#if you see this tag: annoy me because i've forgotten to schedule the rest lol

[tracybirds]

Prompt Generator Fic #7 (Repost)

Alan + John + Angst + stunt

Alan grabbed John’s arm and dragged him to Thunderbird Three before Scott could get on the line to beg him to come home.

He couldn’t believe him, the way he’d so recklessly gambled with his life mere minutes after nearly dying.

The memories all jumbled together, John’s lifeless body hovering in the living room and then in his arms, the mooring claw grabbing at his ‘bird ready to kill him and then his brother, the old determination coloured with desperate understanding for this… thing.

And then he’d called it a friend.

“Alan, are you okay?”

A flare of anger shot through him, white-hot and leaping eagerly to devour the kindling questions in John’s eyes.

“Fine,” he growled, spitting the words through his teeth. “Strap in.”

John wavered, either unwilling to let the fury slide or uncertain of how far he could push.

Alan didn’t know nor did he care.

“Hurry up,” he barked, infusing Scott’s most serious commander voice into his own.

John strapped in. He glanced uneasily over at Alan, staring firmly at the panel as he ran through engine checks.

His expression soured at the alert that beeped relentlessly as he examined the fins that stabilised their landing.

“It’s knocked it off balance.”

“She,” said John automatically.

Alan scowled.

“It,” he said, ugly emphasis painting his contempt, “has just ensured an ocean landing. There’s no way I can land her in the round house.”

“She didn’t mean t–”

“Yes, John, it did!”

Alan whirled around in his seat, glaring at John.

“Listen to me, she didn’t–”

“No, you listen to me. It tried to kill you, it tried to kill me. It stopped us from saving people today, just to play at some twisted game of vengeance, but–”

“That’s not what she was doing!”

Alan barrelled on, spurred by the image of John’s dead body floating behind his eyelids.

“I don’t know what kind of stunt you were trying to pull there; you were gambling with your life and now it’s a friend?”

“It was a calculated risk.”

“It was stupid,” insisted Alan. “What if it had been me in there? Or Grandma? Or… or… Scott?”

“I would have made the same decision,” said John firmly, but Alan could hear the creeping undercurrent of doubt and pounced on it.

“You’d have risked our lives on a hunch that the thing that spent quite literally all day trying to murder you?”

“No! I mean, yes! That is…” John dropped his head in his hands. “It’s not that simple, Alan.”

“Yes, it is!”

“I’d been studying her since Japan, I knew she was scared, I knew she only wanted to play.”

“She was playing with your life! I would have had to take your body home and that’s if she didn’t kill me in the attempt as well.”

He swiped at his eyes, revulsion clawing its way up from his stomach.

“Did you think about any of us when you said it?”

John flinched.

“I just… I had a feeling,” he said lamely.

The words were a hollow comfort, falling limp in Alan’s lap, and he swallowed back a hard lump that choked the furious response he wanted to shout.

“A feeling’s not much to go on,” he said instead, willing John to hear him, really hear him.

John’s lips quirked.

“Sometimes a feeling…is all we humans have to go on.”

There was no calculating the odds, no level of certainty about how EOS would act in the future. John was right about one thing – she was no mere computer programme. Alan knew what to do with computer programmes. EOS was an unknown entity, that John was trusting with his life and more. He couldn’t trust it, no matter what John said. And so, he was forced to ask himself a harder, more foundational question.

Did he trust John?

John snorted, leaning back in his seat as he scrubbed at his face.

“I’m not sorry, you know,” he said quietly.

Alan looked at him, eager and earnest in a way he’d never seen before, caution thrown to the wind and preparing for a battle to keep his new… pet.

He didn’t trust her, and nobody would fault him for it.

But he trusted John.

“I know.”