Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.

The first thing Gordon noticed upon awaking was that he was very much not alone in bed. A warm body was pressed up against him, arm draped over his chest in a quite frankly too tight embrace for sleep and the steady in and out of warm breath fluttered against his neck. Brain addled with sleep, he couldn't identify who they were – surely Lady Penelope wouldn't be quite so heavy, not that they were anywhere near the sleeping in the same bed stage of any relationship – and attempted to pull away.

That was scuppered by the fact that not only did his mysterious bedfellow have him pinned with the arm across his chest, but that his own arm was trapped beneath their body and was entirely dead because whoever they were was heavy.

Resorting to actually opening his eyes – and wincing at the light streaming in through the windows (was it that late already, and ow how much had he drunk last night?) – he squinted in the direction of his shoulder, where their head was pressed, to see dark brown hair.

Oh, yeah. Now he remembered.

After the absolute disaster that had been the end of their night out, he and Parker had all but dragged Scott to bed, where they'd determined that yes, he was concussed but it really was only minor and most of his behaviour was just because he was drunk. Gordon, as the responsible and caring little brother, had still decided it would be a good idea to spend the night with him, just in case. The bed was plenty big enough for both of them, so what was the problem?

The problem, he was now discovering, was that a drunk Scott was a cuddly Scott, and at some point during the night, Gordon had been relegated to plushie status.

Scowling, he prodded his brother's cheek.

"Wake up, Scott," he grumbled. Scott was typically a light sleeper – like Gordon – and woke up at dawn (like Gordon). Also like Gordon, he appeared to have lost both of those traits that morning. Instead of snapping awake, instantly alert, and getting off, Scott grumbled something unintelligible and tightened his grip. Damn alcohol. Why had they thought going out drinking was a good idea?

Well, the evening had been fun until Stool-Bastard decided to ruin it.

"Scoooooooott," he groaned, jabbing his older brother again. It was even less effective than his first attempt, and he frowned. It was probably just the alcohol, but at the same time he was concussed, even if only mildly. "Scott!"

Whether it was simply a case of third time's the charm, or if the change of tone had alerted Scott's inner Smother Hen, that got a slightly more awake groan.

"Shuddup," Scott grumbled. "Tw'early."

"I'm fairly sure this is a lie-in by your standards, bro," Gordon commented, nudging him again and making a fresh attempt to free himself from his brother's hold. "Are you going to let go any time soon? Nature's calling and all that."

The noise he got in response was a clear protest.

"Scott, I love you, bro, but I'm not your plushie or your girlfriend. Or boyfriend, for that matter."

"Mhrr?"

Honestly, if Gordon wasn't mildly concerned about the concussion, this would be quite amusing. He'd never seen Scott this clingy in his life and the potential blackmail was stacking up with every passing second.

(He made a mental note to drink with him more often, as long as there were no Stool-Bastards around to concuss his brother.)

"Scott. Bro. Let go." He punctuated the words with another, fiercer, escape attempt. It was enough to dislodge Scott's head from his shoulder – or would have been, if Gordon hadn't realised the danger and caught it. Counter-productive to his freedom, but he wasn't risking that concussion with anything, even just a fall onto the pillow. "Scott, I will yell for Parker and then everyone will know there's a cuddle monster in there."

"M'nster?" Scott mumbled. "Wha' m'nster, Grds? 'Sno m'nster."

"So you are listening to me! Sort of." Gordon sighed loudly and dramatically, because he really did need to breathe, thank you, Scott. "There is a monster and it's called Scott Carpenter Tracy, so if he would wake up properly and let a squid breathe it would be much appreciated."

"'M 'wake," his brother protested, sounding about as far from awake as it was possible to be.

"Yeah, no," Gordon said flatly. "This is not awake. And I really, really, need you to wake up, Scott."

Right now, the only thing separating Scott from early morning Virgil was the lack of growling. It would be fantastic blackmail if it wasn't so worrying. Gentle persuasion was clearly not working, and Gordon needed to be sure this was just typical hungover Scott and not a sign that the concussion was worse than they'd thought.

He pinched Scott's cheek. Hard.

"Ow!" The arm that had been pinning Gordon's chest moved, hand coming to rub at the abused cheek. "Gordon, what the hell?"

In answer, Gordon tugged at the arm still pinned under his brother, and swallowed a cry of victory when Scott shifted enough for him to reclaim it. Pins and needles immediately sparked to life in his previously numb arm, and he hissed.

Scott's arm wrapped back around him, although not quite so tightly, and he groaned.

"Are you still drunk, Scott?"

The negative response was muffled by his neck – because apparently Scott hadn't moved his head at all. "Hungover," his brother continued, sounding less than pleased about that fact. "And concussed."

Well, if he could recognise that, it definitely couldn't have been too serious.

Doing his best to ignore the buzzing pins and needles in his arm – success on that front was minimal – Gordon ran his hand lightly over the back of Scott's head, where he'd been hit. Scott made a quiet noise of protest but didn't pull away.

"So hungover Scott is as much of a cuddle monster as drunk Scott?" he queried.

"Shuddup."

"I'll take that as a yes, then," he chirped. "But seriously, bro, you need to let go now, okay?"

There was a pause, and Gordon could see the moment Scott realised he was being clingy by the way his spine stiffened. A split second later, his brother was rolling off of his shoulder and releasing him.

Not one to be caught a second time, Gordon immediately sat up and regretted it as his head reminded him that he too had been drinking the previous evening, and just because he'd snapped into something vaguely responsible when Scott was attacked didn't mean the alcohol had miraculously vanished.

A quiet groan later, and he stumbled his way out of the bed. Nature really was calling, after all, and he ignored his brother's mumbled attempt at his name – enough concern seeping into his voice that Gordon was confident it was just Smother Hen attempting to appear – to answer.

Scott was still in bed when he returned, now face down in the pillows and looking about as pathetic as Gordon had ever seen him. Wincing at the mild throbbing in his own head, Gordon made his way over and perched on the bed.

"How's the head?" he asked.

Scott's answering groan was closer to a whine. Gordon took that as a cue to lean over and take a closer look, only for his hands to be batted away by a disgruntled Scott, who then pulled another pillow over the top of his head in a move much more reminiscent of Alan.

"Don't do that," Gordon scolded, tugging it back. "You'll suffocate yourself." Scott made another wordless noise of protest.

Hungover Scott was, Gordon was discovering, a priceless source of entertainment.

"Fine, I won't touch," he promised, setting the pillow down out of Scott's immediate reach. "How about I call Parker and get him to bring up some water?"

He could certainly do with some.

"'ff til shuddyup," Scott mumbled into the pillow. Gordon took that as a yes and pressed the call button.

Parker materialised in the doorway so quickly he could well have been waiting there. In his hands was a tray, carrying a pitcher of water and two plain glass tumblers. To Gordon's delight, there was also-

"h'Aspirin, for your 'angovers." Parker eyed both of them with what Gordon hoped was amusement and not disapproval. "Mr Scott, 'ow h'are you feeling?"

He got the same groan of misery Gordon had been awarded earlier. Parker's expression changed to something that looked fondly sympathetic; Gordon would love to know what Scott had done to get himself in Parker's soft spot.

The tray was put down in Gordon's reach, and he took the hint to help himself as the butler perched on the other side of the bed, hand lightly on Scott's shoulder.

"Come h'on, Mr Scott," he coaxed. "h'If you sit h'up, there's water and h'aspirin."

Scott grumbled but, miraculously, moved. He first pushed himself over onto his side, and then collapsed the rest of the way onto his back. Clearly, his spatial awareness was still offline, because the manoeuvre put him awkwardly draped over Gordon's hip.

"Up you get," Gordon encouraged, using the leverage to slip an arm underneath his brother's shoulders and nudge him. From behind an arm, blue eyes shot him a baleful glare.

Still, Scott reluctantly obeyed, dragging himself upright and hunching forwards with another groan.

"Drink." Gordon pressed a glass of water into his brother's hand.

He wasn't sure Scott had ever obeyed him without complaint before, rescues notwithstanding. It was a little bizarre to see his older brother promptly raise the glass to his lips and take a gulp without so much as a disapproving look.

While Gordon was for the moment content to uphold his agreement not to touch, he did find himself peering closely at the back of Scott's head as he wrapped his arm around his back to support him.

Nothing seemed wrong, although he was willing to bet it was throbbing something awful, especially combined with the hangover. To help, he slipped a dose of aspirin into Scott's hand, and watched the tablets get swallowed down with as much eagerness as his brother had shown for anything since they'd woken up.

Satisfied for the moment that Scott was handled, he continued his own drink, enjoying the bliss of his own aspirin as it began to take the edge off the headache he was attempting to ignore. Parker, bless the man, had made sure the curtains were closed, preventing the worst of the sun from assaulting his eyes, and with a bit of shuffling, he relocated until he was leaning against the head of the bed.

The sudden appearance of brown in his periphery as a weight settled on his shoulder was thoroughly unexpected.

"Scott?" he asked, looking across to see his brother had joined him and was apparently trying to mimic the previous night by using him as a pillow.

"Shuddup, Gordon," Scott grumbled, but didn't pull his head back or make any attempt to straighten from his slumped posture.

Oh, there was so much blackmail to be had here. Gordon reminded himself that he wanted to go out again with Scott, to see what he was like without the concussion messing things up. Just… maybe later.

After his head stopped complaining about last night.

He must have fallen asleep again, because the next thing he knew, there were low voices in conversation and a click of a camera.

Dragging open eyes he didn't remember closing, there was something blue and green and-

Uh oh.

"That makes one of you awake."

Virgil sounded amused, at least. Gordon yawned, but found himself unable to stretch. Something was weighing down his left side, and as he glanced across he saw a shock of brown bedhead.

Huh, how had he missed that earlier?

And when had Virgil turned up? He wasn't supposed to be picking them up until late afternoon.

"You're early," he accused, trying to escape pillow-duty and finding that his arm had at some point wrapped around Scott's waist, holding him close.

"I'm not." Virgil came closer, amusement fading to concern as he reached for Scott's head and gently probed with his fingers. Parker had told him, then. "You two slept the whole day away."

Scott grumbled discontentedly and burrowed further into Gordon's shoulder, away from Virgil's investigations. Their medic brother was not so easily deterred, however, and a subconscious hand trying to bat him away was instead captured and passed to Gordon to restrain.

"How is he?" Gordon asked, obediently clasping his brother's wrist to stop him pushing Virgil away. He was fairly confident that Scott was fine, but Virgil was undeniably better at diagnoses.

"Stubbornly thick-headed," Virgil concluded after another few moments. Blue eyes opened a crack, and the wrist in Gordon's grip tugged harder. Virgil, ever attuned to their biggest brother, immediately swooped in with a penlight, which Scott grumbled loudly about. "Should clear up in the next day or two. Welcome back to the land of the living, Scott."

"Did you have to shine that in my eye the moment I woke up?" their big brother complained, sounding much more like himself again.

Virgil was thoroughly unrepentant.

"Get dressed, you two," he said. "It's time to go home."

"Already?" Scott winced, dragging himself upright and raising a hand to the side of his head. "Urgh."

"It's late afternoon, as agreed," Virgil informed him. "Don't worry, you've got another forty-eight hours of downtime to go." He eyed them both, and Gordon realised that despite Scott raising his head they were still rather tangled together. "I'll meet you in the drawing room when you're ready. Don't go back to sleep."

"F.A.B.," Gordon chirped, unwinding his arm from around Scott's waist as his older brother peeled himself away from him.

One more assessing look from warm brown eyes – mostly focused Scott's way – and Virgil left the room.

"Well, I'd say that's time to move," Gordon quipped once the door shut, leaving the two of them alone. "You good to get up?"

"I'm fine," Scott retorted, inelegantly clambering off the large bed and narrowly avoiding face-planting the floor. There was the stubborn big brother Gordon knew. "Get dressed, Gordon."

Gordon eyed him as he regained his balance and headed for his packed bag, before concluding that Scott was probably stubborn enough to not fall over. As the Creighton-Ward Manor was far from small, he himself had his own room, which was where his bag was waiting for him, so with one last assessing look at his big brother, he slipped out to get his stuff.

Scott was no doubt expecting him to go downstairs to join Virgil and Lady Penelope once he was presentable – and on any other occasion, Gordon would be doing exactly that, especially as he'd managed to sleep the day away instead of spending it with Lady Penelope as planned – but he was still concerned about Scott, so with his bag slung over his shoulder he returned to his brother's room.

His brother was dressed and attempting to tame his bedhead when he walked in, pot of gel on the vanity table as he glowered at the mirror. Of course, Scott couldn't possibly be seen with a hair out of place. Gordon rolled his eyes as his brother's reflection winced, fingers obviously catching the origin of his concussion.

"Sit down," he ordered. Scott jumped, apparently having missed him coming up behind him despite looking in the mirror.

"Gordon?"

"That's me, bro." Gordon hooked a foot around the stool and yanked it behind Scott before putting a hand on his shoulder and pressing down. "Sit."

"What do you want?" Scott didn't budge, a hint of suspicion in his voice. "I'm almost done."

"You've barely started," Gordon rebuked, flicking a particularly flyaway section of hair. "Virgil won't wait forever, you know." He put both his hands on Scott's shoulders and pushed again. His brother reluctantly sank down onto the seat.

"Gordon, what are you doing?" Scott demanded. Gordon let his bag fall to the lushly carpeted floor and scooped up the hair gel.

"Doing your hair."

"What?" His brother swivelled around sharply, before wincing. Gordon rolled his eyes again and gently prodded him into facing forwards again.

"You can watch what I'm doing in the mirror," he reminded him, running his fingers lightly through his brother's bedhead. At least part of it was obviously caused by using his shoulder as a pillow.

Blue eyes locked with his suspiciously via the mirror. He grinned at them.

"Relax, Scott," he soothed. "I'm not going to do anything you wouldn't." He wasn't even sure why he'd decided to take over his brother's hair-care routine, except Scott had looked like he was going to fall over the way he'd been standing, and maybe he was still worried.

"You'd better not," his brother threatened, which was also a surrender and permission. Gordon ran his fingers through a few more times, catching the flyaway strands and reminding them where they usually settled before scooping some gel out of the pot to work into the brown hair.

It wasn't quite up to Scott's usual standards, because Gordon wasn't Scott and didn't usually use so much hair gel – and also because no matter how gentle he was, Scott still flinched when his fingers brushed where he'd been bashed. Still, it was a pretty good attempt, if he did say so himself, and Scott wasn't voicing any complaints.

Then again, Scott was probably surprised Gordon had done as promised and not added any twists to the hairstyle. Another time, maybe.

"All done," he declared, after one last time running his fingers through. Scott squinted at the mirror, touching his hair lightly, before passing judgement.

"It'll do."

Coming from Scott, that was suspiciously high praise. Gordon eyed him as he pulled himself to his feet.

"You okay, bro?" he asked.

"Fine." The response was so fast it had to be automatic, but Scott made no move to retract it. Instead, he reclaimed the pot of hair gel and tossed it in his bag. Gordon stooped to retrieve his own, slinging it over one shoulder. "Best not to keep Virgil waiting, otherwise he'll come see what's taking us so long."

He wasn't wrong. Gordon was somewhat surprised their brother hadn't already returned to check up on them. He said as much, and Scott gave a grimaced smile.

Big brother could dish the smothering, but he wasn't so good at taking it.

"I'm fine," he said, despite the fact they both knew his head was still hurting him. Scott shouldered his bag and headed towards the door, only to pause and wrap an arm around Gordon's shoulders in a clear half-hug. "But thanks for looking out for me last night."

The words were accompanied by a smile, and Gordon reached out to squeeze him back.

"What else was I supposed to do?" he asked, only half-joking. "You're my brother. I get dibs on messing with you, not some drunk down the pub."

Scott huffed out a laugh. "Love you, too, little brother. Now we need to find Virgil before he starts worrying."

As though he thought he'd ever stopped. Still, Gordon grinned. "Let's get you home, big brother."

May have just realised that I never posted this, oops, so here's the unplanned part two for this fic. Maybe one day I'll get the rest of fluffember done (once I'm not drowning under piles of uni work).

Thanks for reading!
Tsari