A/N: Inspiration struck while at work at 9:30 yesterday morning. I was on a roll all day except for when coworkers kept coming in my office expecting me to do work-sooooo annoying, get your priorities straight, guys, teehee! I hope this is as fun for you to read as it was for me to write!
Joe dumped his soccer gear unceremoniously on his bedroom floor and headed to the shower down the hall.
"Smells like a rose garden in here, Joe," Frank commented from his room. He hadn't looked up from his textbook.
Joe paused mid-step. He walked backwards to his brother's bedroom door. Frank didn't notice.
"How did the game go, brother dearest?" Joe said. "Oh, great, Frankboy, thanks for asking. Yes, our team won! Oh, that's so exciting, Joe! Did you score any points? Why yes, Frankie-baby, I scored three, as a matter of fact—"
"I get it, Joe," Frank said tensely. He wrote a notation in his notebook. "Congratulations. I'm sorry, but there's a horrific physics test tomorrow. Take your shower and we can talk for ten minutes afterward."
Joe glanced at the clock. It was 6:50, the sun only just beginning to set. "Then you'll study from seven to ten, bed at 10:30 so you can get your full eight hours? Can you pencil me into your schedule for 10:00, maybe have some warm milk and cookies together and we can tuck each other in?"
Frank moaned and leaned back, covering his face with his hands. "Congratulations again, I've lost my train of thought. And how would it work for us both to tuck each other in? Do you have an extendable arm?"
"It's all good, Frank, let me help you with that equation." Joe pulled up a chair to Frank's desk, stretching exaggeratedly, making sure his armpits were as close to Frank as possible. "What're we doing?"
Frank wrinkled his nose. "Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion."
"Oh, Kepler, of course—I knew his grandpappy."
"You can't help, Joe. I think this sample problem is unsolvable…I called the teacher, but I don't think she's home."
"She's in my room. Sorry, I was too exhausted to roll over and hand her the phone."
Frank abruptly pushed his chair away from his desk and stood up. "Enough, Joe. I've had enough of a distraction as it is. I really can't even meet right now-I'll see you at ten and we can talk about your victory and your feelings and your self-esteem."
Joe held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Okay."
Frank sat down and picked up his pencil.
Joe walked over to Frank's bed and lay on top of it, crossing his encrusted cleats at the ankle. He pressed Frank's house line speakerphone on and dialed a number.
Frank slowly turned around, glowering at his brother as the phone rang twice. They heard a familiar voice. "Hello?"
"Hey, baby," Joe said smoothly. "Listen, Callie, my schedule is wide open until ten o'clock tonight, so I'd love to pick you up for a burger and—"
With one fluid motion, Frank dove onto his bed, wrapping his arms around Joe's waist and pulling him to the floor with momentum.
Frank raised his arm to deliver a shoulder punch but froze when they heard a second voice. "Callie? You're seeing Joe now?"
Callie's mom had picked up the house phone at the same time as Callie had.
Joe pressed the disconnect button. He used the final second of Frank's shocked reaction to roll out from underneath him and open the bedroom window.
Frank snarled with primitive rage and began pursuit.
Joe crouched on the shingled roof and took three steps backward. It was tricky to avoid the gutter as he jumped down, but he and Frank had both done this many times.
Joe turned left and took off running, quickly hearing another set of running footsteps behind him. His hopes of escape plummeted; he was tired and sore from his soccer game, while Frank worked out for forty minutes each morning and twenty minutes each afternoon and was perpetually ready for anything.
Joe's hamstrings begged for relief, but he knew that hesitation would be deadly. A couple of faces appeared at the windows of their residential street, but the neighbors were generally used to this.
They approached Santitori's, the local Italian grocery store, and Joe was relieved and unsurprised to see Biff riding the toddler-sized merry-go-round by himself just outside the sliding entrance door. This was a game that he and Tony played; one of them would hide around the corner, the other would ride the kiddie toys, and whoever could withstand the humiliation the longest was considered the manliest man.
Biff was huge but had no formal training, so Joe made a beeline around the corner of the grocery store, grasping Tony's shoulders to slow down and balance. "He's after me," Joe gasped, dropping his hands to his knees.
Not only were Frank and Tony in the same karate class, but Tony never needed an excuse to fight. Tony assumed a fighting stance, one leg in front of the other, hands up to block. Frank rounded the corner at an unfortunately convenient angle for Tony, who grasped Frank's arm, sidestepped, and flipped Frank onto his back in the grass. Frank compensated naturally, rolling through it, but still needed a moment to recover. That moment was all Tony needed to sit on Frank's back and push Frank's shoulders into the ground, fully restraining him.
Biff walked around the corner. "Seven minutes and thirty-two seconds," he said proudly, ignoring the scene in front of him. "And two cheerleaders from school walked by, too. Could've gone longer but I ran out of quarters."
Frank's cheek was pressed into the ground. "You could've snuck up on Tony and helped me out, idiot," Frank panted.
"What's the magic phrase, Francine?" Tony asked.
Frank sighed. He waited a few seconds longer but everyone knew that he could not prevent the inevitable. "I accept my defeat by the hands of Antonio Prito, The Warrior King."
Tony nodded in satisfaction and stood up. Frank rolled to standing and dusted himself off.
"Something good had to have happened to cause this," Biff said, eagerly joining the group for the news.
Frank stared icily at Joe. "This is your doing. You will explain it."
Joe shifted from one foot to another uncomfortably.
Raucous laughter pierced the Bayport stillness as Biff and Tony debated who should be more embarrassed, Joe for making the call or Frank for having to face the Shaws and explain. Biff and Tony had a systematic ball-breaking ritual, and Frank and Joe knew that once one round of jokes stopped, they were required to wait for their friends to think up new jokes until it was all out of their system. Suddenly Joe held up a hand to silence the group. A creaky rattling grew louder as it came towards them.
Laura Hardy rolled around the corner, pushing the most rusted, half-decomposed shopping cart the friends had ever seen. "Everything okay here, boys?" she asked pleasantly.
Joe remained silent.
"Just peachy, Mrs. H," Biff said, his smile too wide. "The boys were having a race and, uh, everybody tripped here at the finish line. Can I help you put the groceries in the car?"
Joe's palm itched to slap Biff's expression off his face. This was his mom.
"Why, certainly, Beauford," Laura replied, still nice, still neutral. Biff, mildly chagrined, followed her amidst a smattering of snickers.
This interaction cemented Joe's long-held suspicion that his mother preferred it when her sons withheld certain details from her.
An old beat-up car squealed to a stop twenty feet away from the boys in the parking lot. A gun jutted out of the passenger side window and shot Joe long and thoroughly.
Joe sputtered, off guard and alarmed and momentarily deprived of oxygen. When he finally had a second to get organized, he self-assessed and determined that he was not hurt. Only soaking wet.
Iola leaned out the window, still pointing the Super Soaker at Joe. "You're lucky I ran out of water. That's for hitting on my best friend, jerk!"
"Whaaa-?" Joe sputtered. The rear window rolled down and Callie shrieked with laughter. On the other side of the car were the two cheerleaders from school, and all four of the girls raised their arms and made an obscene gesture as the car burned rubber and fishtailed out of the parking lot.
"Did my Callie just do that?" Frank asked. His shocked expression made Joe feel just a little bit better.
"Karen and Samantha must have called Iola and Callie and told them something was going down at the grocery store. And Biff just watched them from the carousal like a helpless jerk. Damn it, who's got a phone?" Joe ran his fingers through his sopping hair in frustration.
Tony fished his out of his backpack and handed it to Joe.
Joe's fingers flew, texting Iola. I deserved that, babe. I was pranking Frank, I swear. That's why he was chasing me. I liver you.
"Curse this autocorrect!"
*I love you.
Joe made a miserable face in Frank and Tony's direction. "You've got to help me out of this one, guys."
Frank crossed his arms. Tony appeared too entertained to want to alter the course of events. The sun dipped a bit lower in the sky.
Joe heard a ping, looked at the phone, and uttered an expletive. He showed the phone to the two others. The girls had sent a picture of Biff, quite happily squished in the backseat between Karen and Callie.
"That skank probably didn't even finish helping Mom with the groceries," Frank said. "Hey—maybe she's still here with the car!"
The three ran out to the parking lot, but she was no longer there. They heard another ping.
We forgive you Cupcake and Muffin and Tony! Meet us at Inspiration Point and you will see what we want to do with you.
Tony gazed towards the heavens with infinite gratitude. "Inspiration Point? One girl for each of us? My diary will never believe me."
"That's quite an abrupt change of tone, Tony," Frank said. "I'm not quite sure they're planning what you think they're planning."
Tony leveled a steely gaze at Frank, then Joe. "There is a one percent chance that they will do what I'm thinking of, so yes, we will be going. Unless you two want the entire school knowing about those adorable pastry nicknames. You both will have to roller skate to school every day for a week to redeem your masculinity."
"We don't have a car," Frank said weakly, but they all knew what the revised plan would be. Silently they all headed toward Tony's house, which was right behind Santitori's. Tony practically skipped in excitement, and he'd already opened his garage door by the time Frank and Joe joined him.
"Darn it—my brother has one of the bikes out, and another one has a broken chain. We only have one single bike and the tandem." Tony grasped the handles of the single bike, pulling it up to his level.
Joe and Frank stared at the double seater bike in growing horror.
Frank cleared his throat. "Tony, your parents are the laughingstock of the town when they ride that thing around. You can't possibly expect me and Joe—"
"Not a convincing argument, Muffin," Tony interrupted.
"I'm Muffin," Joe mumbled.
Tony took a menacing step forward.
Frank sighed. "We have to face the girls tonight, Joe. Inspiration Point is less than a mile away. Maybe nobody from school will even drive past us."
He was certainly wrong about that.
Joe started to feel a little guilty by the time the third car screamed speculations about other things he and Frank might do in their leisure time. He'd dragged Frank into this.
"A radius vector joining any planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal lengths of time," Frank muttered from the front seat.
Joe frowned. "Did you say something?"
"Kepler's second law."
Joe stopped pedaling. "Seriously, Frank? The girls are about to team up to force us into the most humiliating, groveling apologies of our lives and that's what you're thinking about?"
"Force us into apologizing? What did I do?"
"Let's practice by role playing what you might say to me if you were apologizing for not coming to my game or caring how it went."
Frank slammed on the breaks so severely that a cloud of smoke briefly obscured the front tire. Joe didn't wait to come to a full stop, instead hopping off the back seat and running the rest of the short way to Inspiration Point.
"You're so damn needy!" Frank shouted after him. He had to lay the tandem in the woods, giving Joe more of a head start this time.
Joe stumbled cautiously onto the wide cliff by the bay, half-expecting an old-time booby trap to pull him up by the feet. This spot had a beautiful view, or would have if dusk weren't rapidly shifting into darkness. And it was right next to Bayport High, the risk adding to the thrill.
Joe could see a car parked a couple of hundred feet away under the streetlamp. He saw movement in his peripheral vision. He decided not to defend himself when Frank approached. Frank didn't attack.
"Before we run the gauntlet, why don't you give me that punch I've been asking for all night," Joe said wearily.
Joe couldn't see Frank's expression. Frank didn't punch or respond.
The two brothers were suddenly blinded by headlights, and Frank automatically stepped in front of Joe. Frank stepped back when four figures approached.
Tony had arrived before them with a bag in his hand. He was standing just a tad too close to Samantha. Iola and Callie were on their right.
"There are two people missing," Joe said.
"Biffy and Karen had something they needed to accomplish privately," Tony said with a hint of anticipation.
Joe frowned in the bright lights. Did he dare hope to make out? "Sorry, girls. I swear I was just punking Frank because he wouldn't stop studying."
"My Frankie? Never." Callie grinned. "No worries, Joe. My mom is fine. After we hung up she just said something about making sure to stay with men that are marriage material."
"Oh, that's good," Joe said in relief.
Frank approached Callie and opened his arms. "Did she really say that?" he asked eagerly.
Callie melted in his embrace. "Yes, she did."
Iola walked up to Joe. "My mom asked me to remind you to return those Richard Simmons workout DVDs."
"Not done with them yet." Joe grinned and stepped forward, pulling Iola into his arms.
"You're all wet!"
"What a surprise!" Joe tickled her and she shrieked with laughter.
"Typical." Tony glanced sullenly at Samantha, who had taken a step away from him.
Joe stopped tickling Iola just in time to hear Callie whisper something to Frank. "The squares of the sidereal periods of revolution of the planets are directly proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the Sun."
"Baby, you know just what to say to me," Frank breathed, leaning in for a kiss.
Joe turned toward Iola. "We need to refill that Super Soaker."
"We'll stop, we'll stop." Callie stepped away from Frank but held on to his hand, pulling him toward the group. "We do have a reason why we asked you to come here."
Phil, Jerry, Belinda, and Brian emerged from the darkness. Unlike Joe, Brian had showered and changed after their soccer game. "We parked across the street," Belinda said.
"You two aren't really forgiven. You will now have to watch your women make out with other men!" Tony declared triumphantly.
Every female present joined together to send derisive comments in Tony's general direction.
Jerry showed Frank his phone. A Youtube video was playing, Frank huffing up the hill on the tandem bike while Joe sat behind him with legs straight out on either side.
Frank shook his head. "Unbelievable, Joe. I thought it got harder because we started going uphill."
"And you guys were nice enough to get it out there on social media. With friends like these, who needs enemies?" Joe asked.
"Speaking of enemies, let's break up into two teams." Callie nodded toward the bag. "Pass out the flashlights, Tony. Everyone is hereby officially challenged to a half-hour game of capture the flag. Unless they are chicken."
Half the group flapped their arms and made bawk-bawk sounds.
Joe's face erupted into an infectious, enthusiastic grin. "You guys are the best," he said. "If Frank goes with you guys and I go with—"
Iola put a hand on his arm. "You and Frank are on the same team," she said. "You two always need just a smidge of male bonding after he chases you down the street."
Joe looked from her to Callie with admiration. They always seemed to know what needed to be done.
Joe ended up on a team with Frank, Callie, Iola, and Brian. They may have rigged the selection process just a tad. Samantha described the boundaries—extracting a solemn vow from the guys that they would not go spelunking on, near, or down the cliff in their quest for machismo—waited for Callie and Tony to hide each team's respective flag, and blew the whistle to start the game.
Joe soon lost himself in the game, and could tell that the others felt the same. He added a few grass, sweat, and dirt stains to his already filthy soccer uniform. Joe took an impulsive offensive risk and got himself caught, causing his team to halt their process and scheme a jailbreak.
"That was too easy," Frank mumbled, using his flashlight to signal to the rest of the team to join him at the jail site on the offensive side. "What happened to their guard, to their entire team? We have less than ten minutes left, so they must be going balls to the wall on our side looking for their flag."
"Then we should do the same." Joe explained the plan to the rest of the team when they joined them. "We haven't explored our northern boundary yet. We're going to do a full sweep of the perimeter in the time we have left."
Joe and Iola took the lead. There was no hope if their enemy was within hearing range; Brian was too huge to conceal, his footfall too heavy. Joe looked back into the darkness.
"Get those flashlights on, Frank and Callie."
"We can see fine from your flashlights," Callie said.
"Not up for debate. We need to know where your hands are at all times. I need all members of my team thinking clearly and able to move quickly at a moment's notice."
Frank sighed and turned on his flashlight. He frowned. "We can see Bayport High from here. Why is there a light on in a classroom this late? There's no PTA meeting going on tonight."
"Frank, if you keep track of PTA meetings, I'm going to cause you pain," Brian said.
Frank remained silent.
"Nothing to do but explore it." Iola began making her way through the trees and back to the main road.
Joe's uneasiness increased as they crossed the street and entered Bayport High's field. "Is that Mom's car under the street light?" he asked Frank uncertainly.
"I don't like it either. Let's go." Frank and Joe's internal alarms were more sensitive than other teens' due to their line of work.
Fortunately the light was on in a first floor classroom. Joe forced down the impulse to tell the girls to stay back. He'd never gotten a positive response when he'd done that in the past.
The team of five fanned out, by silent mutual consent allowing Frank and Joe to be the ones to approach from the sides and peer into the open window.
Their mom stood casually chatting with Mr. Santitori the grocer in the corner. Belinda and Brian's mother was making the finishing touches to a table of food. Biff and Karen sat with their knees touching in the corner, both fully engrossed in their conversation.
Laura Hardy was the first to notice the group at the window. "Where is it—here it is! Your flag! Your team wins!" She crossed the room to them, waving the blue flag briefly, smiling.
Joe's face again erupted into an infectious, enthusiastic grin. "Sure wasn't expecting this!" He hopped over the windowsill and into the room, knowing better than to ask permission. The four others followed in close succession, only Brian having a difficult time squeezing his considerable height and muscles through the window.
"Surprise!" Mrs. Conrad tentatively approached her son Brian. "Laura and I got to talking after the game when everyone else had left, and we figured…well, those five points that you and Joe scored gave Bayport the win. So we made a few phone calls. It deserves to be celebrated."
Brian said nothing, only pulled his mother in for a tight hug. Everyone knew that Mrs. Conrad was generally not happy in her life or in her marriage; this was wholly out of her comfort zone.
"Some lousy detectives Frank and I are," Joe commented to his mother. "We never took one glance into your shopping cart. Very impressive, using your key to the school for unauthorized purposes. Thanks, Mom."
She squeezed her son's hand. "Mr. Santitori gave us a fifteen percent discount. He insisted on helping us set up and staying to see your reaction."
"It was the least I could do, considering all the business the boys give me." Mr. Santitori stared pointedly at Biff.
Biff looked decidedly embarrassed, glancing at Karen.
"What's the time to beat?" Brian asked Biff as if it were a perfectly normal discussion, diffusing a little bit of the tension.
"Seven minutes and thirty-two seconds," Biff mumbled.
Karen put a hand on Biff's shoulder. "That is nothing. I'll break ten minutes easily—I just have to wait for my allowance on Friday."
Biff gave a look of appreciation.
Mr. Santitori smiled. "I would have taken those rides down a long time ago if you young people didn't have this competition going on. Tell you what—I'll give you each a two-minute free ride each week."
Biff and Brian's eyes lit up with wicked delight. Mr. Santitori was in his seventies and had no idea how his comment would be interpreted by a group of teenaged males. Joe knew he would be hearing jokes about it for weeks.
The group heard a voice on the other side of the door. "If they're not here by now, we'll have to blow the whistle—hey, surprise, guys!" Tony walked through the door, followed by his team.
"Why do you think the entire universe was hanging out at the grocery store tonight?" Iola grinned at Joe. "Callie was on her way out the door—another thirty seconds and you wouldn't have gotten her."
"So this game was a distraction to give you all time to set up. Both flags are here." Frank had an expression on his face that Joe couldn't decipher.
"The girls dropped me and Biff off here to work on decorations," Karen said.
That explains it, Joe thought. Half of the room was immaculately decorated with Bayport's team colors; the other half of the room had sagging streamers, an incorrect spelling of the soccer team's name, and balloons that were only partially inflated. These decorations appeared to be leaning toward the other half of the room, almost as if whoever was putting them up was more focused on the other half of the room than his own.
"Than I demand a rematch. Tomorrow night, same teams." Frank arched an eyebrow in challenge.
The room took a collective pause.
"But tomorrow is Thursday. Another school night." Callie was looking at Frank as if he were a triple-layer chocolate fudge cake.
"Do I need to make chicken noises, Ms. Shaw?" Frank wrapped an arm around her.
Chet wandered through the classroom door. "Any reason why we're not eating?" He took a plate and helped himself.
No one even bothered to ask.
The party broke up into smaller groups, giving Joe and Brian opportunities to talk about various plays and tactics they had used during the soccer game. Joe and Brian thanked everyone again, and Joe and Frank took Iola and Callie to the side to thank them privately. The party dispersed shortly after nine o'clock, Laura Hardy insisting that she and her sons would take care of clean-up. As there were small lights and reflectors on the bikes, Biff graciously offered to sacrifice himself by taking Karen home on the double-seater bike.
There weren't enough leftovers to bother saving, so Laura quickly took care of trash, table wiping, and sweeping while Frank and Joe worked on the decorations. Frank made short work of taking down Karen's decorations, then joined Joe as he fought with Biff's half of the room.
Frank broke the silence. "Mom obviously didn't tell me about the party because she knew I wanted to study." He sighed.
"But tonight still worked out, Frank. I'm glad you ended up here." Joe fought with a balloon sloppily taped to the wall, trying not to peel off the paint.
Frank pulled up a chair to make it a team effort. "I guess maybe when I'm old, I'll remember times like these before I remember Kepler's Laws."
Joe shrugged. "Knowing you? Who knows. And maybe Kepler will help you get us out of a tight jam during an astronomical case someday."
Frank grinned. "You're a pain in my ass, but I think you and I go well together. Congratulations on your soccer game, Joe, and for reminding me what's important."
Joe stopped what he was doing, taking a long look at his brother. He couldn't remember the last time they'd hugged. Fortunately, they didn't have to make that awkward decision because they were both balanced on chairs. He stuck out his hand.
Frank took it in a firm grip, clapping Joe's shoulder with his other hand.
There was a small smile on Laura Hardy's lips as the three turned off the lights and locked the classroom door.
Frank and Joe's team was soundly defeated at the Capture the Flag rematch the following night. They all sulked together over a platter of muffins and cupcakes at the Bayport Diner afterward.
The morning after that, Frank approached his brother between classes at Joe's locker. There was a stoop to Frank's shoulders and a small shuffle in his walk.
"What is it?" Joe asked. He was surprised by the level of concern in his own voice.
"I have a present for you, Joe." Frank's eyes crinkled in good-natured defeat. "I need your signature on this. I'm dedicating it to you."
Joe took one look at the paper and raised both fists high in victory. "This is the best day of my life!" he shouted down the packed hallway. "It's all downhill from here!"
Frank grinned and rearranged some items on the door of Joe's locker, hanging up the physics test.
Frank had earned his first B.