F is for Food Fight

Chapter 2 of 5

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters

Author's Warning: NO food, NO drink.


Don dumped a small can of peas into a bowl and heated them in the microwave. He noticed as he was carrying the bowl upstairs that there were carrots in there, too. He didn't like cooked carrots and neither did Charlie.

Ah, well, maybe Charlie wouldn't notice. He set the bowl of peas on the tray that he'd forgotten to take downstairs and studied his brother.

Charlie was sitting on the floor, staring at a sheaf of blue paper with a horrified expression on his face.

"Buddy?" Don asked tentatively. The last time Don had seen that expression on Charlie's face was when he was explaining why there was more than one copycat sniper. He put the tray on the floor and walked over to his brother, trying to figure out what was wrong.

Charlie looked up with a tragic look on his face. "I mixed up the tests!" he said. He grabbed up a green sheet and turned a bit green himself.

"What? How?" Don demanded. He crouched next to Charlie and set his beer on the floor at a safe distance from the distraught mathematician.

"What was I thinking?" Charlie wailed. Don suspected part of the drama was supplied by the beer. "I transposed question six of my Stats I final with question six of my Complex Systems final!"

"Redo the pages?" Don suggested.

Charlie looked ready to cry. "That means redoing all the tests! I've got two different versions of two tests."

Don pursed his lips. "Let me guess, the tests have the same questions, but in different order to prevent cheating."

Charlie nodded.

"And you screwed up both tests?"

Charlie nodded again. "Like I said, I pasted question six from the Stats test into the Complex Systems exam and…" his voice choked off.

"The agony of cut-and-paste," Don said. He chewed on some peas thoughtfully while he considered Charlie's dilemma. "Can't you just reprint the pages?"

"Well, yeah, but I'll still have to unstaple all of these," Charlie said, gesturing. He sighed and started to stand up. "Well, I'd better find the staple remover…"

Don swallowed the last of the peas and carrots. "Wait, I got an idea," he said. "Each test only has one question messed up, right?"

Charlie nodded.

"So, why don't you print up the correct questions, and then cut and paste them the old fashioned way?" Don mimed cutting with scissors.

Charlie took a deep breath. "That might work," he said, visibly calming down.

"Of course it will work," Don said. "I'll help."

Charlie dug his laptop out from the paper blizzard on the table. Then he frowned at Don. "Weren't you getting me something to eat?" he said, wistfully. Then he saw the empty bowl. "Oh, man!"

"Ummm..."

Charlie charged down the stairs without listening to Don's explanation. "I need something to tide me over from this horrible shock," he said. He stuck his head into the pantry and froze. "Oh, crud."

"Forgot to go to the store?" Don asked.

Charlie shot him a dirty look. "I haven't had time. It's finals, dammit."

"You have to learn to organize your time better," Don pointed out. "Dad can't baby-sit you all the time."

Charlie muttered something under his breath. He pulled out the peanut butter and a loaf of bread. However, there was no jelly or jam to be found.

Charlie sighed, but made a sandwich using the last of the peanut butter and some crystallized honey that he'd found in the back of the cupboard.

"That's disgusting," Don said.

Charlie glared. "What's wrong with peanut butter and honey?"

Don shook his head. "I was referring to the mold on the bread."

Charlie flipped the sandwich around and stared at the large green spots on the bread.

Don was impressed at the breadth and acrimony of his brother's vocabulary.

Charlie gave Don a dirty look, and then threw the sandwich and the empty peanut butter and honey jars into the trash.

"Don't blame me!" Don said, holding his hands up.

"I blame you," Charlie growled.

"I'm not the one who forgot to go to the store!"

"I did not forget! I had everything planned out," Charlie grumped. "I ordered supplies online last night. I was going to pick them up on my way home from school. I had enough food to last me until then, if I stretched things out by buying a sandwich for dinner." He gave Don an accusing look.

Don wasn't impressed. "You should have eaten it when you had the chance, Buddy," he said.

He checked the freezer again to see if he had overlooked anything. "Nice selection you have here, Chuck," he said. He pulled out some freezer-burned ground beef. "I've seen healthier looking meat in the morgue," he observed. He threw the pack into the sink to defrost so it could be fed to the garbage disposal.

"Were you planning on eating these cold packs?"

"Very funny," Charlie snarled.

"This carton of ice cream is empty," Don said.

"Oh," Charlie said in dejection.

"Ooo, hot dogs," Don said. "Well, one, anyway." He peeled the frozen hot dog out of its package and held it up. "Not sure if it's edible, though." He took a bite.

Charlie gaped. "It's not even defrosted!" he blurted.

"What?" Don said, finishing it off. "I'm hungry."

"You're hungry?" Charlie complained.

"Isn't that what I just said?" Don asked.

"What about me?"

"You go fix your exams. I'll make you a tuna salad sandwich," Don promised.

"We don't have any bread," Charlie said tightly. He looked at the loaf in disgust and threw it in the trash.

"I'll make you a tuna salad, then," Don said.

"You'll eat it," Charlie accused.

"C'mon, Buddy, you know I hate tuna salad! Especially with celery in it."

Charlie sighed. "Fine. Thanks," he muttered. "I'd better fix those tests." He headed up the stairs.

Don hard "boiled" an egg in the microwave. Actually, he poached it, but let it sit long enough that it would be hard all the way through.

The egg was would still be warm, but beggars couldn't be choosers. While the egg was overcooking, he salvaged what he could of the celery and mixed it up with the mayonnaise and relish.

By then, the egg was finished cooking. Don poked it to make sure it was nice and hard, the way he hated it for breakfast. He picked up the lettuce and gauged that some of it was still good.

Struck by inspiration, he tore off the good leaves and chucked the bad. Then he finished mixing up the tuna salad and spooned the mixture into the leaves.

He loaded the tuna salad wraps onto a platter and snagged the last beer from the fridge. Then he carried his masterpiece to the solarium in triumph. "Here, Chuck, I told you that I could make a tuna salad!"

Charlie was not impressed. Most likely because he was no longer conscious. He was leaning against the couch in the solarium; head tilted back, eyes closed. His breathing was deep and regular and punctuated with the occasional snore.

Don shook his head. "Man, you are going to have a sore neck tomorrow, Chuckie," he said. He picked up Charlie's empty. "And a sore head," he added. He placed the bottle on the occasional table.

He debated waking Charlie up to finish fixing the exams. Then decided to see how far he'd gotten first.

The federal agent in him had to resist the urge to pull on latex gloves as he investigated this 'crime scene.' He did, however, avoid disturbing the piles of paper as he lifted one of the green sheets up to examine it.

Charlie had finished printing up the correct questions. He had obviously color coded the corrections to match the exams, too.

All that was needed was to cut up the pages of question six and paste them onto the appropriate color exam between questions five and seven.

Don grinned broadly as it dawned on him that, for the first time in his life, he was going to be able to help his genius brother with his math.

First, he had to move Charlie. It was extremely awkward, but Don managed to hoist the smaller man onto the sofa without waking him. "Man, Charlie, when was the last time you got a good night's sleep?" Don muttered. He stepped back and studied the results of his manipulation.

Sadly, Charlie's new position didn't look much more comfortable now, but at least he was out of the way.

Don sat cross legged where Charlie had been, since everything was already set up to be worked from that position. He carefully placed his beer where it wouldn't be knocked over onto the exams.

The stack of green and yellow was bigger than the stack of blue and goldenrod. Plus the header of the green and yellow pile said that the exam started at eight. The blue and goldenrod test claimed to start at 1 PM.

There were thirty-two tests in the green and yellow batch. Even though he used Charlie's paper cutter instead of scissors, Don's hand was getting tired by the time he'd finished cutting them.

The pasting wasn't physically difficult, but it was tedious. And it was tricky to work while he ate the tuna wraps. However, he managed to complete both tasks without soiling the paper. He took the empty plate downstairs and washed up. He also finished washing the dishes that had been soaking in the sink all evening.

He returned to the solarium to find that Charlie had curled up into a much more comfortable looking position.

Don started on the second stack, but ran out of steam after he'd finished cutting up the second batch of answers. It had been a long day in court. Ah, well, he'd done enough that Charlie could finish it easily before test time. He carefully 'bagged and tagged' his results in some plastic grocery bags that Charlie had lying around.

He looked around for his beer…

… and found it clutched in Charlie's hand.

Don gasped in horror. He snatched the beer up, but the bottle was empty. He hunted around for the other two bottles. They were both empty.

That explained why Charlie hadn't woken up when Don moved him.

Don shot Charlie a disgusted look. "Three beers on an empty stomach? Honestly, Charlie, you have no commonsense." He headed for his old room, muttering about beer stealing brothers.