Stuck (OLLIE!)

Matthew was probably the most awesome person ever. Only he could climb trees this good. He was like a real live mountain climber adventuring in the wilderness, only it wasn't a mountain, it was a tree. But trees were much cooler than mountains anyway - of course, Ollie loved trees much more than Matthew did. Matthew didn't love trees - he just loved to climb them! And he never used to be able to climb this particular tree in their backyard because he wasn't tall enough to reach the next set of limbs. But Matthew had grown a bit while he was at school, and was naturally completely ecstatic when he found out that now be could reach! So of course that meant he had to climb the tree all the way to the very top now.

He made it to the top in record time! Not that he was timing himself, but it must have been record time because he was the best tree climber in the world. Unfortunately, when he made it to the top, it turned out to be very boring up there. There wasn't anything to do but - well, be at the top. And the tree wasn't that tall - maybe just as tall as the house - so the view wasn't exactly any more exciting than the view from his bedroom window. Boring. He'd just go back down and find something else interesting to do. Except that, on his way down, one of the branches broke beneath his foot. Matthew didn't fall, but without that branch how was he supposed to get down?! The next one was miles away! Literally, miles. Matthew wasn't scared. Water was scary. Heights weren't. But what was he supposed to do now?

"OLLIEEEEEEEEE!" Matthew shouted loudly, probably startling half of the neighbors in the process. "Ollie, can you help me?!" His brother would be able to hear him, even in the house. And he better come soon, because Matthew was hungry and he wasn't exactly in the mood to starve to death in the top of a tree.

The Bennett's lived in a good, quiet neighborhood. Nothing really happened there. Maybe except for the occasional teenage summer party that involved the police and stuff like that. But even that seemed to happen very rarely. Naturally, Ollie was excited for summer just as much as every other teenager. He had different views on fun, though. Very different. He stood in the middle of his bedroom, balancing on one foot, all his weight on his toes and ankle; the bottom of his other foot touching the side of his knee. Having showered only a few minutes ago, Ollie's dark hair was still dripping wet and it curled up a bit at the ends. His arms were folded against his bare chest, which had not even a single trace of hair and was too disappointing for Ollie to even look at, and he was momentarily blind as his eyes were closed. Not completely blind, he could still see strange shapes and vibrant colors, and that was probably the best part of the whole experience.

There was background music, a muggle band Oliver liked. He really liked Empire of the Sun, and the lead singer's techno voice created little dancing Ollies in his brain, and had his mum walked in at the moment she would have found her eldest son in a bizarre position with a goofy grin on his face. "I CAN'T GO ON WHEN I THINK YOU'RE GONNA LEAVE ME BUT I KNOW I'LL TRY!!! Ollie shouted as loudly as he could without startling his family. He was letting go of his academic worries, his personal moments of slight depression that lasted a maximum of 5 minutes, and his urgent need to grow up and look older. He wasn't sure what he was doing, he'd seen it in a magazine once, but it was helping him with his inner exploration. He was meditating, with music that made him want to dance, but still.

Oliver wore green boxers that day. There wasn't a need for real clothing as he hadn't gone out of his room since he woke up to get some sausages for breakfast. Too much thinking and worrying, he thought, and he cleared his mind as much as he could. Not even the music was able to reach his ears. For a few moments, Ollie was in absolute peace. It was like a personal heaven, like nothing could hurt him and he was alone but completely in tune with everything around him. He was a part of the wooded floor beneath his feet, a part of the video game console on the far corner of his room, a part of the warm-

Ollie heard an incredibly loud scream and his feet tangled themselves beneath him, sending him straight to the floor, his butt landing harshly on the hard surface. Sometime during his fall, Oliver had opened his eyes and his brain was working normally, or as normally as it could, and he was able to recognize his brother's voice. Ah, Matthew. For a second, he'd forgotten he had a family. Standing up, he walked out of his room and headed out to the back yard. That's where Matthew's voice was coming from and he probably had set something on fire and wanted Ollie to see how wonderful said fire was.

Walking out, his bare feet touching the grass, Oliver looked for his younger brother and found him at the most random spot. Matthew was all the way up on a tree, that one tree he had not been able to climb until now. Ollie's mouth turned into another goofy grin, but as he approached Matthew his grin faded until it was absolutely gone and replaced with a shocked expression. Under the tree, under the beautiful tree that had provided shade and fun ever since he could remember, was a branch. Not just any branch, but an injured one.

Ollie's cheeks grew warm as he analyzed the situation. Matthew was up on the tree. He had never been able to get that far. There was an injured branch right under where he should have had to step on to get back down. Matthew had gotten bigger while at school. Furious, Oliver glared at his brother. "MATTHEW! What have you done!? You injured it! he picked up the broken branch and carefully held it with his left hand. "Trees are meant to be adored! Not mercilessly harmed by little kids!" Ollie was furious. Devastated. Disappointed. "Seriously, Matthew! You should know better!!!

For the most awesome-amazing-coolest-older-brother-ever, Matthew's brother sure was slow. "Ollie, what's taking you so long?!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, just in case Ollie hadn't heard him the first time. "Hurry up Ollie, it's boring up here!" Finally, after ages and ages and ages, Matthew saw Ollie step out of the back door. "Why are you naked?" Matthew yelled down at his brother. He wasn't really naked, but Matthew snickered at the sight of him anyway, walking across the yard in nothing but his boxers. But really, how was Ollie supposed to climb up and get him in just his boxers.

But it turned out that Ollie didn't plan on climbing up to help Matthew at all! Instead, he took one look at the branch Matthew had broken and started lecturing him about how he had seriously mistreated the tree. "I didn't mean to break it, Ollie!" Matthew retorted exasperatedly. "And if I hadn't been hanging on so tight, it would have broken me back! So we're pretty even right now, really!" Honestly, his brother cared more about the tree than the fact that Matthew could have plummeted to his death. That was not the brotherly love that they were supposed to have.

"Awe, come on Ollie, I'm stuck! Are you really not going to help me get down?" His brother was obviously not in a very nice mood today. That had been happening here and there lately - it was like since he turned fourteen he didn't have time to save his awesome little brother from trees that tried to kill him. But somehow he still had time to care about the tree's wellbeing! "Fine then, if you won't' help me I'll get down myself!"

Of course, climbing down was definitely a much more daunting task than climbing up, especially since the one branch that Matthew needed was no longer there. Very carefully, Matthew grabbed ahold of the branch that he was sitting on and lowered himself until he was hanging from it completely. Maybe, since he was so tall now, he could reach the next branch if he stretched all the way out! He struggled to reach it, stretching out his legs as far as he could, but couldn't quite get there. With a frustrated sigh, he tried to pull himself up. Only, he'd forgotten that he wasn't strong at all, so he couldn't. "Um, Ollie?" he called from where he was hanging. "I think I'm more stuck now!"

Ollie wasn’t exactly ready for this, but Matthew surprised him when he noted Ollie was naked. Well, he wasn’t really naked, but still. Ollie felt his cheeks warm up and he stuttered a little, getting his words and thoughts mixed up with everything else around him. “I’m not NAKED.” He argued back, much like he did when he was younger and his mother wouldn’t give him a doughnut. When Matthew snickered, Ollie took a small rock from the ground and threw it at him. It was a tiny rock, so no harm was done, and Ollie was sure he hadn’t even hit him because the rock just flew past his brother. “I can wear what I want.” he said snobbily.

“You might have not meant to, but it happened.” Ollie replied, “This is why you should be really careful with trees, Matty!” He said, using a silly shortening of his brother’s name. Oliver couldn’t remember if he’d used it before, but it just slipped, so he might have used it once or twice. Mainly to embarrass him, most likely. Still, Oliver narrowed his eyes with every single little thing Matthew said. That was bologna. Matthew was reckless. Oliver wanted to say he didn’t believe a thing of what Matthew was saying, but there was no prudent way of doing it. Instead, he sighed and was about to walk down when Matthew said he’d get down himself.

Oliver HAD to see this. He just had to. Crossing his arms and standing back, he watched as Matthew managed to get himself down enough to just HANG from the same branch he had been sitting on. Ollie laughed a little, then without saying anything to him, Ollie walked back inside. He obviously wasn’t going to leave him there, not on top of the tree, but he didn’t feel like climbing up to get him so magic was needed. Regardless of not being seventeen yet, Ollie could sometimes get away with using simple spells outside of the school. Simple spells, like the ones that repaired his glasses when he broke them or the fire spell to heat up the fireplace during winter. Those, he couldn’t get in trouble for. Oliver walked up to his room, went through his desk to find his wand, but it took him a few minutes to find it because his desk was most definitely not organized . Finally, he found it. It was keeping his place at a book on Quidditch he’d gotten his parents to buy him since he wanted to try out for the team once term started.

Walking back out to meet Matthew, Ollie pointed his wand at the grass and casted a simple cushioning spell. His father had taught him that this summer since the one on the old broom he was using to practice his flying was wearing off and Ollie had to keep casting it every time he used his broom. “You can jump down.” Ollie said, hoping Matthew would just jump without questioning him, but something told him that wasn’t going to happen.

Matthew watched on in amusement as his brother got all flustered - he wasn't sure why. All he'd done was scream from the top of the tree that Ollie was naked. "You're mostly naked!" he shouted back, a grin spreading onto his face. "Hey!" he exclaimed, ducking the tiny rock his brother threw in a very overdramatic fashion and almost falling out of the tree. Matthew raised an eyebrow at Ollie when he said he could wear whatever he wanted. "Well, you aren't really wearing anything right now," Matthew pointed out. "So really, you mean you can not wear whatever you want."

The humor fell from Matthew's face, however, when his brother called him that stupid name. "Don't call me that!" he shouted down at Ollie indignantly. "It's Matthew! Not Matty!" Ollie knew Matthew hated that name. "And I was being careful, but I'm not used to being this big! And it'll grow back Ollie," he reminded his brother. "Trees can regrow their limbs and stuff! You should know that, Ollie, of all people! So really, I didn't cause any permanent damage, see?!" This was exasperating, really. Because Matthew didn't really care if he caused the tree any damage. It was just a stupid tree. But if he said that to Ollie, he'd probably never speak to him again. So Matthew kept his mouth shut about his real feelings.

"Wait, Ollie, where are you going?!" Matthew called after his brother, a small note of panic rising in his voice as he hung helplessly from the branch of the tree. "Aren't you going to help me?!" Surely Ollie wasn't that mean, to just leave him hanging there - literally. Matthew sighed as Ollie went into the house, and started to struggle to pull himself up once more - but it didn't do any good. Why was Matthew so weak?! In movies people could do stuff like this without even thinking about it, but in real life it was way harder.

But then Ollie was back. Good thing too, because Matthew was actually getting pretty tired of hanging on, and could feel his arms growing a bit numb. "Are you gonna help me down now?" Matthew asked patronizingly. But Ollie just pulled out his wand and pointed it at the ground and then told Matthew to jump. "Jump? Are you crazy?!" Jumping was the last thing that Matthew wanted to do. He wasn't afraid of heights, but he was kind of afraid of jumping out of a tree from twenty feet up and breaking both of his legs in the process. "I can't jump Ollie, I'll kill myself!"