#these honestly are ficlets thank god for shared themes because i cannot write long things

[whatgaviiformes]

5. John & Alan - Scenes from Gordon’s Bedside

Tumblr, you get the full clip under the “read more” this time because I just had to include the phone conversation. I hope you enjoy science!bros Gordon and John, plus some Alan in there. Links are also below for both Ao3 and FF if you like. 

John had been in G-force training, clinging to consciousness by repeating his latest round of Russian vocabulary words, when his younger brother slammed into the ocean at 400 knots. He had just been talking to him that morning, so it feels surreal that in the short amount of time it took for John to finish his bagel, brush his teeth, and head to the training compound, Gordon had boarded the hydrofoil that may have taken his life. From experience, Johns knows just how life can change in an instant, even if an instant is not a true measurement of time. The fact that they’d been through this before in their family does not make today’s events any less surreal or any less terrifying.

“Hey Alan?” His brother has been quiet since he picked him from school. It’s understandable considering the circumstances, and normally John would appreciate the silence. But today, the worry has been exhausting, and he’s been piloting for a long time.

“Hmmm?”

“Did you know that time moves faster for your face than it does your feet?”

He glances over at the small figure for a reaction. Alan shrugs, which is unfortunate because that’s a really good factoid.

Gordon’s message this morning was a picture of a clam, followed by the words Abra Cadabra. Open. Accurate for a clam, but also who said scientists didn’t have a sense of humor? He wondered when and where it was discovered and had started to open a search on his phone, when Gordon’s second message came through.

If you look it up though it was reclassified as theora in the mid 1990s. Of course he’d known John would go looking. Neither taxonomy nor malacology were their specialties, but where Gordon was full of unbridled curiosity for any and all interests in orbit with his love for the sea, John yearned to know, understand, research, catalogue, as if it were a basic need like food. His research this morning started with theora mesopotamica and ended with clam life spans.

“Giant Clams can live up to 150 years old,” he shares with the small blond slouching in the co-pilot’s seat.

“Mmm...”

To let Gordon know he appreciated the hello that morning, John had sent him back a picture of a nebula shaped like one of the creatures he loves so much. Just as Gordon knows John, John knows Gordon, so when his little brother sent back the heart eyes emoji, John knew that Gordon really meant it – he probably expanded the picture, saved it, and showed it to his shipmates that morning with a “LOOK at this AMAZING thing!”

It might have been the last picture many of those men and women ever saw.

Gordon definitely would have shown the picture to his friend, Dan. Gordon always said John would love Dan because he was into naval navigation and always had his head in the stars. His chest aches for the kid he never knew, but who knew him through his messages to Gordo. The anguish he feels for his brother’s grief is overwhelming, because Daniel Cabrera was among the first names released to the public.

“Hey John?” Alan asks. “Did you know the micro quasar’s jets in W50 make it look like scarring, and that’s part of why it’s called the Manatee Nebula. Manatees are on the endangered species list, and they often are pretty scarred from being injured by boat propellers.”

The yeah is heavy in his throat, and he chokes. He does know. It’s the message that he shared with Gordon that morning. The message that Gordon must’ve shared with their youngest brother.

“It was the last thing he sent me.”

“It’s the last thing I sent him,” he reveals, and it hits him that he and Alan have been thinking of the same picture this whole time.

Alan is ever so young at seven years John’s junior and barely a teenager. There’s a lot of Alan’s childhood that John had missed by pursuing his university has young as he did. The thought makes him sad. There’s a lot of Gordon’s that he missed too.

“Since when are you into quasars?”

“Since ever. Since Star Trek.” Alan quips. That’s a language John understands. He may or may not be fluent in Klingon, which in hindsight he really should not have learned before Russian. You need Russian to be assigned to the ISS. Alan continues, “I like space, though. I want to be an astronaut like Dad. Like you.”

That’s new.

“An astronaut? You wanted to be a racecar driver a month ago.” And before that he wanted to be a pilot like Scott.

“Still do, but rockets go faster.”

They do indeed.

John’s smiles at him weakly, quelling the pridejoyexcitement he feels in having his baby brother share a similar love.  It feels wrong to smile while Gordon is dying.

End note: Thanks for reading, maybe one day I can get to >1000 words. - FF, Ao3

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