From @MissSquidTracy
to @scattergraph
Secret Santa does not own this work, full credit to the author above!
Gordon liked to think of himself as the fashionista of the family.
Sure, his Hawaiian shirts sometimes drew attention of the unwanted kind, but the aquanaut was a firm believer in using clothing as a means of non-verbal communication. John was living proof of this theory.
Unfortunately, all of the freedom associated with self-expression went down the toilet with a resounding ‘flush’ when tradition dictated your attire, even if only for a day.
“Seriously, grandma?” Alan grouched, his bottom lip poking out to form his signature pout when he spied the Tracy matriarch descending the stairs with an armful of colourful sweaters.
“Zip it, kid,” Sally rasped, her tone offering no room for negotiation, “This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Tracy Christmas Album, and I’ll not have your attitude souring the occasion.”
Scott and Virgil shared a look of mutual disgust as Sally handed them two hideously baggy and itchy looking jumpers.
“Don’t you two start as well,” Sally warned, yanking a loose thread off the sleeve of John’s before tossing it towards the redhead, “Anyone caught sulking will be in the kitchen with me for the rest of the afternoon. I’ve just finished a fresh batch of liver and onion stuffing and could use a taste tester.”
Five jumpers were yanked over five heads in perfect unison.
A nod from Sally affirmed her satisfaction with her grandson’s new-found cooperation.
Gordon grimaced and scratched absently as the coarse fibres tickled the soft skin of his neck. Posing for the annual Christmas album photograph was a tradition that stretched right back to their days on the ranch, yet he found himself becoming more disillusioned with it the older he got. Maybe it was the discomfort of wearing an unnecessary extra layer in Tracy Island’s heat. Maybe it was the disappointment of no longer having snow to wake up to on Christmas morning. Maybe it was the absence of his parents, and for the last three years, at least one of his brothers.
“Who’s on the roster for today?” Kayo asked, striding into the room and wordlessly scooping up the one remaining jumper that was equally as ugly as the abominations adorning the torsos of her male colleagues.
In an effort to preserve the family element of the season, Scott had devised a strategy where just one member of International Rescue acted as the primary point of contact for any rescue calls that came through on Christmas Day, be them sea, earth or space based. Last year, Virgil had volunteered and been called to Nigeria to deal with a flash flood. The year before, Kayo had drawn the short straw and ended up assisting with the evacuation of a small town in Chile when a nearby volcano blew it’s top. The year before, Gordon had helped clear away the debris caused by a three-way semi collision on one of Australia’s busiest highways. The aquanaut had been instrumental in ensuring three hundred people made it home in time for Christmas, despite it coming at the expense of his own.
Fairness dictated that Virgil, Kayo and Gordon were exempt from being called upon this Christmas unless absolutely necessary. Accordingly, the honour of being ATD (available to deploy) fell to Scott, John, and Alan to hash out.
One quick round of rock, paper, scissors later, and Scott found himself wondering what brothers three and five would look like with their heads shaved.
“Alright, scoot in!” Sally ordered, returning with Alan’s tablet which she held aloft in an attempt to get a good angle, “Scott and John, you two stand at the back. Gordon and Virgil, you kneel in front of your brothers. Kayo and Alan, I need you both to sit at the front. We’re going for a tiered approach this year.”
A healthy amount of shuffling ensued as each Tracy (plus Kayo) moved into position and tried desperately to make himself/herself look decent. Scott yanked on the hem of his jumper in an attempt to cover up his belt. Virgil tried to hoist his up so that he wasn’t rocking the off the shoulder look. John scrubbed at his nose as the acrylic material began to trigger one of his many allergies. Gordon fanned his face with a hand as sweat began to bead across his forehead. Alan tugged fruitlessly on sleeves that fell woefully short of his wrists, and Kayo demanded that Virgil tell her honestly whether the shape of her jumper made her look fat.
Sally was firmly of the opinion that jumpers had to be vomit-inducingly ugly in order to be ‘festive’. The designs adorning each of the six knitted atrocities in front of her offered indisputable visual evidence of this belief.
Scott was brandishing a bright blue snowman, while Virgil sported a dark green reindeer (complete with light-up antlers). John was the unwilling wearer of an orange gingerbread man, and Gordon was proudly modelling a yellow penguin (complete with a squeezable beak that sang Jingle Bells if you so much as looked at it). Alan appeared indifferent to the red elf plastered across his chest, and Kayo was trying to make the best of her rapidly unravelling black turtledoves.
“Smile!” Sally sang, her finger poised, “On the count of three, everybody say cheese! One…two…three!”
“CHEESE!”
Click.
Flash.
The end result was less than impressive. Scott had blinked at precisely the wrong moment. The grin plastered across Virgil’s face was nothing short of horrifying. John’s eyes were almost as red as his hair. Gordon was shamelessly modelling a chunk of leftover spinach in his right canine. Alan had twisted his head to peer at Virgil at the last second and was a blond and red blur…
Unsurprisingly, Kayo was the only one who’d managed to look straight at the camera and smile like a normal person.
After reviewing her rather substandard snap and tutting in disapproval, Sally tightened her grip on the tablet and ushered her dispersing grandsons back into formation with a ‘shoo’ motion of her free hand, “Come on you lot, form up. Nobody leaves this room until we have a decent photo. How you boys can look so good in real life but so bad on canvas is beyond me. Your dad always said-“
The sudden departure of an elf wearing Tracy brought all dialogue to an abrupt halt.
“Sorry, grandma!” John yelled as he made a beeline for the stairs, the redness of his nose akin to Rudolph, “But this wool is giving me a nosebleed. You’ll have to take the next shot without me, or just make the one we have work. It might be for the best, as you know how Alan gets unforgivable gas whenever he’s forced to pose.”
The youngest Tracy let loose a honk of outrage, but was dutifully ignored as, one by one, his other brothers began to filter out of the lounge. Excuses of varying degrees of believability bounced off the walls as three more bodies scampered to freedom.
It took all of ten seconds for most of the lounge’s inhabitants to disperse, leaving Kayo and Alan alone with a somewhat disappointed looking Grandma Tracy.
“Oh well,” the Tracy matriarch sighed, reaching to pick up the blue snowman that had been ejected over the first floor bannister, “There’s always next year.”
Kayo smiled thinly and made a mental note to spend next Christmas with her father.
-x-
As well as being the family fashionista, Gordon was also a self-appointed expert in gift giving.
His affinity for making people smile helped tremendously, since it made the process of choosing something his recipient would find meaningful much easier. He wasn’t adverse to buying his brothers practical gifts that they could use in their everyday lives (the tea cosy he’d bought for John the Christmas of fifty four was still in active service), but he knew they had all of the utilitarian gadgets they could ever want or need, courtesy of Brains and their nine figure bank account.
Cue unicorn poo bath bombs, flamingo slippers, and personalised face cushions.
This year however, he’d outdone himself.
Unbeknownst to anyone outside of the family, Gordon was quite the expert on upcycling. He had a knack for seeing potential in things that other people had written off as trash (like Scott, for instance), and took great delight in working with his hands.
It had taken several days, but he’d finally managed to relocate one of their dad’s old hoverbikes from the ranch to Tracy Island. It had taken up most of the room inside Thunderbird Four’s dry tube station, however he’d managed to offload it in the hanger and perform the desired modifcations in the (relative) privacy of Four’s module.
Alan had stopped believing in Santa when he was seven. With Lucy dead and Jeff away for three quarters of the year, Scott had taken it upon himself to safeguard whatever remained of his youngest brother’s innocence. Every year on Christmas Eve, without fail, the eldest Tracy donned a red suit and beard and made a big (and often loud) show of depositing presents under the tree. Unfortunately, a rather heated debate one year over Santa’s handwriting (which looked suspiciously similar to Virgil’s), had culminated in the death of Alan’s wide-eyed belief.
Gordon had found the whole debacle rather heart-breaking. Sure, he’d been a year younger than Alan when he himself had stopped believing, but the process had been much gentler. He’d made the innocent mistake of asking John one year to help him with some basic calculations regarding the speed and size of Santa’s sleigh, however had ended up on the receiving end of a lecture from his redheaded brother on reindeer anatomy and wind resistance.
His belief had died peacefully in its sleep nine hours later.
Still, having a belief squished verbally was a lot less harsh than having it squished visually. Poor Alan.
Gordon smiled to himself as he inspected his handiwork. He’d outfitted the storage compartment on the back of the red hoverbike he’d abducted to look like the back end of a sleigh. He’d toyed with the idea of enlisting the help of a couple of real life reindeer (or ponies) to act as draught animals, but had decided against it after reviewing the vaccination and transport requirements.
Despite managing to complete the modifications inside Four’s module, Gordon had been forced to relocate his creation elsewhere when he and Virgil had been called away on an impromptu rescue involving a couple of unqualified divers. With his back against the wall, the aquanaut had picked the first alternative hiding place that had come into his head.
The roof.
As ridiculous as it sounded, the glass roof of Tracy Island’s lounge was anchored into numerous rocky outcroppings that, when utilised effectively, provided excellent cover. So long as nobody glanced up, of course.
A sigh of pride bubbled up Gordon’s diaphragm. He might not be able to reverse the damage caused by Virgil’s handwriting gaffe, but he could at least give his youngest brother a laugh and deliver his gifts in style instead.
So preoccupied was the aquanaut with buffing out an imaginary mark from the hoverbike’s bumper, that he failed to notice the Island’s automated weather system bark out the alarm for a storm warning.
Thankfully, John didn’t.
-x-
Scott had checked high and low.
And then high again, just to be sure.
The eldest Tracy was stumped. Gordon had somehow managed to vanish clean off the face of the earth.
Not that such a discovery would usually cause the eldest Tracy any concern (the aquanaut had a knack for evading capture), but Christmas lunch was due to be served any minute and they were one body short at the kitchen table.
“Gordon?” Scott called, shoving his head into the bathroom for what felt like the billionth time that hour. He’d tried calling the aquanaut’s phone, but had been sent to voicemail both times. His biometric tracker showed that he was still on the island, however couldn’t generate an exact location for him. EOS’s heat signature scans weren’t much better, courtesy of the wonky connection brought about by the oncoming storm.
“I’m stumped,” Scott huffed, admitting defeat with a bemused shrug, “He’s gone. I’ve checked the hanger, the changing rooms, his room, the bathroom, and the gym. Nothing. It’s like he’s poofed into thin air.”
Virgil opened his mouth to reply, however was cut off by the arrival of John, whose expression was an expert blend of concern and flippancy.
“I’ll give you three guesses as to his location,” the redhead began, “If you win, I’ll do your laundry for a week. If you lose, you have to eat my portion of grandma’s stuffing.”
Scott quickly did the math. It was a risk he was willing to take.
“Is he stuck inside his launch chute?”
“No.”
“Is he swimming in the lagoon?”
“No.”
“Is he hijacking Thunderbird One again?”
“No.”
….
“Well?” the eldest brother demanded, hands on hips. He had no interest in John drawing out his victory for any longer than necessary.
The redhead allowed a small smile to grace his face before gesturing with an index finger towards the ceiling.
Scott blinked as his blue gaze clapped onto a jean-clad butt scrabbling around atop the reinforced glass, oblivious to the small audience he’d amassed as he tried to evade the rapidly intensifying rain.
“The roof?” Scott honked, one hand fisting itself through his hair, “I take my eyes off him for two minutes, and he ends up on the roof?”
“Whoa, whoa!” a new voice piped up, it’s baritone depth failing to bring Scott any relief, “He’s where?!”
The eldest Tracy said nothing, opting instead to stab a finger upwards. Ever the cooperative one, Virgil cast his eyes in the desired direction, a small frown infecting his face as he did so.
“We should probably get him down,” the engineer announced, cringing when Gordon slipped on the now wet glass and starfished on his back, “He’s still wearing his Christmas jumper, and the blasted thing will short-circuit if it gets damp.”
A loud ‘thwack’ echoed around the lounge as Scott’s palm got itself well acquainted with his face.
-x-
John had never been one for big displays of emotion.
A polite smile or, in extreme cases, a shoulder pat were usually the preferred methods his brothers employed whenever they wanted to convey feelings of endearment towards him.
Christmas was an exception, however, and it was without a shred of his usual awkwardness that the redhead enveloped his fish brother in a tight hug, the scent of singed fabric tickling his nostrils.
Virgil’s extraction of their younger brother hadn’t quite been quick enough, and it was with a suitable amount of humility that Gordon shuffled back into the safety and dryness of the lounge, a thin trail of smoke rising from the beak of his thoroughly soaked penguin jumper.
“How bad was it?” John queried, biting his cheek to keep his humour in check as he took in the static strands of hair atop Gordon’s head. The aquanaut looked as if he’d just stuck his finger inside a plug socket which, on reflection, wasn’t as much of an inaccurate analogy as the redhead had originally thought.
Gordon ignored his space brother in favour of slowly shuffling towards the staircase, an involuntary yelp escaping when his traitorous jumper suddenly gave off a stray spark.
Virgil snorted and flicked a hand through his hair to rid it of the rainwater it had collected, “Nothing to worry about on the health side of things, but man John, you should have seen it. He nearly took off like a firework.”
The redhead quirked an unimpressed brow, “Serves him right for skipping over the electrical safety briefings I sent down last week. You’d think he’d have a better understanding of how water and electricity don’t mix, what with his ‘Bird being the only one kitted out for aquatic reconnaissance.”
A shrug was offered by Virgil in lieu of a response, “I’m sure all will be revealed once he’s properly earthed himself. Meanwhile, I’d better get that hoverbike down before it crashes through the roof and lands on someone’s head. Can you send Scott up to help? I could use a couple of his grapples.”
John threw his brother a mock salute before breezing off towards the kitchen, only to stop when he caught sight of a familiar blue outline on one of the sofas.
“Be there in a minute!” Scott mumbled, his cheeks bulging like an oversized hamster as he chomped his way through an indulgent looking doughnut.
John felt his gaze darken as he took stock of the stray sprinkles in the corner of his eldest brother’s mouth, “Where did you get those?”
Scott held a finger up as he swallowed, thumping his chest when a stubborn piece of dough got lodged, “Mainland, to make up for grandma’s sprout and salmon tart. Help yourself, there’s plenty left. I’ve only had three.”
The lack of control Scott had when confronted with unhealthy snacks never failed to amaze his brothers.
“You want to take it easy,” Virgil warned, motioning with one hand to his waistline, “Too many of those could send you to an early grave.”
Scott flicked his hand dismissively and reached for a fourth doughnut.
“Don’t care. I won’t be the one carrying the coffin.”
- FIN -
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