Chapter Text
He hated more things than he enjoyed. When you like things, you become dependent on them. Dependent, was not on the list of words synonymous with Dallas Winston.
Even the things people assumed he couldn't live without ,alcohol, girls, and cigarettes, he could live peacefully with them gone. He had learned to avoid addiction the hard way. Some things fell into an uncertain category with him, like horses and the constant brawls he got in. He occasionally found himself awake at night, staring at a rusty ceiling fan, wondering if he could live a life without violence, without showing dominance with his fists.
It was in his DNA, the only tangible thing his deadbeat dad had left him. And on some days, out of the blue, an uncomfortable feeling would settle in his stomach, taking up residence there. A small piece of him, the last innocent piece, the vulnerable part he kept tucked away, regretted that this was the man he had become. A stranger who couldn't last a day without laying a finger on someone. The feeling stayed for a moment before retreating to whatever vague area it had come from.
The list of things he approved of was limited, almost nonexistent. No. It was nonexistent. There was nothing there. Not horses, not his parents, not his life, especially not himself. No, he, himself, was right there on the top of the list of his most despised. He wasn't a person to be approved of.
When he was ten, sitting in a cell, his tiny hands wrapped around cold metal bars, a cold that would soon fill his body and become a part of him, he realized that any semblance of the person he once knew was long gone. Those small acts of kindness he would occasionally show, those infinitesimal, human moments where he allowed himself to feel, to cry, were no more. His heart was stone, and his eyes were dry.
And the only thing he could think of at that time was it was that damn kid's fault. Three years older than him but the first to know what would be inflicted upon a poor soul if they messed with Dallas Winston. That was when the rumors began to rip through the town, spreading like a wildfire throughout Tulsa. And when the Soc girls and boys began to whisper of the ten year old kid sentenced to years in the cooler for stabbing someone one too many times, that was the moment when young Dally became a stranger even to himself. And if anyone knew him, or cared enough to look, they would see a difference, but no one did.
But despite how much he had drastically changed, it didn't stop there. In prison he met guys, and in prison guys met him. Not guys, no, men. Men met him. Men called him fresh meat and took him into dark corners when the officers weren't looking. Men took the last bit of innocence that he thought he had already lost. And when those men had their fun with him they stole his last bits of self respect, they invaded the small facet of his soul that no one was ever supposed to discover. But even then, he had never cried. There was a perpetual lump in his throat, a heart-wrenching scream behind it, never to be released. That lump was his pride, the mask to his self-loathing. Over the years it would only continue to grow and grow until the sight of his own reflection in the mirror disgusted him.
On cold nights, when the cooler was quiet and the men were done, he would find himself curling on his hard bed, staring at the smallest bit of moonlight that showed through his thin, prison windows. The first nights, he remembered, he would bleed. He thought after the first time he would stop bleeding, when he hung around with the older boys in Tulsa and they talked about broads and sex they said after the first time it doesn't hurt, after the first time you don't bleed. But he bled the second time. And the third. And the fourth. He figured it was because he was so small. And he could never get use to the sting. He didn't cry, but it still hurt, as he curled up on his bed, his head tucked between his knees and the familiar sting seemed to pound into him again and again while he wished it would just go away but it never did because the next day another man came to give it back to him.
The list got very long in the cooler. First it was him, after that jail, after that officers who can't seem to notice the way that a psychotic man looks at a young boy every day and decide not to ask that boy if he's okay, after that the psychotic men who would take him during the afternoon in shadows and showers and at night, after that the moonlight that snuck into his cold room just to remind him that there was a world out there that he didn't deserve to explore. After that suicide. Dallas Winston hated suicide. He hated how the thought crept up on you when you least expected it, sounding so persuasive and serene and seductive, and right when you're about to listen to it and fulfill its promise, it suddenly leaves you and you're empty with nothing but a freezing knife in your hand and a heaving chest and if you didn't have fast reflexes you would have been dead already, right the when the persuasive thought leaves you and you die with regret.
When he left the cooler the list got longer still. And he seemed to make it his job to hurt anything and everything on there, with words, or fists, or switchblades. And it landed him in the place he hated the most, jail with nothing but his awful self and the continuous thoughts of suicide he conditioned himself not to listen to.
Eventually the psychotic men knew not to mess with him when he was fourteen. They no longer touched him and Dallas relished in the thought of inflicting the same pain they gave him, but he never could. He froze at the thought, the memory of the position he was in. Under a sweaty man, young and helpless, his wrists hurting because big hands squeezed them, preventing them from moving, and then the sting, oh, the sting. He wanted to give those men that same sting but never could. So he gave the sting to girls.
The rumor spread that Dallas Winston was a complete love-machine. That the tough exterior was just a way of hiding how comforting and desperate he was in bed. He wouldn't describe it as comforting in the slightest, and he doubted the girls would either. He imagined those poor girls as the men who used to hurt him, he imagined himself as a young ten year old looking for revenge. When they screamed he loved feeling like he had control over them, he loved hearing their pain, because when they felt pain they felt the sting. The glorious sting that haunted his first years in the cooler, the sting that made him the loving mess he was today.
Sometimes he stared at that rusty ceiling fan wondering if he was dependent on his sadistic love-making, if that was the one thing on the list of his approved. But it fell into the uncertain category. There was the moment right after the love-making, where he lay next to the girl and saw her shuddering and sweaty. And she was no longer an old man, but a blonde boy scared out of his mind. And he no longer was a young child seeking revenge, but a disgusting pervert hurting an innocent mind. As soon as that girl went to sleep he bolted out of the door and drank so much that his head buzzed in a million different parts of his brain. He was grateful to forget almost every moment the next day, even though it came with the price of a hangover.
His list extended and extended, while the other stayed empty. Void. Almost desperate for something to love. That invisible list became more physical, more needy. And he felt that hollow list in his hollow stomach.
When he met Sylvia, he was drunk and depressed, and he had the intention of filling that goddamned list. He didn't leave her as she slept, though the feeling crept up on him several times. He tried to watch how peaceful she looked in her dream-state, her flowing hair, her parted red lips as she sighed. He begged whatever god there was to give him something to love. But the next morning he just woke up with a hangover and a clingy slut who eventually would end up on the ever expanding list of his most hated.
Empty.
He was empty.
And worthless.
And still at the top of one list, and simply giving up on the other.
But then, that list wrote itself, slowly.
No quickly, it was quick.
Shall I stay?
Like a flash of lightning.
Like love at first sight.
The time was long, but it blurred as letters crept up on a once empty paper.
J O H N N Y
C A D E
Would it be a sin?
And he stared at that ceiling fan, a long forgotten smile on his foreign lips. Wondering if he was dependent on the kid.
Wondering what the consequences of dependence were.
If I can't help falling in love with you?
Elvis Presley- Can’t Help Falling In Love With You(1961)