I'm going to be leaving in a week and I'll be gone for two without any internet connection so I wanted to get this fic finished before I left.
I don't own anything you recognize as being S.E. Hinton's.
Also... 2, 182 words... I think that's a new record here. XD

The dial tone continued to go on as Ponyboy clutched the receiver to him as if it was his lifeline, the one thing keeping him together. He breathed in through his mouth, not trusting his stomach to handle to odors coming from himself and the room he resided in. His eyes were oddly blank, the only thing giving away his feelings were the tears slowly gathering within them.

He remained like that, just holding the receiver, before standing up and stumbling upstairs. A shower. He needed a shower and a change of clothes, then he'd find go fix everything. If everything was fixed, there wouldn't be any more of this stupid time business, and he would have to deal with his friends and brother being dead. It wasn't the most ideal but Ponyboy's gut clenched every time he thought of what he was doing to the real present with these candles.

Ponyboy took a shower, making sure to wash his hair (and, much to his disappointment noticed he was still going bald) and spent a good couple minutes scrubbing madly at his skin with a bar of soap. After stepping out of the shower and pulling on a rather nice-looking shirt that he found under one of the upturned drawers, he searched through his closet, at last settling on a pair of black pants. He was, to say the least, pleased with the final result. He still had that beer belly but for the most part he looked respectable.

Taking another look back into the room he spotted something that made his throat go dry and his eyes widen. That stupid ivory candle, the one that hadn't been lit when he had to go searching for them the first time, sat burning brightly on the dresser. Snatching it he went on a quick search of the house, grabbing the multi-coloured one from the laundry room and snatching the brown off the back porch and after he had collected all of them (the sea green was the only not burning, and Ponyboy recognized it as Darry's) he ran out to the car which, despite the change in the owner, was not any different from what it had been, and sped away from his home.

The ride to Johnny's house (he wondered how he could know Johnny's phone number and address but not his own brother's) seemed to take hours, the radio station set to something that Iris probably enjoyed but that he tended to pull faces at. It was loud, nothing like the music he had grown up with, but it barely made a difference to him if he was listening to Michael Jackson or the Grateful Dead at the moment because his family was what he needed to be thinking about.

At long last he reached a house, a one-story sort of place that looked as if it was probably owned by someone middle class, but the yard was what surprised him. It looked nice, there were flowers... the whole place looked well-kept even though, from his understanding, Johnny had never married more than once (which was how he had ended up with Hazel).

He sat in the car for a moment, just staring at the house before him, and then took a deep breath. Candles in hand he moved slowly to the door and after freeing his hand he knocked three times upon the door. After a moment of waiting, Hazel opened the door and stared up at Ponyboy with eyes so like her father's minus the suspicion and a lighter shade of brown instead of the black that Ponyboy was so used to.

"Yeah?"

Ponyboy's mouth twisted at this, a sort of smile-grimace that made Hazel raise her eyebrows. "I'm—"

"You're looking for Jonathan," she said, and the door closed in his face. Cries of 'JONATHAN, SOMEONE'S AT THE DOOR' met his ears, however faint they were by that time, and within moments the door opened again to reveal none other than Jonathan Cade, staring at him with mild curiosity but mostly surprise.

"Ponyboy." It was as if he had nothing more to say to his friend, no question about the candles and he leaned against the doorframe, a very strange thing to do considering it was more of a teenage reaction than Ponyboy would have expected from someone two years older than himself. "What're you doing here?"

He took a deep breath, twirling the wick of the sea green candle and took a deep breath. "Johnny," his voice broke and he cleared his throat, noticing a flicker of sympathy in Johnny's eyes at this sound, "I-I got cleaned up, it's all okay now..."

But Johnny was shaking his head. "You can't do this again. You keep telling Mo you'll be okay but every single time she ends up back here."

"Why can't she go stay with Dallas or-or Soda—"

"Pony, where've you been? She couldn't stay with Soda, nobody knows where he is. Dallas'd never be able to take care of her, you know why he can't..."

Memories slipped into his head again, memories he didn't want or need and that made him sway for a minute. He remembered the funeral, how he had sat there staring stonily at the coffin as his brother attempted to say a few words, voice choked and tears rolling down his cheeks. The funeral was small, only a few work and high school friends plus the old members of the 'gang'. He remembered how afterward he attempted to say something but found his vocal chords wouldn't cooperated and he had run out.

Then later how he had appeared at Soda's house, drunk, got into a fight and Soda had left.

He remembered seeing Dallas later in a bar somewhere, strung out on some sort of drug with his blonde hair messy, parts of it was stuck together with blood. Ponyboy remembered how later Dallas' wife at the time (someone who looked a lot like Sylvia, blonde haired with big dark eyes. She was more timid than Sylvia, though, and wasn't able to stand up to him) had had a fight with him, always ending in violence. She had called him up and Ponyboy, having been too drunk at the time, was unable to take him to rehab. Instead it was Maureen who drove the unconscious man to a nearby clinic and had dropped him off.

Since then Dallas had been avoiding everyone, convinced they were what was screwing up his mind. The woman (Tammy) had left town shortly after but still sent Ponyboy and Maureen Christmas cards.

"Right." His voice was hoarse, and Johnny sighed, moving aside and motioning for him to come in. He stepped into the house, raising an eyebrow again at how clean it looked.

There was laughter coming from the living room, and he caught a glimpse of Hazel and Audrey playing with some of Hazel's toys before Johnny led him into the kitchen where Maureen stood. She turned around and the smile slipped off her face, replaced with a hard frown.

"Ponyboy."

He wanted so badly to just make everything better with a snap of his fingers, but there was no way that would actually happen. For a moment Maureen eyed the candles in her husband's arms and motioned to them. "Why d'you have those?"

"I-I..." He couldn't tell her why he had them and he settled instead on setting them carefully on the kitchen counter, throwing his arms around his wife and pressing his lips to hers, a quick kiss that she ended by pushing him away. Her eyes were sparkling slightly, tears being held back only by force.

"I don't want this to end the same way," she whispered, leaning against the counter and looking down at her hands. There was a small white line from where the wedding ring had sat, and Ponyboy fished through the pocket of his pants, presenting the ring to her and slipping it onto her finger.

"I'm better," Ponyboy mumbled, slightly embarrassed, "I promise this time."

He could tell that she didn't want to believe him, and that she would rather smack him and go back to living in peace with Johnny and his family, but she gives him a small smile, sighs, and shakes her head. "Fine, Ponyboy. We'll try it. One more time."

Ecstatic was probably a better word than "happy" to describe the feelings that swept through him at that moment and he gave her another kiss before Johnny came back into the kitchen, a small smile playing on his lips and looking odd upon a face that Ponyboy had never usually associated with smiles.

"Better?" He asks, not looking at them as he gets two mugs down from the cupboard and then pouring some coffee, handing one mug to Ponyboy and giving another to Maureen before grabbing another cup for himself. "Pony, can I talk t'you?"

Ponyboy, sensing something was going to have to be explained as far as the candles and his little outburst about time went, grabbed the seven candles sitting on the counter and followed Johnny into the dining room, which was separated from the living room and kitchen by doors. Closing them, Johnny motioned to the kitchen table and Ponyboy obediently sat down.

"What's it you said about time?"

"Which part?

"The messing with it... and what's the candles for? I pegged you for a flowers sort of guy," Johnny said this with that odd smile that was so rare but almost everyone in their little 'gang' had seen it at one point or another.

With a shake of his head Ponyboy lifted the unlit candle and held it out to Johnny who took it tentatively and sniffed it, pulling back with a frown. "It smells like... books... sort of..."

Taking it back from him Ponyboy handed him the multi-coloured one to which Johnny confessed he couldn't smell anything.

"Look, d'you think there's anything weird going on?"

"Not really... well... except you're here..." His voice had that hard edge to it again, like it had when Ponyboy had first called him. Dark eyes bored into his as Johnny attempted to understand what was going on.

"Every time I light one of these," Ponyboy mumbled, twisting the wick of the candle again, "someone new dies. You... you're not even supposed to be here. You died."

For a moment Johnny looked stricken, and then nodded slowly. "I don't understand, though. If I'm s'posed to be dead then why aren't I?"

This prompted Ponyboy to tell him the whole story, starting from after Dallas' death to after Maureen had lit the first candle. By the end of it Johnny was looking incredibly skeptical and crossed his arms, regarding his friend with a mixture of amusement and concern.

"You sure you're not drunk?"

"Positive," Ponyboy said, sounding more desperate than he meant to. "One person's always dead, Johnny... I dunno what to do... and now," he stopped, pushed up his glasses and wiped his eyes, then sighed. "Now Darry's dead and... I want everything back to normal."

Johnny frowned, biting his bottom lip and looking down at the table. "Pone," he sounded a bit upset by this, and Ponyboy noticed that his friend's voice wasn't much lower than it had been when they were teenagers, "that means Dally, Soda 'n I'll be dead, won't it?"

"Yeah," Ponyboy replied slowly, setting the sea green candle down again. "But... but I don't like that happens when these things're lit. I don't like having 'em."

There was a long silence after that, wherein Johnny picked up each candle and sniffed them, sometimes smiling and other times frowning until he was holding the multi-coloured one again and blew lightly upon the flame. It flickered but didn't go out, instead got a bit brighter and Johnny looked pained before the look faded.

Setting it back amongst the others, Johnny tapped his fingers nervously upon the table and then ran a hand through his hair. "Do it, Pony," he said at last, looking his friend in the eye.

I kind of like the idea of Hazel calling her father by his first name. I tried it with the words "dad" "daddy" and "papa" but none of them seemed to fit Johnny. So I pulled a To Kill a Mockingbird and basically any children Mr. Cade ever has will call him "Jonathan" because that seems to fit him, I think.