For Forty Weeks the Sunbird Flew: An Airman's Tale

Chapter 8: The Ensuing Week

His injuries weren't too bad, luckily. Lawrence and Archer had taken their shirts off for Talon to be able to look them over properly, and luckily the worst that Archer seemed to have come out of it with was some bruising around his ribs and a dull throbbing pain in his chest. Some ointment had been prepared for him and applied, and he'd not even had anything that needed bandaging. The blow he'd taken when he'd initially grabbed for the cord and struck the railing must have hit him harder than he'd thought, though thankfully nothing seemed to be fractured or broken, just tender. His shirt had been left off so as to let the ointment act without the fabric rubbing it off or impeding it at all, and while he normally would have been red in the face at sitting shirtless in public, and if he was honest he was a little embarrassed, he'd been through so much today that he didn't really give a shit whether or not his cheeks were red to be perfectly honest.

Cooke's injuries had been next, the cuts to his hand extensive and raw but luckily not too deep. Water had been brought to boil, the wounds cleaned out and bandages applied. If the man had been stifling tears at the stinging sensation as his sore hands were disinfected, well, no-one apart from the three of them ever had to know about it.

"Alright then, I'm alright. Thank you. Your turn now, Lawrie."

Cooke turned to the last one of the three of them, Lawrence, and made to start looking him over for injuries. Though he kept his thoughts to himself, given everyone's assumption that the two of them must at the very least have some level of interest in the other Archer had really expected either Lawrence or Cooke to act awkwardly, or at least blush a little, but it seemed both of them were perfectly comfortable with this sort of thing. Maybe this was not the first time that one of them had patched each other up?

"What have I told you about that nickname?"

Lawrence's words may have been disparaging, but there was no bite to them. Even if Archer hadn't been sure, the smile on his mentor's face and the kind eyes he was directing towards Talon meant that there was little worry of offence.

"Respectfully, Lawrie, I think Archer's earned the right to hear me call you that. Besides, you don't really mind it anyways."

Lawrence chuckled.
"Sometimes I wonder when you got that observant."

Cooke smiled back as he cut off another length of bandage.
"You taught me after the Pass, silly. I was all but useless at reading people back then."

Lawrence hissed as Cooke turned the mans hands between his own.

"Sorry, sorry. They're pretty badly cut. Were you not wearing your gloves for the job?"

Lawrence shook his head, looking almost guilty.
"No, I... don't like how they feel on my hands. They make me feel... I don't know, scratchy, I guess. Like dress uniforms, or bright lights."

Archer didn't know what the man was on about, but Talon seemed to understand something that he didn't.

"Alright. I understand, promise. Here, let's get them cleaned up."

If Talon's hands had seemed bad, then Lawrence's were something else entirely. Not only had Lawrence also gripped the cord with his bare hands, just as Talon had, but he'd also scrambled to try and pull himself up initially, and then desperately clawed his way up onto the walkway afterwards. His hands were a bloodied mess, and Archer felt a little guilty that he was glad it hadn't happened to him.

"Does it hurt?"

Lawrence hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.
"I don't know."

"You don't know?"