Sobs because I didn't update yesterday.

Please have mercy! I was wicked busy XD

Not gonna lie, this chapter was wicked fun to write. Hopefully it's just as fun to read :)

I do not own the Outsiders.

Ponyboy's knee nervously bounced up and down. He shifted in the plastic hospital chair, finding no comfort. He had hated hospitals from the moment he had stepped foot in one when he was four years old. That time, he had been carrying a glass plate around his house and dropped it, cutting himself with the glass. He needed seven stitches.

He had been to the hospital many times after that, and each time he hated it. He didn't like the sterilized smell or the fact that everything around him was white and clean, for 'sanitary reasons'.

Tap tap tap. His foot on the tile floor. People have died here… His horrifyingly overactive mind. Tap tap tap. His shoe again. There might be dead bodies in here right now. There went his mind.

He glanced to his side at Soda, who also sat in a nervous position. It wasn't any comfort that Darry chewed on the end of his pen as he filled out paperwork, either.

It also didn't help Ponyboy's nerves when Dr. Planter entered the room and said, "Everything is all set, Ponyboy."

•••

They had taken Ponyboy in for surgery around forty five minutes ago, and Dr. Planter had already been around the waiting room reassuring Soda and Darry that everything was going well.

Soda was scared for his little brother. Soda could distinctly remember the day Ponyboy sliced himself real bad with a knife while he was cutting onions. Ponyboy had only been ten years old, making Soda twelve. He was the only one home with his younger brother that day, and the memory of squeezing his brother's hand in his own as a doctor gave him twelve stitches still lingered in his mind.

And now he's in surgery, Soda thought, admiring how brave Ponyboy was.

Deposits himself, Sodapop smiled. He would get to see his brother on laughing gas. He couldn't help but wonder what his brother would say when he had almost no control over his thoughts.

Soda smirked.

•••

Darry and Soda were allowed in the see Ponyboy twenty minutes later. Ponyboy was sitting up in the hospital bed instead of laying in it, an IV in his right hand and a bandage that wrapped around his ring and index finger on his left. He was carefully examining a painting of a beach scene on the wall, though there wasn't much to see on it.

"Hey Ponyboy," Soda half-whispered. Ponyboy jumped like a scared cat to face his two brothers.

"H- hey…" Ponyboy stuttered drowsily.

Soda smiled. "Hey Ponyboy. How was it?"

"T- they…" Ponyboy rubbed his eye tiredly. "Took the bones outta my finger, didn't they Soda? Now everyone's gonna call me floppy fingers."

Soda snorted. "No one's gonna call you floppy fingers, Pony. The doctors didn't take no bones out of your fingers."

"Did you feel anything, Ponyboy?" Darry asked. "It didn't hurt, did it?"

Ponyboy stared at Darry blankly. "What? What hurt?"

"Don't try and reason with him, Dar," Soda chuckled. "He's on them pain drugs. They make him all loopy. He don't feel a thing right now."

"I don't!" Ponyboy agreed quickly. "It's like I don't even have a hand!"

Soda laughed. Ponyboy was usually the opposite of this. He liked to play the smartass know it all, who always was there to correct you when you got a fact wrong. Now he was acting like Two-Bit, a wisecrack who didn't know his right foot from his left.

"Maybe they chopped it off," Soda grinned.

"Soda!" Darry scolded. "Don't encourage him!"

Ponyboy had spread out his fingers as far as they could go and was holding his hand in front of his face. "It's an alien," he informed his brothers. "From Mars."

Soda smirked, wanting to see how far Ponyboy would go.

"It's a cannibal alien," Ponyboy explained. "It eats other aliens. It ate it's own mother."

"What are you seeing right now?" Soda asked, bubbling over with curiosity.

"Don't you see it?" the youngest Curtis asked dreamily. "It's right in front of my face. It's green and oozy and it has one, big, purple eye."

"And it's a cannibal alien?"

"Duh," Ponyboy said, turning his attention from his hand to his brother. "Aren't all aliens cannibals?"

Soda shrugged. "How would I know? I've never met an an alien."

"I have." Ponyboy said blankly.

"I know you have," Soda said, a small laugh escaping his mouth.

"Soda, stop it," Darry said, though he was smiling. "He's drugged up enough at it is, no need to convince him he knows an alien."

"But I do see an alien, Darry." Ponyboy said, his voice deadly serious.

"Oh yeah? Where?"

"You!" Ponyboy burst out into a fit of laughter, laying on his back. "You look just like an alien!"

Soda snorted at Ponyboy's sheer ridiculousness, as he saw Darry go a little red in the face.

"Ha ha," he said. "That was so funny I forgot to laugh, Pone."

Ponyboy sat up, catching his breath.

"But I didn't."

•••

"I did not say that."

Ponyboy sat on the couch, knees drawn to his chest. The doctor had told him that his fingers should be feeling better after a few days, but it could take up to six months for the swelling to stop. He had told Ponyboy to keep the bandage around his hand for another week.

"You did!" Soda insisted. "You thought your hand was an alien, then you said Darry looked like an alien and you burst out laughing!"

Ponyboy blushed a dangerous shade of red. "You don't tell anyone about this. You hear me, Soda? If anyone at school finds out I'll-"

Soda waved his younger brother away. "Don't sweat it Pony, I won't tell a single soul."

Ponyboy rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right."

OoooooooH yes

If you review it helps fight against cannibal aliens.