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Steve has always had a hard time with keeping his temper. .
This isn't news to anyone. He was pretty sure he had come out of the womb spitting curses and ready to punch his way through life.
It didn’t help that his father hated him. The bruises and bloodied lips he's had since four years old have proven that. His dad is a drunk who beats on him, so Steve learned from a young age how to stay gone. Steve was never is fathers first choice, he isn't even his second choice. Depending on the day, his dad would probably trade him for a six-pack.
Steve was nobody's first choice. It was just one more thing to be angry about.
His mother was a pretty woman. He knew because of the way people used to talk about her. The way people still talk about her.
Though, looking back, he never had any pretty memories of her. She left when he was in kindergarten. His dad told him it was his fault and of course Steve believed him. He can still remember flashes of nasty conversation exchanged with her. Why are you so angry? Nobody is this angry and bitter at six years old. If he thinks about her words for too long it makes him want to throw something. His dad said she left for California, she wanted to find the beach or something like that. Steve figured that she chose a state over her own son. Steve was nobody's first choice.
Every time he thinks about either of them, his veins fill with fire and his chest constricts.
Then there's Soda. He can still remember the day that they met. Steve with his black eye and scuffed shoes and Soda with his hand-me-down backpack and earth-shattering smile. How quickly they became friends and how quickly everything changed. He was welcome at the Curtis home and more than that they actually wanted him around. Soda always invited him over and seemed to want to be around him at school. Despite what his parents said.
He was glad to have Sodapop around too. Nothing about Soda can make him angry. Irritated? Of course, but never downright angry. Not like everything else in the world.
The two of them never could be still for long. They were always getting up to something. Like the time they hid all the chalk out in the school yard so they wouldn't have to do math that afternoon or the time they put a thumb tack on the substitute teacher's chair so she would leave.
They were always moving; moving in tandem, so fast and so hard that the picture was blurring at all the edges.
More than anything, Soda seemed to be the only one around who was not only able to tolerate his biting tongue, but actually liked it. Because what did Steve have if not his biting tongue, fighting fists, and fire in his veins? He had grown up with nothing but those to protect him. Even his mother had seen it.
When they got older, things got more complicated. Soda was still Steve's best friend in the whole world. He was charismatic, outgoing, understanding, beautiful, and funny. Steve knew this but as they got older, everyone else seemed to realize this too. Steve felt that familiar anger and jealousy creep in. The same one his mom had pointed out so early. The same one that had led Steve to beg for his fathers attention as he drank himself half to death. Steve had always needed some sort of attention, now it was just Soda's instead of his father.
So when those others started to notice how great Soda was, he started competing against them.
Every time they would get talking to someone at a party or a drag race or even school, people would never come over to talk to Steve. They came to talk to Soda. His beautiful shining best friend who is everyone's first choice. And once again Steve was left drowning as he realized yet again that he was nobody's first choice.
The worst part was that all of it made sense. Why would people not want to talk to Soda? Why would they not look through Steve? As if he wasn't there? Instead focusing on the charismatic golden teenager with the biggest heart in all of Tulsa. And why would they not?
Instead of saying anything or god forbid, bringing it up to Soda, he got angry. Packing it in like a suitcase with too many clothes. And because of that tightly packed anger came guilt, because Steve shouldn't feel angry about people wanting to be around Soda. Especially when he wanted to be around Soda.
Steve is reduced to the second best, and he deserves it. All these feelings mixing into a nasty cocktail of bitterness. Wasn't that what his mother always told him he did best? Was he still his momma's bitter little boy? So he turned bitter and stopped pulling his punches. Instead, throwing himself into the things he was good at, like fixing cars and fighting soc's and all the other things that aren't worth anything to be good at.
Two weeks after he turned sixteen, he got a job at a DX gas station. It felt good to get that job. The manager liked how much he knew about cars and was impressed with how good Steve seemed to be able to fix them. He was constantly busy and could always do something with his hands. He was so distracted that he hardly had time to think. To think about his shitty father beating him at home or how Soda was so much better at everything than him or how his mother was right about him or how he was nobody’s first choice at all.
He liked working there but he especially liked that it got him out of the house and got him money. It was one good thing that he had.
Then everything turned bitter. He did it to himself really. For the three months till Soda turned sixteen, he talked about wanting to work at the DX with Steve. His parents wouldn’t let him until he turned sixteen. Steve encouraged this, half of him thinking it would be fun and the other half thinking about how he would be second best at something yet again. The guilt ate at him, but still he kept encouraging.
True to both of their words, Soda got the job and things changed once again. What was it that Ponyboy had said before? People were drawn to Soda like flies to honey? Something like that. Steve never said made a point to have a conversation with the kid anyway. He was always annoyed with his lack of focus and his constant hero worship of Sodapop. Though to be fair, he was annoyed with everyone’s hero worship of Soda.
How will this endless cycle of bitterness and anger end?
The short answer? It probably wouldn’t. Steve would probably always bear those hungry flying fists and spiteful tongue like a cross. Like a weight, draped unflatteringly across the scars in his face. He had always been a fighter. Hurting other people was often the only outlet he had.
“Steve..!” The voice sounds far away. “ Steve ..! You have to stop…” Suddenly he is being shoved down. “Steve..!” The world is exploding in angry red, his muscles are tense and he turns again, ready to fight. The voice sounds so loud and Sodapop is right in his face. “Steve, what the hell happened?”
“Soda we gotta go man. Get him up and let's go.” That’s Two-Bit. Suddenly Steve looks down. There is a guy laying on the ground covered in blood. He looks half dead with the way someone beat him up. Steve’s knuckles are busted open and bleeding but they don’t sting like usual. He can’t feel anything and his head is still far away. Soda shakes him a little and they hit the ground running.
They duck inside a greaser joint and head for the bathroom. Soda turns to him, looking sick. Two-Bit starts washing the blood off of his face. But Steve is still angry and ready to fight. His body is tense, like a spring that’s been wound too tight. His fists are pulsating and he’s angry . It’s the only conscious thought his brain can come up with. He’s angry.
“Steve…” Soda is at a loss for words and Steve doesn’t know why. The only thing he can feel is anger. Got red anger as a scream threatens to tear through his throat. His hands want to keep hitting.
“What Soda’s trying to say is you beat the guy half to death Stevie. I don’t even know if he was breathing when we left.”
“Shit…” It’s all Steve can say.
It wasn’t the last time it would happen either. Sometimes he could control it, but sometimes he didn't even realize what he was doing. Steve would beat the guy half to death before Soda or Two-Bit or even Dallas would pull him off. It was like a red haze would go over his eyes and he would operate on auto-pilot. Letting anger take control as a form of self protection.
It had worked when he was a child and his father would beat him. He wasn’t sure if it was working now, but it was all he had.
So he bore those hungry flying fists and spiteful tongue… not like a cross but like an anchor. He would be strong where Soda couldn’t. He would protect this kids when Johnny and Ace couldn’t protect themselves.
So he would try to fight, but not so uselessly like he had done all his life. Now, he would fight with passion and purpose. He knew he’d spend the rest of his life fighting; the only difference now was that he would fight for something . Fight for his gang and his sister and Sodapop and all those little greasers who were too young to fight for themselves. He would never stop fighting but he would start fighting for something good. Maybe his mother was right about him being angry, but she wasn’t right about why.
Steve wasn’t angry for no reason. It was an important distinction.
Steve was angry because of his situation and the shit he’d seen in his life, the shit he’d let his sister go through. He was angry because of his abusive father and the way he’d always been second best.
But most of all, Steve was angry because they deserved more . Jonny deserved to not be so scared all the time and Ace deserved to have a childhood filled with love and Soda deserved a girlfriend that wouldn’t break his heart and Darry deserved to go to college and Dallas deserved to have family and Two-Bit deserved not to drink to escape and Ponyboy deserved his parents alive. They all deserved so much more.
And Steve was angry about all of it. Greasers were used to having nothing and Steve was no exception. He’d grown up fighting with nothing and nobody on his side. His anger was his only constant companion. Keeping him warm at night when his mother left and protecting Ace from whatever violence took place that day. The same hot anger that has burned holes through every memory he has.
Steve had his anger… as well as his flying fists and snarky comments.
So from that anger, Steve would fight. For his friends and his family and for a chance. Because though he may think he’s second best at everything, there is one thing he’s the best at. Steve Randle always gets up and fights for what he believes in.