A/N: I've been a busy little Balek (well, not really little, I am over 6 foot tall!) and I've barely had time to write. But, I have finally managed to tackle this story, I've been struggling with it for a while, ever since the winter olympics started in fact! But, after re-writing it three times, I'm finally happy with it! Hooray!

Disclaimer: Gerry and Sylvia Anderson own Thunderbirds

…

"Are you sure about this?"

"Course! C'mon Johnny-boy, don't tell me you're chickening out already!"

…

"No!"

"Oh come on!"

"I said no!"

"You seriously are a wuss..."

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

...

"Bwark, bwok, bwok, bok, bok, bok!"

"Alan..."

"Bwwwaarrrrrrkkk!"

"Alan! Shut! UP!"

"Chick, chick, chick, chick, chicken. Lay a little egg for me!"

"Oh don't you start Gords..."

…

"Come on John, you've gone higher than that before. Hell, you live in flipping orbit for heaven's sake!"

"This is a bit different to manning a space station you know!"

"Oh, for love of God, just get it over and done with before we die of old age over here!

…

"So you'll do it?"

"Only if you do it first. And land it!"

"Deal!... Al?"

"Yeah?"

"Make sure he doesn't wimp out on us again."

"Sure!"

…

"Why do I let you guys talk me into these sorts of things?"

"Perhaps because you're just as big an adrenaline junkie as we are."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's easy enough to see. Now shh! Gords is almost there!"

"Oh God, I can't look! Dad'll kill me if I break something."

"If, John. If."

"Yeeaaahh, if..."

...

Coming back to consciousness is a peculiar feeling, and he was no stranger to it. It's best described as a similar feeling to when you switch on an old television set. First is the few minutes needed to warm up, where nothing much happens, but slowly things start to kick into life. The first thing that he picked up on was that he was lying on something cold, very cold. Damp too. That was then closely accompanied by the feeling that something, someone was sitting next to him. Not doing anything, just sitting, watching over him. The next thing to appear is sound. Faint at first, but that too becomes louder and clearer as time passes. Not there was much to hear. Machinery in the distance humming away, the rustling of tree branches and birds overhead. And... breathing? Yes, there was definitely someone nearby. Eventually, the picture appears, fuzzy and wavy at first, but slowly it tunes in and focuses, letting John see the beauty of the clear blue sky directly above him, with not a cloud in sight.

"We're making a habit of this..."

He turned his head towards the voice, which was, unsurprisingly, coming from the same direction that he had sensed the presence before. He squinted in the sunlight reflecting off the snow around him and then gave a weak smile as he recognised who it was watching over him.

"Hey Gords."

"Welcome back Spaceman." The red-head grinned back, relief evident in his face.

"Don't tell me, I bailed it." John said with a sigh. He knew he should have gone with his gut feeling. Why he ever let his brothers pressure him into attempting that jump, he'll never know. He'd had a feeling that something would go wrong, he had never even gone off something that big before, let alone manage to land a trick as well, and as it turned out, he had been right.

Gordon grimaced, fiddling with the bindings on the board that he was sitting on. "Yeah, just a bit. Launch was good, but as usual, landing, not so much. Here, look." He pointed towards something, and John gently lifted himself up onto his arms, following his brother's gesturing. "You hit that bit too early...flipped over...hit that bit upside down...tumbled down to there...bounced off that...and slid the rest of the way to here. Certainly one of your more spectacular crashes, that's for sure. Snow, everywhere!"

"Whoa." John was speechless as he looked up at the shadow of the mound of snow making up the jump. He couldn't believe it. How had he come out of that pretty much unscathed was anyone's guess.

"Whoa indeed." The red-head agreed. "How do you feel?"

The older blond thought for a moment. All considering, he didn't feel too bad. "All in all. Surprisingly ok. Just a mild headache."

"Only a mild one?"

"Yeah. Why?" John asked, slightly confused as to why Gordon looked so amused.

The smirk only grew larger as the Aquanaut reached behind him and pulled out something clearly mangled. "Check out your helmet."

"My God!" In the space of a minute, John had found himself blown away again. In his brother's hand was a twisted and broken shell of foam and plastic, barely recognisable as what that morning had been his helmet. "Good job I decided to wear that..."

"Yeah... Not gonna stop you from getting a full neuro check from Virge though. Alan's gone to get him."

"Oh deep joy." His voice dripped with sarcasm as he shifted his weight onto his hands, intending to sit up more, but instead ended up cring out as burning pain shot through his left wrist. He pulled it into his chest, cradling it as he automatically curled up into a foetal position in the snow.

"Whoa, easy there!" Gordon shot to his sibling's side. "You ok?"

"Yeah...yeah." John managed to gasp as the pain subsided to a dull throb. "Musta...landed on it...Help me up would you?"

"Sure, easy now." Gordon helped his brother sit up a bit more upright. Had Virgil been there, he probably would have got scolded for letting John move, but he seemed pretty ok, he had already moved his head a few times so neck injuries could probably be ruled out, plus he was lying on snow, so on balance, letting him sit up and be slightly warmer was probably better than running the risk of him getting hypothermia. "There. You all right like that?"

"Yeah. Thanks." John said. He should have really worn something a bit more waterproof than a fleece, but he hadn't exactly planned to have such a close encounter with the snow. He moved his leg up to sit more comfortably, and it was only then that he realised that he could move one foot without the other following, if he had still been strapped into his bindings they wouldn't have done that, yet the only thing on his feet were his boots. "Hey, where's my board got to?"

"I'm sitting on it." Gordon pointed downwards, and John could see that he was indeed sitting on his snowboard. He couldn't mistake the decal, not many people had a nebula on theirs after all.

"So where's yours?"

"Over there." Gordon pointed across the slope. Near the tree-line at the end of a set of deep footprints, evidently where the Aquanaut had rushed over after John had crashed, was a bright yellow snowboard sticking tail down in the snow. "And Alan's taken his to go and fetch Virge from the chalet. That was after we got rid of Ski Patrol of course, they wanted to strap you up and take you down in the blood wagon. I still don't think they were quite convinced. At least, that's the impression I got, my French is rusty to say the least... Oops!" The last bit he said just as he managed to pull one of the binding clean off John's board, to which the blond groaned.

"Gords... Quit wrecking my stuff!"

"Eh, you're the one who snapped the base plate." Gordon replied, inspecting the bottom of the binding before securing it back on as best he could. "Never mind, I'm sure our funds can stretch to a new pair. Tell you what, we'll pop into the shop on the way back from the hospital and you can pick out the ones you want, ok? I don't think we've been shopping together for ages!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, sure. As long as you don't scream too loud when your wrist is set."

"Out of the two of us, Gords, you're the one who screams."

"I am not!"

Their banter was interrupted by a shout above them and they both looked up to see two people heading in their direction, Virgil and Alan to be exact. Gordon waved back and John nodded his head, earning a thumbs up from both of them. Alan was the first to arrive, sending up a wave of snow as he skidded to a halt, mirrored by Virgil a second later, only his wave of snow dumped straight on top of Gordon.

"Bleh! Thanks Virge." He moaned as he brushed himself off, ruffling his hair to get the flakes out of it. "Seriously, could you have better aim?"

"I dunno Gords. A carrot nose and a top hat, and you'd make an excellent snowman." John said with amusement.

"I see not even a broken wrist puts a damper on your sense of humour..."

"Broken wrist?" Virgil asked. He had yet to be filled in on the details. All Alan had done had burst into the chalet just as he was about to sit down for a cup of hot chocolate, babbling something about John crashing before shooting out the door again. The only thing Virgil could do was keep up, he barely had time to grab his kit, let alone ask questions.

"Yeah, and a mild headache." Gordon nodded. "But check this out." He picked up the broken helmet and chucked it over.

Virgil whistled in amazement as he examined the lump of plastic. "Thank God you were sensible enough to wear this Johnny-boy, otherwise this is what your skull would look like. Hey Al, catch." He chucked it over to his youngest brother and started to unstrap himself from his board.

"Wow..." Alan muttered in the background, fascinated by the extent of the cracks running through the helmet. Quite a few had gone all the way through and split the thing open, not unlike petals on a flower. "Now I understand why Scott nags us to wear these..."

"Yeah, with good cause too." Virgil said as he knelt down next to John in the snow. "Well then, let's have a look at you. How are you feeling?"

"Eh, I've had worse." John shrugged, reluctantly letting the medic take a gentle hold of his injured wrist. "I think my arm broke my fall."

"I know you hate chores John, but this really is a bit of an extreme way to get out of them this evening..." The medic said, pulling off John's glove as carefully as he could, but the older blond still had to bite his lip to stop himself from screaming, not while Gordon was there.

"What can I say, I hate washing-up. And, frankly, I think gravity just hates me..."

"It's probably jealous that you spend all your time out of its reaches." Alan said, sitting down with the rest of them, helmet still in his hands.

"Not all my time." John pointed out. "Besides, Five has artificial gravity."

"That's even worse!" Virgil laughed. "That's like, I dunno, gravity's little sister that's constantly showing it up because she's so much more flashy and impressive. No wonder it grasps every opportunity to dig it's claws into you."

"Annoying siblings eh?" John said dryly, raising an eyebrow. "I know of a couple of them...It's how I got in this mess in the first place."

"Hey, at least I managed to land it!" Gordon retorted, determined not to have the blame placed on his shoulders. "Anyway, it was Alan's idea!"

"It was not!" The younger blond exclaimed. "It was John's!" He didn't want word getting back to their father, or Scott for that matter, about it being his fault.

John and Virgil exchanged a look. Little brothers, who'd want them? "Guys," John said, holding up his uninjured hand. "Let's just say we all had a part to play in this and deal with Mr Flap, and Dad, together."

"Mr Flap?" Alan sniggered, as did Gordon. "Why did we not think of that?"

"Who knows." The red-head replied. "But I like it."

Rolling his eyes, Virgil carefully placed John's wrist in his lap, and then brought his hands up to his neck, untying the scarf wrapped around it. "I don't know, John, what are we going to do with you?"

"Wrap me in cotton wool?"

"Even then...Now, easy does it." In a few swift movements, although not entirely pain free, Virgil had lifted up John's arm and had strapped it around his body using the scarf as a makeshift sling. "There. How does that feel?"

"All right, I guess. Although I never thought you'd use a scarf like this."

"Scouts motto, always be prepared."

"You were never in the Scouts." Gordon butted in.

"Does it matter? Now, look at me John, and follow my finger."

John co-operated while Virgil completed his neuro-check, wanting to make sure there were no lasting effects from his period of unconsciousness. After a few minutes, pleased that John seemed fine, although vowing to keep a close eye on him for the next day or so, they then started to tackle the problem of how they were going to get John down the rest of the mountain.

"Well, he can't board." Gordon noted. "Besides, his binding's knackered. See." He demonstrated as such by pulling it off again for them all to see.

"Oh Gords, quit doing that." John sighed in exasperation. It may be broken, but he still didn't appreciate it being pulled off time and time again.

"Looks like it's walking then." Virgil said. "Gord, you strap in and go on ahead, we'll meet you down the bottom. Al, you follow behind and carry my board too. John, you're with me."

"FAB." Came the collective and slightly amused reply from all of them as they set to work. While they knew they shouldn't really use it whilst not on duty, this was technically a rescue mission. Within a few minutes John was on his feet, supported on his left side by Virgil. Gordon went on ahead and was soon a small speck against the snow, and Alan followed behind his two remaining brothers, carrying a snowboard under each arm.

As he helped his brother through the knee deep snow and down the slope, Virgil couldn't help but shake his head at his clumsy brother managing once again to get himself into mischief. "John, next time Dad suggests a snowboarding holiday, might I suggest you stay in orbit."

"I'll keep that in mind." John replied. "Although you know as well as I do that I'm no safer up there..."

"That is true. I'm sure you could get sliced open by thin air itself if you tried hard enough!"

"Shhhh! You'll give it ideas!"

"Hmmm, you may be right, John, you may be right,"

"These?"

"No."

"These?"

"Definitely not!

"Ok...How about these?"

"Hmm, they're not too bad I guess, but a bit too pink for my liking."

Gordon sighed and massaged his temples. Now he remembered why he hardly ever went shopping with John, he could be so fussy! But, he had said he would, so he was stuck. Looking along the line of bindings, his eye fell upon a certain pair and he smiled. Perfect!

"Aha! How about these then?" He said, picking them up and showing them off to his blond brother, who was sitting in a seat nearby playing with an action figure off a nearby shelf with one hand, the other covered in plaster and in a sling.

"Hmmm, no."

"Oh for God's sake, they're identical to your last ones!"

"I know," John fussed. "But what's the point of that? If I'm going to get a new pair, I may as well go for something different."

Gordon closed his eyes inexasperation. "Look, why don't we do this once your wrist is healed huh? We're both tired and when you think about it, you can't go snowboarding for a couple of months anyway now, so let's just go back to the chalet, all right?"

"But you promised!" John whined, sounding surprisingly like Alan. "And I held up my end of the deal, I didn't scream at all!"

"Oh you have got to be joking..." The Aquanaut muttered. Why was John being so awkward? It was so unlike him. "Please tell me you're joking."

John looked up at him with watery puppy eyes and a quivering lip for a second longer before, like a switch, his expression changed and he smiled. "Yeah, I'm kidding. Let's go. I'm knackered." He stood up, dumping the toy back where he found it and heartily slapping his brother on the back.

"Thank God for that." Gordon sighed with relief. He should have known John was faking it. "Now, hot chocolate?"

"With marshmallow?"

"If you want."

"In that case then, hot chocolate!"