DISCLAIMER: I do not own the rights to Thunderbirds, and no profit is intended to be made. This story is for entertainment purposes only.

Alan, Meet Fermat
October 2015

Alan Tracy, carrying with him a large tray of cafeteria food, unceremoniously placed himself down on a stool in the furthest reaches of the lunchroom. He had no desire to sit with the other students. In fact, he was hoping that if his behaviour was bad enough the headmaster might be inclined just to send him home.

So far his idea hadn't worked very well. He had been given detention three times, had been made to write lines twice, and had even been yelled at by the headmaster himself. But he hadn't been sent home.

Glaring at his bologna sandwich, Alan couldn't help thinking that someone was conspiring against him to make his life miserable. He had only been at the school for a little over a month, and he already hated it.

A part of Alan's mind couldn't quite believe that - there had been things that he had enjoyed doing, like when the boys had been taken to a nearby racetrack to study how cars drive at high speeds. It hadn't been anything complicated, and the thought of being around racecars had been enough to keep his attention completely. The headmaster had even commented on how well that Alan Tracy boy had behaved himself at the track.

It wasn't that the school was bad, Alan finally decided. It was how he had been dumped there so unceremoniously by his own father that made it seem that way.

Even though Virgil and Gordon - who had somehow jumped right into the atmosphere of the place - kept tabs on him quite regularly, they were not always there. He had always depended on his brothers for company, and he realised quite plainly that there was no time at boarding school for him to be alone with them.

Alone.

Alan shook his head and bit into the sandwich, wondering why his dad couldn't at least send him to a school that served something like meatballs for lunch.

Looking up to reach for his milk, he noticed that there was an extra shadow across the tray that wasn't caused by his body. He turned his head, and looked into the face of a brown haired boy with glasses.

"H-h-h-hi."

Alan could not contain an eye-roll. "What do you want?"

"C-c-c-c-c-c . . ." Unable to even finish the sentence, Fermat simply shrugged and pointed wordlessly at the stool beside Alan.

Alan had little to say to Fermat. It had been two months since he had seen the son of James Wilson trudge up the steps of the school, and he had thought that perhaps he had avoided him completely aside from seeing him in class. But it looked as though Fermat was either very stubborn, or simply very lonely.

Scoffing at the idea, Alan turned back to this sandwich. Fermat could go be lonely someplace else. "Why do you have to sit here? There's tables over there."

The brown haired boy's eyes became slightly wider, and he backed away slowly from the table. He glanced once at Alan, then turned and slowly walked over to one of the other empty seats.

"Weird," Alan muttered, stealing another look over at Fermat, who had finally brought out his lunch and was munching away at it. "Really weird."

Then Alan's eyes locked on the boy's lunch, which had obviously been delivered from someplace out of the school. The soup and the muffins looked very inviting, but it was too late to go and try to trade them for something else. He had already told Fermat to go and sit somewhere else.

Sighing, Alan looked forlornly at his half-eaten sandwich. "Why does stuff always happen to me?"

After classes that day, Alan took the time out to grab a campus pass so that he could go walking outside somewhere. He hated being stuck in the building too long - it had such a stuffy feeling to it that he almost couldn't breathe.

The leaves had begun to fall from the trees and were finally lying on the ground in large piles where the groundkeeper had raked them. The air was still crisp with a hint frost. In fact, it was much colder than Alan was used to for the fall. His old school had been further south, and had not been prone to harsh winds and snow in the fall months. During the winter months snow had been present in plentiful amounts, but cold weather in the fall had been unusual.

Flopping himself moodily in front of a tree, Alan sat for a long moment and simply stared up at the branches. It didn't take long for him to decide that sitting was boring, and it didn't take much more for him to decide that the tree was all right for climbing.

He had set his book bag down, grabbed a branch, and was about to climb up when a quiet voice behind him chirped up and said, "Watch out."

Alan nearly fell from the low height that he was at. He turned, and glared in amazement at Fermat Wilson, who stood serenely behind him with his own books held clumsily in his arms.

"What do you want?"

Turning slightly red, Fermat pointed at the tree. "T-t-t-t-t-"

"I know it's a tree!" Alan groaned, going back to his climbing. "You don't have to tell me that!" He stopped again when he felt a small but strong hand pulling on his shirt. "Geeze, dork, let me go!"

Fermat let go, but he didn't stop staring at Alan with large worried eyes. "T-t-t-t-t-"

"What about the tree," Alan finally asked, realising that he would never get anywhere unless he got rid of Fermat. "It's a tree, stupid. There's nothing wrong with it."

Shaking his head, Fermat reached up a hand and traced his finger along a crack that was barely visible in the bark. The valley ran along the entire length of the branch that Alan had been trying to climb up on.

"Yeah, what about it?"

Alan's eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets when part of the branch came away in Fermat's hand. The underside of the bark was discoloured and moulded and was rotting away. It was obvious that, had Alan put his full weight on it, it would have broken away from the trunk.

"Uh." The blond-haired Tracy rubbed his head with his hand, unsure of what to say. "Thanks. But," he continued, a bit more sure, "I don't owe you one or anything like that."

Fermat shrugged, and let the wood in his hand fall onto the ground. "Okay."

So he can talk, Alan thought, confirming in his mind that Fermat had indeed been the one to yell 'watch out'. Still, he convinced himself, it didn't mean anything. The last thing that he wanted was someone like Fermat following him around.

"See you later," he muttered, grabbing his bag and pushing past Fermat so that he was on the walking path towards the school.

The next day found Alan once again sitting alone in the corner of the cafeteria. Only, when Fermat once again approached his table, he didn't ask Alan to sit down. He simply threw his lunch on the table and plopped himself down right beside the very startled Tracy boy.

Alan's mouth was half enclosed about his sandwich, but he still managed to spit out a half-hearted hello.

"Hi," Fermat replied quietly, pulling out a carton of Chinese food from his lunch bag. He opened the box and quickly set to work on the food inside.

The awkwardness after only a few seconds was too much for Alan to handle. He finally threw his sandwich onto the table and turned to stare at Fermat. "Why do you keep following me?"

"Are you going to tell me to leave?"

Alan's eyes narrowed slightly. "Maybe. How come you can talk? Was it a joke before?"

Fermat turned a deep pink and shrugged defensively. "N-n-n-no. I j-j-j-just don't like talking to people, that's all."

Nodding as if to say 'fair enough', Alan shrugged also and went back to his sandwich. He honestly believed that if he ignored Fermat, then Fermat would disappear. He was half finished eating when Fermat spoke again.

"You made a mistake on question ten."

"What?" Alan spit out a mouthful of turkey. "Were you looking?"

"Kind of." Fermat poked at a chicken ball with his fork. "You looked upset, I thought maybe you were having trouble."

"I don't have trouble," snapped Alan. "I'm not stupid. I just hate math." He was silent for a moment. "Why am I talking to you?"

"Y-y-y-you don't talk to anybody else."

Amidst his glowering, Alan had to admit that Fermat was right. "How do you know my dad?" The question had been on his tongue ever since Fermat had walked up.

Fermat didn't say anything at first. He kept poking at his food with his fork, until the bean sprouts looked like little more than squished tofu. "Y-y-y-your dad paid for me to come here."

A snort escaped Alan's mouth. "Don't your mom and dad work?"

Dropping his fork into the container, Fermat let his head fall to his chest. He muttered something, which Alan was only able to catch half of.

"What'd you say?"

"M-m-m-mom died."

Alan's stomach nearly hit the floor when he heard the words. He didn't even know what to say back - he felt horrible about bringing it up, when the words brought back some very faint memories in his own mind about when his own mother had died.

"That's cool," he finally said, drawing an incredulous stare from Fermat.

"W-w-w-what?"

"I said 'that's cool'." He forced a smile. "You know, all right? It's all right with me."

Fermat didn't respond right away. "W-w-w-what about my s-s-s-stutter," he finally asked, looking a bit worried.

"Whatever." Alan shrugged. "I don't care." He looked down at his lunch, then sighed. "It's no big deal. You're not the only person out there with crappy parents."

"My Dad's not crappy!" Fermat looked completely horrified at just the thought. "He's not."

"Well my Dad is," Alan muttered, "he stuck me here just so he could move his work to our new house. He doesn't care about me. Your dad did that too - he's coming to our house. Maybe he doesn't care about you."

In response, Fermat simply shrugged and continued to hang his head. "My Dad does."

"Whatever," Alan snapped back, only he wasn't really mad at Fermat. The mere mention of his father had sent a stream of adrenaline into his veins.

There was a long pause before either of them spoke again.

"Why's your name Fermat?"

Shrugging, Fermat looked down as his cheeks tinted nicely. "He was a French mathematician."

"Fine."

"Why's your name Alan?"

It was Alan's turn to look mildly embarrassed. "He was an astronaut." Glancing one last time at his sandwich, Alan lofted the food in his hand and chucked it towards the nearest garbage can. The bread and balonga landed squarely in the container with a quiet thump. "Dad named all of us after astronauts. Guess he thought it'd be cool or something."

There was another pause.

"I could help you with the math."

Alan snorted. "Yeah, an' what do you want me to do for you?" It was a really unnecessary question, though. He already knew perfectly well what Fermat wanted, and a small part of him was - for whatever reason - willing to reserve the seat beside him at lunchtime. Weighing the two in his mind, Alan decided that having help with math would at least give him more free time to do other stuff, and was subsequently the lesser of the two evils. "Okay, fine."

A huge grin split Fermat's face, going nearly from ear to ear. "G-g-g-g-g-"

"I know," Alan interrupted, stopping Fermat before the younger boy stuttered himself into a corner. "It's great."

A/N -

Gah! Ducks Matrix style as bullet goes by. I was expecting it. ;) I can't believe myself – I remember mixing up Denmark and Danish (they're not even both countries for goodness sakes) on my last social studies test. If you go back and look at last chapter it's actually been changed. I noticed the mistake almost immediately after I submitted it, but ffnet took its own sweet time editing it. :) I plead for forgiveness. ;)

I discovered Fermat the mathematician in Calculus class last semester. :) My professor was giving me the oddest look when I started snickering. I couldn't help it. I'm just easily amused.

Review time! Wow, there are so few . . .

I guess that's what I get for posting so soon after the last chapter. Oh well, I wanted to get this set of two out there. :)

zeilfanaat – I'm sure that you still shoot better than Scott Tracy of TV fame does. ;) Honestly, nothing made me laugh more than him getting the gun shot from his hand in "The Uninvited". I'm glad to hear that Gordon and Virgil were in character! They seemed to be quite the tight-nit pair in the show. I know people always talk about Scott and Virgil being close, but really that's only when they're on missions. Virgil and Gordon are always hanging together. Also, I've noticed that it's Scott who hangs around with John when he's down for a break. Interesting huh? :)

Thanks for the final tally for Holland. ;) That's absolutely incredible.

thunderbirdgirl – Yeah, I'm working on an Alan one. I just can't find some pictures that I like. I'm not looking for anything really specific, just images that will work into a nice composition. I had trouble with Virgil too. That's why he's got paintings on his. I wanted to do a performance hall built with engineering schematics, but it proved too hard to find pictures. sighs One of these days I'm going to tell someone that I live in Cambodia instead of Canada . . .

miz greenleaf – I caught the original series when it was on re-runs during the early nineties. I actually have the "Tracy Island Playset" that people always joke about trying to get. It's in my basement somewhere. :) I haven't actually seen all of the episodes, though! :o I think I missed three of them that my Mom accidentally didn't tape for me. I'm glad that you like Fermat! :) I'm hoping that he'll simply add to the story and won't detract from it.

Ariel D – blushes Thank you for everything! I can't wait to send you the next set. ;) Gosh, there's a doozy of a chapter in there. I think it's my favourite of the set so far. Oh, and bologna plus baloney definitely equals (in my mind) balogna. ;) Gads, I work at a deli. You'd think I'd know how to spell the stuff that I sell. I looked today and it is bologna here. ;)

Anyway, onto the next chapter! It was supposed to be out for the holiday season, but "Christmas Secrets" will be coming as soon as I've thoroughly hacked at it with an axe of editing a few times.

FAB!