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August 1985
You could call it devotion, and most people probably would, but Dally doesn’t see the point in searching for words when the search is over, what he’s been looking for is right there in front of him, and Dally’s making damn sure that he’s not going anywhere.
As if the force of Dally’s attention is intense enough to have become a physical presence, Johnny turns around to peer at him over his shoulder with big brown eyes comically wide and stupid pretty.
For the millionth time since meeting him, Dally bites his lip and thinks, I’m so fucked.
June 1985
Dally probably loves Johnny too much too fast, but who gives a fuck, really?
Well, a lot of people probably would, but Dally doesn’t give a fuck about them and Dally doesn’t give a fuck about what they’d say. Dally does give a fuck about Johnny, though. He gives a lot of fucks, and maybe that’s why he resolves, with absolute rigid resolution, to leave fucking out of the equation. He has Johnny curled up in bed next to him and leaning his head on his shoulder in mostly empty movie theaters and that’s enough, honestly. Wanting is enough for him.
July 1985
Dally doesn’t want Johnny the way he used to want girls, wanted them to warm his bed at night and leave in the morning, wanted them just so he could have someone waiting for him after a stint in jail, wanted them to have someone to bring to parties and hang on his arm. He wants Johnny for no reason at all, wants nothing from Johnny but Johnny, napping by the window and talking about things Dally doesn’t understand and spending half the money Dally leaves him for food on books instead.
Dally’s used to giving an inch and getting taken for a mile. Girls with sly smiles and skinny arms who get gone before Dally wakes in the morning along with his wallet and half his stash of cigarettes, girls with soft hair and shiny jewelry who let Dally pay for their drinks and let their boyfriends make him pay for it later, girls with dark eyes and soft laughter who’ve plucked at Dally’s heart and recoiled at the sound.It’s happened more than one too many times, happened and happened again until Dally’s stopped giving anything except an hour or two of his time for a week at most.
Dally isn’t used to Johnny, Johnny every day for a month and a half with his shy smile and greased-back hair and brown eyes warm like summer, but every time Dally sees him, the thought clouds his mind, aching, I could get used to this.
June 1985
Too often Dally finds Johnny beat-up and bloody in alleyways, behind diners, sometimes on the sidewalk in broad daylight. It makes his blood boil, his hands itch, his heart race for reasons he doesn’t much care to get into. It makes him so, so angry, because Johnny is so, so fucking good . He’s so fucking good and these assholes go around picking fights and pushing him around any time Dally isn’t there with him, because why? Because his skin is tanner year-round than theirs is from the summer sun? Because his tiny frame and hunched shoulders mark him as an easy target? Because the word’s got out that he’s taken up with Dally, and no one ‘round here would dare pick a fight with him?
Never mind that Johnny’s got a smile like sunshine itself, never mind that he might look small and scrappy but he never runs away from a fight even if he never starts them either, never mind that Dally’s the one who—well. Never mind all of that.
Fuck them. And if Dally scours the streets all night every day Johnny comes home trying to hide his face with his hair (like Dally wouldn’t notice, ha), and if they pass by someone in the street with their head hung low and black eyes pointedly not meeting theirs and swollen knuckles on a broken hand an exact match to the bruise on Johnny’s jaw, Johnny never says anything about it. Just looks at him with those big brown eyes soft and awed and oh god that’s enough.
July 1985
Dally doesn’t want to tell him that he loves him. Not because he can’t bring himself to admit it, he does, and not because he’s afraid of saying it aloud, he isn’t, but for the simple reason that if he tells him, Johnny will have to say something back. He’ll either have to say, Dally, I’m sorry, and Dally will walk out of the room and bury himself in whiskey and smoke for a week, leaving Johnny heavy with guilt for doing nothing wrong at all. Or he’ll look up at him confused and say, Dally, what are you talking about, and Dally will just let a jagged laugh cut its way out of his throat and level him with a smile sharp enough to draw blood and say, nothing, nothing at all. Or, worst of all, he won’t say anything, it would just be silence, silence when Johnny stares back at him, silence when Johnny leaves, silence when Johnny doesn’t come back, silence in every goddamn corner of the apartment that used to be filled with his quiet laughter, his books, his only jacket and beat-up shoes with the heel peeling off.
Dally doesn’t know what he’ll do with himself if that happens. So he keeps his mouth shut, his glances fleeting, and he doesn’t let himself think about a scenario where Johnny looks at him, eyes wide, and says, I want you too, because it’s hard enough keeping the words lodged in his chest without the lie of hope in his mind.
August 1985
I’m in love with you , Dally almost says with the whiskey tasting like smoke on his tongue and the cigarette smoke burning like whiskey in his lungs, I’m in love with you and your tan skin and stupid dumb beautiful puppy eyes, I’m in love with every single scar on your body even if I want to tear apart every bastard who fucking dared touch you, I’m in love with the way you cover your mouth with your hand when you laugh because you hate your crooked teeth and I’m in love with your crooked teeth, too, I’m in love with those little strands of hair that are always falling in your eyes, and did I mention that I’m in love with your eyes, Johnny? They’re so big and brown and I just want to always be looking at them. I want to always be looking at you.
And I’m only in love with all these things because I love you, Johnny, I love you, I fucking love you so much, I’m in love with you but only because I loved you first.
But at this point, all the things Dally’s almost said could fill more books than even Johnny’s ever read.
July 1985
Hot July days like this, the air tastes like dust and settles thick over Dally’s skin. Dally squints out at the sun, a single hand halfheartedly shielding his eyes, to avoid looking at Johnny. He can’t decide which burns more.
“Sure is hot out,” Dally drawls slowly, his mouth dry.
“Sure is, Dal,” Johnny agrees readily. He has this way of talking, Johnny, that strips every word bare. The way Johnny talks leaves the words hanging plain in the air, unburdened of hidden things like pretenses or pretensions. Johnny only ever says what he says, only ever says what he means.
And Dally has this stupid way of waxing poetic over Johnny after something as idiotic as three fucking words.
Every day, Dally is realizing more and more that having Johnny around is so delicious and so, so dangerous.
September 1985
Dally doesn’t want Johnny to leave. He’s not ready for it. Might not ever be ready.
He doesn’t think he’s fooling himself when he says that maybe Johnny doesn’t want to leave either, but he can’t actually bring himself to say it, is the thing. He can’t open his stupid mouth and say, hey, what do you need to go back for? You can stay here for as long as you want, you know. And I’ll take care of you and buy you books and banana splits and you can keep falling asleep in the sunlight with your mouth open and arm slung across your eyes and you can climb onto the fire escape with me and take the cigarette from my lips and put it to your own every night, and I won’t beg or say please because I don’t want to change your mind, I want you to do what you want, Johnny, I swear, I just wish that you wanted me. But I want you to know, at least, that you’ll always have me. And that…
You don’t have to leave.
But he can’t say those things because Johnny does have to leave, he knows that, he has to go back and finish high school and even though Johnny swears up and down that no one in his family has ever gone to college and he sure as hell ain’t about to be the first, Dally can see him in one of those big fancy lecture halls, listening to professors with rapt attention and scribbling down every word, and moving on to big change-the-world things. So, yeah. Johnny has to finish high school, which means that Johnny has to leave.
Oh God, Johnny has to leave.
July 1985
It’s the summer of ‘85 and Dally Winston is in love, he’s in love, he’s done biting it back and pushing it down and drowning it with cheap whiskey, because it’s a fight he’s never going to win, and he doesn’t want to win anyway, he wants Johnny, wants him in any way he can have him. There’s Johnny washing the dishes with soap bubbles on his nose, barefoot in the kitchen, and Dally thinks, oh. There’s Johnny with his jacket pockets spilling over hopelessly with saltwater taffy from the day they spent at the pier, and Dally thinks, oh. There’s Johnny on the pier, staring wide-eyed at the ocean like he’s never seen it before, and Dally thinks, oh.
And there’s Johnny clutching onto Dally’s wifebeater every night, knuckles bone white, and there’s Johnny with his eyes lighting up every time Dally walks into the room, and there’s Johnny smiling at him softly, cheeks pink and voice slurred, and there’s Johnny tugging at Dally’s sleeve every time they pass that used bookstore on Ocean Avenue, and there’s Johnny showing up at the bar, saying Dally let’s go home, it’s late, and there’s Johnny in the middle of the night, eyes sad and unsleeping until Dally notices the unsteady rhythm of his breath and pulls him closer to his chest, there’s Johnny everywhere Dally looks, there’s Johnny every night and every morning, there’s Johnny holding Dally’s heart in his worn hands, and Dally thinks, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, I’m so fucked.
November 1985
It’s the autumn of ‘85 and Dallas Winston is undone, unhinged, throwing back drinks like there’s a chance he’ll see Johnny’s face again at the bottom of every glass. He stays out too late at bars because there’s no Johnny to take home or come home to, no Johnny to somehow knowingly show up every time Dally has a drink too many. He stumbles into his apartment at sunrise and slides to the ground against his door because there’s no Johnny to drag to bed, so tiny his feet don’t even reach the end of the couch and an open book covering half his face. He walks past the ice cream parlor and his hands clench into a fist so tight his nails bite into his palms and draw blood, because he can’t stop remembering Johnny’s hopeful guilty glances of longing and his own sigh of pretended exasperation as he took Johnny’s hand and turned them around, tugged him into the shop, bought him a burger and a Coke and a banana split and would’ve bought him everything on the whole damn menu if he thought he could’ve eaten it all.
It’s like that poem in one of those books he was always reading; on one of those perfect summer days where Johnny was curled up on the couch and Dally was curling weights and watching him out of the corner of his eye, Johnny had flushed and ran off to the bathroom, flustered and pointedly avoiding eye contact. Dally, of course, had immediately picked up the book to find out what had gotten him so hot and bothered, and there it was:
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
December 1985
It’s the winter of ‘85 and Johnny isn’t coming back. He’s not. There’s not a single book left tucked between the couch cushions, no forgotten shirt left lying on the mattress, not so much as a sock or cigarette butt or a goddamn eyelash left to remember him by. All Dally’s left with are the memories, playing them on repeat in his mind like looking through a stack of Polaroids all out of order.
He’s stone cold sober when he does it. Walks into the tattoo parlor, his mind set, and walks out with a secret on his hip, something for only him to see. A tiny J, because why the hell not? Johnny was already under his skin.
When Dally traces it with his finger, the skin still red and raw, the ache is familiar. It feels like a promise never made, but kept all the same.