“I do run hot,” he confirms semi-solemnly, fighting back a grin that will give his game away before the joke has a chance to land. Which would be a shame, he thinks, as he pauses for effect. “I also walk hot, dance hot, and climb up rock walls hot. That’s probably important for your notes.”
He hasn’t seen the shift in her expression yet, not with her eyes turned away from his as she studies his leg. But when she delivers her diagnosis, he does hear it in her tone.
It knocks him off balance, the sudden seriousness of it. Enough that it takes him a moment or two to process the words and not just the shift away from their jovial, flirtatious banter.
Broken? He’d broken his leg?
Evan’s broken bones before. He was a clumsy kid with scrawny little fawn legs that didn’t work the same way everyone else’s did; who kept trying to do things one way when his body was set up to do things its own way; who had an extreme affinity for heights that was perilously combined with the recklessness of youth. He’s also a shameless showboater now, who pushes himself too hard to keep upping the ante in his routines to stay at the top of the lineup. And to stay in their benefactor’s good graces.
He’s taken his fair share of tumbles, and he can confidently say that this doesn’t feel like a break. Not anymore, at least. Not since Daniel had attended to him. He’d felt so fortunate–aside from the mortifying embarrassment of falling in front of the big boss–that Mr. Romano had been there that day to take care of him so quickly. To wipe the pain away like nothing so instantly, when they sometimes had to call him in on his leisure time to come help with these situations, after exhausting their own first aid attempts.
Evan can still walk and run, if a little gingerly. Jumping’s been more difficult–the landings have been much harder to stick lately–sure, but a break? No, that can’t be right. It’s totally just a sprain, if anything at all.
Frowning, he reaches out with one hand to touch where Darcy’s fingers are, letting her practiced hand guide his digits over where she’d felt the supposed fracture. And he takes the other hand to the same spot on the other leg to compare.
For the first time in a long while, his silver tongue struggles with his words. It’s hard to deny what he’s feeling with his own hands, both of which are still exploring the differences in temperature, in relative swelling, and in the structure underneath the skin. But it’s harder to juxtapose that against his lack of pain that edges on a sort of euphoria.
“I’ve had a broken leg before, doc. It didn’t feel like this.” He shakes his head for good measure, lifting a hand to his beard in thought. “There’s no way it’s broken.”
And yet, he continues to finger the break line.
His mind wars with itself, going back and forth with the new information.
Because if it’s broken, he’s been training and performing on it while it's broken. He’s taken no precautions whatsoever. He’s leapt and danced and crashed around the ring until Meryem had finally had enough of his failure to perform. How much worse could that have made it? If. If it’s broken.
But it isn’t. It can’t be. Daniel had numbed him to set the bone, made him look away, and moments later all was well. He was bearing weight on it just fine without even a twinge of discomfort or residual numbness.
“Daniel fixed my last break. Months ago.” Long enough, Evan knows from experience that that shouldn’t be the issue here. “Are you sure you’re not just feeling like, scar tissue?” Evan thinks of the scar tissue on his chest and how raised some of it is. How it would feel under his skin instead of a part of it. “Is that a thing? With broken bones? I’m prone to keloids.”