Prompt 2: Delicate
The Tracy name carried with it certain expectations. Stubbornness was the first. Having bad luck was another. Nerves of steel was a third. Being delicate was definitely not one of those expectations.
Delicate.
He'd heard it many times from many different people all through his life. And having an eidetic memory he remembered them all (well, almost all).
When he'd been born he was delicate. Born early and spending some time in an incubator, John was delicate physically speaking. He obviously didn't remember that.
He did remember Scott being warned to be more careful with him as he was delicate and pulling him around like that would hurt him. Scott had been so upset that he had hurt him, and John was too young to tell him he was fine.
Grandma had called him delicate when she took Scott and him out for the day while their parents were welcoming Virgil into the world. It was the ginger hair and the porcelain colouring of his skin she had been referring to and she had smothered him in sun cream. For some reason Scott had found this hilarious and had giggled for ages every time he looked at him.
Virgil was the next brother to be warned that John was delicate. Virgil was a solid child who had easily bowled his older brother over when trying to run past him and misjudging the distance. John had ended up with a fractured wrist and Virgil had been beside himself with guilt.
The next people to call him delicate had not been so nice. They spat the word at him as an insult and followed it up with shoves and fists. It had only happened the once, Scott saw to that, but it made a lasting impression on John. He withdrew from associating with most people outside of his family. People were cruel.
Gordon had heard both parents call John delicate and warn him to be careful not to hurt his older brother, but Gordon being Gordon, he completely ignored them and refused to pussyfoot around John. For the first time John actually felt free to be himself around his brothers. It didn't take long for Scott and Virgil to follow suit, although his two immediate brothers would never grow out of the need to smother him entirely.
Alan never got the chance to be told that John was delicate. By the time he was old enough to be taught that, their mother was gone, and it was Scott and John holding the family together. They all gave Scott the credit for keeping them going, but Scott would often tell John he couldn't have done it without him. It was the first time that it had occurred to John that maybe he actually wasn't as delicate as he'd been led to believe.
Of course, he was the same person he had always been, but being told from such a young age that he was delicate had kind of stuck.
Going away to university and having to survive on his own certainly helped him shed more of the notion of him being delicate. And he relished the challenges life was beginning to throw at him.
NASA meant he couldn't possibly be delicate. The rigorous training he had to get through alongside everything else blew the idea of him being delicate out of the water. He was just as tough as all of them.
He was just as tough as his father.
When he casually mentioned this to Scott one time his older brother came to visit, Scott looked at him with a quizzical frown. 'You've always been tougher than Dad, John. Why on earth would you not know that?' It had taken him back. Did his brother actually believe that? But then, he knew that Scott never lied, and he had seemed genuinely surprised that John still thought of himself as being delicate. Well, not anymore.
Space was unforgiving. Those first few times being back on earth made John feel delicate all over again. It took a long time for his body to adjust to being back on the ground, but each occasion it took less time to acclimatise.
International Rescue presented it's own challenges. Living in space full-time, with little Earth time did make him a little more wibbly-wobbly, but the suit Brains had designed, along with the inbuild support in his clothes, more than helped with the worst of it.
Hi brothers still smothered him over this, all except Alan who had first-hand experience and knew the smothering wouldn't accomplish anything. They all knew that really, but the habit of a lifetime couldn't be broken in either Scott or Virgil.
John had once believed he was delicate, set apart from his brothers in a way that meant he was different. He knew better now. He wasn't delicate. He wasn't different. He was above all else a Tracy. He was steel.
