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John had a somewhat turbulent relationship with gravity on the best of days. His sense of balance left a lot be desired (this was an understatement but shh) and that was when he was standing on dry land – boats were a lost cause unless there were crashmats on deck. There was a reason why he spent so much time in zero-gee – actually there were a lot of reasons, but the lack of bruises and reduced risk of broken bones significantly added to his cause. Whenever he returned to Earth, gravity made it her prime goal to land him on his ass and this occasion was no different, although he had to say that an earthquake was taking it a little too far.
Look, it was difficult enough trying not to trip over his own feet on an ordinary day, let alone when the ground was shaking and shivering and generally trying to rip itself apart as the energy of several hundred kilotons of TNT rippled away from the Faultline.
There had been a brief instance of unsettled silence beforehand as if the world was holding its breath and every living thing surrounding the epicentre for miles sensed this – the atmosphere was a taut string about to snap. Birds exploded into the air and fled for the cover of clouds. Several dogs began barking in unison. The stray cat Virgil had been petting suddenly bolted, eyes wide and fur bristling as it vanished beneath a parked car.
John had been nursing a nagging sense of unease all morning. It had kept him on tenterhooks, adrenaline like popping candy under his skin, because something was going to happen, but he had no evidence to prove it other than a mere feeling and he hadn’t spent years claiming to be a man of science only to turn around and claim he was experiencing some sort of premonition. He took a step away from the shelter of the hotel lobby, out onto the sidewalk where Virgil had his hands in his pockets, staring after the fleeing cat with a puzzled frown and a faintly hurt light in his eyes.
“Weird,” Virgil remarked in lieu of hello. “What’s up with you?”
John took a deep breath of the usual city scents – fumes mixed with cheap takeout and scorched rubber where cars had taken the corner too sharply – and nearly leapt out of his skin as a horn blared. A cyclist fled the scene with an answering shout.
Virgil raised a brow. “You’re jumpy.”
“Something’s off. Doesn’t it feel off to you?”
Virgil shrugged. “The only thing that seems off to me is that Scott has yet to return from that coffeehouse.” He shot John an exasperated grin. “Hey, how much do you want to bet that he’s flirting with the barista?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Virgil finally caught onto that thread of unease slowly winding around the city. Another dog began howling somewhere inside one of the apartment buildings and the sound carried on the air. It was eerily still. There was no breeze beyond the leaflets flapping in the wake of passing traffic and that sense of wrong itched at the back of John’s mind. He was tempted to reach for his phone and ask EOS to run a scan just to ease his own paranoia.
Virgil inhaled sharply. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
There. A tiny tremor, as if the ground were shivering. It was so faint that John could barely feel it through the soles of his shoes, but then it grew. The tension broke. The world was engulfed by a thunderclap in physical form – an overwhelming explosion of energy. The tarmac looked as if it were liquid. Metal screamed as several cars lost control. Glass shattered. He could feel the vibrations in his very bones. The noise made his ears ring. Instinct demanded he should grip onto something, find a way to ground his senses, only there was no stable land left.
Everything was in chaos. He didn’t recognise glass falling from shattered windows to his right as a threat until it exploded across the pavement less than a metre away. A very human urge was to run, but there was nowhere to go. Cracks webbed across the road. More glass cascaded towards the unprotected civilians on the street and an instinctual part of him wanted to help, only he couldn’t bring his feet to move.
There was gravel digging into his hands. Cracking concrete was sharp even through his jeans – at what point had he ended up on his knees, he wondered, only oh yeah, shitty sense of balance. He was struck by a faintly hysterical urge to laugh. A roof tile smashed into the ground, missing him by a mere inch, and he jolted backwards just as Virgil grabbed him and physically hauled him out of range of falling debris.
Earthquakes generally last between ten and thirty seconds, he thought above the roaring of buildings shook to their very foundations and wailing alarms and screams and even his own frantic heartbeat. How long has it been already? A sharp flash of light seared across his vision. Fire.
Heat licked the sidewalk, and he screwed his eyes shut, digging his nails into his jeans as dizziness made him light-headed, utterly disorientated by the shaking. He was vaguely aware of Virgil shouting something into his ear but couldn’t make out the words, so he caught his brother’s wrist and squeezed, hoping it wasn’t anything too important.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it all stopped.
The ground remained solid. John put out a hand and braced himself cautiously against the tarmac, but nothing shifted. He tipped his head back to glimpse dust slowly spiralling in the air, strangely hypnotic. The silence was deafening for the brief second it took for the aftermath to settle. Virgil was still holding him close, practically pinning him against the sidewalk, acting as a human shield, but had yet to notice and John couldn’t bring himself to shove him away. So, he took those ten seconds to remember how to breathe and let his mind reorientate.
It was eerie. So much destruction wrought in mere seconds. The street was unrecognisable. Only a minute ago it had been a regular day with people going about their usual lives, without any clue that their world was about to be shattered. John scrambled onto his knees and then staggered upright, catching his balance against Virgil’s shoulder, still off-kilter from the shaking. His phone was a mess of cracked glass, but if he squinted he could just about read the emergency alert from EOS.
“Six point four,” Virgil breathed, reading over his shoulder. “No wonder it did so much damage.” He wiped dust away from his face. “You okay?”
“What?” John shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Yeah.” He glimpsed the flash of concern in Virgil’s eyes before he tried to cover it up. “Yes. I’m fine, I just- Fuck.” Realisation was like a tidal wave, icy and consuming so that he could have choked on the resulting terror, because Virgil was right there in front of him, slightly shaken but in one piece with only a few grazes to show for the ordeal, but- “We’ve gotta go. We’ve gotta-”
“John, just-” Virgil caught his arm before he could break into a mad run for that coffeehouse. “There are people trapped into those cars. All it’s gonna take is one spark and…”
John wavered between laser-focus and assessing the situation – a delicate tightrope between his IR instincts and the purely selfish desire to find Scott even if it meant turning his back on people in trouble. The irony was that he was fully aware that if Scott could hear this conversation, he would be the first to tell John to help those trapped victims. He harboured an undeniable sense of guilt upon hearing frantic screams from the crushed vehicles, but he also trusted Virgil’s ability to handle the situation. So.
“Go. I’ll find Scott.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh my god, go.”
Virgil hesitated a second longer, wavering on the verge of saying something else – probably something overly emotional which would make John cringe – but instead settled for saying, simply, “Thank you.”
The words were laced with the type of painful honesty that John would usually run from. But right now his ears were filled with screams of scared children and the groaning of support beams crippled by the earthquake and his own pulse was still thunderous as if his heart couldn’t keep up with the pure panic coursing through his veins.
There was a reason why he tried to stay on Five whenever possible and it was one of the thoughts he tried to repress but the truth was that up there he had access to everything all at once – the second a situation went south he had eyes and ears on all the data, but down here? He was cut off. Blinded. He had no idea if Scott was okay or not. And people could joke about him being a control freak all they liked, but if that meant he was able to tell in an instant that his family was safe and didn’t have to live with this overwhelming terror every time something went wrong then he’d happily claim that title.
“Stay safe,” he said before he could stop himself and turned on his heels to hide his expression from Virgil’s searching gaze.
Time was ticking. There were bound to be aftershocks. If a certain person was trapped or injured or both – or a variety of other scenarios, because his brain liked to provide him with what-ifs – then it was countdown to disaster. He scrambled over the hood of a parked car which had been partially crushed by falling debris – which was a terrible idea and it was a miracle that he didn’t tear his hands to pieces on broken glass – stumbling over broken concrete where tremors had torn up the sidewalk.
Several shopfronts had been completely destroyed and flames were licking the windows of a café. He skirted around the worst of the rubble and broke into a sprint, relying on the mix of adrenaline and panic to keep from tripping over – because he’d noticed over the years that he tended to lose his balance more when he was overthinking and right now it was difficult to think about anything other than getting to Scott, save for the space in his mind which was reserved for worrying about Virgil and the risks posed by those crashed cars.
The coffeehouse was a five-minute walk down the road from their hotel – they’d been staying here for one weekend because Scott and John had a Tracy Industries meeting that they hadn’t been able to evade for a second time and Virgil had wanted to visit some fancy art exhibition and so had tagged along. Really, John should have expected something like this to happen because his family attracted disasters or maybe it was the other way around. Moths to a lamp, every goddamn time, but he had yet to figure out which was which in that analogy.
He pushed past the ache in his muscles – wow, okay, so he definitely needed to work out more or maybe just stop resorting to zero-gee every time he got lazy and couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way around the Gravity Ring – and hurtled through a puddle of dark liquid which stunk suspiciously like gasoline.
It was another miracle, he considered absently, that he hadn’t ended up flat on his ass despite running in wet shoes. Anxiety coiled between his ribs and stole the air from his lungs, whispering unhelpful thoughts such as what if you’re running out of miracles, and he sort of wanted to scream but mostly just wanted to find Scott and hug him and then shout at him for being a dumbass, all in that exact order. Because really, Scott should have been with them when the earthquake hit, but oh no, he’d chosen to flirt with a barista instead and if he was hurt in any way - even so much as a scratch – as a result then John was going to murder him.
He skidded to a halt, promptly lost his balance and smacked into the road violently enough to knock the air from his lungs and send a shockwave up his spine. The pain was a dull ache which didn’t really register with him. It was mere background noise, just like the steady dripping of gasoline from the wrecked van a few feet away or the lone bloodied shoe discarded on a mound of bricks or even the sirens as emergency services tried to decide where to start. None of it mattered because that godforsaken coffeehouse was on fire.
Oh my god, he thought hysterically, I’m actually gonna murder him.
Once upon a time when mildly drunk he’d made a list of family from who caused him the most to least stress. Gordon was at the very top, but Scott was a close second and right now John was genuinely considering whether he’d just knocked Gordon out of first place. He threw himself upright, blinking back tears from the smoke.
He had given many lectures over the years about not pulling dumb heroic stunts because he seemed to be the only person in the family with any common sense.
Apparently he was also a massive hypocrite, because the worst decision he could possibly make right now would be to run headfirst into the burning coffeehouse.
So, obviously, he did exactly that.
Okay, confession time: one of his worst fears was fire. It verged on being an actual phobia. In his defence, he was an astronaut and so fear of fire had been drummed into him for the entirety of his career – even before that, actually, because Dad had always told him how fire was one of the deadliest threats you could ever face in space. Fire on an aircraft? Emergency landing. Fire in a car? Pull over and get the hell out. Fire in space? Ha. Good luck. There’s nowhere to go and unless you contained it within a matter of minutes or even seconds in some cases then you were completely and utterly screwed. Therefore, in his books, his fear of fire was perfectly understandable and could possibly be considered self-preservation. So why the hell was he running into one of his own nightmares without hesitation?
Because of this guy. This absolute idiot, who was attempting to carrying a semi-conscious teenager who looked to be around Alan’s age away from the raging inferno, because Scott just couldn’t help but play the hero. A terrified barista with a tear-stained face had a hand wrapped around his bicep but immediately launched herself at John.
“Are you with the emergency services?”
“Uh, no, I’m usually with International Rescue. And him. I’m also with him.” John tried to pry her hands away, but she had a surprisingly strong grip with enough of an adrenaline rush to make her akin to a limpet. Training kicked in and he found himself assessing her for injury. Despite the dust smearing her face and the tiny cut along her cheek, she seemed alright, although that glaze settling over her eyes suggested shock wasn’t too far away. He wrapped an arm around her and helped her find the exit amid the smoke.
She doubled over, spluttering and trying to gulp down air too quickly. He placed a cautious hand on her back.
“Are you okay?”
“No.” She wiped her eyes and forced an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’m just- I- I need a minute. And a phone.”
“Here, use mine.”
“Are you sure?” She looked on the verge of bursting into tears. “Don’t you need to call anyone?”
John tried not to focus on the familiar rumble of engines which were steadily getting closer. “I’m willing to bet that my family already know. Besides, I need a minute to shout at my brother.” He pressed the battered phone into her hands. “Call whoever you need to.”
“Thank you.” Her smile was genuine this time. “Although maybe don’t shout at your brother. He wasn’t inside when it happened, but he came back to help us even with that head injury.”
John mentally switched the order of Gordon’s and Scott’s names on his list of People I Love Who Cause Me Stress on a Daily Basis. “Oh, really? Thank you for telling me that because he sure as hell wouldn’t have done.”
Scott had one hand braced against the bonnet of a car, eyes shut as he tried not to flinch at the bright daylight. There was a tell-tale smudge of crimson over one temple. Suddenly his lack of reaction made a lot more sense.
John bit back a sigh and repressed the instinct to shout at him – because yelling at Scott for being a selfless idiot was one of his favourite hobbies when he was worried. He spared a glance for the teenager – slumped against the side of the car but at least conscious now and under the watchful eye of the barista – and planted his hands on Scott’s shoulders, guiding him into taking a seat on the car bonnet. His brother’s lack of protest was somehow more concerning than the sight of blood.
“Talk to me.”
“Ow,” Scott summarised eloquently. He still had his eyes shut, arms wrapped around his chest as if the earthquake had shattered him too and he was trying to hold himself together.
John cautiously carded a hand through Scott’s hair to search for the source of that blood and muttered a curse upon discovering a nasty gash that was practically a glowing neon sign of a concussion. He went to retract his hand and raised a brow as Scott made a plaintive, protesting sound and grabbed his wrist to keep him close.
“Idiot,” John informed him. “That’s what you are. A self-sacrificing idiot. Zero brain cells.”
Scott sent him a hurt look, eyes wide and yep, very clearly concussed. “Hey.”
The word was pitifully small and rough from smoke inhalation and John felt that icy worry in his heart melt into something still concerned but also hopelessly fond. He repressed a smile as Scott clung onto his hand like some sorta lifeline and moved to sit beside him on the car. The flames were billowing sky-high, but they were at a safe enough distance to make it a show of destruction rather than a real threat. He reminded himself to take a breath, surprised by the shakiness of his own hands as the reality of the disaster they’d just experienced began to set in. It could have gone so very badly wrong. It was different walking into hot zones as IR because they were prepared and had all their technology and each other to rely on, but this? This was… He didn’t have the words. All he had was a suspicious burning behind his eyes and a longing to go home.
“You ‘kay?”
He dragged a hand down his face.
“Yeah,” he murmured, relaxing as he spied Virgil at the top of the street, accompanied by a familiar blue uniform with that distinctive yellow. He took another deep breath, briefly surprised by the sudden weight on his shoulder as Scott listed against him. “I’m okay.”
“Good.”
“You’re an idiot,” John repeated, just in case Scott hadn’t heard him the first three times. He wrapped an arm around his brother’s shoulders and tried not to imagine what-ifs. “But I love you.”
“Aw,” Scott mumbled, way too out of it to remember anything later. He clumsily patted John’s arm. “Love you too.”
“Shut up. I never said that.”
“But… What?”
“Shh.”
“’M so confused.”
“We’re all okay, so let’s just take a minute. Just… breathe. That sounds good.”
John was one hundred percent talking to himself more than Scott. He took his own advice and then, as Gordon and Virgil made it within earshot, slid off the car to greet them.
We’re okay, he reminded himself, over and over until he was back home, sat on the edge of the pool with the sky turning varying shades of rose and peach and the world was no longer falling apart around him. We’re okay.
“Oh, by the way,” Scott informed him a few days later with an obnoxiously smug smile, “I got her number.”
“The barista’s?” Virgil queried, not really shocked at all but mostly just exasperated.
“Hell yeah. Totally worth the concussion.”
John faceplanted onto the kitchen counter with a groan. “Why are you like this?”