Author's Note: I do not own the "Outsiders" characters. I do not own the song for which this one-shot is named.
Two-Bit Mathews is driving. There is a knocking under the hood, and he has been meaning to take it into a shop to get it looked at. He wishes Steve still worked at the DX, because Steve always gave him a good deal and did the best work. Steve doesn't work there anymore, though. Not no more. He went off to a goddamn jungle, and came back on a solid ride, a good horse. Two-Bit wants Steve to come back. He knows Steve's around, but that he's not really there.
His eyes glance up to the rear-view mirror. He catches the eyes of the girl in the back seat. He thinks of the things he'd like to do to her. The pictures slide from view as he hears his girl stir in the front seat. She's comin' outa the nod. Most of Two-Bit wants her to go back under there.
"Where do the fallin' stars go?" Phyllis asks. Her head is hanging partly out the window, and her hair is blowing around her. Phyllis wants to be in the air, and she thinks she could be, if she would try.
She really doesn't want to know about the stars. They're too far away from the car. Falling stars could go here, there, anywhere, in the blonde and dirty hair . . . and she wouldn't mind a bit. She can see herself in the side-view mirror and she wonders if anyone else has seen Paul Chamberlain's daughter recently.
The stupid, motherfucking reflection, looking back, never away, is too pale and dingy. She knows her cheeks used to be rounder, and her eyes used to be more blue than gray.
A hand reaches over towards Two-Bit's knee, and it takes Phyllis a moment to realize that it's her own hand. The fingernails are dirty. She used to always keep them neat, but things fell by the wayside once Phyllis got on that bright, quick, golden pony.
She gives his bony knee a squeeze and mumbles cloudily, "You still love me, don't you, Two-Bit? You love me, right?" He looks over and makes his eyes wild for her. He knows she loves it. It drives her nuts every time, and she curls her toes in her shoes. It makes her feel that everything's gonna be all right, all right, ever'thin's A-O.K, O.K, O.K, A-pefect. He knows it, too.
Two-Bit clenches his teeth, bitterly and strongly, with hate. Wish she'd shut the fuck up. He eases his foot a little heavier on the accelerator and wonders if Shepard saw half of his head on the carpet in front of him before he fell after getting accidentally shot by his idiot little brother.
"Make a left up here, Two-Bit," a voice from the back seat says. The voice's owner, a blond-haired, pale-eyed, nineteen-year-old kid, is startled by the clarity of the sound. He laughs, delighted by the shock. The kid is between a hot-haired, seventeen-year-old chick named Lorna and a thin, eighteen-year-old boy with dirty, silvery hair called M&M.
"I-I just feel like I'm gettin' pulled away from ya, baby, and I jus' wanna know that yer gonna be pullin' me back," Phyllis says to Two-Bit. She's almost whimpering. The sound of her voice is like a kicked pup. He takes his hands from the steering wheel for a moment to grasp her cheeks and say, "I got you, right here, Phyllis."
Two-Bit lets go of a laugh which reverberates throughout the car. Phyllis smiles, showing her stained teeth.
The car wavers and the kids in the back seat agree silently that they want to got to bed in their own beds at that second and that they never want to leave the soft, slow, watery car. His hands are back on the wheel, now.
"You know, Phyllis, I wonder how his kid is doin'," Two-Bit announces. She looks up at him as if he were a god. The most certain thought she's ever had crosses her mind: she was only put here by Him to love him. "Whose?"
It don't matter who had a kid, though, because the car is moving so slowly and quickly at the same time, and it just don't matter at all.
"Pony's."
"Wassat yer horse?" Phyllis asks in a voice that sounds as if she is new to speaking.
Two-Bit isn't listening to her much. He knows she isn't listening to him either. He liked it that way pretty well. "When he was eighteen he went and knocked-up some broad." Phyllis doesn't care. The words wash off of her ears, and she's back to looking at her new thinner, paler, more opaque reflection in the mirror. She really and honestly hopes he likes how she looks. Phyllis doesn't particularly like it, but if he does, then it's okay.
"Ya know, Phyllis, the guys I used to bum around with quite a bit are either dead and gone or moved away or got families of their own. I kinda miss them ol' guys from time to time." Two-Bit is talking, but no one is really listening to him. The kids in the back seat are enjoying the ride with their eyes closed. Phyllis keeps mumbling. She won't be quiet. She won't shut the hell up. Shut the fuck up. She just won't! Just shut yer mouth, Phyllis! Shut up!
Two-Bit breathes. Everything is all right again. He knows it, too. The voice of Dad enters his thoughts, and he hopes he wasn't lying when he said you can't do too much of this shit.This shit here is good shit. You ain't never gonna over do it. You and your little baby'll be cool. Just keep your head right.
"I'm on the nod, Two-Bit, now. . . . I like it better the other way, don't you, baby? Don't you? I hate bein' tired," she says softly. She sinks into the warm seat and lets her train of thought run off.
Now, Two-Bit is thinking. He usually doesn't remember, but he is now. He remembers tackling Johnny Cade in a game of football, and being afraid that he'd broken Johnny's arm. He thinks about the guys, and he vaguely wonders how he got here. He knows the guys aren't here, but he can't quite figure out why.
"What's your real name, Two-Bit? I known you five months, and you ain't told me, yet," Phyllis says. She's not looking at him, but at the passing streets. She tries to remember meeting him for the first time, but she can't. "How old are you, too? What color're yer eyes?" Her words trail off into something not important at all.
He doesn't want to listen to her anymore. He supposes he likes her well enough. His foot presses harder, harder on the pedal. They don't notice the car speeding up. He doesn't. The kids, Two-Bit, and Phyllis are merely going and floating, hanging in and out.
"Twenty-four," he tells her, looking ahead. Two-Bit knows she's not listening. He knows she never, ever has. He remembers that she was already riding the horse when he met her. He liked her from the start. It bothers him, though, when she doesn't toss the needle when she's through. That was what bothered him about everything. Everyone seems to not throw away their needles, as if they expect their mothers to come along and pick them up.
It's not the drive-thru he works at part-time, not how pricey the shit is, not that the house is empty because Momma and Faye got hit when they crossed a drag-race, but that Phyllis would forget to throw away her needles. He wants to, for a heartbeat, hit her across the mouth for not being better, for not being Kathy Milburski before she got smart and told him she didn't love him anymore.
She tells him she loves him again, and he repeats her. He presses harder, harder, still. The car isn't moving anymore. The car's stopped. It's gone. It's squeezing and floating and nice.
M&M is asking for Two-Bit to take them to -
Phyllis sees the prettiest red she's ever seen, clotted with chunks of gray. She wonder-
Then it really is gone. All of it. Finished in a heavy sink against the biggest tree in the center of McKinnely Memorial Park.