Disclaimer: I don't own The Outsiders.

Title: "Tappin' Maples"

Rating: T

Summary: "Good evening, gentlemen," said Tim, large and looming in the burning white parking lot lights. Behind him, Angela smirked. Dally smiled a little too widely at her figure in the distance, wishing with every fatal intent she were hit by a speeding bus.

A/N: My version of what happened when Dally slashed Tim's tires. The characters are all one year older. Also includes Two-Bit! =D

"What are we doing?" asked Two-Bit. He couldn't see clearly in the night haze. "Dally."

"What?"

"I said—what are we doing here?"

"Gonna rob a fucking bank, Al Capone," Dally said. "What do you think we're doing?"

Two-Bit folded his arms.

"You slashed Tim's tires, didn't ya?" he sighed. "And now you wanna get the priceless look on his face when he sees it."

"Kodak moment," confirmed Dally, dipping his head down in the shadows.

"Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to another exciting match tonight at The Random-Ass Parking Lot in beautiful Tulsa, Oklahoma!" announced Two-Bit, suddenly drawing on the car's dice as a drop-down microphone. "In this corner, weighing one hundred and sixty-five pounds, two hundred and sixty-five when he's pissin' bourbon at Merril's, he's the gangster piece of New York shit we all love to hate, Dallas the Dumbshit!" He glanced at Dally. "And in this corner, weighing one hundred forty-fi—"

Dally landed a drive right to the stomach and Two-Bit was down.

"P—penalty," he staggered.

"It's called a no-holds-barred match," whispered Dally, and with that hit him straight in the groin, "you ignorant motherfucker."

After the sting subsided, Two-Bit looked up.

"Dally—" he began.

"Shut it."

"Somethin' wicked this way comes, my man," he warned.

"I said shut it!"

"Enemy breach at twelve," Two-Bit said, pointing out to the stretch of pavement ahead.

They looked out the window and saw a girl, standing akimbo and clad in denim. The small white creature walked slowly, gliding through the night and stopping right in front of the hood. There it announced in a deathly shrill: "What'rya doing this time, Winston? Out harassing people you shouldn't?"

Dally stuck his head out the window. "No time to be talkin', Angela. Tim's coming and he's gonna be so fucking pissed he'll slay you the minute he sees you. Get in the car so he won't see you."

Angela glanced at the nails on her left hand.

"No," she said.

"I ain't asking you," Dally said. "I'm telling you. Get in the car."

"My, oh, my! How on Earth did these ever get here?" she smiled, dangling Dally's keys on her index finger.

Dally's eyes narrowed.

In a flash of whip-lashed denim she took them and flung them atop Tim's hood.

"Fuck you," he spat.

She smiled.

"You know he hot-wired this thing," said Two-Bit.

Dally nearly pounded his palm against the horn, but stopped himself at the last minute. "Get in the car now, you little bitch-fuck!"

"Maybe I'll just stand here, or maybe I'll move—but that all depends what you're willin' to pay me. What do I get out of all this, Winston?" she said.

"This, you cunt," Dally said.

He slammed his foot all the way down on the gas, jerking the car forward with such a start it pushed Two-Bit all the way back into the cavity of his seat, black rubber whipping the pavement with a sudden scream; but Angela leaned forward and put her elbows down on the hood, cupping her face in her palms and smiling up at him through half-lidded eyes.

"Going soft," she murmured. "How fucking sweet."

"Get in this goddamn car or I'm running your ass over right now!" Dally roared.

"Naughty, naughty, grease," she said. "Lucky for you, Tim's feeling generous today. Play nice and maybe he won't strangle you with your own intestines. Play nicer and maybe you'll only get one beatin' with the door he rips off your car. Beg and maybe he won't use your eyelids as lampshades."

Just as her voice dissolved in the wind, another voice filled the air: "My tires!"

"And it's three," she said, holding up a trio of fingers.

The veins in Dally's neck stood out white.

"My tires!" Tim screamed. "What the hell happened to my tires?"

"Jesus H. Christ, Dally, just run her ass over!" Two-Bit shrilled.

"...two," she said, flashing the peace sign.

Turning around, Tim picked up the keys that Angela had thrown atop the hood. "What the shit is this?"

"Angela, I'm not gonna tell you again, get in the—"

Angela said nothing, only smirked dreamily from behind the dashboard glass.

"SON OF A BITCH!" Tim exploded.

"ANGELA! GET IN THE FUCKING—"

And Two-Bit ducked beneath the hordes of screams, clapping his palms over his ears.

"...one," she said, grinning as she revealed her middle finger.

"WINSTON, YOU JACKASS!"

"Houston to Dallas: we have liftoff," Angela said.

"Good evening, gentlemen," said Tim, large and looming in the burning white parking lot lights. Behind him, Angela smirked. Dally smiled a little too widely at her figure in the distance, wishing with every fatal intent she were hit by a speeding bus.

"Good evening, sir," Dally nodded. He could feel Tim's breath melt the welding.

"Would you mind telling me why you wise-asses just slashed my tires?" said the brute sweetly.

Dally shrugged, still smiling.

Tim flared his nostrils. "Then whose keys are these?"

He threw them down in Dally's lap. Dally picked them up and studied them curiously, offering them to Two-Bit. Two-Bit, wide-eyed, also shrugged.

Fumbling around in his back pocket, he produced an extra set of keys, jingling them in front of Tim's fuming face. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Tim." He pointed to the back seat. "We just went for a beer run."

Tim's eyes narrowed.

"Not all of us are dicks, you know," added Two-Bit.

"Yeah—" Tim said, purporting his own wise conclusions, "some of you are cunts."

Dally had never flashed a smile so bright as when he saw that look of damnation rising on Angela Shepard's face as she was dragged down the street.

"So," said Two-Bit, "it was your evil plan all this time."

"Angie's diabolical," said Dally. "But she should know better than to mess with the fucking devil." Turning around, he held out his hand. "Pass me one."

Snapping open a keg, Two-Bit pulled back the cap and handed the bubbling elixir over to Dally. "So why'd you slash Tim's tires anyway?"

"Bored," he stated.

"Always good t' have a half-assed excuse," said Two-Bit sagely, taking a drink for himself.

Dally swallowed the last of the can's contents, crushed it against the dashboard and threw it out the window. "Shut the hell up and pass me 'nother 'un."

As he reached over the back seat, Dally noticed a slip of paper fall out of his back pocket and flutter to the floor. It was worn, crumpled and sat on, but, strangely enough, it was as white as any other fresh piece of paper.

He squinted; apparently the owner had never bothered to look at it.

"What's that?"

Two-Bit bent down. He held the draft notice in front of him. Without a hint of mirth on his face ripped it in two with a clean rrruuup, tossing it out the window and into the eternal night.

"Nothin'," he said.

Dally lifted an indifferent eyebrow and flipped out his lighter. "They'll slam you for that, you know."

"More important things to do than cappin' Japs."

"It's Nam, man, not Japan. God damn, you're stupid," Dally said. "No wonder they kept you back all those years. I bet you can't even operate a fucking loaf of bread without havin' to read the manual first."

"Bull fuckin' shit," replied Two-Bit miserably.

"You know it's true. You're just not cut out for that kinda stuff. You'd be blowin' up whole towns just to watch 'em go boom. Pretty fireworks, ain't it? I'm scared for those motherfuckers already."

"Shut up."

"What? Too sloshed to think of anything clever?"

"Nah," he said. "Not this, man."

And they sat the next five minutes in the silence of passing yellow headlights.

"You got a notice," Two-Bit said. "Didn't you?"

Silence met him.

"Didn't you?"

"Fuckin' set it on fire the first chance I got," Dally muttered. "Let's go."

The car started down the road, but halted. It started and halted, started and halted, started and halted, the driver inside uttering an incoherent string of oaths as he shifted gears into neutral. Two-Bit knew it was bad when Dally began to mistake the brakes for the gas.

"We could go together," Two-Bit said in the subsequent darkness.

The two greasers looked at one another.

"Ah-ha, so you are drunk," smiled Two-Bit.

"You're drunk," corrected Dally, pointing to himself. "I'm inebriated."

"What's the fuckin' difference?"

"Confuses the fuck outta the fuzz if you go all Oxford on 'em," he said, rubbing at his mouth. "Hey, pass me the slip, willya."

Two-Bit handed him another can. "Fancy wordin' don't make it any less true," he said.

"That proposition I do also concur," Dally said, then, taking another swill, added: "Shithead."

He tossed the can out. Two-Bit watched it twirl out the window, bounce with a brief flash of white and roll out on the road...getting flattened by a speeding Ford only a moment later.

Ain't we all like that, he thought.

"Dodgin'?" he said.

After a long pause, Dally replied: "Maybe."

"Hell, Dally," Two-Bit grinned, slapping his fellow drunkard on the back. "We're tappin' maples already."

Dally looked once, turned and revved the engine—Two-Bit had begun to sing "O Canada."

To be continued.