Chapter Text
"I'm here to pick up Dallas." Darry runs a hand absently up the back of his neck, looks past the desk and into the hall where they keep the cells.
He'd gotten the call half an hour ago in the middle of dinner but he'd had a sinkin' feelin' since this mornin'. Dallas had been gone when Darry had woken up, apparently still hacked off over a fight they'd had last night. He should have known really. Dallas' anger was visceral and volatile. An argument with one of the gang easily rolled into a multi-day affair endin' in a trip to the station. Like clock work.
"Last name?" Darry gives himself a shake and returns to the current moment. He blinks at the man behind the counter once, twice. "Dallas? His last name?" He prompts and Darry bites back on his annoyance.
"Winston." He shoves aside his instinct to ask new around here? "Dallas Winston."
The man looks back down over his paperwork and Darry clenches and unclenches the bottom of his shirt to keep himself from reachin' up to grab the back of his neck again. He was gonna throttle that kid. He means it.
"Sorry, I don't have a Winston here." That snaps Darry back and he cocks his head to the side. He'd known the cop that had called him. There was no way they had released the kid without it bein' directly into Darry's hands. "I got a Dallas here but the name's different."
"Blonde kid? Seventeen? Real blue eyes?" Darry ticks off Dallas' most identifiable features without listin' asshole kid with a death wish and an urge to pluck his older brother's last nerve.
The man looks back at his papers and nods to himself. "Nah, that's definitely him. Sorry sir, when we picked him up he was pretty sloshed. Must have mixed himself up. Gave us the name Curtis. Dallas Curtis."
Darry feels the anger drain right out of him. Glory.
He signs the paper the cop shoves towards him with a sigh he doesn't really mean, "That's him. That's my kid brother."
Maybe Darry would still throttle him, but no one would mention it if he held him extra close tonight. And they wouldn't talk about the fact Dallas hadn't touched a drop all afternoon.