A/N: I'm back. Like I said, I'm trying to finish this up. So here's the next chapter. I hope you all like it. I really had fun writing it. So let me know how you like it in a review or message me to my inbox. I love hearing from you all.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own The Outsiders.

She awoke to the sound of pounding at the front door. She attempted to ignore it, however when it continued she groaned and rolled over to bury her face in Darry's arm. However, her face hit a warm spot on the bed. To that she opened her hazel eyes. As her eyes adjusted to the dark room, she saw Darry pulling on a pair of jeans.

"Dare?" she mumbled sleepily.

He leaned over, pressing his lips to her forehead. "Go back to sleep, yeah?"

Before she could respond, he was out the door and down the hall. Only halfway concerned with what was going on around her, she snuggled back under the comforter. Distantly, she could her Sodapop talking to Darry and them both telling Ponyboy to go back to bed. However, she drowned that out too.

"Jacquelyn Ross!"

The light in the bedroom flicked on and Jacquelyn hissed before pulling the blanket over her head. Footsteps approached the bed, too light to be Darry's, and a slender hand pulled the blanket from over her head.

"Get up!"

Jacquelyn rolled over and opened one of her hazel eyes, there was no ignoring the sound of that voice. The eyes of her mother greeted her. Jacquelyn groaned outwardly and rolled back over, tuning her back to her mother. "What?" she mumbled into the pillow. She figured that if what's looking at her mother than she might disappear, kind of like a bad dream. Maybe that's what this was. A bad dream and she would wake up and Darry would be sleeping beside her.

"NOW!"

Well that shattered her false sense of reality. "What are you yelling about?" the brunette question from inside the bed.

"Mrs. Ross," Darry started calmly as he ran his hand over his face. "It's late, perhaps we could do this tomorrow? She's got work in the morning and so do I."

Sadie Ross turned to the man speaking to her. "This isn't about you, boy."

Jacquelyn looked over at her mother and sat up, running her fingers through her dark hair. She didn't really care for the tone that she had taken with him just then. She didn't really like that she kept calling him 'boy' either. "What are you doing here?" she questioned as she looked over at the clock, "It's 12:30, I have to go to work tomorrow."

"Get up and get your things," her mother continued. Sadie started to move around the room again, opening drawers and closing them loudly.

"Mrs. Ross," Darry tried again.

However the woman continued to ignore him, opening more drawers and pulling out Jacquelyn's clothes and shoving them into a small shoulder bag she was carrying. Realizing that he was not going to get anywhere with her mother, he moved from the doorframe and towards a wide-eyed Jacquelyn.

"I'm sorry," she said as he sat on the bed next to her, placing his hand over hers.

"I think that you should go with her," Darry told her as he gave her hand a brief squeeze. When he looked over at her, her hazel eyes held a tinge of hurt in them. He hadn't realized that is wording would be hurtful. "Not because I don't want you to stay, but because I think it's better for you to go and then we can get this sorted out tomorrow. Okay?"

Jacquelyn pulled her hand from his and she nodded. "Alright, mother, stop making all that noise people are trying to sleep." She swung her feet off the bed and sighed. The brunette stumbled to a standing position and ran her hands down her face she started across the room to grab her shoes. After slipping them on, she tugged a jacket off the back of the door. The girl pushed her sleeves through the arms. "Let's go, mother."

Darry grabbed her wrist and twisted her to face him as her mother started down the hallway and out the door, shouting the whole way. "You'll be fine," he told her as he brushed a strand of hair from her face and then kissed her cheek. She tried to pull away from him, but it was all in vain he was too strong. "Hey, you're mad at me. Don't be. I'm not kicking you out, Jacquelyn." Of course, she was still very skeptical. "I will see you soon," he told her as he leaned to kiss her. An action that she allowed.

The horn blared.

"Go."

The car ride was an event to say the least.

Initially, it was battle of the voices. Both women screeching and yelling over one another. Not bothering to listen to anything that the other was saying.

Sadie was shouting about everything and anything. The fact that she was LIVING with some boy. The fact that she could be at home making an honest living for herself. The fact that she was playing house. Just screaming about everything and anything that she could think of. The way that Jacquelyn was sitting, slouching with her arms crossed. The way that she wore her hair. "All the other girls have cut theirs. Why haven't you?"

While Jacquelyn shouted the answers to her mother's questions and rebutted them without event letting her mother finish the question. What did it matter where she was living? She couldn't stand living with her mother. She didn't want to live with her and make an 'honest living' while she was unhappy. Why did it matter how she wore her hair? It was her own damn hair, attached to her own damn head. Screw what the other girls were doing.

Then, after a few moments Jacquelyn gave up. She was tired. She was irritated. Most importantly, she was angry. Of course at her mother, but she was also angry at her stupid boyfriend too. He just let her go. In fact, he told her to go. He told her it was better for her to go. He didn't even try to keep her there.

No.

No. That wasn't fair.

He had tried to reason with her mother. He had tried to reason with her twice. He'd probably even tried to talk to her before she made it back to the bedroom. It wasn't fair for her to be angry with him for that. Her mother was angry. There was nothing that Darry could have done to stop her mother. It was either let her go willingly or let her mother drag Jacquelyn out by her hair.

No.

She wasn't mad at him.

Sadie jerkily parked the car, causing Jacquelyn to unfold her arms and brace herself on the dashboard to avoid hitting it. She shot a glare across the car towards the woman as she got out of the car. Jacquelyn folded her arms again and leaned back into the seat. Looking forward, she realized that they were parked outside of her father's house.

Did she have a key to this place?

That's right. This is where they had all lived together when they were in Tulsa. Of course, she had a key.

"Get out," her mother said before closing the car door.

For a long moment, Jacquelyn remained still in the car. She honestly did not want to be here. She didn't want to be with her mother. She didn't want to be at the house. She just wanted to be in bed with Darry, sleeping. She really wanted to be sleeping. With that realization, she pushed open the car door and got out, hugging the jacket closer to her body. She inhaled deeply, only then realizing that she had grabbed one of Darry's cotton jackets in her tired state.

Her mother was talking about something or other. Jacquelyn could hear her but she couldn't process what she was saying. Not because she was tired, but because she just couldn't bring herself to care anymore.

"Are you listening to me?" her mother shouted once they had gotten into the house and shut the front door. Her daughter continued to walk, heading straight for her room. "Jacquelyn!" The brunette stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Are you listening?"

Jacquelyn exhaled loudly, blowing stands of her dark hair from her face. "Honestly, I'm not."

Her mother stormed towards her. For a moment, a split moment, she saw the same look in her mother's eyes that was in her father's eyes before he hit her. Jacquelyn flinched and her mother stopped in her tracks. No matter how they argued and disliked one another it would never come to that.

"Jacquelyn, I-"

"I am going to bed," she told her mother as she started towards her bedroom.

Her mother, for the first time that night, was silent. So she took the chance to continue her walk to her bedroom. Once there, she closed the door behind her and threw herself on the bed. It felt so odd to be there. It felt like it had been many months since she was last there, however she knew that it had only been a couple of months. She just felt so out of place. The sheets smelled stale, and when she buried her face in the pillow, she coughed.

For a long while, she lay there silently. Inhaling the smell of the stale sheets and listening to the sound of the air moving through the vents. At some point, she drifted off into some sort of light, uneasy, uncomfortable sleep, because the next thing she knew she was being startled awake by a tapping sound.

Jacquelyn sat up and looked around. The shadows on the wall were still and she was quite sure that she had imagined the sound. However, just as she moved to lay back down, she heard the sound again. Her light eyes scanned the darkness of the room looking for the source, but she couldn't find it. When the sound happened again, she realized it was the sound of something tapping against glass. Quickly, she looked over at the window. Slowly, she moved towards the window and glanced out of it, before opening it.

"Hey," she said into the darkness. She couldn't quite see who was there, however, she had a pretty good idea as to who it was.

"She speaks. O, speak again, bright angel," was her reply.

"Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo," she teased as she leaned on the windowsill and he approached. "Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love," she paused briefly, and furrowed her eyebrows as he finally entered her limited visual field. "Forgive me, for I cannot remember the rest of the scene."

There was a time that she could have recited the entirety of that scene with him. When they had been forced to read the works of Shakespeare in their Literature class, she decided that reading Romeo and Juliet was not all that bad. It was a love story. Two unlikely people feel in love and due to the battling families the two start-crossed lovers died. It was tragically beautiful. And of course, as a project the members of the class had to perform a scene from any of Shakespeare's works. And of course, she had all but forced Darry to do the balcony scene with her.

Darry Curtis leaned on the windowsill as well, dressed in a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a University of Tulsa t-shirt, meeting her hazel eyes with his cobalt ones. "Are you okay?" he asked her. She nodded. "Are you sure?" he brushed her hair back behind her ear. She remained silently leaning against the windowsill. "Are you mad at me, Jacquelyn Ross?"

"Huh? I," she paused watching her fingers. "I was, but I'm not anymore."

His eyebrow arched. "Why were you mad?" She shook her head. She was being silly and she had no right to be even a little upset with him. "You were mad because you thought that I wanted you to go," he said for her. She knew that she was wrong and because of that fact she didn't want to talk about with him. There was a part of her that didn't want to give him the knowledge that he was right. "Well you're wrong. I just wanted to make sure that Soda and Pony were gonna get some sleep tonight. Nothing against you, I just needed your mother to stop shouting."

"I know," she replied as she took a step back from the window. "Do you want to come in?" she questioned.

"Is your mom awake?" he asked.

Suddenly, they were seventeen again. He would sneak out of his house in the dead of night. He would climb out of his bedroom window and take the truck, pushing the car out of the driveway in neutral and then hoping in and driving away once he was on the street. He would pull up to her house with his lights off and park a little ways down the road, so that her parents didn't know. Then he would come and tap on her window. She would run to her window and open it, kissing him like she hadn't seen him in days. Then he would climb into her window and just lay with her. Sometimes they would talk, other times they were just content with each other's presence and no words were necessary, and other times she would make him read chapters in books to her, his voice lulling her to sleep, and other times she would read to him, because it was only fair if he was going to read to her. Then at some point, she would fall asleep, because they next thing she knew she was waking up for school and he wasn't there anymore.

When she looked back over at him, it seemed that he was in the same nostalgic moment that she had been in.

"Well, are you coming, Romeo?" she questioned.

"Who am I to keep a Capulet waiting?" he said as he climbed into her window.

By the time, he shut the window Jacquelyn had already fallen backwards on the bed and was with her hair fanned out on the pillow closest to the wall. Darry lay down next to her and she rolled over into his arms. She yawned. There was just something so comforting about lying in his arms and being with him. Even when she was having a rough day, especially when she was having a rough day, his presence was comforting. Probably, because he was never the one to judge or get angry. He was always one to listen to whatever she had to say in full before saying anything.

"Oh," she muttered suddenly and sleepily breaking the silence that had fallen between them.

"Hmm?" Darry hummed in response. His breathing had slowed and it seemed that it was struggle for him to respond to the question accurately.

"Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet," she replied.

"What are you talking about?" he asked as he rolled over on to his side. Jacquelyn tucked her head under his chin and he inhaled the scent of her hair.

"The line, I couldn't remember it. That's the line."

He hummed again, letting her know that he heard her. The two of them lapsed into a silence. They sounds of their breathing echoed in the room. Their breathing was in sync. Their soft exhales and inhales matching. It had always been like that. They had always been in sync that way.

"Dare?" she said suddenly. His name rolled off her tongue very slowly, like her mouth didn't want to form the word. However, he brain had a question to ask.

"Jacquelyn," he whispered against her hair, struggling to answer her.

"Are you going to be here in the morning?"

Slowly he shifted his weight and then settled back into their embrace. "Dunno," he answered honestly. He waited a long moment, feeling her body relaxing next to his and starting to give into sleep. "Jacquelyn," he said quietly. However, she didn't respond. Her breathing was soft. He sighed, she'd given into sleep. "And you will no longer be a Capulet," he muttered into her dark hair.