Hardy Detective Agency featuring Hardy Boys Fan Fiction

Joe rolled over in his bed and groaned as his bruised muscles made their collective protest. Tentatively, he squinted open his eyes, wincing as the morning light instantly brought to back to life the throbbing in his head. He groaned again. The sleep had somehow intensified the pains and aches.

"Joe? You okay?" Frank's voice called out from the doorway of their shared bathroom.

"I think I was in a head-on collision with a Mack truck in my sleep, only I wasn't in a car," Joe grumbled as he gingerly pushed himself into a sitting position. "Ow! Ow! Ow!"

"A bruise or two, huh?" Frank said as he pulled up a chair by his brother's bed.

Suddenly Joe turned his head and sneezed, twice, in rapid succession. "Ow! That hurt! Yeah, a bruise or two, and probably a cold to top it off."

Frank shook his head. "Aren't you a sorry sight."

"Yeah, well, we can't all be beautiful first thing in the morning, Mr. Up-at-Six-and-Ready-to-Roll," Joe muttered as he stumbled toward the bathroom. "Give me ten minutes in here and I'll rival your perkiness, big brother."

"For your information, it is nearly 10:30 , not 6:00 ," Frank said, still shaking his head, quietly amused at how little Joe had changed over the years.

Joe had never been a morning person, not even when he was a child. He must have been the only kid on the block who would sleep in on Saturdays and miss the morning cartoons. In a way, that must had been a blessing of some sort to his parents. How many parents with young kids got to sleep in on Saturdays? Not too many. Frank was pretty certain of that.

Joe was true to his word. Ten minutes later, he came out of the bathroom, though he was hardly the epitome of perkiness as he had promised earlier. In fact, Frank had to bite back a cry of alarm at his brother's appearance.

"My God, Joe, that's more than a bruise or two on you!" Frank exclaimed as he made his way to his brother's side in a flash, intent on a closer inspection of his brother's injuries.

"Looks worse than it really is," Joe said rather lamely.

Frank hissed as he took in the colourful bruises that decorated his brother's torso, front and back. Gingerly, he touched a patch of the discoloured skin and Joe flinched, jerking away from his brother's fingers.

"I think you should go for x-rays. Who knows what damage has been done," Frank said.

"They are just bruises. I would know if something's broken," Joe said as he slipped carefully into a clean shirt. "Don't tell Mom, okay? I don't want her freaking out."

"Never mind Mom, I'm freaking out," Frank said rather shortly. "What did they hit you with? A two by four?"

"I don't know what they hit me with. It was dark and I couldn’t be bothered with searching for their weapon after they were done with me. One guy got a couple of good kicks at me," Joe said, running his fingers carefully over his ribs where the kicks had left their marks. "Three on one, talk about a one-sided fight."

Something suddenly flared in Frank. "Yes, three on one, Joe. I am glad you realize that. Just what were you thinking when you decided to jump into something like that? Did you stop at all to think that you might be outnumbered and that they could do some serious harm to you? Or even kill you?"

"Relax, Frank. I'm still in one piece. No permanent damage has been done," Joe said as he began pulling on some socks.

"I suppose that is something to be proud of, is it? That you aren't permanently maimed?" Frank asked heatedly.

Joe looked at his brother, surprised at the apparent anger that seemed to radiate off the older Hardy. "Hey, Frank, I didn't exactly invite those guys to hurt me. I thought the girl was in trouble. She was screaming. What was I supposed to do? Ignore it and hope that she could get out of trouble on her own?"

"Well, she had you fooled, didn’t she?" Frank said, and instantly regretted his words though he could not bring himself to back down at the moment. The bruises on his brother's body had brought out the fierce protectiveness in him for Joe, which quickly turned into sudden and inexplicable anger.

Joe flushed and the blue eyes flashed with the familiar gleam of anger as he regarded his older brother. "Yeah, I was the total fool, Frank. I should have known better, but I didn't. Is that what you want to hear?"

"Joe ---" Frank said in exasperation, still trying to deal with his own anger. "No, that's not what I meant. It's just that you don't jump into a fight where you know you are outnumbered. You should have tried calling for help first."

"Yeah, I supposed I could have simply asked the bad guys to hold on while I dialed 911. Excuse me, Mr. Bad Guy, can you refrain from hurting her while I call for reinforcements? Get real, Frank," Joe retorted angrily.

"All right then, maybe there wasn't time to call for help. But was jumping them the way you did the only way to help that girl, if she had been in real danger? You could have tried distracting them, you know," Frank said. "Brute force is not the solution to everything."

Joe's eyes flashed again. "You got me there, Frank. What can I say? I'm the hot-blooded, non-thinking one of this partnership. Everybody knows that, right? I don't have your calculating brain. I just have my fists. Maybe you should find yourself another partner, big brother. Someone who will not drag you mindlessly into danger like I always do." With that, he swung around and stormed out of the room.

"Joe --!" Frank called out after him. "Oh, great, now look at what you've done, Hardy! That was so uncalled for!"

With an exasperated sigh, he trotted after his departing brother and was met by a bewildered looking Laura at the bottom of the stairs.

"What happened, Frank? Joe just went storming out of here. Did you two have a fight?"

"No, yes, I don't know," Frank said miserably. "Where did he go? Did he say?"

"He just yelled out something about needing fresh air before he explodes," Laura said, looking worriedly at the closed front door. "What happened, Frank?"

Frank ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "We had some heated words upstairs. I really don't know what happened. Everything just got out of hand. Should I go after him?"

"He looked pretty angry when he ran out of the house. Maybe he does need some time to cool off. You know your brother. He's like a keg of powder. Once he's blown off steam, he'll cool down pretty quickly. So what did you say to him that got him so riled up?" Laura asked gently.

"I don't even know how it all started. One minute, we were fine and the next we were saying some pretty nasty things to each other. Oh, Mom, I didn't mean what I said to him." Frank looked his mother helplessly. "I don't know what got into me."

"Come, sit down and tell me from the beginning what happened," Laura said, guiding her son to the sofa.

Frank sat down and let out a long breath. "I guess it all started when I saw what those one or two bruises really looked like. He was pretty banged up, Mom, and those bruises looked nasty."

A look of worry flashed across Laura's face. "Maybe I will take him to the doctor when he gets back."

Frank smiled a little tightly. "Good luck with that, Mom. I think he's just bruised. I don't think he's hiding anything serious from us." He paused, the smile disappearing from his face. "When I saw how banged up he really was, I guess I just sort of lost it. I felt so angry."

"At Joe?" Laura asked gently.

"No, I don't know. At everything and everybody, I guess. At those goons who hurt him, at myself for not being there when he needed help and yeah, at Joe, for jumping into danger without a second thought to anything else. Sometimes I think he's got a death wish of some sort," Frank said in frustration.

Laura laughed. "A death wish? No, not Joe. Never. He's one person who loves life more than anything else. I think it's his eagerness to protect and preserve life that lands him into danger most of the time."

Frank had to smile. "You're right, of course, but I wish he would just take a second or two to think of his own life before jeopardizing it for others."

"That sounds pretty extreme, but I agree with the gist of it," Laura said. She smiled at him. "It's pretty hard on you, I know. It seems that no matter how hard you try to keep him out of it, he still manages to land in the midst of trouble. What do you think we should do about your brother?"

Frank let out a long sigh. "I don't know, Mom. Sometimes I get so frustrated that I just want to throttle him."

Laura glanced at her dark-haired son, smiling. "But if he were any different, then he wouldn't be the Joe that we all love. We will just have to accept him for what he is and to embrace the joys that he gives us, as well as the ulcers."

Frank grinned slowly. "I don't know about embracing the ulcers, but I guess we don't have much choice, huh, but to take the whole package?"

Laura laughed. "And I don't think it will ever be a choice that we regret making."

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.