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A clatter echoed from the kitchen, swiftly chased up by a startled yelp.
Virgil considered whether to check on the culprit – because this was the third crash he’d heard today and at least this one was in the safety of their own home and not over the comms during a rescue – and decided to stay put. After all, he’d finally positioned the heat-pad in just the right place to soothe all the developing bruises that he’d picked up throughout the day. Also, despite evidence to the contrary, Gordon was an adult and therefore theoretically capable of handling whatever chaos he’d cooked up in the kitchen.
Alan – facedown on the opposite couch, changed out of his IR blues into PJs but still sporting bits of ash in his hair – lifted his head to mumble, “Did Gords just die?”
“Hopefully not,” Virgil replied distractedly, squinting at the page of mission notes that he was attempting to type up so that he could submit the report to the GDF before Scott could get his hands on it and end up working until the early hours again. “I don’t want to cook dinner. He can die later.”
Alan buried his face in the cushions again with a snigger. “You’re grumpy when you’re tired.”
Virgil didn’t bother to respond. If he was tired, then Alan had sailed past the point of exhaustion several hours ago; he’d wrapped up his mission in orbit only two hours before being called out alongside Virgil and Gordon, a rescue which had dragged on far longer than anticipated. Now, he’d entered that mildly delirious stage of tiredness in which everything seemed hilarious. He was acting more like ten than fifteen, but Virgil knew better than to comment on it. Instead, he set his tablet aside and went to check on Gordon, hoping dinner would be ready before Alan crashed.
He found his brother on the floor. Which, weirdly enough, wasn’t that abnormal for Gordon. The guy usually perched on counters or tabletops but sitting on the tiles wasn’t completely out of the ordinary. It was slightly less ordinary to find him surrounded by tomatoes and still in his flight suit. It was rolled down to his waist and his baldric was missing as were his boots, revealing clownfish-patterned socks which struck a stark contrast against the blue. On the stove, a pot of pasta bubbled away alongside a jar of sauce which had yet to be opened.
“Hey,” Virgil began slowly. “Would you like a hand?”
Not do you need a hand because Gordon would get all snappy and petulant and then they wouldn’t get anywhere even though it was excruciatingly obvious that some help was required. Virgil picked up a runaway tomato and held it up in question.
Gordon tipped his head back against the cupboard with a groan. “I just wanted parmesan.”
“Um… okay?”
“We deserve parmesan, Virg.”
“We do?”
“We do.”
“Do you want to, uh, do you want to maybe elaborate?”
“I was making spaghetti and then I realised I wanted parmesan but I couldn’t remember if we had any, so I was like, hey, I’ll check real’ quick, so I went to check except it was on the top shelf ‘cos Scott’s a bitch and I know he puts stuff up there on purpose so he can laugh at me when I can’t reach it and he looks so smug which is dumb because it’s not even like I ask him for help, right? I just climb. Or jump. And then he gets all smother-henny and is like, be careful, what if you fall, as if he didn’t put the damn cheese on the top shelf when he knows I use it more often than he does-”
“Gordon.”
“What was I talking about?”
Virgil held up the tomato again.
“Oh. Oh. Right, yeah, so I tried to reach the parmesan, except some dumbass – a tall dumbass – had put the tomatoes on top of it. Like a weirdo. So, they fell on me and then I fell on them. And now the stupid pasta is sticking to the pan, and I can’t get it to unstick because I forgot to add oil or salt and I can’t find another pan, so the sauce isn’t heated and I still haven’t reached the frickin’ parmesan.”
Less than two hours earlier, Gordon had run into a building on the verge of collapse without hesitation, yet this was what nearly reduced him to tears. It was further evidence to support Virgil’s theory that his brother hadn’t slept the night before despite his claims otherwise.
“Go take a shower. I’ll clear up here.”
Gordon wiped his wrist across his eyes with a damp sniff. “I’m on dinner duty.”
“It’s fine.”
“You know I hate that word.”
“Gordy, go and change out of your suit, okay? I’ll handle dinner. You can take my turn next week.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.” Virgil fumbled around the top shelf of the fridge until his fingertips brushed something which felt the right shape and size for a bag of parmesan shavings. “Here.”
Gordon cradled it to his chest for a moment. “My soul has been healed. Balance has been restored to the universe. But I still think Scott’s a-”
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
“Aye, aye.”
Gordon dropped the packet onto the sideboard and wandered upstairs, humming some vaguely familiar tune to himself of which Virgil couldn’t recall the name. It would doubtlessly bug him for the next twenty-four hours. God, he was tired. He rubbed the blur from his vision with his knuckles and turned back to the partially cooked dinner. There was a second saucepan in the sink which he washed and set on a low heat, upending the sauce jar while navigating the maze of tomatoes. He cleared them up next to save himself from another near concussion, then set about salvaging the spaghetti. As per usual, Gordon was being melodramatic as it wasn’t stuck too badly.
By the time he finished serving it up, Gordon had reappeared. His outfit made Virgil’s inner artist cringe: neon green PJ shorts and a faded t-shirt featuring a picture of a Carp fish with the words carp-e-diem emblazoned beneath it.
Gordon gave an obnoxiously loud yawn, then asked, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t judge my shirt. It’s awesome.”
“It’s something. Awesome isn’t the word that comes to mind.”
“Hey, if you can think of a better fish pun, then… let minnow.”
Virgil dropped the empty saucepans into the sink as he mentally counted to ten. “You’re really testing my patience right now, I hope you know that.”
Gordon beamed at him. “Would you say your patience is wearing… fin?”
“I’m confiscating the parmesan.”
“No, no, I take it back! No more fish puns tonight, I swear!”
They carried the bowls back to the lounge – complete with parmesan, an entire mountain on top of Gordon’s share – where Virgil eyed his abandoned tablet with waning motivation and Alan was roused from his semi-conscious doze by the smell of pasta. Gordon flopped down beside Virgil and peered at the mission notes with a pinched frown.
Virgil stabbed his spaghetti more forcefully than necessary. “What?”
“That should read subsection B-3, not B-4.”
“Shit.”
“Give it here. Let me read through these while you eat.”
“Thanks.”
Gordon gave a half-shrug. “No big deal.”
There was a slight possibility that Virgil nearly fell asleep after he’d finished eating. He didn’t intend to, it just sort of happened but then again sleep was like that – it crept up on you slowly and then all of a sudden, bam, you were startled awake by a thud and realised that forty minutes had passed and you were now listed against your brother’s shoulder with a blanket draped over you.
It took several moments to process what had happened. Virgil shuffled upright, still yawning his way back into full consciousness. The blanket pooled in his lap and he dimly registered that someone had taken the dirty dishes back to the kitchen. Gordon was still working on the rescue notes and had since opened a blank document to add his own experience in rough note form to be amended into something GDF-acceptable later. He’d lowered the tablet to stare across the table at Alan.
Alan, who was now… on the floor?
“Dude,” Gordon said, partly amused, sort of exasperated and definitely fond. “Go to bed.”
“No,” Alan grumbled.
“You’re gonna sleep here?” Gordon sounded distinctly unimpressed. “Terrible idea.”
“I’m not sleeping here. I’m not sleeping anywhere. I’m just not sleeping.”
“Yeah, I noticed. That’s kind of the problem. You’re dead on your feet. It’s not a good look.”
“Screw you,” Alan protested half-heartedly, rolling onto his back with a dramatic sigh. “I want to sleep. I just can’t. My brain’s kinda… bzz, you know?”
“What?” Virgil asked helplessly.
Gordon gave a solemn nod as if this was completely understandable. “Fair enough.”
“What?” Virgil repeated, still lost.
Alan gestured vaguely. “Brain go brr. You know how it is.”
Gordon eyed the darkened screen of the tablet and decided to abandon it entirely. He dropped it onto the table and folded himself into the corner of the couch, fishing for the discarded blanket with one foot. Virgil tossed it to him, still watching Alan with a healthy dose of pure confusion. He was usually better at translating the pair’s gibberish, but then again he was usually a lot less exhausted. Based off the clock, he’d slept around forty minutes but somehow felt even worse for it.
“Maybe Virg should play the Inside Out theme,” Gordon mused aloud, grinning to himself. “That used to send you to sleep as a kid.”
Alan propped himself up on his elbows. “Wait, what?”
There were certain memories which were precious and so remained tucked away in the mental vault to protect them from being faded by time just as paintings were placed out of view of direct sunlight. The memory of playing that specific tune to a very young Alan was one of them, but now that Gordon had mentioned it, Virgil could feel flickers of recollection creeping back to him.
“Yeah,” Gordon was saying, “Don’t you remember? I guess you were really little. You used to throw these big temper tantrums whenever it was your bedtime and the only way to calm you down and get you to go to sleep was if Virgil played the Inside Out theme on piano.”
Alan hauled himself upright, all ruffled hair and disbelieving smiles as he hugged his knees to his chest. “I don’t remember that. Like, at all.”
“To be fair,” Virgil recalled, “You were only three.”
“I can remember being three,” Gordon declared grandly.
“You definitely can’t.” Alan laced his hands over his knees. “You have the memory of a goldfish.”
“Actually, goldfish have really good memories and that saying is rude and inaccurate, so suck it.”
“Rude to who? To goldfish?”
“Yes.”
“Oh god,” Virgil groaned, halfway down memory lane. “Don’t start talking about goldfish. I’ve just remembered how you used to make all of us say goodnight to the pair you had as a kid.”
Gordon beamed. “And you did. Every night.”
“Because you were a brat who wouldn’t stop whining if any of us forgot.”
“You thought it was cute!”
“It was cute when you were four. It got boring by six. Two years of goodnights to goldfish.”
“Goodnights to goldfish,” Alan echoed. “Huh. Sounds like a song.”
“Or a band name,” Gordon chimed in with an evil gleam in his eyes that spelled out mischief in the near future. He pretended to busy himself with smoothing creases in the blanket, aiming for a nonchalant tone as he asked casually, “Hey, Virg? Weren’t you in a band in college?”
Predictably, Alan latched onto the words.
“Oh my god. You were in a band?”
Gordon let out an ominous snigger and dropped his feet into Virgil’s lap, grinning from ear to ear like a Chesire cat. He continued to smirk even when Virgil slapped his ankles but admittedly didn’t shove him away. Instead, Virgil slid down the couch slightly and tried to feign sleep. It didn’t take long for the pretence to start becoming real. The weight in his lap vanished and the couch dipped as Gordon scrambled to his feet, murmuring something to Alan before his steps faded into the kitchen.
“I thought you’d both planned to sleep as soon as we landed,” Virgil commented, sounding more accusatory than he’d intended. To be fair, Gordon always struggled with insomnia after long rescues with too many near-misses, so could be excused, but Virgil still couldn’t figure out what was going on with Alan. He opened one eye to steal a glance at his youngest brother.
Alan gave a half-hearted shrug. “Like I said, my head’s loud.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“You’re literally falling asleep right now.”
Virgil stifled a yawn. “I can stay awake a little longer.”
“That’s dumb,” Alan informed him. “What if we get a callout? Then all three of us would be too tired to fly.”
“If something’s bothering you-”
“Nothing’s bothering me. It’s just… I don’t know.”
“Brain go bzz, huh?” Virgil recalled dryly.
Alan gave an emphatic nod.
“Exactly. It’ll pass.” His hair was leaving ash on the cushions, but Virgil didn’t have the heart nor the energy to point it out to him. “Background noise helps. But don’t tell Gordon I said that because he’ll play his stupid whale sounds compilation again and then I’ll go insane for real.”
“You’re already insane,” Virgil remarked, trying not to think about some of the crazy stunts Alan had pulled on earlier’s rescue.
Alan shot him a mock offended look. “Dude.”
“Don’t call me dude.”
“Now you sound like Scott.”
Virgil didn’t have a comeback for that one. He hauled himself off the couch and wandered over to the piano. The patio doors were slightly ajar and the sea breeze filtering through them was refreshingly cool, waking him up a little. He spared a moment to appreciate the sight of moonlight on the water before turning to the piano.
Alan’s head popped over the back of the couch like a startled meerkat. “You’re gonna play something?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Because I feel like it.”
“But why?”
“Oh my god, Alan. How old are you, five?”
“Emotionally, yes.”
A distant laugh echoed from the kitchen where Gordon had overheard that final comment. Virgil ignored them both, shuffling through sheet music to hide his fond smile despite already having the piece committed to memory. Mostly, anyway. It had been a long time since he’d last given renditions of Pixar movie music for little brothers, but he’d played those soundtracks so often back then that he’d retained most of the chords. He summoned a copy on the holoprojector just to doublecheck some of the semiquaver sequences, then let muscle memory guide his hands across the keys.
“No way.” Alan peered above the couch again. “You still remember how to play this?”
“Apparently,” Virgil replied. Honestly, he was a little surprised too. He ran through the piece slowly twice over to save himself from any horrible clashes, then began to play it at full speed.
“Huh,” Alan commented, flopping backwards across the couch again. “This is weirdly relaxing.”
“Don’t tell me this still works,” Virgil teased.
Alan flapped a hand at him. “Shh. I’m just saying. It’s… nice.” He rolled onto his side, hugging one of the cushions to his chest. “M’not sleeping, ‘kay?”
“Okay,” Virgil humoured him, trying not to laugh.
Twelve years on and the Inside Out theme still worked a treat. He wondered whether Gordon would finally go to sleep if he played something from Finding Nemo. Speaking of which… He glanced up as movement stirred in his peripheral vision. Gordon glanced between the piano and the couch and raised a brow.
“Still works,” Virgil mouthed.
Gordon visibly struggled to hold back a laugh of his own. He went to set two mugs on the piano, then swiftly backed away again when Virgil glared at him. There was a perfectly good table in the conversation pit; hot drinks didn’t belong anywhere near his piano thank you very much. Gordon took the hint and, after letting the final bars of music drift away, Virgil followed him.
“Yo,” Gordon whispered as Virgil sort of fell onto the couch beside him. He nodded at the blanketed lump opposite. “I can’t believe he actually fell asleep.”
“Magic,” Virgil deadpanned, earning a good-natured eyeroll. He sniffed the offered mug suspiciously. “Is this hot chocolate?”
“Well, it was for Alan,” Gordon admitted, propping his feet on the table. “But he doesn’t need it anymore, so now it’s for you.”
“I can’t believe you weren’t going to make me any.”
“Vee, you once lectured me about having sugar at midnight and you think I’m gonna make you hot chocolate at one-AM?”
“It doesn’t count when we’ve just come back from a rescue.”
“You know what I think? I think you make up the rules when they suit you.”
Virgil took a long sip of hot chocolate to avoid answering because there was a lot of truth to that accusation. Gordon read the thought off his face and let out a tired chuckle, lifting his feet off the table to curl against Virgil’s side. It wasn’t cold but there was a certain chill introduced by aircon that seemed particularly vicious in the early hours, so they huddled together as Alan had stolen the blanket. There was a hologram projected from the centre of the table showing Scott’s progress, due home in just under an hour according to John’s best estimations. Virgil wouldn’t sleep properly until he’d seen with his own eyes that Scott was okay – he hated it when any of his family went on solo rescues despite knowing they were all more than capable in the field – but he could still try to rest.
“I know we joke about it,” Gordon mused, reading through the mission report again, “But d’you think Johnny’s actually an alien? I swear he hasn’t slept in like forty-eight hours, so how has he made my notes sound like a proper report? I mean, yay, less work for us, but yikes.”
“If he doesn’t sleep tonight, I’m dragging him down from Five.”
“Cool, I’ll help.”
“Help or film?”
Gordon grinned. “Both.”
Virgil stared into the depths of his hot chocolate with a sigh. “Maybe I should sedate them both. It would be a lot easier.”
“I still vote for supergluing Scott’s door shut. How’s he gonna work if he’s stuck in there? He’ll have nothing to do but sleep, ‘specially if we disable the WiFi.”
“He’d climb down from his balcony.”
“Probably. Unless we rig the balcony with-”
“Gordon.”
“It would be funny.”
Virgil put his empty mug on the table and collapsed back against the couch cushions. Alan seemed to be deeply asleep as his white-knuckle grip on the blanket had loosened and he’d lost the tension which had been lurking in his shoulders all day. At least that was one less brother to worry about.
A finger prodded the space between his ‘brows. He swatted Gordon’s wrist away, met with a smile that didn’t fully disguise the concern in his brother’s eyes.
“What?”
“You’re all frowny again.”
“Watch it or I’ll sedate you too.”
“But then who would help you drag John down from his tin can?”
“Kayo.”
“…good point.” Gordon looped an arm around Virgil’s shoulders and tugged slightly until Virgil leant against him. “C’mon, Virg. You’re exhausted too. Take your own advice and let yourself sleep.”
“I will.”
“What happens if Scott’s rescue overruns? Are you gonna stay up ‘til four-AM?”
“No. Maybe. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Virgil,” Gordon sing-songed in an exasperated voice and Virgil finally gave in and propped his head on his brother’s shoulder. “Hey, if we’re reviving childhood traditions, then how ‘bout this one?” He held up a hand, pinkie finger crooked. “I’ll go to sleep if you go to sleep too.”
“You know I only used to say that because I was sick of hearing Blue Planet when I was trying to study for my SAT.”
Gordon said nothing. The expectant silence dragged on for a minute before Virgil relented.
“Fine.”
“Fine!” Gordon hooked their fingers together with an unholy snigger. “See? You’ve got to sleep now.”
“So have you.”
“Yeah, well. That might not be so easy, but I’ll try.”
Virgil was too tired to argue. Besides, it was the closest to a win that he was going to get, so he’d take it. He studied the holograms for a second longer, then gave into the welcoming arms of sleep. He was woken after two hours by a hand gently carding through his hair and a voice whispering his name.
“Wha’?” He yawned his way back towards awareness. “Scotty?”
“Hi there,” Scott replied quietly, voice tinged with amusement. “Let’s get you to a proper bed before you complain about neck ache all day.”
“Alan’s-”
“Already in bed. The kid would sleep through Three’s launch right now, I swear; he didn’t wake up at all when I carried him. And before you ask, Gordon’s asleep too, so it’s time to take care of yourself.”
“Ugh.”
Scott coaxed him to his feet with another of those fondly exasperated smiles. Virgil listed against him, still half-asleep and reassured to see him seemingly free of any injuries. He crashed onto his bed and didn’t move despite Scott’s whispered order for him to crawl under the blankets instead. He buried his face in the pillow, already drifting back to sleep. The blanket was tugged free and draped over him, carefully tucked around his shoulders, then a hand ran through his hair again before switching off the lamp and plunging the room into blissful darkness, another tradition from their childhood.
“Night, Scott,” he mumbled as he heard the door brush against the carpet.
There was a brief pause.
“Night, Virg,” Scott called softly. “Go back to sleep.”