Authors note: I had meant to slow down with the fan-fictions, but my Tracy-muse refuses to listen to reason. This is a sequel (of sorts) to 'An Experiment in Spontaneity', and the characters are based on their movie-verse equivalents. Ergo, Gordon is piloting Thunderbird 3, and Alan has yet to be assigned to a Thunderbird.
This fic is dedicated to my own little brother, who is every bit as annoying as Alan Tracy :-)
Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profits from this fanfic. Flames will be used to light the candles on my Gerry Anderson shrine.
John Tracy's world had been reduced to two things: the monotonous grey walls of the communications bridge, and the painfully slow progress of the clock.
He squirmed in his orange-lined IR uniform, gloved fingers tapping restlessly on the work-station in front of him. Every now and again, his gaze dropped down to the small chronometer inset into the communications terminal. As he watched, the digital display flickered from thirteen-hundred hours to thirteen-hundred hours and one minute.
John gave a grunt of annoyance and sank lower in his chair. Gordon was now officially late.
He glared ruefully at the empty view-screen, mentally willing Thunderbird 3 to appear. The screen – however – remained stubbornly dark, displaying the exact same scenery as it had for the past week and a half: a few twinkling stars and a whole lot of black. To pass the time, he tried to distract himself with a game of eye-spy, but quickly gave up. As it turned out, it wasn't as fun to play when he was by himself. The answers were too easy.
A quiet bleeping sounded suddenly, signalling an incoming communications from Thunderbird 5.
"This is Thunderbird 3 calling Thunderbird 5. Requesting permission to dock."
John sprang out of his chair in his eagerness to open a channel. "F-A-B Gordon. Good to hear your voice." 'Good'? he thought ruefully to himself. Talk about understatement of the century. He could have dropped to the ground and kissed the cold metal floor, he was so ecstatic to hear another human voice!
Oblivious to John's relief, Gordon gave a low chuckle. "Best hold off on the welcome wagon, John. You might not be so happy when you see the cargo I've brought for you."
John's tanned forehead contorted into a frown at the sound of Gordon's laugh. He knew that particular laugh, and it usually followed one of Gordon's infamous pranks. Having been the object of many a 'joke' back home on Tracy Island, he had learned to be more than a little wary as far as his mischievous younger brother was concerned.
Still, all reservations aside, he would be glad to have some company after so long in space. Hell, if Attila the Hun had patched in to announce his imminent arrival, John probably would have invited him in for tea and crumpets.
...Smiling happily to himself, John practically skipped off the communications-bridge and made his way down to the docking-bay, ready to meet with Thunderbird 3.
Less than five minutes later, Thunderbird 5's circular air-lock opened with a soft hiss of air, and Gordon – the second youngest of Jeff Tracy's brood – strode on deck, helmet grasped firmly under his arm. He gave a wide grin as his eyes fell on the uniformed figure in front of him.
John smiled and held out his hand politely. "Hey Gordon..."
Gordon ignored the extended hand and rushed his brother with a rib-crushing hug. The weight of the impact was enough to send John stumbling backwards, the two boys staggering together in a confused tangle of limbs. John wheezed helplessly under the onslaught, arms flailing wildly.
"Need...air..." he managed to choke, "...Can't...breathe."
"Oops, sorry." Gordon released his grip and stepped back, still grinning from ear-to-ear. Apparently unembarrassed by his gratuitous display of affection, he gave John a friendly – if a somewhat hard – punch on the shoulder. "So how's my favourite bottle-blonde doing? Billy Idol wants his hair back, by the way."
John sighed and raised his eyes heavenward. "Hm, you managed to last a whole..." he paused to check his wrist watch, "...Thirty seconds before you made a joke about my hair. That's gotta be a new record, right?"
Gordon waved off the comment with characteristic indifference. "Johnny-boy, making fun of you is the one thing that gets me out of bed in the morning."
"Note to self: Gordon is still under the impression that he's funny."
Gordon smiled fondly at the elder Tracy. "Note to self: John is still a humourless ass in desperate need of a good shag." He paused to un-strap the shoulder-bag he was carrying and passed it to John, "Before I forget, Scott sent you a care-package. Don't open it just yet though, okay? It's a For-Your-Eyes-Only kind of deal."
"What is it?" John peered at the bag with ill-disguised suspicion, but dutifully made no attempt to look inside. "If this is another one of your pranks, I'll be very unhappy."
"Pranks? Moi? John, I'm hurt." Gordon looked genuinely mortified by the mere suggestion. "While I have been known to have instigated a few - admittedly brilliant - practical jokes in the past, I'm now officially a reformed character."
"Uh-huh, and Brains has reinvented himself as the sixth Chippendale dancer," John commented with no small amounted of sarcasm.
Gordon made a dramatic grimace. "Yeesh, thanks for that mental image."
For a slip second, the two Tracy brothers shared the same vision – one of an oiled, bespectacled Hiram K. Hackenbacker gyrating on stage in a sequined thong. They gave twin shudders of disgust and swiftly sought to move the conversation along.
John frowned suddenly, remembering Gordon's earlier comment. "When you mentioned about the 'cargo' before, what exactly were you talking about?"
Gordon paused to scratch at a phantom itch at the back of his neck. "He should be out it a sec. To be honest with you, John, the flight up here took a lot out of him. He was spewing chunks before we even entered orbit."
"He?"
The younger Tracy feigned innocence. "Oh? Didn't dad tell you?" A mischievous smile suddenly curved at the corner of his mouth, his angelic features melting into an expression of pure demonic glee. "You're babysitting."
As if on queue, a slight figure in a rumpled flight-suit emerged in the hatch to Thunderbird 3. His spiked blonde hair was dishevelled and untidy from the trip into space, his normally tanned skin coloured with a noticeable tinge of green. He was breathing heavily through his open mouth and John could see the thin silver braces that ran in parallel tracks across his teeth.
Alan Tracy.
"Captain Peroxide," Gordon said with a grin, "Meet Retainer Boy."
Alan staggered woozily around for a moment or two. "I think I'm going to throw up," he croaked weakly, clutching his stomach in a theatrical gesture of nausea...
...And then promptly heaved what remained of his lunch onto the docking-bay floor.
Gordon cast a critical eye down at the mess Alan had created, then turned to his stunned older brother, smiling brightly.
"Best of luck, John. He's all yours."
"Dad, I'm sorry, but there is no way that Alan can stay up here."
Jeff Tracy – sitting at his desk in the office at Tracy Island – glanced sharply up from the documents that he had been working through, one dark eyebrow twitching upward. The tall windows behind him were open to the tropical sunshine, and – even across the vast distance that separated him from his family – John could hear the tell-tale shrieks of his brothers as they played childishly in the pool.
"Oh?"
John looked pleadingly at his father over the satellite link. "He's way too young! I was twenty when I first went into space – he's fourteen. That's a big difference."
Jeff set aside his paper-work and leaned back in his chair, resting his chin thoughtfully against a fist. "Maybe," he admitted, "but as far as I'm concerned, he's more than proved himself to be ready to join the team. If it hadn't been for him, we'd all be dead and The Hood would be in full control of the Thunderbird machines."
John frowned at the mention of The Hood's recent attack on International Rescue. He had to admit that Alan – with a little help from Fermat and Tin-Tin, of course – had certainly handled the situation with a professionalism that far exceeded his youth. While John and the rest of the Tracy's had been floating helplessly around in a crippled Thunderbird 5, Alan had managed to evade capture, liberate the hostages, and successfully track down and stop The Hood and his cronies in London.
...Still, while John might concede a passing admiration for his younger brother's actions, that didn't mean that he particularly wanted to share his living space with him.
"So let him clean Thunderbird 1 on weekends! Why do I get stuck with the little weasel?"
Jeff shot his son a sharp look. "I would have thought that you would have been pleased to be getting a little company up there." He paused for a moment, then gave a tired sigh, as though this were an argument that he had fought several times over. John made a swift – but fairly accurate – guess that Scott had also been harassing his father over his decision to allow Alan in space.
The Tracy family patriarch spread his hands in front of him. "You work long shifts, John," he explained patiently, "Three weeks out of four a month? All year every year? It's a lot to ask of anybody, and we always knew that it was only going to be a temporary solution."
John was beginning to comprehend what his father was telling him, and he wasn't sure that he liked it. "Wait a minute...what are you saying exactly?"
"I want you to train Alan. Teach him everything you know - show him the ropes. Then, maybe when he's a little older and he's finished school, he can join you up there on Thunderbird 5."
John ran a hand through his bleached-blonde hair – a habit he'd had since childhood. "Dad, Alan hasn't stopped throwing up since he left Tracy Island. I just spent the past ten minutes cleaning half-digested gummi-bears up off the bathroom floor. He's no good in space."
"He'll learn," his father said simply, "You did."
"But dad-"
"No 'buts', John," Jeff interjected firmly. "Look, I know that Alan can be a little..." he paused, struggling to find the right word, "...trying at times. But he's a good kid – he just needs the chance to prove himself. You were the one who told me that, remember?"
John slumped lower in his seat. "I was talking out of my ass, as usual," he muttered sulkily, already realising that the argument was over and he had lost.
"It's only for a few days. Help me out here, John."
"Oh..." the second oldest Tracy boy gave a dejected groan, "...alright. I'll take care of him."
Jeff graced his son with a winning smile, his teeth brilliant white against his deeply tanned skin. "Good old John; I knew I could count on you. I'll call in later on to check on how you're doing, alright?"
"F-A-B dad."
John sighed inwardly as the view-screen went dark and his father disappeared from view. Good old John. Good old bloody John. Truth be told, he was sick to the back teeth of being 'Good Old John'. Why him? What had he done that was so terrible? What awful crime had he committed that made him deserve to be left alone with the nightmare that was Alan Tracy?
As if conjured by this very thought, the doors to the communications-bridge opened with a soft 'woosh' and Alan staggered into the room.
"John, I think I threw up in one of your shoes. Could you come and clean it up for me?"
Tbc...