His hand cupped the small of your back, keeping you close to his side. You lean your chin on his shoulder, peering up at him through your eyelashes, watching as Dally takes a drag from the cigarette pinched between his fingers.

Enraptured in this— his sharp, quiet beauty, and in the dangerous manner he lives his life— your eyes grow bigger. Normally, he’d tease you, send a *”you ever blink, doe?” your way. Not now, though.

Because, fuck, your brothers would kill him. Like, actually kill him. Ponyboy and Sodapop were nothing compared to him, he could take them. But, big ol’ Darry? Dallas was a dead man.

You swallow thickly before speaking. “Dally,” you start, voice hushed. Like your family would hear you if you spoke louder, despite the two of you being tucked away on Buck’s porch. You’d wanted to go home hours ago, but Dally had been banned from your bedroom after he put a cigarette out on your pillow (a crime, really).

This was wrong— he was one of your friends, one of the greasers, part of the family— God, Darry would kill him.

Even then, you knew what Dally had said: ‘this’ is nothing. You two aren’t together, you aren’t anything more than one of his hookups.

He glances down at you, entirely unimpressed with the soft fear in your tone, “what, doll?”