On the Street Where You Live

The seventh chapter! Huzzah! We have Dally and Cherry getting more screen (er, page) time! Also I have no idea what is going to happen to this couple. Is anything going to happen? I feel like if they get together they would destroy each other… And this is just a little note that has nothing to do with this fan fic, but I just read "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" by Sydney Padua. It is, quite simply, one of the greatest graphic novels that I have ever read. It's funny, the drawings are top notch, it's steampunk, alternate history, awesome under-appreciated historical duos, and it's perfect for both science/tech nerds and history nerds alike! Find a copy, borrow it, buy it, whatever, just read it! You will not regret it! You will beg for a second volume and an animated show! You will beg for a spin-off movie! You will beg for merch (which already exists!)! You will beg for…OK, I'll stop now. Just read it and tell the author (and me) how awesome you think it is!

OK, that's enough ranting for now, on to the story!

Also when I'm done with the 1920's AU I plan to write a Western AU, what do you think?

Dally smoked hard on his cigarette as he followed Cherry around. Darry was too paranoid, there was no way Cherry was going to give them up to the fuzz. Dally knew her type. They'd never go to the police, not even if they'd just witnessed a murder, to scared the local cops would have dirt on them.

He should just leave.

But Dally was still there, because even though no man alive could tell Dallas Winston what to do, that same Dallas Winston also never forgot a debt. And he owed Darry a debt. A big one.

One that involved Johnny, and one that Dally could never hope to repay. It was only thanks to Darry that Johnny was working in The Old Church at all, a place where, just maybe, Johnny felt a little safe.

So Dally ground his teeth and clenched his hands and kept following the mincing little cake-eater.

Cherry's Thoughts…

Cherry could hear footsteps, she could. But she always heard footsteps, ever since that one time when Bob had put a gumshoe on her. She'd never cheated on Bob, never even thought of it.

Except, perhaps, until she had seen Dallas Winston.

Cherry shook her head. No. Not him. Of all the people in the world for her to see and…and…

Dallas Winston. Goon. Button Man. Bruno. With a reputation so horrible that even the police were scared of him. Someone who had so many enemies that you wondered why he hadn't been killed in a mid day attack of Chicago Lightning. And he couldn't even vote yet.

Why was Cherry always drawn to the ones like that? Did the aura of trouble and danger excite her? She'd never know.

But she did remember one thing, some isolated memory from a long, long time ago.

She couldn't have been more than four. There was a house burning across the street where she lived, and she'd watched it. Somehow she managed to slip away from her nanny and run across the road. She avoided all the cars and horses until she stood in front of it.

She remembered the heat pouring off the house. The flames leaping out of the door. She had started to walk towards it, but was snatched up by a fireman in the nick of time and returned to the arms of her hysterical nanny.

Sometimes Cherry wondered if it wouldn't have been better if she had walked into that house. At least she would have felt something. Now? She never felt anything. Happiness, grief, anger, guilt…it was all as foreign to her as an erhu.

Sometimes she would look at the Greasers, with their loud, exuberant emotions, and wonder how they did it. Heck, even Marcia could feel, why not her? What was holding her back? Cherry looked behind her again. She might have caught a glimpse of someone ducking into an alleyway, or it might have just been her paranoid mind again.

She reached her door and fumbled with the keys. She wiped her makeup off with a sleeve, for once not caring about what it would do to the cloth, but only wanting to get her wretched mask off.

This time she definitely heard something, the sound of footsteps. She turned around. "If you're one of Bob's gumshoes, just beat it. As you can see I'm just trying to get into my place and…".

The rest of the words died on her lips. Dally stood under a street lamp, dragging on a cigarette.

He just looked at her, that's all he did. A look of infinite contempt. And that was it for Cherry. She fell in love, maybe for the first time in her life.

A sudden gust of wind blew his fedora off, but he didn't move. Cherry had never noticed his hair before. It was white. Some people might have called it a very light blond, but to Cherry it was white. The light from the streetlight caught his hair and made it glow.

Cherry blinked a few times as she looked at him. He reminded her of something…an angel. Strange as it was he looked just like a picture of an angel that used to hang in the church that Cherry used to go to with her family. How long had it been since she'd darkened a church's steps? She didn't know. Not like she'd ever go back into one now, but looking at Dally, the sharp angles of his face, the white shock of his hair and his glittering ice blue eyes, it was almost like she was small, and could still believe in miracles.

Dally took the cigarette out of his mouth. "You sick or somethin'? You're lookin' at me like I was something you found stuck on your shoe."

Dally smiled, and it wasn't a nice smile. " 'Course, that's all I am to you."

Cherry turned back toward the door. "Curtis sent you, I guess, to watch me."

Dally nodded. "Seems you know your onions."

"I've been in this business a long time, hood, and I've been followed more than once." Just because she was probably in love with him was no reason for Cherry to suddenly become all civil to Dally.

Dally put the cigarette back in his mouth. "Bob, eh? Don't blame him, you look like the type."

Cherry turned sharply to face him. "The type to what?"

Dally breathed out a puff of smoke. "I didn't say nothin'."

Cherry unlocked her door, all the while feeling Dallas watch her.

She turned back to him. He was looking at the end of his cigarette.

"I've been wondering. Why? Why did you do this at all? All I heard earlier today was some drivel about it being the right thing do, or something like that."

Cherry clenched her hands. He was doing it on purpose. He was egging her on, trying to get a rise out of her. Unfortunately it was working.

"I don't know!" She yelled.

It echoed loudly through the alley way. Dally ignored the echoes and simply stared at Cherry, nothing but the mildest interest on his face.

She lowered her perfect flapper head. "Maybe-Maybe it's because that idealistic kid who watches sunsets and his scared friend made me feel something, made me think that maybe living wasn't just something to be endured, that maybe living would be worthwhile, because somewhere out there there were people like Ponyboy and Johnny, people who deserved better but didn't let all this muck that we live in touch them some how, people who could still be…innocent."

Cherry stopped, breathing hard, staring determinedly at her shoes, and failing to notice Dally. Dally, whose face was a myriad of emotions, because, maybe, he thought the same as her.

But of course by the time she looked up again that look was gone, and Dally's contempt was plain again on his face.

"You really let it out, don't you?"

Cherry gave a short cry of frustration. Why must he stand there, being so infuriating, mocking her and everything she thought and felt? Why must he look like that, like fire and ice and danger and all the tumultuous feelings she thought she couldn't feel anymore until she had met the Greasers?

She ran down from the stairs, and kissed him, once, hard, eyes closed, pulling away almost immediately afterward.

Dally stared at her. "Dames." He said.

The way he said it made her blush. It implied that she was not the first woman to do something like this.

Cherry walked back up the stairs and slammed the door, hearing the harsh bark of his laugh outside.

Dally waited outside for a while longer, to make sure she wasn't coming out. When it became clear that she was not going to leave again, he walked off, not even bothering to wipe off the lipstick.

Across the street someone else had observed the scene. He made his way to a phone booth and called a certain number.

"You were right, boss, she is cheating. Who? Some guy with that small time gang, the Greasers. It was Dallas Winston. How do I now? Once you've seen Dallas, you don't forget him, boss. Yeah, I'll gather the boys. We'll make 'im see what's what. What about the other hoods she's been hanging out with lately? They're only little ones, we can bop 'em easily. OK, you got it."

He hung up and made some more phone calls.

GAH! A CLIFF HANGER! Here are the slang definitions! Fuzz: Police Cops: Also Police

Cake-Eater: Spoiled Rich Person

Gumshoe: Detective

Goon: Thug

Button Man: Hit Man

Bruno: Enforcer, tough guy

Chicago Lightning: Hail of machine gun bullets

Know your onions: Know what you are talking about

Hood: Gangster

Dame: Woman

And an erhu is a Chinese stringed instrument. In case you cared.

And that's it for today! Please review and comment!