Work Text:
There's a chill creeping up the back of the mountains, threatening to descend into the valley. Every blade of the breeze cuts him when it blows, slicing his skin into thin, scorching ribbons. The sun burns overhead like August never left, heating his skin where the wind leaves it cold and shivering, laying gently above the looming hills in the distance.
The weather is slow and still today.
He's thinking of leaving, a thought that's preoccupied him for a couple days now, actually. He's spent almost eight months here, when he said he'd only stay for two (he got… a little caught up). It's not the thought of leaving that's new to him -- it's the idea of where he might go that comes creeping up his back in icicle fashion, threatening to descend into his brain like the slow, steady weather of the valley, yawning into his skull -- that's what's new to him. This idea blooms rather than sprouts, regurgitating old thoughts and arguments.
Of course there's always Vegas, Utah, or New York, (items he hasn't crossed off the wish list yet), but he hasn't been home in a while. Not in 23 years, to be exact.
His arms wrap tighter around his waist reflexively, pulling the flimsy, thin sleeves of his jacket closer to him, doing absolutely nothing to combat the chill. Maybe he should just go home.
He doesn't have any idea of what happened to his parents, and the last person he'd seen in Tulsa had almost torn his head off in anger, but he could. There's nothing stopping him, he's not a fugitive anymore.
The trees shake their leaves on him, every stretch of bark in California going through that burning change from green to gold to red, painting the autumnal landscape with varying shades of death, so that the September fields stretch on in a haze of yellow in front of him.
There are no clouds in sight, just the miles and miles of clear sky above him, quintessential California.
No, maybe he shouldn't.
Maybe he'll go to the east coast instead, he's already seen what the west has to offer, he'll go to New York, maybe, or New Jersey. He'll have to get a better jacket though. He'll see Lady Liberty, or go to Broadway.
That's the charm of it: America is so vast it's size seems nearly untraversable sometimes. There's so much he hasn't seen yet, so much that he wants to see, what's that saying -- the world is your oyster? He wants to crack it open. He's seen everything Oklahoma has to offer, he's seen the rich side, the poor side, the countryside and the city side -- there's nothing for him there, not really. He doesn't even think he wants to go back. He's got no reason to, not when the world is so open.
But the thought that he could, that nothing's stopping him, is nice.
(Or maybe he's just a coward.
But he still wakes up at night with his hands fisting the sheets, reaching for switchblades that aren't there. He still feels his ears ring with the echo of boys screaming, he feels foreign blood on his fingertips, he feels his own -- so sue him, he's earned the right to be a coward.)
So what if he does go home? He's got no idea if his mom and dad are dead yet, if they've mellowed out in their old age. Maybe they've both killed each other already, and he's missed the funeral by decades. And what about Ponyboy? The Curtis brothers? Are they up and well? Darry is responsible but you can't be with someone all the time, and Ponyboy's always had a penchant for getting himself into trouble. What about them? Or Two-Bit? Or Steve? Or… or Dally?
What about Dally? Always the first and last to throw a punch, who can't control his temper and does reckless things like drag race while drunk, who jumps socs with hoods and gangs, what about him?
Johnny shifts, curled into the wall and sheets bunched around his ankles like weights. He doesn't want to know. He's afraid he might not like the answer.
"Johnny," Dally breathes, and the world closes, just like that. The sound is a quick, punched out thing, harsh as a bullet between them, and ringing twice as loud in its softness.
(He does want to know.)
Johnny's breath catches in his chest, Dally's name trapped in his throat. Dally's voice has the same effect as violence, he'd forgotten the sound -- it's not the same now as it was 20 years ago. It's gruffer now, sort of scratchy too, the effect of all those cancer sticks Dally had loved so much as a teenager taking their toll on him. It's homely. It's weird.
There's no mistaking his voice, smokers rasp or none, because nobody says Johnny's name like Dally does, but it's disconcerting hearing it so rough, so aged. It makes Johnny's brain blank out. He sounds like a man now, not a boy anymore.
Simultaneously, he sounds almost… softer, the cutting edge Dal's words used to be barbed with back then gone, and leaking air in their absence, leaving him sounding stripped down and naked. He'd once read somewhere that a dead person's voice tends to be the first thing you forget about them, then go the little details that make them up, not their whole appearance, just the little flaws that make them… them. It was a slightly horrific thing to read, especially now that he can apply the knowledge to himself, and his own life.
It had never even occurred to him that he'd forgotten what Dally'd sounded like, not until he'd spoken, and now the thought unsettles him -- it's uncomfortable to acknowledge that he's capable of forgetting any part of Tulsa, it makes him wonder what else he's already forgotten. A voice is such a horrible thing to forget, he thinks, that must be even worse than forgetting a face.
At least Johnny could never forget Dally's face, that's something he knows he's incapable of. That face is plastered to the inside of his skull, his fondest token of his youth, the memory that'll probably always be his sharpest. There aren't many things Johnny considers as familiar, nor as HD as Dallas Winston's grin, and he doubts there ever will be.
There's a slow grin unfurling over Dally's face now, although it's not quite any of the grins Johnny could remember seeing on him before. This is something newer, a grin Dallas has cultivated in the years he's been gone.
It's just as feral as Dally himself, something wild brewing in the worn lines of his mouth that stretch around his smile. It's also tamer, the looks and smiles Dally had given him (while special, and saved just for him) had never bordered on affection, (though deep down, Johnny had always known that's what he'd been trying to communicate, always), but rather had been tinged by the kind of violence and anger pervasive throughout his entire being. They were the kind that seemed to tighten something in Johnny rather than soothe.
But this one, with Dally's eyes bright and stunningly blue, and his mouth all soft and curved rather than jagged and pointed, this one borders on affection.
"Dally." Johnny manages somehow, feeling like he's just been sucker punched. He can't quite believe his eyes.
Dally's grown up.
(It had never been a well kept secret, that nobody had ever regarded Dally as the kind of boy who could grow up. He was a live wire, a black shock of emotion that was bound to blow at some point, a hot point of violence and arrogance, -- and though the thought had always left Johnny's mouth tasting like it'd been flooded with lead, and his brain was trying desperately to pretend the thought had never even occurred to him -- everyone had privately (and publicly) known that he was the kind of boy that lived fast and died young.)
He's mellow now. If mellow is the right word.
His skin is tanner, no doubt from months of summer in the burning Oklahoma sun, and his hair is darker.
His hair had been so platinum when they were kids he'd looked like a lightbulb, but now the color's softened out into a golden kind of blonde, falling into brown and twisting into the color of dirt at his roots. His face is fuller too, gone are those sharp lines of his jaw and the sharp points of his nose and lips, the features that'd driven girls mad (socs and greasers alike) replaced by something more square and boxed.
His eyes though, are still as blue as the sea in a storm.
Johnny could stand there for ten hours, or maybe a hundred, it wouldn't matter. He'll never get enough of this man's face -- this man who he's now keenly aware, is a stranger. Every detail of his body is catalogued in Johnny's brain, but everything is different now, rougher. He's a stranger in the body of a boy whose back he'd once known better than his own.
He catches himself trying to find traces of that boy he'd once known in this new, scruffier Dallas Winston -- it's not particularly hard, not when Dally moves like they'd never lost a quarter of a century, like this whole time they've spent causing those wrinkles in each other's skin, not when he moves like the old Dallas.
He's not sure how long it lasts, the silence as they regard each other, drinking each other in with the thirst of men who've been at sea for weeks. And he's not sure who moves first, who initiates, but he finds himself locked under Dally's elbow like a child again, pulled in close against the side of his chest, one of Dally's big hands (these too, are square instead of sharp now) ruining his hair and digging into his scalp.
"Ow, ow, what're you, tryna take my head off?" Johnny beats at Dally's big forearms half-heartedly, too starved for this to really try and get away, laughter bubbling up from his lips.
Dally's laughing too, Johnny can feel the movement of his quiet exhales against his cheek, the shudders that rock his sides when he guffaws and chuckles softly, reverberating through his chest.
And well, isn't that something? Johnny's never known Dally to do anything softly.
That's the thought that has Johnny burrowing into him, wrapping his arms around Dally's middle like it's only been days since they've last seen each other, laughing into Dally's rib bones with the same kind of quiet novelty, the sort of laugh that hushes itself in disbelief -- and he stays there, breathing in huffs that might be laughter, until he can't tell the expand in Dally's chest from the tremble of his own.
The movement is almost uncomfortable, because they're no longer kids and Johnny has to bend into Dally to get into this position, but the curve feels almost natural, like something his spine was just meant to do. He supposes the body never really forgets how to melt into another, not when it was made to.
"Is that really you Johnnycake?'" Dally asks, his fingers locked in Johnny's hair, threading snaking trails down Johnny's cropped black hair, his fingers gentler than he's ever felt them. His chest doesn't move anymore, like he's holding his breath. The silence is almost awed.
"Yeah. It's really me, Dal." Comes the shuddering reply from Johnny, letting himself close his eyes for just that second, feeling rather than hearing the soft laugh that elicits from Dally.
The branches are swaying behind them, leaves knocking to the ground completely scarlet. It's almost November now.
"How long's it been? Years, I bet. I haven't seen you since--"
"Twenty years ago--" Johnny starts,
"--that night on the lot." Dally finishes.
"You were so pissed at me then."
His heart thumps dumbly. Johnny untangles himself from Dally, unable to completely sever contact with him so he let's his hand drop to Dally's shoulder. There are new things about Johnny too. He'd always been the runt of the litter, the small one -- but now he stands to Dally's height, just a hair's length shorter than him. Another thing that's new -- the Johnny twenty years ago could've never interrupted Dally. Could've never done any of this, probably, he could barely get five sentences out of his mouth on a good day -- but the Johnny twenty years ago would never have waited so long to come, either.
Suddenly he remembers that apprehension, feels the Western chill creeping up his back like frost up a mountain, suddenly he remembers a plethora of things. He remembers Dally's twisted expression, practically dripping blood it was so chock full of horror, red and blotchy.
There's a reason he hadn't been back.
Before Johnny can go and put his foot in their whole reunion, Dally's already speaking, "You're taller." Dally notes, no malice or even mockery laced into his tone, a surprising thing.
"I'm not 16 anymore." Johnny laughs, feeling himself relax again, as much as he can relax. He'd never grown out of his nervousness, not fully, and it's hard to forget it now when he's got a reason to be.
"Yeah." Dally's eyes trace over his face wistfully, expression caught in a time machine, "I guess you're not. Where've you been?"
"Just here and there," He catches his bottom lip between his teeth, hand flattening against Dally's shoulder. His eyes flicker to the empty house behind Dally accidentally, not necessarily meaning to flit but flitting anyway.
There's a bare hallway with shoes scattered at the entrance, leading into what's clearly a kitchen, covered in newspapers and pages, disorganized and haphazard over the table, looking like Dorothy's after the hurricane had blown through Kansas.
He has to smile for a second, he's so horribly fond. "I moved to Idaho for a while." (He says it even though Dally already knows,) "I really liked it over there. Everything was so… green. Spring never leaves in Idaho. Eventually I moved on west, thought I'd head to the coast -- try life in the city. Didn't work out. I started getting bored, so I figured, hell, why not go back south? Visit home? I went to your old place but you weren't there, thought maybe you'd moved on out -- asked around 'bout a Dallas Winston, hoping you hadn't. And well… here I am."
Dally smiles, happy, just happy. It's not a grin, or a smirk, just a smile.
"Gotta be careful asking 'round like that, lots of Dallas Winstonses in Tulsa these days."
Johnny grins.
"C'mon in," Dally motions him inside, and then Johnny can see inside the full expanse of Dally's house. It's nice, much nicer than the places Dally had crashed in twenty years ago, much nicer than the broken down bones of a house Johnny had called a home, much nicer than even the Curtis's. It's messy, but that's true to Dally he supposes.
The wallpaper on the walls is starting to peel, these nice bright patterns, just muted enough to fade into the background and not completely grab the attention of anyone wandering in, but still very absurdly un-Dally. It gives Johnny a bit of a kick to imagine Dally living like this. At the entrance, there are three pairs of shoes all kind of tossed together rather than placed, messy, but still holding on to some kind of semblance of tidiness. It's obvious that one of these pairs belongs to a woman. They're black, leathery, and cheap high heels, the type he'd once seen on Mrs. Curtis before… well, before. The other pair has to be Dal's, because there's no way the third pair could fit him -- they're small and brown, school childrens'. Leathery.
There's something -- he's not sure what, but it makes something in his stomach twist.
"You have a wife?" He asks conversationally, his tongue feeling heavy in his mouth -- which it shouldn't, he's just surprised, is all.
"Yeah." Dally answers, but doesn't elaborate, his voice very matter of factly saying that's--that.
Dally having a wife is just as ridiculous as it is obvious. Life goes on, very evidently, but he'd never thought of Dally as the type of guy who could hold down any girl -- the kind of… intensity he loved with was hard to match, and even harder to keep up with. The thought makes him feel guilty, his stomach flipping all over again like it had when he'd remembered how people used to think of Dally, and he reminds himself that that isn't a fair thought.
They make their way to the kitchen table, covered in beer bottles, some old and some half full, covered in papers and news articles, where Johnny pulls a chair out from under the table and makes himself homely. The plastic squeaks and croaks underneath his weight, flimsy and white. It's a garden chair, Johnny realizes.
"What's her name?" Johnny presses, even though he already knows he shouldn't. Dally hadn't offered the information up himself, he'd been clipped, these are all cogs that are starting to whirr in Johnny's brain, but he isn't a cowed little boy anymore, he tries not to be so afraid of others' tempers. He wants to know. He desperately wants to know the woman Dallas Winston married.
His finger traces patterns unconsciously into the tablecloth, following the faded blooming spring flowers, which match the ones blooming across the walls, he's mindful to maintain eye contact.
Dally's voice is gruff when he speaks now, pulling a chair across from Johnny, hands knocking into beer bottles, "Maria." One thing that hasn't changed; Dally's still as standoffish as ever, as cool as a crossed black cat. Johnny doesn't like how the air's gotten tense, how Dally's gotten all quiet, avoiding his gaze like Johnny's got something nasty on his face.
After all these years, it still makes something spring in his stomach, knowing he can read between Dally's lines.
He cracks a grin, laughs, and says "Who would've thought? Dallas Winston, a wife." to ease the tension. He has a million questions. He wants to know what she's like, what she looks like, who she is. The way Dally feels about her. (There's another part of him that doesn't want to know anything, that feels cold.) "What's she like?"
Dally grunts, which is a very vague and quite uncharming answer to a question posed about your wife. Then again, the last thing anyone would use to describe Dally with would be "charming".
"C'mon Dal," Johnny nudges him with the toe of his boot, pushing up against Dally's thigh, "Give me something here. I haven't seen you in decades. I want to know what you've been up to. I want to know about the woman who's so special she not only caught but kept the great Dallas Winston's eye." He jokes, kicking at Dally's foot, maybe a little too hard.
He drops his eyes from Dally's face now, wondering why the fuck his voice had gone so soft, so… bitter, when he'd tried to force it out light and happy, politely curious. It sounded confessional. Johnny's not-- Johnny's over that. He's had girlfriends, women he's been in love with, he doesn't…
Dally's eyes have finally flickered from the walls and the furniture behind him, and are now scrutinizing Johnny, looking at him with the kind of curiosity that killed the cat. "You don't have to tell me," He blurts, feeling strangely like he'd mistepped, but Dally interrupts him before he can finish that train of thought.
"She was a grease. I met her at Tim's. We were partying, drinking, and we fucked. That's it. Nothing special to the story. Just a one night stand. I thought that was the end of it but well, she got pregnant. I didn't wanna split, I couldn't do that, not after--" Dally's expression darkens for a second and his speech falters, before he picks up, sounding heavier than he'd last, "So I decided to stick around. Married her."
"You have a kid?" Johnny seems to finally be able to croak, in the resulting silence of Dally's explanation.
"Yeah." That makes Dally bark out a laugh, hands digging into his jean pockets (still blue jeans, all these years later) for a wallet, worn and black.
He flips it open and slips a thin photograph out of it, white at the edges and creased in the middle where it'd been folded in half multiple times, the crease so thick it cuts a line through the boy in the photograph's body, obscures a part of his neck. He can just barely make out the boy's face.
Johnny reaches out a hand, almost unconsciously, asking before he can help himself, "Can I--?"
"Yeah, yeah," Dally slipping the photograph across the table in one swift movement, just the flick of his wrist and a slight lean over the table, before he's plopping down in his seat, his hands and fingers dancing across his face uneasily, searching for a suitable dip or curve in his skin and bone to rest.
Johnny's thumb glides across the textured side of the photograph, looking so hard the image burns back into his retinas.
The boy in the photo is young, six, maybe seven.
His face is serious but not solemn, just… set. It's an unsettling expression on a child so young, far too reminiscent of what he'd looked like at that age, what Dally'd probably looked like. Well, he is Dally's son, although they bear shockingly little resemblance. His hair isn't a bright blond like Dally's, instead it's a deep chestnut brown, and his eyes too, he doesn't have Dally's baby blues, his are deep brown, probably like his mother's. He looks nothing like Dally. The photo still makes Johnny's breath catch, something like wonder stirring in his chest.
Dally has a kid.
"How old is he?" Johnny finally asks, sliding the photograph back to Dally across the table.
"20." Dally answers.
Wow. Johnny feels as breathless as he'd been the moment he'd knocked on Dally's door, the moment he'd seen Dally. He's suddenly struck with how old they are.
Dally has a son. His son is twenty years old. These are facts that shouldn't exist. Johnny thinks it's a small miracle they're both here, living and breathing, thinks it's more than a small miracle, so asking for a wife and kids? The stars would've had to align on the day they were born. There were no shortage of reasons why they shouldn't be here. It's such a mundane thing, having a wife and kids, but it feels… like so much. It feels overwhelming, almost.
In the years they've been apart, life's gone on.
He hears something, rough, raw, and deep, and it takes him a second to register what the sound is.
Oh. That's him laughing.
"We're so old." He chokes around a laugh, sending Dally into a fit of laughter as well, not because it's funny, because nothing is funny. Not really.
Dally's smile is full of teeth, and when he laughs he laughs with his chest, the sound driven straight from his belly and accentuating all the lines in his face. His eyes crinkle at their corners, his ears move up an inch on his head. It's a beautiful look.
"Yeah, we really are, huh? I didn't think we'd live this long." That's the crux of it, really, isn't it? The reason Johnny came, the reason he couldn't. He didn't think they'd make it this far.
Johnny traces Dally's face with his eyes for a moment, just trying to commit his expression to memory.
This Dallas is old, the thought almost makes him giddy -- they're old people now, and maybe that's something most people dread, but to Johnny it's quite wonderful.
Dally's smile hasn't quite faded, but it's softened, and his eyes have dropped down to the table.
"That um… that day in the hospital, you really scared me, y'know? I didn't think you were gonna make it." Dallas confesses. It's nothing Johnny doesn't already know. Nobody had expected him to make it. He remembered the day everyone had come to say their goodbyes, his own voice saying dreadful, terrible things. The feeling of death closing in. The memory didn't seem to be his. "I thought… I thought that was it. Seeing you here, all grown up, it's surreal. That night Johnny, if you had gone -- I don't know what I would've done." It's then that Dally looks up from the table, and the look on his face is paralyzing.
This is not an expression Johnny wants to memorize. It's not an expression he ever wants to see again. It makes the weight of a million stones sink in his stomach.
"I couldn't have stayed. I had to be… I wouldn't be here, I couldn't, do you understand me?"
Not without you.
His eyes are pleading. He's begging, Johnny realizes slowly, dawningly. The lines of his face are drawn and scrunched, something haunted in his expression. Johnny can't hold his gaze.
His eyes sweep to the left, to anywhere but Dally.
(He'd known, or, maybe he hadn't -- but he'd known something Dally hadn't back then, enough to quantify for the lack of knowing this. He'd had a leg up, had known about the good in the world, had realized he wanted to be around for it -- for those once in a blue moon events where everything was okay -- because the alternative was nothing, nowhere, and that was even worse than permanent pain. The sun, even half the time, was better than total darkness. Dally hadn't known.)
The light from the open blinds on Dally's window washes the room in gold, the sun setting just beyond the horizon. It burns on the trees, the yard, and the pedestrians on the street, making everything glow, perfectly autumnal. Dally's eyes gleam in the light, his face catching beams of shuttered sunshine that stretch like neon claw marks across his cheek, across the table -- in the beams of light, Johnny can see dust floating in the air. Johnny's hands are yellow.
Everything for one shining, beautiful moment is gold.
Johnny smiles softly, reaching for Dally's hand across the table, covering Dally's resting palm with his own. He meets Dally's gaze.
For a second he thinks Dally will pull away. His entire body goes tight, and his eyes look downright pained, as if Johnny's struck him. He's taut as a bowstring, this is the Dally Johnny remembers; a boy who was always on the verge of explosion, trading love for violence, because he wasn't sure love couldn't be violent. Johnny thinks he'll do something horrible.
All at once the tension seeps out of him, and he melts into Johnny's fingers, pressing his forehead to where Johnny and him connect, like a preacher at prayer, something like relief shaking through his body. Like this, he's naked as the day he was born.
"You scared the hell out of me, Johnnycake," Dally whispers, his whole body jerking with the motion, his words spoken on a harsh exhale. His fingers curl in Johnny's palm and just when Johnny's flinching, an instinct he still can't kick even all of these decades later, something wet touches his skin.
It's with a start that he realizes Dally's crying. Not quiet tears either, or a few tears, but real cries. The movements shake his shoulders, like his bones are trying to jump out of his skin with every tear, he jerks with the force of it. Every breath out of his mouth is ragged and torn from him, every sob painful and harsh against Johnny's ears.
He's not quite sure what to do.
He remembers -- how could he ever forget? -- the last time he'd made Dally cry. The first time, and the only time he'd ever seen him cry. Dallas didn't cry, not back then, not in pain, not in joy, not in heartache, but that day Johnny'd been in the hospital, and his eyes had slipped shut, Dally'd wept over him. He could still feel it, the warm chill of Dally's tears against his fingers. He could still feel every harsh breath dusting over his knuckles, could never forget the way he'd begged. That was the first and last time he'd ever heard him say please.
"Dally--" He begins, moving his body in an aborted motion. He stops when he realizes he doesn't know what he even wants to say.
He doesn't know words for this gaping hole that's been left between the two of them, or how to make it better, he doesn't think enough words exist in the English language to describe this. The time they'd lost apart: the scars across Johnny's neck where the fire had choked him, the beer bottles on Dally's kitchen table, the little nick on the small of his back Dally'd gotten in prison that only Johnny knows about, the way Johnny flinches when people get too close to him, the way Dally punches when he can't deal otherwise, Dally's son. Dally's wife. Is this expressible? Could anyone else, save for Ponyboy, understand what these things mean apart, and then begin to sew them together, begin to see what they mean and read them like a book instead of just a page?
Dally just keeps on crying, an endless torrent of tears like he doesn't know how to stop, isn't aware that he can.
"Hey," Johnny's moving up from his chair, with such desperation he nearly knocks the plastic back, his skin itching because Dally's crying, his eyes just as haunted as his, baby browns to match Dally's baby blues. He's not entirely thinking, if he's being honest.
This instinct is familiar, it's old.
It's something he hasn't felt since he was young, a kind of blind panic to just be with Dally, an inability to be without him rearing its ugly head when Johnny's mom would scream too loud, or his father would throw something too heavy, so heady in his veins it feels like it's taken control of everything. He thought he'd kicked this -- but that's another thing, not anything new, but something he should've known already. There are just some things you just don't kick, and Dallas Winston was one of them. There will always be room in his heart for Dally, whose presence is akin to slipping into a childhood bed, or a hug from your mother (there are just some things he'll never grow out of wanting), or the first breath of spring. Who else understands him so completely?
His hands flit over his face, awed that Dally doesn't push him away, wiping back his tears and shushing him, his heartbeat moving at jack-rabbit pace, trying to think of anything to say, anything to do.
Their lips are pressed together before Johnny can stop himself.
(He's not thinking.)
Dally doesn't stop him. No, he kisses him back.
(God's gotta owe him a favor or something, because Johnny knows damn well he didn't do enough with his life to deserve this.)
Johnny hasn't kissed this harsh, desperate, since he was a teenager, but now he dives into the kiss like everything he can take out of Dally will never be enough, which must be true. Dally's hands are on his face, clawing, Johnny's hands are fisting in Dally's shirt, now they're completely connected, and it's everything, everything at once and nothing. It's not enough. How could it ever be? Certainly not with 20 years between them, not with the knowledge that even if they could get those years back, it would have never even mattered.
Some things couldn't be.
They bleed slow into each other's mouths, bumping teeth and devouring more than kissing, with the kind of fervency of absence. At some point it's less of a kiss and more of a melting point, a conduit they try to force pieces of the other through, so they can inhale and store away for rainy days, to try and keep the other nowhere but here, forever. Johnny doesn't know how he's lived without this for 40 years. It feels like the world is ending.
Dally whimpers into his mouth, tears staining the kiss, salty and thick on Johnny's tongue.
It's then that Johnny breaks, tearing them apart with great effort. He can't be without Dally's touch right now, so he leans his forehead against Dal's, just feeling their breathing mingle in the space between them, feeling Dally's blond hair tickle at his scalp, letting his eyes slip shut. His mouth tastes like blood and tears.
"Please,"
"I know, it's okay, I know,"
"Johnny--"
Quick, feather light kisses in subsequent fashion, each one chasing the last.
Johnny heaves in the air between them, Dally sobs.
"It's okay. I know. I know."
"No, no you can't, everything is wrong. Johnny I'm-- the years, learning to be without you was like learning to be without air-- I told you to get tough, nothing can hurt you when you're tough," Dally shook all over, "I just wanted-- I couldn't--"
"I know." He lifts a hand to Dally's cheek, let's it rest. "I know, Dal."
Dally bats his hand away, shaking his head, his whole face twisted in torture.
In some ways, it is torture. To speak it is unthinkable, Johnny can't get the words past his lips himself, even at 42, can't admit it to himself. To say it aloud--? No, it's something that can't be spoken. These kisses, quick and raw, will never be enough, but they're all Johnny can allow, all he has to give. This feeling, like burning, like being back in that church, caught between utter pain and pride and joy, it isn't something he has to explain to Dally. It isn't something Dally has to explain to him.
Maybe if they'd been born in another lifetime, maybe things could've been different.
"You need me to understand. I'm telling you I understand, Dally. I know. I thought," His breath hitches, his next words sticking to his mouth. "I thought I was dead." He's never talked about it with anyone, nobody, "I thought I was dead, and it scared me shitless. It scared me more than anything. I was stupid. You were so damn gallant Dal, all I wanted was to be like you, just for a second. Fuck," He laughs wetly, "I was goddamn gallant. Just for a moment I was--" He breathes, licks his lips, feels his vision start to blur, "I'll never regret what I did in that church. If I could do anything good, be anyone, I had to know. I couldn't live otherwise." His eyes shine, and Dally presses their mouths together once more, chasing down Johnny's words, his eyes all pained and blue when he comes up for air.
"You're goddamned stupid." He says, and Johnny laughs again, thinking maybe it's a sob, "You're the stupidest grease I ever met,"
"I know it." Johnny agrees, wiping the tears from Dally's eyes with near reverence, shocked still, that Dally allows him to touch him like this. He's shocked that this is happening, that the press of Johnny's lips against Dallas's is something the universe could allow to happen, even though another part of him feels like this was inevitable -- like this had to happen, it was only the natural culmination of everything, the point they'd always been hurtling towards. It feels so right.
"It was always you." Dally tells him, his voice hard and rough, serious as a bullet. "You were the only thing I…" He steels himself, shuts his eyes and his face goes all quiet. "You were the only thing I loved. You were good, Johnny."
Johnny, for the thousandth time in Dally's presence, is breathless. "I loved you. You were all I ever wanted to be."
It's true. And it hurts. It hurts to say, maybe even more than it hurts to feel, because by now the pain is only an old bruise, merely something to prod at and poke just to feel it smart -- but speaking it aloud almost seems to open the wound again, feelings stuck where nobody else could see or even guess them finding their way to the surface for the very first time. It's as calming as it is upsetting.
He's aware that this moment can't last.
Johnny's gonna leave -- there are still 29 states to discover, and Dally has a son, and a wife. Even if he stays, there's nothing to be done now. 20 years apart, 40 years lived, only 6 years of their lives shared, and still it's the heaviest piece of Johnny's heart. They can't be together -- not now, not ever, not anymore. They're not kids anymore.
It hurts like being burned, like some part of the fire survived in Johnny's lungs and Dally's poured gasoline on the whole damn thing, apathetic as to whether or not Johnny burns down with it.
"I can't stay, Dal."
"I know."
"You don't need me anymore, and I don't need you."
"I… I know." He hesitates, but they both know it's true. Life's moved on.
Johnny takes a deep breath, Dally's fingers clutching the hair at the nape of his neck so hard it hurts.
"I wanted to tell you, back then, about the world. I didn't think you knew. I wanted to tell you how it could be beautiful."
"I know." Dally smiles slightly, relaxes a bit. "I needed to know it then, I didn't. But I… there are beautiful things all around me now, Johnnycake."
The sun shining in from the open window gives them both yellow skin, and Johnny kisses him just one more time, for the sake of it.
It's a once in a blue moon moment.
It's late February. The snow settles over the evergreens, winter in full spring all around him. His breath puffs like whispery smoke in the air, the shades of ice in the sky melting slowly into pinkish hues, a Wisconsin sunset.
His fingers trace the edge of a photo, worn and rough.
Johnny smiles. The sunset he sees from the park bench is the same one Dally sees from his back porch.