Disclaimer: The Thunderbirds do not belong to me. They are the intellectual and actual property of Gerry Anderson and his affiliates. Any original characters are a product of my imagination.

AN: Not a genre or subject matter I generally write about, but I figured I'll try anything once. Adult subject matter warning (hence the M rating) but hopefully not crossing the boundary into MA ratings instead.

After the Aftermath

The aftermath of rescues don't just affect International Rescue

With the rescue over and the post-rescue dissection complete, it's time to turn in for the night. He's tired and spent – physically, mentally and emotionally – as they all are, but for some reason, it's taking its toll particularly hard. The rescue hadn't been that successful; at the end of it all, more people, especially babies and children, were dead than there were alive. Wearily, he and his brothers drag themselves off to their room, bidding each other 'night' – never 'good night' after rescues like that one because there was nothing good about it. The doors close and what his brothers do behind them to unwind remains a secret. On an island as isolated as this, and a family as close as this, it's nice to know that some things are kept sacred.

With his brothers safely ensconced in their rooms, he lets his guard down ever so slightly. The door to his suite glides into place and he sags in relief when he hears the dead bolts seal their way into the lock. He strips himself off his uniform, strips off his responsibility until he's wearing nothing but the skin he was born in and leaves it in a soggy pile on the floor that resembles his wardrobe.

Need to clean up the floordrobe, he reminds himself, but now is not the time for that. Instead, he relishes in his new found freedom as he waits for the shower to warm up. Once the water's steaming, he steps under the shower head and lets the water hit him like blunt knives. The water's so hot it almost scalds his skin, but at the same time, his muscles release pent up stress and tension and he begins to loosen up, ever so slightly.

There's only so much the water can do, and this time, it's not enough. It's never enough when he's questioning the motives of humanity, whether it's worth all the time and effort into saving a species that seem so hell-bent on destroying themselves by destroying each other. After an excessively long soak under the water, he steps out from the shower and pads his way towards the bedroom, letting himself air dry. He's still wound up tighter than a spring and it's not good; he'll be in no shape for the next rescue. His eyes move of their own accord, towards the hangers where the propeller planes are stored, and it hits him. He knows what he's after, he knows what he needs and he knows what his next step is.

It's late at night, and she's bound to be asleep so chances are she won't hear him, but he knocks anyway. Courtesy, really, since he knows the code to unlock her door, but he won't ever use it against her. He'll lose too much if he does.

He wonders why he's here, back in the town that had been rocked by a disaster even International Rescue couldn't get them out of successfully. Rocked by the selfishness of humanity that thought killing innocent lives through acts of destruction and terrorism was the way to be heard.

Just as he's about to give up, turn tail and walk away, she opens the door. She stares at him, straight in the eye and sees what she needs to see. He's pretty sure that the look in his eyes, eyes much too old before their time, mirrors hers. The ache to be the one that gets held and protected instead of doing the holding and protecting of others, to have someone looking out for him and him alone instead of him looking out for the rest of the planet. The need to indulge, the desire to forget, for just one night.

He comes to her out of comfort, familiarity; they've been friends with benefits for a long time - since they first met - and for one night, it's easier to pretend a normal man with a normal life with her than it is to face reality. It's more palatable to act on a long standing mutual attraction than it is to go to sleep alone, wake up alone and possibly die alone.

She doesn't say a word but steps aside and lets him over the threshold. She's long since had her suspicions about his true occupation, but she'll never ask him about it. He knows she knows about him, but he'll never confront her about it. So they've reached an unspoken agreement; she won't ask and he won't tell her for certain, and they dance around the fact that they know each other knows, using it as an excuse to prevent them from forming anything more concrete than what they have now.

She holds her arms out to him and he walks straight into the embrace. No second thoughts, no hesitation.

No regrets, he thinks to himself. Not tonight. Tonight it's about her and me. Tonight it's about feeling normal.

His arms wrap around her and he burrows his head against the joint that connects her neck to her shoulders. It's his favourite part of her, smells of popcorn and tastes of maple syrup, salty and sweet all wrapped up together. His lips brush against her skin and he can't resist a token lick. She gasps and tilts her head back, giving him more access.

In all the years that they've known each other, in all the years they've done this, he's always made the first move, the same way every time. She likes it that way, as does he. It's predictable but exhilarating for both of them. He likens it to a rollercoaster; he knows where the crests and the dips of the ride are, but still gets the knots in his stomach, still gets the head-rush from it every time.

Her fingers move automatically and curl around the hair at the nape of his neck and she raises his head so she can capture his lips lightly with hers. It's a turn on, a reassurance for him, all rolled into one.

He breaks off, touching his forehead to hers, willing himself to starve off the frenzied rush and savour the moment, a feat that's almost impossible because he knows that she needs this as bad as he does. She leans into him, eyes staring straight into his and he realises what she's trying to tell him; he can't go on like this much longer, he's got more lives than a cat but he's going through them too fast. She knows he knows it too, but tonight isn't about a reprimand, it's the chance to let go of their fears and worries and lose themselves in each other.

His lips move back to the joint between her neck and her shoulder, his hands fiddling with the straps of the singlet that she wears, sliding them down her arms. Her hands are no less busy, fudging buttons through the holes in his shirt. He tosses her singlet off to the side of the hallway at the same time she shrugs his shirt off. His hands and hers move in fluid motion downwards; his fingers claw at the elastic band on her pyjama shorts and hers fumble with the belt and the buttons on his jeans. The bottom half of their attire joins the top, strewn around the hallway. They pause and drink in the sight of each other, every last vestige of clothing deposited on the floor so that there are no barriers between them. It's been a while since they've done this – at least three months – and they both need to assess and catalogue changes.

To him, she looks like she's lost weight rapidly, something that only happens when she's stressed or worried and it hurts him even more on the inside; she's only like this because she's stressed and worried about him, about the dangers in his job they never talk about but are always aware of. He knows he's changed a lot more since the last time; there are more scars on his torso, more broken bones, more unexplained and mottled bruises, a more fractured and shattered heart from the things he's seen, from the things he's had to do on rescues.

Pick up the dead baby, hand it back to the mother, no emotion. Pretend it doesn't hurt, doesn't stab you in the gut every time you do it until you can't pretend any more. Until you can't keep the fractures on the inside and it leaks to the out.

He winces at the thought, traitorous brain for bringing up memories to a time he doesn't want to go to. So he stops thinking about the past and allows her hands to guide him back to the present, back to the moment he'll savour until they do this again.

Her hands flutter over scar tissue on his chest, perilously close to his heart. She blinks up at him, questioning, but he shakes his head. This is not the time for explanations. Another scar across his abdomen that her fingers run lightly over. He shakes his head again. She pulls him flush against her, as close as she can possibly get him and presses her lips to his shoulder blade, sparing a glance down a spinal column that's already riddled with cuts, bruises and scars that didn't quite heal right. Her hands move, tracking the changes, tracing over swelling that hasn't reduced, over newer injuries that are hidden behind old. She feels his head shake against her.

They stop and stare at each other again, the pressure intensifying between them. He grinds his hips on her and she feels him press against her thigh, hard and heavy. It spurs her on and her hands creep downwards past his belly button towards the crease between his hip and his thigh. She knows he's particularly sensitive, particularly ticklish there and she lets her fingers ghost over the area. He shudders and lets out a small laugh in a puff of breath, something she knows he can't quite control. Involuntary laugh or not, it's music to her ears to know that he's still capable of that.

He gives into her ministrations as she caresses and kisses her way down his torso, letting groans escape from his throat as the knot in his stomach tightens. Almost as if he were a wind-up toy, ready to be let loose. It becomes too much and he tugs her back up, capturing her lips in another searing kiss as he hefts her legs around his waist, pushes her back against the wall and he waits.

She groans, frustrated, until she sees the look in his eye, the unadulterated hurt that's been there since he first showed up on her doorstep. There's something that's happened in his job that's killing him from the inside out and he doesn't want his hurt to infiltrate other parts of his life. No matter how much he wants this, he wants to not hurt her even more; if she says no, he won't let it happen. And she can't bring herself to say no, she never has denied him; they both have different reasons for wanting each other, but the end result is the same. Why should she be the one to rob them of the relief they both need? Somewhere along the way of this ongoing friends-with-benefits, they became inextricably tangled with each other; it is too hard to separate one set of need and desire from the other.

And he waits on a knife edge, so ready to let his mind check out and cruise on autopilot while he's with her, but unable to move until at long last, she nods her head and yields underneath him, letting them both be as vulnerable as they need to be.

On the outset, it looks violent, rough, frenzied and rushed; they claw and bite at each other, she scratches at his back, careful not to break the skin, rakes her hand through his hair, and he grips and rubs his hands up and down her thighs, over the backs of her legs and backside, across her belly and over her breasts feverishly. He bites her lightly on the collar bone and she bucks against him, sending him into even more of a tailspin.

The appearance is deceptive. It's almost a paradox. There's harshness, but there's tenderness. It looks painful, but it's pain free. There's an outpouring of hatred and bitterness against the world, but there's love, lightness and hope in the moment too. There are two of them in this, but the reality is that it's just two parts of an entity coming together at last.

They fall over the edge at the same time, clinging onto each other as they ride it out together, lips ghosting over each other before sliding to the floor. Still intertwined with each other, she leans over him and drapes herself across his chest. He smiles briefly, more out of sated relief rather than anything else, before his eyes turn downcast and memories slither to the forefront of his mind.

There's the question burning between them, the inevitable that always crops up while they're lying silent in each others' arms.

Why?

She goes first. Tells him about her day, about how she was called out to the rescue site – how he never saw her there, he'll never know, probably too preoccupied worrying over his brothers – about how a toddler had been placed on her gurney, barely clinging to life. About how she watched the light go out of the toddler's eyes and heard the rattle of the infant's last breath. About how more kids came to her in the same condition and she couldn't save a damned one.

He feels the tears sluice down his chest from her eyes and he holds her close and he cries with her. The tears may not have been on the outside, but he cries for all the kids lost in that rescue earlier on the inside. He carries the weight of them, the unrealised dreams and potential they had on his heart.

It's his turn now. He white lies, tells her he was passing through town for work when he heard about the incident and was one of the first civilians on the scene to help out with the rescue effort since conventional rescue operators were overrun, even though he knows that she will see straight through that and link his presence there with International Rescue. He knows that she won't call him out on it, that would break the illusion of pretense. He tells her that he heard the babies and kids crying, and that he's not sure what makes his gut twist more; the way they were in hysterics, panicked by the blood, the dark, the cold fear of not knowing what comes next that comes with acts of terror, the solid weight and warmth of them in his arms as he tried to save them, or the way the din slowly faded into silence as each scream dropped off one by one. He doesn't say any more after that. He doesn't have to. She knows how he feels because she's feeling it too.

There's something cathartic for him, lying in the arms of someone that understands, someone that he can talk to without saying a word. It is more healing than the useless platitudes that have been passed his way over the years. And as he lies there, he thinks – not for the first time – that if humanity was a little more understanding, compassionate and loving towards each other, the world would be a much better place.

He wonders if the presence of International Rescue could preach that to the world, and he thinks that if it can, then he's damn proud to be part of that.