This Really Gets Me Laughing! One Thing They Always Leave Out Of The Show Is The Nitty-gritty Details,

This really gets me laughing! One thing they always leave out of the show is the nitty-gritty details, so this was a great (and hilarious) way of clearing that up! Thanks!  😁😁

The Sweet Smell of Manly Pride

Written as part of @gumnut-logic SensorySunday: Smell. Set just before the boys re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in the Zero-XL after rescuing Jeff from the Oort Cloud. Being stranded in deep space for eight years without even a can of deodorant must have left the Tracy patriarch smelling pretty ripe xD.

Raw humour. Sorry not sorry.

Starring Gordon, because he’s the husband and I loves him <3

-x-

Gordon’s tolerance for body odour was surprisingly high.

It had to be.

Considering the aquanaut spent a good portion of his life two to three thousand meters below the ocean’s surface, he’d become intimately familiar with a variety of fruity nasal cocktails. His habit of skipping showers in favour of re-watching seasons one through twelve of Into the Unknown didn’t help either.

Eh, what the heck. Being sandwiched inside a tight suit and at the mercy of Thunderbird Four’s air conditioning would leave even the most fastidious person smelling a little ripe.

Plus, it wasn’t like Lady Penelope could smell him at the bottom of the South Sandwich Trench anyway.

Of course, there was body odour and then there was body odour.

“Eugh!” Gordon clamped a hand over his nose and glared accusingly at his brothers, “Okay, who just let loose?”

Four pairs of eyes locked onto Alan, who quacked in outrage.

“Why are you all looking at me? I’m trapped inside a pressurised suit over here!” the youngest snapped, his face the same colour as Thunderbird Three.

“We all are, Alan,” John countered, his eyes narrowing to turquoise slits, “Gordon, can you be a bit more specific? An unpleasant odour could be an indication that the charcoal filter needs replacing.”

Gordon elevated his nose and began to scent the air like a bloodhound, “Whatever it is, it’s pretty nasty. Seriously, am I the only one getting it?”

Over on Alan’s right, Scott shrugged, “Apparently. Care to elaborate on what exactly ‘nasty’ smells like?”

On guard in case anyone dared to throw the ‘he who smelt it dealt it’ line at him, Gordon spent the next three minutes offering a variety of olfactory diagnoses for the unknown smell. The options ranged from ‘donkey’s armpit’ and ‘skunk’s butt’, to perhaps the most insulting of all, ‘Virgil’s socks’.

Of course, Virgil was thoroughly offended.

Just when had Gordon sniffed his socks?

He would never sleep again.

“Ugh, man! It’s getting worse!” Gordon wheezed, wafting the air frantically with his hand, “Alan, how long until we’re home?”

“About forty minutes, depending on turbulence,” Alan replied, absently flicking a button on the dash, “I’ve just requested clearance from orbital patrol.”

Gordon’s eyes widened in alarm, “I won’t last that long. John, can you pull up my will? There are a few things I need to change before I become unsound of mind.”

While John was preoccupied with ignoring Gordon in favour of cataloguing a few nearby asteroids, a new voice piped up.

“What you’re smelling is me, Gordon. Sorry for the trouble, but there ain’t a whole lot I can do about it at the moment.”

Virgil sighed before throwing a playful glance over his shoulder, “Dad, you just sit back and relax. I swear, we can’t smell a thing.”

Gordon begged to differ. After unclipping his safety belt, the aquanaut pushed himself free from his seat and drifted over towards his father. Indeed, the stink intensified the closer he got.

“Ugh, dad!” Gordon turned his face away before pinching his nose, “You reek! When was the last time you had a shower?!”

Jeff’s blue eyes twinkled in humour, “About eight years ago. Unfortunately the Oort Cloud doesn’t offer its residents indoor plumbing. Reckon I went noseblind after the first five months,” Jeff smiled as he extended his arms above his head in a fake stretch, “On a scale of one to ten, how bad would you rate me, son?”

“Thirty!” Gordon gagged, groping desperately for the oxygen masks the Zero-XL was equipped with, “Seriously dad, I’m amazed you’re not the epicentre of a fully functioning ecosystem!”

Jeff smiled proudly, “Jeff Tracy Vintage, available at select stores only,” the Tracy patriarch hesitated for a second before offering Gordon his armpit, “Take a whiff, son. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

Scott shared a look of amusement with John, Virgil and Alan as their father snaked an arm out and yanked Gordon in for a hug. The aquanaut made a sound of muffled distress as he whacked fruitlessly at the arms enveloping him.

“Careful, Gordo,” Virgil warned with a laugh, “We just got him back, don’t break him yet.”

Gordon made no indication he’d even heard Virgil, his energy focussed on trying to escape the noxious grip he was imprisoned in.

“Seriously, I can’t smell anything,” John declared, sticking his nose in the air and sniffing for emphasis, “It must have something to do with the direction of the air circulation.”

Brains adjusted his glasses before swivelling to face Jeff, “I must say I’m incredibly p-proud of your suit’s durability, M-Mr Tracy. It managed to keep you warm in the Oort Cloud’s f-freezing temperatures for over eight years and hasn’t suffered any m-major damage aside from the t-tear on your thigh.”

Jeff inclined his head in gratitude, “You build things to last, Brains. I knew my suit wouldn’t give up until I did.”

Enveloped in the stinky wonderland that was Jeff’s armpit, Gordon felt very much like giving up.

“You done teasing your old man yet?” Jeff asked, affectionately rubbing his knuckles across the aquanaut’s scalp, “Because we’ve still got thirty minutes of flight time remaining if you haven’t.”

“Please!” Gordon begged, his tone pitiful, “At least let me amend my will!”

Jeff was about to reply with something smart about Gordon’s lack of valuable possessions, but was stopped by a weird smell assaulting his nose, “Hold up, something pongs around here. Gordon? Have you been forgetting to floss?”

Almost on cue, a can of easy cheese rolled out of the storage compartment above Gordon’s empty seat and clattered onto the floor. The aquanaut’s caramel eyes widened as an idea hit him.

“No dad, I take great pride in my oral hygiene,” Gordon replied, twisting his face towards Jeff and taking extra care to exaggerate his a’s and h’s.

“Eugh, Gordon! Your breath!” Jeff rasped, holding his son at an arm’s length before glaring accusingly at the can of cheese rolling innocuously past John’s foot, “Don’t tell me you still eat that junk?”

“It’s his go-to deep space snack,” Alan informed, “If you think the cheese breath is bad, wait until the cheese farts start coming. We’ll all be amending our wills if one of those escapes.”

Jeff grimaced as Gordon blew in his face, “Maybe we should confine him to the airlock for the remainder of the flight. Brains? Can we rig up a safety belt in there for him?”

“I’m s-sure I can organise something,” Brains replied, before unclipping himself and drifting towards the rear hatch, “J-John, could you kindly give me a hand?”

“F.A.B,” the redhead replied, freeing himself from his shoulder restraints and floating across the control deck, “Dad, you get Gordon inside. I’ll help Brains stabilise the door.”

With Gordon tucked under his arm like a roll of carpet, Jeff nodded and pulled himself through the airlock’s doorway. He was just preparing to release his hold on the aquanaut when the door suddenly slammed shut.

“John?” Jeff called, his brows knitting together in confusion, “Brains? Open up! You locked me in as well, you fools!”

Back at the helm, Scott shared a look of relief with Virgil, “Ah, thank goodness. I couldn’t have kept that up for much longer.”

“Tell me about it,” Virgil muttered, reaching into the compartment above his head and retrieving a can of air freshener, “Things were going so well until Gordon opened his mouth.”

“It was the right thing,” John exclaimed, pointedly ignoring the bangs and screams that were starting to emanate from the sealed airlock, “Dad may be medically stable, but we won’t know the exact state of his mental health until we’re back home. Until then, it would be wise to refrain from making direct comments about his physical state.”

“Agreed,” Alan replied, before twisting around to gaze in amusement at the airlock door, “Think they’ll be okay in there?”

“Of course,” Virgil replied, popping the top off the air freshener and spraying a liberal amount around the chair Jeff had been sat in, “What better way to bond after eight years of being apart than being locked in an eight foot by eight foot airtight room together?”

John cringed as he made the final preparations for the Zero-XL’s atmospheric re-entry, “I think I’ll stick to a catch up over coffee.”

-x-