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Chapter 4: Flutter

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Astrid sits on the edge of the table and crosses her legs, staring down at her swinging toes for a moment before uncrossing them and leaning back, hands planted against the padding behind her. Dr. Haddock is taking forever and she wonders what he could possibly be doing. The receptionist took her back to the room today, and she's already picking it apart, wondering where he is, where he could have run off to.

She's still got that dream on her brain, and it has her wondering if she's at all right, if she's anywhere close to guessing what he looks like under his clothes. She wonders why she's thinking about it so damn much, thinking about him so much. The way that he lolls her head side to side, making pleasant conversation in the few seconds before that delicious crack.

The way his hands feel against her ears, against her shoulders, against her hips, so close to something worth grabbing before letting go with a crackle and a release.

She cracked her knuckles yesterday and almost had to leave class.

Dr. Haddock walks in a few minutes later, chart in hand as he jots down a few notes, letting the door fall shut behind him and greeting her with a pleasant smile.

"How is the back feeling? I wasn't expecting you back so soon, I thought you were making an appointment for Friday?" He sets the file down on the counter and walks around behind her and pats the table, indicating for her to scoot back. She listens, stifling a shiver as his hands land against her shoulders, probing, cautious. He tracks her ribs down her back and she sits up impossibly straight, breathing in the electricity racing down her spine. "Tired today?"

"Huh?"

"Did I just ask myself how your back is feeling? Because I thought that was out loud."

"Oh, it feels fine," she actively tries not to lean back into his fingers as he ghosts her lower back, hands sliding to cup either side of her waist, assessing if they're even.

"I thought I'd be seeing you on Friday?" She nods along for a second before he clears his throat.

"Oh, right. I…it felt a little strange this morning, kind of loose." It's a lie, she felt the best she has since the accident this morning, loose in the best way possible.

"That's normal after an adjustment," he presses his thumbs deep into that recently wounded section of her spine and her toes curl in her tennis shoes. She almost closes her eyes, and he hasn't even popped anything yet.

"How long have you been doing this?" She asks, looking back over her shoulder at him. He grabs the back of her head and gently aims her head back straight, adjusting the back of her neck straight and tall with a careful finger grip.

"I graduated chiropractic school last year," he slides further down, hands on either side of her hips. "You're a little out of whack here, I don't think I noticed the tilt in your hips with the back staring me in the face."

"My hips tilt?" She wants to make it sound good somehow, and the urge to ask him if he likes her hip tilt is a little too strong.

"Don't sound so worried, I can have you straight and even in a few visits, it's a common problem, most people never notice but it can leave your back vulnerable."

Guess not.

"You can fix it?"

"No problem," she can hear the smile in his voice as he slides two fingers around the sides of her hips, towards her upper thigh, and she can feel his breath against the back of her neck. He has to feel how quickly her heart is pounding. She wants to point it out.

This is ridiculous.

"How many visits do you think?"

Really ridiculous. She needs to go out more, but between visits to Dr. Haddock and practices, she doesn't have time to think, let alone accompany Ruffnut out at night. Not to mention the fact that she hasn't been sleeping…

"I can't be sure until I try a couple of times," he mutters mostly to himself, stepping away and walking the long way around the table, stopping to stare at her chart for a moment. "Lay down for me."

God, that sounds good.

"Ok," Astrid agrees, swinging her feet for a second before turning to lay down with her head at the end of the table, shifting her shoulders against the padding to get comfortable. He walks over and stands by her feet, tugging on them and grinning.

"Loosen up," he urges her and she exhales, trying to relax. "Thank you…and there we go…yup, right there, you've got a nice rotation in your hips." He pats the bottom of her foot, almost friendly, very strange, and he walks up to her head. "I'm going to work top down here, so I don't over-adjust, let's see if it's some sort of systematic kink."

Again, systematic kink, this is all sounding really good.

He stands like he always does at the head of the bed, so close that she can smell him, like soap and hand sanitizer and something she can't quite define. She breathes a little too deeply and fakes a dramatic exhale, shaking her hands out.

"The neck still makes me nervous."

He grins down at her, cupping his hands on either side of her temples and rocking her head slowly side to side.

"You've been watching too many action movies. Trust me, your neck is a little stronger than one solid…" he twists her head to one side and pressure she didn't know she was carrying releases from her top vertebrae with a gunshot pop. "Crack."

"It seems like it shouldn't be so loud," she shivers, stiff under his grip when he starts lolling her head again, rolling it from palm to palm.

"Nah, those are the good noises. That's a good quarter inch I just put into your neck there, you're going to feel so much taller," he teases, hand slipping behind her head to rub briefly at a her stiff muscle before returning to the slow sway. She exhales and he snaps hard to the other side, five pops ringing out in succession. She sighs and wipes sweaty palms on the sides of her jeans. "There we go, go ahead and sit up, and we'll try to work that down." He pats her shoulder and she grins too wide, sitting astride the narrow table. "You're always so happy after the neck part."

"Hey, you've only been doing this for a year, what if there's still some neck-breaking tradition you haven't heard about?"

"Oh, I've heard about it," he walks to stand beside her, reaching across to grab her shoulder and pivoting her towards him, turning her chin with a single finger and pulling the motion through, coaxing three pops out of her upper spine. He's magical. "It happens at your second anniversary, but it's always a man in his early fifties. You're safe."

"That's comforting," she laughs, bending as he bows her back straight backwards, pressing her shoulders towards the bed until two more gentle pops slink through her spine. And she thought she felt good when she woke up. "But I won't send my dad your way."

"Unless he's got scoliosis or osteoporosis, I probably couldn't help," he laughs, walking around to her other side and angling her chin again, finger blistering against her face. "I'm only now breaking into sports."

"So I'm a guinea pig? That's also comforting." He twists her towards him, and her back releases further, bending more easily when he bows her back towards the bed.

"There we go…" he grins and helps her sit back straight, anticipating her bobble at the strange give in her tendons. "Come down here and sit at the edge of the table, knees lined up," he instructs, again staring at her chart. She wonders what he's looking for. "But yeah, I'm just breaking into sport."

"What do you like more?" She asks before thinking about it, staring up at him as he pushes her back gently to lay down and picks up one of her knees, pressing it to her chest before bringing it up and out, leaning against it with his hips.

Whoa. This suddenly went somewhere…weird.

His hand is anchored on her thigh, keeping it stuck as he presses her leg…oh, really? He's doing that, he mutters frustrated to himself and crooks her knee to a ninety degree angle, leaning on the back of her thigh for a moment until another firecracker blares into the room. He almost delicately plucks his hands from her and lifts her leg back to her chest, pressing it in multiple directions and inciting a few little crackles. He puts her leg back down and scribbles something in her chart before turning back and answering her question.

"Which do I like more? Pediatric is probably my favorite, it sounds…well, kids are more moldable, you know? Between my orthotics guy and I, we can really fix a lot of childhood problems." He repeats the strange motion with her other leg and she can't help but focus on the way that she can feel his hipbone under his belt, against a spot so high on her leg she's not even sure if it's considered thigh.

This hip is quieter, more of a fizzle than a bang, but he gets bigger pops in the other three corners of the compass, pushing from a handhold behind her knee with a firm grip.

"What after pediatric?"

"I'm coming to like sport," he shoots her a glance she can't quite decipher before scribbling something down and walking back over to her. "And pardon my reach," he reaches between her legs and under her ass, hands wrapping around her waist and bowing her slightly. She barely has time to notice that the position elevates something very important towards his mouth before a pop explodes from her spine, reverberating alarmingly in the base of her skull. "There we go, full spine today, how does the lower back feel?" She sits up and shrugs, but he doesn't see because he's back staring at the counter, clicking his pen against the manila.

"What's going on with my file today? You've been looking at it more and more, does something not make sense?" He turns around too quickly and shrugs.

"Nothing strange…it's just—it's like I said, you're my first sport case, I'm trying to get my bearings?"

"Is that a question?" She laughs and he shakes his head, walking around behind her and grabbing patting the table in front of him.

"Back to me? I haven't done your shoulders before, have I?"

"No…do they need it?" She listens anyway, spinning a quarter turn on the table and backing up towards that warmth. He pulls one of her arms back and loops his through it, pulling her gently up and in and stringing a shocking pop out of the joint.

"Feels like they do. That's the thing about sport, it's more trauma than anything else, you're young and strong and you move like a…practice dummy." He explains, grabbing her other arm and doing the same thing before touching her elbows together behind her back and lifting both forearms up at the same time. This is…this is oddly hot.

He plants the palm of his hand in the middle of her back and presses forward. Something she can't quite identify lets loose and she yelps, coughing with the sensation reverberating through her chest.

"Ooh—"

"Are you ok?" He stops, letting her arms down slowly and walking around to stand in front of her. "That was a rib pop, the first time that happens it hurts a little bit—"

"I'm fine," she shakes her head and takes a deep breath, grinning when she can almost feel her chest expand further, lungs stretching pleasantly. "That...whoo. That really opened it up, didn't it? Yeah, that was a good one."

He grins and her heart stutters in her chest.

"Careful. You're an addict now, you'll be back every week."

"I'll be back every day," she jokes, even though it's true. She's going to make her appointment for tomorrow on the way out. "I can tell you're excellent, but how did you get your own practice a year out of school?"

She finds herself leaning forward, interested in the answer as he goes back to check her chart one last time.

"I was lucky enough to get a loan on this practice from a retiring teacher, he had a lot of pediatric patients and no one else was interested. It's not…the glitziest department," he shrugs. Who pops his back? Is there a secret ring of chiropractors somewhere that all work on each other?

"It's sweet."

And that's a compliment.

"I—It's my dad's influence, probably," he's still smiling, but he looks a bit more tired, a bit closer fulfilling that age gap between them. "He's a small family doctor in a town about four hours away. And he really…it's that whole, small town, cradle to grave sort of place and…"

"No, I get it. Following in his footsteps," she fills it in, and he brightens for a moment before closing her file, slow and measured. "Is that it for today?"

"Yeah, make your next appointment at the desk…and yadda yadda, you know how to do this."

"Friday, still?" She asks, sliding off of the bench and assessing for what feels like the hundredth time that she comes up to his bottom lip. She doesn't know why she cares.

Everyone is the same height lying down, aren't they?

And that's absolutely all she's thinking about.

"That's three times this week, you can start to get sore from the adjustments," he cautions, and it might be her imagination, but he looks hopeful.

"I feel great. I haven't felt this great in…well, ever. Who knew four years of hard hits could accumulate?" She edges towards the door, taking her time.

"I did," he grins cheekily. "Friday it is, Ms. Hofferson, I will see you then."

"Yeah, Dr. Haddock."

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