Work Text:
Barndoors
2051
Scott Tracy pulled his car up beside the farmhouse on the Tracy farm.
He and his youngest brother, Alan, had just gone to pick up his second youngest brother, Gordon, from swim practice, as well as Piper Talyor so that she could hang out at the farm with him and the rest of her ‘honorary’ brothers from another mother.
His father Jeff was away on another one of his business trip’s which had Scott wondering if it was for Tracy Industries or the International Rescue project, that seemed to be taking up a lot of his father’s time lately.
Grandma had been called in to help out at the Hospital in town, while Kyrano and his daughter, Kayo, were having a father daughter day, so the only two people on the farm at the moment were Virgil and John.
“Where’s Virgil and John?” Piper asked, as they were getting out of Scott’s car.
“They were-“ Scott’s answer was cut off when an almighty bang came from the direction of the barn.
Scott turned just in time to see, the project that Virgil and John had been working on, when Scott and Alan had left to pick Gordon and Piper, smashing the barndoors off the hinges and go whizzing down the road.
Scott in that moment, didn’t care about where the engineering project landed, he had two younger brothers that he was going to kill, if the explosion hadn’t already done the job for him, “Virgil! John!” he screamed, as he ran up to the barn, as Piper kept Gordon and Alan back, just in case the worst had happened. “Speak to me! Are you alive!?!”
Scott heard some loud coughs and the sound of fire extinguishers, as he approached the entrance of the barn, “We are a little scorched, Scott,” Virgil replied, as John coughed again. “But other than inhaling a little bit of smoke, we are fine – did you see what happened?”
“Did I see what happened?” Scott muttered, as he ran his hands though his hair. “DID I SEE WHAT HAPPENED!?! Had Piper, Gordon, Alan and I been here a couple of minutes earlier, we could have been killed!” he threw his hands up into the air. “Fuck! You two morons could have gotten yourselves killed, and you know the three of us are all going to be dead when Grandma gets home and sees this… I don’t even want to start thinking about what Dad’s going to do to us when he sees this.”
Both Virgil and John looked down at their feet, “Sorry,” John muttered. “I thought I had the right fuel mixture.”
Virgil looked at John, “It might not have been the fuel mixture though,” he argued. “It could have been a fault in the design or the materials used.”
Scott held up his hands, “Enough!” he snapped. “You two can do a post mortem, later, under Dad’s supervision.” He pulled his younger brothers into a hug. “Thank god you two are alright.”
The moment with the three brothers was interrupted when Piper ran up to the barn, “Oh good,” she said, when she saw that Virgil and John were okay. “You two idiots didn’t kill yourselves.”
“We are never going to live this down, are we?” John muttered.
“Not until Gordon or Alan does something spectacularly stupid, at least,” Virgil agreed.
“Do you want to send me or Dad to an early grave?” Scott growled.
“While I hate to break up this moment of brotherly bonding,” Piper cut in. “Scott, Dumb and Dumber’s wayward project has set the house paddock on fire.”
Scott swore loudly as he tore out of the barn, and saw that the paddock was well alight, “Piper, Virgil, help me with the firefighting equipment,” he snapped. “John, call Aunt Harry, and ask if Rufus can come over to assist, then you can keep and eye on Gordon and Alan – where are they anyway?”
“I sent them inside the house,” Piper replied. “Under strict instructions to behave.”
“Right,” John replied, as he started for the house. “I will make sure they say out of the way.”
Virgil had already gotten to the farms fire unit and had started to fire it up, by the time Scott and Piper had managed to catch up to him.
Jeff had always made sure that the firefighting units on his properties were well maintained and ready to go at a moments notice, and that his three oldest sons and Piper knew how to how to use them (Gordon’s training on them would start when he was 12), so the machines started with little to no trouble and they were out fighting the fire within minutes…
0o0o0
When Jeff Tracy decided to fly home early and surprise his boy’s and mother, he didn’t expect to see the house paddock on fire, and what looked like Scott, Virgil and Piper taking out the fire unit to fight it.
He radioed a call to Harriet Taylor, the mother of his best friend, Lee, who lived next door to the Tracy Farm with her crop-dusting business, who told him that he had better land and check on his boy’s and Piper, John had called her, and her offsider, Rufus, was already on his way to help.
That ‘help’ happened to be the fully loaded fire bomber, that Harry kept for such occasions, so the fire was out by the time Jeff caught up with a now drenched Scott and Virgil, with a completely dry Piper in the cab of the fire unit, “What the hell happened here!?!” he shouted. “Why have I come home to the place on fire!?!”
“Dad, we can expl-“ a startled to see his father, Scott started to explain, before Virgil cut him off.
“No, John and I can explain,” Virgil replied. “What happened here, and to the barn, is our fault, Scott was looking after Alan and picking up Gordon and Piper when we decided to test out a project we had been working on, as you can see it failed.”
Jeff stared at his second born son, “I’m not going to like hearing what happened here am I?” he commented.
“No Dad, you probably won’t.”
0o0o0
Jeff was standing out in front of the damaged barn, when his mother and Harriet came screaming down the driveway, as much as he wanted to be inside with his boy’s he couldn’t as much as look at Virgil and John without wanting to scream at them, if Scott had been a minute or two earlier he could have lost all of them and Helen’s daughter, and if that had happened it wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
“Jefferson!” Sally screamed, as ran up to him. “Where are the boy’s? Are they alright?”
“The Boys and Piper are fine,” Jeff growled. “Although, you might want to give Virgil and John a check over to be sure,” he sighed, as his mother turned toward the house. “And Mom? Virgil and John are both grounded until December, and they are figure out how to fix the damage to the barn themselves, properly, before then.”
Sally stopped and looked at the damage to the barn, “Virgil and John did this?” she asked, sounding completely dumbfounded. “The doors are completely gone…” she looked at Jeff. “Are you trying to tell me that Virgil and John could have killed themselves with their project?”
“Not just themselves,” Jeff hugged himself. “They could have seriously hurt Scott and the others as well… That why I’m out here at the moment, I can’t even look at them right now, as much as I want to hold them in my arms and tell them that things are going to be alright, when I think they could have killed themselves and/or their brother’s…”
“I’m sorry, Dad!” John’s voice cut threw the gloom. “I know Virgil and I fucked up, and I’m sorry for not getting you or Brains to check over our work before we tested it.”
“Your Father knows you’re sorry, kiddo,” Harriet commented, before Jeff and Sally could say anything. “And that harm wasn’t your intention, but he and your Grandma need to process what happened today, kid, it’s clear that you and Virgil have realised the consequences of making a bad choice, just remember you might not be so lucky next time.”
0o0o0
2074
“Dad, did Uncle Virgil and Uncle John, really blow the barndoors off the hinges at Great Grandma’s and Grandpa’s farm?” Kallen asked his father, Alan, the evening after, the Tracy Grandkid’s a rocket in Brains’s workstation.
“Who told you kid’s that?” Alan replied. “Wait, don’t answer that, it was Gordon’s way of saying today’s incident could have been worse, wasn’t it?”
Alan’s four kids nodded in unison, as Alan sighed, “Figured as much,” he muttered. “Virgil and John, are not going to be happy that Gordon’s mentioned it.”
“Didn’t that incident happen when you were like seven?” Kayo replied. “I’m surprised you remember it.”
“Considering that it was rare for Virgil and John to get into that much trouble growing up, whenever they did was something to remember,” Alan replied. “Besides, John ended up telling me of his experience of the incident when I won my dumbass of the year award, just before I started homeschooling.”
“What did you do to get that, Dad?” Aaron asked.
“That’s different story for a different time, son,” Alan answered. “As the barndoor incident is not my story to tell, but the lesson is this:
“People make mistakes, but sometimes those mistakes cannot be repaired, and while you may get away without serious damage, once, you may not be so lucky next time…”