CASPER

Drawings & paintings I’ve done-> my art

Writing-> my writing

The Outsiders x Top Gun AU-> steve & mav half bros au

Outsiders x Tex x That Was Then, This is Now AU-> Dally Mark & Tex au

Long bits of text that’re mainly personal thoughts but often have something to do w/ fandom-> rambling

Drawings of my personal life/experiences-> self portrait

-As with most friendships that happen when one is five, this terrible activity plus the shared telling-off they experience together is enough for them to decide they are now best friends. 

-Then when they start grade school, they’re in the same class. (Different school than the Curtis gang is at atp—Dally gets expelled from this school and moved to the Curtises’ school a few years later)

-They pretend to be horses together because Sylvia is real into horse books and Dallas already wants to be a cowboy. (actually a cowgirl at the time, but yk yk you get it I’m not gonna clarify every single time gender comes up lol.)

-Sylvia’s parents work full time, so Buck, her father’s much-younger half brother, is very often the one in charge of her/picking her up from school/making sure she is alive and whatever. He doesn’t mind doing this because Sylvia is fully willing to clean all the stalls in his stables for just a bit of time near his horses. (He doesn’t actually make her do this lol but she is willing)

-Dally’s a latchkey kid, so Sylvia often convinces Buck to drive him home, too. There they hang out in the fields and woods on the edge of Tulsa. They watch Buck’s horses and play elaborate games. Sylvia likes to make up stories/worldbuild, while Dally likes to hit things with sticks and also likes hearing her talk, so this works out well for them. 

-When Sylvia begins to get crushes on boys (or whatever it is that second grade girls have when they’re still far too young to act on it but do find people cute), Dally gets sort of angry and doesn’t know why. He’s kind of possessive of her, and very jealous, but in a platonic for now way lol they are children

-Like his feelings get way too hurt when she hangs out w/ other people. Which she does fairly often. Sylvia has an easier time socially than he does. (My hc for her home life is that it’s actually really good until she’s in her tweens-early teens, when her folks die in an accident.) Dally on the other hand has an awful home life, and people don’t like him much because he has an awful temper. He bit a teacher once. No one trusts him at all except Sylvia, and that’s just ‘cos she also has a bit of a crazy streak.

-When they’re like eight, while tromping through the prairies, Dally (still not quite jaded yet, though no longer so obedient) tells Sylvia that he thinks he wants to marry her when they grow up. Sylvia tells him that’s gross. They’re both girls. Ew. Dally’s soul is legitimately crushed. Instead of expressing that though, he punches her, and they fight in the grass. When they are done, Dally’s eye is blacked and Sylvia’s missing a baby tooth. They don’t speak to each other after that for two weeks, which in kid years is more like two months.

-Then Sylvia gets into a fight with a different friend and she’s besties with Dally again like nothing happened. Alls fair in the second grade, yo

-Dally is occasionally sent to girls’ reform school and things like that now and again, but he and Sylvia remain friends, even if there’s periods where they’re less close than others

-It’s at age twelve, in the summer before they go off to junior high, that Dally’s father is sent to jail and Dally has to move to NYC to live with his mother now. Dally decides to run away from home that night, and he goes to Sylvia’s. They both pack their things and hop onto the train to Windrixville. When they’re buying supplies and talking to farmers, the people in the country mistake Dally for a boy. He goes with it, and Sylvia feels really confusing feelings about it. In the empty church, Dally has Sylvia cut his hair short “so that it’s more believable—they’re lookin for two girls, not a girl and a guy”

-They’re still found pretty fast tho—Sylvia starts to feel really bad about her parents being worried, and later that same day, she calls them to tell them she’s okay. They manage to get their hiding place out of her because she feels so guilty

-Dally is furious at her, and she starts crying. He tries to catch another train, alone this time, and is promptly found. He blames Sylvia entirely.

-In New York, Dally starts to grow into himself. His mother lives in Greenwich Village, and is kind when she isn’t high, but mostly is high and neglectful (kinda like Rusty-James’s dad in Rumble Fish if that means anything to you.) He has a neighbor who is a trans woman, and he bothers her with questions because he has a sinking feeling that he’s not too different from her. She gives him the clothes she wore as a man. He’s pretty devastated when she has to leave.

-He gets the name “Dallas” from a guy he starts hanging around with because he thinks Dally’s accent is from Texas. Dal never corrects him, and when Dally’s mom moves them to another part of New York, he begins to introduce himself as “Dallas.” He thinks it’s a tuff name. Very cowboy.

-Two-ish years pass, and then Dally’s sent home to Tulsa again. This time, he’s at the Curtises’ high school. Having been semi friends with the gang before, he slots back in pretty well, under the guise of having heard about their outfit from his “sister,” who is “staying in New York.”

-Everyone buys it pretty easily. Except for Sylvia. 

-She’s had a terrible time while Dally was away. Her parents both died and she moved across town to live with Buck, who is a well intentioned but horrible guardian. Her friends ditch her because she depresses them now, and in this part of town, the divide between Socs and greasers is much more pronounced. She goes from a somewhat crass but otherwise promising kid to the textbook definition of greaser girl in a matter of weeks. And that’s about where she is in life when Dally comes back.

-Desperate for some semblance of her old life, she latches onto him fast. 

-At first he tries to keep his distance, because he hates her for being the only one who recognizes him, and because he’s still a bit angry at her for calling her parents all those years ago.

-But he does also genuinely miss her. They fall back into friendship pretty fast, although they’re even less healthy about it now.

-To make matters worse they’re also very much attracted to each other. Sylvia had a crush on him before he left for NY, but hid it because he was another girl. He had a crush on her as a kid, but hid it because she kind of broke his heart a little. 

-Now, Sylvia says they should date just so that he can learn how to be a real man. He resents this reasoning, but would rather date her for a bad reason than allow someone else to date her. And it does actually make him feel more “properly” masculine. (A pretty toxic idea, but I do keep saying they are far from healthy)

  I chewed a bit of dead skin on my lip. “How ‘bout…uh…a stablehand?”

  Soda shook his head. “You…you can’t come, Steve,” he said, something unreadable in his eyes.

  It was like a gut punch. “Well, sure, I’m a bit jumpy ‘round horses, but I don’t see why I can’t learn,” I tried to recover, attempting a charming grin. I’d never been so good at that.

  “I’m goin’ alone, man,” Soda said. He still wouldn’t meet my damn eyes.

  “F…fine,” I said, trying to dislodge the words from my throat. I crossed my arms, feeling too big, like I was taking up too much space. I liked being bulky, most of the time–after all, I worked hard for my muscles. But right now I just felt silly. Stupid. Stupid for wearing such showy clothes, stupid for cutting the sleeves offa everything, stupid for looking so bull-headed and redneck, stupid for the hoodlum tattoo on my shoulder. Stupid for assuming that I’d go where Soda went.

  “It ain’t personal or nothin’,” Soda said, sympathy flashing in his big brown eyes.

  “...Then why?” I said, or maybe spat.

  Soda rubbed the back of his neck. “I uh…I just. I’ve lived in Tulsa all my life, y’know?”

  “Sure. So’ve I.”

  “Well, yeah, but this is it, Steve. This is my one break. I’m too stupid for college, I’m too broke for much else. This is my one chance, y’know, to…to be something.”

  I knew all this. I got that. I looked at him.

  “Well why can’t I be part of that?” 

  He cringed, and his gaze shifted to the ground. “Oh…Stevie, c’mon, I ain’t gotta spell it out for ya?”

  I clenched my teeth. “Yeah, I guess you gotta!”

  Soda looked at me head on. “I can’t just mess around with my best buddy all my life, okay, man? I—I can’t. I could meet a girl out there. I could meet the girl of my dreams. But if—if you’re—if you’re there, then I’ll never—I’ll never have that, alright?!”

  I coulda guessed those words were coming. But hearing it out loud felt like the floor dropped out from under me. 

  I wanted to jump on him, throw him to the ground and yank his damn blonde hair, scream, hit him hard as I could. Bruise my knuckles on his teeth. Call him a damn coward. God, he was such a coward. 

  But when I spoke, my voice came out steady. Steady and quiet. 

  “You want a girl, Soda?” I said, my voice sounding miles away. 

  Shamefully, he looked away. “Oh—don’t get me wrong, Steve—I—I mean, you’re my best friend, and I love ya…but…”

  I swallowed hard, trying to get my head to stop spinning. Christ, I shoulda seen this coming.

  “But I’m a guy.”

  “Exactly,” Soda said, relieved. “See?” Relieved. As if he thought I got it. Thought I understood. Ha!

  I shrugged off his denim jacket and crumpled it in my hands. 

  “Go. By all means, don’t let me stop ya,” I said. I tossed the jacket at him, not looking to see if he’d caught it. “Go. Go be a bigshot cowboy, headlinin’ all the damn rodeos. But I ain’t gonna be here for ya when you come back.”

  Pepsi—no, Sodapop, because Pepsi was a nickname for a best friend, for a lover, not for this stranger—Sodapop grabbed my shoulder.

  “Steve, you don’t get it, okay? I don’t mean I don’t love ya! I just—I just love everyone, and I mean—we’re so young, right? You didn’t—ya didn’t think we could fool around forever, right? Lordy, we ain’t kids no more!” he blubbered.

  I kept my head tilted down because there were tears starting to prickle in my eyes, and that was the last damn thing I wanted him to see. 

  I kicked the door open, ducking outta Soda—Sodapop’s grasp. Why the hell was he my best friend? Why’d I let things get so far? I knew he was a flighty little bastard, why’d I think I’d be any different from all the chicks he left behind?

  Because I thought I was special, I realized grimly. Because I thought I was different. We were supposed to be different. I wasn’t his girl of the month, I was Steve Randle. Steve Randle, Sodapop Curtis’s best friend, so I guess I thought I was different.