Scott can count on one hand the number of times he's been to Jane's place.
He's never even had to land TB1 here, but her little prairie cottage is surrounded by land left fallow around the outside edges of the windbreak that surrounds her property. This is all old growth, trees decades old and well-established, and the house they shelter is far smaller than their boundaries seem to warrant.
From the air, it's possible to see the very faintest outlines of the buildings that used to be there, yellowing shadows in the grass where basements and cellars were backfilled, and everything that once stood on the property was razed to the ground and erased. There's enough space that he can land his Thunderbird in her backyard, and though it's a bit of a tight squeeze, it's not like it's a high-stakes landing.
Then again, considering the present state of International Rescue, maybe the stakes have never been higher.
Jane's outside waiting for him by the time Scott disembarks, the breeze teasing at her French-braided blonde hair, barefoot in ripped jeans and a faded t-shirt. What might be mistaken at a distance as happiness to see him is revealed upon closer examination to be the smuggest, most self-satisfied smirk Scott's ever seen her wear, and he can't even be annoyed with her for it.
He also can't help but comment, in lieu of a greeting—
"Yeah, we'll see if you're smiling when my entire family collapses into complete and total anarchical dysfunction and our only remaining livelihood is to scream at each other and throw things on the first and trashiest reality show that'll have us."
This sobers her not even slightly, and her grin only widens. "You know I'd watch the hell out of that."
"You're about to have a front row seat to the live and uncensored pilot episode."
"Do you think the cast will be trashy enough to sign my tits?"
This metaphor is already wearing thin. Scott sighs, shaking his head dramatically as he drops an arm around her shoulders, falling in step beside her as hers slips around his waist. "The worst thing about the quality of your taste is how I can't even say anything about it, because—"
"Because I'm dating you." Her glee is completely unfettered now.
"Right. We'll see how much longer that lasts."
"Oh, shut up. Come in and change."
She breaks away, not before giving his hip a slight, affectionate squeeze, and her long-legged stride takes her easily up the well-worn path to her front door. Scott follows obediently, far less familiar with this place, but still aware that there's a change of his clothes waiting somewhere inside from the last time he was here.
Jane's house is lovely, even if Jane herself can be a bit obnoxious. The reason Scott hasn't been here often is because the place is a little oasis of true solitude, a lonely claim staked in the middle of the prairies, and aggressively constructed to house one person and one person only. He knows she built it herself, sometime long before he knew her. There's a picture on the wall of the bedroom, of her standing amidst the unfinished framing of the same, in aviator sunglasses (vintage), a tanktop (braless), and denim shorts (genuine cut-offs), with a nailgun in hand and the smile he so loves.
The outside is the hazy blue-gray colour of an aircraft carrier, and Scott knows her well enough to believe this is a nod to her background in the Navy. The theory gains credence as the interior picks up a rather cheekier nautical theme, the walls are all pristine white clapboard, open to the rafters, and painted thickly by an amateur's hand. Every surface is gleaming white except the floorboards, which are an almost shocking royal blue. Shelves and bookcases and her desk are all built into the walls, which encircle a wide-open floor plan, which somehow manages to feel like it sprawls in a space of only a few hundred square feet, only ever intended to accomodate one person. Wherever furniture exists to accomodate anyone extra, it feels like a grudging concession. The bedroom and bathroom are the only rooms tucked away from the rest of the house, squirrled away beneath a lofted reading nook. The house is charming.
Scott's only been here a few times, but the place feels familiar because it feels so quintessentially like Jane—and because she acts as though he's welcome here, when he knows for a fact that very few people actually are. There's a coffee cup still sitting on the kitchen island as he comes in the door and a bagged loaf of bread between jars of peanut butter and grape jelly. More blankets are layered on the couch than one would think could belong to a single person, and a philodendron threatens to take over the entire coffee table. Her laundry sits unfolded in a basket on an armchair that probably exists for the sole purpose of holding a laundry basket. She's already crossed the room and started rifling through it, presumably looking for one of his shirts.
Something about this place makes a sudden, swelling ache rise in Scott's chest, especially because he hasn't been able to follow her further than the little front hallway, where he lingers.
"I have an idea," he says, as Jane looks up from her laundry, with a pair of lavender cotton panties in one hand and a heather gray t-shirt in the other. "Let's just stay here."
Jane throws his t-shirt across the room to hit him gently in the face. "Go shower," she orders, pointing towards the bedroom door, as though he could've forgotten where it is. "Don't be a baby."
The poor choice of words probably isn't deliberate—for as much as Jane can poke and prod and tease him sometimes, she usually eases up on the torment around the subjects he's most sensitive about and generally isn't wantonly cruel. Still, it's an unwelcome reminder of what's brought him out here, and he remains mutely sullen on the subject as he ducks into the bedroom, and then the bathroom beyond. He leaves the door halfway open behind him, undressing, and just before he turns the water on and steps into the shower, he hears the familiar (though rather less vigorous) squeal of the bedsprings as Jane deposits herself in the middle of her mattress.
"Your jeans are already on the counter," she calls through the half open door. "What should I wear?"
The shower is actually a deep, enameled cast iron bathtub with a curtain hanging around it, and a rainfall showerhead square in the center. It's nice in that it's been installed at sufficient height that he doesn't have to duck beneath it to wet his hair, but unfortunately drafty, especially with the door open. "I don't know," Scott answers, finding a bar of soap with the slivered remains of a previous bar of soap stuck on top. Jane makes better money than to need to save slivered bars of soap, but it's endearing all the same.
"Should I wear a dress?"
The water is hard here and it takes a minute to build up a lather, soap slick and slippery over his skin before it finds somewhere on his body to start to get sudsy. "You don't have to wear a dress," he tells her, still shouting back over the sound of the water and the whirr of a vent that's kicked on automatically, sensing the steam in the air.
"I've got that little red number you like."
Jane has several little red numbers that Scott likes, but none of them are appropriate for the occasion, and he knows she knows it. Teasing again. His tolerance for it is starting to slip, as the discussion careens towards the occasion in question and he can feel his stress levels mounting. "Wear what you want."
"I thought you'd want me to make a good impression."
This is a trap. It's an unstated truth that the impression Jane makes is contigent on the reality that Scott's kept her a secret for the past two years. That truth is out now, trusted to Gordon of all people, and there's no way it's going to go over well with the rest of the family. He doesn't want to be the one to tell her that, though, so he dodges the question instead. "I don't want to have this conversation shouted between your bedroom and bathroom."
The response to that is a pointed silence, and then the creak of the door and the sound of approaching footsteps, before the shower curtain is yanked open and Jane sticks her head into the shower. "Is this a conversation?" she asks, at a reasonable volume now, though the weight of the emphasis she lays on the word is about as heavy as the prospective conversation.
Scott moves on to scrubbing soap through his hair as water sheets foamy suds off his shoulders. "I think I've already blown your chances to make a good impression," he tells her, eyes closed so he doesn't have to meet her gaze.
The rings at the top of the shower curtain rattle around the curtain rail as she flicks it closed again, but by the proximity of her voice, she doesn't go far. "Gordon seems to like me," she observes.
"Gordon doesn't count; Gordon likes everybody."
"Doesn't like you too much at the moment."
At the moment, as far as Scott can tell, nobody really does. He's had a week to fly under the radar, stonewalled by John's icy silence and shut out by Virgil's sudden, uncharacteristic depression. Even Alan's seemed abnormally distracted by something, even by the usual standards. Scott's just kept his head down and tried to catch up on paperwork, holed up in his father's old office. "Yeah, well. I probably deserve that."
"Oh, honey, I think we're well beyond probably."
Scott sighs and turns the water off. He pushes the curtain open and finds Jane sitting, waiting, on the bathroom counter with a towel in her lap and her legs dangling. She tosses the towel gently towards him and he catches it, drying off before wrapping it around his waist and stepping out of the shower. "You do know I'm really sorry, right?"
Jane shrugs. She's taken the time to pile his jeans and a t-shirt on a small stool beside the shower, with a clean pair of briefs folded neatly on top, and Scott starts to dress, not made especially self-conscious by her continued presence. "Sure, but mostly because you've told me instead of any of the people who need to hear it."
"I'm getting there."
"I know." She still watches from where she sits atop the counter, not in a particularly salacious way, merely observant. "You've gotta understand, though, this is the closest thing I've ever seen to your family having to deal with a real person problem, even if your family's version of a real person problem still involves a pregnancy scandal with one of the most recognizable socialites in the western world. And sweetheart, you're kind of dropping the ball."
Scott feels himself wince at the use of the word 'scandal', straightening up as he pulls on his jeans. "Do I not qualify as a real person?" he asks, sardonic because he already knows the answer.
"Not on the global stage you don't; not when International Rescue does what it does. I don't think I need to tell you that." Jane hops down off the counter and crosses the room, still barefoot, still in the jeans and t-shirt she'd worn to greet him, despite all her facetious questioning about what she should wear. She hasn't changed, and probably never planned to. She slips her arms casually around his waist, where his jeans still lie low and loose over his hips, without the aid of the belt he hasn't gone looking for yet. "But you're not Thunderbird One right now, are you?"
The answer she expects is obvious, and he wants to be able to give it to her, but it wouldn't be the truth. By now she should know better than anyone that who he is has become inextricable from what he does. Barefoot, Jane's only a few inches shorter than he is, tall enough that when she stands close, he can bow his head to touch his forehead against hers. "Less than usual, I guess," he answers, trying to tell her what she wants to hear, while equally aware that that wasn't it.
Her right hand comes up to rest at the side of his neck, her thumb lightly grazing over his throat in a gesture that's as intimate as it is vaguely threatening. "But never not entirely. Always and, never or."
"Package deal," he reminds her gently, swallowing against the miniscule pressure of her thumbprint against his throat. Jane has a way about her that can be disarmingly intense, at times. "You don't usually give me shit about that."
"Can a person be codependent on themselves? Asking for a friend."
"A friend," Scott echoes, pretending that such a diffidence of the label was the greater affront in her very pointed statement.
"Yes, a friend," Jane answers right back, mimicking his tone. The hand at the side of his throat drops down, and her fingertip jabs solidly against his collarbone, emphasising each point as she goes on, "—and a boyfriend, and a lover, and a brother, and a grandson, and a pilot, and a veteran, and one of the richest people in the world, and the de facto leader of International Rescue, and Thunderbird fucking One. Baby, there's barely enough hours in the day."
Scott pulls away from her, bending down to scoop up the t-shirt she's found for him. It matches one of hers, though not the one she's wearing now, and has the Kansas City Chief's logo emblazoned across it. They'd picked them out the last time they went to a ballgame together, and the fondness of the memory is just enough to soften his growing irritation with her, his impatience for her to get to the point. Most of it is just nerves, and none of it is Jane's fault. She's just doing what she always has—what he fell in love with her for—knowing him well enough to call him out. Still, he deflects, "I wear a lot of hats."
"I think by this point, Scott, you might be more hat than cowboy."
"None of the hats are cowboy hats. What's your point?"
She'd let him go when he stepped away from her, and she allows him to put on his shirt before she insistently steps back. Now she takes both his hands and holds them in hers, and she might as well have employed the nail gun from the picture in her bedroom, for how securely Scott finds his bare feet fixed to the floor by the gesture. There's no chance of him trying to move away or evade her again, as Jane takes a few moments to gather her thoughts.
"I think," she begins, oddly gentle, in a way that's at odds with her typical flippant abrasion, rare and worth waiting for, "I think there's a real person in there somewhere and, if you'd just let him, he'd handle all of this better than you have been so far."
"You think?"
Jane corrects herself with a faint smile, soft and almost shy. "I know. Because wherever he is, he's the guy I fell in love with."
It's perhaps an unfortunate reflection of Scott's innermost true nature that he immediately manages to feel a twinge of jealousy towards himself, or whatever buried aspect of himself Jane claims to love, even as she leans in to kiss whoever exactly he is at the moment. Initially his impulse is to resist, to let this be brief, prefunctory—but that'll never really be possible, not while every part of him loves her back. The second kiss tastes of the peanut butter sandwich she had for lunch, and by the third his shirt is on the floor. The fact that he hasn't found a belt yet makes it even easier for his jeans to follow.
There's no real rush to get out to the farmhouse anyway.
Afterwards, loosely tangled together in the bedsheets, Scott reaches out to languidly prod Jane's shoulder. "Hey."
Jane almost always wants to nap after sex, and now is no exception. She lies on her stomach with her arms folded beneath pillow to cradle her head, her golden hair a braided tangle, haloed and hallowed by the bright sunlight slanting through her bedroom window. The shadows of the window panes pattern her bare back. She looks angelic, at least until she opens one eye, at which point she looks like an irritated pirate. "Mm. What?"
"Which one of me do you think that was?"
"I think that was at least three of you in a row, and one of you twice. And there was definitely a cowboy."
Scott scoffs lightly at that, but can't help smiling. Somehow, Jane always manages to take the edge off. He rolls over to get closer to her, close enough to press a kiss against the back of her neck, and to hear her sigh contentedly. "You can't sleep, though."
Jane responds with a soft little huff and a suggestive shimmy of her shoulders. "If any more of you wanna try and stop me, bring it on."
It's not often that Scott is the more responsible member of their partnership. He sighs and shifts closer, crowding onto her pillow and putting his face too close to ignore. "No, I mean we gotta go."
"You wanted to stay," Jane reminds him, probably just teasing again, probably to make a point.
He still does. More than anything, in a way that makes whatever part of him is supposed to be a brother feel horrifically guilty, Scott wants to just stay here, with her, where things are simple. Where what they both want begins and ends with each other, and their lives are confined to the bounds of a little prairie cottage, built for one person but with just enough room for two. Where no lives are at stake and no catastrophes loom; where no one's gotten unexpectedly pregnant or secretly been having an affair with their surrogate sister, or is turning twenty-years old in a way that can only mean he's about to turn thirty-one. Where he has no one to apologize to for things he wishes he hadn't said. More than one part of Scott's apparently myriad self wants to stay.
But he suspects that Jane wouldn't love that about him and of course, that's what he wants most.
"Maybe," he concedes, sitting up and flicking the blankets off the bed. "But a better version of me says we've gotta go."