Summary: Set when the brothers are in high school. Don makes a phone call from jail.
Don walked up to the pay phone and dropped in the quarter he had been given. He glanced behind him at the guard, noting the gun on one hip and the nightstick on the other. He punched in the numbers for his house and listened to it ring.
The walls were cool against Don's hand. He wanted to rest his aching head against them for some relief. Sitting in a cell drunk had not been much of a picnic. Sitting in one with a hangover had been excruciating.
Don ran his fingers over the textured surface of the wall. Cinder block walls covered by an institutional grey paint. Lovely. He wondered what sort of germs were squirming on them. God knows who had touched them. But it hardly mattered much now.
Please, please, please if there was a God, his father was going to answer the phone. If his father answered, he could just tell him what happened, he'd come, he'd chew Don out on the way home, he'd be punished, and that would be the end of it. If his mom answered, he was going to have to play on her sympathies and remind him that, after all, he was okay. And he didn't know if the guard was going to actually wait around for all that. And there would be the drive home. His mom would go on and on about how disappointed she was in him. How she expected better. Don wasn't sure if he could bear it.
"Hello?" the voice on the other line said. Charlie. Dear God, why did it have to be Charlie?
"Charlie!" Don snapped, trying to frighten the younger boy into doing as he was told. "Put on Dad!"
"Who is this?" Charlie teased. Charlie had obeyed orders a lot better before the two of them had been put in the same grade. Somehow Don seemed to have been stripped of his authority and, quite frankly, Don didn't like it one bit.
"Put. Dad. On. The. Phone," Don snarled.
"And what is this regarding?" Charlie asked calmly, trying to make Don nuts.
"It's regarding the ass-kicking you are going to get when I get home!" Don snapped.
"Hurry up!" barked the guard. "I don't have all day!"
"Who was that?" Charlie asked. "A friend of yours?"
"If you must know, it was a cop. I'm in jail. Now, could you please, pretty please with sugar on top, put Dad on the phone!" He was yelling.
"Jail? For what?" Charlie sounded duly impressed. Don closed his eyes. Oh, great. Until this moment he hadn't even considered the "What sort of example are you setting for your brother?" speech he was going to have to listen to 100 times. This whole situation just got better and better.
"Please," Don begged, "just put Dad on."
"I can't, actually. He's out driving around, looking for you. You were supposed to be home two hours ago, you know."
Captain Genius might have mentioned that Dad was out a little earlier, Don thought. Great. "Where's Mom?" he asked, resigning himself to his fate.
"Out too. Looking for you. I think she's searching the hospitals. I'm supposed to wait for you to call. Which reminds me, I should get off the phone. You might be calling any minute." Charlie was just loving this. Don could hear him chuckling at his own joke.
Don sighed. "I was at a party and Paul and I got picked up for drinking. Just tell them where I am. They have to come get me. Okay? Can you do that?" The look on the guard's face told Don he didn't have much time left.
"Sure. No problem. You just sit tight and someone will be there soon."
"Thank you," Don snarled and slammed the phone on the cradle.
"Watch it!" snapped the guard. "I can always charge you with destruction of public property."
"Sorry," Don muttered, barely above a whisper.
The guard led him back to the cell where Paul, his best friend for about a million years, sat looking dejected. "How'd it go?" Paul asked.
Don shrugged. "Charlie answered. I guess my parents are out looking for me. He'll tell them when they get back. I just have to wait. How'd it go for you?"
Paul leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. "My old man is letting me stay here overnight to teach me a lesson."
"That's rough," was all Don could manage as an answer.
It took over an hour before someone came and got Don. They processed him and led him out into the main room, where his mother and father were waiting. His mom ran up and hugged him, asking if he was okay. His father snapped at him, asking him what was going through his head, and saying he was lucky they decided not to press charges.
Don followed them out to the car. He had dreaded the ride home, dreaded the speeches and being grounded. But thinking about Paul, sitting in that cell all night long all alone with every pathetic drunk the cops could round up, Don realized that things could be much, much worse. At least he had two people who cared about him. Make that three.