I wrote a little thing for @lenle-g because of her lovely art of snoozy John and the hint that Scott might appear shortly.
Nothing really happens, just some Lucy headcanons and some John headcanons and some Sky & Stars fluff but… hope you enjoy:
💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙
Scott leaned on the balcony rail and suppressed a yawn as the last slither of sun dipped below the horizon. The warm orangey glow always soothed him a little - it felt like a promise the light would be back soon. He smiled wryly - Virgil would object strongly to “orangey” and point out there were hundreds of different names for colours like “burnt sienna” or “golden epiphany” or saffron daydream” or “cadmium satsuma” or whatever. In reality Scott privately called the colour “John”.
Mom had always loved a sunset. Partly the sheer art of it of course but she’d said once that it was the perfect example of how a farewell can be beautiful. She was as excited as the next astronomy nerd for the day to end and the stars to finally appear, but that never meant one needed to rush a transition. That sometimes the journey was as important as the destination.
Her eldest son huffed a tiny laugh as he belatedly realised the proliferation of “orangey” things around their childhood home might been connected.
When the child who most closely resembled her claimed the colour for his favourite, nobody was surprised. Quieter, shyer John had always been more inclined to stay close to his mother than run off and explore. Not constantly crawling into her lap like limpet-Gordon did, or grabbing her hand and dragging her places like Virgil and Scott… but just… nearby. Close enough to reach out to, even if he rarely actually needed to. Mom was young John’s anchor on the ground who let him feel safe and secure enough on Earth to cast his mind into the cosmos where hers so often danced.
Scott rolled his eyes at himself. Now he knew he was tired! He never been great at poetry, for all he had desperately wanted to be - there were definitely some efforts only a mother could love. But when he dropped his guard his brain had a tendency to get… sentimental.
He missed her so much.
He missed John so much too.
Not that he didn’t still have John, thank goodness. But since Mom… it had been clear John’s safe place, his home, would no longer be on Earth. Scott had tried, he’d tried so hard to fill the void she’d left but John eventually found his security elsewhere - in his work, in his stars… eventually in himself. Tracy Island had always been John’s holiday home, not the place he lived.
Scott was happy John was happy. He knew how privileged he was to be able to talk to his brother every day, to work with him. To share so much of everyday life. Most people didn’t get that. So it was selfish of him to mourn his brother’s lack of physical proximity. Especially when he knew that physicality wasn’t important to or even necessarily comfortable for John.
It was just that John in a hologram was always so… blue. Scott loved blue, it had always been his favourite colour but somehow when John was blue, blue felt cold. Sometimes Scott worried he might forget what his brother really looked like.
The sunset was long gone now.
All was quiet on Tracy Island.
The sea breeze took courage from the departure of the light and strengthened, sending a cooler gust of salt-encrusted air into Scott’s face. Standing up straight and stretching, he snapped himself out of the thought spiral - if a brother caught him now, he’d be accused of ‘brooding’ again.
Anyway, John was right here. For once! And his ridiculous elder brother was wasting his time out here on his own.
Scott turned back towards the villa and the warm orangey glow from the lounge where his actual three-dimensional, solid flesh and blood brother sat reading made him smile. Alright, John wasn’t actually the one glowing, it was a table lamp… but Scott allowed himself a secret scrap of poetry.
Sliding the screen door open just enough to squeeze through, Scott re-entered the house and shut the breeze away before greeting John with a quiet “hey Johnny”.
There was no reply and Scott looked round in surprise - however embroiled John was in anything he was doing it was family law that he’d always object to the nickname being used. He’d even appear on comms mid-way through a conversation he wasn’t involved in with “Don’t call me Johnny” only to immediately disappear again.
The funny thing was - John didn’t actually dislike the name - it was just it was Mom who called him that, so while Scott knew he didn’t mind other people using it, officially they weren’t supposed to because it was for her. The traditional back and forth was a way they had of bringing her along with them, keeping her memory close.
The only exceptions were when he was out of range, in mortal peril or…
Scott’s brother let out the tiniest snore. The book he’d been reading rested complacently on his chest and, while John was in the slow process of sliding down the couch into a posture that would give an osteopath palpitations, his relaxed features combined with the halo of lamplight presented a rather beautific scene.
Big brother mode engaged and Scott knew his face had softened into the soppy expression Gordon and Alan continually mocked him for while evidently competing to be on the receiving end of. It had been a long week for all of them and Scott wasn’t about to risk ruining John’s rare opportunity for a decent sleep cycle by insisting he spend it elsewhere. He activated the gentle reclining function on John’s couch and carefully selected a pillow and a couple of blankets from the box in the hall - weighted, but not too fluffy, not too scratchy, no threads. Any colour but blue.
He paused, then grabbed a second pillow and the blue blanket too.
John had curled slightly to one side as his seat had moved outwards and the book was now clinging on by the slightest thread of frictional energy. Scott carefully transferred it to the side table, slid a pillow between John’s torso and the back of the couch and tucked two blankets around the astronaut’s shoulders and legs. The second pillow he left nearby should John wake and want to make use of it. With immense willpower he resisted the urge to scoop up his little brother into a hug like a toddler, but allowed himself to plant a featherlight kiss on top of the sweep of sunset hair.
A quick trip to the kitchen to refill John’s water glass, and a whispered request to EOS to dim the lights to whatever level John preferred in his sleep chamber on Five completed his smotherhen duties for the present.
With a final smile, he wrapped himself in the remaining blanket and stretched out on the adjacent couch. As nice as it might be to take the chance to sleep in his own bed, his brother was here. Right here.
Scott didn’t want to be anywhere else.
💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙🧡💙
