Feet Wars

"Merde."

The voice that registered in his ears was familiar, but Tove Christensen did not so much as glance away from the television, where a lazy Sunday afternoon found him channel-surfing. He knew what he would see if he did: his younger brother Hayden, dressed in flannel pajama botoms and one of his own white t-shirts, because Hayden had apparently never figured out how to do his own laundry. "You could have at least asked before taking it," he grumbled, flipping past wrestling and an advertisement about help for one's erectile dysfunction.

Hayden blinked. "Sorry," he muttered, used to these silent exchanges. "Or," he said, brandishing a small blue-backed book, "should I say, 'pardon'."

Tove rolled his eyes. "I thought you gave up French in grade eleven," he snorted.

"I did," Hayden waved his hand airily, sauntering into the room and plopping down unceremoniously on the sofa across from his brother. Tove motioned to the floor. "What?"

"Your feet," Tove said. "Don't put them on the couch."

"I don't have shoes on," Hayden argued. "They're just ... feet."

"They smell," Tove retorted. "At least keep them on your side." This, of course, only served to egg Hayden on more. Grinning brattily, he tossed his bare feet over Tove's lap, raising one of them to shove in his face. Tove retaliated by grabbing for it, pinching the heel and a couple of toes between his fingers. "They're mine now," he said, purposefully squeezing them so that Hayden would be encouraged to struggle. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Looks like I'm up Merde Creek without a paddle," Hayden said, using his other foot and eventually his hands for added leverage. Tove tickled his captive sole a little and he bit his lip. "Let me go, you merde-a-tete," he panted.

Tove did, wiping his hands on the arm of the couch melodramatically. "That's not how you say it, you know," he explained. "You can't translate that cleanly, most of the time." He frowned. "Your feet really do stink, Hay," he complained.

"Mange moi." Hayden affected his best offended expression. "Like yours smell like roses."

"Mine aren't on the couch, either."

"Like it's even your couch. You're renting it. It came with the rest of the house." Apparently, Hayden was intent on being as annoying as possible today. "What do you care what it smells like?"

"Because when I give it back to whoever does own it, I don't want them to go, 'I'm sorry, Sir, we can't take it back because it smells like somebody laid their grandmother to rest here and she decomposed for about six months in the same spot'. And I'll have to be like, 'oh, that's just my younger brother and his smelly-ass feet'."

Hayden looked unphased. "It can't be any worse than all the farts you sink into the cushions." He glanced at the remote that Tove had picked up again. "Now that's going to smell like my feet, too."

Tove looked pointedly at him. "Don't you have something better to do than steal my clothes and harass me?"

"Not today, no." Hayden grinned. "Entertain me." He regarded Tove's half-hearted attempt to resurrect his channel-surfing. "You're doing it wrong," he said after a moment.

Tove raised an eyebrow. "How does one channel-surf incorrectly?"

Hayden looked at him patronizingly. "There's a system, an order to it," he explained. "You don't flip through the programs and stop on the commercials. You have to make it an art form." He enunciated this with a flourishing hand motion.

"I'm so very sorry," Tove deadpanned. "I guess I was too busy learning French to master the delicate technique of wielding a remote control." He motioned to the pocket dictionary in Hayden's hand. "Where'd you get that, anyway?"

"I found it when I was sorting through some stuff." Hayden paged through it a bit, smoothing down one of the small pages with three fingers. "'Ou sont les toilettes?'" he enunciated brokenly. He flipped through it some more. "'Une biere, s'il vous plait. C'est tout. Je ne parle pas francais.'"

Tove ticked his responses off on his fingers. "Across the hall. No. And we can tell." Hayden threw a small pillow at him and he laughed. Then he held fast to the remote as Hayden tried to snatch it from him. "I see through your nefarious plot, baby brother," he said. "I know now that your stinky feet were just a distraction to make me give up the remote. But you'll never succeed."

Hayden snorted. "I'll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!" he vowed. He made a daring grab for the channel changer, which Tove how held over his head. Somewhat older, and quite a bit taller, he used the leverage to topple Hayden onto his back, tickling his ribs and stomach at a frenzied pace. "No fair!" Hayden shrieked, laughing in spite of himself. "This is merde! Merde, I tell you!"

"No, what's 'merde' is you thinking I'm going to let you sucker me into another three-hour marathon of Spongebob Squarepants," Tove replied, sitting astride his younger brother. He let up eventually, and Hayden squirmed out from underneath him.

"It's a good show," Hayden muttered, running a hand through his tangled hair.

"You're a tard, Hay."

Hayden watched Tove pull himself off the couch and amble towards the kitchen a few minutes later, eagerly requisitioning the discarded remote and putting it gingerly to his nose. "It doesn't smell that bad," he told himself, and then punched a series of buttons. The familiar strain of cheerful theme music brought a smile to his face. "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea," he sang along, loudly. Then he poked at a few more buttons until the 'closed captioning with French subtitles' option appeared, and let the learning begin.