You know the drill: By this Disclaimer, I sadly admit that I do not own any particle of Drake or Josh, and I'm making no profit from them, and intend no infringement to the copyrights of large, powerful entertainment moguls or conglomerates.

Rated: M for Mature - content may be upsetting for younger readers, particularly male/male slash in Part 3 - be warned.

Inspiration provided by the final moments of the episode The Helicopter.

CRASH COURSE

PART ONE – LOCKDOWN

After they had effectively grounded themselves, to avoid a confrontation with their parents, Drake Parker and Josh Nichols, looking crestfallen, and with their heads down, turned on their heels and scurried down the hall – away from the threatening helicopter pilot and the furious father, the latter standing by the front door to their house, holding a bill for $400,000.00. As soon as they were out of sight, they broke into a run and hurried upstairs to the sanctuary of their bedroom. They were chilled, exhausted, hungry, and now, extremely worried.

Drake sank wearily onto the couch and told Josh, "I guess I should thank you for saving my life. Although it's not going to be worth much now."

Josh fell back onto his bed and replied, "Maybe if I hadn't gone after you, the situation wouldn't have happened. If you'd been by yourself, gotten scared and not jumped, nobody would have been the wiser."

"Well, that's a hypothetical," answered Drake. "The reality is that an expensive helicopter crashed into the ocean and we're being held responsible for it."

Walter Nichols, still wearing his jacket, and his wife Audrey Parker-Nichols, who had only returned home a few minutes earlier after working the annual charity telethon at Walter's television station, burst into the room without knocking.

Audrey, with arms crossed, looked at the boys with flames practically shooting from her eyes. "This is your only chance to give your side of the story, before we decide what's to be done. We've talked with this pilot, Vincent, and we don't like what we've heard."

Drake reached out to his mother, begging "Mom, don't take his side. This man's idea of a skydiving lesson was 'S-P-L-A-T! Squat, Pray, Leap, Aaaaah, and Touchdown.'"

Audrey countered with, "Yet you trusted him enough to go anyway, even though we had specifically forbidden you to do so."

Josh broke in with, "It was just for the ride, Mom. Drake had already agreed not to jump. It was his prize, and you only said he couldn't JUMP."

Audrey was not to be distracted. "What do you have to say for yourself, Drake Parker? You use your brother as an alibi, get him mixed up in all this, and now you've got him pleading your case."

Drake tried to explain, "I didn't ask him to follow me or to go up with me. Vinnie suggested that. And I never asked Josh to plead my case. But you should know that Josh saved our lives; we had to share the only parachute. The helicopter didn't have any fuel left. We didn't have a working radio. I wanted to land that helicopter. It's not like we crashed it deliberately. We didn't have any options left."

Josh burst in with, "And Megan hung up on me when I called for help on my cellphone. She told me to call back in half an hour! We didn't have thirty minutes to wait. The alarm was blaring that the tank was empty! And don't let her snow you that she didn't know it was an emergency; I was very specific about that!"

The boys told their story. They told everything they could think of. They answered every question that their parents asked. They felt as though they were on a crash course to oblivion all over again, judging by their parents' livid faces.

Finally, Walter nodded to Audrey. "Boys, for the next 24 hours, you can consider yourselves under lockdown. Your mother will bring your food. I don't want to hear a peep out of you. The only reason for you to take a step out of this bedroom is to go down the hall to use the bathroom. Have I made myself perfectly clear?"

Both boys mumbled "Yes, sir," nodding, and hoping that this was as bad as it would get. The parents retreated.

Josh got off the bed and joined Drake on the couch. "So far, so good?" he asked.

Drake, unsure, replied, "Well, they haven't killed us or even yelled that much . . . yet. Considering."

Josh concluded, "As long as they're talking it over, I guess the jury's still out." Drake shivered, brought his knees up to his chest, and wrapped his arms around his knees. Josh leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Twenty minutes later, Walter returned, without his jacket on, and carrying a large empty box. "Your mother is on the phone with an attorney she knows. She wants to find out if we can legally challenge this pilot and/or his company. We think he was negligent of your safety in the first place, and that you had to take necessary action to save your lives under the circumstances. We may even drag in third-parties, like the makers of Helicopper and the p.r. firm that thought up this idiotic promotional stunt. We're not just going to accept this without a fight."

As he talked, he walked around the room. Into the box he placed the television remote and the game controllers. "Give me your cellphones."

Josh reluctantly said, "Uh, Drake's has been broken for a while and mine was … in … the 'copter."

A muscle in Walter's jaw twitched. He nodded briskly, and then he picked up a bag on the shelf by their mini-fridge, which contained assorted junk food, and put this into the box. Next he picked up the house telephone, adding it to the collection. For good measure, he unplugged the keyboard to the desktop PC and took it. He grabbed a stack of books sitting on the desk next to Josh's bed. Everything was loaded into the box.

Hands on his hips, Walter scolded the boys. "Drake, it was your disobedience and stubbornness that is at the root of this whole mess. And Josh, you should know better then to take matters into your own hands. You also knew that Drake was forbidden, and you tried to cover for him, instead of telling your mother the truth."

Walter paced back and forth, scowling.

He continued his lecture, "We have tried to be good parents to you both. We understand that it's natural to want to be independent at your age and that you're at the stage of your life where you want to expand your horizons. But we're almost at our wit's end. We don't know how to make an impression on you. We've grounded you, taken away privileges, put you to work to fix things or to pay them off, and we even placed you in that ill-conceived police-sponsored program."

He placed Josh's laptop into the box, then Drake's red electric guitar. The boys were astounded but dared not protest.

"We almost don't know what to do with you," Walter admitted. "Give me your G-O's, too." These went into the box, along with a portable CD player.

Walter took the now full box and set it in the hallway. "Your mother and I have discussed it, and there's one last thing that we've never done. Our parents certainly never hesitated. But those were different times. I have to admit, I don't know if this will have any impact at all on you, but I hope it will make ME feel a whole lot better." Walter cracked his knuckles, a bad habit that Audrey abhorred, and one he rarely indulged in these days unless he felt he was under a powerful amount of stress.

Pointing to the door, he said, "Josh, go to my bedroom and stay there with your mother until I send for you."

Josh traded looks of uncertainty with Drake, got up and went out the door, which Walter shut behind him. Josh hovered outside his closed bedroom door, trying to listen, but then he saw little Ms. Megan Parker gloating in the hallway.

"Oh, you're gonna get yours, missy, the cat's out of the bag now!" Josh said to her with satisfaction.

Megan's lip curled as she asked, "What do you mean, you boob?"

Audrey came out of the bedroom she shared with her husband and said to Megan, "Go to your room at once. I am so disappointed in you, young lady. How could you hang up on your brother when you knew he and Drake were in peril? And don't tell me you thought it was a joke. Stay in there and wait for me or your father."

Megan frowned and squinted at Josh, a killing look that spoke of revenge to follow, turned and flounced into her room, slamming the door for effect.

Audrey took Josh's arm and steered him to her bedroom. As soon as she had closed the door, she threw her arms around his neck and started to cry, much to Josh's chagrin. "I can't believe I came so close to losing the two of you today," she told him. "How could I console myself, when all I could think is that 'if only the boys hadn't lied to me, maybe I could have saved them'? It would have crushed me, and your father, if you hadn't come back." With a trace of bitterness, Audrey added, "When we first became a family, I remember it used to be impossible for you to lie to me. I guess that's the truest sign that you're growing up. Now you can lie."

Placing his large hands on Audrey's arms, Josh looked down at his pretty little mother and replied softly, "I don't know what to say, except how sorry I am."

She took his face between her hands and looked up into his eyes. "You're a good boy. Soon you'll be a good man, like your father." She mused, "You've grown so tall over the past year," then continued, "I know you wanted to help, to do the right thing. You were trying to protect your brother. And your courage and quick thinking ended up saving the both of you. But I want to lift that burden off your shoulders. You are not Drake's parent. You don't have to make those kinds of decisions. You need to leave them to me and your dad."

She removed her hands from his face, squeezed Josh's hands as she lowered her arms, kissed Josh on both cheeks, and hugged him again. "I'm serious, Josh. I know how Drake tries to twist people around his little finger to get his own way. But you have more power than you think. I know he respects you and cares deeply for you, as any brother would. You mustn't worry that his opinion will change if you need to come and tell us, when he's doing something that you know is foolhardy."

Josh wanted to say that wouldn't make for a good relationship with someone he shared a room and sometimes a bed with but he couldn't think of a way to express himself. He was so upset at the sight of his mother in tears that it drove all coherent thoughts out his head.

Audrey's sobs began to subside. "I don't know if your father ever told you that his oldest brother fought in Viet Nam and had a lot of stories about the choppers."

"Uncle Jimmy?" asked Josh.

"That's right," said Audrey, nodding. "He's the oldest and your father's the youngest, with three in between. That's one of the reasons your dad and I were so dead-set against Drake doing this."

Meanwhile, at the other end of the hallway, Walter's heart clenched in his chest and an icy feeling flooded his nervous system. The thought of how close he'd come to losing his sons nearly made him lightheaded with fear. He recalled when he was a teenager and he and his best pal had gotten drunk and wrecked the family car. They had suffered only minor injuries, but the confrontation later, with his parents, seemed so much worse than the accident itself. He remembered that his father had beaten the snot out of him. He brought himself back to the present moment and sat down on the couch opposite Drake, who was waiting to learn his fate.

Walter didn't yell. He wanted Drake to listen and not tune him out. "Son, your mistakes are growing costlier the older you get. And more dangerous. We can't risk losing you. We have to make you understand that your decisions, your choices in life, come with consequences, and you can't just give in to your impulses all the time. When you lie to us, that tells us that you don't understand our concerns and that you don't respect us." Walter stood up. "We really feel you've left us no choice here."

END PART ONE

Continued in Part Two