riptide_asylum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
riptide_asylum) wrote2011-11-20 09:54 pm
riptide_asylum) wrote2011-11-20 09:54 pm
Entry tags:
"Deep Tissue" (Beach Boys, 1986)
Title: Deep Tissue
Rating: PG
Summary: Cody needs a little help recovering after the events of Echoes...
Capri Jones stood on the pier and looked from the slip of paper in her hand to the cabin cruiser in front of her. House calls took her to some strange places, but a detective agency on a boat--that one took the cake.
She went cautiously down the companionway, hefting her table under her arm, and called out, mounting the steps placed at the bow. No-one answered, so she climbed carefully on board, then poked her head in through an open hatch on the side.
There was a strange whir, and a short orange creature glided toward her. Capri wasn't the nervous type, but she couldn't help herself: she screamed. Her folded table hit the deck with a thump.
"Oh! Oh, no! I'm so sorry!" A skinny man in a white labcoat exploded into the room, gesturing frantically. "That's the Roboz--please don't worry--come in!" He looked at her beseechingly.
Capri composed herself and looked again. The orange thing, despite strange glowing eyes, did in fact have a pleasant expression. And on its belly was displayed WELCOME TO THE RIPTIDE. "The Roboz?" she faltered.
"My robot--well, our robot, but I invented him. He's a sophisticated computer, we use him extensively for research and communications--but that's not why you're here." The skinny man extended a hand. "Please, I'm Murray Bozinsky. Would you like to come aboard?"
Capri stepped over the threshold, hoisting her table carefully, still eyeing the robot warily. "Thank you. I, uh, I'm Capri Jones. But I have an appointment with--" she consulted her notes "--Mr. Cody Allen. Am I in the right place?"
"Yes, yes, of course you are. This is Cody's boat--well, we all live here, but the boat belongs to Cody. Please sit down. Can I get you some coffee?"
"No, thanks." Capri leaned her table against the wall and perched on the edge of the bench seat just inside the door. "Is Mr. Allen here?"
"Yes, he's resting right now. I suppose you want to get started?" Murray blushed adorably, and Capri found herself smiling. On first glance, she wouldn't have called the guy attractive, but there was definitely something about him.
"Is that the masseuse?" A blond man with a mustache appeared at the head of the stairs. He looked pale and drawn, and his left arm was in a sling.
"Oh, Cody! Yes, this is Miss Capri Jones. How are you feeling?"
"Fine, Murray. I'm fine." Cody came the rest of the way into the room, moving in a way that made him a liar.
Capri's professional eye assessed him even as she said "It's Ms. But if you'll just call me Capri, we'll get along fine."
Murray burst out into apologies, but Cody interrupted him. "Hey, Boz, how's your wide-angle tele-thingy project coming along?"
"Oh! The telemetric receiver! I'd really better get back to that." Murray looked guilty, glancing from Cody to Capri. "Do you have everything you need?"
"I'm sure I do," Capri said.
Cody patted Murray's shoulder reassuringly and guided him toward the forward stairs. "Capri and I are gonna get along just fine," he said reassuringly. As Murray left the room he turned to face her, squaring his shoulders and grinning ruefully. "At least I hope we are. Sorry about the Boz."
"Don't apologize. He's cute." Capri grinned back and stood up. "So, you suffered a gunshot wound to your shoulder three months ago?"
Cody nodded. "And as you can see--" He indicated the sling. "I have ongoing weakness down the arm and--" he glanced guiltily over his shoulder as though someone might be listening "--sharp pains in my upper chest when I breathe too deep."
"I don't remember that being in the notes."
"It wasn't," Cody admitted. "I didn't want my partners to know."
"Okay." Capri hefted her table and started setting it up. "Are you having any other sort of therapy?"
"The physiotherapist gave me some weight work. But it hurts."
"This is sounding to me like a pinched nerve," Capri warned. "And that's not something I can fix in one session, you understand? In fact, you might need to go back to your doctor and tell the whole story this time."
Cody flushed a little. "I know. But we can try, right?" The look of appeal on his face was impossible to resist.
"Of course we can." Capri patted the table. "Take your shirt off and hop up here, okay?"
Her assessment was thorough and efficient, and left the pain lines marked even deeper on Cody's face. "Have you been prescribed something for the pain?" she asked seriously.
"Yeah." He looked hesitant, and she thought of the other things in his notes.
"Take them," she said firmly. "At least before and after our sessions. They'll help the muscles relax, and without that, we can't make any progress."
Cody nodded. "I will."
Having gained his agreement, she laid him facedown and went to work. He was tight and resistant from living with the pain, and in another way she couldn't fathom, and she took him slow and careful, easing his tension in tiny, cautious clicks.
She'd gotten as far as she thought she'd manage, and was rubbing the final warm essential oils into his skin--ylang ylang, neroli and lavender, a mixture of her own devising--when the boat rocked and feet sounded on the wheelhouse stairs.
"Nick!" Her patient threw relaxation to the winds and made to get up.
"Oh, no you don't," Capri said grimly. She grabbed Cody by his belt and his good shoulder, and deftly flipped him back to his position on the table. "You can talk to whoever it is when we're done."
The new arrival was dark, Italian looking, and eyed the scene in the salon with surprise. "Everything okay here?"
Cody made another attempt to raise his head, which Capri thwarted with a palm on his neck. "Please," she said calmly. "Mr. Allen needs to stay relaxed right now. We're nearly done, and then I'm sure he'll be delighted to help you."
A glimmer of amusement lit the dark man's eyes. "I'm Nick Ryder. Cody there's my partner. So you're what, another therapist?"
"Capri Jones. I'm a masseuse." Partner. Business partner? Capri smiled and applied another dollop of oil to Cody's back. "Mr. Allen seems to have a pinched nerve."
"He's got something, that's for sure. I'm glad he's got someone looking at it." Nick came around to the other side of the table and sat down on the couch. The position put him a bare six inches from Cody's shoulder--it was the most crowded place in the room.
Cody moved slightly, angling his head so he could look at his partner, and Nick reached out and brushed Cody's hand with his.
Capri nearly dropped her oil. As Nick touched her patient, the strange tightness she'd been unable to trace, unable to combat, disappeared as though it had never existed. Sure, Cody was still tight, up in the damaged muscles around the wound and in the nasty clumped knots where the pinched nerve was doing its harm. But the rest was gone as though it had never existed.
She worked on him for five more minutes then covered him with a warm towel. "Fifteen minutes," she warned when he tried to move. "You think you've just been lying there, but believe me, your shoulder's played two innings."
Nick showed her the bathroom and she cleaned up, taking her time washing the oil from her hands. As she came slowly back up the stairs, she saw that Nick had taken up his position beside Cody again. He was sitting forward, unobtrusively holding Cody's hand.
Capri allowed herself a small smile. Pretending she hadn't noticed, she packed up her oils carefully then tapped her watch. "Time, fellas. Sit up slowly, Cody, and keep the towel around your shoulders."
"What does he need to do?" Nick asked. "He keeps telling me he's fine, but it's damned obvious he's not fine, and all we got is some weight exercises that hurt him."
"Yeah, stay away from those for a few weeks," Capri advised. "The only exercise I want you to do right now is walk. An hour or more every day, if you can manage it, and when you're not walking, lie flat as much as you can. And take your pain meds. They help the muscles to relax, and until that happens, we can't really make progress."
Cody nodded. "I'll do all that. But it feels better already. Capri, you're a marvel!"
Capri smiled non-committally. The immediate afterglow often produced this reaction. Tomorrow would begin to show whether results had been achieved or not. "Two p.m. tomorrow?" she confirmed, opening her diary.
Nick's eyebrows shot up and Cody looked abashed. "Yes," he said, looking down.
"Were you planning on telling me about this at all?" Nick asked. His tone spoke of mild interest, but Capri wasn't stupid. She folded her table and headed back up the companionway, leaving Cody to pour coffee and do some fast talking.
*
Cody was waiting for her in the salon. He was wearing sweats today, and a matching dark blue zip-up hoody. There was a pile of towels folded on the couch.
Capri grinned in approval as she started setting up her table. "You'll be more comfortable in those," she observed.
Cody nodded, and jumped up on the table obediently as soon as she patted it. He slipped the hoody off, but tensed when she touched him.
"Sore?"
"Not bad. It definitely feels better. But it's kind of like there's something hot and tight inside."
"Well, let's see what we can do about that, huh?"
Capri had only been working ten minutes when Nick came in. Nick moved the towels and took up his place beside Cody without asking. Capri usually objected to friends or family--or even partners--remaining in the room while she worked, as she needed her patient's focus on her. But today, as he had yesterday, Nick rubbed Cody's hand in a brief gesture of greeting, and with the touch, Cody's lingering tension disappeared.
She went thoroughly to work, able to get deeper and do far more than she'd achieved the previous day. When she'd finished, Cody was wrung out--she could feel his exhaustion in the way his body was reacting to her touch. She spread one warm towel over him while she fished her vial of oil out of the vacuum flask that kept it warm.
Cody made one attempt to move but before she could correct him, Nick stepped in. "Lay still, big guy. The lady'll tell you when you can move." Cody muttered something, and Nick reached out and covered Cody's hand with his own.
"Take a nap," Capri advised Cody when she released him from the table. "We've made real progress today, and it means your body has a lot of healing to do."
Nick was still sitting on the couch, and he drew Cody down beside him. Capri watched as he folded Cody into the shelter of his body, gathering him close.
"He'll nap," Nick said, and Capri didn't doubt for a moment that Cody would. And that Nick would, too. She allowed herself to wonder about the number of staterooms, then grinned to herself. Who was she trying to kid? However many cabins were aboard this boat, she'd go bail only two were occupied, and one of those was by Murray Bozinsky.
"Are you coming tomorrow?" Nick interrupted her chain of thought. "I've made some changes to our schedule so I can be here."
"I'm sorry." Capri furrowed her brow. "My next appointment for Cody is Monday. Depending how that goes, I have one more session planned for Friday, and he'll be good as new. I hope you haven't gone to a lot of trouble."
"It's no trouble." Nick shrugged. "Since Cody's been off work, I've been filling in at the body shop downtown. Changing my hours isn't a problem."
Capri didn't even bother to mention her no-observers rule. Rules were made to be broken, after all, and Nick's presence made all the difference to her patient's relaxation.
*
Capri arrived at Monday's appointment with a plan. She always left patients with exercises and stretches for them to continue their own rehabilitation, and in certain cases she showed a spouse specific massage techniques for ongoing use.
Nick and Cody were prime candidates. Nick was physically strong enough to apply the right sort of pressure, and Cody was relaxed with him. And Cody's injury, while superficially healed, would benefit hugely from the kind of short, regular treatments that a partner could provide.
The key difficulty, Capri thought as she kneaded her way across Cody's shoulder, was broaching the subject. Although it was obvious how close Nick and Cody were, Capri wasn't sure just how much she was supposed to notice.
Today, Cody was finding the treatment easier: he was obviously stronger and experiencing less pain. Nick had been there from the time Capri arrived, and he was watching her closely as she worked on Cody.
Capri would have felt self-conscious if she hadn't hoped Nick was trying to figure out what she was doing, so that he could repeat it.
"Cody, would you be okay with Nick performing some simple massage techniques on your shoulder over the next few months?" Nick had gone downstairs to make fresh coffee, and Capri took the chance to gain Cody's permission.
Cody lifted his head in surprise--even though he knew by now that Capri frowned on moving without specific instructions. "Nick? Of course." Capri was sure his surprise wasn't at the idea of Nick massaging him.
"Provided Nick's comfortable doing it, of course."
"He tried a few times before you came," Cody said ingenuously, laying his head back down. "But it hurt so much... he stopped, he was scared of making it worse."
Capri smiled. "That's because you weren't taking your pain meds," she chided him gently.
Cody made a soft noise of agreement. "Didn't take any this week either," he said, half-guiltily.
"Even though that's against my specific instructions," Capri teased, "I'm pleased to hear it. It's real clear that you're not hurting today."
Nick was a quick study on the massage techniques. Capri watched him through the movements, entirely satisfied. He seemed to know by instinct exactly how much pressure to apply.
Not instinct, Capri told herself, watching Cody respond to Nick's hands. The way Nick touched Cody was eloquent of intimate knowledge and extensive practice. Nick knew Cody's comfort zone, knew his thresholds, knew his body. And what was at least as important, Cody's body knew Nick's touch.
"You're not bad," Cody said as he sat up, grinning at Nick. "But you're not as pretty as the lady."
Nick grinned back and made some remark. It was probably clever; Capri had no idea, she didn't hear it. She was transfixed by the heat that passed between the two men in a traded glance. She'd already suspected their relationship, but what she glimpsed in their eyes was so much more than she'd imagined.
Flustered, she dropped her diary and finally accepted a cup of coffee to help her regain her composure. Nick and Cody, sitting together on the couch with Nick's arm comfortably around Cody's shoulders, seemed not to notice. Perhaps they didn't, Capri reflected. Cody was coming down off his massage-induced endorphin-trip, and Nick was riding an adrenaline-buzz caused, if she was any judge, by forty-five minutes of Cody being touched by someone that wasn't him.
Without compunction, Capri turned to the following Friday in her diary and crossed out Cody's appointment. "It's been great to meet you, fellas," she said, putting her cup down and standing up. "And don't hesitate to give me a call if either of you are injured in the future. But for now, I've done all I can."
Nick looked troubled. "Weren't you coming Friday? Sometimes he still hurts at night."
Cody made shushing motions at Nick, and Capri gave them both a reassuring smile. "Cody, you'll have a little pain, on and off, for several months. Nick, you know the techniques to bring him relief when needed. You don't need me anymore, guys. You two can take it from here."
Capri folded her table and headed out, and Nick followed her to the door. "Are you sure?" he asked in a low voice. "He hurt so much for so long, and it's only been three sessions. Maybe he still needs you."
Capri paused with one foot on the companionway, smiling over her shoulder. "I'm sure, Nick. Believe me... you're everything Cody needs."
Capri sketched a wave to his shocked face and headed up to her beat-up yellow Ford. As she got in, she saw that Cody had come out to join Nick on deck, and they were both staring after her.
The old engine started on the first try for once, and Capri pulled out and headed slowly up toward the road. She glanced in her rear-vision mirror in time to see Nick slide his arm around Cody's shoulders, and Cody raise his left hand in farewell.
Capri gave a heartfelt toot, then gunned the engine and swung the little car out onto the boulevard, and out of sight.
Rating: PG
Summary: Cody needs a little help recovering after the events of Echoes...
Capri Jones stood on the pier and looked from the slip of paper in her hand to the cabin cruiser in front of her. House calls took her to some strange places, but a detective agency on a boat--that one took the cake.
She went cautiously down the companionway, hefting her table under her arm, and called out, mounting the steps placed at the bow. No-one answered, so she climbed carefully on board, then poked her head in through an open hatch on the side.
There was a strange whir, and a short orange creature glided toward her. Capri wasn't the nervous type, but she couldn't help herself: she screamed. Her folded table hit the deck with a thump.
"Oh! Oh, no! I'm so sorry!" A skinny man in a white labcoat exploded into the room, gesturing frantically. "That's the Roboz--please don't worry--come in!" He looked at her beseechingly.
Capri composed herself and looked again. The orange thing, despite strange glowing eyes, did in fact have a pleasant expression. And on its belly was displayed WELCOME TO THE RIPTIDE. "The Roboz?" she faltered.
"My robot--well, our robot, but I invented him. He's a sophisticated computer, we use him extensively for research and communications--but that's not why you're here." The skinny man extended a hand. "Please, I'm Murray Bozinsky. Would you like to come aboard?"
Capri stepped over the threshold, hoisting her table carefully, still eyeing the robot warily. "Thank you. I, uh, I'm Capri Jones. But I have an appointment with--" she consulted her notes "--Mr. Cody Allen. Am I in the right place?"
"Yes, yes, of course you are. This is Cody's boat--well, we all live here, but the boat belongs to Cody. Please sit down. Can I get you some coffee?"
"No, thanks." Capri leaned her table against the wall and perched on the edge of the bench seat just inside the door. "Is Mr. Allen here?"
"Yes, he's resting right now. I suppose you want to get started?" Murray blushed adorably, and Capri found herself smiling. On first glance, she wouldn't have called the guy attractive, but there was definitely something about him.
"Is that the masseuse?" A blond man with a mustache appeared at the head of the stairs. He looked pale and drawn, and his left arm was in a sling.
"Oh, Cody! Yes, this is Miss Capri Jones. How are you feeling?"
"Fine, Murray. I'm fine." Cody came the rest of the way into the room, moving in a way that made him a liar.
Capri's professional eye assessed him even as she said "It's Ms. But if you'll just call me Capri, we'll get along fine."
Murray burst out into apologies, but Cody interrupted him. "Hey, Boz, how's your wide-angle tele-thingy project coming along?"
"Oh! The telemetric receiver! I'd really better get back to that." Murray looked guilty, glancing from Cody to Capri. "Do you have everything you need?"
"I'm sure I do," Capri said.
Cody patted Murray's shoulder reassuringly and guided him toward the forward stairs. "Capri and I are gonna get along just fine," he said reassuringly. As Murray left the room he turned to face her, squaring his shoulders and grinning ruefully. "At least I hope we are. Sorry about the Boz."
"Don't apologize. He's cute." Capri grinned back and stood up. "So, you suffered a gunshot wound to your shoulder three months ago?"
Cody nodded. "And as you can see--" He indicated the sling. "I have ongoing weakness down the arm and--" he glanced guiltily over his shoulder as though someone might be listening "--sharp pains in my upper chest when I breathe too deep."
"I don't remember that being in the notes."
"It wasn't," Cody admitted. "I didn't want my partners to know."
"Okay." Capri hefted her table and started setting it up. "Are you having any other sort of therapy?"
"The physiotherapist gave me some weight work. But it hurts."
"This is sounding to me like a pinched nerve," Capri warned. "And that's not something I can fix in one session, you understand? In fact, you might need to go back to your doctor and tell the whole story this time."
Cody flushed a little. "I know. But we can try, right?" The look of appeal on his face was impossible to resist.
"Of course we can." Capri patted the table. "Take your shirt off and hop up here, okay?"
Her assessment was thorough and efficient, and left the pain lines marked even deeper on Cody's face. "Have you been prescribed something for the pain?" she asked seriously.
"Yeah." He looked hesitant, and she thought of the other things in his notes.
"Take them," she said firmly. "At least before and after our sessions. They'll help the muscles relax, and without that, we can't make any progress."
Cody nodded. "I will."
Having gained his agreement, she laid him facedown and went to work. He was tight and resistant from living with the pain, and in another way she couldn't fathom, and she took him slow and careful, easing his tension in tiny, cautious clicks.
She'd gotten as far as she thought she'd manage, and was rubbing the final warm essential oils into his skin--ylang ylang, neroli and lavender, a mixture of her own devising--when the boat rocked and feet sounded on the wheelhouse stairs.
"Nick!" Her patient threw relaxation to the winds and made to get up.
"Oh, no you don't," Capri said grimly. She grabbed Cody by his belt and his good shoulder, and deftly flipped him back to his position on the table. "You can talk to whoever it is when we're done."
The new arrival was dark, Italian looking, and eyed the scene in the salon with surprise. "Everything okay here?"
Cody made another attempt to raise his head, which Capri thwarted with a palm on his neck. "Please," she said calmly. "Mr. Allen needs to stay relaxed right now. We're nearly done, and then I'm sure he'll be delighted to help you."
A glimmer of amusement lit the dark man's eyes. "I'm Nick Ryder. Cody there's my partner. So you're what, another therapist?"
"Capri Jones. I'm a masseuse." Partner. Business partner? Capri smiled and applied another dollop of oil to Cody's back. "Mr. Allen seems to have a pinched nerve."
"He's got something, that's for sure. I'm glad he's got someone looking at it." Nick came around to the other side of the table and sat down on the couch. The position put him a bare six inches from Cody's shoulder--it was the most crowded place in the room.
Cody moved slightly, angling his head so he could look at his partner, and Nick reached out and brushed Cody's hand with his.
Capri nearly dropped her oil. As Nick touched her patient, the strange tightness she'd been unable to trace, unable to combat, disappeared as though it had never existed. Sure, Cody was still tight, up in the damaged muscles around the wound and in the nasty clumped knots where the pinched nerve was doing its harm. But the rest was gone as though it had never existed.
She worked on him for five more minutes then covered him with a warm towel. "Fifteen minutes," she warned when he tried to move. "You think you've just been lying there, but believe me, your shoulder's played two innings."
Nick showed her the bathroom and she cleaned up, taking her time washing the oil from her hands. As she came slowly back up the stairs, she saw that Nick had taken up his position beside Cody again. He was sitting forward, unobtrusively holding Cody's hand.
Capri allowed herself a small smile. Pretending she hadn't noticed, she packed up her oils carefully then tapped her watch. "Time, fellas. Sit up slowly, Cody, and keep the towel around your shoulders."
"What does he need to do?" Nick asked. "He keeps telling me he's fine, but it's damned obvious he's not fine, and all we got is some weight exercises that hurt him."
"Yeah, stay away from those for a few weeks," Capri advised. "The only exercise I want you to do right now is walk. An hour or more every day, if you can manage it, and when you're not walking, lie flat as much as you can. And take your pain meds. They help the muscles to relax, and until that happens, we can't really make progress."
Cody nodded. "I'll do all that. But it feels better already. Capri, you're a marvel!"
Capri smiled non-committally. The immediate afterglow often produced this reaction. Tomorrow would begin to show whether results had been achieved or not. "Two p.m. tomorrow?" she confirmed, opening her diary.
Nick's eyebrows shot up and Cody looked abashed. "Yes," he said, looking down.
"Were you planning on telling me about this at all?" Nick asked. His tone spoke of mild interest, but Capri wasn't stupid. She folded her table and headed back up the companionway, leaving Cody to pour coffee and do some fast talking.
*
Cody was waiting for her in the salon. He was wearing sweats today, and a matching dark blue zip-up hoody. There was a pile of towels folded on the couch.
Capri grinned in approval as she started setting up her table. "You'll be more comfortable in those," she observed.
Cody nodded, and jumped up on the table obediently as soon as she patted it. He slipped the hoody off, but tensed when she touched him.
"Sore?"
"Not bad. It definitely feels better. But it's kind of like there's something hot and tight inside."
"Well, let's see what we can do about that, huh?"
Capri had only been working ten minutes when Nick came in. Nick moved the towels and took up his place beside Cody without asking. Capri usually objected to friends or family--or even partners--remaining in the room while she worked, as she needed her patient's focus on her. But today, as he had yesterday, Nick rubbed Cody's hand in a brief gesture of greeting, and with the touch, Cody's lingering tension disappeared.
She went thoroughly to work, able to get deeper and do far more than she'd achieved the previous day. When she'd finished, Cody was wrung out--she could feel his exhaustion in the way his body was reacting to her touch. She spread one warm towel over him while she fished her vial of oil out of the vacuum flask that kept it warm.
Cody made one attempt to move but before she could correct him, Nick stepped in. "Lay still, big guy. The lady'll tell you when you can move." Cody muttered something, and Nick reached out and covered Cody's hand with his own.
"Take a nap," Capri advised Cody when she released him from the table. "We've made real progress today, and it means your body has a lot of healing to do."
Nick was still sitting on the couch, and he drew Cody down beside him. Capri watched as he folded Cody into the shelter of his body, gathering him close.
"He'll nap," Nick said, and Capri didn't doubt for a moment that Cody would. And that Nick would, too. She allowed herself to wonder about the number of staterooms, then grinned to herself. Who was she trying to kid? However many cabins were aboard this boat, she'd go bail only two were occupied, and one of those was by Murray Bozinsky.
"Are you coming tomorrow?" Nick interrupted her chain of thought. "I've made some changes to our schedule so I can be here."
"I'm sorry." Capri furrowed her brow. "My next appointment for Cody is Monday. Depending how that goes, I have one more session planned for Friday, and he'll be good as new. I hope you haven't gone to a lot of trouble."
"It's no trouble." Nick shrugged. "Since Cody's been off work, I've been filling in at the body shop downtown. Changing my hours isn't a problem."
Capri didn't even bother to mention her no-observers rule. Rules were made to be broken, after all, and Nick's presence made all the difference to her patient's relaxation.
*
Capri arrived at Monday's appointment with a plan. She always left patients with exercises and stretches for them to continue their own rehabilitation, and in certain cases she showed a spouse specific massage techniques for ongoing use.
Nick and Cody were prime candidates. Nick was physically strong enough to apply the right sort of pressure, and Cody was relaxed with him. And Cody's injury, while superficially healed, would benefit hugely from the kind of short, regular treatments that a partner could provide.
The key difficulty, Capri thought as she kneaded her way across Cody's shoulder, was broaching the subject. Although it was obvious how close Nick and Cody were, Capri wasn't sure just how much she was supposed to notice.
Today, Cody was finding the treatment easier: he was obviously stronger and experiencing less pain. Nick had been there from the time Capri arrived, and he was watching her closely as she worked on Cody.
Capri would have felt self-conscious if she hadn't hoped Nick was trying to figure out what she was doing, so that he could repeat it.
"Cody, would you be okay with Nick performing some simple massage techniques on your shoulder over the next few months?" Nick had gone downstairs to make fresh coffee, and Capri took the chance to gain Cody's permission.
Cody lifted his head in surprise--even though he knew by now that Capri frowned on moving without specific instructions. "Nick? Of course." Capri was sure his surprise wasn't at the idea of Nick massaging him.
"Provided Nick's comfortable doing it, of course."
"He tried a few times before you came," Cody said ingenuously, laying his head back down. "But it hurt so much... he stopped, he was scared of making it worse."
Capri smiled. "That's because you weren't taking your pain meds," she chided him gently.
Cody made a soft noise of agreement. "Didn't take any this week either," he said, half-guiltily.
"Even though that's against my specific instructions," Capri teased, "I'm pleased to hear it. It's real clear that you're not hurting today."
Nick was a quick study on the massage techniques. Capri watched him through the movements, entirely satisfied. He seemed to know by instinct exactly how much pressure to apply.
Not instinct, Capri told herself, watching Cody respond to Nick's hands. The way Nick touched Cody was eloquent of intimate knowledge and extensive practice. Nick knew Cody's comfort zone, knew his thresholds, knew his body. And what was at least as important, Cody's body knew Nick's touch.
"You're not bad," Cody said as he sat up, grinning at Nick. "But you're not as pretty as the lady."
Nick grinned back and made some remark. It was probably clever; Capri had no idea, she didn't hear it. She was transfixed by the heat that passed between the two men in a traded glance. She'd already suspected their relationship, but what she glimpsed in their eyes was so much more than she'd imagined.
Flustered, she dropped her diary and finally accepted a cup of coffee to help her regain her composure. Nick and Cody, sitting together on the couch with Nick's arm comfortably around Cody's shoulders, seemed not to notice. Perhaps they didn't, Capri reflected. Cody was coming down off his massage-induced endorphin-trip, and Nick was riding an adrenaline-buzz caused, if she was any judge, by forty-five minutes of Cody being touched by someone that wasn't him.
Without compunction, Capri turned to the following Friday in her diary and crossed out Cody's appointment. "It's been great to meet you, fellas," she said, putting her cup down and standing up. "And don't hesitate to give me a call if either of you are injured in the future. But for now, I've done all I can."
Nick looked troubled. "Weren't you coming Friday? Sometimes he still hurts at night."
Cody made shushing motions at Nick, and Capri gave them both a reassuring smile. "Cody, you'll have a little pain, on and off, for several months. Nick, you know the techniques to bring him relief when needed. You don't need me anymore, guys. You two can take it from here."
Capri folded her table and headed out, and Nick followed her to the door. "Are you sure?" he asked in a low voice. "He hurt so much for so long, and it's only been three sessions. Maybe he still needs you."
Capri paused with one foot on the companionway, smiling over her shoulder. "I'm sure, Nick. Believe me... you're everything Cody needs."
Capri sketched a wave to his shocked face and headed up to her beat-up yellow Ford. As she got in, she saw that Cody had come out to join Nick on deck, and they were both staring after her.
The old engine started on the first try for once, and Capri pulled out and headed slowly up toward the road. She glanced in her rear-vision mirror in time to see Nick slide his arm around Cody's shoulders, and Cody raise his left hand in farewell.
Capri gave a heartfelt toot, then gunned the engine and swung the little car out onto the boulevard, and out of sight.