Roy: Alright, you win. You got what you wanted.
Ted: I’m a little lost. What exactly are we talking about?
Roy: I’m dating Jamie now.
Ted: That’s great! I’m happy for y’all. But I don’t remember sayi-
Roy: You told me to be mature and get along with him. I am.
Ted: [looks to Beard for help]
Beard: [pretends he’s absorbed in the book he’s reading even though he’s blatantly listening in so that he won’t have to be the one to respond to that]
Ted, clearly going for a joke: I’m glad. But you do realize I didn’t tell you you had to date him, right? It is possible to get along with someone without dating them.
Roy, dead serious: This is your fault. You did this to me.
Ted: I’m a little confused. When you say it’s my fault, are you saying that to blame me like it’s a bad thing or to thank me because you’re happy with him?
Roy: Yes.
Beard: [shoots Ted a confused look]
Ted: Which one?
Roy: Both.
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Daniel is three weeks into the programme when Scotty asks to join him.
“What do you say then? Should we go for a run like we used to?” He says and nudges Daniel’s shoe with a naked toe. “Get some of those muscles back on you, eh?”
Daniel laughs, hooks his foot around his ankle. He pulls him into his lap, rests his weight on his good leg. “Don’t think I can keep up with you anymore, Scotty. You, me, and my bum knee. Don’t think we’re getting very far, yeah?”
Scotty smiles, rubs a thumb over the LED bracelet he slapped on in case the sun sets before he comes home. It’s better than the yellow vest his mother had told him to wear, but it still makes him feel ridiculous. Scotty, he knows, prefers to run on trails, in the deep woods with nothing but trees and birds to keep you company.
But Daniel cannot do that now.
The forest floor is too uneven for him, filled with broken-off branches and stones the size of his fist. He can barely run a mile on a flat surface, doesn’t want to challenge himself with a broken ankle as well. So he runs by the roads now, always in the vicinity of help if he were to fall.
“Hey, Lance and the fam are coming into town in two weeks or so,” Scotty says and pulls out his phone. He flips the screen around to show him a scenic view of one of the trails they used to take before the crash. A viewpoint over the water, secluded enough that Daniel had gone to his knees without problems, sucked him off until they were both fucked out and satisfied on their way down.
“I don’t know your schedule, never know where you are these days, Ric,” he says, laughs. It feels weird in his chest, bitter to taste, but Daniel laughs with him, doesn’t say the answer nowadays is mostly PT. “But it would be cool if you could come, yeah? Been a while since we’ve done something like this.”
Daniel smiles, tightens the hand resting on Scotty’s hip.
Scotty wasn’t around when Daniel crashed, deep in his training programme for the next circuit of games. Blake had offered to call him, to arrange his flights so he could come and see him before his surgery. But Daniel hadn’t wanted Scotty to see him like that, injured and pathetic, overcome with pain at any movement of his leg.
He had been on crutches by the time Scotty came home, moving by himself and mostly off the hard meds. “Come to play nurse, haven’t I?” Scotty said and clumsily carried him to bed. But even then was a shit time for Daniel, no position suitable for both sex and his knee.
Times like these are when he regrets not involving Scotty more in his recovery. The evasive memory of his crash and subsequent injury, the current limitations he was working with.
“Don’t really think I can, babe,” Daniel says and tips him to the side, Scotty landing on the couch with a bump. He leans down to tighten his shoes, stands up for a quick stretch. “Unless you wanna carry me down?”
Scotty hums, stares at his knee, at the scar making its way down his leg. He looks, puzzled, and Daniel doesn’t know how to feel.
“Yeah, no dice, mate,” he says faintly.
Daniel shrugs, tries to breathe out the bitter frustration. He leans down for a kiss, just a brush of their lips before he’s upright again. “Right, I’ll be off. Dinner later? I will order something.”
He’s barely out of the door before his phone is in his hand, music in his ears as he presses start on the next run in his programme.
“Another day, another lovely run with you. I am coach Max, the Red Bull Running global head coach, and I will be with you every step of this two-mile run,” Max says in his ears, the familiar accent easing him into a different mindset as he lets the built-up frustration bleed away.
“You did not want to be here maybe. Perhaps the weather is bad where you run, and you feel tired today also. But you pressed start, so for the next 1.6 kilometres, I will of course help you to become the best runner you can today, and I think that is the most important thing right now.”
Daniel breathes out, shifts the pressure onto his bad knee, and when it feels good, he picks up the pace, loses himself in Max’s voice, “I’m here, Maxy. Tell me what to do.”
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