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Scott was vaguely aware of the sound of his door opening, but it took a knee hitting the far side of his mattress to actually bring him to full wakefulness. He rolled over and blinked drowsily at the intruder, guiltily frozen halfway through the process of climbing into the double bed. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Virgil chewed his lip briefly. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“‘S okay. C’mon in.” He pushed himself into a sitting position and watched sleepily as his younger brother tucked his legs under the covers.
Back when they were kids, Virgil had snuck into his bed on a regular basis, especially after Mom was gone. He’d started doing it again right after they’d lost Dad, but it had been nearly a year since the last incident. Virgil had a particularly stubborn streak when it came to confiding in others–he was always available when his brothers needed a shoulder to cry on, but he seldom asked for the favour to be returned. Virg coming to his room for physical comfort in the small hours of the morning was a surefire sign that whatever was eating his little brother was ... not great. Rest, however desperately necessary, could wait.
“You want to talk about it?”
Virgil shook his head as he pulled one of the spare pillows out from behind him and hugged it roughly to his pajama-clad chest. “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
“So the definition of ’fine’ now includes having a major crisis at—” Scott tapped the holocomm on his bedside table. “—three-thirty-seven AM. Good to know.”
Virgil smiled ruefully and shook his head. “Not a major crisis. I’m just over-tired. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
Scott shuffled closer and began to rub lightly between his shoulderblades. “C’mon, little bro,” he said gently. “Spill.”
“It’s dumb.”
“I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume that’s not even close to true.”
Virgil blew out a sigh. “It was on today’s—yesterday’s—last mission. Y’know, that Icelandic volcano thing?”
“With the unpronounceable name, yeah.”
Virgil snorted. “That’s the one. Anyway, while Brains and Questa were doing their thing with the lava, I went to the hot springs resort down the slope to organise evac. The manager—well, he was a real piece of work. He’s been dealing with Doctor Questa crying wolf about eruptions for the past five years, same as us, and I guess he’d had enough. I told him I was with International Rescue, and, well—y’know that snarky thing people do, when they don’t believe you are who you say you are? When they say ‘and I’m the King of England’, that kind of thing?”
“Uh-huh.”
Virgil ducked his head, hiding his expression from Scott behind shadows and tousled hair. “I told him I was IR, and he replied with ‘and I’m Jeff Tracy’.”
Scott winced. “Ouch.”
“Yeah. I mean, I know it was only a stupid joke, and I treated it as such. But he—he used Dad as a punchline, Scooter. The rest of the world’s moved on to the point that they can make wisecracks using his name, and it doesn’t even occur to them that it might still ... hurt.”
Scott wrapped his arms around Virgil from behind, resting his chin on his brother’s shoulder, at a loss. It was useless to try and provide reassurance when he could feel his own dormant rage and pain bubbling at the mere thought of dealing with something like that himself. Just try and say something like that to my face, pal, he thought viciously. I dare you. “What did you do?”
“That—that’s the worst of it.” A shudder ran through Virgil’s frame. "I ignored it. Blew it off. Got on with the job. Tried not to think about it. And then I got home, and went to bed, and now I can’t stop thinking about it, and—and how you would have responded, and I ... I feel like I failed him, Scott. I let him down—I let some jerk drag his name through the mud, and now I can’t sleep, and I’m so tired, and ...”
“Woah woah woah.” Scott released his little brother and crawled around to face his front, trying and failing to get him to look up. “You did not fail Dad. Don’t you dare think that. Ever.”
“But—you would’ve—”
“Punched his lights out? Yeah, probably. And that would have accomplished precisely zip.” Scott sucked in a breath. “If we’ve got a family curse, it’s that we’re a bunch of hotheads. Grandma, Dad, me, Gordo, Alan—even John can be a massive ginger if you push the wrong buttons. But you? You’re the exception. You don’t go ballistic, even when it’s totally justified. You—well, get on with the job. And we need that. I need that. I need you to keep on telling me off for crashing my pod and pulling me off weasel-faced archaeology professors and calling me out when I’m an idiot—because I can count offhand about a dozen times where, if you hadn’t been there, getting on with the job when I couldn’t, someone would be dead. And Dad would be proud of you for that, and he’d be proud of you for today. I guarantee it.”
It took several long seconds for Virgil to look Scott in the face; when he did, his eyes were wet, but he was smiling—weakly, yeah, but smiling all the same. “Did Dad train you in pep talks or something?”
Scott grinned. “Hey, you give pretty decent ones yourself.” He reached out and squeezed Virgil’s shoulders. “Honestly. Are you okay? Really?”
“I—I think so.” Virgil bit his lip again, then nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. I still feel kinda bad, but—you’re right, decking him wouldn’t’ve helped. He probably felt pretty guilty about it when he saw Two out the window, anyway, so my piling it on would have been excessive.”
Scott shook his head, chuckling, and shuffled back around to his own side of the bed. “That’s my li’l bro, crazy nice to the end. You think you can sleep now?”
Virgil nodded wearily, face suddenly splitting into a yawn at the reminder of his exhaustion. “Can I stay here?”
“You ask stupid questions sometimes,” Scott mumbled, snuggling back under the comforter and closing his eyes. “‘Course you can.”
He felt Virgil nestle in next to him, knowing without having to look that he was still hugging the pillow to his chest. “‘Night, Scott,” he murmured. “Love you.”
“Love you too, baby brother.”