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Combat, I'm ready for combat
The socs spread out in front of them, a wall of madras shirts and unearned superiority, made of more money than he’d ever see in his whole life, enough that his mother wouldn’t have to work herself to death and Susie could have fun for once instead of always having to pinch pennies and be practical. He hears his mom’s voice in his head, telling him it’s not right to hate anyone. He swallows another swig of beer and hates them all anyway. Johnny’s dying, Ponyboy’s sick as a dog, and Dally’s a wild, dangerous explosive animal more than he is human, and all because the socs couldn’t stay on their own side of town.
I say I don't want that, but what if I do?
Everyone from the east side fights. It’s just a way of life.
‘Why do you always do this?’ Susie had screamed at him once, on one of the many nights he’d stumbled home drunk, bloodied and bruised after picking a fight he didn’t care if he could win. He hadn’t had an answer then, when she’d stitched up his forehead with fury in her eyes, but looking at the socs he does now, thinks maybe he fights sometimes because he likes it a little too much, likes being hit when it feels like he deserves it and hitting someone else when it feels like they do.
He’s never said he was a good person.
'Cause cruelty wins in the movies
“Look at the dirty fuckers run!” The words feel torn from the savage monster in his chest that delights at the socs downfall, that feels like this is retribution, somewhat, for Johnny and Pony and the rest of their whole fucking neighbourhood. For a second, a blissful moment, it feels almost like they’re in a movie and they’re still a bunch of hoods but the heroes of the story nonetheless.
Then the rest of the night happens, and he remembers that life isn’t ever like a storybook, and that tragedy is the only thing the east side ever has to spare.
I've got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you
He’s in the school hallway a week after Dally and Johnny died, walking with Steve and Ponyboy- for the kid’s comfort or his own he doesn’t know- when he sees her.
She’s as pretty as she was at the drive in, prettier even, now that it’s daylight and he’s sober enough to see the auburn strands in her otherwise brown curls, and can catalogue the mirth hiding in her clear eyes, a spark he recognizes easily because he sees it every day in the mirror and never managed to find it in anyone else but her, no matter how hard he tried.
He should hate her, the way he hates all the socs now, should blame her for Johnny’s death and Dally’s by proxy because the whole mess started with her and her redhead friend and their shitty, violent boyfriends. To not hate her is almost a betrayal in itself.
She meets his eye, sunlight from the window bathing her face, and smiles.
He doesn’t hate her. He can’t.
He smiles back.
She keeps smiling, for weeks, every time she sees him in the hall. He smiles back. Thinks about talking to her. Doesn’t.
She’s in his art class, the only subject he isn’t in a remedial lesson for, and one he used to skip before he noticed her. She sits three rows ahead of him, and sometimes she ties her hair into a huge fluffy ponytail on the top of her head.
Once, she brushed an errant strand of that glorious hair behind her ear and smeared blue paint along her cheek. She’d laughed at herself and caught his eye, as if to share the joke, and Two-bit found himself thinking about licking it.
His attendance in other classes is abysmal but art class is near perfect.
Easy they come, easy they go
Mom gives him a weird look on a sunny morning in May, sometime after the midterm reports are out but before classes end. It’s uncommon, the two of them sitting at the breakfast table together, but he spent last night bailing Steve out of county lockup and she didn’t have an opening shift for once, so they both slept at home and woke up in no sort of rush.
“You haven’t brought a girl ‘round in a while,” Mom says, and his ears burn because she knows what he brought those girls around for , and it’s embarrassing being asked by his own mother why he’s got no game all of a sudden, “everythin’ alright?”
“Fine.” His ears burn and all he can think about is brown curls and blue paint and the fact that he stopped bringing girls around about the same time he started going to art class everyday, and hadn’t even noticed until now.
“Well,” mom pops a bite of scrambled eggs in her mouth, and grins, her smile the only one in the world that matches his, “you got your eye on anyone?”
His mom has always loved gossip, but she knows what most people don’t: that he loves it too.
Unbidden his mind flashes back to art class and the girl who never seems to leave his mind. He can feel his face split into a smile.
“Maybe.”
I jump from the train, I ride off alone
He talks to her on June 2nd, 1967, the last day of classes. Her usual seat partner is absent along with half the rest of the class who apparently had better things to do than sit in a classroom that’s forty degrees when grades are already in. Steve had ditched before lunch and invited him to go to a poker game at Tommy Prumly’s place, and even Ponyboy had permission from Darry to leave once he handed in his theme for English, but Two-bit had chosen to go to class instead. All because of her. All because he realized if he didn’t talk to her today then it might be a whole summer before he catches a glimpse of her beautiful, quietly mischievous face again.
“Took you long enough,” is the first thing she says when he slides into the seat next to her, and he laughs, and suddenly he doesn’t know why he waited so long to talk to her again when it’s most of what he’s been thinking about for months.
She steals his pencil crayons while he draws a shitty, cartoonish version of their teacher, complete with a bow tie and an elaborate handlebar mustache, and Marcia giggles so loudly she gets sent into the hall, and Two-bit gets tossed out about half a minute later.
She’s waiting for him in the hallway, hair up in that fluffy ponytail he’s still dying to touch.
“Perfect,” she says, seizing his hand brazenly, right there in the hallway for god and her ex boyfriend and anyone else to see, “I knew you’d follow me. Let's get out of here.”
Then she sprints without warning, dragging him along, flying through the school hallways and out the doors until they reach her car, a tuff blue corvette he feels wrong just staring at.
He thinks that was the moment he truly fell head over heels in love with her, running from nothing and towards everything, her hand in his and him content to follow her anywhere just to bask in her aura a little bit longer.
I never grew up, it's getting so old
He’s been told his whole life he needs to grow up, stop being so childish, get his shit together, get a job, figure out his life, as if the east side wasn’t all he’d ever have and a hood wasn’t all he’d ever be. Dad said it before he stormed out, Mom said it when she was harried and tired and came home to a sink full of dishes and an empty fridge. Susie said it too, before she gave up and stopped speaking to him altogether. Even Darry said it sometimes, when things with the gang were at their worst. He’d said it after Johnny and Dally passed, and it was about the only time Two-bit ever found himself considering it.
Marcia never says it though, probably because she's just as childish as him. They bought milkshakes instead of dinner and raced to see who could finish theirs first and then stumbled out of the diner with stomach aches and matching grins on their faces. He sings along too loudly to the radio, and when they go for walks she balances on the edge of the sidewalk with her arms out to the side like it’s a tightrope and she’s some sort of gymnast. They make petty bets and she call for a race after she’s already started running and it’s fun and easy and real the way life has never been with anyone else. With every other girl he’s always felt like he had to play a part, the suave greaser, the funny guy from the Curtis gang, a tough, no feelings type of casanova. But with Marly, he’s just him. Keith Mathews. For once, being himself doesn’t feel so soul crushingly bad.
Her kisses taste like chocolate and cherry lip balm, and her touches like sunshine, soft and warm or burning, but always all consuming, and he spends every stolen minute with her and could spend the rest of his life with her and it would never be enough.
Help me hold onto you
He genuinely wonders sometimes how he survived before he met her. Marly’s hand in his feels like the only thing tethering him to the earth after his sister leaves, bag packed and room left empty, having left nothing behind but a note and her grieving family. It’s not as permanent as death, but it hurts more, another abandonment and the knowledge that part of it is his fault.
“You didn’t know,” Marcia whispers into his neck, one of his hands caught between both of hers, “You couldn’t have done anything more. She made her choice.”
Maybe he couldn’t have. That’s the worst part.
Marly’s too perfect in her pressed green dress and shiny shoes, to be sitting in his run down living room with the peeling wallpaper and stains on the coffee table, but she makes no move to leave, holds him close and curls up next to him on his lumpy mattress that night.
It hurts. He misses his sister, but Marly is here with him, and he isn’t out on a bender, and maybe he will survive this without destroying himself in the process. As long as she’s here next to him.
I've been the archer
I've been the prey
It felt like they played cat and mouse for months before they ever properly spoke after the drive in, but he’s hers now and she’s his, and it doesn’t matter that they’re still sneaking around nearly seven months later, doesn’t matter that they drive a town over to go on dates, that his friends still think he’s single, and her mom keeps trying to set her up on dates. They love each other. That’s all that matters.
Right?
Who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay?
They’ve been together almost a year when he decides he has to break up with her. She’s too good for him, always has been, always will be. It’s cruel of him to tie her down like this, for her to still be a secret after all this time, for her to have to hide him from her family like the shameful thing he is. They come from two different worlds, how could he ever justify tying down someone as effervescent as her? She’s as precious and rare as the jewels in her earrings- earrings he could never in a million years afford to buy her no matter how much he may want to- but him? He’s just some east side hood who likes booze a little too much and isn’t going anywhere but down. Boys like him are a dime a dozen, and he doesn’t know why she bothered to give him the time of day in the first place.
They’re the hardest words he ever has to say, but he says them anyway.
“This can’t keep workin’. You know it can’t. Just- please, don’t make this any harder than it has to be, I’m beggin’ you, Marly, please.”
He turns to leave, half because she’s so beautiful sometimes she’s hard to look at, and half because he doesn’t want her to see the tears in his eyes. Greasers shouldn’t cry in front of anyone, but especially not pretty soc girls they’d fallen in hopeless, unsustainable, soul shattering love with. Besides, his tears would only hurt her, more than he knows he already has, breaking things off like this without warning, and if there’s one thing he’s recently learned he hates more than anything in the world its causing one Marcia Valentine any sort of pain.
“No,” soft, manicured hands close around his arm in a grip that’s near bruising, and when he looks into her brown eyes they’re fiercer than he’s ever seen- which is saying something giver her strong opinions on just about everything. “You’re not doing this to us Keith Mathews. You’re not doing this to me. I won’t let you.”
“Mar,” he tucks a rogue curl behind her ear, a selfish final excuse to touch her in this, the last moment where he can, the action he’d longed to do in that art class all those months ago, “I ain’t good for you. Your folks can’t stand me and they don’t even know I exist, your friends wouldn’t give you the time of day if they knew about us, and I can’t exactly blame them-”
“Shut up!” She snaps, and she’s real angry now, he can tell, just like he can tell he’s about to get an earful.
“You listen to me, Keith Mathews, and you listen good. I don’t care .” She wrenches herself away from him, trembling with rage, and all he wants to do is wrap her in his arms, but he can’t let his shitty self tarnish her imperfect perfection any longer. It was selfish and cruel to have let it last this long in the first place, but he is and always has been the lowliest form of a selfish man.
“I don’t care ,” Marcia repeats, her chin jutting out stubbornly, “You hear me, Keith Mathews? I don’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks. I’ll tell my parents, and Cherry, and the goddamn president tomorrow if it’ll convince you I’m serious about this because I need you.You get that? I need you like I need air to breathe and water to drink and sugar to keep me sane. I need you. I love you, like I never loved anyone else, and I know you love me too. So you can’t end this for no reason. You just can’t.”
“I know-” her breath hitches, and tears fall from her eyes but she keeps going, brave, so brave, always, “I know you think you’re some kind of worthless or that I’m somehow out of your league and I wish I knew why. And I wish I knew how to convince you otherwise, or show you how I see you because you’re so much better than that but- but I’m not going to let the piece of you that believes you don’t deserve anything good in this life tear us apart, because you deserve it all Keith. You deserve it all . You deserve to be happy, and I know- I know I make you happy. ”
Fuck. His own tears start to fall in earnest this time, and he looks away reflexively, not wanting her to see him cry- he’s supposed to be funny, he’s supposed to keep things light, to make her laugh, keep her laughing, all the time-
“Hey,” suddenly his cheek is cupped in a soft palm and he’s looking into her eyes once more, and there's so much feeling there if he didn’t know better he thinks he’d call it forever. “I mean it. You deserve to be happy. Let us be happy, okay? We can be happy.”
“O-okay,” it feels like a gift and like a curse but her face splits into a familiar smile he loves so much and anything that makes her look like that could never be bad, not really.
She swipes her thumb under his eye, wiping away a stray tear, and the gesture is so gentle, so sweet, so loving it’s the complete last straw.
The dam breaks and a full on sob bursts from his mouth. The next thing he knows he’s cradled in Marcia’s arms and she’s pulling his head down to rest it on her shoulder, cooing softly in his ear and holding him together as he falls apart.
“We can keep being happy,” she promises, “you deserve it. You deserve to keep being happy.”
With her, he thinks one day he could believe it.
You could stay
You could stay
You