#co-pilots

Today, however, the stars had aligned and allowed Scott to fully relax for once. Which was a really long winded way of saying that Scott had been so totally exhausted that with the addition of hot water, and some stolen lavender bath soak, it had been enough to have him out for the count and snoring into the bubbles. 

He was just passing the door to the gym, arms swinging at his sides, when a movement caught his eye. Alan was just swinging his leg over the seat of the rowing machine. Memories of his earlier painful experience with the same machine came flooding back to assault Scott, igniting his protective instincts.

Must protect the baby brother (even if he was looking longer and ganglier by the day). Shoving the door aside Scott surged towards his brother, although the moments seemed to pass in slow motion. He pushed his legs forward even as Alan parked his bum on the sliding seat and, bracing his feet, leaned forwards to grasp the handles.“Wait! Alan! No!”But he wasn't quick enough, even as Scotts feet pounded on the gym flooring, Alan was already pulling back on the handles. 

Scott reached forward as he ran, ready to try and catch his brother before the expected collision with the ground.Only he didn’t, Alan didn’t go crashing to the floor. He didn’t even seem to struggle. Where Scott had been all flying limbs and ungraceful endings, Alan was one fluid movement, all muscles working together to aid in the smooth motion of machine and man. Scott clumsily came to a stop, mouth hanging open in surprise.

“Oh hey Scott.” Alan looked up with a smile, pausing in his activity, “sorry, did you want this?” he bobbed his head towards the body of the machine. 

Scott mutely shook his head, whilst trying to order some words together into a workable sentence. “But… How?” he shook his head and had another go. “How are you making it look so easy, I couldn’t make it budge.” Scott pointed an accusing finger at the cursed equipment.

 “Oh, yeah I did notice it was set quite high when I checked it, so I read the manual and set it back down to where John and I usually have it.” he jabbed at a button on the display to highlight the settings. 

“Oh.” Scott stood there, feeling more than a little stupid, of course his logical little brother would do just as they had taught him - work through the problem to find a solution, rather than charging headfirst into something new. Sometimes astronauts could be annoyingly sensible.

Scott brushed his palms against his jeans, more for something to do with his hands than anything else, “ok, yeah, right, of course….I’ll, um, leave you to it then.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and backed away towards the door. Only pausing as he was  closeing the door slightly longer than necissary to see Alan glide back into action. The graceful fluidity of movements really highlighted the growing similarities between Alan and John. It must be all that time in space, Scott told himself, but even the voice in his head didn’t sound that convinced. 

Scott shook his head, and reminded himself that it was a good thing that he didn’t need to patch up grazed knees with rocket ship bandaids anymore. He let the door swing shut and continued on his way back towards the main lounge. 

For a moment he thought about taking a detour via the medical room to swap out the childish cartoon print plasters, but then he thought better of it. His brother might be growing up, but if he continued to take after John then more bumps and scrapes were bound to happen soon enough. And when they did, said younger brothers would have to suck it up and put up with all the fussing from Scott - garish bandaids included.