"Hand me the thirteen millimetre socket, will you, Brains?"
Virgil's hand stuck out from underneath the console, his fingertips stained with Thunderbird Two's insides. Brains set down the diagnostics tool he had been using and picked up the socket. He set it on Virgil's palm and he watched as the other man's strong fingers curled around it.
"Thanks!" Virgil said.
His voice was muffled by the console. Brains smiled and picked his miniature computer back up.
"N-no problem, Virgil."
There was nothing Brains enjoyed more than working with the one and only Virgil Tracy. From the very first time they had met, when Brains' hand had been enveloped in a calloused grip, he had known they would get along. Brains was rarely wrong; in this instance, he definitely wasn't.
"How's it g-going under there, anyway?" he asked, tapping on the diagnostic tool's touchscreen.
"I think I've isolated the problem," Virgil said. All Brains could see was his waist and legs sticking out from under the green bulkhead. "I think if I loosen this panel, I'll find a broken connection."
Brains listened to the clunk and clank as Virgil attached the socket to his wrench and went to work. There was a fault on one of Thunderbird Two's control panels. It wasn't connected to any of the main systems, though there was always the possibility that a small fault could lead to something more sinister. And so they were working.
Tapping a few commands into his little computer, Brains smiled. Anything that went wrong with Thunderbird Two, even something so small as part of the black and yellow warning tape peeling off, became an immediate priority for Virgil. Of all the Thunderbird craft, Two was taken care of with the most vivacity. It was all down to the tenacity of a pilot whose passion for the job was matched by no other.
Virgil and Brains had chatted about it over coffee and cookies one day, even before International Rescue was operational. They had put the finishing touches on Two's cockpit.
"Well," Virgil had said, raising a cookie in a toast. "Here's to a fantastic job."
Brains had brought his own cookie forward and tapped it on Virgil's.
"Everything s-seems to be going according to plan," he said.
"And those plans are perfect," Virgil said, voice muffled by crumbs and chocolate chips. "You've done a fantastic job, Brains."
Brains had blushed and tried to hide behind his cookie.
"I'm j-just working with your father's ideas," he said. "He's the one who should get the c-credit."
Virgil had shaken his head, washing his snack down with a swig of coffee.
"No, no," he said. "Dad has the ideas. We all have an idea of what we want to achieve – even Alan. I think he'll have a fit if we don't paint Thunderbird Three red." At that time, the youngest Tracy was only twelve years old and, while his intelligence was far more advanced than the average preteen, he wasn't exactly up to designing multimillion dollar space craft – just yet. "No, Brains. We have the ideas. But you're the one who turns the dreams into reality. We couldn't do any of this without you!"
His attention grabbed by the present, Brains shook the memories from his head and blinked.
"S-sorry, Virgil," he said. "I didn't catch that."
Virgil had rolled out from under the console and was smiling up. Brains gave him an awkward smile and turned the diagnostics tool over in his hands.
"You were miles away, Brains," Virgil said. "I asked if you have found anything on your computer."
Blushing, Brains looked down at the screen and shook his head.
"Not so far," he said.
"Well, you can stop looking," Virgil said. There was a satisfaction on his face that was endearing. "Just as I suspected. There was a broken connection behind the panel. I'll solder the wires again and see if that solves the problem." Leaning over to grab his soldering iron, Virgil gave Brains a wink and a grin. "Grandma's right. Sometimes the old ways are the best. Computers can't tell you everything."
He disappeared back under the console and Brains looked back down at his diagnostic tool and smiled.
In reality, he had located the fault fifteen minutes before.
He hadn't said anything simply because he was enjoying himself far too much.