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It’s a Saturday night and they've been all over town, had a couple of burgers and caught the last twenty minutes of the new Dick Van Dyke flick with Two-Bit and Pony. Johnny’s well-fed, but he kisses like he’s starving, Pepsi-sweet and eager in the backseat of Dally's newly acquired Buick.
The fields around them shine red and gold as the sun begins its descent into the horizon, and there are no prying eyes here, on the outskirts of town where Dallas is free to pull Johnny into his lap and let his hands roam. He's not new to this, getting hot and heavy in the backseat of a car, used to be a regular thing, but he ain't chasing skirts no more, not when he's got a lapful of Johnnycake.
Johnny curls his fingers into Dallas’ coarse hair, rubs against his thigh, hard and wanting.
“Dally .”
Johnny’s new to everything, gets excited real easy, but Dallas knows he ain’t been touched much, not kindly anyway, and he tries to be patient. He rests his hand against Johnny’s chest, feels the way his heart races under his palm like a stopwatch, and he pulls back the moment he hears Johnny’s breath hitch in his throat.
He can read the signs, knows when Johnny’s pushed himself too hard.
“Hey, hey, how about we take a little break.”
“Aw, do we gotta?” Johnny twists his kiss-red mouth into an impressive pout, but his fingers are clutched around the silver of St. Christopher as he strains to catch his breath. The pendant is too big for him, hangs halfway down to his rib cage, but it looks better on Johnny than it ever did between Sylvia's soft tits.
Dallas presses his fingers to Johnny’s neck and strokes them along the patch of scar tissue above his collar. “Come on, deep breaths, Johnnycake.”
Johnny breathes in and out, in and out, the wheeze in his chest fading away. It’s been over a year since the fire and Johnny’s road to recovery ain’t been smooth. Dallas gets frustrated a lot, not at Johnny, but at his own uselessness. He understands bruises and nasty cuts from an unexpected switchblade, knows how to patch them up, but the worst of Johnny’s injuries are out of reach, and there ain’t nothing that can fix his broken lungs.
Johnny strokes his fingers over the shell of Dallys’ ear and pulls him out of his brooding thoughts with a quiet chuckle.
“What?” Dallas grins.
Johnny's smile turns wry. “Nothin’.”
“You laughing at my ears?”
“Naw,” Johnny says innocently, giving Dallas’ earlobe a playful flick. “I like your ears.”
“Oh yeah? You don’t think I look like Dumbo or somethin'?” Dallas snorts. He used to hear that a lot as a kid back in New York, and his old man would pull and smack his ears until they were as red as the leaky fire hydrant in front of their building.
“I like Dumbo too,” Johnny says, almost ethereal with the sunset behind his back.
Dallas tightens his grip on him, worries he’ll disappear if he makes the mistake of looking away. And some days he thinks they're both living on borrowed time, memories of Johnny's charred skin and smoke-blackened face swimming before his eyes until he exorcises them on the back of the meanest horse at the rodeo, and if that don’t work, a bottle of Buck's moonshine is guaranteed to knock you into oblivion.
He doesn’t do it as often as he used to, tries to keep his nose clean for Johnny, because he’d never forgive himself if something happened to him while his sorry ass was stuck in the cooler.
Johnny leans in and presses his mouth to Dally’s ear. “Dumbo was always my favorite.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dallas huffs, “smooth-talkin’ little wiseass.”
He presses his lips against Johnny’s grinning mouth, savoring the familiar shape of him against his palms as he slips his hands under his shirt. Johnny flinches at the touch, he always does, but he lets Dallas map the raised patches of gnarled skin on his back.
Steve and Two-Bit have asked to see Johnny's scars a few times, eyes wide with morbid curiosity, but only Dally’s seen the full damage, in midnight shadows with Johnny’s hunched shoulders and bent knees hiding the worst of it, and later, in a shroud of steam as he cradled Johnny in his arms and stroked his soapy fingers over pink strips of skin.
There are days when Johnny can’t go farther than the kitchen, and he’s forced back into his wheelchair whenever the weather gets dry and dusty, but at least he ain’t covered in bruises no more, not since Dallas got his act together and found himself a little place above the pool hall across from The Dingo. It’s a real dump. Cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and Dallas is pretty sure there are rats inside the walls, but Johnny hasn’t spent a single night at his piece of shit parents’ house since he got out of the hospital, and that’s good enough for Dally.
Johnny gasps into Dallas’ mouth, skinny legs spread wide as he grinds down. “Dal…”
“You want it, huh?” Dallas grins. He unzips Johnny’s fly and pushes his hand into his jeans, watches him bite his pink bottom lip, overwhelmed. “Yeah, feels good, don’t it?”
Broads used to blush whenever Dallas talked dirty to them, called him nasty and coarse, but Johnny nods eagerly, clinging to Dallas’ shoulders as he thrusts his pretty little cock into his grip.
They haven't gone all the way yet, and Dallas has to find other outlets to let out some steam. His own hand mostly. And sometimes, when Johnny falls asleep early, he drives across town to the drag races, and Johnny pretends not to notice the stink of exhaust and gasoline in his hair when he crawls into bed at the crack of dawn.
“Dally, I-I think I’m close.”
“I know you are,” Dallas murmurs, feeling the damp heat between Johnny’s thighs, how he strains against his palm.
It’s been years since his last confession, but Dallas thinks there’s gotta be someone upstairs as he drinks in the pleasure on Johnny’s face, gets him to pulse out a sticky little mess on his knuckles.
He’s half-hard against his zipper and his nostrils flare at the wet smell of Johnny’s arousal, but he wipes his hand on a wrinkled burger wrapper and lifts Johnny gently off his lap.
“You okay there, Johnnycake?” he asks, looping his finger around the chain on St. Christopher where it rests on Johnny’s heaving chest.
Johnny blinks at him, his eyes a little hazy as he sucks in a couple of deep breaths. “Peachy keen.”
Dallas flicks his fingers against Johnny’s pointed chin and pulls him into a loose headlock. “Come on, let's get you home.”
They head back east on dusty gravel roads asThe Monkees sing about the last train to Clarksville on the tinny radio, the air still balmy enough to drive with the top down.
“Hey you wanna start that book about the big whale tonight?” Johnny asks, his greased curls whipping against his temples in the wind.
Dally’s more into funny pages than dusty classics, but Pony’s got a library card and there wasn’t much to do to pass the time while Johnny was bedbound, so they got into a routine of sorts.
“Sure, man,” Dallas shrugs, and the city lights are still far enough to pull Johnny against his side and have him rest his head on his shoulder, “but it’s your turn to read.”
There’s a brawl in front of the pool hall when Dallas parks the Buick at the curb. There usually is. No Socs are involved, but Johnny’s shoulders pull up to his ears and he shoves his hands into the pockets of Dally’s old denim jacket in an attempt to make himself small.
Dallas digs his nails into his palms, knows he can’t reach out, not here. “Come on, man, just ignore it,” he says, urging Johnny to follow him inside.
The steep staircase is always a challenge and Johnny has to pause twice, fingers clutched around the railing as he catches his breath. Dallas lets him take his time, knows Johnny doesn’t like it when people make a fuss and treat him like he’s fragile, because he ain’t.
Dally’s seen his share of mean fuckers who don’t take shit from nobody, but he ain’t ever seen anyone as tuff as Johnny Cade.
The fuzz arrives at the scene by the time they make it up to the second floor and the brawl is over in a matter of minutes as the crowd scatters in various directions.
“You think we should move?” Dallas sighs, shoving the keys into the lock and nudging Johnny into their apartment. “Because I kinda think we should move.”
“Where would we go?” Johnny huffs, like even the thought of leaving Tulsa is a pipe dream.
“Anywhere but here?”
Johnny shrugs his jacket off his shoulders and kicks his tennis shoes off on his way to the bedroom. “I like it here.”
Dallas shoots Johnny an incredulous look. “Why? ”
Johnny grabs his copy of Moby-Dick from the small desk by the window and bumps it gently against Dallas’ forehead. “You’re here.”
“Oh.” Dallas drops his gaze to his feet, feels a prickle of heat at his hairline.
“You blushin’, Dallas Winston?” Johnny grins. “I think you are.”
“Alright, alright,” Dallas grunts, rolling his eyes. He ruffles Johnny’s hair and snatches the book from his hand. “Give me that.”
“I thought you said it was my turn to read,” Johnny says, letting Dallas pull his shirt over his head.
“Yeah, well. You’ll owe me one.”
They both know Johnny doesn’t read too well and he seems content to crawl under the threadbare blankets, curling against Dallas’ flank, eyes already heavy with sleep.
Dallas licks his thumb and flips through the first couple of blank pages, hears Johnny breathe in the smell of the yellowing paper. “Call me Ishmael,” he begins, pausing here and there on words that don’t exactly roll off the tongue, but Johnny doesn’t seem to mind, stroking his fingers through the dark hairs on Dallas’ chest.
The street below their apartment is alive with the sounds of a Saturday night and Dallas’ foot begins to twitch as he listens to the rumbling engines and drunken hollering. There’s a race between the River Kings and the Brumly Boys at midnight and bets are always high when Bobby Harper is behind the wheel.
He feels Johnny’s fingers settle over his heart and his foot stills under the blanket as he turns his eyes on his sleep-lax face. He laughs under his breath, wonders when boozin’ and cruisin’ started losing to a quiet night in bed with Moby-Dick. Johnny's fast asleep, snoring through his nose, sticky warm against Dallys' side in the August heat. Dallas makes a little fold on the corner of the page and sets the book on the cable spool Soda and Pony found by the train tracks.
He takes Johnny's hand in his own and brings the scarred tips of his fingers to his lips, and yeah, maybe Tulsa ain’t so bad after all.