Chapter Text
There’s a proper office on the island. Their Dad’s desk stands sentinel at the edge of the comm center, but he’d had a private office, too. No one goes in it much, because it’s a melancholy place, more or less untouched since Dad’s disappearance. If Dad’s desk is a shrine, then his office is a temple. It’s got the same minimal, elegant style as the rest of the island, but it feels different, somehow. The little roaming bots who take care of most of the cleaning on the island still include it in their circuit, so the place doesn’t even gather dust. Nothing about it ever changes.
But it’s quiet, and it’s private, and it’s been deliberately constructed to be the best isolated from the noise and the vibration of the high-powered jet craft that launch from the island at any given hour of the day, and so it seems like the best place for a pair of bearded dragons to live. At least on a temporary basis.
So it’s where Scott, temporary guardian of two bearded dragons, has decided to base his custodianship of the aforementioned, until such time as John gets back to him concerning just what exactly they’re supposed to do with a pair of bearded dragons. It’s been a long day, and Scott’s relaxing with a drink at the end of it, enjoying the quiet and the privacy and the company of the two newest members of the household, who he likes better than he’d actually expected to.
Gifts from rescues aren’t uncommon. But this is a bit different than usual, and most closely analogous to the time a Chilean farmer had insistently gifted Virgil a pair of broody hens after TB2 had showed up in the local village to help with earthquake relief, and he had felt too guilty about declining to do anything but just bring them home to the island. The nickname “Chickenshit” had stuck to Virgil for over a month, and had nothing to do with his relative levels of bravery.
Gordon’s relative levels of bravery are the reason Scott has taken custody of the gifted pair of lizards. Gordon’s a staunch environmentalist, a friend to and fan of animals from all over the world. But his aversion to lizards is founded in an incident in a pet store, nearly two decades ago. In Scott’s memory it’s a non-event, he doesn’t even remember what exactly had happened that resulted in all the screaming and the desperate flight from the pet store, but Gordon had only been four, and he’s had a phobia of lizards ever since. It had gone so far as to necessitate a switch out of his fifth grade classroom, owing to a terror of the class’s pet iguana. So clearly their parents had taken it seriously.
“Seems a little bit egotistical,” he comments to the lizards, who are the only entities present in the office, still in the case they’d been shipped in, because they don’t yet have anything better. “Buddy and Ellie. If you were my lizards, I’d call you Grapple and Jetpack. But I have to be honest—kinda long odds on you being anybody’s lizards, at least as far as this family’s considered. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that we don’t all have schedules that are exactly conducive to pet ownership, and depending on the intensity of care required by a pair of lizards, you might do better elsewhere. I’d go so far as to say you’d probably do better elsewhere.”
Lizards are a weird gift. Even for a pair of people like the Pendergasts, lizards are a weird gift. And subsequent to a jungle adventure in which gigantic lizards had represented the principle threat, even as a gag, lizards are just a really weird gift. They represent a level of thoughtless presumption which seems a little bit rude, by Scott’s sensibilities. The fact that their intended recipient has what could be a mild to moderate fear of lizards is just the icing on the cake.
“He doesn’t mean anything by it,” he assures Buddy and Ellie, who aren’t privy to his own internal monologue concerning his younger brother, but who are also lizards besides that. “And considering your namesakes, I’m pretty sure he definitely appreciates the idea of the pair of you. It’s just, y'know, the reality of it. Because you’re lizards. Gordon isn’t scared of much, but he’s shit scared of lizards.”
Before he can continue to wax poetic about his little brother and the tragedy of his herpetophobia, there’s a soft knock on the office door, and the man of the hour puts in an unsolicited appearance. The door swings open and Gordon peeks inside the office, finds Scott sitting at the chair behind their father’s other desk.
“Speak of the devil,” Scott greets him. He doesn’t stand, but lifts his glass in salute. “How’s it going, Gordo? You did good work today.”
Gordon steps inside and closes the door behind him, though he lingers just over the threshold. He’s off rotation, due a solid twenty-four hours of downtime. It’s been a solid few hours since the conclusion of his latest jungle adventure, and he’s since showered and changed into his preferred island attire, board shorts and a t-shirt, complete with whatever miscellaneous faded inanity on the front. This one proclaims that life is short and proposes eating tacos as a means to cope. And Gordon nods in answer to Scott’s greeting, but his gaze has locked onto the crate of lizards atop the end table where Scott’s keeping them. “Thanks.”
As acknowledgments about his feats of derring-do go, this is understated, for Gordon. Generally congratulating or complimenting Gordon for anything results in finger-guns at a minimum, and can escalate as far as mugging for a non-existent camera, posing and preening and planting kisses on his biceps. A bob of his head and a shuffle of his feet and an absentminded “thanks” is worryingly subdued, for Gordon.
Maybe it’s the lizards. Scott clears his throat to get his brother’s attention, and queries, “Something you need, Gordon?”
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, actually. Um. Just, uh—uh, wanted a word. With you. Um. Privately.”
This is getting downright spooky. Dad’s office is about as private as things get on Tracy Island, but there are other options. Scott sits up in his chair, puts his drink aside. He stands, with a glance at the crate of lizards, and motions towards the door. “Well, considering your particular problem with our present company, we can—”
“No,” Gordon interrupts, and takes a few hesitant steps into the room, though he still keeps his distance. He looks deliberately at the crate with the lizards, and shakes his head for emphasis. “No, this is fine.”
Scott sits. “Is everything all right?” he asks, getting right to the point. He’s in Dad’s chair at Dad’s desk in Dad’s office, and it’s possible that without meaning to, he’s slipped into the Dad Voice, which is something he can only do on accident and never on purpose. It happens sometimes that he’ll be listening back over an audio log in order to make a mission report, and his own voice will trick him, will seem to belong to the ghost of his father. He’s never worked up the nerve to ask any of his brothers if they notice. He has to wonder what they must think, if they do. “What’s up, Gordo?” he prompts, hoping that this sounds a little less like the way their father would ask.
“I have a question,” Gordon starts, and then stops immediately, swallows. He’s barefoot, and their father’s office is carpet over hardwood. Gordon lingers at the edge of the area rug, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet, an action that seems to belie some serious anxiety. A long few seconds pass. Reticence isn’t typical for Gordon, and Scott’s starting to get a little bit concerned.
Still, he tries to play it cool as he nudges his little brother again, “—and were you planning on asking it?”
Gordon nods, but it still takes him a moment to summon up his voice. There’s a false start, as he doesn’t quite manage it, so he clears his throat and tries again. When he finally spits it out, he speaks too quickly for Scott to actually understand him. “…hvyvrhdathrsm?”
There are a few ice cubes in Scott’s glass of rye, still sitting on the desk at his elbow. One of them melts in such a fashion that one of the others perched atop of it falls against the side of the glass, with a soft crystalline clink. It’s the only sound in the room as Scott stares at his brother. At this point he’s more bewildered than strictly concerned, because now Gordon’s actually blushing. Gordon will, on occasion, go streaking out of the house for the purposes of throwing himself into the pool, naked as the day he was born. It’s very difficult to embarrass Gordon.
Scott reaches for his drink, takes a sip. Dad was a patient man. Scott attempts to channel a little bit of his father’s forbearance as he suggests, “…try it again, maybe with some vowels this time.”
In the past twelve hours, Scott’s watched his brother cheerfully jump out of the back of TB1 into a shrouded and deadly jungle. Hadn’t even batted an eye. He’d been game as hell, then, the same bluff and breezy ease with which Gordon attempts all of life’s adventures. Now, at the edge of the carpet in front of his father’s desk, in silence and stillness and with nothing more dangerous in the room than a pair of bearded dragons and an unasked question, Gordon takes a deep breath, steels himself.
And then, clear and deliberate—
“Have you ever had a threesome?”