A/N: I meant to leave this on the first chapter but this is my first attempt on fan fic and I havn't quite figured it out... so apologies for the bad layout. I notice most storys are about the Curtis boys, while this story is about Tim and his brother, so don't know if it people will be interested?? If you enjoy it let me know as I have the whole story planned, if not please be honest, I can handle criticism!

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

"Tim, Tim, come on buddy."

I could actually feel myself rising up through the blackness, back into consciousness. When did, I kinda wished I had stayed down in the dark.

Every muscle, every bone, every nerve and vein in my body ached and throbbed.I never wanted to move again.

I slit my eyes against the sun and looked at Darry's face, close to mine.

"Curtis, you run me over, you motherfuck?"

"Nah man" Darry said, grinning a little. Hell, I wasn't joking.

"Me and Soda was coming home from work and saw you. I just drove at 'em, fasted way I could think of getting 'em off you."

"How many you get?" I asked hopefully.

Darry just looked at me, I guess not knowing if I was serious.

"No point" I heard Soda pipe up. "Soc's are only worth five points a piece."

"Can you get up, we should get outta here" said Darry, standing up himself.

"Yeah, sure." I forced my eyes open properly and tried to sit up.

I have never hurt like that in my life.

Darry and Soda were watching me with serious faces, and they swirled in and out of focus before me.

I put my head on my knees for a second and tried to get it together.

"Got a cigarette?" I asked them, not looking up.

I was actually glad it was the Curtis boys who found me and not my gang, I didn't have to keep on being the toughest hood in Tulsa in front of Darry and Soda.

Their good guys and their tough, but they sure ain't no hoods.

"Nah. Look lets get out of here" repeated Darry. "You don't want the fuzz to show."

"Aww Hell." I looked around for the kid I had stabbed.

I hadn't intended on hurting him too bad, but soc's just don't seem to be as tough as greasers.

I couldn't see a body, just dark patches of blood on the ground. I guess his mates must have taken him with them. I figured he wasn't dead, just wounded. I've seen people hurt plenty worse than that and survive.

Darry's Ford was stopped at a crazy angle across the street, and there was no sign of any of the soc's. Just the black rubber Will had lain when he stopped for me.

I glanced down and was kinda amused to see I was still hanging onto my knife. I grabbed the hand Darry offered and he hauled me up and helped me to into the car.

"D'ya reckon ya oughta go the hospital Tim?" Darry asked.

"Nah man, just drop me round my house would ya?"

All I really wanted to do was lay down, and lay very, very still. I could plan revenge while I was lying there.

Darry swung hard round a corner and I bit back a wince.

"Hey Darry, just swing by the drugstore would ya?"

Ten minutes later we pulled up in front of the drug store on our side of town.

I looked out at the roughneck slouching kids on the street, two collarless dogs fighting over scraps from an overturned rubbish bin, the cracked and lifting pavement the county never bothered to repair. I felt better already, being in the only place I ever really wanted to be.

This was my 'hood, my streets, my kids, my dogs even. And I loved 'em all, this is where I belong.

"I'll grab it, what ya want?" Soda asked, turning to me.

"Painkillers, whatever they got."

Then I grinned and added "If they don't got none, a bottle of whiskey."

It was getting hard to live up to my rep, curled in pain in the backseat. I chucked Soda a tenner and he headed off.

I tried to straighten and sat back, watching Darry holding the steering wheel and gazing out the window.

"Tim," he said after a minute.

I watched his eyes lift to look at me in the rearview mirror.

"Don't start another war" he told me flatly.

Much as I don't take to people telling me what to do, I just sat in silence and stared back at him for a moment.

I didn't fight my way to the top of a tough neighborhood without self control. I find the people who shout and yell get a lot of attention at first, but it lose the effect real fast. Once you seen someone at their worst, you know what their capable of.

It's the not knowing that scares people more.

"There's no war" I told him calmly. "This is between me and Will, and there ain't no reason for it to be otherwise."

Darry shook his head slightly.

"It's never that simple with them, they don't let up and you know it. We beat 'em good before Dally died, but it ain't stopped 'em coming back around."

"That's cos they ain't used to not winning at anything, they don't know their beat. Dunno what the fuck you're expecting me to do about it."

If the soc's didn't keep coming around, as Darry put it, I'd only have other greasers to fight. It's crazy getting jumped and nearly killed for just walking the streets, but it's that danger that makes me feel most alive.

"I know ya can't just let it go…" Darry began.

"Not a fucking chance."

"I got my brothers to think about."

"I got a brother too."

"I know, and people have been killed. It ain't just kids playing."

"It never was."

"Killed for what side of the river they live on." Darry made a spitting sound.

He was right it was crazy, this life is crazy, but I was born to be a hood.

I love it and he hates it, and that's what makes me a hood and him a greaser.