The punch caught him by surprise, spinning him around but he kept his feet. He straightened up and turned back around. Ran his thumb along the corner of his mouth and glanced at the blood there.
He spat a mouthful of blood out and folded his arms and raised an eyebrow, waiting for an answer to the question he had not asked.
The two men in front of him did not look repentant. In fact, they looked furious. Gordon wondered what he had done to upset them, but for the life of me he couldn't think of anything.
'Was it my singing?'
The other man went to punch him but he ducked out of the way.
'Was it the puns?'
Both men lunged at him. The first was easily avoided, the second was not, and once again he found himself spun around, hands gripping the bar. This was harder.
Gordon turned back to the two men and felt his jaw. Damn, that one hurt. What was their problem. But the two men stood there with inane grins on their faces. Maybe there wasn't a reason. He knew that sometimes people just wanted to have a pop at them.
'Is it the uniform?'
The next punch he wasn't quick enough to avoid.
The next time he was awake he was in his own bed, a sleeping bear next to him if the noise was anything to go by. He moved and – yeah, that was a mistake. He remembered two, no three punches to the face, but why the rest of him was hurting was beyond his memory.
Still, time was awastin' and he had swimming to do, so Gordon slipped out of bed and padded out to the pool. He was not surprised to see Scott returning from his run a little later, nor was he surprised that Scott came back out with two bottles of water, and he accepted it with a towel.
He settled on a lounger next to his brother, who surprisingly had not yet mentioned the beautiful bruising across his torso and face. It was very unlike the smotherhen, and then he noticed the slight bruising to his knuckles. So it was Scott who had come to his rescue. Huh.
Virgil joined them a couple of hours later, carrying three mugs, two of coffee and one of orange juice. The niggle he had felt when drinking the water made itself known again, and Gordon wondered if he had damaged a tooth last night.
He forgot about it until lunchtime. Biting into his favourite celery crunch bar hurt. No way that there was not an issue with one of his teeth. He disappeared as soon as he could to check.
Yep. He had a loose tooth. Just then the klaxon sounded, and his tooth was forgotten in the blizzard of activity that this and the next three rescues provided.
Until the pain in his jaw became so bad Gordon knew he had to get it seen. He needed to hunt down Scott. He would not bother Virgil, the man was terrified of even the word, so Scott would fly him over to the mainland.
Scott, sitting at the desk trying to complete some of the backlog of reports, stopped when Gordon bounced up to him. Bounced, yes, but his brother's face told him that there was something else going on.
When Gordon explained the toothache following the fight from four days ago, Scott frowned and looked at his face. Yes, there was a slight swelling on his jaw. He nodded and the two made their way down to the hangars.
When Virgil checked in with John later, unable to find Scott or Gordon, and John explained where the two had gone. He shuddered, pleased that Gordon was thoughtful enough not to ask him.
They returned home not long after, Gordon grumpy on a little pain relief and Scott trying (and failing) to keep a straight face. Gordon had needed more than one filling and the fish was not happy.
He was happy later when Virgil gave him a giant bowl of ice cream for his dinner – and it didn't hurt to eat it.