people getting reckless and enough people are there that no one really takes a second to look at them. Seeing him with blood on him would just make people think he'd lost a fight, not that he'd stuck a switchblade into Johnny Cade. Not unless they wanted to stop him and right now, Dallas was liable to knock someone flat on their ass with one swing with the way his pheromones were, with the rage he was still feeling, as much as he'd been trying to control himself on the drive.
He expects that Ponyboy might say or do something as they move. He doesn't, just mutely allowing Dallas to push him up the steps — he's able to hear Ponyboy's teeth chatter every so often as they go, some movement finally restored to his body. The sound isn't something he wants to hear, doesn't want to acknowledge – it's making his instincts flare up, wanting to tend to him.
Not yet, though.
Being in Buck's was exactly what he needed to remind him of what was at stake: that they were on a time limit.
Within the hour, someone will figure out that Johnny Cade was murdered, find his body. His friends, the cowards, had all ran when Dallas had killed him and more than likely, they'd be going somewhere to lay low. Or get as many cops as they could and come back to a nasty little surprise.
And Dallas? Dallas was gonna be long gone by the time they were searching for him. They weren't gonna just be polite or nice about it, either. And he needed to be long gone before they could put him in the electric chair.
Thing is though, he isn't leaving Ponyboy alone first. It might be stupid, full on idiotic maybe, could maybe get him caught. Leaving him there, shocked and wet wasn't an option, though. It hadn't been from the moment Dallas had seen him.
It could get him caught, leading Ponyboy into his shitty little room and closing the door on the shitty music. He knows Tim Shepard would've told him to leave the little Soc right where he was, but he's not Tim Shepard. Right now, as the light from the neon sign outside filters through his room, turning Ponyboy's skin a neon red, he's more concerned about him. About the color slowly returning to his face, about his wide brown eyes, about the blood mixing with water on his face.
If only Ponyboy were here under any other circumstance. If only they had been able to get past one kiss without anything awful.
But everything was in motion now, nothing they could change now.
"Kid," Dallas tries to keep his voice gentle, trying to imitate someone nicer and kinder than he is, "You gotta let me clean you up. You're wet, bloody and you're gonna catch cold."
Ponyboy shakes his head, teeth chattering. "I'm –" He swallows, shivering in that yellow shirt, Dallas' jacket on his shoulders unable to hide the new stains: blood flecks here and there, dirt stains turning to slight mud, clinging to his skin in a way that if it didn't have the rest, would be attractive to Dallas. "Okay. Okay."
He's not.
He wouldn't be, couldn't be.
It feels as if Dallas is imitating someone, something else as he looks at Ponyboy, at the lost upset look on his face. Slowly, he crosses the room, using his hand to cup Ponyboy's cheek, smearing more blood on his skin than he means.
Ponyboy doesn't draw back; in fact, he leans his cheek against Dallas' larger hand, those long eyelashes of his meeting his cheeks as he half shuts his eyes. Right now, he trusts Dallas, allows Dallas to gently guide Ponyboy to his bathroom, feet scraping the wood beneath them. The bathroom is probably the cleanest, most put together place in Buck's as far as Dallas is concerned. He's put in as much work as he could to keep it that way, guiding Ponyboy to sit on the closed toilet seat. The light he flicks on, the sound of the buzzing filament filling up the bathroom with a dull hum.
The sight of Ponyboy in proper light just makes Dallas wish he had kept Johnny Cade alive a little longer: he's got a bruise forming on his cheek, a cut on his forehead that Dallas had missed, and his shirt is missing a torn off button. A growl leaves him, low and angry, and Ponyboy averts his eyes, curls closer into himself. "You don't have to do this."
"Yeah, I do," Dallas snaps out, throwing open the crappy medicine cabinet. "I'm not letting you go back home looking like this."
He expects Ponyboy to push his shoulders up, look ashamed. He's a Soc who's never participated in a rumble, who's never picked on greaser kids, who's probably never even had his parents spank him. He expects him to look soft, just let Dallas do this and be found in the morning after he calls the cops. This should all be a bad version of the way Cherry had tossed that Coke on him — the stain now clearly overridden with blood and mud.
If everything made sense?
This would be where this will all end for him and Ponyboy. It has to — for all that they were earlier that night, with Ponyboy kissing him first, with how pretty he was, and how much Dallas wanted to stay with him, there is no future here for them anymore. It's a fact Dallas hates, tries to harden himself against.
It doesn't get easier when Ponyboy looks stricken, for his voice to come out in a panicked tone of, "Go back home? What? Why – why would I go back home?"
"You really got a screw loose don't you?" Dallas shoots back, frowning at him, trying to find where he put his bandaids, distract himself from what he has to do. "I'm skipping town so I don't get the chair. You're going back home where you belong after this."
"Back — back home?" Ponyboy croaks out the words, and when Dallas locates the bandages he turns to see Ponyboy shaking, hands and all. "No. No, I can't. How can I go home?"
"You got to," crouching down, Dallas grips Ponyboy's chin, forcing his head up, to look at the cut on his forehead, trying to ignore that they'd been kissing earlier that evening, that all he'd been wanting to do was slip his tongue into Ponyboy's mouth. "You ain't the one who stabbed him." Ponyboy flinches. "If anyone's getting in trouble, it's me, not you. Your brothers can buy you outta trouble. You're a Soc, don't you know that?"
He spits out Soc the way he has before, the way Cherry has before, the way most greasers did. Venomous, angry, and in this moment, that anger is so much different than before, so much more personal. He says it to make it hurt.
Ponyboy looks at him, lips trembling. Dallas looks down at him. "Wasn't he your friend?"
"You weren't, and you killed him for me," Ponyboy's voice is hardly able to be heard above the din. "He was my friend and he was pissed at – at me, and he tried to kill me. You didn't." Ponyboy reaches up, grasps for Dallas' wrist. "Would you have killed him, done all that if I were just a Soc?"
As much as Dallas wants to say no, as much as he wants to pull away, do the smart thing, he finds himself unable to lie for the first time in his life. He looks at Ponyboy, at his face stained with blood, at the way his rum brown eyes refuse to leave his.
No. The answer is no and they both know it.
"You're crazy," Dallas says, trying to keep his voice harsh. "What are you thinking, huh? That we're gonna run away like one of those movies?" When Ponyboy nods his head, Dallas snorts derisively, trying to ignore how much his instincts want to latch into that, bury his teeth into it. "You think it'll be easy, just like that? It ain't! We gotta figure out how to feed ourselves, figure out how to avoid the cops and – if we get caught, they aren't gonna believe you just left with me. You get that?" The vacant look Ponyboy's face had earlier seems sharper than ever. "They're gonna say all kinds of shit, and that's if we even make it out of here."
"I'm not leaving you," his voice is stubborn, finally coloring with some emotion other than shock. "How could I leave you?" Ponyboy's grip goes tighter. "You didn't hurt me. You didn't take advantage of me. It's my fault you had to kill him." His mouth trembles again. "I'm going with you, Dally. We're leaving, together. We are."
A thousand things race through Dallas' head at that, at the conviction in his voice, at the way he looks with all that blood on him, with the memory that Ponyboy had kissed him like this and hadn't drawn away. His blood is starting to roar in his ears and Ponyboy pulls him closer and closer until his lips are pressed against Dallas' own and the rational part of Dallas starts to quell, starts to accept this: that he and Ponyboy were tied by more than hormones, more than bodies and a taboo interest.
They were bound by blood now, blood Dallas had spilled himself.
thanks so much for reading! this is going to have two, possible three chapters. see you all next time.