Title: GTB, Part II: Ramifications

Author: FraidyCat

Disclaimer: In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter so much who owns what, and for how long? For when we pass, we pass with empty hands; it is no longer of any import how tightly we held on to the things of this world. In the meantime, perpetuate the idiom – "the rich get richer" -- and direct any and all payment for these fine characters to Heuton, Falacci et al, their creators and rightful owners.

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Chapter 9: You Can't See the Forest for the Trees

Don and Charlie had not made cookies together in…well, ever, when Don stopped to think about it. When he was growing up, he often came home from school or baseball practice to find a plate of cookies waiting for him. They were usually lopsided and misshapen, and the result of one of his mother's afternoons off; she would take Charlie to one of his tutors, and then they would come home and make cookies. Less often, Don had made them with her himself. She would distract him on a rainy Saturday, when a game was cancelled, or when he had his tonsils out and was stuck at home for most of a week. At those times, it was his turn to help, and a plate of chocolate chip or oatmeal-raisin would be waiting for Charlie when he trudged home after his lessons.

Don's favorite had always been his mother's 'Cowboy Cookies', full of M&Ms and peanuts and coconut and any number of other things. He had learned how to make those himself, because he genuinely enjoyed them, and they always reminded him of home, and his mother; and, because, as he learned in college, chicks really got off on a man who made cookies. Just a few weeks ago, in fact, he had surprised Robin at her office with a batch of homemade cookies. The gesture had led to some of the hottest sex it had ever been his pleasure to enjoy; which actually had made him feel a little guilty. He was fairly certain Margaret Eppes did not share her cookie recipe with her oldest son hoping to get him laid.

So the idea to spend the morning making cookies with Charlie was probably some kind of sub-conscious penance. The mind was an odd creature that way. At any rate, it turned out to be a fairly inspired idea. Don and Charlie were able to share some fond memories of their mother – something they had done far too little. His tightly-wound brother even began to relax a little.

Charlie sprang back to full alert just after noon when Don's cell rang. Don picked it up from the counter in the kitchen, where they were both waiting for the last batch of cookies to come out of the oven, and read the caller ID. "It's Colby," he shared. "They probably got a call already and dispatch told him I called in sick; he's checking up on me." Charlie tugged at a strand of hair and looked at him worriedly but didn't say anything. Don shrugged, preparing to answer. "If I don't take the call, he and David -- and maybe even Tom – will come barging in here to make sure I'm not dying. I don't call in sick a lot, Chuck." Charlie remained silent, although his eyes got a little wider.

Don grinned at him and flipped the phone open. "Eppes." He wandered into the vestibule as he listened for a while. "Yeah, Granger, I'm okay. Sorry about messing up the on-call for everybody…must've been something I ate." He wandered some more, stopping to straighten the photograph of his graduating class at Quantico, hanging on the wall between the vestibule and the bathroom, just over the small telephone table where he stowed his weapons each night. "No!" he suddenly barked into the phone, and Charlie stiffened in the kitchen, watching him. "I mean, I appreciate the thought, really," Don went on, "but I'm good, here. Charlie actually dropped by this morning and he's been taking really good care of me." He turned, and started back toward the kitchen. "I will," he said into the cell. "Thanks for checking up on me, Cole." He flipped the cell shut hurriedly and waved a hand at Charlie. "Dude! There's smoke coming out of the oven!"

Charlie swore and whirled around, yanking open the oven door. Smoke billowed out, and the alarm in the kitchen began to sound. Don grabbed a towel from the counter and began to wave it under the alarm, trying to dissipate the smoke, but he clearly heard Charlie swear again, followed by a loud clatter on the top of the stove and the sound of someone kicking the oven door shut. The alarm finally ceased, and Don turned a little to take in his brother, who was standing over the stove with his finger in his mouth. He dropped the towel on the counter and turned more fully to steer Charlie toward the sink. "Forgot the potholder, didn't you?" he asked. He reached for Charlie's hand. "Let me see."

To his surprise, Charlie jerked back from him, his eyes narrowing and his free hand reaching to the counter nearest him, to grab a knife from the wooden butcher block that stood there, waving it vaguely at Don as if to hold him at bay. "That stupid son of a bitch," the youngest Eppes growled, taking his other hand out of his mouth and looking at it. "He burned me!"

Nonplussed, Don stood in silence for a moment, eyes transfixed by the shiny blade of the knife. "Charlie?" he finally ventured, moving his gaze to his brother's face. Charlie grimaced and shook his head twice, as if to dislodge something stuck in his hair. He squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head to his chest. His entire body undulated in a massive shudder; an indiscriminate grunt escaped his mouth. The sum effect of it all was a little frightening, and Don took a half-step closer. "Charlie?" he repeated.

The curly head slowly rose, and familiar, if somewhat glassy, brown eyes locked with his in confusion. "Donny?"

Don smiled a little in relief. "Yeah. You okay, Buddy?"

Charlie lifted his burned finger into his line of sight. "There's a blister," he observed in wonderment.

Don nodded. "Right. You burned your finger on the cookie tin. Why don't you put the knife down and come to the sink? We can run some cold water over it."

Charlie looked at him as if he were crazy. "Knife?" He followed Don's eyes to his other hand, and saw that he was clutching a butcher knife with a five-inch blade. He made a noise of distress and let it clatter to the counter. "What the hell?" He looked back at Don, clearly terrified. "What the hell? You were supposed to watch! What…what day is it?"

Don held up a hand and tried to soothe him. "Calm down, calm down. It's still Sunday. You've been right here – I just hung up with Colby, and the cookies were burning…do you remember any of that?"

Charlie almost felt relief. He did remember the phone call, the burning cookies; and Don was saying that it all had just happened. He hadn't lost any time. He glanced sideways at the counter, not quite ready to believe. "Why did I have a knife?"

Don hesitated. He wasn't real sure of that himself. "Maybe you were going to scrape the burned cookies off the sheet?"

Charlie considered. There was some sensibility there; he just didn't remember making that decision. "Is that all I don't remember?" he asked.

Don's shoulders slumped, and Charlie shivered, waiting to hear something terrible. "You said some weird shit, in the second person," Don finally admitted. "I think I scared you, yelling about the cookies and trying to force you over to the sink. It was my fault," he concluded, not sure exactly who he was trying to convince. Charlie looked at him warily, and Don hurried on. "Seriously, it was just a few seconds, Charlie." Against his own better judgment he tried to make a joke. "Look, you're even wearing the same clothes. Mine."

Charlie looked down and saw that Don was right. Don had been here the whole time, and he was saying that everything made sense. Everything made sense. Charlie sighed and looked back at his brother. "You've been watching?"

"Didn't take my eyes off you," promised Don. His gaze shifted to Charlie's hand, now hanging limply at his side. "Can we run some water over that finger now?"

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Despite three Red Bulls and the Harrison Ford retrospective Don had found on one of the pay channels, Charlie fell asleep on the couch. Sometime between the third Star Wars movie and the first Indiana Jones, Don glanced at him from his own end of the couch and saw that he was down for the count. He knew that he should wake him; Charlie was adamant that he not be allowed to sleep – but he just didn't have the heart. The kid was clearly exhausted; visibly upset by the cookie incident, and he looked so damn peaceful with his head tilted back on the couch, his mouth slightly open. Don let him sleep all the way through the first Indiana Jones. He even called for pizza about half-an-hour before it ended, and Charlie didn't wake up until the delivery guy started banging on the door.

He bolted upright on the couch, breathing heavily. "Oh, my God."

Don couldn't help smiling as he rose from the other end of the couch and started for the door. "Take it easy, Charlie. It's just the pizza guy." He climbed over his brother's feet and went to the door, trading his hard-earned cash for a Supreme, tipping the driver handsomely. When he proudly carried his prize back into the living room, he was startled to find Charlie standing in front of the television crying. He dropped the box on the coffee table. "What?"

Charlie pointed at the screen. "Where's C3PO?" he all-but begged. "Th-this is the wrong movie. I lost time. I lost time."

Don approached him cautiously, remembering the knife incident in the kitchen. "No, no, Charlie, it's all right. It's okay, you fell asleep. This is the end of the first Indiana Jones movie."

To his dismay, Charlie's face crumbled further and he began to cry harder. "You let me sleep?"

Don moved until he was directly in front of his brother. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry – I won't do it again. I was watching, the entire time. It's been about two hours." He could see that Charlie was not convinced. "What's the last thing you remember?" he asked.

Charlie sniffed, and dragged his arm across his face. "Th-the big meeting, when Han Solo volunteers to take the Fal, Falcon Millenium into the Death Star."

Don grinned. "Sounds about right to me. The only part you can't remember is what you slept through." Charlie sniffed again and Don put a hand on his shoulder. "Come back to the couch; I've got pizza. So far, this is a pretty righteous sick day for me. Cookies, movies, pizza delivery…"

Charlie smiled somewhat tremulously. "Jerk," he whispered.

Don raised an eyebrow. "Last one to the couch gets the last Red Bull®."

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The pizza and most of the cookies were gone by 2, and the Harrison Ford movies had more than worn out their welcome by 5. The brothers turned off the television and Don spent a miserable hour letting Charlie try to teach him the finer points of chess. It had been news to him that he even had a chess set in the apartment, but Charlie had looked a little hurt and insisted he had given him one for his birthday a couple of years before. Lo and behold, Don found it in the hall closet, under a backgammon set and on top of a dusty Pictionary® game still wrapped in cellophane. Standing behind him, Charlie had advanced to full sulk mode. "I gave you that at least five years ago," he muttered. "Right after you moved back to L.A."

Don kicked the closet door shut and shoved the chess set at his brother. "Forgive me if I don't like to play board games against myself," he answered sarcastically. "Living alone here, Charlie."

His brother was barely mollified. "Maybe you'd have a longer-term relationship with a woman if you did something with her besides having sex," he pointed out.

Don bristled. That hurt his feelings a little, but he tried to push it down. "If I was looking for relationship advice, Chuckles, I probably wouldn't go to you."

Charlie reddened and dropped the boxed chess set heavily on the coffee table, lowering himself to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the table. "Susan and I played board games when we lived together," he pouted.

"I'm noting a past tense here", said Don, lowering himself on creaking knees to sit on the opposite side of the table. "You and Amita also play chess, but I haven't noticed that relationship working out much better."

He winced as his own words floated through the air and slapped his brother across the face. Shit. He really was an idiot, sometimes. "Sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean that. I'm sorry."

Charlie's hand shook almost imperceptibly as he carefully schooled his face and continued to set up the board. "Not at all," he answered formally. "It's an accurate observation."

"Might be accurate," countered Don, "but it wasn't fair."

Charlie finally looked up from the board and smiled sadly at Don across the coffee table. "Nothing about life is fair," he observed almost dreamily. "People die. They leave. They hurt each other." He looked away, then, letting his gaze fall back to the chess board. "None of this shit is fair."

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Charlie gave up on the chess lesson around 7, and spent two hours installing several programs on Don's computer and running a systems check. He threatened to teach Don Quicken® as soon as the computer rebooted, so he could balance his own books, but backed off when Don pointed out that he'd already reached his instruction quota for the day and his internal hard drive was in danger of an overload. At 9 Don turned the television back on; Alec Baldwin had come up to bat, and was performing as Jack Ryan, hunting for Red October. Don was sipping a beer, but Charlie was sticking to drinks high in caffeine, determined to stay awake. Still, he started yawning around the submarine's first ping, and by the time Sam Neill was accidentally shot by the KGB saboteur 'cook', was snoring. Don sipped his beer, alternately watching Charlie and watching Baldwin and Connery complete a series of evasive maneuvers. As soon as the movie was over, he thought, yawning himself, he would wake his brother. He had promised, and it was important to Charlie. Still, nothing had happened during or because of Charlie's nap that afternoon; nothing weird had gone down since the cookie incident. Don would let Charlie sleep just a few minutes this time, he decided, until the end of the movie.

About the time Jack Ryan flew home, carrying a teddy bear he had promised his daughter, Don was fast asleep on his own end of the couch.

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"The Hunt for Red October" was replaying when Jeff awoke at 3 a.m.

He blinked at the ceiling in the darkened room, using the light from the television to figure out exactly where he was. He sneered in anger as he remembered the close call in the kitchen. He had almost gotten out. He had gripped the knife in his hand. Somehow, Charlie had regained control and pushed him back under, had kept him there all day.

He turned his head slightly on the couch, aware of the steady breathing that indicated another person was sleeping nearby. His sneer turned into a smile as he observed the Big, Bad Federal Agent – dead to the world, slumped in the corner of the couch like a spineless crustacean. For perhaps the first time, Jeff truly appreciated the small, compact body of Charles Eppes, as he sat forward gingerly on the couch, perching on the edge for a moment. The brother stirred a little, but sighed and settled further into slumber. Silently, delicately, subtly, Jeff rose from the couch and padded unobtrusively away.

He was quiet – so quiet – as he reached the kitchen, veering past to a small telephone table just pass the door on the edge of the vestibule. There was no telephone; apparently Don only had his cell – and in its place on top of the ornately carved table rested a set of keys and a phone book. The proper place for that book was in the single drawer just under the table top, Jeff knew. Excited, he wondered if he would hit the jackpot in the first place he looked. Perhaps the agent was as predictable in his own home as anyone else would be.

Slowly, carefully, he slid open the drawer. He nearly danced in delight at the sight before him. Not only was the agent's service weapon there, it its holster; so were his shiny handcuffs and his back-up piece, a small .38 in an ankle holster. Jeff extracted them all as silently as he could, leaving the tiny handcuff key in the drawer, which he only partially closed, and continued down the hall to the bathroom. Once there, he placed the .38 in one of the front pockets of the baggy sweats after he had done his business, and shoved the handcuffs in the other. Then he removed the Glock from its holster and hefted its solid weight in his hand, caressing the smooth, cold steel.

On the way back to the living room, he stopped at the refrigerator for his own beer. He twisted off the cap quietly and padded back into the living room. He stood over the coffee table long enough to set down his beer, and take the handcuffs from his pocket, placing them carefully on the end of the table closest to Don, on top of some papers. Then he cautiously picked up the remote to the television long enough to lower the sound -- it was giving him a headache. Finally, he retrieved his beer and lowered himself into the easy chair that faced the couch.

He drank, and rubbed the cold steel against his face, and waited for Don to wake up.

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End, Chapter 9