Disclaimer:

S.E. Hinton owns "The Outsiders".

Author's Note:

This is Dallas' version of A Dying Fish Out of Water, considerably short and terse, posted two months post-meds and on very little sleep.

Round This Time of the Morning

Everything tastes stale and he hates the taste it leaves at the back of his throat.

So you're here.

And I can't do a goddamned thing about it, neither.

Round this time of the morning, everything is black besides the lights playing on the backs of my eyelids and the moon hanging off the edge of the window frame. I can barely see your face, it's so dark, and you're pressing yourself into the shadows, trying to disappear.

I light up a cigarette and take a drag to hide the annoyance that's curling my fingers into my palms. Everything tastes sour and stale from the weed and the sudden inhalation of nicotine, like old bread left too long on the kitchen counter, and I hate the taste it leaves at the back of my throat.

"The fuck're you doin' here, kid."

With all your open wounds, God only knows how you managed to drag your ass through the night. It's sometime past midnight and not nearly six a.m. and you're standing in the doorway, bleeding like a fucking slaughtered pig, and we both know there's no excuse I can use to send you back to wherever you just crawled from.

"Thought I could crash here for awhile" is all you have tell me before I've dragged you inside and locked the door. You're cold, shivering even despite all this heat, and I want to say something, anything, but fuck me if I'm gonna let you think this is some Salvation Army and let you stain the nicest shirt I have. The room's small as it is, and the bathroom tinier – there's barely enough room in all this mold and rotting wood for a sink and a john and a bathtub.

"He did this to you," I say, blinking to fight back the sleep. The only thing I can see is red and brown, blood on skin, and the mere sight of you is making me sick to my empty stomach. It's disgusting that you'd come to me for help, yet I can't kill the fucker that caused all this with my own hands.

I say your name once, Johnny, and suddenly you're hyperventilating and I'm watching you choke on the blood in your mouth and it's too much, too much, and then I'm muttering "goddamn son of a bitch" while shoving a washcloth into your mouth to shut you the hell up because we're doing this again too soon, it's always too soon.

Each time I'm done cleaning a cut or examining a bruise, you're already telling me where the next one is. When we're done, I take my hand off your bony shoulder and run the washcloth under the water, the blood and this night swimming down the drain like so many others.

I tell you to go lie down and for once you don't argue. You're tired – skin pasty and eyes bloodshot, covered in more scars than I'll ever see. Leaning against the doorway, I bite on my lip to stop from yawning and then the inside of my cheek, tearing at the skin. It's not the first time you've showed up, and if there's one thing we both know it's that this won't be the last time, either.