Two-Bit Mathews x Randle!Reader
Two-Bit drunkenly turns up at the reader's house meaning to confess a secret to Steve.
Request: two-bit cuddling with you
I made you Steve's twin-I had a reason, you'll see-but I hope you dont mind! It doesn’t quite begin with cuddles but I think(?) i did justice to Two and that lovely idea
You hear a rough voice, sloshing like beer in a bottle, call out at yours and Steve’s bedroom window. In a groggy haze of rude awakening, you jerk your neck around to the inside side of the room and crane to see your alarm clock on the nightstand between the two twin beds.
1:38. Who the hell is calling here at 1:38 in the morning? You wait for confirmation that that is in fact happening, or that you were dreaming, and not a minute later you have your answer.
“Hey, gimme a break, Scandal Randle! I’m gonna count to ten ‘undred and ninety…two, and if by then you don’t lemme in-”
It’s Two-Bit. The realization is groggy but firm this early in the morning, as the echo of his distinctive, knavish voice bounces off the siding of your house. Glory, he sounds so gone with the wind that he wouldn’t know Jax from Anheuser-Busch. And how much difference that makes is a lot: he’ll argue for hours on the subject. You suppose that means he wouldn’t know any difference between you and Steve to let him in if that’s what it takes to get him to stop yelling at the house. Your mother might be boozey herself on sleep but she can wake up with that bellowing going on just like anybody and wear both you and Two-and anyone else in the vicinity for that matter-plain out.
As you swing your feet round the side of the bed a question pops into your mind that was too obvious to come up with before. Where is Steve? You scan your mind for any remembrances of a mention or an intimation he was going to be someplace other than in his bed at a time like 2 o’clock in the morning on a school night. Sure, he doesn’t care a whole lot about that, but he is where he ought to be more often than not. Was he going out with Evie? Not likely, her parents don’t let her go out but except Friday nights and Saturdays, and anyway Steve told you she’s visiting family in Topeka this month. That isn’t to say you’d mind if the oldest of the gang, the cutest, in your opinion, the one you secretly felt positively whipped for drops in for a visit via your bedroom window and your brother happens not to be home…
No! No time to think about that now. You move the slat of wood responsible for keeping the window closed and as Two-Bit staggers closer to the opened portal you call out to him hoarsely. In the dewy chill of lightening dawn you can see furls of your breath. “Listen, you drunk skunk, you keep your voice down and crawl in here since you need to so bad-and be quick about it!”
There’s still considerable question in whether he knows just who he’s talking to, but Two takes the order regardless and throws back a sloppy “Shhhh” before clambering in the small square you’ve opened up for him. In the process his clumsily crushes a tiny upcrop of tulips you planted below the sill about a week ago, for this you just sigh.
“Stevvvvveeeeeeee,” Jesus, really? He’s blinking his wet eyes a lot and you’re sure if you don’t sit him down soon you might as well shout ‘timber’ and make Two feel welcome on your floor. Not Steve. Y/N. But that’s okay, I bet you don’t even know who Walt Disney is right now, goin’ by how trashed you are. Poor thing.
“Whaddidja need, Two-Bit?” You’re not in the best form yourself and decide to lean against your dresser, carefully watching how Two leans further and further forward off the edge of the bed, but never so much so he faceplants to the ground.
“I got-I gotta tell ya somethin’, buddy, but you gotta swearrr-” he giggles at nothing, making the sitting situation even more precarious for a moment, before shaking it out of his head and visibly forcing his focus back to whatever it is he needs to talk to ‘Steve’ about, “You gotta swear ‘at you ain’t gon’ say nothing about it to Y/N.”
“On my honor as a greaser.” you mumble, too interested in what he has to say to make any effort about pretending to be Steve, or whatever you’re doing here. Out of nervous habit you card through the Randle curls that without any grease tend to fall in the way of your eyes. They’re getting used to being open, not so lead heavy as you look over to him and notice that the boy is more disheveled than usual, but somehow even that doesn't impact the way he looks like a goddamn greaser prince. What is it that they drink down at the Mathews’ that made their boy grow up so good-looking? Those ducktails, that toughened physique. You wish you could borrow a cup of whatever it is, but put aside your teenage self-consciousness which is so not needed on top of everything else that is swimming around the room at the moment. What does Two care what you look like, he can’t even see.
“Heh. That’s funny…Law’, where’m I s’posed to start?”
“Try…why are you here at cock crow and not a shade later? What couldn’t wait?”
In a brilliant moment of drunken dissociation your squeeze Two-Bit completely misses anything you’ve said and yawns like a big cat. Apparently he’s decided that your bed looks like the perfect place to stretch out, and pass out.
“No no no,” you chide, knocking on the heels of his boots, attempting and failing to shift his deadweight. “You fall asleep in my bed and my mother’ll skin us both alive.” It occurs to you to thank your stars your Pop doesn't care enough to be home lately on top of that, because if the opposite were true there would be no Two-Bit Mathews left to skin.
“I ain’ gon’ fall asleep,” Two protests, but the fading slur of the delivery introduces doubt in your mind. “N’w here, you climb in with me, so’s I can talk t’ya quiet.”
You freeze, astonished by fate’s sense of humor. You're not even considering it, not for a second.
It's a fact not easily acknowledged that you're more innocent than you'd like to have others believe. That’s why you're so thankful the boy you’re in love with has taken care of blinding himself, because him being in your bed has given you a case of blushing tomato. So you don’t budge.
“Nuh-uh, Two, you sit up and talk to me.” It’s imperative you don’t give him too much leeway in this arena, from what you've seen of this loopy sort of drunk on rare occasions with Steve, it's also best to coddle and support a person under such influence like they were no more than three years of age.
Unfortunately, this particular one is of a more stubborn variety than your absent brother.
“Two-Bit.” You repeat demandingly.
“Iiii’m fine where I is…’r was...wait-” he lets out another howl of laughter at this silly mistake and you're sure this time someone is gonna come through your door asking questions. “Golly you get off topic like a Mississippi-” a Mississippi something, but you'll never know what because he’s essentially buried his face in the pillow invitingly below it.
“Hey, c’mon.” You plead, exasperated and too far from awake to be taking onslaughts of conflicting emotion like this. Few people at your teenage time of life are devoutly religious, and you aren’t an exception to the rule. However it comes naturally as almost the only thing to do: you pray, as you contemplate the best way to proceed at first, and that crucial moment later, for the gods to favor the position that if it’s to get Two out of your house that much quicker, it won’t be the worst thing if you...say, scoot in next to him. You’re now facing each other, or Two’s trying his best to turn his head so there’s a certain blurry vision of you looking back. You keep a separation enough so that you’re not leaning on each other, but it ain’t hardly a king size bed and you find you need to hunker down so his warm breath can’t tickle the crook of your neck. “Tell me what’s in that crazy mind of yours then get outta here, promise?” your whisper sounds fiercer than you mean and Two waggles a hand in the air to dismiss the harsh noise.
“So you wan’ me to come straight out with it, huh? Well I...shoot, all my words is gone.” he laments deliriously.
“Start slow,” you dig deep for patience, “You say ‘I’ and then whatever comes with.” It’s like guiding his kid sister, at times when you’ll sit with her and do some reading, or she’ll ask why she can’t eat all the chocolate cake she wants. Easy stuff, but with this tuff boy that always seems to strut and dodge all the trouble that threatens his way, this boy that you’ve grown up with and mooned over while Steve teased you all the way along-it takes a moment to realize. Your father is always asking what you, what your brother and the rest of you have to be so bitter and complain about. Now you know, it’s that same thought you and Ponyboy came up with to fight back against Steven Randle Sr., those same words you coughed on instead of saying out loud, ‘us kids sometimes break, only cause on account that life treats us like we ain’t kids at all.’
Empathy darn near breaks your heart and you instinctively snuggle just a little closer, like the nearness of you alone could protect Two-Bit.
You don’t know it, but when his mind ain’t clouded by liquor Two sure thinks it could.
“I,” he pushes himself, “I...I got a-fuck, I hate this. Cause you isn’t-you ain’t gonna care, I mean what’m I tellin’ you for? Y/N never would go out with me, even’f I got the big brother’s permission. And I know I ain’t nothin’ anyhow, what could I offer a smart, beautiful kid like ‘at?”
You’re shaken to your very core. He may be worse for whiskey but no matter how little he meant them you know this very second you’ll never be able to forget the words you just heard Two speak. The soft giggly part of you, the part you put away to keep from getting hurt most days seems hellbent on pounding your heart straight out of your chest, and what a way to die.
Then the universe has the funniest imaginable answer for you: you apparently have nothing to say back. Words are disappearing from your brain as fast as oxygen is and you wrack that foggy stupid sleepy wasteland of a mind for anything of comfort, of contradiction, anytime now! And finally, they oblige. It’s time for you to to have your voice back. The glorious result?
“Steve’s only bigger than me by six minutes, s’that don’t count.”
The saving grace is, like most, impossible to anticipate: is that these words, so oft-repeated and so thoroughly you, allow Two for the first time to peek through the blue haze of sodden inebriation. And his eyes snap open like caps popping off the sensation, no longer able to hold in an energy, but instead nigh about to burst.
“Y/N?” He asks the face emerging from the dark, dumbfounded.
“Yeah,” you sigh, expecting the worst of it, envisioning even a mad hatter Two-Bit, launching himself from the bed and swinging from wall to wall, letting the night’s craziness go with the last of his alcohol and leaving you here, downright silly.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” he mumbles.
“Bathroom’s down the hall, unless I got to show you where it is.” Resigned. Crushed, really.
“That’s a whole icebox a’chilly coming from the seventeen year old kid I just poured my heart out to.” he comments, the words still strung together with the wet weight of too-much-to-drink but more aware, more meant this time.
“Well what d’you expect? You’re too drunk to know which way’s your left hand and even when it’s morning I’ll still be in love with your fool self, you’ll have forgot it all and I love you, but I s’pose it don’t matter, at all…” you make to eject yourself from the bed, but-admittedly muscular- Two-Bit throws an arm over your whole body and holds you still.
“Say that again.” he barks, concentration molding his face handsomely in the faint morning light as it seeps into your room. It’s nuts, you briefly think to yourself, not sure what subject is meant by the ‘it.’
“I got school tomorrow,” you deflect, trying not to like this accidental brush right up to Two-Bit and the security of his arm around you. His leather jacket catches the littlest bit of violet dawn. “You gotta get out of here, and I don’t hardly know when Steve is comin’ back.”
“I don’t care.” He says deliberately, and you initially account that his Jack Daniel’s blood content makes for the look in his eyes, the way they seem to be scanning the space, your wardrobe tucked in the corner by the window. Then it sends a shiver up your spine, as without words, Two-Bit’s wide gaze corrects you that he isn’t doing anything of that kind. He’s staring, straight, deep, into your eyes. “Say you love me again.”
Fine. What do you have to lose? Only the sweetest, most caring friend you got. Only your pride whether he has no memory of your wounding it or just pretends for the rest of your existence this morning was some kind of dream. What’s left, anyway? He knows what you said and you have to get away from his hands on you before you really start to feel turmoil rise up because-of course-they can’t stay there. What have you really got coming to you on the other side if you let go of the big secret?
“I lov-” He doesn’t even let you finish the three little/big words, but suddenly draws you flush up against his chest and steals your lips forcefully from you for a moment. Getting them back, your head spins.
“Really?” Why you ask, you don’t know. It seems to you a very childish question. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to Two-Bit like anything other than a lucky opportunity to kiss you again to make you sure. Real sure.
“Naw,” He kids, grinning like a fool, “I just snuggle in with anybody I can find ‘fore sunrise.”
“Good. I’d hate to think you and I was goin’ together now or somethin’.”
“Shoot would that mess things up. We’d have t’tell the boys then, or somethin’, and I’d have to hold you in my arms for goddamn forever,” Two-Bit’s voice is low but sharp on the end when he’s close to sleep what’s more Jax takes away some motor control when it comes to his mouth. He kisses just fine though, and he pecks you again on the top of your head before rolling over so he’s on his back. You follow suit, mind glazed with disbelief, so you can cuddle up to him. His heartbeat echoes in your ear, and you beg morning to never end. “Not t’mention things like this,” Two lets the running joke fall off and drapes an arm over your back as you close your eyes and rest on him. Your alarm clock is anything but forgiving-what’s three hours compared to the eternity cuddling with Two-Bit has its way of bringing on the desire for-but for now you two just lie together peacefully, he’d have thought he’d be off to sleep but you go first. He’ll slip out in a little while, it’s the only thing he rightfully had ought to do. But he can’t disturb you yet.
He hums Elvis, you’re fadingly aware that you know the song. Tomorrow Night.
He drapes one arm over your back and though you mumble something about time, he soothes you enough to nod off.
Two-Bit twists a lock of your hair around his finger and wonders how he got s’damn lucky.
