Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.
Bad weather was rarely enough to stop International Rescue. If it was possible for a Thunderbird to fly – and at the absolute cutting edge of technology, there were very few weather conditions that the 'birds couldn't handle – then they attended. No matter what.
The thunder of rain blasting One's hull as he brought her into land, visibility almost zero from the thick, low clouds and almost entirely relying on instrumentation, still didn't sound particularly appealing. Scott felt his shoulders slump unbidden at the knowledge that he was about to go out in that. Behind him, he heard his brother produce a noise that sounded dangerously close to a complaint.
Considering that brother was Gordon, who thrived on getting wet, that spoke volumes.
"I thought fish liked water," he quipped as the landing gear made contact and his 'bird settled comfortably on the ground.
"I like choosing to get wet," Gordon retorted. "Getting as drenched as I would going swimming by just leaving a plane is not the same thing."
He wasn't wrong, but Scott rolled his eyes anyway. "At least your uniform is designed for the weather." The neoprene of his own was waterproof to a certain extent, true, but against the flood from the heavens he was under no illusions regarding how well it'd hold up.
Still, International Rescue had been called, and International Rescue had answered, so they had to go out in the rain and get on with the rescue, regardless of how wet they got.
There were no words to describe how wet they were when, several hours later, they were finally afforded a retreat into Thunderbird One again, rescue a success. Drenched was an understatement, and Scott would dare to say that drowned didn't do it justice, either. Water ran off him in rivers, forming lakes near-instantaneously in the belly of his 'bird, and there was the very specific chill in his bones that came from waterproofing failing, resulting in sodden clothing clinging uncomfortably closely to every inch of skin.
The high of a successful rescue wasn't quite enough to completely eliminate the disgruntlement that came with being soaked to the bone.
Unrepentant, the weather continued to assault Thunderbird One, the noise reverberating through the cahelium and promising a headache in the near future.
Scott headed straight for his pilot's chair, determined to get out of there as fast as possible, but a hand caught his bicep and pulled him up short.
"You'll catch a cold if you don't get out of that uniform and warm up," Gordon pointed out. He didn't look much better – or much warmer – despite his deep water uniform. With the hand not gripping Scott's arm, his brother reached over and yanked open the locker that held spare uniforms and towels. "Get dried off and changed while I put the kettle on." The hand vanished and his brother padded through the ocean of water in the base of his 'bird towards the tail.
Thunderbird One didn't have a kettle. Scott knew she didn't. That was Thunderbird Two.
"You've got the wrong-" he started, turning around to see what his brother was up to, only to be pulled up short when two large flasks were withdrawn from another storage locker. "When did those get there?"
She was his 'bird. If anyone knew everything she carried, it should've been him.
"I brought them with me," Gordon shrugged, twisting the lid off the top of one of them. Steam immediately erupted into the cockpit, promising that the contents were still scalding hot. "Figured we might need them." Scott watched a little dumbly as his brother produced some cocoa sachets from the same compartment. "Get out of that uniform, Scott. These'll be ready by the time you're done."
Scott huffed, but Gordon wasn't wrong so he grabbed another uniform from the locker and slung it over the back of Gordon's jump seat before starting the uncomfortable process of tugging his current uniform off. The underclothes weren't salvageable, either, so with a grimace he peeled the fabric away from his skin before bundling himself up in a towel to get the worst of the water off, careful to stay away from the viewing window just in case anyone was mad enough to still be out in the rain.
True to Gordon's promise, by the time he was free from the drenched uniform and comfortably clothed in a dry replacement, the flask of cocoa was held in an outstretched hand.
One apparent advantage of the wetsuit was that, while it was a pig to remove at the best of times, it did more or less keep Gordon dry, so it transpired that in the time it had taken Scott to get changed, Gordon had managed to change his own uniform as well as mix up the cocoa.
Scott wasn't jealous in the slightest. His cold fingers burned as they came into contact with the warm metal, despite the exterior of the flask not actually being that hot, and the first sip had the liquid scorching its way down his throat in a way that would be painful if the warmth wasn't so welcome.
"Here." A thick, blue, blanket settled over his shoulders unexpectedly. Gordon brushed his hands over it, clearly fussing, and Scott fought the urge to tell him to stop. The blanket was warm, and combined with the cocoa had his temperature leaving frigid and entering the realms of acceptable again.
A matching blue blanket was draped over his brother's shoulders, too, and Gordon grinned as he pulled his hands back and retrieved his own flask to sip from.
"Warm up, then pilot home," the aquanaut said with a small grin, stepping into Scott's personal space – as though he'd ever left it - and nudging him gently with a blanketed shoulder. "It'll keep Virgil off your back about possible hypothermia."
Scott doubted it would entirely stop the fretting when they returned, but Gordon was right that it would at least ease it a bit.
Hopefully.
I took a few days off from fic writing, and will likely not return to writing daily fics just yet (still got a few to keep archiving, though), but combining today's fluffember/fluff&fun prompts "brush" and "cahelium" with FlashFictionFriday's weekly prompt #126 "out in the rain" gave me an idea, so here we are. Totally not inspired by me wishing I could shelter in my van until the rain stopped at work today...
Thanks for reading!
Tsari