Chapter Text
Scott figured it was probably time for a coffee break.
He had been looking at the same document for… a while now. After reading the same page for the 4th time, all the words were beginning to look the same, and he had processed none of it. Unfortunately, he was going to have to read it again, but first, coffee.
He stood from his desk.
Immediately his hands slammed down as he tilted forward. The papers slid slightly under his hands, crumpling under his fingers. Well. That wasn’t good.
Scott blinked hard, willing his vision to clear. He took a couple of steadying breaths. The world came back into focus. He thought he had at least one more day before his body crashed, but with these symptoms, he had a couple of hours, tops.
He probably needed sleep. But sleep was… not an option. Work doesn’t get done when you’re sleeping. And Scott has much too much work to be sleeping.
Plus, he already slept. He got a whole 3 hours of sleep after that 48-hour rescue in… Peru? A mudslide in Peru? Or was that last week’s mission? No, no, last week he was in Chile. He just came back from Peru… yes. It was a rescue that, thankfully, happened after (and not before) a very important and very long meeting with Tracy Industries’ board of directors. He had been preparing for all week in advance for that meeting.
Hopefully some coffee will help.
Sleep was a luxury that Scott couldn’t afford.
“Scott?”
Scott looked up to see Alan, who was helping out with some paperwork and was currently sitting in a messy layout of various business proposals, looking back at him with a slight crease between his eyebrows.
Well, that’s not good.
He can’t have Alan worrying about him.
Scott straightened up and plastered on his best, hopefully heartwarming, smile. “Come on, Sprout,” he said, tilting his head toward the stairs. “Break time.”
Honestly, Scott had been so surprised when Alan approached him earlier and asked if he could help out with the paperwork, that he had nearly fallen out of his chair.
Alan usually complained whenever he had to do anything related to Tracy Industries. From wearing stuffy suits to galas to taking business and marketing classes with John, Alan groaned and gripped about all of it.
Scott hardly ever pushed him about it. Alan should enjoy being a teen while he could.
However, if the kid really wanted to help out, Scott wasn’t going to deny him. There was a lot of work to do, and Alan could use the experience. So, Scott had him read various new venture proposals, decide which ones he thought would best fit Tracy Industries, then create a presentation he would later give, convincing Scott why they should pursue his chosen venture.
It was something Scott had his interns do… when he had time to talk to the interns.
From the mess of papers Alan had around him, Scott guessed the kid was still in the process of choosing a proposal.
The sight brought a tired smile to his face.
Scott pushed off from the desk, rolled his shoulders back with a tired sigh, and strode to the kitchen in what he hoped looked like a confident steady stroll and didn’t betray the way exhaustion seemed to pull at his shoulders. He heard the hurried shuffle of papers then the soft thuds of footsteps pattering after him.
The coffee was cold.
This made sense. Scott made the pot early in the morning and now it was… late afternoon, nearing dinner time, if the setting sun is anything to go by. Scott still frowned at it.
If he was alone, he would just pour himself a cup, gulp it down cold, then return to his work.
But he wasn’t alone.
Alan was here. Scott looked up from the cold pot of coffee to Alan, who was currently digging through the fridge. The kid deserved more of a break than the few seconds it would take for Scott to drink a cold cup of coffee.
So Scott poured himself a mug full of coffee and put it in the microwave. It beeped as he set the timer then the low drone of the microwave sounded out. Scott leaned back against the counter. If he was going to drink his coffee in more than a couple of gulps, he wanted it to at least be warm.
Scott crossed his arms as a shiver ran through his body. He’ll have to ask John if anyone has messed with the thermostat recently. It was oddly cold in the villa today. He’d even gone through the trouble of putting on two shirts under his button-up, although it doesn’t seem to have helped much.
The microwave beep pierced through his skull. Scott had to suppress a wince as he retrieved his coffee.
He let the heat warm up his fingers before taking a swig. It stung his throat going down but helped chase away this chill that he just couldn’t seem to shake, if only for a moment.
Alan didn’t quite have a taste for coffee yet and had opted instead for a cold Coke. The teen was leaning against the counter across from Scott, soda in hand, staring listlessly at the floor.
Scott considered the scene for a moment. The tropical breeze rustled through the palm trees outside. Distantly, the birds chirped. The low hum of the refrigerator bounced off the walls.
“Everything ok?” Scott asked. Alan was unusually quiet. The teenager was always blabbing on and on about whatever he was interested in at the time, but now it seemed like he had nothing to say.
Alan shrugged.
Ok, that set off some alarms in his head. Scott put down his coffee. “Did something bother you about one of the new venture proposals?”
Alan shrugged again.
Growing increasingly concerned, Scott moved until he was standing directly in front of the kid.
Alan looked up at him briefly before looking at the floor again. “My head kinda hurts.”
Alarm bells were blaring now.
In Alan’s vocabulary, kind hurts meant it definitely hurt. The kid had used the same phrase after bruising three ribs on a rescue and giving Scott a near heart attack.
“Did you get enough sleep last night?” Scott asked.
A slight blush rose to Alan’s cheeks. “Cavern Quest had an update last night,” he said sheepishly. Before Scott could reprimand him for pulling an all-nighter for video games, Alan added, “But I wasn’t expecting to spend 7 hours doing straight paperwork today either!”
A part of Scott was surprised because he didn’t think they spent that long on paperwork. Another part of him flared up in anger because Alan asked to help with the paperwork.
Just as quickly as the anger came, it left with the reminder that Alan was just a teenager. A teenager who flew a rocket and went on high-risk rescues, but a teenager nonetheless.
“Alright,” Scott said tiredly. He ruffled one hand through Alan’s blond mop. “Why don’t you run upstairs and take a nap in the lounge? I’ll be up there in a bit with some Advil.”
“Really?” Alan’s eyes shot up to meet Scott’s. “You’re not mad?”
“Nope. I didn’t realize we had worked for so long without a break. Sorry about that.”
Alan bit his lip. “But,” he said hesitantly, “you always push yourself without a break.”
For a moment, a small agonizing moment, Scott recalled John lecturing him about appearances and setting an example and how they all look up to him for guidance and what kind of lesson is he teaching their brothers by constantly running himself into the ground and John can only do so much from space. But the moment passed quickly enough and Scott gave Alan a soft smile.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said as he pushed the teen toward the lounge. “Go on. I’ll be there soon.”
Alan hesitated for just a moment before nodding and trudging up the stairs.
Scott rustled through the kitchen for their bottle of Advil. In his concern for Alan, he had been able to ignore how exhausted he felt but now that the kid was gone he felt like he was moving through tar.
He popped a couple of pills in his mouth, washed them down with a swig of coffee, and belatedly wondered if it was smart to take Advil with a stomach that only had coffee in it. Then he remembered that Alan also most likely hadn’t eaten anything either, so he snagged a granola bar before heading up to the lounge.
Alan was sitting scrunched up in the corner of the couch with his arms wrapped around his stomach, legs pulled up, and his head tucked against his chest.
Scott rubbed a hand over his face. Concern and guilt pulled at his core.
In the short amount of time between being in the kitchen to going to the lounge Alan had gone from looking alright to downright miserable.
“Hey,” Scott crouched before the kid and gently shook his shoulder. “Do you want to lay in your room instead?”
Alan rubbed at his eyes. “Can I sleep in your room?”
Scott frowned. Alan hadn’t asked to sleep in Scott’s bed since he was small. “Yeah, bud.”
Scott stood, fully intending to lead his younger brother to his room, but his body chose that moment to remind him just how close to crashing he actually was. The room swayed greatly. There was a brief moment of dizzying weightlessness that Scott can only associate with 2 things: Thunderbird 1 suddenly dropping altitude and being on the verge of losing consciousness.
Before the floor could come up to meet him, he felt something press against his side and grab his arm. He leaned heavily to the side. After a few steadying seconds, he looked down to see Alan under his arm, trying his best to support his weight.
“Let’s go?” Alan asked as he stepped forward, taking Scott with him.
From an outside perspective, it looked like Scott was guiding Alan by the shoulders up the stairs. Scott would never admit to how much he leaned on Alan at that moment.
By the time they reached the top of the stairs Scott was shaking and out of breath. If Alan noticed, he didn’t say anything.
Scott’s bedroom was… neat. Neat in the way only an un-lived-in room can look. Almost like a guest room that isn’t often used or a model room set up to showcase a house on the market.
Scott’s number one rule, when it came to his bedroom, was: no work. This was a rule proposed by John and approved by everyone else, but Scott. John even set up a blackout code over Scott’s bedroom that would block any electric signal. It was annoying at first but over the years he began to appreciate it. His life was full of enough work. This was supposed to be one of the few spaces he could get away from it.
The downside was that Scott always had work that needed to be done, and it he can’t bring his work into his bedroom then the solution is simple. Don’t go into the bedroom. Scott began to spend more time at his desk than in his room.
Crossing through the door felt almost like crossing into a different world. He felt his shoulder relax instantly. Here, he didn’t have to worry about doing work.
He sat heavily on the bed while Alan all but threw himself onto the neatly made, hardly used mattress.
“Go get changed,” Scott said as he reached behind him and smacked the teenager’s ankle. The idea of someone lying in his bed while wearing scratchy everyday clothes made his skin crawl.
The teenager grumbled but he climbed out of the bed and left the room, presumably to grab a change of clothes.
Scott should probably change too. While he preferred to keep his everyday civil clothes on, his jeans felt stiff, his belt too tight, and while the two shirts were keeping him warm before, he felt like he was melting now.
He didn’t have to go anywhere today, nor did he have any meeting scheduled, and if they had a rescue, he had to change into his uniform anyway so it didn’t really matter if he wore loungewear for the rest of the day. Having made up his mind, Scott changed into a loose t-shirt and sweats.
He had just finished pulling down his shirt when Alan walked back in.
“Woah,” He remarked as he entered the room wearing a pair of plaid pajamas. “You changed.”
“Yeah,” Scott sighed as he sat back on the bed. He didn’t feel the need to explain himself so instead, he tossed the Advil and granola bar he had brought with him to Alan. “Take those and eat that before you sleep. I’ll let Virgil know you aren’t feeling well when he gets back from the supply run.”
Alan caught them with ease and looked at them in his hands like he was trying to solve some sort of puzzle.
Scott watched him with mild interest. A nagging voice in the back of his mind reminded him that he was supposed to only be taking a short coffee break. He only had a couple of hours left before he crashed, then who knows how long he’d be out. He had things he needed to get done. The sanctuary of his room wasn’t going to get those things done.
The problem was he didn’t really want to do any more work. His eyes stung, throat itched, joints ached, and tiredness seemed to pull on every bone. While he could ignore all of that, he’s worked through worse, what he couldn’t ignore was one of his younger brothers feeling under the weather. Especially one that was feeling so bad, that he wanted to sleep in Scott’s room.
Once Alan fell asleep, he would head back to his desk and finish as much work as he could.
So he stood, his knees popping as he did, and stepped aside for Alan to climb into the bed.
Alan didn’t climb into the bed. Instead, he tugged on Scott’s arm. “Will you lay down with me?”
Scott furrowed his eyebrows. The bed was plenty big, and many a younger brother had snuck into it in the past, but even for Alan, this was a strange request.
“Please, Scott?” Alan pleaded with big blue puppy eyes. “My head really hurts. Can you just stay until I fall asleep?”
Scott was torn. He still had so much work to do. He always had so much work to do. If he didn’t finish his work today, then he would be behind tomorrow, and tomorrow was always uncertain.
It was that uncertainty that kept Scott working.
Scott knew that the moment he laid down, he wouldn’t want to get up. He doesn’t even want to go now. He needed to be able to get up. He couldn’t allow himself a moment’s rest.
He was so tired.
Alan has their mom’s hair and their dad’s eyes. When Scott looked at his youngest brother he saw a perfect mix of their parents. He was kind like their mom but bold like their dad. Scott himself was nearly a carbon copy of their dad. This was something he took pride in, but sometimes he wondered if he was too much like their dad and not enough like their mom.
What would their mom say if Scott denied cuddles with Alan because he was too busy doing as much work as he physically could before his body crashed?
Scott only nodded and let Alan pull him onto the bed. The moment Scott was fully onto the bed, Alan plastered himself to his side, as if he was afraid Scott might try to leave. Scott breathlessly chuckled. He would have expected that behavior from Gordon. Alan had been full of surprises today.
With some effort, Scott lifted his hand and ran his fingers through Alan’s hair. “Sleep, Sprout. You’ll feel better after.”
Even as he uttered the words Scott felt himself slipping away from consciousness. He felt Alan nod against him before sleep fully took over.