A Change of Pace


Summary: Don remembers an event from his childhood that was just a little unexpected. Very teensy drabble. Don and Charlie.

A/N: Teeny tiny drabble. Enjoy. Please R&R.

From the very beginning, Don had been skeptical.

It just seemed unlikely. More like something he would have thought up. What were the chances, after all, that his baby brother, the prodigal maths genius, would come up with the idea to propel himself off the roof of the shed and down onto his perfectly positioned bike in order to make it out of the street in record time? Charlie had told him. He didn't remember them though.

But in a way he couldn't refuse when Charlie asked for his help. His brother never did anything dangerous, not even anything he'd ever call 'fun'. His fun came from doing complex math equations in his dark room. His mother once nicknamed him 'mushroom'; a name that had stuck. At least for Don.

He'd helped him set up and everything. Climbed up and untied the swing from the big old tree, and helped make a sort of improvised flying-fox, that Charlie could use to swing down onto the bike.

Standing beneath the awning of the porch, watching through rounded eyes as his little brother prepared to throw himself off the shed roof and onto the bike, he had cheered, and shouted encouragement. Charlie had puffed up his little chest, grinned wildly for the first time in years, and leapt forwards.

Down. Only after the dreadful realisation that the rope was just a tad too long did it occur to him that he really should have made his brother test the flying fox earlier. As in, before he launched himself off the roof down onto the pavement.

It really wasn't funny, he knew, nor a time for jokes. But, leading his little brother gingerly up the garden path, as he nursed an obviously broken leg and bleeding arm, he couldn't help but comment,

"I suppose that was part of your equation?"

"Shut up."

The End