Can I get a snippet of a mouthful of wildfire? :3
Yes Noora, anything for you! <333
So this is the Jally fic I’ve been working on in the background while writing my lawrusso fics, and includes this little thing I posted the other day, about Johnny writing letters to Dallas while Dallas is in prison:
The morning Dallas gets out, with a cuff on the back of the head from one of the guards, and his jacket thrown back in his face, the first thing he sees is the boys waiting for him out by the gates. He didn’t expect them to come. He’s never had a family before, at least not one that’s ever mattered, but the sight of them - Soda, Steve, Two-Bit - makes his chest clench.
They look nervous, smoking quietly as they wait, but the moment they see him, they flicker into action, running over to holler joyously and grab at him, the whole lot of them howling like a wolf pack, shaking him hard and ruffling his hair. Even Darry, who’s always been the most reserved out of the lot of them, smiles at him from a distance.
The only piece that’s missing is Johnny. The eager little puppy should have been climbing him like a tree right now, all shy smiles and big dark eyes. He knocks away the hand Two-Bit’s got in his hair and says, “Where’s the kid?”, ignoring Steve when he crows that the rest of them aren’t good enough.
But that’s when he sees him, half-hidden behind Sodapop, hanging back while the others crowd around him. He’s looking away, his little hands shoved into his pockets, the collar of his jacket turned up high.
“There you are, you little fuck,” he says. “Why you hiding?”
Johnny turns to face him, says, “Oh hey Dally.” Trying to sound so tough, as if he hadn’t written a letter to Dallas every single day he’d been gone. Pouring out his big, bruised heart in every scrap of paper he could get his hands on.
Dallas felt annoyed at first - how the fuck could Johnny expect to survive when he was that soft? But then he started to look forward to them. Would pace his cell until one of the guards delivered that day’s letter to him and Dallas could set eyes on that looping, dreamy scrawl, telling him about wildflowers and constellations and train tracks. Always sneaking in at the end how he missed Dallas so, so much. The words so open and earnest Dallas had to fight the urge to bite down on his knuckles until they bled.
But here he was now, staring at the ground like Dallas wasn’t even there.
“Come here,” Dallas says, hooking a finger under Johnny’s collar and bringing him in for a hug. He tells himself he doesn’t need it, doesn’t need to feel Johnny close and warm after months of not seeing him. It’s the other boy that needs it. Touch-starved, eager-to-please little Johnny, their pack baby.
Johnny goes stiff when Dallas pulls him in, and for a second Dallas thinks he’s going to stay like that. Playing dead like he felt threatened. But then he melts, goes soft, and he’s knocking himself against Dallas to hug him back. It doesn’t even matter that the others are watching: the kid clings to him, shoving his head up under his chin as he grabs at his jacket, pressing each one of his fingers into Dallas’s back. It’s like he’s trying to convince himself Dallas is real. That he’s not going to suddenly fade into smoke and leave Johnny there.
“Dally,” Johnny whispers, so threadbare and low it comes out half-moan.
“Hey there,” Dallas says, as Johnny starts to quiver in his arms. “Hey, it’s okay. I wasn’t gone for that long.”
“It felt long,” Johnny says. “It felt like you were gone forever.”
