Two Weeks Later - AB
post!death dally x cade!reader
kind of happy ending?
warnings - angst, post! Major character death, slight implied sex if you squint
summary - two weeks after the death of both your little brother and boyfriend / months later, you find a hidden secret
word count - 2k
Two weeks. Two weeks was how long it had been since you’d lost both your little brother and your boyfriend in the same night. Two weeks since you’d gone back to the hospital after the successful rumble, only to be met with your little brother’s final goodbye, and then his lifeless body. Two weeks since you’d warned Dally to be careful as he left the hospital, only to run outside barefoot after his breathless call to the Curtis house. Two weeks since you’d arrived where you were meant to meet Dally, just to be met with the sound of gunshots. BANG! BANG BANG! And he was gone. Both of them were.
You remember falling to your knees beside him, pressing your forehead against him, tears falling onto his blood streaked abdomen. Everything in you gave out, you couldn’t even fight back when the police officers grabbed you by your shoulders to pull you off of your boyfriend’s lifeless corpse.
You remember Darry lifting you up and carrying you when you were too grief-stricken to walk yourself home. You remember him laying you down on the couch in the living room of the Curtis house. You cried and sobbed and wailed, until you exhausted yourself and passed out on the couch. You tried your best to block out what had happened that night.
You’d have trouble, though, when you’d, purely out of routine, knock on Johnny’s door to tell him you’d cooked his favorite, to be met with silence, and a dinner you felt too nauseated to eat. On those nights, you’d usually end up bringing the food over to the Curtis house, and claim you’d just had extra left over, due to cooking large portions out of habit, usually cooking for both Dally and Johnny as well. And while it was true that the large portions were purely out of habit, ‘left overs,’ left everyone under the impression you’d already eaten some, and not the truth, that you were yet to eat today, unable to sit at your table with the two empty seats.
You found it especially hard to forget what had happened when you’d have a particularly bad dream about it. You’d wake up in a cold sweat, instinctively reaching towards Dally’s side of the bed, only for your hand to grip onto the cold sheets, rather than Dally’s hand you’d usually find there. Those nights you’d end up walking the streets, chain smoking and drinking whatever was cheapest at the corner store, willing yourself to just forget everything.
Forgetting helped when you were going out to do something. Living like you hadn’t just lost the two most important people in your life proved to be easier than properly grieving. But when you were at home, the silence only broken by the sound of whatever record you’d absently put on, it was harder not to think about. You’d flipped all the pictures of them face-down, but the scent of their smoke had seeped deep into the walls. When you’d manically scrubbed all the smell out of them, you’d found that the absence of it hurt worse than it ever being there in the first place.
Everything in the house was somehow connected to them. Whether it be the ingredients to the meal you’d cook for Dally and Johnny when they were particularly banged-up, or something as simple as a pair of shoes, forgotten, never to be worn again. Everything in the house just hurt.
You’ve found yourself going out more often, unable to sit in a home that holds so many memories. On nights you’d usually be at home, in bed with Dally, you were at Buck’s drinking yourself half to death, and turning down any guy who even looked your way. No one would ever compare to Dally, in any aspect. Whether it be how he’d beat the shit out of a guy for looking at you like you were a quick fuck, or how he’d hold you after a late night, all sweat and limbs and sweet nothings, no one could ever come close.
Dally’s death had hit the hardest initially, being almost completely unexpected, and while you would never truly get over it, you felt that the pain was lessening, even if just a bit. On the contrary, the pain of Johnny’s death just got worse and worse everyday. You felt completely responsible, some butterfly effect bullshit spiraled out of control. A series of events, in your eyes, all caused by you, that ultimately lead to your little brother’s death.
You and Johnny had fought that night. If you’d never argued, he would’ve been at home, in his bed instead of at the lot. If he wasn’t at the lot, he would’ve never gone to the park with Pony. If they’d never gone to the park, they wouldn’t have gotten jumped. If they didn’t get jumped, he wouldn’t have killed Bob. If he’d never killed Bob, he wouldn’t have had to run away. If he never ran away he would’ve never gone into the church. If he’d never gone into the church, he wouldn’t have died. And now you realize, if Johnny never died, neither would Dally. It was all your fault. Both of their deaths were all your fault, all over some stupid disagreement with Johnny, that you can’t even remember what it was about anymore.
You were a shell. A shell of yourself, like the long-forgotten shell of a hermit crab, chipping at the edges. The life had crawled out of you, now left with an empty space, waiting for something new to crawl in. Though, rather than a new life crawling in, as you’d hoped it would, you’ve found what had crawled in was a parasitic grief, inviting more and more parasites to join in and suck out whatever life did remain of you, until you truly were just a shell. Eventually there’d be nothing left of you, and only then would the parasites give way, off to find a new host to drain the soul of and ultimately leave them too.
Maybe, just maybe, if you sat on your hypothetical ocean floor for long enough, a new life would eventually crawl in. Though you thought by that time, the weathering of the years would leave you chipped and scraped and ultimately broken. Or maybe nothing would come to you, and you’d sit and sit and sit on the ocean floor, waiting and hoping for something to crawl in and carry you back to the surface of the water, up onto the beach, and into the sun, and nothing ever would. Rather you’d sit there and chip and break and weather until you’d finally erode away into millions of bits of sand fallen on the ocean floor.
That was your analogy of how the rest of your life would go. Maybe a bit of a morbid one, but either way you felt it was more comforting than believing your life was a total loss. Perhaps your life was a total loss, maybe there really was no point in living like this. If you did die, what would it really mean to anyone? Just the death of that one little greaser girl with the already dead boyfriend and brother? Who would really care? I mean sure, the greasers would, but you didn’t think they’d be near as distraught as with Dally and Johnny’s death, so what was one more? Maybe your death would bring light, and maybe flowers would sprout from your grave. Maybe a little boy would pick the flowers and give them to the girl he liked. Maybe a bee would pollinate the flowers and make the sweetest honey in the town of Tulsa. Maybe your death wouldn’t be a bad thing. And maybe you should stop dwelling on this topic before you end up too deep in your thoughts.
Months later, you were doing a bit better, better enough to be able to actually look through Dally and Johnny's stuff without bursting into tears. Okay, maybe you were crying, but not as bad as you would’ve thought you’d been, which was surprising. You thought you’d pick up a few things, burst into tears, and then decide this was for another day, then go to Buck’s and have a few drinks. You were doing really well though. Of course, you were just going through it, none of it was going anywhere. You didn’t think you’d ever be able to part with any of their things, no matter how far in the future.
At this point you’d gotten through all of Johnny’s things, and now you were working on Dally’s. You’d been through maybe two or so drawers, he didn’t have many things, but what he did have was scattered around your room in various places, though you’re sure he knew exactly where everything was. You didn’t though, so you had to go through drawer by drawer, picking out the very few things you had left to remember him by.
You got to this next drawer, which was surprisingly only filled with his things. You’d gotten about halfway into it, looking at all the things he kept. Rather than this being a drawer of his things, it was a mix of many people’s things, a few of his, but mostly yours and others that he wanted to keep for himself. You found a photograph of the two of you, dated on the back in red ink. When you lifted the photo, you found a sheet of paper, folded in quarters. When you lifted that, you were met with a little velvet box.
You set the sheet of paper down to read later, and instead, went to inspect the box. You lifted it, and upon opening, you found that it was a ring. Why would he have a ring? You picked the paper up to see if it had any clues to what the ring might have been for. You unfolded it, and began to read.
“I'm not great with words, so I'll keep this simple. You make me a better person. You challenge me, you support me, and you put up with my bitch ass. Being with you is the smartest decision I ever made. I want to build a life with you, face whatever comes our way together, and grow old pissing each other off. Will you marry me?”
The end was hard to read through the tears, but you could still see the words “Will you marry me?” You dropped the paper from your hands. He was planning to propose. Dallas was planning to propose and then he fucking died. He died before he could ever marry you. He died before he could really become Johnny’s brother.
You sank down onto the floor with the ring box clutched in your hands. You had been so close to becoming Mrs. Winston. You had almost been married. You had almost been married to Dallas Winston, the love of your life, and he had died before he ever got the chance to ask you.
You carefully opened up the box and slid the ring onto your finger. It was definitely fake, and probably stolen, but it was a ring nonetheless. An engagement ring. It was beautiful. You sat and stared at it for a minute. He knew everything down to the cut and color and you hadn’t even told him. He had learned simply from observing.
One of the things you’d loved about Dally was his ability to just observe. Sometimes, he’d go particularly quiet and suddenly he’d just know things. Like the one morning at breakfast when he’d gone quiet and then the next morning you’d woken up to a cup of coffee made exactly how you like; two sugars and a splash of cream. Or when you’d run out of red nail polish and come home to a new bottle sitting on your dresser. It was just little things like that but they mattered so much to you, and now you didn’t have them anymore.
Perhaps you could learn to live with it. Maybe things would get better and you could lead a new life. It’d be hard, and you knew it, but maybe, just maybe you could heal, and you could live.
You looked down again at the ring on your finger and just admired it. You were going to wear that ring for the rest of your life. In your eyes, you two were married, whether you got an official ceremony or not. You were Mrs. Winston.
First fic on this account! Likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated, but not expected! Hope you guys liked it!