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gumnut-logic · 3 years

Text

Dear John

@purfectpurple asked for question number 8.

(why won’t Tumblr tag you????? Aaargh! Stupid program!)

Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

I have written far too much fic. It took me a while to work out which fic to choose, but then I remembered this one.

This is built almost entirely out of text messages so it is almost all dialogue. The back story is that Virg was seriously injured and due to reasons, he can’t see his brother John without a serious negative emotional reaction to his presence. But Virgil loves his brother and tries to reach out and talk to him anyway, even if it is only through text messages. And John loves his brother too.

This one was both painful and hilarious to write. It is one of my very early fics and part of a series that is kinda special to me. I’m particularly happy with this one because, honestly, for what it was, I think it works really well.

I’ve posted the whole thing rather than a snippet because I think it needs to be read as a whole to get the effect.

It should also be noted that at the time I was still terrified of writing John :D

-o-o-o-

Title: Dear John

Tales of Sotto Voce

Author: Gumnut

9-10 Sep 2018

-o-o-o-

Message from OntheVirg.

Dear John.

I don’t really know where to start other than to say that I am so sorry. This is not your fault and I know I’m hurting you. If I could stop I would.

I miss you, little brother, please don’t doubt that ever. This thing that bastard has done to me has come between us, but I still love you (yes, I said it, you can now poke fun) and we will get through it. Somehow.

I’m having a hell of a time talking at the moment, so even if I could bear to be in the same room with you, having a conversation would be difficult. Would you mind if we swapped words using the message system? A little odd to be pen pals when we are only a couple of rooms away, but I’m hoping it will help. And I miss you.

Your brother, Virgil.

John stared at the message and something inside him broke. He knew the state his brother was in. He was still confined to the infirmary, could barely walk due to dizzy spells, could barely speak, and was wracked with emotional instability, his brain struggling to right itself after the attack.

Yet, he had managed to write this?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Certainly, Virgil.

I think it is a good idea. It is likely to help us regain our relationship.

It is also great to see you able to write so well, considering your condition. I am very happy to hear from you.

And yes, I love you, too. No poking required.

I am also so sorry this has happened to you. I would offer some regrets, but I cannot see any way that we could have honestly prevented it. Looking back reveals so many opportunities, yet given the same situations with the same information at the time, we would have acted in exactly the same manner. It appears the Hood planned well for once in his life and he almost succeeded.

The only element that he didn’t plan for was you. It is you we have to thank for his failure. I have never been more thankful for your stubborn streak in my life.

I’m am so proud to have such a strong big brother.

John.

He hit send and bit his lip. He wouldn’t list personal relations in his list of best skills, but Virgil knew that. He just hoped he was good enough.

Several hours later, John was startled out of the sub-function he was writing by a chime from his tablet.

Message from OntheVirg.

John.

Thank you for your vote of confidence. To be honest all I could think of at the time was that I couldn’t let you have my ship. You yelled and screamed, but no, you couldn’t have her. Then you hurt me, tried to force me, but no

Sorry, wasn’t you.

It was to be expected. John was surprised the message had even been sent and not deleted. Perhaps Virgil had hit the wrong button. Or perhaps he was trying to explain.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Virgil.

There are no words for the extent of the anger I feel for the violation made against you. There is no need to apologise. I understand, big brother.

Please if you need to talk. I am here.

John

He swallowed and hit send.

Message from OntheVirg.

Do you remember that deer Dad found on the side of the road that had been hit by a car? How it looked up at us desperate for help, but somehow knew it wasn’t going to come?

It felt like that.

It hurt so much. I couldn’t do what he asked, so he just hurt me more. And then I think he just hurt me because he could. There wasn’t any way out.

And he looked just like you. I think that hurt the most.

He had to resist the urge to run down the hallway and hug his brother. He rubbed his eyes instead.

Message from GuyintheSky.

I really wish I could hug you right now. Tell Scott to give you a hug from me.

Do you know why he looked like me?

John

Message from TheFlyingScottsman.

Hug delivered.

You okay?

Message from GuyintheSky.

As well as I could be considering the circumstances. How is he?

John.

Message from TheFlyingScottsman.

Struggling to type. We’re going to have to call it quits soon. It is taking everything he has to hit those keys. But I think he needs this.

Thank you for being there.

How goes the programming?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Don’t let him overtax himself.

Where else would I be? He is my big brother.

Slowly. Whoever did this really knew what they were doing. It is cutting edge work. I can guarantee that the Hood outsourced it. Far too smart for him. I recommend we set Penelope and Kayo on their tail. I dread to think what else this person could be capable of doing. Brains has already started the groundwork to protect our systems. We have a long road ahead to get our equipment up to a level I will be happy to let out on the field without fear of compromise.

I’m afraid International Rescue is down for the count for the foreseeable future.

John.

Message from TheFlyingScottsman.

Damn. I still had hope for a magic wand. Do your best. I know you will.

Oh, and if you need to talk, let me know. Virgil isn’t the only victim here.

Message from OntheVirg

Gonna have to stop soon. Tired.

I have thought about that and I’m not sure. Have you ever met the Hood? I don’t think you have. So I’m wondering how on Earth he knew what you looked like.

But then perhaps he didn’t have to know. Perhaps the program just needed to source the most likely person in my head it could use. You are unique, little brother. Because you spend so much time on TB5, I mostly see you as a hologram. That would be extremely convenient for a mole.

In any case, I fell for it.

Message from TheFlyingScottsman.

He’s asleep.

You know, watching him, I can see why the Hood didn’t win. He won’t give up. By the end of his last message his hands were shaking so badly, I had to help him tap the right keys. Wouldn’t let me do it for him, no, he had to do it himself.

We are so damn lucky to have him for a brother.

Message from GuyintheSky.

I know.

Message from TheFlyingScottsman.

Johnny?

He was still sitting, staring down at his tablet when Scott entered the room behind him. He continued to stare as his brother’s hands took away the tablet and placed on the shelf beside him. When a hand was placed gently on his shoulder he finally looked up into those caring blue eyes.

It was enough to break him again.

For the first time in many years, his biggest brother drew him gently into a hug. John let his forehead drop to the soft material of Scott’s shirt and simply clung.

-o-o-o-

Message from OntheVirg.

Roses are red We wear blue I look groovy And so do you.

Message from OntheVirg.

There once was a flyboy named Scott Who used to fly around a lot He flew so fast He kissed his own ass And completely lost the plot.

Message from OntheVirg.

And then there was one named John Whose appendages were quite long In space he was ace Full of delicate grace But in gravity everything went wrong.

Message from GuyintheSky.

GORDON, GET OFF VIRGIL’S TABLET!

-o-o-o-

Message from GuyintheSky.

You there, Virgil?

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Yeah.

Message from GuyintheSky.

How are you?

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Been better.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Scott with you?

Message from LikeaVirgil.

No. I sent him to bed. He looked awful. Please make sure he looks after himself. You know what he is like when one of us is injured.

Message from GuyintheSky.

I’ve been trying, but he is slippery. Any tips?

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Don’t take no for an answer and, if necessary, manhandle.

Message from GuyintheSky.

I don’t exactly have your physique, Virgil.

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Out logic him then. He does see sense occasionally.

Message from GuyintheSky.

I’ll try.

Virgil, I had an idea about how we could see each other. Do you remember my prom?

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Really?!! You’d try that again?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Do you think it would help?

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Honestly, John, I don’t know. Maybe. It is certainly a fond memory, for me, if not for you. Would you really do that for me?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Of course. It will grow back and maybe that could help you ease back into seeing me?

Message from LikeaVirgil.

You would really go that far?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Wouldn’t you?

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Maybe.

Message from GuyintheSky.

I know you better than that.

Message from LikeaVirgil.

It is asking a lot. Are you sure?

Message from LittleSpaceballs

John.

Can you please give Gordon access to his tablet. He is driving me insane.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Yes, Virgil. Give me a moment. Alan is throwing a hissy.

Message from GuyintheSky.

No, Alan.

Message from LittleSpaceballs.

Then at least change my username for me. He’s locked me out of my settings and his sense of humour leaves much to be desired.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Sure.

Message from TheShortestOne.

Thanks, John. Yours isn’t much better.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Now you lack the balls.

Message from TheShortestOne.

You’re not safe on your little satellite at the moment, John. Remember that.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Go and see Virgil. He needs the company.

Message from TheShortestOne.

How is he doing?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Go and ask him. I’m sure he would love to see you.

Message from TheShortestOne.

I guess.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Have you gone to see him at all?

Message from TheShortestOne.

I’ve been busy.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Alan.

Message from TheShortestOne.

Okay.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Alan.

Message from TheShortestOne.

I hate seeing him like that.

Message from GuyintheSky.

We all hate seeing him like that. This isn’t about us, it is about him. He sacrificed so much to protect us, the least you can do is visit him while he is recovering. He’ll be missing you. You know what he is like.

Message from TheShortestOne.

I know.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Get Gordon to go with you if it will help.

Message from TheShortestOne.

Maybe.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Alan, do you have any idea how much I would like to walk in and see Virgil right now? But I can’t. Move your ass and go see him.

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Everything okay?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Yeah, Alan is just being Alan.

Message from LikeaVirgil.

He tends to do that. Being Alan and all.

Message from GuyintheSky.

Ha ha.

Message from LikeaVirgil.

So you are going to try it?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Yeah.

Message from LikeaVirgil.

I’ll owe you big time, Johnny.

Message from GuyintheSky.

No, you won’t.

Message from LikeaVirgil.

Do I get to keep proof?

Message from GuyintheSky.

I’m sure Gordon will oblige - at a factor of approximately one thousand.

Message from LikeaVirgil.

It will be painful. You have my sympathies. Speak of the devil, the terrible two are here. Speak to you later?

Message from GuyintheSky.

Of course. And you have my sympathies too. Yell if it becomes unbearable.

-o-o-o-

Message from EatYourVirgetables.

Fgxzs

Message from GuyintheSky

Virgil?

When his brother didn’t answer, John pulled up the video feed from his room. Virgil was not in his bed, the covers ruffled and discarded.

Frowning John scanned the room. For a moment he thought it was empty, but no. Right on the very edge of the camera field, a hand lay across a discarded tablet on the floor.

He hit his comm. “Scott, get to the infirmary, now!” And he was moving.

He didn’t know exactly where in the building Scott was, but John was close. He dashed down the corridor, tore around the corner...and Scott had beat him to it.

Virgil was on the floor, distressed and disoriented, struggling to get up. Scott knelt beside him, his hands on his brother’s shoulders muttering reassurances.

John slipped back into the shadows. He could not be seen. Certainly not when Virgil was in this state.

“It was a nightmare. Only a dream.”

“It h-rts. G-d, it h-rts.” There were unshed tears in his brother’s voice, a shaking hand fumbling at his temple. “Mk it g ‘way.”

“I-I can’t, Virg. I’m so sorry.”

Virgil let out a sob. “Why? Why d-s he w-nt to h-rt m?

“Because he was a self-serving bastard who would do anything to get what he wants.” The venom in Scott’s tone startled Virgil.

“J-hn?”

Oh, god.

“No! John would never-“

“H-rts.”

Scott drew his brother close, rocking him gently, desperately trying to calm him down.

John slipped back into the corridor and headed back to his room, heart in pieces.

-o-o-o-

Message from TheMightyFish.

John?

Message from TheMightyFish.

Johnny?

Message from TheMightyFish.

Jooooooooohhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnyyyyyy.

Message from TheMightyFish.

I really don’t like being ignored. You haven’t answered your comms and your door is locked. C’mon, John. We’re worried about you.

Message from TheMightyFish.

John. John. John. John. John.

Message from TheMightyFish.

Please John. I really don’t want to have to deploy Scott, he looks like shit.

Message from GuyintheSky.

What do you want, Gordon?

Message from TheMightyFish.

You okay?

Message from GuyintheSky.

I’m fine.

Message from TheMightyFish.

Don’t believe you. This all sucks big time. Let me in, pleeease.

Message from TheMightyFish

C’mon, John. We need each other in this.

John sighed and walking out of his bathroom, opened the door. Sure enough, Gordon was standing outside, tablet in hand, worry on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“I should be asking you that question, bro. You look almost as bad as Scott.”

“Well, plenty of reason.” He sighed. “Is he okay?”

“Who?”

“Scott. Virgil. Pick a brother. Everyone is hurting.”

Gordon looked at him for a moment as if he was going to say something, but then decided against. Instead he took the opportunity to push past John and into his room. “What are you doing in here anyway?”

“Gordon-“

“What?! You’re going to dye your hair???” His little brother let out a laugh. “This will be good.” He grabbed the packet. “Blond? Do anything to be me, huh?” The humour in his brother’s eyes was definitely infectious.

“I’m hoping it will help.”

Gordon immediately sobered. He looked down at the packet. “Prom?”

“Yeah.”

“That sucked.”

“Yes, it did.”

Gordon reached up and patted his shoulder. “Hope it works better than it did last time.”

John looked down a moment. “Hey, Gordon. Do me a favour?”

“Anything, bro.”

“Can I borrow one of your shirts?”

Gordon cracked up. “Anything to be me.”

-o-o-o-

Message from EverVirgilant.

You ready?

Message from LongJohnBlondie.

Are you?

Message from EverVirgilant.

Scott’s here, and Gordon. Dunno where Alan is. We have enough troops should I lose it.

Message from LongJohnBlondie.

You are not going to lose it. Do me a favour and cuff Gordon about the ears for me. I don’t know how he has changed my username this time, but even I’m locked out now.

Message from EverVirgilant.

Cuff deployed. Consider yourself scowled at. I’ll speak to Brains later. See if I can get his font to appear pink with flowers and fairies.

Message from LongJohnBlondie.

Sounds great.

Message from EverVirgilant.

Now get your ass in here.

-o-o-o-

Scott was tired. But that seemed to be the permanent state of affairs since his brother had been injured. He was wary of this experiment, but agreed that it was worth the try. Virgil missed John, and John was going through his own version of hell in this, so if it helped just a little, it would help a lot.

Gordon dashed back into the room, a grin on his face. “Awesome. Totally awesome.”

Scott glared at him, but his grin would not be subdued.

He reached for Virgil’s hand. Simple reassurance.

Virgil’s voice was hesitant. “C-m in, J-hn.”

The middle brother edged around the doorway, and Scott felt Virgil tense.

Oh my god.

His tall lanky brother had cut his hair short and dyed blond. He had obviously shoved a pile of product into it and it stood up in messy spikes. On top of that he was sporting a pair of John Lennon sunglasses, conveniently hiding his eyes.

One of Gordon’s just a little too small, blindingly colourful shirts hung from his shoulders, leaving just a hint of bare skin at his waistline. Low hung burgundy linen pants and leather sandals finished off the ensemble.

So far from their John that a new man stood in the room.

“J-hn?” Virgil’s voice cracked.

John attempted a grin.

Virgil succeeded. “Yu l-k gr-t.” Scott started as Virgil suddenly pushed aside his covers and clambered out of bed. He steadied him as he wavered predictably, but let him go as he hesitantly approached his little brother.

His shoulders were tense, but he reached out and laid a hand on John’s chest. “H-w r yu?”

Quiet and still tentative. “Getting better by the minute.”

Virgil looked up at him, a mess of emotion on his face.

“How are you, Virgil?”

Whispered. “G-ttig b-tter b the m-nut.” He swallowed, then leaping in, closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his little brother. “M-ssed yu.”

John gently returned the embrace. “Missed you, too.”

Scott swallowed as something caught in his throat.

They stood there for a moment before Virgil broke it off, stumbling a little and backing off. Gordon caught him and led him back to the bed.

John stayed where he was standing as his big brother sat back down on the bed. Scott grabbed a hand. “You okay?”

Virgil smiled up at him. “Ye, I th-k I am.”

The biggest brother in the room broke into a grin and tightened his grip. He looked up at John and finally saw a hesitant smile on the man’s face.

They had made a beginning.

-o-o-o-

Message from ScottyWantaCracker.

GORDON!

Message from TheVirgilQueen

What has he done now?

Message from HeWhoLooksUpSkirtsBecauseHeisTooShorttoLookDownShirts

What the hell?!

Message from BlondHippyandLippy

He’s in the pool.

Message from ScottyWantaCracker.

I’m going to drain the damn thing!

Message from SleekSilverandFoxy.

I’ll take care of it.

#Username reset

ScottTracy

VirgilTracy

JohnTracy

AlanTracy

GroovyGrandma

GordonisGrovelling.

-o-o-o-

FIN.

The rest of the series can be found here.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #John Tracy #Virgil Tracy #Sotto Voce

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50kawana-blog · 6 years

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tsarisfanfiction · 2 years

Note

U: Share three of your favourite fic writers and why you like them so much.

Fanfic Asks

Oof, bringing out the hard questions here! Picking just three is hard because there's so many good writers out there (so many) but...

@blackkatmagic does things with crossovers and rarepairs that continually baffles and amazes me. They're currently mostly writing for a fandom I don't follow nowadays, but I keep poking back to see if there's anything new for my fandoms (or to re-read old stuff). I'm also in total awe regarding their prolificy. If you think I have a lot of fics... you have never seen their AO3 page.

@stereden is the captain of the Badass Buggy Boat and I am very willingly pulled along in their wake! That part of the One Piece fandom seems to be slowly growing and I love going back to see what's new there. Their worldbuilding in particular is awe-inspiring (the whole pirate code that runs through their fics is pure poetry) and I fully encourage people to check it out.

@gumnut-logic last but certainly not least is one of the major TAG authors, and a general stalwart of the fandom in general. Nutty's got all the genres under her command and wields them to devastating effect - and once again, the effort that goes into the worldbuilding for her AUs and longfics is breath-taking and I am privileged to have been one of the people she bounces off of sometimes.

#purfectpurple

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Hi Tsari. Wow, you've been busy answering all those prompts. Here's another one, if it pleases you.

Sicktember 2021 Prompts

10. Medicine/Injection

Virgil is an obvious one for this prompt, but I was thinking maybe Scott & Gordon. Though Virgil could be added anyway 😁

Sting

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort Characters: Gordon, Scott, Virgil

There’s something in the water. @sicktember prompt 10: Medicine/Injection

Oh, this very much pleases me :D Virgil is an obvious choice, that’s true, but I’m a Military Bros girl so I was more than happy to focus on those two and just give Virgil a moment to fret once he realises what’s going on. I have to give thanks to @janetm74 for being my sounding board on this one!

Sicktember 2021 Prompts - Somehow we’re most of the way through the month and I still have ones in my inbox. I’ve added a list of what’s been done already and what’s sitting as a not-yet written request to the original prompt post if anyone wants to pick any of the remaining prompts, and yes, the alt. prompts are also fair game!

In Gordon’s opinion, they were under-equipped for this rescue. That wasn’t a usual state of affairs – International Rescue prided itself on having the best rescue equipment in the world – but circumstances had conspired and they were here, on a beach, without so much as Thunderbird Four.

There was a valid reason for their lack of water-based equipment, though. The three of them – him, Virgil and Scott – had originally been handling a rescue far inland in Spain with no water in sight. That one had gone smoothly, but as they’d been packing up John had appeared with news of a collapsed rock arch sending tourists scattering into the water in the Canary Islands. Going home to collect Thunderbird Four would have taken too long, and they did have Module Two, which could bundle together submarine pods if necessary, so the decision had been made to head straight there and work with what they had.

He couldn’t say he liked working on a water rescue without the security of his Thunderbird, but with Virgil hovering overhead in a dragonfly pod and stabilising the rest of the arch, things seemed to be relatively under control.

The water was teeming with panicked tourists, some splashing around in the shallows and others struggling further out. With Virgil’s duty clear, it left Gordon and Scott to retrieve them all. He wasted no time in taking charge – Commander or not, water rescues were his specialty, not Scott’s – and sent his big brother to the shallows while allocating himself to the deeper water.

Screaming and crying was, unfortunately, par for the course when it came to panicked rescuees, so to start with, Gordon didn’t think much of it as he gathered together groups of tourists and shepherded them back to shore, where the local authorities were waiting with ambulances. Fully geared up in his water-appropriate uniform, complete with attached helmet and rebreather, he kept making trips between the deep water and the triage centre, vaguely aware of Scott wading through the shallows and hauling up traumatised rescuees of his own.

Then the begging started.

Usually, hysterics were based around you gotta save me, and help, and I’m gonna die! That was normal. Understandable, even. Being begged to just let me die, on the other hand, was rare. Not entirely unheard of, sadly, but rare enough to catch Gordon’s attention. Especially when it wasn’t a one-off.

Something niggled at him as he deposited one batch of seemingly suicidal rescuees at the triage, increasing in intensity when he caught sight of the first aider’s faces. Resignation, as though they’d been expecting it. As though people begging to die happened here.

Gordon’s mind screeched to a halt halfway back to the water. Ahead of him, up to his shoulders in water and talking to a young girl who was screaming loud enough to deafen anyone in her vicinity, Scott seemed to have once again neglected his helmet. Fingers left exposed by the fingerless gloves Scott had opted for when gearing up for their original rescue curled around skinny limbs as he coaxed the girl up, and Gordon’s heart suddenly took a swan dive straight down to his stomach.

“Say,” he said, turning back to the nearest paramedic. “How often do you guys see Irukandji in this region?”

He wanted to be wrong. He really wanted to be wrong. His squid sense told him he wasn’t wrong.

The paramedic in question turned to him with tired eyes, the resignation shining through them. “Often enough,” he said. “These people? At least half of them have been stung. Maybe more.”

“Great,” Gordon sighed, shoulders slumping. “Thanks.”

Even as he headed back out to get the last few stragglers in the deep end, Scott caught his attention again. The screaming girl was now sat up on his shoulders as he pushed his way through the water towards the shoreline, one hand clutching another woman and hauling her along. A quick visual scan showed that they were the last of his brother’s cohort. Good.

“Wait for me on the shore,” he ordered as he passed him, hoping his brother heard him over the girl’s screaming. There was no time to check the message had got through, though. Not when he had people still in need of rescue – people who were probably being stung by a swarm of violent and near-impossible to spot jellyfish.

Once upon a time, Irukandji had been native only to a specific part of the South Pacific, along the northern coast of Australia. However, during the first half of the century, they’d spread – or new species had been discovered – and now they were a near-enough worldwide threat.

Threat was an apt word, too. The stings were no joke; Irukandji Syndrome was nasty, and if not caught in time, could be fatal. Thankfully, a few years ago there had been a breakthrough on an antivenom for it, which had greatly reduced the number of long-term hospitalisations and mortalities, but from all accounts it was still an awful experience.

In his neoprene, deep-water-rated uniform, Gordon was perfectly safe from the tiny jellyfish. But Scott, on the other hand…

Gordon really hoped the swarm hadn’t spread to the shallows.

His final few rescuees were as agitated as the previous lot, confirming that they, too, hadn’t escaped, and he towed them back as fast as he dared, half an eye out for Scott.

He spotted him standing right at the water’s edge, talking to a hologram of Virgil. There was no sign that he was in pain, but one of the biggest threats with the Irukandji was the potential delayed onset of symptoms. Gordon couldn’t relax just yet.

“Virgil’s almost done,” Scott told him when he approached. “I’ll go and report to-”

“John can do that,” Gordon interrupted, stopping just out of arms’ reach. “We need to get to Thunderbird Two and get out of these uniforms, now.” He still couldn’t see any signs that Scott had been stung on any of the exposed parts of his body, but he was taking absolutely no chances.

Scott paused, clearly startled at the interruption, and Gordon found himself under scrutiny from concerned eyes that belonged somewhere between Big Brother and Commander.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, stepping forwards. Gordon edged back out of reach again, conscious that his uniform could have all sorts of jettisoned stingers caught on the ridges of the neoprene.

“There’s a swarm of Irukandji in the water,” he said. It was enough to widen blue eyes. “We need to decontam.”

Scott, like all of his brothers, was familiar with the dangers presented by the oceans and their inhabitants. Gordon had made sure of it personally; while their knowledge didn’t match his, they at least knew enough to know what was bad news. The fact that Irukandji were also a concern off of Tracy Island had cemented his brothers’ knowledge on that one.

“F.A.B.” Scott was immediately on the comms again, calling up John and Virgil and updating both of them of the change in plans as he headed back to Thunderbird Two and her decontam facilities. Gordon followed, still scrutinising all the exposed skin that he could see.

Decontam was never fun. Gordon hated it, but it was a necessary evil so he suffered through the procedure until his old uniform was stripped away and he was released from the unit to claim and don a fresh one. Scott was similarly spat out of the neighbouring unit, yanking on his own fresh uniform as though it’d run away if he took too long to get dressed and looking for all the world like he was about to hurtle back out of the Thunderbird and rejoin the danger zone.

Gordon caught him by the bicep, bare fingers on neoprene – so skin-tight wetsuits took longer to put on than flightsuits, whatever – and pulled him to a stop. Once again, he found himself under the scrutiny of concerned blue eyes as Scott looked him up and down, clearly wondering why he was being stopped.

“You’re not going anywhere until I know you didn’t get stung.” Outside of the water, it wasn’t often that Gordon pulled a commanding tone with Scott, but in this case it felt very, very, necessary.

“Our uniforms would have protected us,” Scott dismissed, waving a hand lightly in his direction pacifyingly. His fresh uniform was one with full gloves, and Gordon felt a rush of frustration that none of them had thought to make Scott change into that variation before getting into the water. “I’m fine.”

“You were helmetless and wearing fingerless gloves in the water with Irukandji around,” Gordon retorted, refusing to release his brother. “I’m not letting go until you’re scanned.” Scott looked like he had something else to say, so he kept talking. “You know Irukandji stings are barely noticeable and only show symptoms later. With the rescue taking your attention, there’s no way you’d have noticed anything.”

Scott’s mouth shut with a clack, confirming that he was probably about to say I’m fine until Gordon had headed that off with logic. If he was less worried, Gordon would’ve rolled his eyes. As it was, he tugged Scott along to the medical bay, big brother following with extreme reluctance, judging by the way he was lagging behind at the end of Gordon’s arm, and grabbed a scanner all without releasing his grip.

The yellow light washed over Scott, his big brother stood stiffly as though he was about to bolt, and Gordon parsed through the results as they came in.

A scattering of pinpricks flashed up, predominantly across his fingers, but there were a couple of hotspots on the back of his neck, and a curse slipped from between Gordon’s teeth.

Scott went pale, bravado lost in the fact of scan results telling him that he had, in fact, been stung multiple times, although Gordon knew that it wasn’t just the jellyfish stings that were causing it. The dread passed across Scott’s face, his adam’s apple bobbing in a subconscious swallow, and Gordon set down the scanner so he could yank down one of the docked hoverstretchers.

“Sit, Scott.”

His brother obeyed, sinking down automatically onto the hoverstretcher. Gordon squeezed his arm reassuringly before slowly releasing his grip, ready to grab Scott again if he made a break for it. He didn’t, although the temptation was clearly there. Blue eyes flickered between him and the door at an alarming pace, but Scott knew that Irukandji Syndrome was no joke. They’d caught the stings before the symptoms manifested, but it was still a race against time to administer the antivenom before they appeared.

“Uniform,” Gordon ordered, heading for the antivenom storage and rummaging through the locker to find the one he needed – one advantage of living in Irukandji territory was that it was an antivenom they made certain they never ran low on. For a long moment there was silence, and he began to fear that Scott was already succumbing, before the sound of the zip carried through the air.

By the time he had the needle prepped and ready, Scott’s arm was hanging out of his uniform, all the fine hair standing on end in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the Thunderbird. Blue eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell in a carefully even pattern.

Needles were not Scott’s thing.

Gordon made sure not to take too long. With practiced ease, he administered the antivenom, one hand rubbing Scott’s shoulder firmly, before withdrawing the needle and quickly tossing it into the relevant recycler.

“It’s over,” he promised once it was out of sight. “How are you feeling?”

With a shaky breath, Scott opened his eyes and looked over at him. “I’m fine, Gordon,” he tried, but his voice had gained a tightness that could only be associated with pain.

“Yeah, right,” Gordon sighed. The antivenom would take a few minutes to kick in, and it seemed like they hadn’t caught it fast enough to prevent the start of the symptoms. “Lie down and I’ll find you some painkillers. You’re not going back out there like this.”

Scott’s compliance was apparently at an end, although Gordon suspected a large motivator for that was not wanting to be subjected to another needle – this one full of morphine – because he started pulling his arm back through his uniform’s sleeve even as he tried to find his way to his feet again. He didn’t stumble, but Gordon grabbed his shoulders reflexively anyway.

“Scott.”

“I’ll be fine,” his brother insisted. “The antivenom’ll kick in soon.”

Gordon sighed, but before he could say anything, a deeper voice sounded from behind him.

“You can lie down willingly, or I’ll make you,” Virgil rumbled. Gordon obligingly moved to one side as his dark-haired brother hurried into the area. “You’re going nowhere.”

“Virg-”

“The rescue’s all wrapped up,” Virgil continued. “All that’s left to do now is to go home, which you will be doing on that hoverstretcher. John’s got One.”

As if on cue, the familiar cry of the supersonic engines resonated as Scott’s ‘bird took to the sky. Scott looked more than a little annoyed. “Virgil-”

“Don’t even try,” Virgil interrupted, gripping Scott’s shoulders and slowly but steadily forcing him to lay flat. “I’m going to hook you up as a precaution and we’ll reassess once we’re home.”

“Virgil…” This time it was almost a plea, or as much of a plea as Scott was capable of while still partially in Commander mode.

“Gordon’s going to stay and keep an eye on you,” Virgil continued, bustling around with tubes and needles. “I don’t want you moving until we’ve confirmed the antivenom’s working.” Well-practiced as he was, it didn’t take long before the relevant measures were set up. Gordon placed himself by the morphine pump, knowing from experience that Scott wouldn’t touch it if he had the final say, no matter how much things hurt. That was also the only needle, and therefore the most likely thing to be torn out if Scott was left unsupervised.

“I got this, Virge,” he promised, resting a hand lightly on Scott’s shoulder. “You get us home.”

Virgil hesitated for a split second, clearly internally warring about leaving him, but Thunderbird Two was his craft, and they all knew who would get the most out of her on the way home.

“Keep me updated,” he eventually said, giving Scott’s shoulder a light squeeze. Gordon promised, and watched him reluctantly leave before turning his attention back to his eldest brother.

Scott’s face had pinched further, a sure sign that the pain was flooding through him in earnest now. Gordon fingered the morphine pump, considering for several moments before letting it drop away again. He’d trigger it if Scott started broadcasting agony, but until that point he would – reluctantly – respect his brother’s wishes. He knew all too well what being doped up on painkillers without permission was like.

Beneath his feet, Thunderbird Two roared into life, Virgil’s ‘bird ready to take them home. Gordon made sure that Scott was secure before finding a seat himself, moments before she peeled away from the ground to follow her sister home.

It would be a long journey for Scott, who was used to travelling at Mach ridiculous – and being the pilot. Less so for Gordon, who was very familiar with Thunderbird Two’s slower speeds, but it still wasn’t easy seeing his brother’s skin turn more and more ashen as the toxin attempted to make itself at home, only to be challenged by the antivenom.

Gordon wrapped his fingers around one of Scott’s hands, feeling the callouses on his palm, and squeezed reassuringly, elated for a brief moment when the grip was returned. Home couldn’t come soon enough.

#sicktember2021 #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #gordon tracy #scott tracy #virgil tracy #thunderwhump #purfectpurple #sicktember

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Colour Prompt :)

#22 - purple: bruise, pain, mystery

For Scott & John (& Gordon?)

A Little Ruthlessness

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Gordon, John, Scott

First thing I've written in a good week and a half, and the longest thing I've written in... a while (thank you, rl, for hitting me hard enough to wreck my muses when I was planning on celebrating finishing my dissertation by writing lots). Also highly self-indulgent because why not.

So we have some Scott&Gordon&John, which is a highly entertaining combination and I loved writing this. I think I actually hit all three of those prompts with this...

Colour Symbol Prompts

“He’s late,” Gordon huffed, fog erupting from his mouth as he rubbed his arms to stave off the winter chill. “What’s taking him so long?”

Leaning against a nearby wall nonchalantly, bundled up in so many layers Gordon had laughed when he’d first seen him and poking at his tablet, John shrugged. If Gordon didn’t know his brother as well as he did, he’d think the ginger wasn’t worried at all.

There was an urgency to the way he was poking at the screen, though. John didn’t do big, flashy, displays of emotion, but when you knew what to look for, the deliberate placement of each digit as he manipulated whatever was on the screen screamed unease, and even a little bit of frustration.

Their brother was supposed to have met up with them an hour ago, as soon as he escaped the social gathering he’d been coerced into by what Gordon could only assume was an old flame from high school. For all that Scott was naturally charismatic and popular, it was an open secret in their family that he hadn’t managed to keep any of his old high school friendships. Teenagers were fickle things, and he’d been too busy raising four younger brothers to fill the social quota they’d expected of him at the time, let alone after they lost Dad as well.

Still, the high school reunion had called, and for some reason, Scott had answered.

He wasn’t supposed to stay there so long, though. Gordon and John had both determined that there was a high chance Scott would be leaving the reunion reminded of all the reasons why he hadn’t been able to keep those friendships and decided to make their own arrangements for the evening. Nothing outlandish – not when John was involved – but a trio of brothers hanging out without the stress of their otherwise busy lives hanging over them.

Not the usual trio of brothers that might be expected to hang out, but as much as Virgil would always jump to help Scott, where they had planned really wasn’t for their softer brother – and Alan was underage anyway.

Beating casinos at their own money-laundering game required just a touch of ruthlessness, and that was very much John’s area of expertise. Gordon found it fun, and Scott always enjoyed taking selfish rich snobs a peg or several. It also required enough strategic thinking and brainpower to cut off any unwelcome dwelling their big brother might otherwise land himself in.

That meant nothing if Scott wasn’t even showing up in the first place.

“Have you called him?” Gordon shot over at John, who was still poking away deliberately at his tablet.

“No answer,” the ginger replied, breath fogging in front of his own face. He didn’t even seem to notice – then again, all those ridiculous layers were probably doing their job to keep him warm. Gordon’s had failed him about half an hour ago. In his defence, he hadn’t exactly planned to be hanging around in the cold this long. “He’s not read any messages, either.”

If they’d gone to all this trouble to plan a pick-me-up for Scott after an expected downer of an evening, their big brother had better not have managed to find some entertainment and forgotten to let them know.

But that wasn’t like Scott at all – even if he had initially forgotten, a call or message from John would have reminded him instantly.

Gordon shivered again. Something didn’t seem right.

“So now what?” he asked instead, not because he didn’t have any ideas – crashing the reunion was an obvious one that sprung to mind – but because John was probably already enacting a plan or several of his own already.

“His phone’s location transmitter’s off,” John said by way of answer. “Actually, his phone seems to be dead in general.” The same phone John and Scott had both checked was fully charged on the way here so he didn’t lose contact with them?

Gordon’s eyes narrowed.

“So what have you got?” There was no way John hadn’t got something by now.

“His watch isn’t transmitting, either,” his brother reported. “But…” He trailed off, staring intently at something Gordon couldn’t see on the screen.

The temptation was there to prod him – verbally or literally – but unlike when John was a mere hologram that may or may not be transmitting, this time Gordon could see that he was mid-thought, still working, still doing something to figure out why their big brother had gone dark, and held back.

It didn’t take John long to finish whatever he was doing.

“I’ve got a location.” The astronaut kicked off from the wall he was leaning against and started striding forwards, long legs uncaring that Gordon’s were much shorter. It took a second or two to jog to catch up.

“What have you got?” he repeated.

A map of the area flashed up above the tablet; orange and yellow highlighted their own position, moving quickly down the street, while a flickering blue icon blinked in and out of existence unsteadily down a side alley four blocks away.

“You said it wasn’t transmitting?”

“It’s not,” John said shortly. “I triangulated all the signals within the appropriate parameters until I picked up traces of its electronic residue.”

Residue didn’t sound promising. Gordon resumed his jog, knowing that John was fully capable of keeping up with him, and mentally mapped out the shortest route to the weakly flickering blue dot. It was staying in the exact same location, not even a slight waver in position, and that, Gordon really didn’t like.

Scott wasn’t one for staying still.

Unconsciously, his pace hastened further. By the time the alley loomed ahead, visible in person and not just lines on a hologram, he was all but sprinting. John was a little way behind him, but that was fine.

Gordon’s instincts screamed for him to keep going, to charge straight into the alley and find out what was going on, but he reined them in, forcing his legs to slow to a walk, and then a stop at the entrance to the alley.

They had no idea what they were walking into, and despite all the signs pointing to not, Gordon really didn’t want to interrupt if Scott had simply found entertainment and forgotten about them. More realistically, he also didn’t want to charge into a hostile situation unaware.

There were no sounds coming from the alley. Nothing to tell him what was going on, but also enough to tell him what wasn’t. With one glance back to see how far behind John was – not far, only seconds out – Gordon slipped around the corner.

Alleys were always somehow gloomier than the surrounding streets. Lighting never seemed to work quite so well; John could no doubt explain it, but an explanation wasn’t important right then.

What was important was that, in the resultant gloom, something was slumped over on the ground. Something that Gordon approached carefully, glancing around to make sure nothing else was laying in wait with a nasty surprise.

Nothing appeared, even as he took the last few steps, and his rigid restraint snapped.

“Scott!” His knee protested as it hit the street sharply but that was insignificant in the face of the ragdoll impersonation his eldest brother was doing spectacularly well. “Hey, Scott?”

His cold fingers found his brother’s throat, pressing up against the pulse point. Scott’s skin was almost as cold as his own, but the steady thrum of his heartbeat beat reassuringly against his fingertips.

Hurried footsteps behind him announced John’s arrival.

“Give me some light,” Gordon ordered, not looking up at him. A blink later and a pale, holographic blue washed over the pair of them. Tablets didn’t have the best torches in the world, but it did the job.

Scott’s eyes were closed, although the lack of response had already implied their brother was out cold. One had a spectacular ring of colour around it, matching the blotches that covered every visible section of skin. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth in a way that had Gordon fearfully inspecting his lip in the hopes that it was just a cut.

The light quivered a little as John knelt down on Scott’s other side.

“His watch is smashed,” the ginger reported. It made sense, considering how difficult it had been to track, but their watches were IR standard. They didn’t smash easily. “Broken wrist, too. How’s his head?”

“Bruised, like the rest of him,” Gordon replied. “Looks like he cut his lip on his tooth, and he’s going to have a fantastic shiner.” He gingerly felt around. “Splitting headache, too. His head’s not bleeding but it’s taken a hard knock.”

“Try and get a response while I deal with his wrist,” John ordered. The tablet light moved away from Scott’s face, leaving it shadowed by alley-gloom, but Gordon could still see well enough to lightly tap a less-colourful portion of his cheek.

“Hey, Scott,” he coaxed. “This isn’t a great place for a nap, you know, bro.” Rustling indicated that John was deploying something medical. Gordon wasn’t even surprised he had something on him, although it was probably brought along just in case gravity got the better of him, and not because he was expecting to patch up their brother when they’d left home earlier. “C’mon, Scotty.”

The faint groan he got was music to his ears.

“That’s right,” he encouraged. “Really not a good place to nap.”

In the gloom, he couldn’t make out the exact moment familiar blue eyes edged open, but he heard the second, louder, groan, followed almost immediately by a sharp inhale that could only be pain.

“G’don?”

“Right here,” he confirmed, resting his hands lightly on Scott’s shoulders in case his idiot of a brother thought attempting to sit up was a good idea. “John’s here, too.”

He got a pain-smothered grunt in response. Muscles twitched under his palms, and then he was predictably forced to keep Scott still.

“Nope,” he chirped. “No moving for you just yet. How’s his wrist, John?”

“Strapped up,” the ginger answered. “How aware is he?”

“’nuff,” Scott rasped weakly before Gordon could reply. “W’ah-ow.”

“Hospital or home?” Gordon looked away from Scott to glance at where John was once again poking at his tablet, somewhat awkwardly as he was also holding Scott’s arm still with one hand.

“’ome,” Scott interjected.

“We’re closer to Thunderbird One than the hospital,” John agreed. “Once we reach her we can run a scan.”

And if the scan showed up something they couldn’t handle at home, Thunderbird One could get Scott to a hospital faster than an ambulance. Gordon nodded.

“Sounds like a plan,” he agreed, looking back down at Scott. “I’ll need a hand picking him up.”

“Ic’n-”

“Nope.” He overrode Scott’s protest. “I doubt you can even see straight right now. You’re not walking.”

The wordless noise he got in response told him he was right, and that Scott didn’t want to admit it.

John’s tablet vanished somewhere in amongst the multitude of layers he was wearing as the ginger left Scott’s wrist to kneel opposite Gordon instead. “How do you want to do this?”

Gordon considered his options, quickly realising that the one that would hurt Scott the least was also the one his brother would hate the most. With no idea what damage he’d taken to the ribs, putting any substantial pressure on his abdomen could spell disaster.

He drew Scott’s unbroken wrist up, to renewed protest, and looped it around the back of his own neck. “It’s not far,” he said. “Bridal’s safest.” Not the easiest, but Gordon was always up for a challenge.

“No,” Scott huffed, but John nodded, like he’d come to the same conclusion. He probably had.

Between them it took no time at all to get Scott loosely in position, broken wrist cradled limply on his stomach as Gordon and John slipped their arms beneath him and prepared to shift.

“Whenever you’re ready,” John said, and Gordon’s mouth twisted into a wry grin.

“On three. One, two, three.”

Scott wasn’t light by any means, but despite his protests he didn’t resist as between the two of them they got him into the air, suspended between them for a moment before John carefully shifted his grip until the battered body of their big brother slipped neatly into Gordon’s arms.

His shoulders protested at the weight, but Gordon ignored them in favour of immediately starting to move. He wasn’t Virgil; he couldn’t carry Scott around as though he weighed nothing, and there was a definite, short, time limit before his muscles gave out.

Scott gave a pained huff, the air brushing past Gordon’s jaw. “Ic’n walk,” he muttered again. Gordon appreciated that he wasn’t trying to prove it, because if Scott actually tried, he’d almost certainly end up dropping him and probably injure them both in the process. At least Scott was mentally aware enough to recognise that.

“Not until we know how badly injured you are,” John told him firmly. “One’s not far from here.” Gordon let him lead the way, trusting him to pick out the shortest route to where the Thunderbird was secured. They left the gloom of the alley for the better-lit streets, and Gordon almost wished they hadn’t. The bruising had been bad enough in the half-light conjured by the tablet; under the powerful street lighting, Scott looked even worse.

When Gordon found out who did this to his brother, they were going to regret it.

Blue eyes, one barely able to open, were regarding him worriedly, as though Gordon was the one that needed fretting over. The hand slung over his shoulder squeezed shakily when something made him stumble, and Gordon grinned down at him thinly once he regained his footing.

“Nearly there,” he promised, both his brother and his protesting muscles. In front of him, John had reproduced his tablet from the volume of clothing he was wearing and was tapping away even as he led Gordon around another corner.

Thunderbird One glittered in the darkness of the park, tucked away mostly out of sight. The stealth coating Scott rarely bothered to use since the Zero-X had done its job at preventing gawkers gathering around, although now John had turned it off it was only a matter of time before late night crowds gathered.

Gordon stumbled again as he approached, muscles burning, and Scott let out an almost silent hiss. A hum of a hover stretcher murmured its way into earshot, guided by John, and Gordon gratefully let it take Scott’s weight, slipping his screaming arms out from underneath him and ducking away from the arm slung around his shoulder.

True to form, Scott immediately started to sit up, but John was there with a gentle but firm touch. In his other hand, the medscanner flickered yellow.

Rubbing at his protesting shoulders, Gordon was reluctantly relieved to hand over responsibility to his older brother as John somehow managed to keep Scott laying down long enough to get the stretcher inside Thunderbird One. Gordon followed, just in time to hear John sigh.

“-broken foot, so no, you couldn’t walk, Scott.”

“So,” he interrupted before Scott found a reason why that wouldn’t stop him. “What’s the verdict, Johnny?”

“Don’t call me that,” John snapped back automatically. “Nothing’s flagging up as beyond our facilities, but I’ve sent the results to Grandma for final verdict.”

Grandma, Virgil, and their arsenal of medical equipment could handle a lot, so that by itself wasn’t completely reassuring, but it went a little way towards it.

“Do we know what happened?” he asked, rather than dwell on that for long. “Scott?”

“N’dea,” his brother mumbled. “D’n r’mber ‘thing ‘fter th’arty.” He sounded put-out enough for it to be the truth.

Gordon caught John’s eye and the ginger’s lips thinned. They’d find out who did it, one way or another. No-one messed with their family and got away with it, no matter how much that contradicted with International Rescue’s philosophies.

Sometimes, a little ruthlessness was necessary.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #scott tracy #gordon tracy #john tracy #thunderwhump #drabbles #purfectpurple #a little ruthlessness

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Sicktember 2021 Prompts

26. Strep Throat/Laryngitis for One Piece - whichever character you wish :)

Quiet Eggplant

Fandom: One Piece Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: Zeff, Sanji

When the teenager didn't react to the woman, Zeff knew something was wrong. @sicktember prompt 26: Strep Throat/Laryngitis

Picking a character for this took a while. My first instinct was Heart Pirates (of course), but none of them felt right for this and in the end I ended up on pre-series Sanji at the Baratie. I've never written Zeff before, and barely written Sanji, so this was a challenge on characterisation, but it was great fun anyway :D Sanji's around 13/14ish in this; teen rating is for canon-typical language and affection-violence.

Sicktember 2021 Prompts - I only plan on writing prompts if I get a request for them, so request away :D Doesn’t have to be TAG - characters from any fandom can be requested (although I can only guarantee I’ll work with ones I know)

Zeff hadn’t been a man of the sea, survivor of the Grand Line and all that entailed, Captain of a Grand Line crew – not to mention the motley pile of idiots that made up his employees-come-crew – this long without knowing a thing or two about people. Adults, mostly, he’d admit, but the eggplant had forced him to learn at least a bit about kids, and Zeff was a fast learner when he put his mind to it.

He also knew his people, nakama he sailed with, lived with, worked with. So when the eggplant kept his mouth shut and head down when a woman walked in, he knew something was up. The teenager had become borderline insufferable in the past year or so as puberty had settled in and women had gone from being just more people to an object of interest.

His peg leg had slammed into that blond head more times than he could count when the idiot eggplant had almost – almost – dropped food in his distraction. If he was honest with himself, the fact that this time he didn’t have to remind the teenager to think with the right head was downright worrying, no matter how much he tried to play it off as relief.

The other chefs noticed, too. No amount of harshly reminding them that the kitchen was a place for cooking, not gossiping, was enough to quell the worried mutters to each other whenever their resident blond charge was out of earshot.

“Sanji didn’t even look at that captain’s companion,” Patty hissed to Carne as he passed him. “Last week he barely kept his eyes in his head when she was aboard.”

“Something’s up,” came the agreement, concerns they kept at bay whenever the eggplant was around seeping out through the meat master’s voice. “This ain’t right.”

“If you want to gossip, get the hell out of my kitchen!” Zeff snapped, punctuating the action with a solid kick. He couldn’t deny that they were right, though, and as he went out to greet the next arriving customers he considered his options.

They didn’t do mushy. His eggplant didn’t expect that from him, and he didn’t offer it, either. He taught the brat everything he needed to know to survive the world and one day find All Blue, but he didn’t coddle him.

That being said, his behaviour was throwing off the rest of the chefs, and something wasn’t right. Zeff was well aware that he was the closest thing the eggplant had to a parent, and while he had no intention of chasing around after him like some sort of nanny, he also didn’t want to let whatever this nonsense was fester.

So, he decided once the newest customers were seated and perusing the menu, there was only one way to solve this.

As the teenager made his way back into the kitchen, setting down empty plates to be washed up before silently heading for his next job – there were many things that could be said about the eggplant, but he was a damn good employee when he wasn’t being a pubescent brat – Zeff lashed out with his peg leg, landing a solid crack against the slender back.

“Put that sullen attitude awa-” he started, fully prepared to be snapped back at and unprepared for the reaction he actually got. As far as kicks go, it was basically a love tap, nothing that should faze the teenager any more.

Certainly nothing that should have seen him stumble forwards, lose his balance, then end up face down on the kitchen floor.

“Oi, Eggplant!” he snapped, attempting to ignore the way his heart leapt up into his throat. “What shitty reaction was that?”

No reply, not even a snarl of shitty geezer. All he got was a solitary blue eye glowering at him, as though the eggplant wanted to say something but was being stopped. The teenager certainly never held back of his own volition, and Zeff’s feeling that something was off strengthened.

The blond dragged himself back up slowly – too slowly – and Zeff elected to hurry the process by grabbing his collar and hauling him up. This close, the pale skin and slight warmth of his skin was immediately apparent. Everything slotted into place and he growled, hurling the teenager straight for the stairs that led up to their cabins.

“What do you think you’re doing working sick, you damn eggplant?” he demanded, feeling anger rise. It was definitely anger that he was risking their customers and reputation, and nothing to do with being worried about the brat’s own health. “Get your ass out of my kitchen and away from the food right now!”

Around them, the other chefs paused, until he rounded on them and reminded them that they were supposed to be working, not gawking and letting the food burn.

The eggplant was still slumped against the stairs where he’d landed, eyes wide as though the fact he shouldn’t be working while sick hadn’t occurred to him in the first place.

Whoever had raised the brat before they’d been thrown together had a lot to answer for.

“Are you deaf?” he demanded, punctuating the words with another kick, forcing him up a few more steps – if he’d wanted to, he could have punted the eggplant all the way up, but then he’d need to replace the inevitably broken banister so a gentler kick it was. “Get your ass out of my kitchen and don’t come back down until you’re not sick any more, got it?”

Still no verbal reply, although the blue eye smouldered in frustration. The teenager at least got the message, though, and after a moment dragged himself up and out of sight.

Out of sight, out of mind, or so it was supposed to go.

Zeff lasted an hour, past the end of the lunchtime rush, before cursing under his breath and stomping his way up. If nothing else, he at least needed to have some idea what the eggplant had come down with, if only to make sure it wasn’t contagious and about to pass through the entire kitchen.

Pesky brat.

He found him curled up in the window of the communal cabin, staring out at the sea. There was no acknowledgement of his presence, so either he was being ignored, or the teenager was worse than he’d thought. Neither of those were options he cared for.

“Out with it,” he demanded, crossing his arms and shifting his weight in case he had to deliver another kick. “How sick are my chefs about to be?”

The blue eye flicked back to look at him before a shoulder raised in a half-hearted shrug. Still no words, and Zeff had never known the eggplant to be sparse with words when he had a whole vocabulary of pirate-learned insults at his disposal. Not willingly at least.

“Seaking got your tongue? I asked you a question, Eggplant.”

It took a moment, but the teenager opened his mouth. The sound that came out could hardly be called a voice, even if shitty geezer was just about recognisable before it turned into rasping coughs.

Well, that answered that. Sore throat, lost voice, and Zeff sacrificed a moment of pride to reach out and roughly shove his hand against the eggplant’s forehead, to a hoarse squawk of surprise. Low grade fever.

He knew what that was, alright. Probably not contagious enough to spread through the kitchen, although not a guarantee, and definitely something to be kept away from the customers.

Damn eggplant.

“If I see your ass in the kitchen before your voice comes back, I’ll kick it straight back up here so hard you won’t be able to get out of bed,” he threatened. “The same goes for if you even think about a smoke.”

The visible blue eye widened for a moment before the teenager’s face settled back into a scowl. His duty done, Zeff turned to leave, well aware there was nothing anyone could do until the thing cleared up by itself.

Well, nothing except making sure his eggplant only ate things that soothed his throat, although if anyone suggested that Zeff was going out of his way to make a special meal for the sick teenager, they’d get a peg leg to the face. No-one went hungry on the Baratie, and if that meant making food for the brat on a temporary kitchen ban, then it was just good sense to make something Sanji’d actually be able to swallow easily.

#sicktember2021 #one piece #one piece fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #red leg zeff #sanji #vinsmoke sanji #patty #carne #purfectpurple #sicktember

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Authors Questions

12: What do you like least about this fic?

Let's stick with Long Way for this one too :)

Yay more Long Way questions... but also that's even harder than the last one! I adore Long Way - the premise, the act of writing it, and the way it lets me explore (compare and contrast!) the two canons.

What am I not so fond of... Hmm...

Okay, I've thought of one, really minor, little thing that does keep tripping me up from time to time. It's a necessity in the fic, but it's the one thing I sometimes struggle to remember to do:

Referring to the TOS boys as "Other-[name]".

The reason I do it is because in other fics I've read with a similar premise, I've found it quite difficult at times to keep track of which universe's boy is which, so I wanted to add in a way of differentiating them that felt natural. I'm not actually sure how natural it's ended up being, especially as Scott is starting to get slightly more comfortable with the TOS cast now, but the aim is to have it from his pov (obviously) where he's basically mentally going "this is not my family", hence the Other- prefix for most of the cast (exceptions are Tin-Tin, because her name is different to Kayo's, Grandma, who becomes "Mrs Tracy", and Jeff, who is "Not-Dad").

I do, however, keep forgetting to do it. It's a bit of a pain to keep constantly typing out, but I don't want to drop it because I need to keep the differentiation in there both for clarity reasons and characterisation reasons as Scott keeps reminding himself that this is not home, no matter how similar the people might be.

Ask Me About My Fics

#thunderbirds are go #long way from home #purfectpurple

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Trope #36: Amnesia, Prompt #633: "Please, stop saying my name like that." for TAG

Forget Me Not

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Angst/Family Characters: Scott, Virgil, John

Ah, good old amnesia time! And you know what, apparently my muse has decided it wants to beat up someone who isn’t Scott, entirely without prompting! Although that might have something to do with the angst of a little brother not knowing who he is... So there’s that.

Another old prompt I’m finally getting around to, so let’s see if I can even find the original post, oops...

Writing Game: Tropes

Scott had thought he’d known despair. He’d felt its frigid bite the day the snow roared down, had it steal all the breath from his lungs the day the Zero-X exploded, heard its white noise when the call had come about a hydrofoil. He’d lost - or almost lost - so much, and seen the way it infected other families every time a rescue didn’t have a hundred percent success rate. He’d been sure, so sure, he’d known what it could do.

The vice around his heart, frigid and thieving and loud, was all of those together and more. Too many things, too much to take in, too much to react to, and he was gasping for breath he didn’t have, drowning on dry land.

“Virgil,” he gasped out, his brother’s name something wet and rasping all at once. Brown eyes regarded him, warm and concerned and a little upset. More than a little upset; he was hiding it but not well enough. Not from Scott.

“Please,” his little brother said, and his voice tightened the vice until Scott thought his heart would stop. “Stop saying my name like that.”

It was only force of will that kept Scott standing, kept him in the same room, because every fibre of his being was screaming for him to get out of there. Before it killed him, so he could find a way to fix it, before he broke in front of the brothers he had to be strong for.

Even the one that didn’t remember him.

Especially the one that didn’t remember him.

Amnesia. A head injury at just the right - wrong - spot, and now Virgil couldn’t remember them. Couldn’t remember him. His brown eyes were warm and concerned but also empty of that one spark that made Virgil Virgil.

They didn’t know if it was permanent.

Grandma had scans running, Brains was delving into research, but the simple fact of the matter was that it was entirely down to Virgil. Either he’d remember, or he wouldn’t, and there was nothing Scott could do to make it happen.

They’d done everything they could; they’d surrounded him with familiarity, family in and out with Scott the constant because he couldn’t - couldn’t - leave even though every moment that passed with no recognition destroyed him just a little more inside. A trip to the hangars, Thunderbird Two in all her beautiful green glory. It hadn’t helped.

Now all they could do was wait. Wait and hope and pray that Virgil’s brain would recover the memories in time.

Scott had never been good at waiting. Waiting for the news that Mom hadn’t made it, waiting for the body they never found, waiting for Gordon to regain consciousness. His job was to protect his family, to help them when things got tough. To do things. Fix things, because he was the big brother and all his little brothers needed him to be able to make the world right again - or at least to keep it turning.

Now he had a little brother who didn’t remember that. A little brother who looked at him without a single spark of recognition but was still so painfully Virgil that he could tell everyone was upset and wanted to help them.

There were three other little brothers still looking to him, three different colours of eyes watching him with thinly veiled hope and belief that somehow, somehow, he could fix this. Big brother could make it right again. After all, there’d always been something between them, hadn’t there? That mutual understanding that went beyond comprehension but was always, always there.

Scott could feel the gaping hole where it should be. Where it was gone, and that alone had him crippled, because he’d had Virgil since he was four, almost as long as he could remember. They’d always said nothing could tear them apart. Even in his blackest days, days he’d done his damnest to block from his memories, it had been there. But this? One simple knock to the wrong part of a head, and it was gone.

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Virgil said, dragging him out of his mind and back into the room where his brother was watching him with those concerned yet sparkless eyes.

“Yes, I do,” he corrected. His voice almost managed to stay steady.

“No,” Virgil said. “You need to leave.” The voice was all Virgil, but the words... Virgil had never, ever, tried to send him away. Not like that.

“Virgil-”

“You think watching you fall apart is helping me?” his brother demanded, shocking him into silence. “I can barely remember my own name, you hovering isn’t going to change anything. You’re just hurting yourself more.”

“No-”

“Get out. Go do whatever you do to relax, and don’t come back until you don’t look like you’re about to shatter.”

Scott’s eye stung. Virgil’s voice was making noises but they were nothing he would say. His brother knew he could never relax when one of his brothers was in trouble, knew that he had to be there. Knew that sending him away would always be infinitely more painful than sitting vigil by a bed.

But he didn’t know, because he didn’t remember. Didn’t know he was tearing Scott’s heart out of his chest, one strip at a time. Thought, in Virgil’s kind way, that it would help him.

Scott couldn’t correct him, though. Because him staying was hurting Virgil, doing the absolute opposite of what he was supposed to be doing, where big brother was supposed to help, was supposed to make everything better. Scott’s job was to fix things but now he was just breaking them more.

It was the worried brown eyes that did it. Filled with pain and frustration but also worry and concern for him. Scott’s other eye stung, at the same time something salty dripped into the corner of his mouth.

“I-”

“Go.”

Brown eyes were unwavering, and Scott swallowed with an unbearably tight throat. One last moment of hesitation, one last silent plea for Virgil to change his mind, to let him stay, but he didn’t.

Scott barely made it out of the room before he broke, his knees crashing to the floor as the door shut behind him and his lungs shuddering and heaving as every breath that escaped was accompanied by a wrenching sob.

Virgil. Scott had never felt so helpless, so useless, in his life. Not only could he not fix it, but he couldn’t even reassure his brother like he normally would. No, he’d just made things worse, his presence an additional stress on the brother who was going through hell. So much so that Virgil - Virgil - had sent him away.

He didn’t know how his heart still had the space to beat, how it could keep going under the crushing pressure surrounding it. His lungs were barely functioning, air replaced by salty sobs and hiccups. Open eyes couldn’t see anything, his sight blurred beyond all comprehension. Extremities were numb, muscles were locked rigid, and there was nothing he could do.

“Scott!” Hands grasped at him, pawing and tugging in a futile attempt to get him to move.

“Scott?” Quiet, worried. Part of Scott stirred at it, recognising a little brother in distress, but it couldn’t break through the rest of him.

“Alan, go sit with Virgil. You too, Gordon.” A third voice joined in, the third and final little brother there to witness Scott’s greatest failure.

“But, Scott-”

“I’ve got him.” Strong arms wrapped around him. “You two check on Virgil.”

Hands fell away.

“Come on, Scotty.” It was John talking, voice quiet and calm and everything Scott couldn’t be. “Let’s get you off the floor.”

Scott’s limbs still weren’t responding, but John was stronger than he had any right to be with all the time he spent in space. His younger brother dragged him upright, or at least to his feet, and then down the hallway. Scott had minimal awareness of where they were going, barely able to put one foot in front of the other until there was something soft and he was sinking down onto it - into it.

John didn’t speak, but the arms didn’t leave him, holding him together so he didn’t have to. It was wrong, another failure - he couldn’t fix Virgil, and now he couldn’t even reassure his other brothers either - but John was unrelenting and so were the tears.

“I-” he choked out, not sure what he was trying to say, but needing to say something. “He- Virg-” Another wave of sobs caught him, and John pulled him closer.

“Virgil’s strong,” John said, quietly but without a hint of doubt. “Whatever happens, he’ll overcome it.” Slender fingers coaxed through his hair, somehow more grounding than the arms around him. “We’ll overcome it, Scott. All of us, together.”

He shuddered involuntarily. Together, John said, but Virgil didn’t even want him in the same room. Found that he was hurting rather than helping.

“I couldn’t- couldn’t help,” he hiccupped, a painful admittance that burned his throat. “He said-”

“You can’t help anyone when you’re a wreck yourself.” John’s voice stayed level and calm. “You know this, Scott. Take a break. Get some rest. You don’t have to do this all alone. He’s our brother, too.”

“But-”

“Rest, Scott.” John didn’t raise his voice, but the command was clear nonetheless. “You’re no good to Virgil like this.”

The words cut, but they didn’t burn like the words he’d been telling himself did. John had always had a gift with words; coming from him, they were marginally easier to swallow.

“Go to him,” he begged.

“Alan and Gordon are with him,” John reminded him. “He’s not alone.”

Scott knew that, but his heart still seized at the terror that somehow it wouldn’t be enough. “Please.”

John’s fingers stilled in his hair. “Okay,” he agreed. The hands slipped away from him and Scott found himself toppling sideways onto the same soft that he was sat on. A bed.

It shifted as weight lifted, and Scott blinked enough moisture away to see the vibrant ginger hair of his brother.

“John,” he rasped. His brother paused. “I’m sorry.” Sorry for failing. Sorry for being blind. Sorry for being so useless. “Thank you.”

“You’re not alone,” the Voice That Answers said. “Either of you.”

John left, and Scott was left staring at the wall - pale silver, not his own - as his heart tried to wriggle free of the clamp around it. John was right; John was always right. They weren’t alone. They would get through, one way or another.

The despair ebbed, just a fraction.

Just enough for him to breathe again.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #scott tracy #virgil tracy #john tracy #gordon tracy #alan tracy #thunderangst #drabbles #purfectpurple #forget me not

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Fluffy Prompt Generator - Scott & John getting sick at the same time. Please :)

Childhood Illness

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Gen Genre: Family/Hurt/Comfort Characters: John, Scott, Lucille

I can definitely do that! Poor boys. Gonna be a little of a wee!Tracy story this time, I feel, so let’s see how well that goes...

Fluffy Prompt Generator

“This,” ten year old John said with all the righteousness of a wronged sibling, “is all your fault.”

A cough accentuated his words, rattling through his chest, and he curled up into foetal position as though that could help them stop. It didn’t.

A sniffle came from the other bed, followed by a low, dramatic groan. John had no sympathy for his brother in the slightest. Scott had gone out to play with friends, one of which had been sick, Scott had caught the bug, Scott had come home and promptly infected John with it.

Mom had promised to take him to the library today. Swollen with another little sibling in her belly, she couldn’t do that as much at the moment, and John had run out of new books to read three days ago, so he’d been excited at the chance to go.

But now he couldn’t, because Scott was sick and Scott had made him sick, and the two of them had been quarantined to their bedroom to make sure they didn’t get Virgil or Gordon sick, either. It just wasn’t fair, and despite the occasional pained noises from his brother, John felt nothing but betrayal towards him.

Scott erupted into his own coughing fit, the noises unmistakable even under the blanket he’d pulled over his head, and together the two of them ended up making such a racket that the door opened a crack and Mom sidled in.

It was John she approached first, perching on the side of his bed. Soft hands smoothed his hair back from his face before he felt himself coaxed out of his ball and drawn into a sitting position. He wheezed and tried to coil back up, but she was having none of it. Quiet murmurs of reassurance washed over him as a hand ran up and down his back, crumpling the fabric of his star-patterned pyjamas as it did so.

Tears prickled at his eyes. Coughing so hard hurt and it made breathing hard and it seemed like it would never stop, but Mom was patient and soothing, and after what felt like a lifetime they subsided and he could breathe properly again.

“Try and drink a little water,” she coaxed, offering him the cup with a straw that had been on his bedside table. “Even if it’s just a few sips.”

John clutched it tightly, straw poking at his lips, and watched as she gingerly stood and crossed the room to Scott’s bed.

The first thing she did was pull lightly at the blanket pulled over his head. “No, Scotty,” she scolded lightly. “Don’t do that; you’ll suffocate.” The only response John’s brother gave was to continue coughing, and he watched as Mom did the same thing she had with him, and pulled Scott into a sitting position. Unlike John, who even when sick didn’t care for much physical contact, Scott burrowed into her side, tucked neatly under her arm as the coughs wracked his body.

He had tears running down his face, too, prompting John to wipe at his own face with his sleeve as Mom worked her Mom-magic and managed to ease Scott’s coughing fit as well.

Just as Scott had his own cup and straw handed to him with the same instructions to try and drink a little, something went crash outside their room.

Mom sighed, and slowly made her way to her feet, letting go of Scott and pressing a light hand to her swollen belly. “I need to see what mess your brothers are making,” she said apologetically. “I’ll be back soon. Look after each other, okay?”

Look after Scott? This was Scott’s fault. Still, Scott was croaking an agreement, so John pinched his mouth shut and nodded sullenly. Mom smiled at him like she knew what she was thinking, before she slipped out of the room again.

Pointedly not looking at the other bed, John took a sip of the water. It was cool and soothing as it ran down his throat, and when it didn’t trigger any more coughing, he took another. He could hear Scott doing the same, his slurps of water a little louder, but ignored his brother.

Then Scott started coughing again. The sound was loud and violent and there was a clatter and a splash as the cup fell to the floor. John hunched over his own cup protectively, and tried to ignore the noise. Mom would hear it, anyway. She’d come in and do more Mom-magic and stop Scott from coughing up a lung.

Except Mom didn’t come. Gordon or Virgil must have been demanding her attention, but Scott was coughing and coughing and coughing and Mom wasn’t coming.

John’s knuckles went white as he stared down at his cup. This was all Scott’s fault. It was. But Mom had asked them to look after each other, and Scott, despite being annoying sometimes, was his big brother.

It was the panicked sobs and gasps between coughing spurts that tipped it, and John glanced over to see Scott curled in on himself, eyes squeezed shut and entire body spasming with each painful-sounding cough.

He set the cup down and stumbled out of bed. Their bedroom wasn’t huge, and it was only a few steps to cross from one bed to the other, but, sick, it felt so much further. His foot landed in the wet spill of water and he pulled a face. Still, Scott was gasping and shuddering around the desperate coughs, so John hauled himself up on the bed beside him.

“Hey, Scotty,” he mumbled, trying to do what Mom had done and straighten his brother out again. Wet blue eyes blinked open blearily at him, and his brother ended up leaning against him heavily, coughing violently enough to shake both their bodies. “It’s okay,” he whispered, rubbing his brother’s back like Mom had rubbed his.

Scott shuddered, but some Mom-magic must have still been around, because the coughs subsided after a moment. His brother was still sniffling, shaking a little from the coughing fit, and any thoughts John might have had about going back to his own bed were scuppered by arms clinging to him tightly.

“‘m sorry,” his brother mumbled. “Didn’t mean t’get y’si’, ‘oo.”

John was still a little annoyed, even with his brother clinging to him, but it didn’t burn like it had done before.

“You owe me a library trip,” he said firmly, and Scott nodded against his shoulder.

“Soon as’m better,” he promised. Another cough crept out and they both braced for another explosion, but it seemed like it was just a one off this time.

“I’m holding you to that,” John warned, before caving and wrapping his arms around his brother in turn, finding himself a little reassured by the contact, too. Scott gave him a thin smile and guided them both to lie down properly.

“I know,” his big brother replied once they were down, lying face to face with their foreheads touching. Scott’s felt warm. “But first we’ve gotta get better.”

John hummed in agreement and felt his brother’s arms tighten around him. They were warm, too, and also comfortable. Somehow, more comfortable than his own bed.

Scott’s eyes closed, and John took that as permission to let his do the same.

He didn’t notice when Mom came in to check on them, letting out a fond little laugh at the sight of her eldest children curled up together, fast asleep and running her fingers lightly through their hair before cleaning up the spilled water.

“Sleep well, boys,” she murmured. “You’ll be better in no time.”

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #john tracy #scott tracy #lucille tracy #drabbles #thunderfluff #sickfic #purfectpurple #childhood illness

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Injured Sentence Starters - 'It feels like I’m dying' with Scott & John

No Witness

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Gen Genre: Hurt/Comfort Characters: John, Scott

So apparently this one’s four months old, but my muse finally sparked on it, so here we go! (See, I get around to prompts eventually... my muses are just fickle. Sorry for the delay!)

Not entirely sure where this is going to go, but I have a beginning in my head so I’ll just let it roll.

Okay, not a physical injury, but a lovely pile of angst nonetheless!

Neither of them were prone to exaggeration. Hyperbole - John liked that word, had found it in a dictionary as a child and found it apt to describe things like Gordon’s latest claims that he could hold his breath for an hour. Alan was prone to being hyperbolic, too, and even Virgil wasn’t always immune, but John preferred to stick to the facts, and Scott...

Well, Scott could be known, sometimes - more so when he was younger - to flourish his storytelling a little. But something like this, he wouldn’t say unless he meant it. Not after Mom. Not after Dad.

On the surface, Scott looked fine. Went about life the same way he always did, a strong, unshakable force that nothing could cower.

Under that front, however... Scott was only human. Mom’s death was still an open wound. Dad’s crash was raw. Scott pretended he was okay, pretended that he could manage, but he was barely twenty and Dad had been so big. So famous. So much.

And now all of that was on Scott’s shoulders. In the dead of night, when no-one was watching, it was too much.

John hadn’t meant to be in his brother’s room. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was in there, rather than his own, but despite his general preference for isolation - and the delight of having his own bedroom - he’d found himself gravitating towards his big brother.

Instantly, he’d known two things. One was that he’d never breathe a word of it to anyone. The second was that he couldn’t leave.

Moonlight highlighted the tear tracks running down Scott’s face, his unshakable big brother curled up at the head of his bed, knees to his chin and arms wrapped around them.

Scott was their big brother. Scott was the one that held them all together, kept them going.

Scott had lost his parents, too. Scott had lost his own support even as he carried on supporting the rest of them.

When the realisation washed over him, John felt like an idiot for not noticing how much he’d been struggling.

He didn’t announce his presence, but he let the door shut silently behind him and padded across the carpet on bare feet. Whether or not Scott noticed him at all until he pulled himself onto the bed and pressed up against him, shoulder to shoulder, he didn’t know.

Scott didn’t pull away at the touch. There was a quiet sob at the contact, but otherwise no response. If John hadn’t already realised how much he was suffering, that would have sent alarms ringing all the way through him.

It still did, Scott never one to show weakness if he could help it, but this wasn’t the first time John had seen Scott broken. Fifteen years of sharing a bedroom had seen to that, and the weeks after Mom’s death had been hard. Terrible.

Agonising.

Scott wasn’t the big brother here. He didn’t need a little brother curling up next to him and looking up at him in wide-eyed adoration and blind belief. He was the grieving son, the young man barely out of teenagerhood who’d had both his parents torn from him and four brothers to be strong for.

John shifted slightly, raising his arm and wrapping it around Scott’s shoulders the way his big brother did for him when things were particularly bad and even he needed the physical contact to ground himself again.

Scott melted against his side.

Words weren’t exchanged. There was nothing to say; anything he tried would be worse than meaningless. Sniffles and gulps hung in the air instead, emotions and grief pouring out of Scott after having to hold everything together for so long.

“I feel like I’m dying.” The words were quiet, a secret hanging tentatively between the two of them. From anyone else, John would dismiss it as hyperbole. Scott... Not Scott.

He tightened his hold, feeling his brother slot more firmly against his side in an almost unheard of role reversal, because Scott needed this even if it wasn’t John’s personal preference when it was him on the receiving end.

“There’s so much,” Scott carried on, more words to linger for a moment before scattering into the void of the night, never to be caught again. “Dad- He-” A louder gulp interrupted the stuttered words. “I’m drowning.”

John understood. Dad had been larger than life, but he’d lived more than twice as long as Scott. He’d had time to amass all of that, to adjust to the weight of the world he was building.

That world had slammed on top of Scott all at once. He hadn’t been ready for it, and it was breaking him.

Drowning him, as Scott put it, as though it had morphed into shackles, pulling him down, down, down, into the depths of responsibility. Maybe it had. But whatever form it had taken, John knew what he had to do.

“You won’t,” he promised, voice just a little louder than Scott’s near-silent confessions. Firmer. “I won’t let that happen.”

Scott’s breath hitched, but it was a startle, not another sob. “You-”

“We’ll work it out.” Ideas were already swirling, logistics and what responsibilities could and should be shared coming to the fore, but now wasn’t a time to vocalise those. Now was a time to hold his brother afloat. “I won’t let you drown.”

They weren’t the two kids that sometimes curled up in the same bed when the world got too rough any more. They were both adults, if only barely, and John hadn’t shared his sleeping space with anyone else - even Scott - in years. Not since Mom had died, and there was a tragic poignancy that it was mourning for Dad that had them back in this position again.

John let his bare toes nudge underneath the covers, pressing his ankle to Scott’s in a silent promise that tonight, he wasn’t leaving. A shudder ran through his brother at the touch, and as though a switch had been flicked, Scott moved.

Come morning, there would be no sign that it had ever happened. Scott would rise with the sun and get on with his day while John slunk back into his own room before any little brothers noticed he hadn’t spent the night there, and they’d go back to the daily routine of scraping their lives back together. John would find a way to start siphoning off responsibilities, releasing Scott from some of the weights dragging him into the depths, despite the resistance his brother would put up, and the world would keep turning the same as it always did.

Come morning, no-one but the moon and stars would know that Scott spent the night curled up against John’s chest, head buried in his shoulder and salt on his cheeks, as though he was a drowning man and John was the lifeline keeping his head above the water.

Scott fell asleep like that, looking like the young, lost, fledgling of a man he was, kept afloat for one night by his brother.

There was no sleep for John that night.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #john tracy #scott tracy #thunderangst #drabbles #purfectpurple #no witness

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Seventy-two times in a minute - TAG

Xanax and tears - TAG - Scott and/or Gordon

Bad Days

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Angst/Family Characters: Gordon, Scott

So I had to look up Xanax because that’s an unfamiliar term to me; seems like it’s some sort of meds against panic attacks and anxiety, which is the context I’ll use it in here rather than as the specific brand of med it actually is. Also let’s just assume it doesn’t automatically ground someone from piloting if taken... Future medical advancements, right? I’m also gonna merge the prompts together in my usual fashion, so yay :D They fit together pretty well, I think. And yes, this is another prompt from four months ago, whoops...

Warnings for panic attacks and PTSD.

Chapter Titles

Scott had problems. It wasn’t something any of them tended to discuss on a regular basis - if Scott never had to talk about it again, he’d be delighted, and talking about it behind his back just felt a hundred different types of wrong - but they all knew it.

Then again, people didn’t survive three months of hell as a prisoner of war and come back all sunshine and roses. Even if Gordon hadn’t seen it in Scott, he’d seen it enough times in WASP to know no-one got out of military service unscathed. Hell, he hadn’t, either, although at least he had the luxury of having physical scars and a cool story to tell to deflect from the mental issues.

Scott didn’t. Scott hid behind masks upon masks - Commander, CEO, Smother Hen - instead. They let him, bitter experience from those first few months giving them too much of a glimpse into the damage that would never truly heal. He did his thing; he was responsible and had monthly meetings with a therapist even now. It was as under control as it was ever going to be.

But under control didn’t mean gone, and sometimes the masks failed him, fell away until the scars were on full display. On the worst days, they reopened a crack.

He tended to hide away from them on those days, bedroom door locked and barred and comms muted. There was nothing any of them could do except leave him be, and maybe be just a little more openly affectionate when he remerged with red-rimmed eyes and blotchy cheeks.

But sometimes, he didn’t manage to hide away in time. It was second nature at this point to banish Alan when the cracks started to show - Gordon’s little brother never complained, mature enough at least to understand it wasn’t for his sake they didn’t want him to see Scott at his worse - but none of the others would leave Scott alone if his safe haven was out of reach.

It didn’t consciously fall to Gordon on those days, John and Virgil still his big brothers and trying their best to protect him, but his age meant nothing when he was the only one of them that had any chance of understanding what it was like. With Scott’s permission, he’d taken to carrying around a small pill case in his baldric, not for their rescuees, but for his big brother if they were away from home.

Rescues were a prime opportunity for him to crack, if something hit too close to home. They always made a point to keep him away from the main triggers, but sometimes there was nothing they could protect him from. An innocent comment. A trick of the light. Someone with just the wrong features on their face.

Scott was apt at burying it, slamming down the Commander façade with enough force that it cracked if you knew what you were looking for, and piloting was so ingrained in his blood that in theory he’d always make it home safe.

Gordon preferred not to take the risk if it could be avoided. He’d leave Virgil to pack up Thunderbird Two alone and coax Scott into the safety of Thunderbird One away from prying eyes.

Hugs made things worse, physical contact the furthest thing from a grounding presence and a sure fire way to cement his mind wherever it had fled to, so Gordon would just sit opposite him, close enough to reach but far enough to be out of Scott’s personal space, and wait for it to pass. The slight brushing of their hands as he passed the pill over, Scott more often than not swallowing it dry, was all they’d have. Then it was just a waiting game.

For Gordon, the worst days were the ones with tears. Most often, Scott would just clam up, muscles locked and eyes unseeing as he gasped for breath. That hurt, because of course it did - it was Scott and seeing him so far away would never be anything short of agonising - but the pill would kick in and after several minutes Scott would be back to himself again.

The days he cried, when gasps for breath turned into broken, wet sobs, and Scot curled in on himself until he resembled a human hedgehog - complete with the metaphorical spikey defences - were the ones where Gordon had to ball his hands into fists to stop them shaking. To quell the urge to pull his broken brother in close and do everything in his power to hold him together.

It wouldn’t help; it would only make things worse. So Gordon just had to watch and witness and wait until Scott drew himself out again, with the help of that same pill.

Tears or no tears, it was Scott’s breathing he listened to as his brother rode it out. On his worst days he’d clocked Scott gasping seventy two times in a minute and dug out a rebreather in preparation for a potential collapse. If it ever got that high, Gordon would pilot home no matter what Scott said. More often it peaked closer to forty, twice what it should be but faster to calm again and still leaving him safe to pilot.

Once it was over, pill kicking in and Scott once again calm and rational, Gordon normally left. Scott never wanted to acknowledge the incidents, and Gordon respected that enough to never bring it up himself. More often than not his departure was silent and forever unacknowledged, and the next time he saw Scott - normally back at home again - his brother’s masks were back and he was the same Scott as always.

It hurt, knowing that Scott was always going to carry those scars, knowing that those little pills were in his baldric for a just-in-case that happened more than he’d like, and sometimes Gordon wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. But they didn’t talk about it, not with Scott, and not about him, either. It was just one of those facts of life they had to deal with. Would always have to deal with.

And if it came up in his own monthly therapy sessions, well no-one else needed to know.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #gordon tracy #scott tracy #panic attack #ptsd #thunderangst #drabbles #purfectpurple #behind the scenes

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

For the 100 Fluff Prompts - how about 96. Whisper and 99. Yawning for Scott and John?? :)

Just The Two Of Them

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Gen Genre: Family Characters: John, Scott

Something nice and fluffy was just what I needed tonight, and this is very much based on me and my sister’s “night-time chats” whenever we end up sharing a bedroom.

Bring on the Fluff Prompts

It’s an old habit, one dating way back to their childhood and two young boys sharing a bedroom, no little brothers around. Lights’ out and instructions to go to sleep, but they don’t, because why would they want to sleep when it’s the only time they’ve had with just the two of them all day?

How it worked as children, they’re never quite sure. John’s always been a night owl, preferring to sleep during the day so he can spend the nights staring at the stars. In contrast, Scott’s always been one to rise with the sun, sleeping through the hours of darkness and cracking his eyes open when the dawn bathes him in light. How they ever found mutual time after lights’ out was a mystery.

It’s more obvious nowadays. They’re both adults, and they’re no longer roommates, either. In fact, they’re rarely both on the same celestial object (or in John’s case, on any celestial object). Their vocation has left their sleep schedules rather sporadic as well, despite their best efforts to the contrary, so it’s really no surprise that their night-time conversations have continued.

Sometimes it’s a way to wind down after a stressful day. Sometimes it’s one or the other - occasionally both - insisting the other stop working and get some sleep.

But sometimes it’s just a good old chat, the two eldest brothers curled up in conference together once the rest of the family have been sent to their beds for the night (or until the next call comes in). A rare night finds Scott reclining in bed, comfortable in pyjamas and the only light spilling in from the stars outside. John is normally holographic, still in uniform because that’s what life on board Thunderbird Five requires, but reclining on his own bed.

They’ll talk well into the night, John’s sleep schedule non-existent and Scott’s not much better, about anything and everything. Little brothers and their mishaps are common topics, as are latest discoveries about the universe - John always likes to tell big brother about his findings first. Other, random, topics creep in from time to time; something on the news, perhaps. A small, insignificant thing noticed on a rescue.

And then there’s the conversations about their parents. Memories of Mom and Dad, keeping them alive in their minds. There’s only two years between them so most of their memories align. It’s easier, sharing those memories with each other. There’s no fear that they’ll have to explain every little detail to a younger brother who wasn’t there, or was too young to remember. They’ll do that in the daytime, but not now. Not at night, when their voices are low, little more than whispers in the vast darkness.

Secrets. Insecurities they dare not share with anyone else but have to share with someone before the weight crushes them. John knows more about Scott than anyone else - even Virgil, for all the two of them are a duo who don’t need words to communicate. Scott knows John best, too, because he’s his only big brother and sometimes John needs that.

It’s always Scott who has to cave first. He still rises with the sun after all, dawn breaking over his face and the light calling him to wakefulness. The yawns start as small and subtle, but as the hours pass they get more and more intrusive until he can barely talk without being interrupted by himself.

That’s the point when John tells him good night, less a hint and more a meaningful jab, and Scott waves him off with another yawn, insisting that he’s fine and doesn’t need to sleep just yet.

John always stays with him until he trails off, often mid-word. Once upon a time, he’d reach over and pull his blanket up to cover him properly, but that’s something he can’t do from space. Luckily, Tracy Island is warmer than Kansas, so if Scott wants to sleep with half of his chest uncovered, it won’t do him any harm.

He’ll watch for a while, to make sure he’s really asleep - prepared in case a nightmare comes calling and blue eyes startle open with a terror Scott will never admit to in the daylight - before settling down properly in his own bed and letting sleep take him.

The comm line stays open. They might not physically share a bedroom any more, but they did and there’ll always be something a little comforting about knowing the other’s there.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #scott tracy #john tracy #thunderfluff #drabbles #purfectpurple #behind the scenes

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years

Note

Trafalgar Law + blood loss + forest??

Anamnesis (Tales From The Heart)

Fandom: One Piece Rating: Teen Warnings: Blood Characters: Law, Baby 5, Buffalo, Doflamingo

Slowly munching my way through this pile! (Not that I’m not happy to still get more! Keep ‘em coming!) Fandom switch for a moment, and Law’s in the firing line now.

Hmm, might go with something a little different this time. My muse has pondered, and has decided to go for a part of Law’s history I’ve never written before! Sadly, that means no Heart Pirates, but it does mean I get to play around in a new sandbox, so how about that? (It’s also an area I remember less about, so challenge time?)

Spin the wheel of whump and give me a character!

The leaves rustled, and Law glared up at them. Some animal was up there, no doubt completely uncaring about the boy hiding in the foliage that made up the base of the tree, but if it kept rustling, it’d draw attention.

Law wasn’t ready to be found, even if the trail of blood would lead right to him if the gangsters looked in the right place. Baby 5 had done her best to cover it up, even as Buffalo did his best to cover him up after Law had point blank refused to let the other boy carry him back. It would be smarter and far more efficient for him to stay hidden while Buffalo raised havoc the other side of the forest and Baby 5 ran for help.

It was stupid. The gangsters were idiots, clearly, but unfortunately being idiots meant it hadn’t occurred to them that attacking a trio of kids was a bad idea. Maybe they didn’t know who they were. Who their captain was.

Law was mad he hadn’t been able to destroy them himself, had taken a bullet to the thigh in what was rather a dangerous place, knocking him down from the fight. It stung that he’d need one of the adults to finish his fight, because he might only be twelve but his life was nearly over and he couldn’t spend it hiding behind the adults if he wanted to make the world burn before he died. He still wasn’t strong enough, but he was running out of time.

Running out of time fast. He didn’t have anything to treat his wound with, his pack abandoned in the fight, complete with its medical supplies, but he knew the puddle of red was getting larger and his thinking wasn’t quite as crisp as it should be. He was going to die when he was thirteen, but the hole in his leg was making it more and more likely by the moment that he was going to die when he was twelve, instead.

It needed sutures, maybe even cauterisation, although that would bring its own set of problems, but all he had were blood-soaked hands, pressing down as much as the pain would let him - sharp pain, not the ever-present pressure of the lead in his skin - and the knowledge that Baby 5 was running for help.

Law wasn’t afraid of dying. Death was a constant companion now, looming closer every day, and he had accepted that. However, he hadn’t watched the world burn, yet. Hadn’t made the world pay for what it did to his sister, his parents, his home. Right now, death was not an option. Right now, he had to live.

His fingers were slippery and red and white swam in his vision, the tan he’d picked up since joining the Donquixote Family lost beneath blood and lead. His head was heavy, lolling down even as he tried to hold it still. There was a lot of red. Even the white was being overcome, no longer the prime candidate for his murderer, and Law bit down on the inside of his cheek. Copper flooded his mouth.

He had to stay awake. Couldn’t pass out, had to wait until the Family arrived and tore apart the gangsters and brought medical supplies so he could patch himself up.

He had to... stay... awake...

“Law!”

Awareness nudged at him, the black fog he didn’t recall arriving fading back into a mist. Feathers, large and obnoxious and pink, and a man many times his size crouched in front of him.

Light glanced off of something. Doffy’s fingers were moving, dancing through the sky in a way that meant he was using his strings. The light highlighted them, too - thin, gossamer strands with tiny red beads and smears of crimson.

Someone was crying. Two someones, and Law didn’t need cognitive awareness to know it was Baby 5 and Buffalo. Trebol’s nasally voice was there, too, but Law wasn’t listening to what he had to say. Wasn’t listening to anything as the realisation he wasn’t dying today set in and the haze turned back to fog.

Large hands grabbed him, the ground disappeared, and the fog turned into inky, inky nothing.

#one piece #one piece fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #trafalgar law #donquixote doflamingo #drabbles #purfectpurple #Tales from the Heart

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