#but also I wish you could've lived. and gotten therapy. and idk played guitar or something.

[horsegirl-curtis]

How would Dally react if he got a hug? Or just people showing him affection in general (like the gang, more specifically Darry bc I hc him as Dally’s emotional support human)

If we're talking in a fully canon compliant sense, I think Dally would straight up refuse any physical affection that anyone in the gang might try to give that isn't in the form of like play fighting or throwing arms around each other type deal. Like he's the world's most emotionally unavailable teenage boy. The only situations I could see him (at least canonically) accepting a hug or most outward forms of affection would be if it was in a romantic context with some girl that somehow enjoyed his advances. He shows affection to his friends through insults, jabs, walking the streets together, sneaking into movies, smoking around places together, things that don't require him to get really deep and emotionally open but allow him to hang out with them and have conversations. He cares about his friends, but his platonic love language is vague, confusing, and clearly coming from his inability to open up at all...much less to other boys. I thought about perhaps he might accept a hug from Johnny...Dally knows Johnny's home life sucks so he might accept like a three second hug to help his friend feel better, but he would absolutely not want it to last long and definitely wouldn't choose to admit that it made him feel a little good to wrap someone up in his arms. He strikes me as someone who is super touch starved and in need of a good long hug, but he very much hates the idea of admitting how he feels or what he needs. He wants to be hugged and held deep down but like hell he's gonna admit it, ESPECIALLY to his greaser friends. I think Darry would try to get him to open up, try to get him to at least cope healthily, but he likely wouldn't get far. I imagine he'd try every time they got a moment alone, but that wouldn't be often, and Dally would always walk away from it without having made much progress at all. The most Darry can do is try to keep him from getting hurt or in too much trouble with the law. It's not much but if it weren't for Darry and the gang, Dally would've died a lot sooner than he did, and if they'd gotten there before the cops did he might have had a chance to make it. Even if he's a major asshole half the time who doesn't like to open up and generally doesn't seem like a good dude in most situations, his friends enjoy his company and care about him, they want him around despite everything about him. Ponyboy looks up to him. They mourned his death because he meant a great deal to them, he sucked but he cared just as much as they did, he just did it in his own way that painted him in a bad light to everyone but the gang.