#astrawrite

He placed his freshly fetched keep cup full of coffee down on the bench, stretching out a hand and reminding himself to wait patiently for the cat to come to him. That was something that had taken him a while to learn until John clued him in. Cats were like John, really, or John was pretty much a human shaped ginger cat: both preferred to be given time to chose to make the approach themselves rather than suddenly having their space invaded, no matter how well meaningly.

Taking the moment was rewarded when the cat curiously peeked out and wandered towards him, tail held up with the tip curled over. It was covered in a delightful mess of ginger, black and white, like a little brother had splodged paint all over it. Scott smothered a laugh. There had been that one time with Virgil and their childhood cat…

Moving slowly, he pulled his phone out of his suit pants pocket and took a photo, flicking it off to John with a smile. 

--

John kicked off the wall of Thunderbird Five’s hub, rippling the holograms beneath his feet. He turned another backwards flip, with a dual purpose of revelling in the sensation of the movement and keeping himself occupied in the lulls between calls.

A new message pinged and he immediately twisted around then dispersed his momentum by delicately colliding with a different wall to read it.

-Scott Tracy: Kitty cat for you Jay!!!!!

The attached image of a calico cat had John grinning. 

Before he had a chance to reply, another message came through of a close of of the cat’s whiskered face with Scott’s hand in the frame rubbing around its ears. John could practically hear the contented purring. 

-John Tracy: Awwwwww a sweetheart!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, that was exactly the number of exclamation marks he needed to express his joy and make sure Scott knew it. 

Overtime, sending pictures of cats back and forth to each other had become one of their things and it delighted them both. It meant they got to share so many moments with each other, even far apart, and it was often the beginning of more conversations, even if they had to happen in five minute bursts between busy moments. It was a way of showing they remembered and cared for and were thinking of the other. A love language all of its own. Plus, cats!

Scott saw more live cats up close because he was planetside on IR rescues and for TI, but when John was down he made up for it with tours of the world’s universities he got to lecture at by their cat populations he befriended. 

His brother could be rather cat-like too, more of a large, lithe cheetah built for speed. Or a house moggy with a propensity for climbing the walls and always finding the highest place possible to perch, no matter how impossible it seemed to get to. John shared in that too, they were both often found on the rooftops, stargazing or sunning themselves, with a large hat and extraordinary amounts of sunscreen especially in John’s case, but he wasn’t going to let Scott get cooked either.

On occasion, Scott did also get the mad, dash around the house, hyperactive zoomies of a cat, where he couldn’t possibly sit still. It was always delightful when Scott let himself mess around and lean into it.

One of John’s favourite memories as a kid was of him and Scott curled up together, practically on top of each other in a nest of blankets with books of all sorts and many toy planes within reach. Mum had come in and snapped a photo of them, laughing fondly, “Like cats in a basket!”

He probably had the photo around here somewhere, he’d downloaded a lot of their childhood photos to Five’s memory banks as well as the data storage on the island. He hadn’t seen it in years. With Eos’ help, he found it in a few minutes. He did have to explain to her why he was blinking away tears as they welled up in his eyes as he’d forgotten how he and Scott had been wearing matching blue pyjamas covered in stars because they’d both been going through a phase of wanting to have the exact same things as the other so as to not be left out.

He sent it off to Scott.

-John Tracy: Cat basket :)

Bubbles signifying typing disappeared and reappeared as Scott on the other side of the world figured out what to say. John gave Scott the same patience he gave to him when John was gathering his words for the exact ones he wanted to say.

-Scott Tracy: Next time we are both home? If you want.

-John Tracy: Of course. When you get back, I’ll take the elevator down for the weekend.

He could cuddle up with Scott and take a moment to just be together. It was well past time they did, it always got to this point which they really needed do something about.

Suddenly the only place John wanted to be was curled into Scott’s side, with a good book and maybe some hot chocolate for them both too, surrounded by as many blankets as they could find.

Scott sent through another burst of photos of the cat from before, including a few selfies of it sitting in his lap, snuggled up to him. He was grinning happily and that was worth the world, no matter the cat hair on navy blue suiting nor the coffee that was doubtless half cold and nearly forgotten.

John was puzzled, honestly. Five to ten recipe blogs and that was Scott trying to decide what to make for dinner during a meeting or while he was struggling to concentrate on work. During lulls between callouts, he and John would sometimes debate options together. More than forty separate sites visited at 3:12pm on a Tuesday afternoon and Eos had flagged it for John, on suspicion that Scott’s computer had been hacked by a malicious entity or some other AI virus.

Scott went from double facepalm of despair to full on faceplant, his head hitting the desk with an audible thunk.

“Why so much pasta?” John questioned. Now his curiosity was piqued, he couldn’t let it go or he’d be doing EVA work later, still turning over possibilities in his mind, which wasn’t conducive to the constant concentration needed while floating around in the vacuum. Outside, any misstep would be your last.

“I dunno. I just feel like pasta,” Scott mumbled into the wood.

Scott sounded…weird. Like he was about to start laughing, or coming down with a cold.

“Scott? Are you okay?”

It had better not be another flu; corralling Scott to take care of himself was hard enough even if he wasn’t feverish. John wouldn’t be able to come down either, quarantined up in Five unless he already had it. Was the slight tug of a headache at his temples from his sinuses beginning to clog up too?

Scott hadn’t looked up yet; his shoulders were shaking. John wiggled his fingers anxiously.

“Scotty?”

Big brother’s head shot up at the nickname John so rarely used. Had John intended to provoke that reaction? The name had been a slip of the tongue but if he was was honest, he sort of had meant to jar Scott out of his thoughts. He never called Scott, Scotty unless he was scared though. And Scott not answering him did tick tick tick up his system from yellow alert into red.

“I’m fine, it’s okay. Don’t worry about me.” Scott’s words ran over each other in an attempt to come first. His voice sounded oddly wet.

Tears, yes those were indeed tears dulled by holographic format, tumbled down Scott’s cheeks.

As soon as he saw John looking, Scott turned away.

Suddenly, John landed on the spark of insight that he had a hunch would crack the code to his big brother’s distress. “Have you eaten anything all day?”

Scott dug around for tissues in a drawer of the desk and gave a half shrug. “I guess not—not really? I tried to before you say anything. Got a mouthful of breakfast in and then there was a call out. Lunch didn’t happen, there was a meeting, I had to make coffee, I ran out of time. I don’t really feel hungry though…”

That did explain a few things. It was well known family lore that Virgil and Alan got hangry, and Gords went all sad and mopey. Scott and John himself though, they got …really, unstably emotional. 

So yeah, hence the unexpected bursting into tears. John got the whole shit interoception and not even noticing if you needed to eat while you were buried in work thing; Scott was way too used to ignoring his body too. 

John took a deep breath. “Scott, and I’m one-hundred percent serious about this, do you want me to come down there and make you some pasta?”

Thunderbird Five systems whirred around John in the quiet as Scott hesitated.

“Maybe,” he whispered. “Or you don’t have to, I’ll wait, Virge’ll be doing dinner in a bit anyway.”

“Virgil won’t be up until past sunset after the hours Thunderbird Two was out yesterday and into this morning,” John said gently. “You need to eat before then.”

Nor would an overwhelmed Scott and the kitchen be a good combination at this point, and John saw the moment Scott realised this, while fidgeting with the rubix cube on his desk. 

“I want to do this for you,” John told him.

Scott dashed at his eyes, sniffled a few times and finally capitulated. “Okay. Thanks, Jay.”

John smiled and signed off, heading for the space elevator. He was usually so far away, he was right now, but it was in his power to close off that distance when he needed to and today he could use that. 

He farewelled Eos; she so often missed him but the opportunities to run the space station on her own that weren’t emergencies where he was incapacitated excited her. They showed how much he had come to trust and rely on her. Plus she got full reign of their virtual chess set.

On Earth, Scott was waiting for him as the elevator docked, his hands stuck casually in his jeans pockets but looking as pale and wobbly as John felt. His face was still tearstained.

“Hey.”

“Hey to you too.” John took a few heavy steps before throwing himself at Scott, wrapping his arms around his brother tightly, all the while careful not to knock him off balance. Scott stiffened then melted into John. 

Usually that interaction went the other way around. 

Scott used the extra height space gave John to rest his head on him without having to duck down like with everyone else. John hugged him close and comfortingly as his fingers tap tap tapped their rhythm at Scott’s shoulder. All of it meant I love you.

“Pasta time?” John said eventually.

Scott nodded silently, following when John started off towards the kitchen. The raw rock wall of the hanger was rough and vividly solid in its three dimensions, as John ran his hand along it for balance as he walked that initial part. He was touching the Earth, he was in the Earth, he was on Earth.

With cold water from the fridge dispenser and the fizzy, brightly coloured tablets shook out of their tube, John made up lidded cups of electrolyte drink for himself and Scott. John needed to be sculling the stuff perpetually to stay upright down here, and he would not be at all surprised if Scott was dehydrated too. It might to something for John’s headache, could go either way for the nausea coming on.

He put a large pot on the heat. One advantage of having a stove so high powered that it could nuke anything it touched was that any volume of water boiled fast. 

An entire packet of fettuccine got tipped into the enthusiastic cacophony of bubbles. John poked at it with a pasta scoop, regretting that he hadn’t snapped the long pieces to actually fit in better. Ah well. 

He shook in an excessive-to-anyone-not-him amount of salt with a shrug ‘cause he needed it, before having another go at separating the pasta. The pasta scoop was quite an effective implement for that, there were reasons after all it was Gordon’s favourite utensil as John remembered from previous discussions. One could also use it to mash potatoes when held vertically, if one so pleased. His second favourite was the tongs as they could be clicked like crab claws and used to pinch unsuspecting siblings. 

Scott watched from his place slumped over the kitchen bench on a stool, chewing on the ragged skin at the edge of his thumbnail. He was trying to work on a couple of screens pulled up as holomonitors, as unsuccessfully as could be expected. John came over and hopped up to sit on the bench, clipping through the projected email inbox and meeting minutes so Scott dismissed them. It was with a sigh of relief.

They smiled tiredly at each other.

The pasta! John tapped at his uniform comms watch. “Eos, set a timer for the pasta, please?” John shaved the minute that had already passed off of the box time and then another couple to ensure it wouldn’t come out mushy.

“So what sort of stuff on pasta do you feel like? There’s a good lot of options you were looking at earlier.”

“We don’t have the ingredients for most of those, I checked. No eggs and no mushrooms so no carbonara. Technically that wouldn’t be authentic carbonara though. No cream cheese. We missed this week’s supply run so we don’t even have any frozen peas!” Scott threw his hands up in the air.

“Hmmm. You feel like something creamy?”

“Yeah. Honestly at this point I’d eat anything.”

John swung his legs and tapped his fingers on the counter while he thought.

“I believe some bacon is hiding in the bottom of the freezer so that’s something. And…” he trailed of as he moved his head too fast and set off a wave of dizziness as he looked around the kitchen.

“Avocado!” Scott exclaimed.

“Avocado?”

“Funny story, we ended up with several cases of them after that rescue on that farm where we saved the whole village and nearly all their trees from catastrophic flooding. They really need eating too and there’s only so much toast you can stand.”

“I have heard theoretically of putting avo on pasta and it does sound good. Mmmm bacon and avocado, John hummed. “Worth a shot?”

Scott reached towards the fruit bowl in answer, grinning at John. “Soon we will have pasta!”

John peeled off the upper half of his uniform and tied the arms around his waist in preparation. In the subtropical summer down here he was already getting too hot and while the temperature regulation built into his suit would do its best to make up for his own body’s lack thereof, it felt weird to have everything covered up from fingertips to neck down here while he was cooking.

Scott began to giggle.

“Huh?” John said, extremely eloquently.

Scott gestured at him. 

“My suit?” Was something up with his suit? The full gloved hands and sleeves flopping about without John in them had been known to amuse the lot of them on occasion, ever since he’d used the empty suit as a phoney decoy of himself to trick Eos. It was pretty funny now no one was in mortal peril and Eos was his friend.

“Your face!” Scott exclaimed.

“What’s wrong with my face?” 

John frowned. Was it his fringe that never could survive true gravity? He hadn’t gotten freckles while he’d been down all of half an hour and inside, had he? Then he looked down.

His t-shirt had a photograph of his face printed on it, and across the chest, emblazoned in neon orange read the words ‘Space Face’, courtesy of one particular fish brother. Ah yes. That.

John sighed, resting his chin on his hand to hide the smile he couldn’t quite control. “Not exactly subtle, is it? In my defence this was the only one in my closet that was clean and you can’t exactly see it beneath my suit. It’s all Gordon’s fault anyway!”

Scott was still laughing, albeit a touch hysterically and at him, but John took it as a win regardless.

Eventually Scott grabbed himself a cutting board and knife to get to work on the avocados as John carefully slipped off the bench, steadying himself on the counter as his ankles went noodley so he could handle the bacon. 

Bacon, bacon, now where had he seen that bacon? He had the image of it in his head, but that was only one piece of the puzzle, a photograph, humanly imperfect, memory woven out of instinct. Digging about in the deep freeze which the evidence pointed to as best John could tell had his fingers feeling like he’d stuck them out in space with out gloves on. They ached sharply as John cursed his crappy circulation. 

He gladly found the bacon though, lurking at the second darkest depths. He would not be willing to venture into the midnight zone of Unidentified Frozen Objects and charred dinner leftovers put away for ‘later’. He chucked the packet into the microwave and thawed out his hands by running them under lukewarm water, wincing all the while. If he’d thought this through, if he’d been smart enough, he would’ve put his suit gloves back on—his space rated, cold proof, most definitely impervious to domestic appliances gloves— and saved himself the pain.

Scott came over to rinse his avocado green hands. He dried them off then wrapped his arms around John’s waist so he could lean on him, giving in for a moment in face of daunting gravity. With Scott, he could because Scott got him; they both could.

“You alright?” And there was big brother smotherhen coming out.

John flexed his defrosted fingers. “I will be.” He turned and smushed his face into Scott’s neck for a little bit, hugging back, Scott rested his head on John’s, and they stayed there for a while.

They were both fading. The pasta would help with that, Scott really needed to eat and so did John at this point, the half a dry bagel for breakfast and another at lunch hadn’t really been enough. The trick now was finishing the task that felt as if it expanding faster by the second than the Universe, as measured by the Hubble Constant was. They could do this though. Together.

Scott chopped up the bacon roughly and John cooked it, hissing back when it spat hot oil at him. 

When Eos notified them the timer had gone off, and John had very scientifically tested the pasta was done by nomming on a bit, he called Scott over carry the large pot to the colander in the sink to strain. 

“Gravity plus boiling water plus my space noodley arms are probably not a good combo,” he laughed. 

He was getting better at knowing his limits. Scott’s smile was small and proud, he saw John.

Scott stared at the bacon with the intensity of a starved wolf with its mouth watering, then stole some pieces hot from the pan and burnt his mouth. Scoff Tracy strikes again. 

They dumped the pasta in a big mixing bowl with the mashed avocado, a little lemon juice, the bacon, and a whole lot of salt, pepper and parmesan cheese, mixing it together with the big pasta scoop.

John swayed on his feet then, grabbing onto Scott to stay upright for long enough to decide actually the best place for him right now was sitting on the kitchen floor just here. John folded himself down to the ground in a slithering pile of too long, too bendy limbs, Scott wordlessly guiding his descent. 

“You want me to grab some sporks to eat with?”

“They’re splayds, technically,” John remarked. He gave Scott the thumbs up anyway, while he rested his spinning head on his knees.

Scott waved about his ‘sporks’ acquired from the cutlery draw with a victorious grin before he sunk to the ground to join John.

John took one, passing the pasta to Scott once he was settled, lanky legs stretched out for miles, bumping into John’s.

“We forgot plates,” Scott said.

John shrugged. “At this point, who cares. We have pasta.”

“We do.” Scott blinked for a moment. “I didn’t before and I wouldn’t’ve but now we do.”

He hugged the warm pasta bowl to his chest, and when John observed more closely he saw the tears collecting on Scott’s eyelashes, sparkling in the kitchen light as he looked up at John.

“Thanks. I love you so much, Jay.”

John gave him a gentle smile, ducking to knock his forehead against his brother’s shoulder like a cat. “Love is stored in the pasta.”

Scott smiled back at him and they both dug in.

It was good pasta.

The private room at the end of the building was too quiet, if taken on its own. Any room that contained Scott shouldn’t be this silent, John was nauseous even thinking about it, but there was his big brother swathed in pale hospital sheets, lying limply on the mattress instead of tossing, turning and pacing even in distress. He wasn’t meant to be still. If he was happy, he’d be in constant motion, in constant, running flight. He’d fidget, he’d lazily sprawl across the couch one second then dash across the room the next and wind up perched on a counter or desk, and when he had to stand in the same place he’d be even then wriggling his toes and shifting his weight between his feet, swinging his arms between broad gestures and parade rest. If he was upset, the movements would be louder, suddenly explosive even but he’d be moving. 

This was the antithesis of a joyful Scott. Unnatural consciousness wasn’t something John hadn’t seen before, he’d seen Scott knocked out and concussed, or dosed up to his gills with painkillers. This here wasn’t even that, Scott’s body needed the rest with words such as hypovolemic shock thrown around too few hours ago. 

John should only be glad he was getting some sleep. Should stop being such a child that he wanted to tug on Scott’s hand, to yell talk to me, play with me, let’s read about piloting space shuttles together, to wake him up. Selfishly, he wanted to drag Scott right back to him. No matter that it was John’s fault he was here, when came down to it. John could run every calculation so that the answer pointed back to himself.

Grandma and all the doctors and nurses said that Scott needed to rest. Virgil had said it as he left the room at the beginning of their nightshift turned over to John, brushing Scott’s curls off his forehead with a gentle, unsteady hand, blue eyes trying to follow him, dark bruised stamped beneath dark brown eyes. Virgil had been the one with Scott when it happened, the one to hold him stable by his fingernails, packing the gaping hole in his side around the shard of metal that had once been part of a home, as Gordon flew Two to [auckland general??] as if chased by all the hell hounds of the underworld. John had been the one to cut off camera feed to Allie sitting on the Island doing his school work. He had arranged the trauma surgeons to be ready upon touchdown. 

Virgil had murmured Please don’t let anything happen to him, towards the windows at the back of the room beyond Scott’s bed, looking out to the stars. John didn’t know if it was meant to be a prayer to the universe at large or to him. When it all came back to it, it meant him. Virgil had squeezed his shoulder lightly before he left; whether he was seeking comfort or to comfort John, John had ran his hand down Virgil’s arm to grip his wrist, fingers rubbing at the protruding bone beneath flannel cuff.

Scott hadn’t moved since then, stirring only when nurses woke him up like John didn’t get to to check his responsiveness and note it down on their charts. The endless glowing boxes had twisted and melted the harder John tried to decipher the number, orange, black and blue bleeding into each other. 

One had paused in their rounds to drape an extra blanket around John. He hadn’t noticed he was shivering. The nurse had a rainbow sticker and googly eyes stuck to their identification badge. The eyes wobbled with their every step. John wobbled with his every step when he came in, wasn’t that special.

He and Scott were still in the same places.

His brother looked dead. 

John flinched from the thought. 

He so easily could’ve been because someone had done this on purpose and the others might be oh so grateful they didn’t ‘succeed’ but to John this looked pretty fucking like success. Scott was hurt. John had been supposed to keep him safe, to see the threats and deal with them before this happened. Therefore he had failed. John had. Not Scott, never Scott, not even when he’d fallen on the pile of debris after fighting an armed and armoured assailant until the aggressor fled.

Was it bad luck that a twist of metal roofing had broken Scott’s fall? Was it good luck it wasn’t immediately fatal, was it good luck that it had missed his vital organs, taking only blood? 

Did the universe, no matter how much John loved it, simply not care?

The latest virus making the rounds of the Island had hit Scott hard, compounded by the utter exhaustion Scott fought through on a daily basis. He’d finally managed to get Scott to rest when he was weaker than a newborn kitten with a nasty hacking cough that had gone to his chest. Sitting with him as he looked over the latest update schematics for Two as proposed by Brains was both to enforce resting and keep Scott company as out of it as he was.

What Virgil hadn’t expected on his return was to find Scott curled into a ball on his bed, body heaving with sobs. The sounds were choked and painful, dragged out of his throat by gasping breaths. In between, they were broken by harsh, choked up coughs. 

The final detail that nearly shattered Virgil’s already split heart completely was how big brother clung to his abandoned flannel shirt, holding it protectively to his chest as if it the last piece of his brothers left in the universe. 

It was only because of the heat of the tropical day Virgil had taken the flannel off in favour of t-shirt beneath it on its own. He’d draped it over his chair by Scott’s bed and made sure Scott was tucked in before he stepped out; now the blankets were in disarray on the floor, with Scott’s desperation keeping the flannel, Virgil’s flannel close.

Virgil was back by Scott’s side in an instant. He reached for Scott slowly, wanting to do anything but startle and scare him further. 

What had happened in the brief time he’d been away? Unless he thought he was alone, Scott usually hid his hurt until he utterly couldn’t anymore. 

“I’m here, Scotty. You’re safe.” Virgil murmured reassurances without knowing exactly what was wrong. He grasped for what he could to comfort Scott, letting his voice fall into an even cadence in hopes it would get through the more than misery, the desolation rolling off of Scott in waves.

Scott tossed his head, mumbling.

“It’s Virgil. I’m right here,” he tried.

“Nuh uh.” Scott gripped the shirt tighter like he expected someone to tear it from his white knuckled grip. “Virgie’s gone.”

Tears welled up in Virgil’s own eyes. Dammit. He dashed at them as they threatened to track down his cheeks; he wasn’t ashamed of wearing his heart on his sleeve but right now he needed to concentrate on Scott.

Ever so carefully, Virgil pressed a hand to Scott’s shoulder, hoping for physical touch to get through to his brother and ground him. 

Scott froze; Virgil held his breath.

When Scott leant into his touch, resting his shoulder against Virgil’s palm with the force of his weight, his tears came to a startled pause as he registered Virgil’s presence. As he seemed to finally believe it. 

“I’m back, here with you and I’m not going anywhere, we’re going to be okay, Scotty. We’re safe and we’re gonna be okay.”

It became a hand rubbing circles on Scott’s back over his sweaty t-shirt, as Virgil eased himself closer to his brother. 

Feverish blue eyes pierced his. “You left me. You— you were gone.” Scott blinked in confusion, attempting to work out what was happening. 

Virgil crumpled. It was such a short time, he hadn’t thought to even alert John to watch over Scott in his absence.

“I’m so sorry, Scott.”

Scott frowned as he put the pieces together, like they kept trying to slip away. 

“How long was it actually?” It was a command, barely couched as a question.

“A few minutes. I thought you were okay, you were mostly asleep. Wasn’t sure you’d even notice,” Virgil admitted.

Scott scrubbed a shaky hand over his face. “Woke up from a nightmare and you weren’t there. The light had changed, so y’know, seemed like longer.”

Before he left, Virgil had pulled down the blinds to darken the room so it would be easier for Scott to sleep.

A shiver racked Scott’s body, transforming into trembling aftershocks. He’d be due for more fever meds soon, but frustratingly for all of Virgil that hated to see anyone hurting, not yet.

“Everything’s all blurry, blending together. Don’t know what day it is anymore. I can’t—” Scott cut himself off.

At that, Virgil gathered Scott into his arms as gently as he could, arranging lanky limbs so they would be comfortable as Scott barely moved to help, just let it happen.

“—didn’t think you were coming back. Everyone else abandons me too. I mean why wouldn’t they,” Scott mumbled into his neck as Virgil propped him up to lean on his chest.

Virgil swallowed, hard, to not break down there and then as his heart really did shatter. There were going to be messy, ugly paintings at some point later as he worked through all the emotions.

“Scott, listen to me. I will always come back to you. Nothing in the world could possible stop me.”

His big brother twisted around to look up at him with those bright, sky blue eyes filled with tears. 

“‘Cause we’re brothers?” Scott asked. 

“You’re my brother. I’ll always love you.”

Scott crumbled then, and it took Virgil a long, terrifying few seconds stretching out to realise it was in relief, even as Scott took a deep, sudden breath in and begun to cry like everything but the exhaustion had been wrung out of him.

It was less harshly than before but still interspersed with hiccups and coughs. 

Virgil wrapped Scott up closer, cradling him as Scott rested his head at the crook of Virgil’s neck and let him take his weight. All he wanted was for his brother to rest, to know that he could lay down his burdens because they were here for him. He could let Scott cry as he obviously needed to after the whiplash of thinking Virgil was gone, before Scott put back up the walls and bounds that he used to make himself who he thought everyone wanted of him to be, when his family wanted him to just be Scott. Hopefully, bit by bit, Virgil could get it through to him.

Fever made Scott far too warm to the touch, yet Scott was caught up in violent waves of shivers coming and going like the tides. 

Virgil picked up his flannel that Scott had abandoned in favour of Virgil himself and draped it around him. In spite of gentle coaxing, Scott wouldn’t or couldn’t let go for long enough to put his arms through the sleeves properly. Instead Virgil tucked it in, pulling up an extra blanket over them both. 

He settled back against the pillows, cuddling his big brother which went some way to mending his own heart and letting himself relinquish the guilt no matter how difficult that was to do. Beating himself up wouldn’t help Scott, he could only figure out how to do better next time. 

“You okay there, Scotty?” he checked in. 

The tears at least had slowed, reduced to the occasional catch in his breath where it brushed against Virgil’s neck. 

Scott shuffled to bury his face in Virgil t-shirt as he shrugged. It was probably the most honest Scott had been in answer to that question for a long time.

Rubbing a hand over his brother’s arm prompted Scott to tuck it around Virgil, clinging closer. He hated that Scott was hurting but he was ever so glad for the chance to hold Scott and comfort him while Scott let himself be held.

“‘m not going anywhere,” Virgil told him softly, “Before you worry, I don’t have anywhere I need to be.”

The schematics of Two he could look over here, and even then those could wait. 

With one arm securely around Scott, he reached over to the bedside table to grab his headphones and the bright blue water bottle there. 

He nudged Scott to drink as he fished around for the packet of tablets so he could take them too. 

After, Scott went limp against him, melting into the hug. Virgil pressed a kiss to his hair before carding through it in a gentle attempt to lull Scott to sleep, humming along softly to his music to keep away the silence. The less reminders Scott had of being alone, the better.

“Mmmm. Thanks for being here. Glad you’re here with me.” Scott words blended together in exhaustion but they told Virgil Scott would be okay. 

How he tugged away from the contact fully was even less so. Scott let him go, not forcing his brother to put up with his personal space being invaded when he was so unused to having anyone else around. He wouldn't anyway, even if his own heart ached. John needed physical affection to be on his own terms as much as he did need it.

John's arms went back to hugging himself as he rocked on his feet from heel to toe and back again, sniffling. "It's really nice to have you here."

"I'm glad to see you too. I really am," Scott replied. That barely begun to express how badly he wanted only to sit at John’s side and talk about anything or nothing at all, simply to be close.

Pretending to inspect the big ol' International Rescue sign became far more interesting as Scott turned away to let John surreptitiously wipe at his eyes. Spelled out in blaring capital letters, it was underlined red on the front of their space station

Funny how they had built this massive sign into Thunderbird Five up here where only John saw.

Scott ran his hands through his hair. He'd heard his brother's voice, seen his image through their communications array every day and near every mission since John had last rotated out, but it didn’t compare. Never could. It had been so damn long since he'd actually been physically in John's presence. 

He missed him ever so much.

He spun back to John, slowly to give him warning but too fast because right now he needed his brother in his sight. John seemed a bit more with it, the mask of Thunderbird Five, the larger than life promise of salvation overshadowing the very human operator slipping back into place. There were still cracks in it to see his brother through as John fidgeted with his uniform, twisting his fingers around his baldric until it crumpled.

He was more the utterly exhausted, probably covered in mud and hangry level of put together of the others after a mission, than John's usual never less than perfect. Scott would take what he could get though. If John started crying again, Scott couldn't guarantee he wouldn't either. 

"You ready to head home?" Scott said suddenly. 

He craned his neck around to look at the gleaming control panels, their blinking lights shining as brightly as they should. There. Sorted. Given this was John, of course it was: he’d never leave Five anything less than gleaming. They could go home.

John paused, his movements dying down into unnatural stillness. He lifted his chin, looking Scott straight in the eye like he was presenting his case before a committee of the entire world judging him, instead of it only being them. 

"No."

The single word came out blunt anyway.

Scott tensed up. To leave without John… he couldn’t—

Scott forced himself to take a deep breath. John wasn't exactly making sense, but when it came to his oh so clever little brother, it was most often Scott who was missing part of the equation.

"You don't want to? Or is there something else?" he asked, hesitant. 

It was rare for John to be this thrown by anything. But then this wasn’t an everyday situation, or rather it never should’ve become one so ceaselessly.

“Jay, what’s going on?”

Scott didn’t know how not to worry.

"No!” John shook his head frantically. “No, I want to go home."

His hands flailed through the air as if he was trying to sketch out a diagram of the problem for Scott. They rose upwards before John brought them down fast, flicking them, flapping them in rapid, repeating succession.

It struck Scott how long it had been since John had let him see him do that. With came the piercing realisation of long since he’d been physically in front of John to see him. In front of a camera and across comms, John held his hands below the field of view unless one was delicately wrapped around his microphone.

A tiny piece of the tension eased. John took a deep, shuddering breath, placing his words deliberately: "Father told me to pack my bags. I'm not packed. So therefore I'm not ready.”

To leave without John… he couldn’t—

As Scott reached for him, out of an instinct to comfort his brother in any way he could, John flinched back. He flattened himself against the wall, limbs compressed inwards as if he wanted to to sink through the glass and disappear into the star punctured void outside. 

John had always had the talent of making himself small. Scott was the one here on Five who was too loud and out of place.

 “So therefore I can’t go home,” John murmured. Or rather he mumbled, barely audible syllables clinging to each other instead of cutting through the noise clear as day. Scott had nicknamed the latter as his newsreader's voice once upon a time, on a day they’d been messing about over the comms as each brother requested John do different voices and Jeff pretended to not hear. 

It was what the world heard of Thunderbird Five, through and through. But not all there was to him.

Scott's hands found their way into his own hair again, tugging at it. He hadn’t thought. Grabbing him into a hug wouldn’t work with John. Never had. Sometimes that meant Scott wasn’t sure what to do.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

This was unfair, so fundamentally unfair that Scott didn't know what to do with it. He wanted John, down on Earth for however long he needed, happy and safe, but this wasn't the kind of rescue where Scott could throw him over his shoulder and carry him out of the burning building. It wasn't that sort of strength Scott needed.