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Tim was angry.
It wasn’t new. He'd gotten used to anger over the years.
He usually just let it bubble up under his skin and manifest itself however it chose. Sometimes he’d fight it out, and sometimes he’d just lash out. Usually at Dallas, who just let it happen.
Dallas understood anger.
But now he wasn’t here and Tim’s brain was working which was never a good sign because that meant that quiet anger would simmer under his skin until it boiled over.
Which is why he wishes Angela would just leave him alone right now.
Don’t get him wrong, he loves his siblings. Well, he likes them. Sometimes.
But sometimes, they didn’t feel like his siblings. They felt like his kids.
He had raised them after all. His mother hadn’t gotten out of bed for love nor money for months at a time when the twins had been growing up, so that fell on Tim.
He had fed them and let them stay in his bed if they had a nightmare and he got his first job when he was eight just so he could get them something to eat.
But he wasn’t cut out for being a parent.
Especially not to two kids who were only three years younger than him.
It was easy for them to piss him off and Angela was a master at it.
The thing about Angela is that she was dangerous. Not in the way Tim and Curly were. She wouldn’t bash someone’s head into the concrete, but she could undo someone. From the inside out. She could push their buttons and take a seam-ripper to their sanity.
She was especially good at doing this to Tim.
Right now, she stood in front of him, wearing heavy black makeup and a dress that was entirely too short.
Talking about some party or another.
He wouldn’t let her go.
Not because he hated her, as both of his siblings seemed to think, but because she was in a different dangerous mood.
She didn’t want to go out and cause trouble, she was reckless. And a reckless Angela was one of the worst things Tulsa would ever experience. She wouldn’t care for rules or authority as much as she usually would and it would manifest in her actions.
She’d end up getting hurt.
Or getting someone else hurt.
It’s clear she’s just doing this to piss off Tim. Ever since he caught her out of the house at one of Buck’s parties he’d told her to stay away from, she’d been picking up older habits.
Smoking weed she found in Curly’s room, drinking, flirting with any of Tim’s boys that came around the house.
And it made Tim so fucking angry because he wasn’t telling her no because he didn’t want her to have fun. He wasn’t telling her no because he wanted to keep her in the house, sheltered from the world.
He was telling her no to keep the world sheltered from her.
She was a beautiful type of danger that was commonly found in the East Side. But it burned her up.
It ended up burning every kid who had it.
Dallas.
Sylvia.
Tim.
It burned them all at some point. Hell, it led Dal right up to his death.
It was because that type of danger was a spark. And the world was gasoline.
They would walk through the world, torching everything in their path, but eventually, that fire would catch up to them.
And the flames were licking at Angela’s toes.
“I’m going to this party, Tim. You can’t keep me inside just because you hate me having friends for whatever stupid-ass reason.” she says, stomping towards the door, a storm brewing in her eyes.
Tim jumps forward, grabbing her wrist just as she almost reaches the door.
It’s too bony. She’s too skinny.
“What the fuck?” She exclaims, her eyes blazing with anger as she stares at Tim.
That same anger that he had.
This is why it pissed him off so much to deal with her.
Because Curly was difficult, he would challenge Tim on everything and he’d make stupid jokes and digs to embarrass him but ultimately, Curly would listen.
Curly’s his own creature. He bore the most resemblance to both Tim and their mother, but he respected Tim. Maybe not a lot, but enough to listen.
Angela is too much like him.
She doesn’t respect anyone but herself and maybe Curly. She couldn’t. Her anger burned too bright and too hot, scorching anyone who gets too close.
She’s a star, everyone she knows orbiting her.
And it scares Tim.
Because Curly will listen to him when he says “no” but Angela always has the same reaction.
The one she’s having now.
She’ll stare at him, a defiant gleam in her eye like she enjoyed seeing him pissed off, knowing that she did that.
It’s like she’s daring him—begging him—to challenge her.
And he has no idea what to do with that because it shouldn’t be him challenging her ideas. He was the parent (kinda) in this situation, not her.
But she still had command. She was still the one who could stare him down and get him to cave.
He was hardly the best brother, never mind the best parent. And right now, he felt all his eighteen years weighing on him. Both weighed down with experiences he should have never had and altogether too light for what his life had been like.
He didn’t know what to do, and he couldn’t help but think that he wouldn’t be able to protect her.
She would burn up too quickly, just like everyone on this side of town eventually ended up doing.
He could do nothing to stop it and he felt everything come crashing down on him all at once.
He saw her face soften slightly before her eyes widen in alarm. “Tim?” she asks, voice too loud.
He just let go of her wrist and walked to the kitchen, landing hard in his chair and letting his head hang, elbows resting on his knees.
He had no clue what he was doing. He was barely an adult and he was expected to help raise a fifteen-year-old?
He felt the tears prick at his eyes and bit down on his tongue hard.
Tim Shepard didn’t cry.
He didn’t cry in second grade when he broke his ankle on the monkey bars. He didn’t cry in third grade when his dad hightailed it out of Tulsa and his mom replaced the guy before two full weeks had even passed. He didn’t cry when he first had to take care of Angela and Curly. He didn’t cry the first night he spent in a cold jail cell, alone and scared.
It wasn’t something he knew how to do. He had burned up his tear ducts years ago. Along with the rest of him.
Now, he was just a lump of charred remains and cold harshness molded into the shape of a man.
He felt small.
Biting his tongue only made his eyes grow blurrier.
Angela sat down across from him and put her hand on the table.
She didn’t reach out and try and touch him, she just sat there.
“I won’t go to the party.” she eventually says, her voice sounding sweeter than it had in weeks.
It reminded Tim that even if he was young and overwhelmed with everything, Angela was younger and probably more overwhelmed.
How long must it have been since she’d seen her brother cry? Even just tear up?
Years.
Because Tim Shepard didn’t cry.
“Good.” He says, voice cracking slightly and it only makes the hot tears come faster because he isn’t supposed to be young. He hasn’t been for years. And he never would be again.
“I’m sorry.” she says, and she means it. She doesn’t have that sickly sweet tone or sound patronizing.
She just sounds sorry.
He gets up, brushing past her and walking to his own room.
“It’s late.” he says, trying hard to make his voice not waver. “I’m gonna go to bed. Don’t go to the party. Please.”
He shuts the door, unwilling to let his sister see him cry, and he lets himself burn up.