Work Text:
Cold, tough, hard Dallas Winston who doesn't give a crap about anyone but himself. A no good hood who commits every crime under the sun other than murder. One of the toughest in Tulsa, never getting told what to do and always getting what he wants. Dallas Winston doesn't care. Right?
Dally would never admit that he cares. If something or someone puts someone close to him in danger then he'll do whatever he can to help and protect them but also get revenge, but in a subtle way to make it seem like he just wants some action. Contrary to the popular belief he does have feelings other than hate and anger, for example when Johnny was jumped. When he saw the kid bloodied, bruised and crying he felt like he was going to be sick. Dally knew it was hard to make Johnny cry and these socs not only did that but managed to completely break the kid as well. Johnny was never the same after that and Dally swore he would get revenge on the guys who did that to him. It didn't help that his home life was terrible, getting beaten by his father and ignored or yelled at by his mother, some parents they are. Dally still doesn't understand how Johnny still cares about them and what they think of him. He also thought of Pony like a little brother similar to Johnny, unlike the rest of the gang Pony was different. He didn't like fights or crime, he seems happiest when books or movies were involved. He has a certain innocent spark in his eyes, and the day someone even tries to take that away from him is the day they'll die. Sodapop Curtis also has a certain spark in his eyes but Dally couldn't quite figure out what it was, maybe compassion? Kindness? Excitement? Childishness? Possibly all four, but it doesn't really matter. Soda could make anyone crack a smile or at least cheer them up, Dally included. He never wants Soda to lose that about himself, he worries that one day he'll end up being forced to change sort of like Johnny, Darry and himself, and he hates the thought of it. Speaking of Darry, he doesn't deserve any of this. He doesn't deserve to be a parent/guardian at the age of twenty, he doesn't deserve to work two jobs just to pay the bills and keep custody of his brothers. Darry deserves to go to college and he deserves a break, he's working more than he's not and Dallas will forever feel guilty. However, he must say that even if Darry was forced into the role of a parent/guardian at a young age he does a better job than every other parent in their neighbourhood. Two-Bit is just Two-Bit. That's Dally's reason to care about him. He's always the life of the party, he's really funny and always cracking jokes. He makes light of serious situations, partly to help everyone else and partly to cope, anyone can see that. Honestly you can hardly tell when the guy is sober. Dally also loves robbing stores with him just because he's so good at it. Even if he's always joking around and scatterbrained at times, Two-Bit's a great fighter and can hold his own. He's gotten jumped a lot but he normally comes out with only a few cuts and bruises but there's the few times where he gets injured and every single time that happened Dally ended up jumping each of the socs that got him, but he doesn't know that. Steve is just a great buddy to have around. He's great with cars and can probably drive anything on wheels. Of course Dally doesn't just keep him around because it's convenient, he enjoys his company. He has so much pent up energy which is probably why him and Soda get along so well. However he has a really short temper and when Dally says that then you know just how short it is, because of that temper he gets in a lot of fights, only one of them have gotten serious but there's always a chance that something could go wrong, and the day that happens Dally will be there, both to support a buddy and to kill the person or people responsible. Dally hates the fact that he cares this much for his own gang but it bothers him that he cares about Tim Shepard, hell if one of his devil little siblings got themselves in a jam he would probably still care. Him and Tim are buddies no matter what they say or do to each other. They have fair fights and Dally's pretty sure he's the only one who can get away with slashing Tim's tires with only a fair fight. Curly Shepard is just like his older brother and somehow he's really close with Pony much to the displeasure of Darry and Soda. Curly can hold his own along with Tim but, Curly does some dumb shit sometimes. One time he and Pony were hanging out and he decided to climb a telephone pole and ended up falling from the top, and Tim happened to walk by and thought he was dead when he hit the ground, but Dally's pretty sure that Tim has only told him about that. Angela acts like she's older than what she is. At fourteen she's sleeping with a new guy every week. Of course that's not odd in this neighbourhood but it bothers him that a fourteen year old is acting like that, but maybe he's gone soft from hanging around Ponyboy too much.
"Hey Dal you coming?!"
God they're all idiots,
"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming."
but he cares about those idiots, but they'll never know that because Dallas Winston doesn't care.