Chapter 5 Maps to the stars

It was a tight fit in Virgil's car. John's long legs should have guaranteed him front seat status, but Scott simply jumped in without hesitation to ride alongside the driver, his urgency leaning him forward towards the windscreen. John had the sense that his older brother would have sat on the bonnet if it made them find Gordon faster.

The whole 'finding Gordon' quest was itself somewhat odd. John never liked admitting to being wrong-footed. But he found himself in an awkward position in more ways than the fact his knees were up under his chin in the back seat, because he also liked to believe he was free of vanity. And in John's case, vanity consisted of developing and maintaining an air of mysterious self-possession, a rigorous imperturbability in the face of sibling provocations.

In practice, this meant that anything the other four threw at him, John would try to accept with a nod and a shrug.

This tactic proved to be endlessly useful. When Alan announced he'd discovered a new galaxy (he hadn't, but it was a close run thing there for a while); when Gordon connected the stars on his star chart with dental floss to create a portrait of Karl Marx (with Virgil's help on that occasion, he suspected); or when Scott suddenly demanded a calculation of the theoretical generation of dipole gravitational fields, and could he have it as soon as possible please, since he needed it for a submission this very afternoon?; in each case, John gave an unimpressed shrug and cultivated an expression of mild dyspepsia when a less contained man would tear out his hair.

But this? Being bundled back out into the cold to find an apparently lost younger brother after a day of dashing to meet work and travel deadlines across three states – well, John didn't mind admitting that this was seriously damaging his calm.

His calm was significantly further damaged when Virgil explained, as succinctly as possible (given Alan's frequent interjections and Scott's acerbic asides) exactly why Gordon wasn't with them, where they thought he might be, why they'd (foolishly, in John's opinion) not stopped to consult the anti-kidnapping tracker technology in their father's office, and what they intended doing once they found him.

"Well," John said. He paused. "The fuck?"

"Exactly," said Scott, grimly.

Virgil was driving as carefully as the icy conditions demanded and as fast as they'd allow him to go.

"Tippett's Mill is a good call," he said. "It's his favourite place around here. He's always swimming down there in summer. Remember when he rigged up the tire swing from the upper storey?"

"That thing really worked." Alan bounced on the seat beside John. "You'd get so much speed if you jumped off the roof."

"You jumped off the roof?" Scott said sharply.

"Scott. At least two years ago." John couldn't help but smile at the back of his brother's head. The only light in the car came from the two powerful headlights, and he couldn't see Scott's expression at all, but he knew the kind of worry that would be etched there. Scott subsided, but John could see where his hands were clenched on his thighs, where Virgil's hands were tight on the steering wheel as he urged the car forward in battle with the icy slickness of the country roads.

"Here's the turnoff," Alan said, sounding almost breathless.

Each of them angled forward, straining to see through the darkness at least a hundred yards before they could possibly do so.

"It should be around here…" Virgil muttered.

"There! Look! He's lit a fire!" Alan pressed forward against the back of the seat in his excitement.

"Someone's lit a fire." John, the voice of reason. Alan spared him a brief scowl.

"It's Gordon, I know it is."

Virgil eased the car across the poorly maintained track, skilfully allowing for frozen ruts and icy potholes. The headlights lit up the side of Gordon's car, and Alan's fierce, "Yes!" was silently echoed by his brothers as they drew alongside.

"Alright." Scott twisted to face everyone else in the car. "How will we play this? I think – "

But Alan had pushed open the door with a, "Good idea, Scotty," and was already barrelling across the dark and uneven terrain as if ankles and knees were titanium and tumbles never hurt.

"Ah, the element of surprise." Virgil opened his own door and stepped out too. "I think we can safely say we've lost it."

"Hey! Gordon! Gordo!" From where John stood after getting out of the car he could see Alan reach the fire and approach a dark figure on the far side of it, holding out a coat that was ignored for a moment before being snatched and hastily thrown on.

"Well, he's accepted the sacrificial coat," Virgil said, stumping off towards his younger brothers.

John followed, his cool brain trying to make sense of everything he had heard in the car. It had been a jumbled recital, but key facts were in there, and John set them apart in his mind as factors to be appraised in isolation before being brought back into the whole. The first fact was that Gordon appeared to have a father other than Jefferson Tracy. Surprising, but not strictly speaking unusual, to have a child raised in a family with their non-biological father. It was a while since he'd read anything on the subject, but the last figures he saw suggested a 5.8% median for paternal discrepancy in the US. The second fact was that this was discovered via the revelation of Gordon's different blood-type, AB according to Alan, and not voluntarily on Gordon's part, although it was suggested (not established) that Gordon had known about it. The third fact was that his father had handled the matter poorly, resulting in Gordon being upset. The fourth fact was infidelity from both Tracy parents had been revealed after Gordon left the farmhouse in the state of said upset.

Carefully keeping his footing in the tricky conditions, John came towards the fire. He could see it was built in an old oil drum, cut sideways and propped on the ground surrounded by logs positioned as seats. The fire threw enough illumination that it caught Gordon's legs in his dark blue uniform, Alan's jeans, and far above them, the old struts of the mill, abandoned in the late twentieth century and left to rot beside the mill pond. As he drew closer, his mind shifted to the facts he had collected and how he would then process them.

In seconds he considered combinatorics (not useful), dimensional analysis (maybe?), harmonic functions (really? He'd blame the cold). He could reduce his father and Gordon to factorials with his brothers and himself as binomial coefficients and –

No. He was over-thinking it, and doing so in completely the wrong direction.

The stars, as ever, were his guides. The immutability and the distance of them; the impossibility of knowing alongside the familiarity of permanent presence. Their symmetry and chaos, an oxymoron created from the tension between the human need to find a pattern and the universe's need for laws of predictability amongst random chance. In such a model rested his family, each as known as his own hands, and each as unknowable as a far flung star. They all tracked in parallel orbits, sometimes overlapping, sometimes chasing each other, sometimes colliding. It was tempting to think of Jefferson Tracy as the centre of their system, or even perhaps his mother, their inimitable Grandma. But John suspected the truth was something more abstract; the Tracys orbited an idea to which they were all fixated, and it could be labelled love, or service, or duty, or honor, but ultimately answered to 'family'. John felt the tug of it, hundreds of kilometres away in Florida, and he had no doubt others, in time, would be dragged into that same orbit; the pull was too strong.

But now, was Gordon lost to them, broken away from their solar system, spinning off into deepest space, a rogue planet?

No. Impossible. Like each one of his brothers, Gordon was a fixture in their own shared heaven.

The problem could be expressed far more elegantly without recourse to higher mathematical theory.

Did Gordon still belong in the Tracy family? Undoubtedly. Incontrovertibly.

Would he still feel able to be a part of the family? Unknown.

And, if he allowed himself a rare moment to insert his own subjectivity into this equation – what did John intend to do about it?

The answer was as blindingly clear as any successful application of theory to a puzzling mathematical problem had ever been for him; he intended to do as much as he humanly could to keep his brother safe. And until it was proven otherwise, by his father or some other factor, that was within the keep of the Tracy family.

Satisfied and clear-headed, John reached the group that now consisted of Scott, Virgil, Gordon and Alan, who was happily chatting as he pulled first one of Gordon's hands and then another out of Gordon's coat pocket and forced a glove on each.

"And then it turned out Grandma knew all about it. She really read Dad the riot act, called him a hypocrite and told him to take a damned hard look at himself and boy! You should have seen his face, Gordo, he was shitting blood and – "

John could see, now that he was closer, that Alan's rattle of speech was not helping. Gordon looked shell-shocked and lost. Behind his face, half hidden in shadow, the old mill formed a cavernous blackness against a night-sky full of stars. It served to emphasise his smallness, a backdrop of infinity against which his loneliness and vulnerability were painfully obvious.

Before he could say anything, Virgil stepped in.

"Okay, Al, might let Gordon get a word in there, buddy."

Alan rolled his eyes. "The point is, Gordon, that Grandma is not going to let Dad get away with it. You can come home. It will be fine, seriously."

"Maybe," Virgil said, quietly, "he doesn't want to come home?"

It seemed to John that Gordon hunched himself even smaller at the words.

"What? Are you nuts?" Alan was so outraged he seemed to spark along with the fire. "Of course he does!"

"Just leave it, Al." Gordon sounded subdued, not something John ordinarily ever associated with this brother. It was nine months since he'd seen him last, when the image he took away with him was of Gordon dressed in a tuxedo with a garish satin vest, swinging from the bannister at the Kansas City Hall Gala, bottle of champagne in his hand, leading the crowd below in a rousing chorus of the hit song of 2054, 'Sachimoto Baby'. He was a brilliant firework that night, fizzing and popping with joy, and everyone at the Gala that night had shared something of it.

To see that joy gone, that boy diminished, was abruptly painful.

Gordon looked up and caught sight of hm. Across the fire and against the darkness, John knew he was obscured. But he saw the flicker of pleasure when Gordon recognised his brother in the figure before him.

"Johnny. It's - it's real good to see you, man."

"Good to see you, too, Gordon." John smiled sadly at him, unable to dissemble. Gordon, always so quick to read his brothers, nodded and dipped his head again, hands opening and closing unconsciously at his sides.

"You heard?"

"Edited highlights. Condensed version." John peered at him. "A world of hurt in what I got."

Gordon became still, as if naming how he felt somehow pinned him to a board with the label Young Man: Immobilised.

Young man, illegitimate.

"Gordon, I think Dad is coming to terms with it as we speak." Scott stamped his feet and opened his hands to the fire, seeking warmth.

"Coming to terms." The words sounded leaden as Gordon said them, and John winced internally. They suggested a flaw to be overcome, a compromise to be reached. How did one compromise on an issue of essentiality such as belonging? "He shouldn't – it's not his…"

A breach in the conversation, and Alan had never yet met one that he wasn't prepared to fling himself into.

"I know. I mean, what's there to think about? It's just bullshit, you know, patriarchy. My son, my blood, my blah-blah. It's just so bullshit, right? Right?' He looked around at his brothers, seeking confirmation.

"No, it's not," Gordon said, dully. "It's fact."

"How long have you known?" Scott, still digging for those same facts, and that one was as irrelevant and as pointed as anything said today, John guessed. Because he immediately got the subtext, whether Scott meant to put it there or not, and he knew that Gordon would be seeing it writ large and pulsing red in this darkness; how long have you walked amongst us, how long have you broken bread with us, how long have you celebrated with us, partied with us, mourned with us, and known you were not really one of us?

"What does it matter?" Ah, loyal Virgil, with a heart too big to second guess a loyalty or question a kinship.

Scott, however. John peered through the sudden flurry of sparks and smoke as his older brother dropped another small log on the fire. Scott needed things clear-cut, sorted. He would need as much data as possible in order to sense a rightness of course.

"I think I can guess." John moved closer into the light, the warmth. "You were, what? Eleven? Twelve? Eleven, I think. You wanted those v-certs. I'm guessing – a DNA test?"

Gordon stared at him, still frozen in place. His eyes were black holes, hidden beneath his cap.

"Eleven? All that time?" Scott was astounded.

"All that time," Virgil murmured, and there was nothing but sorrow in the look he gave Gordon. "Jesus."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Scott demanded. Then he checked himself. "No, of course not. Of course not. God, Gordo. This has been – this must have been so god-damned shitty for you." Scott reached out a hand and gripped Gordon's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

John could see Gordon stiffen with surprise, which in turn surprised him. What had he expected? Rejection? Banishment?

Yes. John blinked, momentarily overcome by the realisation. Dear lord, yes. He had. For all these years, the little boy he'd been and the young man he'd become had kept this secret tucked tight, with everything he was and everything he hoped to be hanging on the knife edge of discovery. A flood of memories assailed him, brilliantly etched with acid; of Gordon always pushing too far, trying too hard, smiling too wide, laughing too loud. Gordon, filling the void that only he could see beneath their feet, the one that contained a moment when distraction failed and there would be a chance for double takes, second looks, murmured conjecture, grim discovery.

He felt his throat growing unusually tight.

"It's not your fault," Gordon said.

"Not yours, either," Scott replied, promptly. Gordon gave a slight shrug.

"I dunno. I ruined Christmas."

Alan was quick to that.

"No you didn't. Virgil did."

"Yeah, thanks Al." Virgil pulled his coat firmly across his chest.

"You've ruined nothing," said Scott, with all the conviction he could somehow summon when he needed it. "We're still the Tracy boys. We're still a family."

John couldn't read Gordon's expression, but his shoulders were as tense as they'd been when he arrived.

"What are you thinking?" John asked. At the same moment, Virgil said, "What are you feeling?"

Their unintended unison caused Gordon to give a huff that on another day might have been laughter.

Scott intervened. "How about, rather than us asking you questions, you ask what you want to know?"

Another moment of shrinking, as those tight shoulders drew in again; and then, as John watched, Gordon lifted his chin and forced his shoulders back. Whatever he was about to ask, John knew, it was coming at a price.

He expected something about whether his brothers could overlook this, whether his father would welcome him home. He expected a 'where to now'? foray. What he didn't foresee was what Gordon actually asked, quietly, in a voice that had been distilling this question for seven years.

"Was she raped?"

Shocked intakes of breath around the fire. John found a brief second of comfort that his powers of deduction weren't the only ones failing here tonight; nobody else saw that one coming.

Gordon read their silence as confusion.

"Am I here because – am I the result of something awful?"

"God, no," cried Virgil, but Scott held up his hand.

"Hold on. Wait a sec, Virge. We don't help anything if we sugar-coat this now." Scott put his hand back on Gordon's shoulder. "We don't know for sure, Gordon, but from what Grandma said, I really don't think so."

That was more than John knew. Scott had more to say, clearly, but the airing of that question seemed to have galvanised Gordon, unnaturally succinct until now.

"What if every time she looked at me she remembered that? What if I'm some – some asshole's kid? And now this has changed everything, it has, we can never go back. I never meant for anyone to know. I didn't mean to trick you, I know it looks like that but that's not what I – when I covered it up, it was just to keep everything the way it was. And I could pretend that he was – that Dad was – "

His voice, so urgent, died away. It was if something beyond his control had sucked away his words. After a moment in silence he raised a hand to his face and hid his mouth, shutting it and his secret fears away in a futile attempt at self-preservation.

"Gordo." Alan grabbed his arm. "This is all pretty crazy right now, and it's really hard to keep track of who did what to who and who knew about it, but you gotta know, it doesn't matter. To us, I mean. I dunno about Dad, he was kinda worked up."

Virgil gave a groan of protest, but Alan blundered on.

"No, but I mean, just with surprise, don't you think, Virgil? I mean, Grandma had him coming around. She was just like one of those sheepdogs, you know, just at his heels till he admitted he'd been kinda shitty way back then and Mom had every right to pick up what someone else was puttin' down. You know?" Alan peered around in the dark, and what he saw in his brothers' faces made him immediately defensive. "What? It's true!"

"Yes," Virgil glared at Alan, "there was a frank and fearless exchange and several home truths were undoubtedly delivered." He softened his look towards Gordon. "The point is, you're still our brother. Bottom line. And we'll – all of us – fight the good fight against anyone who says otherwise, Dad included."

"Dad won't say that." Scott was adamant. "He's sorry, Gords, he wants you home."

Gordon looked at him, searching for a certainty long lost to him over years of hiding.

"Why? I mean, he knows now. He knows I'm not his son." He gave a crooked kind of laugh, raw and cold. Something in the logs on the fire suddenly caught and spat little venoms of flame. "I don't even know who my – my real father is."

"Oh, but Grandma does," said Alan, comfortingly. Gordon's eyes grew wide, and he quickly looked to Virgil for confirmation.

Virgil hesitated. "Yes. Yes, she does, or at least, she did. So does Scott, and probably John."

"What?"

John didn't echo Gordon's cry, but it was a near thing.

Scott grimaced, then nodded. "Yeah, I guess we did. I can remember him, a bit."

"And..?" prompted Virgil.

"Well…" John could see how reluctant Scott was about this, and he understood. What kind of glamour did childhood memories cast across barely remembered people from the past? And this mattered so much to Gordon, who was so dependent here on the fragments being offered. "He was a nice guy. He was kind to us kids, kind to Mom as I can recall. He had some kind of accent, I think, I don't know what sort. But he was great with us, took us fishing. Built us a fort."

It was John's turn to take a metaphorical reel back.

"Uncle Declan? He was Gordon's father?"

Gordon, clearly overcome, sat suddenly down on one of the logs by the fire. Alan quickly sat beside him.

"He sounds pretty cool, hey?"

Dazedly, Gordon shook his head.

"I don't remember a whole lot," said Scott, apologetic and clearly chafing at the paucity of what he had to offer. "I do remember that he looked after us on some afternoons, and he somehow found the time to play in the space station."

"Cave," muttered John. He was ignored, as he knew he would be.

"What did he look like?' Alan, agog with curiosity.

"Is he still here?' The question was almost fierce from Gordon, and John could only guess at what turbulence buffeted Gordon's mind in this moment. "Am I going to bump into him going into the store?"

"I haven't seen him in years," said Scott, and John wondered if that was meant to comfort or apologise. "I think if I remember right he was a bit of a drifter."

"Shit." Gordon put his head in his hands.

"If you want to find him, we'll help." John said it with as much gentleness as he could muster. "If you don't want to find him, he won't be mentioned again."

Gordon gave a kind of helpless laugh, muffled against his hands.

"I have no idea what I want. No, wait. I know. I want to be coming in the front door again, and saying hello to everybody, and leaving my goddam dogtags in my bag and never taking them out."

As someone who rarely indulged in those kinds of regrets, John struggled to find a response to his brother's. He could point out that the wish was an impossible one, likely to be a temporary delay of the inevitable at best, and generally a waste of effort all round. Given that was unlikely to be helpful, he offered something else instead.

"Did you ever wonder why I helped you with the v-cert?"

"No." The answer was still obscured through his hands.

"I'd been reading." That was a straight line that ordinarily would have prompted a range of comebacks and cries of overdone shock, but tonight it seemed no one had the heart for it. "All about self-determination. It's the idea that people have innate needs and set about meeting those needs in various ways, all of which require effort and agency and commitment."

Gordon raised his head with infinite weariness.

"And you figured I had a need?"

"You did. You needed to find out that you were related to Dad."

"Wow. Yeah." He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Good call, Johnny."

John waved that away. "I didn't know that was precisely what you needed, just that you had a need. Self- determination theory is about motivation, and you were motivated to do something that I could help you with. Your choice, your motivation, your agency."

"Right. Good. My fault. I get it."

"No, you don't, because I haven't got to it yet."

"Any time soon would be good," said Virgil.

"Okay. Gordon – no, scratch that. Scott." His brother blinked in response. "How would you define a family?"

"Uh – a family? I guess – it's a group of people related to each other by birth?"

"Yes, true, in a legal and literal sense, but we all know of families who are related by birth and who have nothing to do with each other."

"So you mean in a non-legal and un-literal sense?" It was said jokingly, but Virgil was following him closely.

"Yes. Exactly. Guys, it's self-determination." John waited several beats for them all to cry out their understanding. He was met by the hiss of wood on the fire and the sound of a dog, somewhere far distant, barking at the moon.

"Thanks, John. Good talk."

"It's an act of will." John tried again. "An act of determination. Family is only defined by blood at its most primitive and biological level. Family as a social unit has far more to do with an act of will, a consensus between people that together they create an entity which has value to them, which both has meaning in itself and gives them meaning and purpose they would not otherwise have."

Each of his brothers was looking at him now, rendered silent by either incomprehension or awe. John was in little doubt that awe was highly unlikely.

At last, Virgil spoke.

"We're the Tracy family because we say so?"

John shrugged. "Ultimately, yes. Always. We reify the family every time we act as if it exists and it matters to us."

Scott nodded, slowly. "It wouldn't really matter who was in it. If we decide that someone else is part of the family, they become so?"

"Clearly."

"And this would be the case regardless of biological factors." Virgil grinned. "Sometimes, John, you say the most amazing stuff."

"Does this mean anyone can get to be a Tracy family member?" Alan was frowning.

"If we all agree to it, yes." John smiled at him. "What will happen when you find the perfect person some day and partner him or her? They'll be family, won't they?"

"Well, duh."

"An act of will." Scott grinned suddenly. "I don't know anyone on the planet who has a stronger will than Dad."

"If he says so, it is so," agreed Alan.

"What do you think, Gords?" Virgil asked the question softly, sitting down on the other side of Gordon.

"We make it work by wishing it so?" Gordon had dropped his hands away and was looking up at John now, his face a study in tension. "Bit easy, isn't it?"

"Because it is," said Alan. "That's what I've been telling you. You're our brother. It's what we decided. Well, we didn't even decide it, did we guys, we just knew."

"It's our reality," John affirmed. "It's our act of will."

"We can make that work." Virgil rubbed his hands together, and blew on them. "In the meantime, what say we take this back home? I don't know about anyone else, but I am freezing my butt off here. And I'm supposed to be playing at the church tomorrow – can't if these are frost bitten." He waggled his fingers.

"Good idea, Virge. Let's go." Scott clapped Gordon on the back, and made to move off, but John kept his eyes on Gordon. Everything in his brother's body language told a different story, and when Gordon lifted his face to them all, mouth twisting, he knew before he said anything exactly what his brother was going to say.

"You go on. I'm driving back to KC tonight."

"Nooo, Gordo." Alan made it sound as if his brother had misspoken lines in a play. "You're coming back with us."

"No, I'm not." Gordon's tone was low, and throbbed with feeling, but John heard finality in it. "I'll leave the car at the office and get a cab to the airport. Be back in San Diego in time for Christmas lunch tomorrow."

"Is this punishment? For Dad?" Scott folded his arms. "He wants you home."

"Yeah?" Gordon raised his voice. "Tell me, Scott. What did he say, exactly?'

"What do you mean?"

"Did he tell you he wanted me home? What were his exact words?"

"Well," Scott began. "Well, I think he said something like 'Bring him back.'"

Gordon closed his eyes briefly, shielding the pain. "Yeah. That sounds about right. You know, if the colonel asked the MPs to bring in an AWOL officer, he'd use those words, too."

"He wants you home, Gords," Scott insisted.

"Does he?" Gordon threw his arms wide. "Where is he then? He didn't come himself, did he? All I've got is your word for it, and face it, Scott, you've always been his right hand man. You've worshipped at his altar for a long time now. Well guess what. I've been standing here for about an hour, and the thing I keep coming back to is he blew it. He really, really blew it. All these years I've been thinking about how he would react, and let me tell you my happy place fantasy looked nothing like what I got there tonight." Something in his eyes caught the dying light of the fire; John didn't need to look closer to know it was tears, of anger, of grief. "He ditched me. He ditched me, Scott, and if I go back there right now I don't know what I'm going to say. I've got so much – " He took a long, shuddering breath, then shook his head. "You don't want that. I don't want to burn all my bridges, and tonight? I feel like blowing them all to hell."

There was silence, painful, as each brother sought a way past Gordon's impasse. Finally, as he so often did, Alan spoke first. He sounded more like the child he'd been just a year or two ago than the young man he strived to play.

"But – you can't go. You'll miss Christmas."

"No I won't." Gordon reached out to him, gave a gentle tap on his arm. "They have a great Christmas at WASP. And I'll be back early, means I can get into training the next day. We've got some amazing trials coming up. I might even get picked for them, if I put in the extra work."

"Is that your final word?"

Gordon looked at Scott. "For now. I got to sort my thinking out, Scott. You get it, don't you?"

Reluctantly, Scott nodded. "But this isn't – you'll come back. You will come back."

"If I'm still welcome."

Scott put his hand out, and after a moment's hesitation, Gordon gripped it.

"Always. You remember that, little brother."

"It will be a dull Christmas without you," said Virgil, coming closer to shake Gordon's hand as well.

"You'll have me," Alan said, sounding unhappy but determined not to show it more than he could help. "I'll have to bring the Alan magic. God knows that's saved a whole bunch of family dinners. "

"Said no one ever," Virgil winced.

"Well, I just did!"

"Uh – that's not a win, Al."

Scott ignored them both. "And anyway, who said you are going to miss Christmas? We brought a little Christmas with us. Virgil? You've got the thermos?"

"Right, yeah. Some of Grandma's eggnog." He busied himself pulling it from inside his coat as Gordon surreptitiously wiped his eyes, and then groaned.

"Grandma's? God, Virge, have you no pity?"

"Ah-ah. I checked it as I poured it in. Doesn't look like it's got any lumps this year." Virgil unscrewed the cup and poured a little of the creamy mixture into it. "I'm taking that as a sign."

"And as I liberated Dad's Pappy van Winkle," Scott said, reaching to take the cup and splashing a generous amount from the bottle retrieved from his own jacket, "I'd say we have the makings of a pretty fine little Christmas right here."

He passed it to Virgil, who raised it up and said, "To the Tracy Boys. All five of them," before taking a sip and passing it to John.

He raised it in turn.

"To acts of will and self-determination," he said, and sipped. He gave it to Gordon, who held it low, then took a mouthful, grimacing at the hit of bourbon, before passing it to Scott.

"You'll always be a Tracy, Gordon," and he sealed the statement with a drink.

"And a universal recipient." At Virgil's and John's sudden, shocked laughter, Alan said, "It's true! I learned it last year."

"Right, none for you," and Virgil swiped the cup back from Scott.

"Hey, no fair!" Alan grinned. "As if I want that stuff, anyway." And then, startling everyone, he turned suddenly and wrapped Gordon in a hug. He spoke into the soft hair at Gordon's neck, his voice muffled. "I hate that you're going."

"Yeah. I hate it, too." Gordon hugged him back, hard. "You stay cool, yeah? Don't go letting these nerds corrupt you into the dark ways of nerd-dom."

"I won't." Alan released him at last and without another look, headed away to their car.

"Guess we're going." Virgil stepped forward for his own hug. "You take care of yourself, you hear me? You know where we are, you call if you want anything." He pulled back to shake Gordon lightly, his face serious. "I mean it."

"Yeah, I know you do. See you round, Virge."

With one more grip and a long stare, as if to set the image of him in his mind forever, Virgil turned away and followed Alan.

Scott grinned ruefully. "You're a pain in the ass, Gordo, but you're our pain in the ass." He wrapped him up in his arms, strong and sure. "Don't you forget it."

Gordon shook his head, and there was something just a little more desperate in his hold on his eldest brother as they embraced just a little too long to have the casual vibe they both would no doubt say they wanted. John waited patiently as they held tight, wondering if they realised how scared they each looked as they faced the dark over the other's shoulder.

"Okay. Okay." Scott finally let go and stepped back. "You stay in touch. Drive safely." At Gordon's nod, Scott left, soon disappearing away from the firelight.

Gordon cleared his throat and turned to John.

"I haven't seen you for so long and now this."

"We'll catch up again. Soon."

"If we will it so?"

John smiled. "Now he gets it."

"Come on, John!" That was Alan, hanging half in and half out of the car. John tipped his head in Alan's direction.

"Delicate flower, isn't he?"

"I'm really going to miss you guys," Gordon suddenly blurted out. He gave a shaky laugh. "Crazy, isn't it? I haven't seen any of you for months, so I should be used to being away, but this feels so different."

"It's not." John shrugged. "Or at least, it's only different if you allow it to be. Can I ask you something?"

Gordon's expression gave permission.

"Was I wrong to get you that v-cert? If I hadn't – would it have made a difference to your childhood?"

In the last of the firelight, Gordon's face was half in shadow. The half John could see looked haunted, as if Gordon was re-visiting all those years of secrecy and fear. In the end, resignation.

"It is what it is, right? Nothing was ever going to change it." He put his hand out, a move ignored by John in favour of pulling him in to one of his rare hugs.

"Wow. Look at you going all soft on us."

"Hey. It's Christmas."

"Yeah."

"Gordon? You know that when we say 'family', we're saying something else, too."

Difficult, this admission, but finally a soft, "Yeah. I got that."

"Good. Merry Christmas, Gordon."

John walked carefully back to the car, where Virgil had already started the engine to get some heat going.

The stars so far above him caught his soul in icy hooks and lifted it from the ground. A spectacular, wheeling infinity beckoned. It was astonishing, in a way, that one small tragedy of one small boy child would capture him just as completely, here on Earth, on frozen Kansas soil.

In John's mind it demeaned them, these giants, these expanses of light, to do something as puerile as wish upon them. And yet, on this night, he found himself echoing a wish long lost, made by a boy long gone, when he and Scott and baby Virgil sat with their mother beside the fire, beneath the tree, one Christmas Eve long ago. In the still of this night he sent the wish out again, and made a superstition into a benediction of love.

Keep my family safe, stars. Keep all of my family safe.

End of the first story in this series