My contribution to @bucktommyweek: a kind of marriage of convenience.
I didn’t really expect it to go on so long, but it was such a trip writing it, so I just rolled with it.
Summary: some nebulous time after BT break up and Chimney becomes captain, Buck is forced to deal with his old leg injury bothering him.
Buck gripped the edge of the counter and forced himself to exhale through gritted teeth. His knuckles were turning white against the cool marble. The breathing exercise wasn’t helping; the pain in his leg was pulsating. His vision blurred as he tried desperately to think back to physical therapy. He forced another breath out, trying to relax his jaw. If he could get the leg muscle to let up just a little, he could reach for the bottle of Advil.
This pain was like clockwork. Every year, just before the Santa Anas, his leg could sense the coming storm, and it ached. It did this before thunderstorms, too: dull cramps, stiffness, a stabbing sensation when he first walked on it in the morning. But the sharpness of this pain was new. This felt like someone was jackhammering directly through the muscle and into his bone.
It started yesterday. Yesterday, it ached – more than he wanted to admit, but he went on shift as planned and got through it alright. This morning, he stood to get out of bed, and fell back immediately, the piercing sensation radiating right around where the first pin was. He called out sick, hoping that a day of rest would fix it. But the pain was unrelenting. It got wilder, sharper, bigger, and now he stood hunched over the sink, unaware that he was yelling as his entire calf spasmed.
The last time this happened, months ago, Tommy brought him a box of icy hot patches, and Buck learned a new benefit to dating someone his own size: he didn’t have to stumble around on a sore leg. He could wrap his arms around Tommy’s neck and let him do the heavy lifting. Even though the pain had been intense then, too, it went away within hours.
Now, Buck’s arms were slipping under the pressure as he bore down on them. He was covered in a sheen of sweat.
“Buck?”
Maddie’s voice was distant. Buck was adrift in a galaxy of white-hot bursting stars; her voice hooked around him like a tether, trying to reel him back into reality.
He wanted to call out her name, to ask her for help, to pull the rope she had tied around his waist so she could pull him back down to earth. But he wanted these things abstractly; the only thing tangible right now was how much this fucking hurt. Later, she would tell him: it was at least a minute before he stopped yelling and opened his eyes.
“Jesus, Evan.”
Maddie skittered through the kitchen to her brother, wrapping an arm firmly around his waist. “Are you nauseous?” she asked, pressing a palm firmly into his forehead, readying herself to keep him steady. It was enough to bring his vision back towards focus.
“N-no,” he stammered.
“Okay, good. Walk with me now,” she said, calmly and firmly. Her tone sent him at warp speed through that painful galaxy she’d just brough him back from. For a moment, he flew through a mushy soup of other injuries she had been around to help tend to as she said, always in that same voice: be more careful next time, Evan; keep the ice pack on for five more minutes; let me get an ace bandage for that. Despite the pain he associated with that tone, he found it more comforting than anything else, and he tried not to lean too heavily on her as she steered him towards his couch.
He flopped himself backwards and stared up at the ceiling, listening as she filled a glass of water. If he put his leg out straight, the muscle hurt. If he bent it, the bone hurt. Maybe someone at work could do him a favor and amputate it. Maddie perched next to him on the coffee table and handed him two pills. “Here. It’s a muscle relaxer.”
Buck stared up at the blank whiteness of the ceiling above, waiting for the medication to kick in. Maddie drilled her eyes into the side of her brother’s head.
“You had those lying around your house?” he asked her, unable to take the silent stare any longer. His leg still felt like something was being nailed into it, but either because of the drugs or because of the placebo effect, the spasms were weakening.
“No, Chimney told me you called out because your leg was bothering you and I don’t think you’ve ever called out of work once. May I?” she gestured towards his leg.
Buck nodded and bent his knee obligingly. Maddie pressed her fingers against his calf, starting right under his knee and working her way down towards the ankle. After two presses, he clenched his teeth, trying not to let on how much it was hurting. After the fourth poke, he couldn’t hold it in any longer, and he hissed.
“Well, I think you’re going to live.” Maddie stood upright. “Have you eaten dinner?” She had slipped back into her stern-yet-soothing voice.
Buck nodded sheepishly. “Not yet. Hey, if you stay, we can have muffins for dessert.”
~
Buck begrudgingly took off the next day. The knife-sharp pain in the bone was mercifully gone, but the muscle wouldn’t let up. He staggered around trying to stretch it out for fifteen excruciating minutes before admitting defeat. Another dose of the overpowered acetaminophen from Maddie helped, but if he stepped in just the right way, it sent unpleasant sparks fizzling through the bottom of his foot and up his knee.
Ten minutes after he got off the phone with Chimney, telling him he needed another day, his phone rang with a call from Maddie. He listened patiently as she told him she was proud of him for taking off another day, that he was doing the right thing, that she could come by again if he needed any help.
“It’s fine,” he sighed. “It feels better, I swear. It’s just the muscle. It’s like a knot in there,” he gave himself a gentle poke as he said this, setting one of those sparks off. “But thanks for calling.”
“You know what you need?” Maddie asked.
“By all means…tell me.” Buck sighed.
“Get a massage. No, I’m serious! It’ll help. Besides, what else are you going to do today? You can’t stand and bake all day, that’ll make it worse. I bet if you call your old PT place, they’ll have a recommendation for where to go. Sports massages. It’s a thing.”
“Alright, alright. Thank you.”
“Take care of yourself. Call me if you need anything.”
Buck threw his phone across the bed. He loved Maddie, but her most annoying trait was being absolutely right about something he had no interest in her being right about. Yes, he did the right thing by calling out. Yes, he shouldn’t stand and bake all day. But did she have to be so on the nose? Always? He supposed he could just stay in bed all day and binge watch Star Wars. He could practically feel his other leg – the good one – atrophy at the thought of it.
He reached back out for his phone, and to his great irritation, found that Maddie was right yet again: his old physical therapy place gave him the name to a sports massage place and said to call back if that didn’t fix the problem.
Buck didn’t love the idea of going somewhere, stripping, and letting a complete stranger rub him down. He pulled the blanket over his head and groaned into his pillow. Not even an hour into when he should be working and he was already going stir-crazy. He checked the website for the sports therapy place, then called Maddie back.
“Buck, what’s wrong? I can be there in an hour.”
“Did you know a one hour deep tissue massage with a specialist costs a hundred dollars? Not including a tip.”
“What’s worth more to you, a hundred dollars, or the chance that your leg will feel normal again in an hour?” Maddie shot back.
“Fine.”
Buck went back to scrolling through the services on the website. Why is a couple’s massage only $150? He thought, grumpy. He twisted his foot back and forth, testing his leg, trying to convince himself he was getting better by the minute. “Ow,” he muttered, as his entire calf seized up and threatened to start seizing again.
He flipped furiously back to his messages, scrolled through to his chat with Tommy. Everyone he knew who wasn’t his annoyingly-correct sister was working now, and he couldn’t bake, so who was going to stop him from this? He hovered his finger over the phone symbol and tapped it before he could think any longer.
“Hello?” Tommy’s voice was warm, confused, familiar, and painful in a completely different way than Buck’s leg.
“H-hey. Tommy. How are you?”
“I’m fine, how are you? Is everything okay?”
“No, actually, I just called out of work for the second day in a row because my leg is acting up, and Maddie told me to go to this place for a sports therapy massage, which is not a thing I knew even existed, and it’s more expensive to do it alone than to go as a couple, which doesn’t even make sense, and my leg hurts and I just want it to stop. Oh, and Maddie keeps asking me if I need help, which I don’t, but I don’t even blame her for asking, I was practically invalid yesterday when she stopped by, and I know she’s just worried about me being alone and not able to get around, but it’s just…annoying. It’s annoying.”
Buck stopped and listened to the deafening silence on the other side of the line. “Sorry, I don’t know why I called you. I missed you. I’m sorry.”
“Well…” Tommy sounded hesitant. He cleared his throat, sounding more certain as he continued. “I’m off today, so if it helps your predicament, we can go get a couple’s massage. Together. As friends.”
“Wait, seriously?” Buck asked.
“Are you okay to drive? Do you need a ride?”
“I-I can drive. I’ll send you the address. Any time in particular?”
“No. Whatever works.”
“Really, you’re sure you want to do this?”
“Sure. Why not.” Tommy sighed. “It’s nice to hear your voice.” He sounded so matter-of-fact about it, like someone making a plan out of a sense of duty to a long-lost childhood friend.
“Okay, I’ll see you later.”
Buck stared at his own reflection in the black phone screen. His mouth was agape, his brows were furrowed. He would have sat frozen in disbelief for longer, but his leg cramped and burned suddenly, and he remembered with a start that he still had a call to make.
~
The man behind the counter at the sports therapy office looked like he was more than eligible to collect Social Security and ask for senior citizen early dinner specials at the diner down the road. But instead he was here, perched on a stool behind the counter, glaring at Buck and Tommy as they checked in. “You’re here for a couple’s massage?” he asked loudly.
Tommy sized the man up, unimpressed. “Is that a problem? My husband and I are celebrating our anniversary.”
“Anniversary?” The man was practically shouting back.
“Yes,” Buck jumped in. “Five years together. Usually we travel, but we decided to keep it simple this year.”
“So instead of a vacation, you’re getting a couple’s massage?”
“We’re both first responders, and my husband here is still recovering from an injury he got on the job.”
“Have a seat,” the man said finally, still looking at them skeptically. “Someone will be out to get you in a minute.”
Tommy flashed Buck a triumphant smile as they turned away from the desk. Buck smiled back in spite of himself and limped alongside his so-called husband. Tommy, who had only offered him a perfunctory hug when they found each other outside, now wrapped an arm around him, trying to help him stay steady. Before they could sit, a petite woman poked her head from around the corner to call them in and point them towards their room.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Tommy dropped his arm, looking down as he kicked his shoes off. Buck had never felt anything resembling discomfort while undressing in front of Tommy. But suddenly, in the dim light surrounded by meditative music, he wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t like the feeling; Tommy, even as an ex, was so full of intimate familiarity. Until now, Buck had seen Tommy as the person who would always answer his calls, offer to drive him, and undress in front of him without a second thought. But as Tommy gazed down at the floor, it struck him that there were boundaries now, ones he couldn’t see and ones he had tried to ignore. He cast his own eyes down, avoiding looking anywhere but his feet or the bed for one.
The petite lady came back with another, even more petite lady. “Do you or your husband have any injuries we should know about?” she asked. Buck awkwardly clung to the sheet around him as showed the woman the scar on his leg. Tommy lay rigidly, staring directly ahead with glassy eyes. The petite lady told Buck to turn onto his stomach; the even more petite lady told Tommy to do the same.
Neither one of the women looked like they had hands large enough to so much as encircle Buck or Tommy’s wrist. But the woman started by touching Buck’s back right in the places that usually got sore from the weight of his oxygen tank at work. At first, it hurt him: he found himself reflexively tensing up. But she pressed again, and again, and he found suddenly that it felt nice, as though he had just stretched. She had an uncanny ability to find exactly the spots that needed it the most. For a moment, he forgot where he was: in a dark room, with his ex-boyfriend, practically naked yet unable to look at him, so he could save a few dollars.
She adjusted the sheet and his leg cramped in anticipation. He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself down; the room smelled earthy and warm. She ran her fingers down his leg, gently prodding. The music flipped from soothing piano to melodious flute. Even though he hadn’t come here because of his back, he hadn’t realized how much tension he was carrying there until she’d worked it out of him.
White-hot stars popped in his eyes as the woman pressed directly where his leg hurt the most. He could feel his whole body shaking from the shock, except where she touched him. There, where her palm was, he was perfectly still, as though the muscle were trying to calcify itself so that he wouldn’t feel this overwhelming stabbing sensation any longer. She dragged her fingers up towards the knee and the pain loosened, shifted: instead of settling in deeper it rose to the surface and escaped out of him. Buck felt his breath catch from the relief of the throbbing subsiding: a loud groan slipped out as the pain dissipated. The woman didn’t react: she made the same motions again, again, again. Buck breathed easily now.
He was getting close to falling asleep when she softly told him she was done. His wondered if this was what it was like to be cookie dough; soft yet firm, pliable, relaxed. Maddie was right, he thought, content. The two women slipped out and closed the door behind them, and Buck felt the relaxation transforming rapidly into nerves as he heard Tommy stirring from a few feet over.
Buck lay frozen still for a moment, trying not to let the comfort evaporate completely. He listened to the sounds of fabric rustling, waiting for them to stop.
“Evan?”
Tommy’s voice was quiet, tentative.
“Yeah, yeah.” Buck peeled himself off the bed, avoiding looking up as he pulled his shirt on. Tommy was sitting on his bed, looking down at his carefully folded hands.
“Haven’t heard you make that noise in a while,” Tommy deadpanned once Buck was fully clothed. Buck flushed. Before he could respond, there was soft knock at the door, and the petite woman was back.
“I just wanted to show you,” she said, motioning for Buck to sit back down. She picked up his heel, felt over his jeans along the back of his leg. “Here.”
She pressed her other hand firmly against the spot that had been the source of Buck’s agony. “The next time this happens to your husband, you press, and then you pull the pain away.” She showed Tommy, then set Buck’s leg back down.
“Thanks,” Tommy said.
She nodded briskly. “Take your time,” she added, then vanished.
“Great, now she knows I haven’t heard my husband make that noise in a while.”
Buck stood, shook his leg. “It-it feels normal, which is a huge relief. Thank you again, husband.” He forced the sarcasm in the last word, letting it cover up his instinctive desire to offer Tommy his hand, help him stand, ask him if he wanted to go catch a movie.
“I missed you, too.”
“What?”
“Earlier, on the phone. You said you missed me.” Tommy stood. “I wasn’t sure if you meant it, or if you just said it because you were in pain and not thinking clearly.”
“Of course I meant it, Tommy. I miss you.”
Tommy wrapped his arms around Buck. “Will you go get a coffee with me?” he whispered. Buck could hear him so clearly, the smallness of his voice. The person he always saw as so confident sounded so uncertain and so hopeful.
Buck was glad both of his legs felt solid under him. “How could I say no to my husband?”
