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The thing is, when it comes to playing Pa, he never had a choice. Dallas rags on him for it all the time- ‘he’s your kid brother Tim, why are you acting like his old man’ - but he doesn’t get it. Tim never chose this, but the fact of the matter is the twins would have starved to death before their first birthday if he didn’t step in. It was hard enough parenting himself at seven years old- the last thing he needed was to start playing mom and dad for two babies, but he didn’t have a choice . Sometimes he wonders if Angie or Curls actually know how bad things were back then. By the time they were five he’d been dealing, making enough money to feed them, even if meals were sometimes skint, but before that things were real rough. Sometimes he’s still not sure how they survived, what with him going days without food and the twins teething on their own tiny hands, living off watery formula and prayers to a god he no longer believed in- no matter what abuela said.
It’s little wonder the two of them are as scrawny as they are, all wild eyes and shaky hands. They’d lived like animals since the day they were born.
Still, Tim wouldn’t mind seeing Angel gain a few pounds, wouldn’t be upset if he needed to find Curly a pair of jeans a size or two bigger. He does his best, always has, but he was a kid himself raising two kids, and he’s never once been able to give his siblings half of what they need, let alone deserve. Never once have they had enough of anything, not food or attention or love. It’s little wonder they are the way they are, Angela too cold to care about anything, Curly caring about everything too much.
That said, they’re alive and mostly well- despite the fact that Curly’s arm never healed proper from that break, and Angel’s nightmares have never been normal- which is a miracle in and of itself.
They’re doing okay. He could probably back off a bit now with the parenting shit, they’re 14 now, old enough to look out for themselves if they need to, but he’s looked after those kids since the day they were born and he isn’t about to quit now. Maybe he didn’t choose it, but the twins are his kids now, the only part of his heart that still exists, and the truth is they still need him, as much as they pretend they don’t.
Angel doesn’t cling to him after a nightmare anymore, but she still makes him do her hair every night, long plaits he made Sylvia teach him when she was still a baby. Curly never tried to hang out with him anymore but he still knew to come to him when he inevitably ended up in trouble he couldn’t get himself out of- and Tim always fixed it, even if the little shit did deserve to rot sometimes, because goddamnit if he wasn’t soft for those deep blue eyes and that insolent grin.
Shit he was going soft. If Dallas could hear his thoughts right now he’d never let him hear the end of it. But what the fuck did Dallas Winston know- wasn’t like he had any kid siblings to look after, or if he did he’d split a long time ago. The biggest difference between him and Dally was that Dally cared about himself and nothing else, and Tim cared about Angel and Curly and nothing else. That’s why Dally was so reckless and he was so careful- unlike him, Dally had nothing to lose.
The door opens and Tim looks up to see Angela walk in. She’s wearing a skirt he specifically told Sylvia he’d shred if she gave it to her, and that bitch and him are gonna have words because his baby sister is only fourteen and flaunts what she has enough already without a skirt like that making it all worse.
“Hey Tim,” her eyes are bright, and there’s a spring in her step so she’s probably expecting a call from whatever lad she’s playing like a fiddle, and hell if Tim isn’t all sorts of proud of her. Maybe it’s a stupid thing to be proud of, but Angela isn’t afraid to go after what she wants and get it by any means necessary, and that will keep her alive on the east side, which is pretty much the best any Shepard can hope for.
“Hey Angel. Where’s Curly?”
“Him and Ponyboy have a math assignment together.”
She purses her lips and Tim can feel himself scowl. It’s not that he doesn’t like the Curtis kid- he’s a better influence on Curly than he ever could have imagined- but he and Curly aren’t exactly subtle, and Tim would be lying if he said he wasn’t terrified of the possibilities of what could happen if the little dumbasses not-so-secret relationship got discovered by the wrong person. Fag bashing in Tulsa is no joke, and the way those two look at each other could be enough to get someone wondering. Tim doesn’t know who Curly thinks he’s fooling. The kid never liked school, and math had never been an issue for him. A math assignment, really? Between him and Curtis they’d have that done ten minutes after it was assigned– if they actually decided to do it.
He sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. What is he gonna do with that stupid fucking kid?
Angela seems to know what he’s thinking. She’s always been like that, a little too perceptive for her own good, watching with her big blue eyes and keeping her mouth shut until she’d learned things she shouldn’t. He remembers her hiding under the table when she was real little, thinking she was getting away with it when him and Sylvia were shooting the shit, or the gang was around, causing trouble.
“Curly’s been quieter than usual lately,” Angel starts, and she’s good at that too, talking around an issue but makin’ her point just the same, “dontcha think?”
Tim cuts her a warning look. Just because they both know what Curly is doesn’t mean they should say it out loud, not even in the safety of their own home. It doesn’t do to let your guard down on the east side, and quieter is safer, always.
“Maybe Curtis is finally rubbin’ off on him.”
He regrets his word choice immediately when Angela snorts. “Rubbin’ off with him more like.”
“Shut up,” Tim snaps, and her eyes widen. He doesn’t lose his temper half as much as he used to, at least not at her, but she don’t seem to understand the gravity of this, how bad things will be for Curly if this gets out. Chances are they’re all gonna die young, but if word of Curly’s preferences gets out he’ll sign his death warrant a lot sooner. “Keep them words outta your mouth y’hear?”
“You ain’t gonna hurt him over this,” she props her hand on her hips, fierce as she’s always been, eyes as cold as his own, “I won’t let you.”
“Jesus Angel, whaddya take me for?” Now he’s real angry. After all these years of him pulling Curly out of scrape after mistake, spending time in the cooler just so Curly wouldn’t have to, she thinks this would be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Maybe she’s colder than he even realized if she could believe such a thing. “I’m trying to stop him gettin’ hurt- or worse. But you can’t talk like that, not even ‘round here.”
She glares at him a minute longer, sizing him up before nodding once and turning back to whatever she was doing, long hair swishing behind her. He has a feeling this won’t be the last time she brings it up, but she’s got a good enough head on her shoulders that she gets what he means.
He goes back to sorting pills- the new momas round the block sure do love their sedatives- listening to Angela giggle into the phone from the other room. He’s gotta put a stop to that- she’s racking up the phone bill.
Twenty minutes later Sylvia waltzes in like she owns the place, and Tim has long since stopped bothering to tell her off, so he just rolls his eyes as she takes a seat on the couch beside him, stealing the cigarette outta her mouth and taking a drag.
“Thought you had a date with ol’ Derek Hudson.”
His best friend laughs, throwing a perfect ringlet over her shoulder. “That boy couldn’t handle me if he tried.”
Ain’t that the truth. Derek Hudson was a lot of hot air and not much else, certainly not half smart enough to entertain Sylvia for more than a minute.
He hums, taking another long drag before passing the cig back. Most girls round here smoke marlboros but Sylvie’s partial to viceroys like him, and he seldom sees her without one between her carefully painted bright red lips. There’s a lot of tough guys in his gang but even among them he’s never found a bigger weed fiend than Sylvia.
They finish the cig in silence, something both of them always want and seldom have, before he chooses to break their tenuous peace.
“I told you not to give Angel that skirt.”
Sylvia snorts. “And you should be glad I did. You shoulda seen what that Carmen Sanchez was gonna give her instead.”
Tim sighs but doesn’t argue. There’s no winning an argument against Sylvia, and it’s exhausting just to try. Besides, Carmen Sanchez is wilder than even Angela, and usually when Angel gets into trouble it’s because of her. He can’t stand the kid.
“Besides,” Sylvia continues, crossing her long legs and propping her stilettos on the tiny coffee table. Tim glares at her, moving his product out of the way, and she studiously pretends not to notice, “I hardly think Angel is the kid you should be worryin’ about right now.”
The reminder sets him on edge, and he clenches his jaw tightly. He trusts Sylvia with his life- more than he trusts any of his gang, even- but he’s not entirely sure what she means by that, and hearing from Angela how much Curly’s put his foot in it has only upped his stress. Looking after those two he swears he’ll go gray by thirty.
He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything at all. Luckily, Sylvia doesn’t go any further with her veiled warning, just lights up another cancer stick and starts helping him sort pills. They chit chat idly, her telling him things he shouldn’t know and will definitely use, and she’s dangerous in a different way than he is and he’s stupidly glad she’s still here. One of these days she’s gonna piss off the wrong guy and end up dead in a ditch somewhere, and he’ll avenge her when it happens provided he doesn’t get knifed down first, but right now she’s here with him and it’s the closest he ever gets to letting his guard down. He doesn’t love her, not like that, but she’s precious to him in a way no one else is. It’s nice having someone to rely on, someone he can care about but doesn’t have to take care of .
Angela finds them sitting in silence when she finally finishes her phone call, giving them an unimpressed look.
“Y’all are weird.”
“How so?” Sylvia is wrapping tinfoil around piles of portioned out pills while Tim makes doggy bags of weed.
“You spend so much time together,” Angela says, and the huffy way she’s holding herself means her call didn’t go as well as she hoped and now she’s spoiling for a fight, “and yet you don’t wanna fuck. Ain’t no one else I know does that.”
Tim just raises an eyebrow. She’s looking for a fight but he isn’t having one, not right now. It’s not like he doesn’t know people think his friendship with Sylvia is strange- she’s a whore in every sense of the world and he’s not exactly a saint- but they don’t owe anyone an explanation and they’ve never given anyone one. Let the whole town think they’re fucking, who cares? Still, it's a bit of a sore spot and Angela knows it.
Sylvia laughs. She’s never backed down from a fight in her life, and the fact that she helped raise Angela isn’t gonna change that.
“How bad did that call with Bryce go baby if you wanna cause trouble this bad?”
Angela’s cheeks flush. “It didn’t go bad!”
“Sure it didn’t,” Sylvia blows a smoke ring, carefully nonchalant, “ain’t like-”
The snap of a branch outside followed by a muffled curse interrupts her. Immediately, Tim is on his feet, switch ready in his hand as he creeps carefully to the door. Behind him, Sylvia and Angela continue their argument, voices a bit louder in an attempt to cover any noise he might make, but he’s been creeping through this house like a ghost since he was four years old and terrified of his Pa so he knows how to move without being clocked.
The second he looks out the window and gets an eyeful of what’s going down he’s got his switch back in his pocket and is marching out to the front door, ready to whoop his kid brother’s ass six ways from Sunday, and Curly’s dreamy eyed paramoor too.
“Curly fucking Shepard you get your ass in this house right now!” He has to consciously make sure he's yelling in english so Ponyboy can understand. That kid isn’t getting out of this scolding either, to hell with what Darry Curtis has to say about it. “What the hell do you two think you're doing?”
It's obvious what they were doing- trying to climb through Curly’s bedroom window which faces the goddamn street and it’s not hard to figure out why. Maybe all the concussions Pa gave Curly did more damage than he thought because this whole scheme is stupider than anything Tim’s seen in a while. It’s broad fucking daylight , Curly still shares that matchbox room with Angela, how did either of them think this was a good idea? Everyone around town talks about how smart the Curtis kid is but apparently they’re mistaken since he seemed happy enough to go along with this harebrained scheme, even if Tim is a hundred percent sure Curly was the one who came up with it.
Practically snarling he grabs Ponyboy by the ear and Curly by a handful of his hair and all but drags them inside, ignoring their protests and swearing all the way.
“You stupid fucking idiots!” Curly flinches at the venom in his tone. Good, Tim thinks, he needs a bit of healthy fear, “it’s the middle of the goddamn day, anyone coulda seen you two! Do you ever use the brain god gave you Curly Shepard? Goddamnit, I swear if I didn’t know better I’d think you have a death wish!’
“And you ,” he rounds on Ponyboy, who’s trembling, eyes wide and face so pale it;s nearly green, “aren’t you supposed to be smart? That’s all anyone ever says about you- such a smart kid that Curtis boy, goin’ places bigger than Tulsa- and now I catch you tryna break in through Curly’s window? A real good look ain’t it? I’m sure your brother Darry would love to hear all about it.”
Ponyboy goes, if possible, even paler. Tim thinks of the last time he caught these two in the act doing something stupid, playing chicken behind the convenience store. He’d knocked their heads together then and the only thing stopping him from doing it now is because they can’t afford to lose the brain cells it’d cost them.
“We were just gonna work on homework,” Curly tries to defend them, “ain’t like we were tryna rob the place.”
“Oh and I suppose you just never heard of a front door?” Tim sneers, “it’s this thing here,” he raps on the doorframe with his knuckles, “most people enter a house this way.”
“We were just havin’ a little fun.”
“Bullshit.” Tim snaps, “You know the cops watch this house, last thing we need is them seein’ your dumbass version of a break in– and the last thing you two need is for anyone to see you climbin’ into a bedroom together!”
A deafening silence follows his outburst. Curly freezes, mouth dropping open, and Ponyboy looks ready to bolt.
Curly recovers first, closing his mouth and attempting to get into a defensive sort of slouch despite Tim still having a firm grip on his hair. “What are you implying Timmy?”
It’s all false bravado attempting to hide bone deep terror shining obviously in his deep blue eyes, and if Tim didn’t love this dumbass kid so much he thinks he’d slug him.
“Don’t play dumb,” he tells him, having reached the end of his very limited patience, “you’re dumb enough, it’s a bad look on you, and you two aren’t half subtle enough to play plausible deniability.”
Ponyboy gulps.
“Tim,” the fear in Curly’s voice just about destroys him, “Tim listen, I’m sorry but please don’t- I mean- I just- I can’t help it- me’n pony, we tried ok, we tried not to but-”
“Curly,” he sighs, “shut up.”
The kid does, hanging his head.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen. From now on you two are gonna learn how to control yourselves in public, and you’re gonna come here - not to the drive in, not to the gym supply room at the high school, not the woods- when you wanna fuck. Curly, you and Angel work out who gets the room at what time and I don’t wanna hear squabblin’. She’s not breakin’ the law, she can find somewhere else to fuck.”
Behind him Angela starts to protest, but he cuts her a look and she shuts up. He turns back to Curly and Ponyboy
“You’re also gonna start acting like normal fucking people and come in through the door, else you’re gonna end up dead before you finish high school, and I didn’t spend fourteen years raisin’ you just for you to throw it away because you can’t figure out how to use your head.”
Curly looks up in disbelief. “What- you’re not mad ?”
His glare makes it clear that he very much is. “I don’t give a rats ass who you fuck so long as you’re careful, savvy? Just ‘cause I don’t have a problem with it doesn’t mean most folks don’t. This ain't robbin’ a liquor store Curly, this is the kind of stuff guys get killed over, understand?”
Curly swallows heavily and nods. “But- but you ain’t tryna stop us bein’ together?”
“When has trying to stop you from doing something you want ever worked? No I ain’t gonna stop you, but I meant what I said. Clean up your act, and if you’re not in your room you’re not fucking, capiche?”
Both boys nod like bobbleheads. Stupid fucking kids.
“One more thing,” he gives them each a good shake before releasing them. Curly rubs his scalp, and the Curtis kid grimaces, “this one,” he jerks his head at Ponyboy, “better tell his brothers what you two are up to. I ain’t fighting Darry Curtis just ‘cause you two can’t get your act together.”
“ What? ” Ponyboy speaks for the first time, his voice an indignant squawk. Tim gives him a look and he clamps his mouth shut, dropping his gaze.
That kid always had been a softie.
“I mean it, and if I find out about you breakin’ any of these very generous rules, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Curly’s as serious as he ever gets, and Tim can tell just by looking at him the the kid knows he means what he says. Hell, he might even listen to him for once.
He lets them slink out from under his gaze before he pulls Sylvia onto the porch for a smoke, and listens to the sound of Angela and Curly start screaming at each other over who has the rights to their shared room and when. Curly’s winning, but Anglea’s a sneak and he knows whatever agreement they come to won’t last long.
Sylvia grins at him over her viceroy, “kids huh?”
“Fucking kids.” TIm agrees, lighting a cigarette of his own, and they stand there together until the sun slips past the horizon.
He didn’t have a choice when it came to raising Curly and Angela, but he was damn well gonna finish the job.