Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.
Prompt from janetm74: "Please don't go" with Scott and Jeff
"Please don't go."
Once upon a time, large blue eyes, far too big for their face, had welled with tears as his two-and-a-half-year-old son had tugged on his sleeve desperately. Jeff, all packed and ready for a mission in space, but already reluctant to leave when Lucille was due with their second child any day now, had fought an internal battle as he'd knelt down and put a hand in the brown mop of hair Scott sported.
"I have to, Scotty," he'd said, dragging a grin onto his face and hoping the toddler couldn't pick up on his inner turmoil. "A man should never give up on his dreams."
"But… but…" The lower lip quiver was a lethal weapon, and tearful blue eyes had shined bright with moisture that wasn't yet falling, but threatened it was only a matter of time. "I need you, Daddy."
"It's only for a few months," Jeff had promised. "I need you to be brave for me, okay?"
Scott had sniffled in response, the first tears starting to fall.
"Listen to me, Scotty." There had been a lump in his throat, and Jeff had swallowed around it. "Very soon, you're going to be a big brother."
His son had been told that before; Scott had always been so excited to have a little sibling whenever it was brought up – and indeed was often the one to bring it up. Under Jeff's hand, Scott's head had ducked in an acknowledging nod.
"That means you have to be big and brave for them while I'm gone, okay?" he'd coaxed. "Mommy will need your help to look after your little brother or sister when they arrive."
"I know," Scott had replied, a little sulkily. "But do you have to go?"
"Yes," Jeff had sighed, even though big blue eyes still shone with tears and that lower lip was still quivering lethally. "Yes, Scotty, I do."
When he'd come home, eight months later, baby John was old enough to sit up and watch the world with curious eyes, just as bright as his brother's but starting to contain just a hint of green inside the baby-blue, and Scott was the most doting big brother Jeff had ever seen.
It had been a bittersweet sight.
He'd left many times since then, sometimes to space, sometimes just mentally, leaving his boys with a husk of a father as his soul tried to patch itself up after being torn in two, but by far the worst had been the sudden, heart-stopping launch of the Zero-X.
Eight years until he'd finally stepped on Earth again, with five grown up sons who didn't need him anymore. Not after eight years of thinking him dead, adjusting their lives to compensate and, for all intents and purposes, cutting out the parent-shaped holes in their lives and patching them back together with a mix of brothers and friends.
Jeff watched, an outsider in his own family, and mourned for what had been, knowing that the days of small boys with equally small hands but big eyes who needed Dad were long, long gone.
There was nothing to tell him otherwise, after all.
Nothing until Scott came back from a rescue gone wrong, battered and bruised and held together by bandages and the determination of his brothers. A young man or not, a man who needed his father or not, it was Jeff who needed to be there, by his son's bedside, as his own mother and middle son put Scott back together again. Pain and anaesthetic combined hazed his eldest boy's eyes, half-lidded at best and more or less unaware of his surroundings.
"He needs rest," Mom told him, nudging a reluctant Virgil out of the room once they were done and Scott was held together with the security of sutures and hospital grade bandages. "He'll be out of it for hours, yet."
There was a pain in her eyes that Jeff knew was reflected in his. After all, grandparent or parent, the pain of seeing the young man in such an awful state twisted a knife in their own hearts. She was right, too, that they should take their own time to rest and recover before Scott was aware enough to need them.
"I'll be out in a minute," he promised, cradling limp fingers in his left hand while his right brushed tufted hair where it stuck up awkwardly from the bandaging around Scott's head. "I just need a minute more."
She nodded before trailing out of the room after her middle grandson, leaving Jeff alone with his son.
He didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay by Scott's side until he was sure he was okay, awake and complaining about being grounded, and every inch the young commander he was. No matter how much it hurt to see his child in such a terrible state.
"Rest up, Scotty," he murmured, brushing the little tuft of brown hair a few more times. "I'll see you in a little while."
His fingers slipped away from the strands, and he reluctantly stood up, lowering the limp fingers to settle on the bed.
They tightened as he tried to pull away, barely a fraction of Scott's strength, but enough to make Jeff's heart hitch regardless.
"Please." Scott's voice was hoarse and rasping, awful in the same way as nails on a chalkboard. "Don't go…"
His eyes were more closed than open, their vibrant blue hidden behind too-pale eyelids, but they were looking straight at Jeff through the haze of a man clinging desperately to consciousness as his body slipped further and further away.
"Dad." The word was split into two syllables, his son not strong enough to say it all at once. "I… need… you…"
Jeff's hands shook. He'd thought the time of being needed by his sons, especially the eldest ones with the responsibility of the world on their shoulders, was past, but here was Scott, begging for his Dad to stay in the same way he'd done all those years ago as a toddler.
Back then, Jeff had gone anyway, leaving Scott with what at the time had seemed like a reasonable enough request to make of a two-year-old, but had since morphed into something almost unrecognisably self-destructive.
It was John he'd been injured saving.
There was no way, no matter what his mother might have to say on the matter, that Jeff was leaving Scott now. He perched on the edge of the bed once more, cradling the still-limp fingers between his palms and trying not to get too melancholy about how big they were, now.
"I'm here, Scotty," he promised, stroking long fingers gently. "I'll stay right here."
Scott's lips, swollen and cracked and painful-looking, twitched into a ghost of a smile, and his eyes slid shut.
Jeff stayed exactly where he was, where he should be, holding a vigil over his recovering son.
I had two muses pipe up for this one, so I ended up combining them because why not?
Thanks for reading!
Tsari