#making me all depressed thinking about Dally and how he deserved so much more

[8osbabe]

a sad song about a girl i used to know

pairing : soda pop curtis x female!reader (dallas winston x reader mention)

warnings : none

summary :

who deserves love?

notes :

not enough can be said.

enjoy.

_________________________________

you didn’t love him.

and it’s the most bitter truth you know.

for a long time, you’d hated him.

you tug off the last few of his shirts from their half-broken plastic hangers in the closet.

the last one is a white tee that reminded you of james dean when he wore it. you fold it neatly, pausing to breathe in the scent on the shirt, wondering if there’s any dallas winston left on it at all.

it smells like beer, but that brand of musk could just as easily be two-bit’s. you shove it in your duffel bag.

besides these last few abandoned garments, there wasn’t much with any sentimental value in dallas’s room at buck’s.

the jackets he wore most often, which the gang considered the most valuable, hung on the hooks near the front door of the curtis place. there were no pictures in here, not even of you, or of the gang.

you run a hand through your hair, inhaling sharply as you try to remove yourself from the emotion in this room. it’s just a room. his room.

or it was.

you dig the heel of your palm into your watering eyes before tears can even dare to spill. you think of buck, downstairs, still nursing the bruised eye you gave him a few days ago, when he told you he was renting out dallas’s old room, and to clear it out or he was pawning it for drug money.

you know he was being harsher than he’d meant, that he’d had it rough since dallas died, too.

you turn toward the door, fingertips reaching out toward the indent dallas’s hand made in the wall when he’d punched it.

you look back into the room one last time before leaving for good.  

you leave buck merrill's complex without another word, jaywalking down the street and around honking cars as you approach the sidewalk and swing the duffel’s strap over your shoulder.

you remember what soda had said to you the night he told you he loved you.

the night dallas died.

three hours before his skin knew cold steel.

“you like the pain, (name). you like it because you think you deserve it.”

his hand clutched at the side of your face, the touch somehow managing to be both gentle and violent at once.

your face was red and splotchy.

he was right.

dallas winston gave your rough, turbulent, hot.

he cussed and pulled and spit venom until you were pushing back in harmony, with equal fire.

he gave you trouble and confusion and blurry and messy. he made your head spin with hot and cold love that drove you mad.

and you thought you deserved it.

so much that it hadn’t occurred to you that maybe you deserved soft touches and kind eyes and featherlight affection.

soda was telling the truth, and you almost believed him.

then dallas called, and in less than an hour, nothing was ever the same.

you haven’t talked to soda since the “funeral” darry had plunged into a savings account for.

you thought you knew depressing.

have you ever seen a johnny cade - sized coffin before?

that’s depressing.

you wanted dallas and all the pain that having him meant.

you guess that, when it came down to it, he’d given you exactly what you’d wanted.

the ultimate hurt, his mortality.

but even before then, you knew you didn’t love him.

the night of the rumble wasn’t the first time soda had talked to you like that. like he needed you.

even dallas saw it.

the way you and soda started to look at each other from across the room, the way you’d smile.

friends don’t look at each other like that.

friends don’t smile like that.

friends don’t kiss each other on the front porch of the curtis house when your boyfriend is in jail and you’re sobbing that he’s never going to change.

at the time, you hadn’t loved soda either.

but you knew that you could.

it would be so easy to fall in love with sodapop curtis.

you hadn’t loved him yet, but it was damning enough to know that you could.

then there was the guilt. you knew you both felt it.

dallas winston was dead and the last thing his girlfriend or his best friend ever did for him was lie.

you were thinking of leaving him long before it happened. and dallas knew.

you think that had been the worst of it.

the first day at school after he died.

it wasn’t going to be anything worse than what you’d already seen. dallas hadn’t attended school for months before he died, and besides the whispers and gossip, there were no reminders of him here.

you think you felt every ounce of color drain from your face when you read it. the note he’d left in your locker before he died, the last thing he’d ever said to you.

words written in his same messy handwriting, meant for your eyes only ;

                                                         i still love you.

there had been no stopping the tears then, and nobody to comfort you as you sobbed.

the words had weight.

dallas winston had never told you he loved you.

he’d never have said it, not to you or anyone, and you definitely never thought he’d write it, in permanent black ink for anyone to see.

and when he did write it ? it said “still.”

it meant that he knew, about you and soda, about everything.

it meant he knew. and he still loved you.

it wasn’t a goodbye, or a suicide note, since he’d left it in your locker long before the rumble, or johnny’s death, or his own.

dallas had been alive, and so were you, and he wanted you to know that he loved you, even after all you’d done.

you’re standing on the porch of the curtis’s when you realize you don’t know where you’re going to put this stuff.

there’s no room for it at the curtis’ place, you definitely can’t bring it home, and it’s not like dallas is coming back to claim it.

you sit on the steps of the porch, slumping over and running a hand through your hair as it starts to rain.

the water his the roof and trickles down, falling to the ground a few feet in front of you.

you hear the screen door open and close gently behind you, but don’t bother to look who it is until you feel cool denim fabric touch drape over your shoulders.

you look up to see soda, Barry making eye contact before shifting your gaze back forwards to the street.

today was emotionally draining enough without him having his presence taunt you about it.

your hand only loved to the collar of the jacket to feel the familiar fabric between your thumb and forefinger.

johnny’s jacket.

for a while, he just sits beside you on the steps, staring out into the rain, in silence.

“(name),” he says after a while. you don’t respond.

“how’ve you been feeling?” he asks, but he already knows the answer.

he turns to look at you, but you don’t meet his eyes.

“better,” you finally answer.

he bites his lip before looking away.

“you’re lying to me, (name).”

“really? but we’ve never been liars, soda.” you lay the sarcasm on thick, and he doesn’t speak.

even now, it hurts to know you’re hurting him.

“i’m sorry.” you finally turn to look at him, meeting his eyes and not managing to stifle the butterflies that his soft gaze still makes you feel.

“don’t be sorry,” he answers gently.

“don’t apologize to me.”

there’s only more silence as you wrap the denim jacket closer around your shoulders.

“i love you, (name),” he says after a while, and he continues without letting you answer.

“-and i know how you feel, about us, after what happened.”

you don’t know if it’s the way he looks at you, like dallas never did, that makes you break down. but something does, and you breathe in sharply in a futile attempt to hold your pieces together.

“-but i’ll leave you alone from now on if that’s what you want.”

is that what you want?

you don’t know, you don’t know.

is that what you deserved? what dally deserved?

did either of you deserve anything?

you can’t escape the image of blood on your hands, blood on your clothes for what you’ve done.

for causing both of them pain. ruining them.

but maybe they had hurt you too, maybe you’d been hurting each other for a while now.

choosing soda wasn’t pain, it was peace.

dallas winston wanted to be dead and he got what he wanted. he didn’t care who he hurt anymore, and he didn’t care he was leaving you behind, because he knew soda would protect you.

maybe he just wanted you to be okay.

death was kinder to dallas than life ever was.

the rain hits your leg in drops, until you realize the rain has been stopped for a while now, leaving only petrichor and your tears in its wake.

you look up at soda, his eyes brimmed with tears of his own. you remember how dallas was all dry eyes.

you long for the moments you wasted not being with soda, and your heart comes to claim them as you lean into him, soft lips moving against yours instantly.

he’s gentle.

he christens every scar with heat, and you love yourself a fire. it’s when your head dips beneath his jaw, kissing his neck, that you realize you can be more than destruction. you want to make him feel good, to forget pain.

a little more of you is gone, a little more of you becomes him.

you know how easy it is to love someone who is broken.

you always get cut by the pieces.