This story owes a lot to Waterfowl who gave me the original idea, to idontknowreallywhy for their exquisite Daddy Jeff series that you can find on AO3, and to Sineater and MariaShadow for allowing me to inflict the results on them!

For the sake of this story the boys ages are: Scott: 30, John: 28, Virgil: 25, Gordon: 20 and Alan: 16. Scott and then John initially grew up on base, with Jeff's Mars mission just after John's birth. They moved to Kansas when Virgil was born, Jeff resigning fully from the USAF and working solely for NASA and setting up the business with Lucy while in Kansas.

The short line of top brass waiting to shake his hand made Scott feel very self-conscious and even a touch nauseated, but he'd been playing this rodeo for almost a year now and he knew how to present the image over what he felt.

Every hand that was shaken got personal attention from him with a smile and a platitude and a thanks.

The last man in the queue gave him pause. Scott paid the Brigadier a bit more attention than he had to the others, breaking out into a genuine smile. And a wink that he ensured no one else saw. The man's sudden smirk – there and then not there – told Scott he understood and that he would play along.

He was roughly the same age as Jeff would have been, his stance screaming Career Military almost as much as his uniform and ribbons did. He shook Scott's hand firmly and Scott said his piece, and it wasn't until he'd finished speaking that the Brigadier spoke.

'You're Pyro's eldest, right?'

Scott hadn't heard his Dad's original callsign in many years. Jeff Tracy's callsign from NASA was a matter of international knowledge, but his pre-NASA military career, while known about in generalities, had some closely guarded secrets, like the knowledge that Jeff was one of the few who had had his callsign changed.

'Sir?'

'You won't remember me, I'm sure, but I remember you.'

'Yes Sir.'

'I was the one to nickname you Swift.'

A sudden and intense memory hit Scott and he blinked. He hadn't heard that name in years, not since they had moved out of army housing while expecting Virgil. It had been while at the base that Scott had been given the callsign Swift at the ripe old age of 2 months.

But then they were moving and Scott had a presentation to deliver.

Once it was over Scott looked for the Brigadier but couldn't see him anywhere. Colonel Casey led him away, discretely passing him a slip of paper, and with a sigh he disappeared back to the hotel, ordered room service and a bottle of scotch and sat down, thoughts returning to his parents and their first house, in Davis-Monthan Air Force base, Tucson, Arizona and the few stories his parents had told him and that he remembered while he looked at the phone number written on the paper in his hand.

…

Scott had been a shock to them both.

Finding out they were expecting only a couple of months after marrying had been a complete surprise. As the child grew he or she became restless, always moving and kicking in Lucy's belly. She tried everything to calm the infant – earphones on her stomach playing Mozart didn't work, changing her diet didn't either, and by late pregnancy Lucy was at her wits end trying to get some rest for herself.

That evening the Air Base had been particularly busy and with a sigh Lucy slipped out from her bed and padded down to the kitchen. Jeff wasn't home, not due back from his latest mission until tomorrow, and they were suffering an early spring heat even at night, so she eased a light coat on, grabbed a torch and set off to walk around the block in a vain effort to somehow tire herself and the baby out enough to sleep.

During the time that she wandered the private accommodation areas several jets passed over, and Lucy couldn't fail to notice that the child she was carrying became still. Ah…blessed relief!

When Jeff had returned the next day Lucy had wasted no time in telling him that their child was already a pilot, only soothed by the sound of jet engines overhead.

'He or she is definitely their Father's child, Jeff!'

They had laughed together and hugged, ate a meal, walked around the base…and Lucy had gone into early labour.

Scott's birth was also a matter of record for Davis-Monthan. From the time Lucy's waters broke once they had returned home as they were settling down to a movie to his birth was less than an hour. There was no time to get an ambulance anywhere near, and Jeff had had the pleasure of delivering baby Scott in their car on the way to Base medical.

That had made the Tracys famous on Base before Scott was even a day old. And pretty soon he made himself even more famous.

Nothing in the toddler books said anything about a baby that wouldn't sleep more than an hour. Sure, they were full of advice about babies that cried and didn't sleep, but Scott wasn't crying. Indeed he seemed perfectly happy even with the lack of sleep, it was his parents who were suffering. And once again nothing seemed to make a difference.

By the time he was two months' old his parents were at their wits end for a decent night's sleep. That weekend they had more air traffic as usual and in desperation Jeff had promised Lucy a chance for her to rest by taking Scott out for the whole afternoon.

He donned the sling, carefully manoeuvred Scott into it and went for a stroll. It was cloth sling that held Scott closely, but it rested his baby partially on his hip rather than fully on his front. It still gave the support in all the important places, but it gave Scotty a view around him beyond his Daddy's chest. Both Jeff and Lucy knew that it was too early for their child to actually take in what was going on but it was never too early for stimulating his senses.

Scott burbled happily as Jeff strolled around the grounds. He didn't seem tired in the slightest, and as his teeny feet occasionally kicked out as his legs moved, Jeff found himself marvelling more and more at the tiny person he and Lucy had made.

As Scott went from sleepless night to sleepless night to sleepless night Jeff had begun to feel like a failure, unable to get his baby to sleep, unable to give his wife the break she needed…but here, walking around the base, stopping to talk to people who knew them and enjoying the attention that a baby on a military base always brought, he began to feel better, not so much the failure. Scott seemed to enjoy the attention too, but it wasn't until the planes roared overhead that he gave an actual reaction.

Eyes wide, Scott startled, with an 'O' expression on his face. But he didn't burst into tears at the loud noise, instead he jigged up and down in apparent excitement, flailing his little fists, causing Jeff and the small crowd who had gathered around them to laugh.

Jeff's feet naturally took them to the hangars. Not to the jets though, Jeff knew he'd get into trouble going there, but the maintenance sheds wouldn't be out of bounds.

The smell of fuel and oil had Jeff breathing in deeply in appreciation and in memory. It reminded him of home, of his Pa's tractor, of the two of them with their heads together as Grant run maintenance on the giant green machine. He wandered the bays and spoke to several people and before he knew it he'd been there a couple of hours.

He looked down to see Scott was fast asleep. Jeff whispered as he turned for home.

'Looks like someone else likes the smell of oil and fuel. Something else you've inherited from me and your Grandpa.'

Scott said nothing to that, of course, and for the first time in what felt like since he'd been born Scott slept on. By the time Jeff had got home and found Lucy curled up asleep on the couch he was beginning to feel sleepy himself.

They had finally found themselves a method to get Scott to sleep more than half an hour at a time, and pretty soon both Jeff and Lucy with Scott either in a sling or in the pram – the stroller – was a regular fixture at the maintenance sheds.

It was on one of these regular walks that Jeff met up with one of his teammates. Sterling Artak was also on a fast-track career path like Jeff, only he was bound to stay with the military – probably with the GDF – rather than Jeff's aim for Mars. NASA had already poached Jeff and he had already been guaranteed a place on the Mars mission and was sharing his life between USAF and NASA for the next three years until that mission was a go.

Artak was immensely amused by a baby who could only sleep when surrounded by jets and their fuel. A baby already to pilot…so eager for the sky and planes already. They had joked and laughed and the family left with a new nickname: Swift for Scott, already ready for his wings.

As Scott grew his obsession with all things that flew just grew with him. Because of the unusual arrangement whereby Jeff was both Major in the USAF and for NASA the family had stayed on base for the eight months Jeff was away for firstly training and then for a six-month stint on the moon.

Lucy, working now with NASA and the USAF, helping out in the engineering shed with designing, often brought Scott along too. They had built him a special playpen out of engine parts and Scott loved it. Everyone loved him and he loved everyone, and often Lucy would find the pen empty and look around to find one of the engineers had Scott in their arms and was proudly showing him what they were building.

And they weren't the only ones.

Jeff's squadron had also taken Swift under their wing, and while Jeff was away on the moon they also developed the habit of poaching him from Lucy and showing him their planes. They just loved the way his eyes gleamed when he sat in the planes with them, and they delighted to explain what all the controls meant.

Sterling Artak was the absolute worst offender.

And then one day Lucy finished up work and went to the pen to collect Scott and he wasn't there. She wasn't worried at all, not at first. He'd be with one of the other engineers, or with Jeff's airmen.

Fifteen minutes later Lucy was getting increasingly panicked as no one seemed to have seen her baby. Pretty soon the whole base was on silent alert, military police tearing the place apart as did all airmen currently grounded.

It was Sterling who found him. Somehow Scott had managed to climb the stairs up to Artak's jet and had curled up in the seat. He was fast asleep.

Artak snapped a picture and sent it to Lucy and waited for her to arrive, and even though this was serious Sterling couldn't help but grin at the sight. Swift was so tiny! He stood on the steps and waited for Lucy, only moving when she came flying down the flight line to him.

By the time she'd arrived Scott had woken up but had not moved, and Lucy looked down onto her curled-up child, blue eyes blinking sleepily up at her and the biggest grin on display, showing his dimples for all to see.

'Scott Carpenter Tracy, what are you doing?'

'I sleeping Mamma.'

Well, what could she say to that?

Especially since Sterling was laughing his head off.