#dumping a bunch of nearly identical images into the water and RUNNING

[g1ngerbeer]

long time no ghost au

[misssquidtracy]

The Bravery of the Tracy

So I dipped my toe into the angst sandbox a little while ago...and nearly broke it off in the process.

I started my first and only fic to date (A Taste of the Tracy) at the start of lockdown, and my intention was (and still is) to keep it as humorous as possible. Unfortunately, I’ve found myself shifting between genres a bit more as the chapter count nears the big five zero landmark.   

My absolute favourite to write is (and always will be) Gordon, however I find John appealing in a scary kind of way. Appealing because I feel he’s much more multifaceted than what we see in the series, but scary because I find his identity hard to ascertain. He straddles both the older and younger camps, yet belongs to neither. The plight of every middle child.

I wanted to challenge this, and ol’ musey was up for it. I published this chapter a while ago, but recently re-read it and tightened a few things up. It’s well outside my comfort zone of Gordon and humour, but casting John as the heroic big brother was very satisfying, especially when considering his place in the Tracy age hierarchy. He may not be as old/experienced as Scotty and da Virg, but he’s just as much of a big bro to my boi and Alan as One and Two are. Maybe even better...*ducks flying chair and scurries back to Gordon’s corner*

P.S. This is chapter thirty two out of forty six. Gordon rescues a stray mutt in chapter twenty seven and names her Celery. She makes a brief appearance at the end.

                                                            -x-

John hated water.

It was wet, got everywhere and was frequently a lot dirtier than it looked.

It was also incredibly dangerous.

Hence the redhead’s displeasure when Lady Penelope sent him and his brothers the coordinates for Sydney Harbour, along with instructions to rendezvous with her and Kayo aboard FAB 2 for a private cruise.

It had taken the combined efforts of both Virgil and Gordon to manhandle John into Thunderbird Two, plus the assistance of Alan to secure him into a seat. It was only after Scott broke out some tranquiliser pills that John felt calm enough to stop puffing into the paper bag Gordon had handed him.

John’s fear of water was well justified. His aversion wasn’t the result of a lack of skill; like the rest of his brothers, he was a strong swimmer. Granted, he hadn’t enjoyed the swimming lessons their dad had forced them to take when they were young as much as Scott and Virgil had, but drop him in a body of water and he’d be quite capable of getting himself out safely.

It was the fear of one of his brothers drowning that fuelled John’s aquaphobia. The fear of looking away for a second, only to turn back and see one of them floating face-down. John swore he lost half his bodyweight in sweat every time Thunderbird Four was deployed.

The redhead’s fear hadn’t been born inside the four walls of his head. He’d had the misfortune of very nearly losing not one, but two of his brothers to the murky depths of aquatic oblivion.

It had been the middle of the summer holidays, and the entire Tracy clan had been enjoying a brief vacation at their mother’s ranch in Arizona. Jeff had been away at a NASA conference in Glasgow and Sally had been visiting some old friends in Phoenix. As the eldest and therefore the most responsible, Scott had been left in charge of the house and his brothers.

It had been a hot and sweaty day. Tempers had escalated alongside the thermometer and Scott had quickly found himself with four irritable younger siblings on his hands.

“I need an ice cream!” Virgil panted, fanning himself desperately with the hem of his shirt, “It’s too hot!”

Gordon, who had already shed most of his clothing and was padding around in just his shorts, pouted and gazed out the window, “I want to go swimming! Why can’t you take us swimming, Scotty?”

“I wanna go swimming too!” Alan cried, sipping angrily from a glass of juice, “You just don’t want us to have any fun because granny left you in charge!”

Scott sighed and dragged his hands across his face. He had a bunch of reading to catch up on before the new semester started in three weeks and copious interruptions from his brothers had already thrown him way off schedule.

John was also busying himself with schoolwork, however not quite on Scott’s level. While the eldest was reading for a degree in aeronautical engineering, John was preparing to graduate high school one year ahead of his peers.

Virgil was sailing through the first year of a degree in aerospace engineering, however wasn’t as preoccupied with studying as Scott and John were. As far as he was concerned, the summer vacation was for resting and spending time with family.

Gordon was in his second year of middle school and had zero intention of completing any of the homework his teachers had set him for the three month break. Stacks of untouched maths and history worksheets lay untouched in his schoolbag back on Tracy Island, along with the remains of a sandwich that had been in there for goodness knows how long.

Being in the middle of elementary school, Alan had bounded through what little homework he’d been assigned with some help from Scott. The youngest seemed unable (or unwilling) to understand why his brothers spent so much time on schoolwork when they were on holiday. Wouldn’t they much rather play video games and watch TV with him?

“Scotty!” Gordon whined, snatching the book on astrodynamics his brother’s nose was buried in and throwing it onto the floor, “Take us swimming! Take us swimming! Take us swimming!”

“Swimming! Swimming! Swimming!” Alan chanted, stamping his foot in time with Gordon’s pleas.

Scott groaned loudly and turned pathetically towards Virgil, his sapphire eyes wide and despairing, “Virg, could you take them outside and spray them with the hose? I haven’t got time to take them to the local pool.”

Virgil gave a sympathetic shake of his head, “Sorry bro, but I’ve got to be at the train station to meet Grandma in just over an hour.”

“John?” Scott tried, desperately switching his gaze to the redhead.

John remained silent for a few seconds, mulling over his options. He’d have to slap on at least three layers of sunscreen to stop himself from burning to a crisp, however schoolwork was getting dull and the weather was gorgeous…

“Fine,” John capitulated, wincing when Gordon and Alan screamed in elation, “But only for an hour.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” Scott gushed, seizing the redhead around his waist and yanking him in for an awkward hug, “You are my favourite person in the whole world right now.”

John merely grunted and reached for the sunscreen.

It was the middle of the day by the time John, Gordon and Alan arrived at their local swimming hole. Gordon had insisted that they go to the old flooded quarry on the perimeter of the ranch’s land, arguing that the local pool would be too busy.

John hadn’t objected. Any plan that didn’t involve crowds got his instant approval.

The sun’s rays beat down on their heads and John cringed as he felt a bead of sweat run down his neck. After separately tackling both Gordon and Alan and smearing an appropriate amount of sunscreen across their wriggling bodies, the redhead dumped himself in the shade of an ironwood tree and returned to his essay on hydrostatics.

Gordon and Alan busied themselves over the next twenty minutes with swimming and cannonballing off every rock they could reach. Tuning out the excited screams and energetic splashing, John channelled all of his attention into the paragraph on Pascal’s law he was in the middle of writing.

It wasn’t until the splashing ceased that John glanced up, only to see the quarry empty and the water’s surface perfectly still.  

Panic coursed through the redhead as he scrambled to his feet and ran down to the bank, hoping desperately to catch a glimpse of Gordon’s bright green trunks or Alan’s blond head beneath the surface.

After being thwarted by the poor visibility of the water, John switched his focus to scouring the nearby rock formations, silently praying that his brothers were engaged in an impromptu game of hide and seek.

A lone bubble breaking the pond’s surface dashed that plan in a second.

John had never thought of himself as particularly brave, but the boldness with which he threw himself into the quarry would have stunned even Scott.

Without waiting for his eyes to adjust after crashing through the surface, John frantically swooped down towards the bottom of the pond, his long legs making short work of the journey. Panic turned to dread when the redhead realised that the water was a lot deeper than he’d originally thought.

The sight that met John’s turquoise eyes when he reached the bottom would go on to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Gordon’s leg was ensnared by a submerged section of wire, most likely from a discarded piece of machinery. Alan was tugging on his brother’s arm in an attempt to free him, however was expelling an alarming number of bubbles, a sure sign that he was seconds from falling unconscious.

Reacting purely on instinct, John seized Alan’s arm in a steel grip and began to drag the youngest towards the surface. He glanced down briefly to motion to Gordon that he’d be right back and instantly wished he hadn’t.

The look of despair in Gordon’s eyes as he watched John disappear with only Alan in tow was an image the redhead would take to his grave. It was the raw panic of an older sibling who’d been left to die so that the parent could save its helpless younger sibling.

It was a look of anguished rejection.

After surfacing and dumping a coughing Alan onto the first rock he could find, John dove back down only to find Gordon limp and unresponsive.

It took the redhead’s strategic mind only thirty seconds to disentangle his brother’s leg from the wire trapping it. Chillingly, he knew from his rescue training that it only took twenty for an exhausted child to drown.

The ascent with Gordon was much harder than with Alan, but John knew his own fatigue was mostly to blame. His lungs burned and the strain of propelling two bodies up to the surface was killing his legs.

Alan was sat on the rock John had left him on. He was white from cold and had several nasty looking cuts on his hands, no doubt from trying to remove the wire, however seemed otherwise stable.

Gordon was blue and unresponsive. John could feel a scream of dread building inside his lungs as he lay his brother down on the shore and began performing rescue breaths.

In the background, Alan started to cry.

“Come on you idiot!” John screamed as he surfaced for air, slapping Gordon across the face before starting a series of chest compressions, “Breathe! Breathe!”

Gordon didn’t stir.

John felt white hot anger crash over him like a tsunami. His previous fatigue long forgotten, he resumed the rescue breaths and chest compressions, barely flinching when Gordon’s sternum cracked under the pressure from his palms.

After one more gut-wrenching minute of CPR, Gordon exploded back to life. John felt himself sag as his brother violently vomited up the water he’d inhaled, his torso spasming in panic.

“He’s okay!” Alan cried, his cheeks red and tear stained, “You saved him!”

John barely heard his youngest brother, his vision blurring as the adrenalin wore off and shock began to set in. In the distance, he could just about make out the forms of Scott and Virgil sprinting in their direction, their yells fading to white noise as John’s drenched head hit the ground.

Two seconds later, his world went black.

                                                            -x-

“We’ll all wear lifejackets, so try not to panic too much,” Scott soothed as John planted himself like a mule in the doorway of Thunderbird Two, “FAB 2 also has a state of the art drowning detection system, so we’ll be as safe as if we were on dry land.”

John scowled and refused to budge. Scott hadn’t seen that air bubble. Or Gordon’s face when he thought he’d been left to a watery grave.

“C’mon John,” Virgil waded in behind Scott, “We’ve all had a rough week. Don’t you think you deserve a little pampering?”

John’s face flushed red, but he still refused to move. He felt a sudden affinity for cats and their aversion to water. Screw the joke about him being a ginger giraffe, he was most definitely a ginger tabby.

“Ten seconds,” Scott sighed, raising his eyebrows in impatience, “I’m giving you ten seconds to move and let us pass, otherwise I’m locking you below deck with Celery.”

John’s eyes widened accusingly, “You brought the dog along?”

“Of course,” Gordon responded, motioning to a yellow pet carrier that was stashed in the back corner of the cockpit, “I couldn’t leave her back home with just Grandma and Brains for company. She might get blown up. Or be made to sample Grandma’s new liver casserole.”

John scowled, suddenly aware of his nose twitching in irritation.

It didn’t matter. Dog or no dog, he wasn’t about to willingly let any of his brothers near water that wasn’t contained in either a shower or a bathtub.

Ten minutes later, the redhead found himself imprisoned beneath the swanky deck of FAB 2 while the others cast off. Celery sat obediently at his feet, gazing up with the same expression of ardent worship she used on Gordon.

Next to Celery, Sherbert yapped loudly, thrilled at finally having another doggy friend to play with. The tiny pug launched himself at Celery’s face, disturbing a large plume of fur when his claws playfully caught the mutt under her chin.

John groaned before sneezing loudly.