Archive of Our Own ^beta

"I love you," she says, her head leaning against his, her fingers offering him a cigarette.

"I love you too," he says, taking the cigarette from her as the train rattles onward, towards their stop. Their reflection in the dark window makes them quite a pair, with her long so brown, it was almost black hair almost her waist, his auburn hair half askew, brushing past his shoulder blades. Where she's in shades of brown and white and some dark red, he's in his blue work shirt thrown over his normal white t-shirt, in jeans and boots.

Neither of them are very tall people and if someone had just heard them then and there, if they watched the way he turns his head and smiles at her, they'd think they were in love, maybe. Think they were a couple who were just going home after a long day's work, to a place where they would be together.

That's not the case.

Strangers don't know that when he looks at her, he's seeing someone else's face: with similar dark eyebrows and hair, with stick out ears and slightly sharp teeth. They wouldn't know that when she looks at him, she's thinking of years lost to parents who didn't love him, and a stroke of good luck that had her coming to Tulsa during a hot summer, pleading to know where her brother had been buried, holding a book with the name P. M. Curtis as author.

He hadn't wanted to talk to her at first, had been afraid of what she might say, of the things she might do. There had been letter after letter sent to him over the years, there had been interviews and movie offers and people begging to know more, to get another piece of writing out of him that had never materialized.

The last thing he'd wanted to do was to hear someone say, Can you tell me more? wanting to feast on his grief or anger.

He hadn't expected to look at her and see Dallas' features on a softer, smaller girl. He hadn't expected that she'd be so desperate to meet him, desperate to know where Dallas had been buried.

The door had almost shut on her, until she had offered the photo: Dallas, maybe barely ten years old, looking sullen-faced at a party, a hat on his head. And there was her, beaming in the photo with him, about six years old, clearly happy her brother had come.

To deny her would be cruel and cruelty is something he's been so sick of, so tired of. So he had widened his door, let her step inside of the home that had become the only place he'd felt safe in.

She had sat there, her eyes huge, seal-like in her face, desperation and nervousness there. It might've been the first time he realized that her eyes were a little bit like Johnny's only where the memory of Johnny's panic and fear overrode everything else, this girl — this woman had determination there, a pleading. The bitterness that had overrode Dallas, it hadn't taken hold there and he thought to himself that he couldn't hurt her. He never could hurt her.

No one else has gotten it out of him, the things he'd told her. How he'd always wanted to be closer to Dallas, how he changed things — omitting the way Dallas had crawled to him on his hands and knees, saying his name before he died, omitting how he'd stolen Dallas' ring at the morgue, how he'd never told anyone that the person who started leaving cigarettes at Dallas' grave had been him.

She tells him things, over sobs and her hands in his: Dallas' real name, the circumstances that had his father banishing him from his house, the two other brothers Dallas had who he'd never mentioned, how she had searched desperately for her older brother. She tells him, voice steadying about seeing the book after a ballet rehearsal, drawn to the cover, reading it cover to cover in the bookstore, until she'd gotten to the end and burst into tears. How she'd read it over and over and over again, until she'd started writing to anyone, everyone she could find to know where he was.

And now here she was, just asking him, Where is Dallas buried?

Someone else in the entire world had loved Dallas, and who was he to prevent her from seeing him?

He'd walked her there, pointing out where they'd been together: that was where they teased the waitress, that's where they met for a movie, that's where Dallas —

The last part he stopped. She'd looked at him, knowing what he almost said.

There weren't any words left when they'd gotten to the cemetery. Only them, holding hands in front of Dallas and Johnny's graves, silent and overcome. The only thing she says, after the minutes went by was, His birthday isn't here. It was November 9th, 1947.

There was more — it just wasn't as important as that. Not as important as getting it fixed.

After that, he'd expected her to do what most people did: to leave. Soda had gone after Sandy; Steve had never come back from Vietnam; Darry had been deployed to Berlin and had found a girl there; Two-Bit had gone, running off to dodge the draft. Hoods weren't the same, and he wasn't like most, still.

Instead, she'd lingered. At first helping around the house, and then she'd been the one walking with him to the grocery store, quietly understanding what was going on when he'd stiffened up around one of the men there and the way he'd looked at him. There wasn't any judgment for him, when he'd obviously come back from the man's house later that week, alone and clearly upset that things hadn't gone the way he'd wanted.

And there is none when one of them says something like, I remember when Dallas — or Dallas would've — or I wish Dallas was here. There's nothing but each other, talking and holding each other and then suddenly, he says to her, lying in bed together to keep the nightmares away, Don't you have to be back in New York?

Yeah. She reached out to hold his hand. I don't want to just yet.

Could I come with you? To see where he used to live?

She had smiled at him in a way he'd never seen on Dallas' face.

He'd smiled back in a way he'd never smiled at Johnny before.

The love he feels for her, years on, isn't the love he felt for Johnny or Dallas. He'll never be into girls, sure. Not when there are men around with dark eyes that smile at him a little bit dangerously. It still isn't the same as what he feels for her, as the train comes to a stop and they both get up.

"C'mon, Pony," she shoulders her bag, grinning at him. "We're gonna have carbonara tonight, and it's going to be good."

He smiles at her, coming behind her, walking out of the train, wishing Dallas could see him. "Okay, Helen. I'll just make dessert for myself."

Her nose wrinkles. He laughs.

All he wants to do is go back to their apartment, with her ballet shoes and inherited cookware and her photo of Dallas placed on the mantle and eat with her at their rickety table and watch television together. He wants to hear about her day, wants to hear about her newest routine, and he wants to tell her about his shift at the diner, to tell her about the book he's working on again, wants to hear her snort laugh at a joke.

He never felt this way about anyone else and he doesn't think he ever will.