Chapter Text
When it’s all over, Alan, rather unfairly in his anger and frustration, tries to blame Gordon. The whole thing had been, after all, his idea, but the hurt expression on Gordon’s face when Alan, red-faced and sobbing, had begun to yell at him, had made it clear to anyone that their aquanaut was blaming himself more than enough already. Scott feels too weary to shout, to be angry at Alan for blowing up, and instead does his best to softly reassure them both that this is nobody’s fault.
It had been an accident.
Just an accident.
He steers Alan away from his immediate older brother with a firm hand on each of those little shoulders: just like their Father would have done. Gordon doesn’t need this kind of confrontation right now. Alan’s baby blues spill over with tears and Scott has to force his own closed to prevent them from joining him. He doesn’t look back at the static shape of Gordon in the shadows. He can’t right now.
It’s been a long, long day.
...
Brains had gone up to Five to perform some routine checks and repairs at around 0900 hours and that had meant that John was coming home. They’d all been pretty excited; they haven’t seen their brother in person in a good couple of months and even John had felt the rare need to spend some time planet-side, reconnecting with them all.
He spends far too much time up in Thunderbird Five, and they all know it.
John had landed cleanly and promptly, and spent the customary first twenty or so hours in bed recovering from the always-tenuous shift back to Earth-pressure. It was Gordon who’d decided he should get their space case up and out for the day. Call it brotherly bonding or I’ve missed annoying you John, but, with whatever reasoning, he’d bound straight into his ginger brother’s room, pulled apart the thick blackout blinds and had cheerfully exhumed a tired, grumpy astronaut from his bed without a second thought.
“Australia.” Gordon grins from where he’s hovering in the doorway of John’s little ensuite bathroom. “We could fly over to Sydney, catch some waves.” The kid wiggles a hand through the air in what's probably supposed to be a sea-like motion, and John tries his best not to compare him to some kind of demented jellyfish. Alan sure would have.
“You’re kidding, right?” Instead, he catches Gordon’s eye in the bathroom mirror, where he’d been brushing his teeth. "I've just got down Gordy, what makes you think I want to go surfing?" But the mouthful of foam rather renders the long, unimpressed look John’s giving him ineffective.
The spaceman’s plans for this morning had involved a large mug of the fancy English tea from Penelope he'd been saving, and a good book in his favourite quiet corner of the living room. He’s still got the lingering edges of a headache at his temples and gravity feels twice as heavy when your body is still expecting to float. John is well aware he'd lost a fair amount of weight this rotation, the past month having been too busy to maintain a good fitness regime, and the plan had been to build that back up slowly in his downtime. Throwing himself in the deep end, literally, by going surfing ranks around a 3 out of 10 on his things I wanna do right now scoreboard, and that's only so high because he does love surfing with Gordon.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Gordon’s nose scrunches. “Come onnn,” He's bouncing on the balls of his feet, too excited to keep still, "It’ll be fun. You and me and the open sea, sounds awesome right?”
John sighs.
If he’s truthful, Gordon always feels a kind of distance from John that he doesn’t with his other brothers. The distance isn’t all just literal either. It’s not just the stuck-up-on-Thunderbird-Five thing. See, John and Alan have their love of space to bond over, and then he’s got the oldest sibling smothering going on with Scott and then there’s the thing with Virgil where they sit and take electronics apart just because seeing how they work is therapeutic. Gordon and John probably have the least in common of them all, at the core of it. They’re like chalk and cheese. The sun and moon. Gordon is wild and exuberant; untameably colourful, and John is quiet and clever; bleached out by life in space.
Curiously, the one thing they do have a shared interest in is swimming, and if Gordon can take advantage of that to see more of the brother he sees the least of, then he sure as hell won’t pass up the opportunity. See, gold rank in the NASA pools is not as different from Gold in the Olympics as you’d think, a little less fancy but nonetheless efficient. John is very used to neutral-buoyancy diving and its similarity to the weightlessness of space travel and if they’re going to take a swim off the reef they’re more likely to stick together as diving buddies than ever go alone. It’s their thing and Gordon needs their thing right now because damn he’s missed John.
Their spaceman’s not home nearly often enough. It’s becoming almost weird to see him in the flesh, and not just as a pale blue hologram.
Gordon jams a shoulder against the frame of his brother’s bathroom door and studies the lean figure of the other man as he finishes meticulously cleaning his teeth, waiting for a reply. John is pretty active when he’s on Earth - after all, he’s got to maintain muscle mass and bone density while there’s lots of that dreaded gravity around to help him do so. He likes jogging with Scott and swimming with Gordon and climbing with Alan and it’s not often he objects to a good workout, even if that’s Kayo taking him down or Virgil coaxing him through the weights... so Gordon doesn’t think it’ll be that hard to tempt him out surfing.
Even if he's hardly going to win any awards for grace or balance straight down from space. Man's vestibular system is shit.
“You know the sea is currently averaging 64.7 Fahrenheit along the Sydney Coast, right? Windspeed 7 knots.” John informs him, frowning. He's pulled up a holographic diagram from his wristwatch that evidently tells him as much. “64.7 is the official freezing to death in a pair of swim shorts temperature.” John shakes his head. “It’s July, remember? The coldest time of year?” His toothbrush goes back in its holder, and he picks up a comb to run through the soft curl of his hair. “Any other time it’s around 74, you know. You might find it easy to warm up as you swim but some of us don’t have regular circadian rhythms to maintain proper thermoregulation.”
“What?" Gordon blinks, "Ah come on Johnny.” Little brother seems to have understood, or perhaps selectively heard, only about half of what John just said. “It might be winter, but it's not gonna be that bad. Ten degrees is nothing to a good wetsuit, and besides, the wind speed'll make great waves; enough to be fun for me without constantly knocking you flat on your face.” He flashes his brother a fantastically cheeky grin.
John just worries too much , Gordon thinks; he over-calculates everything.
“You chicken big bro?” That makes John look up from his holograms, scowling. “It’ll wake you right up I swear. And we can get ice pops at that place in the cove you like... Uh, or maybe fries if it really is cold. Make it a fun, relaxing, no-working trip. Don’t you wanna spend time with your faaaaaaaaaavourite little brother?”
The unfortunate downside to being a big brother is the uncanny lack of ability to say no to the younger members of the Tracy posse. Gordon knows he’s won when John’s nose goes all scrunchy in consternation.
John supposes he does kind of want some almost-weightless time in the sky, so flying over there might not be all that bad an idea...
“If it’s freezing,” He says, slowly, “then I’m officially designating Alan the role of favourite little brother.” The edge of a smile creeping in at the corner of his mouth betrays him as he sets down his comb, persuaded. “And we’re not going to Bondi - I’m not putting up with all the tourists.”
“Fine.” Gordon heaves an over-dramatic sigh, “Deprive me of the hot lifeguards then. We’ll go to Collaroy, at least they have a shake hut.”
“Were you thinking of taking out the Tiger Moth?” John finishes making himself a facsimile of presentable with a last futile attempt to flatten the curl of his forelock backward out of his face, then leads his little brother out the bathroom door. “Alan’ll want to come if you do.”
Gordon’s eyes light up at the idea of taking out the Tiger Moth - their sixth Thunderbird in all but a line of vinyl lettering. The little biplane is much smaller and more manoeuvrable than the Tracy Two, and therefore a great deal more enjoyable to fly. The one thing all five Tracy brothers have in common is a love for being in the air, and the best way of achieving that has always been in Grandpa Grant’s old, 1930s biplane. She'd been his absolute pride and joy; his grandfather had served aboard her during the Second World War for the British RAF, running maritime surveillance. It makes the little plane over a hundred and thirty years old, having been handed down through generations of Tracy's ever since she was purchased from the military. It’s the craft their Father taught them all to fly in in the first place and, though the thing's an antique, with the way Alan slaves over it (with a healthy amount of guidance from Virgil's engineering expertise), it looks and runs as almost new.
The kid’s endlessly proud of it. He's loved the Tiger Moth since he was only just tall enough to wax the undersides of her wings and he was the last to learn to fly in her so, naturally, Alan’s the one who spends the most time at her yoke now. Scott has credited the plane more than once as being the reason their little brother is such a gifted pilot so young.
It’s also one of Scott’s favourite pastimes to irritate everyone by comparing the little craft to the behemoths they have in the USAF nowadays; he seems to think the ‘massive leap in plane technology’ since the World Wars is the most incredible thing on the planet. Alan would argue to his last breath with him over it, but really they all know that, compared to all their fancy gear and ion engines and rigorous safety protocols, there's something just a little bit magical about taking the simple old plane out.
When you're just a man and a piece of old metal, abjectly and unapologetically defying gravity.
“Hey, Alan.” John has brushed past Gordon and crossed the landing to stick his ginger head around the door frame to their baby brother’s room before the aquanaut can formulate a suitable complaint about being joined by him. “You free for a trip to the mainland? Gordon wants to take the Tiger Moth out.”
Alan leaps up from the seat at his desk, rushing out to meet them with excitement bright on his young face.
“Oo! Where are we flying to?” Alan grabs hold of one of John’s big cool hands and pulls his brother into his room, “What do I need to bring? I am flying right?”
John laughs, the sound honey warm and good-natured. As Alan releases his fingers John brings them up to ruffle through his baby brother’s hair in a rare, brotherly moment of physical affection. Alan beams excitedly up at him.
“You better be quick short stuff,” Gordon’s got his arms crossed in the doorway; “I was planning on leaving in twenny.”
“Leaving in twenty for where boys?”
Uh-oh. Grandma's 'dubious activity detector' seems to have overheard, and she shuffles slippered into the corridor behind them, eyes narrowed suspiciously at her Grandsons as if to ask; What the devil are Jeff’s boys up to now?
“We’re just taking a trip over to the mainland Grandma.” Gordon flashes her his patented TracyTM persuasively charming smile, brown eyes all big and deceptively doe-like... though it seems to have little effect on her expression. She's almost entirely immune at this point. Time to bring out the big guns. “I wanted to take our Johnny here surfing while he’s home.” He slaps a hand hard on John’s shoulder, mindless of the annoyed look his brother gives him for it. “Don’t you think it’d be good to get him outta the house?”
Fortunately for Gords, Ruth’s eyes go very soft as the name of her space-bound Grandson gets dropped into the mix. There’s the crinkly edge of a fond smile and old fingertips reach out toward her outlying boy. John tolerates the gentle sweep of her fingers down his cheek... though it feels suspiciously like she’s checking he’s not just a hologram. His nose wrinkles.
Gordon Tracy really can play the best of them.
“Alright then,” Their Grandma smiles at them, though shakes her head as Gordon whoops noisily, punching the air. “You boys have fun.” She instructs, “Don’t do anything I wou... anything that John wouldn’t do, now Gordon.” Squid-kid pulls a face at her for that and Ruth has half a mind to clip him around the ear for the cheek.
“I’ll just grab my jacket and hat.” Alan pushes past John, “It’s gonna be a bit chilly this time of year.” Gordon freezes mid-celebration to glare at him for unknowingly siding with John. “What? It will b-”
“Ah, now, you hold on just one minute young man.” Grandma Tracy latches onto Alan’s shoulder before he makes it all the way out the door. Blue eyes narrow behind her large spectacles. Alan gulps audibly. “...Have you finished your homework ?”
“Uh...” The instantly guilty look on the youngest Tracy’s face speaks far too much for him. “Yeah, I mean... well mostly. I’ll... finish it when I get back?” He suggests weakly; pointedly trying to look anywhere but at his Grandma’s steely gaze.
“Oh no you won’t Mister.” The foot goes down and even Gordon winces, “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve given me those full fourteen pages on Newton’s laws. There are no shortcuts in this household Alan. If you’re going to be home-schooled then you’re...”
“Going to have to work for it, I know, I know.” There’s an awkward, disappointed shrug of Alan’s shoulders. He’s pointedly avoiding their eyes and then, traitorously, the pout of Alan's bottom lip starts to become a tremble. There’s a quiet pause, and all three other Tracy’s feel their hearts twist in sympathy.
“Oh Allie... Here, love, I’ll make you a deal,” Grandma gives the kid's skinny shoulder a firm ‘buck up’ pat, “If you get it all done in the next hour, I can have a batch of fresh baked cookies all ready and waiting for you.” That idea only seems to make things worse for some reason, as Alan’s face crumples traitorously, like he’s both gonna miss out and get tortured for it, and John feels like he has to step in before she makes the kid cry.
“Next time, ok Sprout?” There’s a gentle ruffle of the soft duckling down fluff atop his baby brother’s head and Alan looks up at him hopefully, all watery big blues and expectation. John’s always been up there with the Mercury Seven on Alan’s list of heroes, and if John makes a promise then you damn well know he’ll do his best to keep it. “We’ll take her out again before the end of this week, I’m sure.” Alan nods gratefully, clinging a little to John as he leaves his hand hovering in the line of fire.
John doesn’t comment on it.
Lucky kid. Gordon scowls, unable to reason with the gelatinous bubble of jealousy inside him.
“I’m getting together a shopping list of things I’d like picked up.” Grandma is pointing out, helpfully, “You boys can do me a mall run on Thursday in your Grandpa’s plane.”
“Urgh!” Alan makes that sound that only frustrated, upset teenagers have perfected before turning on his heel, pulling away from them, and disappearing back into his room. The door gets slammed behind him. John and Ruth exchange long looks. Gordon shakes his head.
Teenagers.
“Go easy on her gears!” Alan yells a moment later, his voice muffled through the wall. It makes John jump and provokes a spluttery, surprised laugh from Gordon. “If you grind them up I’m gonna get you Gordy!”
“Ala...?!?” Their Grandma starts some kind of shocked retort, but she’s stopped in her tracks by a gentle hand on her arm.
John, smiling fondly, is shaking his head at her. Alan’s just upset: it’s clear scolding him won’t do much to help matters here. Taking her grandson’s non-verbal point, Ruth relaxes, taking hold of his hand again and giving it an affectionate squeeze. Brothers will be brothers, she supposes.
“Well... You boys have fun.” She says, and both of them get dry kisses pressed to their cheeks. John has to bend down and Gordon, scowling, swipes at his skin afterwards with the back of his hand, but Grandma seems pleased enough all the same. “Fly safe now.”
“Meet you downstairs in ten.” Gordon slaps his brother’s arm playfully, eliciting another scowl from John, before he sprints down the corridor shouting; “Don’t forget your swim shorts!”
John, with a resigned sigh, shares a look with his Grandma – provoking a dry chuckle from her before he gives in and goes to follow Gordon. Ruth rather thinks the younger boys are lucky that John inherited his Mother’s patience over the Tracy fire-starter attitude they seem to possess.