CONTENT WARNING- John is a vampire. John hates being a vampire and tries to ignore it as much as possible until he can't any more. On this occasion a starving John overdoes it. John angst, Scott whump. Please be aware of this before you read.
John- Complications to being a vampire
"You don't have to say it, I know what you're going to say." John gritted out from between clenched teeth as he limped along, one arm around Scott's shoulders and Scott's arm around his waist for support as Scott helped him limp towards the medical bay set up in the back corner of Thunderbird Two's module, the large door shutting behind them.
"Well it looks like I'm going to have to say it anyway." Scott glowered at him as he helped John up onto the stretcher, raising the head end so John could sit up comfortably. "You've been cutting it too fine with your feedings- blood bags and fresh. You're already pushing it with the roughly once a month fresh feedings, you can't push it with the blood bags too."
He reached into the cold storage locker where they kept the supplies of frozen whole blood and plasma, withdrawing two and placing them into the cube-shaped warmer that would quickly defrost them without damaging the contents. "How's the leg?" Scott asked, turning his attention to the soaked dressing on John's left calf.
"Not good." Was the reluctant admission.
John had to conclude that he only had himself to blame. He hadn't been keeping up with the amounts of feedings he needed, telling himself that he didn't need it, that he could last a little longer without it, until Virgil had seen his telemetry and shouted at him to come down and get a fresh top up. He'd reluctantly come down, but before he could find Scott or Kayo, an alert had come in that needed him- a new self governing power station had gone rogue because the competition had decided to tamper and inadvertently set off the security systems. Fixing it would have to be done on site- the protocols completely isolated the system from the outside world.
He'd undone the damage and saved the power plant, but he'd caught his leg on a jagged chunk of metal and sliced it up pretty badly, leaving a trail of blood all the way back outside, where Scott had found him. It would have been fine if he'd been keeping up his feeding schedule, but the longer he waited the slower his reflexes got and he just hadn't dodged in time.
"I'm not seeing any signs of clotting." Scott glanced at him with concern as he pulled off the soaked dressing, inspected the wound and pressed a fresh one to it.
"It won't be." John ducked his head slightly, trying to ignore the feeling of his hunger surging at the smell of blood. "I'm too low, I don't heal properly if I haven't fed enough."
"John!" Scott frowned at him, checked the warmer and how long it had left to run, then looked at his leg and the bandages already heavily stained with red. "Here," Scott pulled off his left bracer and glove, then rolled up his sleeve and offered John his wrist. "This should do until the bags thaw."
He didn't intend for it to happen. But the twin demands of his injuries and his hunger required more blood and delivered more quickly than what he'd be able to get from the arteries of the wrist while they waited for the blood bags to thaw. His will weakened by his reduced feedings, John wasn't able to resist what his ravening instincts demanded that he do.
John moved without thinking, using the offered wrist as a way to yank him closer. At the same time he slipped off the bed and pivoted, grabbing the steel-grey baldric to reverse their positions and throw him onto the stretcher. A hand under the chin silenced the yelp of surprise and fear as he used the other to open the uniform, push the standing collar clear of the throat, then grab the upper arm to keep him from squirming away. Seconds later he was feeding, his teeth dug in deep. John was vaguely aware of a struggle, of hands grabbing at him, pushing and frantically scrabbling against his uniform, the attempt to bring a knee to bear to strike against his ribs. He ignored it all as he greedily sucked down blood, feeling his wounds knit themselves together and his hunger be fully satiated for the first time in a very long time.
That the struggles had ceased perhaps halfway through his feeding didn't even register as he closed the bite wound and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Content, refreshed and replete, John stretched languidly, feeling well and well fed… then he saw the unmoving figure slumped on the stretcher and realisation hit him like a freight train.
"...what have I done…" John stared in horror at Scott's ghostly pale face, the barely discernible rise and fall of his chest. His training kicked in. He'd fall apart later, right now he needed to fix this.
"Scott, I'm sorry!" John blurted out the words as he quickly fitted the oxygen mask and turned it up to full, then dropped the head of the bed so Scott was lying down flat. A quick glance at the warmer showed him the blood was thawed, but he knew Scott would need more. Those two bags were whipped out and two more frozen bags put in. He dove for the IV drawer next, hands shaking as he pulled out the supplies. He next slit open Scott's sleeves, cursing when his comparative inexperience made him fumble as he plunged the large bore needles into the veins of both arms and secured them. The blood bags were hung on IV poles and the running lines connected between them and Scott's arms. Once the blood was running freely and the lines were fully open, John pulled out the medical scanner and ran it over Scott's body, hoping and praying he was in time.
'There are three kinds of shock,' the old lesson floated back into the forefront of his mind as he waited for the results. 'Compensatory, decompensatory and irreversible.' For once the exact numbers escaped him, but he hoped and prayed his stomach volume was less than what would tip Scott over into irreversible organ failure.
Finally the results came back and John felt like he could breathe again. Amber alerts across the board, but only a couple were red and as he watched he saw one of them flick from red to amber and an amber change to green. He'd been in time. The warmer chirped for attention and he pulled out the fresh bags, swapping them for the now drained ones. With a shaking hand, John reached out to Scott, intending to brush back a lock of hair that trailed across his brow… but stopped short before he made contact.
He had almost killed Scott with his lack of control, with his stubborn insistence that he didn't need to feed as often as his body demanded… he hadn't even seen his brother as he attacked…just food, not someone but something to satiate the hunger…
John backed away from the stretcher as Virgil's voice came onto the radio- he'd been deep in the bowels of the powerplant repairing the damage to the geothermal tap and the automatic alerts of Scott's crashing vitals had just reached him.
Horror and self loathing making his stomach curdle, John deactivated his comms gear and fled, sealing himself into the cramped living quarters tucked into Two's airframe. "I'm a monster…" The thought echoed unchallenged in his mind.
He had to keep his family safe from monsters.
0o0o0
Though his family liked to tease that he hid it well, Virgil was a very smart man. But you didn't need multiple degrees in engineering, art and music to put two and two together and get four.
A far too pale and unconscious Scott on a stretcher, his uniform opened at the neck, plus an absent John who had been borderline starving himself last he saw him? Yeah, this was one of his many worst nightmares almost come true.
"John, what have you done?" Virgil murmured the words as he ran careful fingers down the side of Scott's neck, searching for the final confirmation of what had happened. He could have pulled up the internal video feed, but he didn't want to see that. His fingers found the divots in Scott's skin, the only trace of the wounds left by feeding and Virgil sighed as he smoothed an escaped lock of Scott's hair back into place. The eldest absolutely hated having his hair in his eyes, it never failed to drive him up the wall.
"Computer, locate John." He asked, leaning his hands against the edge of the stretcher. He already had the last two bags of blood in the warmer, between them and the Ringer's Lactate it would have to be enough until they got back to the island.
"John is in Two's accommodation unit."
Virgil started when EOS' voice answered him instead of the robotic voice of the ship's computer. "EOS?" He asked.
"Yes." She responded, subdued and sad.
"Do you know what happened?" Virgil asked, looking up but not seeing her hologram.
"Yes."
Until this moment, he hadn't realised that EOS could feel heartbreak. "EOS, under no circumstances are you to let John back onto Five. He's going to be beating himself up about this, we can't let him run away and hide where we can't get to him." Virgil ordered, frowning as he considered how to both fly Two back home and monitor Scott at the same time. He couldn't take the stretcher outside and use the lower cockpit lift, there were far too many people milling about out there. He wasn't a fan of it with the tight passages but it looked like carrying him up inside the airframe was the only option.
"Understood."
"Thank you EOS. Keep an eye on him, let me know if he comes out." Virgil said as he took the half-empty blood bags off the IV poles, laid them in Scott's lap and unhooked the oxygen, judging he'd be okay for the short trip between here and the cockpit. "Oh, and EOS?"
"Yes, Virgil?"
"Tell John if he thinks this is going to make me or Scott stop loving him or think any differently about him, he's an idiot." Virgil instructed as he carefully slid his arms under Scott's shoulders and knees to pick him up.
There was a tiny spark of amusement in her voice as she replied "Yes Virgil."
0o0o0
Virgil had been intending to go prise John out of the bolt hole he'd barricaded himself into once he was sure Scott was stable and ensconced in the island's infirmary. But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry and the call had come in shortly after he'd transferred Scott onto a hospital bed and stripped off his uniform.
"What do you mean he's on Five?" Virgil demanded of EOS' hovering icon. He was sure that out of any of them, EOS would have been able to keep John earth-side.
"I'm sorry Virgil, but he used overrides I wasn't aware of to mute me, access Thunderbird Three and dock with Five, I have only just been able to overcome them." EOS apologised. "He is currently in the central sphere. I am very concerned about him."
He successfully resisted the urge to facepalm. Of course John had gone for Three! He didn't love flying the rocket like Alan did, but he was extremely capable, and of course he had backdoors and overrides, this was John- their system security was air tight to everyone else, but had more holes than swiss cheese when it came to him. And it shouldn't have surprised him that John had made it to Three almost as soon as his back was turned- one of the few advantages of his condition was greatly increased speed. "Can you access the space elevator?" He'd need to get up there pronto.
"Yes. I have been able to unlock that system." EOS told him.
"Well, that's something at least." Virgil grunted, turning back to Scott and startled to see the eldest was now awake, the oxygen mask in his hand and blue eyes flicking about the room until they settled on Virgil.
"John…?" Scott rasped out the question.
"Is on Five, I'm sorry Scott, I thought I could keep him here." Virgil apologised, guessing what Scott was wanting to know.
Scott frowned in thought, then looked to the door. "I need to get up there." He declared, struggling to prop himself up on his elbows.
"No Scott, you're in no shape to fly!" Virgil pushed him back down with one hand, reaching to take the mask off him with the other and put it back into place.
Pale and weak, his hand shaking with the effort, Scott reached out and grabbed Virgil's arm. "Get. Me. Onto. That. Station!" He snarled out the words. "I know what he's going to be thinking right now, I have to get to him before that gets locked into his brain. I don't care how you do it, just get me up there."
Virgil held his gaze for a long moment, weighing up one brother's condition against the other, then nodded sharply. Scott would push the boundaries when it came to flying, but absolutely never when it came to space. "F.A.B." He turned to look at EOS' icon. "Send down the space elevator while I get Scott into a new uniform."
"Space elevator enroute." EOS confirmed, then her icon winked out.
0o0o0
The ride up the space elevator always felt weird as far as Scott was concerned. He'd used it plenty of times, but he absolutely hated the feeling of being not in control of the craft he was in.
When it finally docked, he was very glad to find the gravity was off, he wasn't sure how strong he actually was and stumbling to the elevator, half draped on Virgil, had been harder than he'd let on. What unnerved him though, as he ditched his helmet and pulled himself along the gravity ring, was that Five was dark. No interior lights. No running lights. Nothing.
He frowned as he keyed his Commander overrides to open the iris into the central sphere. If John was at not just 'hide' but 'hide in a dark place' level, this was very, very bad.
The sphere was pitch black as he paused just inside the aperture, not even the glow of a hologram to light the way, but he heard the sharp gasp of surprise before John could smother it and pushed himself in that direction, arms wide to snare his brother before he could escape. As he drifted through the darkness he caught a foot and used it to pull John down and in for a tight hug.
John didn't fight it, but he did freeze up. Scott could feel the tension in his muscles, hear the rapid breathing, so he did the only thing he could. "John, I'm okay, I'm alright, I'm safe," He soothed, rubbing his back and reciting the reassuring litany again and again.
It seemed forever until John found enough strength to reply. "You're hurt…" His voice was barely more than a whisper.
"I'm getting better." Scott countered.
"I hurt you…"
"It was an accident."
"But… but I could have killed you…" John's voice cracked on the word, drawing in a deep and shaking breath.
Scott tightened his grip on John in response, then shifted to lift his chin, his right hand moving from John's shoulder to cup the back of his head and gently press John's forehead into the crook of his neck. "You didn't kill me and you won't kill me. You'll always stop before it gets that far." He murmured.
John stayed there for a moment, bowled over by the simple demonstration of the depth of Scott's unshakeable trust in him and love for him. "Scott…thank you…"
"Any time, little brother." Scott told him, the smile evident in his voice. "How about we take that rocket back home before Alan freaks out that you stole his Thunderbird?" He asked.
John nodded, knowing Scott would be able to feel the motion. The unspoken message of 'you're still welcome and you're still family' was loud and clear. "F.A.B. But I'm flying."
"Heh, no argument from me. C'mon, let's go."
