Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.

Prompt from rachfielden-xo: "Person A and Person B unable to sleep after watching a horror film but neither will admit the film scared them"

"Hey, John?" His brother's voice was quiet. Tentative. Scared. "Are you awake?"

"You should be asleep, Alan," he replied, allowing the holographic visage of his youngest brother to flicker into existence in front of him. "It's three in the morning." The teenager liked his sleep entirely too much to stay up late without good reason, and John shuffled his own thoughts around in his head until his focus was on his brother and not the reason he was still awake despite handing monitor duty over to EOS for the night an hour earlier.

Alan was rigid, shoulders hunched and blanket pulled up to his nose. The cause was immediately obvious, and John supressed a wry, humourless smile of his own. Just one more thing he had in common with the teenager.

"No reason," Alan mumbled, pulling the blanket tighter against him. His bright blue eyes stood out starkly against the red of the material. "I just… couldn't sleep. That's all."

It never ceased to amaze John that his brothers thought they could lie to him and he wouldn't realise. Living in space did not mean he was out of touch, nor did it mean he couldn't see their tells. In this case, however, he was more than willing to humour Alan.

Alan wasn't the only one still awake despite being in bed, after all.

"Do you want me to wake Scott?" he offered. He'd never go to Scott for himself over this, but for Alan was another matter entirely. Any other time, he'd wonder why Alan hadn't wandered into the room next door already, but tonight?

Tonight, the dark was the unknown, and the unknown held Things, writhing and creepy and hands snatching at ankles from holes in the wall that hadn't been there before they'd blinked. Thunderbird Five was well-lit, no dimming of the lights while he tried to sleep tonight. Alan didn't have that same luxury, so the security of the blanket on his bed was the best he could do.

It was a little pathetic, really. They could face the deadly void of space without flinching, they could battle aliens and zombies in a fully immersive gaming system as blood and guts and all manner of grotesque things rained down upon them.

But one measly movie, and suddenly the bogeyman was real again.

It hadn't even been a good movie. The plot had been terrible, and John had spent most of it listening to Scott and Gordon tearing it apart. Virgil, clearly the most sensible member of the family, had opted to linger on the mezzanine floor with his paintings rather than watch the movie with the rest of them.

The entire budget, and the creativity of the screenwriters, had gone into the Things. They weren't ghosts, which were admittedly something that creeped John out if he considered them for too long – the 'haunted' Eden hadn't helped with that – so he hadn't expected to find anything particularly taxing about the movie.

He'd been mistaken, and apparently he wasn't the only brother that had underestimated how terrifying the Things from the movie would be.

Alan shook his head. "He's asleep." The words were muffled, and sounded a lot like an excuse rather than a reason, but John couldn't really argue with the logic. Their big brother didn't get enough sleep as it was; disturbing him over movie-induced paranoia really wasn't worth it.

Still, the blond clearly needed a big brother to chase away the Things, and John mentally ran through the options. Virgil would help with no hesitation, although he had gone to bed an hour earlier so that would involve getting him back out of bed and dealing with a sleep-deprived Virgil in the morning. Gordon was more of a wildcard, and when it came to something irrational like this, there was no real telling how he'd react.

…If he was honest, John wouldn't mind some real company tonight, either.

"Okay," he said, finding his way to his feet. "I'll be down in fifteen."

"You're coming down?" Blue eyes widened further, a cross between concern and delight. "Why?"

"Well, I'm already awake," John shrugged. "I'll keep the line open."

Admittedly, once he was out of the well-lit hangar and in the dark of the villa in the middle of the night, the ongoing whispered conversation held a selfish connotation. Just as Alan clearly didn't want to leave the bed and brave the darkness, John found his own pulse accelerating a little as he padded through the familiar hallways that were somehow off despite the number of times he'd come down in the middle of the night before until he reached his little brother's room and let himself in.

If he didn't know Scott would fly into a blind panic, he would have grabbed Alan and whisked him back up to the brightly-lit and sterile safety of Thunderbird Five. Unfortunately, their big brother would discover that Alan wasn't on the island and freak out before thinking to contact John and ask for a location.

No, John would have to stay down on Earth tonight, and pretend that the intermittent shivers were from leaving his nice, temperate-controlled, space station for the whims of Mother Nature, and not from a ridiculous irrational fear brought on by family movie night.

"Is there room for me?" he asked quietly, and Alan obediently shuffled over. The fact that he was in his bed at all was unusual, but considering the circumstances John declined to comment on it. Instead, he slid into the space his brother made for him, well aware that he was still in his spacesuit barring the bulky baldric. He slept in it all the time in space; one night down on Earth wouldn't be a problem.

As soon as he was settled, Alan migrated towards him, close enough that his hair tickled his chin. John didn't pull away.

"Think you can sleep now?" he asked instead. Alan made a non-committal noise.

"Maybe," he admitted dubiously after a moment. Considering everything, John would take that.

"Then, night, Alan," he said. "I'm gonna get some sleep."

"Night, John," his brother mumbled. More hair tickled his cheek, and then his nose, as Alan got comfortable against him. It helped John's own heart calm back down from his scurried adventure through the dark villa.

Silence reigned, and John had just begun to wonder if Alan had succumbed to sleep when his brother spoke, curiosity lacing his voice.

"Say, John… Why were you still awake?"

There was absolutely no way John was answering that. He feigned sleep and hoped Alan was too tired to put the facts together.

"…Oh. You too, huh?"

Apparently Alan was not too tired to put the facts together, but John didn't give up on his pretence of sleep. He had some big brother clout to try and preserve, after all.

This one had me stumped for a while, and I considered a couple of different bro combinations before I stumbled across the perfect one. It's not a combo I write very much, but hopefully it works!

Thanks for reading!
Tsari