A/N: Alan's turn for some TLC from Scott

Bathing in starlight

He was awake before the second 'ring tone' had buzzed, sitting up and shoving away the covers as he forced his brain into activity. "What's the situation?" Scott asked as he swung his legs over the edge of his bed, looking up as John's hologram blinked into view.

"Stand down Thunderbird One." John answered. He was looking very freshly awakened himself, lying on his side, propped up on one elbow and his hair a tousled mess flopped across his brow. "This is a Big Brother alert." He said as he waved a hand and showed Scott an image captured from an internal camera.

It was from inside Thunderbird Three- a picture of a blanket-wrapped bundle huddled in the back of the cockpit, only a tuft of blond hair showing above the folds of fabric.

"Alan?" Scott frowned in concern, setting aside Commander mode for the time being. "Any idea why?"

"Yes to the former, unsure to the latter, he's bypassed the launch tube, comms are deactivated and he's not wearing his uniform, I don't have any telemetry." John explained. "I got the unauthorised access alert just a few minutes ago."

"Understood, I'll go see what's up." Scott stood up as John signed off, presumably to go back to sleep. He threw on some clothes and shoes, then as an afterthought grabbed a blanket and rolled it up so he could tuck it under his arm.

Down in the hangar accessing Three was easy enough- he just went straight to the loading arm and used it to get into the cargo bay, much as he imagined that Alan had. The climb up the ladder with the blanket draped over his shoulder was a little unexpected cardio and Scott felt decently alert when he opened the cockpit door and pulled himself inside.

"Alan?" He looked around, spotted the bundle of blankets and sat down next to it, using his blanket as a floor cushion, and reached out to what he guessed was a shoulder to pat it gently. Blue eyes peeked out at him from under the edge of a duvet, then the blanket pile shuffled over with surprising speed so that Alan could clamber into his lap and cling to him, arms wrapped around him and head resting over his heart.

As Scott automatically put his arms around his littlest brother he was reminded once again how small he was. Sometimes it was so easy for him to forget that Alan hadn't hit eighteen yet. He and the older brothers had all been at or over that mark before they donned the blues, they'd left home and explored the world under their own steam, but Alan hadn't. He was still in high school.

It was a weird dichotomy, now that he thought about it: Alan had a relatively sheltered and isolated upbringing, remote learning from a tropical private island, but he was responding to disasters on a near daily basis. While other kids his age were cramming for Algebra and worrying about the school dance, he was prepping for his space rating recertification and tracking hours for his pilot's licence.

Scott made a mental note to make sure Alan had more not-emergency/work/school/supply run- related trips to the mainland for socialisation, the kid needed more in-person human contact that wasn't immediate family if he was going to have a chance to build healthy friendships and relationships.

"You okay?" He asked gently, putting one arm under the blankets so he could rub Alan's back.

A headshake.

"Want to talk about it?" Scott asked next.

A nod, then Alan put a hand on his chest and started tapping in Morse. N-I-G-H-T-M-A-R-E.

"Ah." Scott hugged him closer. "Why didn't you come to me?" He asked, careful to make sure he had no trace of rebuke in his tone. Nightmares were something that they all got and as a family they had an open door policy when it came to those- go to someone, call someone or wake someone, you don't face those alone. And that was if someone hadn't noticed and gone to you first.

He was pretty used to half-waking in response to someone else crawling into his bed, shuffling back to make room, putting an arm around them and going back to sleep. He'd even surprised John one time when he'd needed his immediate brother's company after a particularly bad one and managed to call down the space elevator and squeeze into John's bed with him, all without waking him. For any of them, especially Alan, to go away from family after a nightmare was unusual.

N-E-E-D-E-D-D-A-D. Was Alan's reply.

Oh. Now it made sense. Scott tightened his hug a fraction as he scrambled for something to say.

While he'd worked very hard to treat all his sons equally, their dad had definitely played favourites with the Thunderbirds. Four was accepted, Two he was fond of, Five was good, One was great, but Three had Dad's clear preference because it went to space and it went there fast. He'd found himself coming here fairly regularly in those awful first few months after Dad's crash, they all had in fact, searching for some sense of his presence and drawing what comfort they could from the cockpit of the rocket.

It'd been long enough since then that he mentally assigned Three to Alan now, not Dad, but even so he'd sometimes sit in the co-pilot seat and every now and again out of the corner of his eye he could swear that he saw their father in the pilot's chair.

So for Alan to come to their father's Thunderbird, seeking some trace of him for comfort, made a lot of sense now.

"Did you want to watch the old video clips of Dad?" Scott asked, wondering if that would help. "Or go through the photo albums?"

N-O. There was a very clear refusal wrapped up in the firm tapping.

Scott frowned, absently rubbing Alan's back again as he tried to come up with another idea. This didn't feel like a 'sit with me, reassure me and validate my feelings' situation, it felt like an 'I want to do something but I can't and I'm frustrated'.

"Want to suit up and take Three for a leg stretch?" He tried.

Again the firm N-O in response.

Scott's frown deepened. That was strange. Normally Alan would jump at the chance to take Three out for a loop around the Moon to run out her engines- a 'leg stretch'. Scott pondered the problem for a little longer. An idea surfaced, and he quickly danced his fingers over his watch, checking the external cameras. He smiled when he saw the images. Perfect.

"Alan, can I show you something I do sometimes when I miss Mom and Dad?" Scott asked.

The blanket shifted and Alan poked his head out. "Okay." He responded quietly. Scott had suspected there would have been tears, but it still hurt to see his baby brother's puffy, bloodshot eyes.

"C'mon, let's head up to the house." He said, giving a smile of encouragement.

0o0o0

Upstairs, by the pool, Alan watched as Scott pulled two pool hammocks from their collection of lilos and floats, laid them in the water and stripped down to his underwear. A couple of commands flicked out on his watch and every single light in the villa's shared spaces turned off- the hallways, lounge, kitchen, even the lights around the patio steps and the pool. The moon had long set and as Alan's eyes adjusted he looked up at the stars above. Without a shred of light pollution, the multitude of stars and the broad brushstroke of the Milky Way arching above them against the blue-black night sky was breathtaking. He could pick out the odd satellite and even some faint trails of meteorites burning up in the atmosphere. There wasn't a single cloud and not a whisper of wind. The sound of the sea was only a faint susurration in the background and everything was almost perfectly still.

Then Alan glanced down and realised the stars above were reflected in the near perfect mirror of the swimming pool. The effect was mesmerising.

"Sometimes, when I really miss Mom and Dad," Scott began softly, "I come out here, turn off all the lights and lie in the water. It's like being in space without the spacesuit. Virgil calls it 'bathing in starlight'." He looked up for a moment with a wistful expression before looking back to Alan. "They both loved the stars, just showed it in different ways, and knowing they're both up there…" He gave a half shrug, trying to find words to fit his emotions. "It… it helps. It makes me feel closer to them." Scott nodded to the pool hammocks. "Want to try it?"

"Yeah." Alan nodded and shrugged out of his pyjamas.

They carefully entered the water, trying to make a minimum of ripples to keep from distorting the surface, and settled themselves into the pool hammocks so they could float more comfortably.

Lying in the pool hammock, stars twinkling on the water around him and the skies above and his brother close to hand, Alan felt the knot of pain and grief in his heart start to uncoil. It wasn't quite what he'd been hoping to find in Three- some sense of their dad's presence, that intangible trace that people always left behind in the places they'd inhabited- but somehow, being surrounded by the stars seemed to help him feel close to their long gone father.

He could feel tears pricking at his eyes again, but they weren't the same tears of grief, loss and frustration from when he'd gone looking for comfort but found none from his Thunderbird. No, these were tears of relief. He'd found comfort, and now he knew what he could try the next time he needed something tangible, not the holograms and videos carefully archived on the Island's servers.

They stayed like that until the approaching sunrise bleached the night out of the sky, leaving the pool so Gordon could have his morning swim in peace.

"How're you feeling?" Scott asked as they put the pool hammocks away.

"...good. I feel good." Alan smiled at him and tugged him into a tight hug. "Thank you Scott."