"What is this for, again?" Chuck huffed behind his handler. Casey had woken him up before dawn could even think about cracking, shoved a pack on his back, and dragged him into the woods.
"Don't you listen, Bartowski?" Chuck watched as Casey stopped walking and turned around, making him skid before nearly slamming into that brick wall of a man. "Survival training."
Chuck groaned.
"Quit whining," Casey snapped. "It's just basics today, so you probably won't break anything vital." Lowering his voice, Chuck watched as Casey curled his lip at him, "But with you, I never know."
"I heard that!" Chuck attempted to cross his arms, but the large hiking pack on his pack restricted his shoulders from moving too much. He grunted and tried again to no avail, he settled on putting his hand on his hips and glaring at Casey. Casey glared back. Averting his eyes, Chuck continued, "I just don't understand why you've dragged me into the woods this early."
Casey grunted and smirked, "Would you have preferred being lost in the woods at night instead of morning?"
"No." Chuck looked back up the hill at his handler, panicked at that key word, "Wait, what do you mean 'lost'? You aren't leaving me out here by myself, are you?" Chuck's voice had gone up an octave at the end of the sentence at Casey's notion. "You wouldn't do that! Can't do that, Casey!"
"Stop your whining!" Casey sauntered down the slight incline of the hill they stood on and grabbed Chuck by the shoulders hauling him up to where he stood before. "We'll start with the simple stuff today, work onto harder things tomorrow and so on." Casey let go of Chuck. He heard a large thunk behind him and guessed Casey had taken his pack off and dropped it on the ground.
Chuck turned around and looked for a pulley system or torture devices leaning on the giant trees. But all he found was Casey popping his wrists and cracking his knuckles one by one.
The agent waved his hand at Chuck, "Let's go princess, take off the pack and loosen up your joints. Start off with stretches."
Chuck quickly whipped his pack off and started rolling his neck and stretching his shoulders- he'd do anything to get that thing off his back. After a few moments, Chuck began to feel a little insecure doing physical things alongside Casey. The other man was so much more experienced at these sorts of things, yeah, Chuck had gone through P.E. in middle and high school, but he had never gotten into it like Casey obviously had. As Chuck started rolling his wrists and ankles to get them loosened up, he watched as Casey began to twist his abdomen to pop his back, then plant his feet, square his shoulders and stretch his arms behind his back as far as he could.
Chuck frowned and tried to copy him. He straightened up and interlocked his fingers behind his back and jutted his chest out, hoping to stretch something. He let go when he felt something pop, catching a rather amused grunt from Casey's direction.
"How long are we going to be out here?" He didn't want to sound whiny, but it came out that way. "How much stretching do we really need to do, Casey?"
"We'll be out here for 8 or 9 hours, so I'd say stretch all the muscles you can name." Casey grinned impishly, or on him it was more like a wolfish smile- the smile right before eating Little Red Ridinghood.
"9 hours!" A few resting birds flew away at his shout. "But I can't name any muscles!"
"Than you're in for a pretty rough day, champ." Casey began to stretch his legs with lunges. He sighed as Chuck attempted to crack his knuckles. "Just… Come over here, and copy what I do."
Chuck didn't smile as he walked over. If he smiled, it'd just make him look even more unsure of himself. He stood on Casey's right side and they silently loosened up the muscles in their calves and thighs. As Chuck turned around to do the same exercise to his other leg, he felt an awful burn explode in his groin- right where his left leg came up and made his hip.
"Ahh!" Chuck brought his hands down to clutch at his side as he slowly knelt down. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"
"What the hell'd you do now, Bartowski?" Casey growled and whirled down on him. His large hand clamped down on the back of Chuck's neck, hairs standing on end at the touch.
"Gah! It feels like I broke a muscle!" Chuck shut his eyes and curled up on the ground, but he landed on his left side, causing the muscle to spasm more. "Ahhh!" His leg shot out and connected with Casey's shin. Casey grunted and reached down to grab Chuck, who had rolled to his right side so he could start to rub at his left hip.
"Would you hold still, you idiot?" Casey crouched next to Chuck and grabbed the smaller man's leg and covered his slender fingers with his own larger ones. He began to knead Chuck's hip. "You probably didn't even pull it. When you use muscles you never typically use, they tend to pop a bit or get sore the next day."
Chuck's face relaxed as Casey rubbed out the small spasms rocketing through his lower left side. He slipped his hand out from underneath Casey's so only his fingers were working the muscle.
"Uh-huh", Chuck groaned as the pain soon left him. "That's real interesting Casey." His foot twitched and brushed against the agent's ankle.
Casey frowned as the man on the ground clearly wasn't paying attention to him, and therefore didn't react to the shot he took at him. "Did you hear what I said, Chuck", he tried again, "I said the reason this occurred was because you probably haven't been using your muscles lately." Chuck felt Casey squeeze his hip gently. That was very true he hadn't been using those hip muscle for anything besides walking and sitting. And running. He was running for his life thanks to this lump of meat nearly every day of the week.
He opened his eyes and blinked up at Casey, his square head blocking out most of the rising sun. "I use'm everyday."
"Nah." Casey dug his fingers into that left hip, and Chuck wrinkled his nose, stretching out the other leg as Casey kneaded the muscle back into its original state. "You aren't using… these", Casey shifted his hand down Chuck's leg and into his inner thigh, "muscles very often, are ya slugger?"
The sliding motion made Chuck's eyes shoot open and he snatched Casey's wrist. His brain registered the words as his heart suddenly beat staccato. "Alright, NSA badass, why don't you insult me when I'm not in pain? Make me feel a little better about myself." Chuck let go of Casey's wrist and the meaty fingers pushed off his legs, letting him stand. As he brushed off the back of his pants, Chuck wouldn't meet Casey's eyes, "Irony not intended."
"Heh," Casey grunted. He walked in front of Chuck and led him over to a big tree. Well, not big by Californian standards- actually quite small in comparison to the giant redwoods and sequoias. Chuck trudged his feet as he fiddled with his sore muscle and made his way up to Casey, who in turn grabbed his forearm and hauled him up beside him. "Alright, Boy Scout," Casey swatted Chuck's back, and pushed him toward the tree, fingers sliding down and off of the Nerd Herder. "Climb on up."
Chuck's hearing had been turned off at all this touching from Casey. Chuck knew the man was more hands on in his work, never verbally expressing himself. The tips of his ears burned, and he could feel his neck turning red. "You want me to what?"
"Climb the tree, Bartowski." Casey grinned at him and planted his hand on the tree's bark and hauled himself up into the V'd trunk of the tree. Chuck watched as his huge handler straddled the tree like a horse. An image of Casey in fringed chaps and a cowboy hat made him smile and blush. "Being a spy isn't always shootouts in abandoned wear houses and car chases down the highway or even getting the girl." Casey raised his leg and planted one foot on either trunk and raised himself up grabbing the tree until he looked like a crouching Greek-god turned gargoyle. "Being a spy sometimes means running away from the bad guy in different settings and hiding your ass before he kills you."
"I've seen you run away from pinkos and Frenchies on docks, ware houses, down the street, in a train, and during consulate dinners. But it's much harder to get to safety when you're in plain sight." Casey stood up, feet still planted on the split tree's trunks, "especially when you're wearing that."
Chuck looked down at his clothes; black Chucks, blue jeans and a yellow Star Trek shirt. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing? It's the red shirts that always die, Casey."
"That shirt is practically neon out here, numbnuts. A bat wouldn't even have to use sonar to see you in that."
Chuck picked at his shirt. "What's your point, Major?"
"My point is," Casey looked up at the branches above his head and began to find one sturdy enough to allow him to swing his weight up. "After you learn how to properly climb a tree, I'm going to hunt you in these woods and you need to not be as easy to find as you are now."
"What?" Chuck squeaked as he watched Casey grab a branch with one hand and wrapped his other arm around the thicker of the two trunks, hauling himself onto another limb.
"Open your ears, Chuck! Start climbing!" With a crack of his neck, Chuck planted his right foot on the bottom of the tree and slapped down where the trunk split in two, pulling himself up.
Twisting and turning, Chuck leaned against the left trunk, his feet resting nearly 90 degrees up against the right one, right underneath Casey's perch. "Alright, bad-ass, what now? Does the hunt begin?" Crossing his arms behind his head, Chuck admired the blue sky expanding behind the leaves of the tree and Casey's large, attractive, obnoxious head.
"Not until you learn to climb this damn tree, Bartowski. Need to obtain high ground and stay out of sight." Casey wrapped those meaty fingers around Chuck's ankle and shoved him out of the tree. "And you'll keep climbing this tree until you beat me to the top. Go!"