This is up a few days early, because I'm leaving for a surprise vacation tomorrow and didn't want to make everyone wait.
And be excited. Stuff is about to go down.
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Chapter 5: Clunk
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"So how did your hips feel yesterday? We've done them two days in a row, aren't they getting sore?" Hiccup asks, setting Astrid's file down on the counter and wishing he could shove a portable cold shower down the front of his damn pants. She must know that this is utterly horrible for him, she must know. This must be intentional evil.
Maybe it's karma, and he killed a nice dragon in a former life as a knight or something.
Who's he kidding? He was the hunchback of Notre Dame.
That thought cools him down enough to receive her answer and he gives her his most attentive face, trying to restrain his heartbeat.
"A little sore, they just feel so much better," she shrugs and swings her legs under the table, back and forth, slowly like she doesn't know what she's doing to him. "I haven't been this flexible since I was in gymnastics." His face goes pale and he clears his throat, trying not to imagine her in one of those shiny little gymnastics uniforms. While being flexible.
She's probably really flexible.
"You did gymnastics, I didn't know that."
"When I was a kid," she shrugs. Never mind, it's creepy to think about it. "I stopped when I was in high school, I got too tall and lacrosse was more my speed anyway."
"You get to tackle people?" He laughs, walking up behind her and stretching her shoulders. Her elbows move easily and he manages one weak pop before giving up on them. Her neck seems absolutely fine, he grabs the back of her head and rolls her neck slowly, feeling for any issues or kinks that he needs to work out. She's perfect.
Well, her neck is perfect.
Not that she isn't perfect, he's just not one to judge that. Her neck is excellent.
"Technically, no. But I do get to carry a big stick." She can't say stuff like that. That's simply not ok at all, she doesn't get to talk about carrying sticks. And gymnastics, even if she was a kid and that's creepy. And while he's thinking about this, she really shouldn't talk about being flexible.
He should put rules up on the wall.
The Astrid Hofferson rules of chiropractic appointments: No being flexible, no gym shorts…he glances at her legs and wonders why the hell she's wearing shorts in the first place. It's March, it snowed a few days ago, it's forty something degrees outside. No shorts of any kind, that's the official rule. No daily appointments, no wearing her hair down, like yesterday. It reaches halfway down her back, an uninterrupted golden curtain, and she kept on having to pull it out of his way. He brushed a lock of it over her shoulder, and it was so unbearably soft and she thanked him—
"Are you alright?" She asks, looking over her shoulder at him with a concerned smile. "You seem sort of out of it today."
"It's just been a long week." He shakes his head and reaches for her shoulders almost habitually, thumbs digging into her trapezius between her shoulder blades and rubbing. She's carrying a lot of tension and he starts massaging her in earnest before his hands freeze against her and he plucks them off with an awkward laugh.
"That felt good, you don't have to stop," she laughs, arching her back towards him in a way that makes his mouth go dry.
"Sorry, I got distracted. Like I said, it's been a long week." He repeats the lamest excuse of all time and walks back over to her file, staring down at it and wishing he had a pen to mime writing.
"Seriously, don't apologize."
Something about her voice makes him turn around and he can't quite place her smile. It's something past polite, something a little towards friendly and he laughs quietly.
"What do you mean, long week?" she asks.
Her. He means her. He means three days in a row of touching her and listening to her laugh while he adjusts her hips and very nearly cups her rear.
Three days in a row where he couldn't sleep, either anticipating it or dreading it or thinking about it. Soon to be three days where he stopped for a drink at the bar on the way home, like the old regulars avoiding wives and loud children and empty homes like his. He almost tells her some of this, all of it, just to see what she'd possibly say.
"Busy week. It's a good thing," he smiles and she returns it, impossibly bright. "I've actually got two new pediatric patients, and that's always hard. Kids are always scared the first time."
"It's not scary."
"Says the woman who still squeaks when I pop her neck."
She glares at him and crosses her arms, raising an offended eyebrow. "I'm just telling the truth." He has to look away, scuffing the toe of his brown leather shoe on the carpet. "Nah, I like first appointments with kids though. They bring Toothless back into the exam room and pet him. I'd like to think that having a cat turns me from a scary doctor to something more…human."
"You aren't a scary doctor."
"You aren't seven."
"That young, huh?" She frowns, eyebrows wonderfully expressive above pools of blue and he keeps talking, even though he should be popping her hips and pretending it's not grabbing her ass.
"They're the lucky ones. When they've got a congenital back issue, they have to get in early. It really helps them later in life."
"You really like your job, don't you?" She smiles at him again, a different brand of strange.
"Wow, I—I think that's the first time anyone has ever pointed that out—"
"Do you really have to be so sarcastic all the time?—"
"No, not sarcasm at all. I honestly don't think anyone's ever—I do like it. I really like it, it's…it's all the good parts of medicine. I can only help, you know?"
"I do," she smiles with one corner of her mouth, obviously sincere. "I didn't even know how messed up my skeleton was until you started fixing it."
"You're not messed up, you just have a sensitive sacroiliac joint that's prone to rotation."
"You lost me," she grins and he blushes, turning halfway around before thinking about it and pointing to the very base of his spine. She looks and he turns back to face her, swallowing a nervous laugh.
"Sorry, I'm really out of sorts today—anyway, the sacroiliac joint is where your spine joins to your hips. Yours tends to rotate to the right, it's probably just in the way you walk, the way your musculature is."
She pauses to think for a moment, nodding along.
"Where is it again?"
"The very base of your spine," he laughs and runs a hand back through his hair. His next appointment will be here in fifteen minutes, and he's mortified at the direction of this conversation, but he doesn't want her to leave.
"So tailbone area or what?"
"Sort of—"
"It's easier when you just show me." She blinks at him and he doesn't move. "Can you show me on me?" She points to her hips and wrinkles her nose, thinking hard. "I know these are my iliac…areas. So it's where my hips meet the base of my spine?"
He nods and she smiles again. "Oh, so it's were my hips meet my spine in the back," she slides off of the table and turns her back towards him, reaching around to point at a spot right above the surprisingly low slung waistband of her gym shorts. "Somewhere right around here?"
His mouth goes dry. He swallows hard and tries not to think that she's the perfect height that he could just walk up behind her and— no.
Does the doctor-patient relationship mean nothing to him?
Apparently not.
"Exactly," he pretends to note something in her file, trying to slow down his breathing. "That's your sacrum, and it's joining with your ilia—your hips—so it's the sacroiliac joint. Scientists aren't horribly creative when it comes to naming. Normally. When they are it's sort of a pain. I think." He can't seem to shove his foot in his mouth fast enough, "It's just kind of a personal opinion, I guess—can you straddle—can you sit back down? One foot on either side of the table?"
She grins at him again before following the instruction and sitting in the middle of the table with one leg on either side.
"My hips need it again?"
"Maybe? They're a little out of whack in the opposite direction, I might have overdone it yesterday, sorry about that."
"No need to apologize. These things take time," she's too comfortable, sitting upright with her damn perfect posture and staring at him. God, those shorts are short for March. They're short for August, but even shorter for March.
No shorts, it should be an overall rule. Number one on the Astrid Hofferson list of chiropractic rules. Number zero.
"Alright then," he rubs his hands together for a second, until it strikes him that they'll be warm against her skin and maybe that's what he's going for. He wipes them on the sides of his jeans and steps up, gently asking her to lay back and bending her knee towards her chest. He averts his eyes from her legs entirely, tries to stop thinking about the soft, silky skin of her calf and the back of her thigh against his fingers.
Her hips pops and she sighs. He nearly drops her. "Probably just one more on this side," he bends her leg out to the side and holds her knee at ninety degrees, hooking one hand behind her knee and pushing it up gently towards her head.
She is flexible.
He can't think about that.
Her hip pops again and she shifts, centering herself on the table. "And other side." Her other leg behaves similarly, and his hands are on fire from the contact when he lets go. He rubs his wrists and stares at her file as she sits up, stretching her arms over her head.
He peeks through the corner of his eye and curses himself, shutting her file with a flushed red hand.
She can't know what she's doing. He hopes she doesn't. He hopes it's all in his head, and just something to deal with. Silently and suffering.
"Much better. Thank you for that."
"It's my job."
"When should I come back?" She grins at him, swinging one long leg over the table to sit on the edge facing the door. He's going to be up all night thinking of long, pale legs. Perfectly muscled and trim and…
She asked him a question.
He should probably answer that.
"Come back? Probably next Monday or Tuesday. But honestly, I should be able to clear you soon, it's looking really good."
She grins at the compliment.
"Nothing like the pinched lumbar nerve I first met. In fact your lumbar spine looks pretty perfect, not that there's anything wrong with your thoracic spine or anything—" he stops and exhales before continuing. "Oh wow, look at the time. It's a…time."
"You are out of sorts today."
"Sorry."
"No, it's…it's cute."
"I think you got me confused with my cat, he'll receive compliments at the front door."
She seems to think for a minute before jumping down from the table and taking two slow steps towards the door. Her fingers twitch at her sides, nearly an involuntary muscle spasm, and she squints at him for a second, biting her lip.
"So…unless something comes up, I'll see you next week."
"What could possibly come up?" He smiles and she returns it, lower lip slipping out from between her teeth.
"I could think up another compliment for Toothless, I guess. Or you."
Kathy knocks on the door and says that his next appointment is here. He must have heard wrong anyway, that's an absolutely bizarre thing for her to say, it makes no sense.
"I'll see you next week, Ms. Hofferson."
"Ok, Dr. Haddock. I'll see you then."
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"It's looking really good, Astrid." He flicks through her file and sets it down, walking towards her and tilting her chin up. It aims her face directly at his and she lets herself look while he's distracted, eyes tracing the strong line of his brow and nose, connecting the freckles along his cheekbones. "I'm not really seeing anything out of place right now, your hips are perfect and your spine is in alignment. I'm going to say one more time this week and then I should be able to clear you for play."
"Really?" She sits up a little straighter and focuses on his big green eyes, despite the impossibly warm hand still against her chin. He seems to notice that he's still touching her and lets go with an adorable hint of a blush.
It makes her want to give him a reason to blush.
Either she's going crazy or he looks better today than normal. It could be her weekend at home, without human contact aside from Ruff and an awkward bowl of cheerios across from her roommate's Saturday night hook up, but Dr. Haddock looks really, really nice today. Maybe it's the mint green pin striped button down, it must set off his eyes. And his freckles.
She bites her lip and watches the slow bend of his arm, the delicious clench of his bicep against the crisp, slim-fitting fabric of his cotton shirt.
"Really, I think it's looking great. Just one more appointment." It feels like an ultimatum and her stomach churns slightly.
She hasn't been out in the last two weekends, now that she thinks about it. And the one before it was unsuccessful, everyone around her seemed bland and loud and drunk and stupid. Maybe they were bland and loud and drunk and stupid. Maybe she's getting too old to meet guys in bars, and she should start trying libraries or 24 hour fitness or…the aquarium. She doesn't know; bars have always been successful since she started trying.
Huh, and the weekend before that, she kept Ruff home and got herself amped up for her Saturday appointment with Dr. Haddock. It seems like longer than that, sitting on this table early in the morning all alone with him and talking about family.
God, no wonder she's having issues with his big green eyes. It's been a while.
The weekend before her Saturday appointment, her back hurt and that was a no go, not to mention it was Valentine's Day and she didn't want to give anyone the wrong idea. He clinically touches either side of her waist, probing gently against the base of her ribs. She shivers.
"Just one more, huh?"
"Until I clear you for competition," his eyes flick to hers and he holds her gaze for a moment too long. "I'm not that great at my job, I'm sure you'll get knocked out of whack at some point and come right back…unless they're recommending a better chiropractor over at State by then."
"Why are you so down on yourself?"
"That's a loaded question," he laughs and walks around behind her, placing gently hands on her hips and holding them even against the surface of the tables.
"Seriously, I think you're great…at being a chiropractor." She catches her mistake and sits up straight. His breath tickles the back of her neck and she bites the inside of her cheek.
"Well, thank you. It's a…frankly, it's a loaded job choice and there's history behind it and I'm...nervous to be taking over someone's practice just a year out of school and I'm venting. I'm sorry."
"I'm a good listener," she offers, looking back at him over her shoulder. "If you ever wanted to vent outside of your office. Sometime." She waits for a long moment before continuing. "I could buy you a drink, maybe. My apartment is…busy, but you could come over sometime."
"That's why I got the cat."
"Isn't drinking with a cat animal abuse?" She tries so earnestly not to be miffed, exhaling a shaky sigh as his hand follow a slow line up to her waist. He presses gently into the curve before pulling away and leaving her squirming.
"Not if it's milk," he glances over at her, and it reminds her of a professor glaring at someone chatting in the back of the room. "And you know I can't take you up on that."
"Fair enough," she looks away, biting the inside of her cheek.
"Anyway, I really do appreciate the offer," he shrugs a bit sheepish. "But I vent too much with you anyway, you're paying to get adjusted, not hear about my life problems."
"I'm sure you could come up with some way to pay me for all the venting." She grins and he blushes so cutely that she's sure he's going to say yes. He glances down at his feet and she slides down off of the table. He doesn't say anything at all, "one more appointment this week then?"
One last chance after today, until it's staging interceptions in bars and wondering why she didn't just grab him and kiss him in the first place.
Why did she ever think he was married? He's obviously too clueless and handsome and…
"One more appointment," he nods, too serious. "Unless you take another hit, I guess."
"I won't." Because that would be the easy way to do this, the cheap way. Only losers need to buy more time on the clock.
She gives him a grin and stares pointedly at the curve of his ass for a moment before walking more confidently towards the door. "I'll see you then, Dr. Haddock."
"Ms. Hofferson."
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"I'm going to go ahead and clear you for the tournament," Hiccup sets the file down with a smile after a moment of joking deliberation. Astrid sits up straight and grins, sliding off of the table and rolling her head from side to side, stretching out her recently relieved joints.
She'd been assuming this would fall through somehow. The best reason would have been that he came to his senses and decided to take his easy way out and keep her coming in. She wouldn't have stood for it of course, because she needs to play in this tournament and she can't lose sight of that, but it would have been good to have some affirmation before she does something crazy today.
Last appointment, just the phrase sounds bittersweet.
"Really? I'm clear?" She makes sure she knows what she's hearing, feeling strong and sure for the first time in weeks. "I can play in the tournament tomorrow? Assuming my coach lets me but—really?" He smiles and nods before the expression falters, freckles on his cheeks drooping with a strange little frown. He's more handsome than ever.
"Yeah, you're looking great. I might want to see you back afterwards, if you take any hard hits, but I'm going to say that you're aligned." He says it like a joke, and she laughs even though it isn't funny, stepping away from the table.
"So I guess this is it, then."
"Oh, come on, Astrid. You'll be around, I'm sure you'll need a shoulder popped in a few weeks after punching someone." His first mistake is resting a not quite platonic hand against her upper arm. She bites her lip and he blanches, hand slipping off of her. She misses it instantly. "And your lumbar spine is probably always going to be a weak spot, you'll be in and out of this office—"
"Dr. Haddock, I—" It's not worth talking about first. She leans in and kisses him, gripping his shoulder for balance and pressing herself closer when he doesn't immediately respond. But then he does, soft and almost uncomfortably sweet as his hand finds her waist, respectful and warm. God, it's better than thinking about it, his mouth fits against hers in a too familiar way and it feels like she's been doing this for years, forever.
He's not so much returning the affection as welcoming it and it sucks the air from her lungs. She wishes the room were darker, warmer, closer, anything but the clinical light shining on the side of her face. It's too loud and not private enough, he might respond in full if they were somewhere isolated. She gasps into his mouth and his hand freezes against her side, warm and dense.
Her hand wraps around the back of his neck and he jerks away, dropping his hand from her hip like she burned him.
"Ms. Hofferson, this isn't appropriate—"
"If I get a hard hit," she cuts him off and steps back, licking her lips and breathing too hard. "I'll call and get an appointment." She leaves before he can say anything else, slipping out into the hallway and pausing briefly to lean against the wall. She wonders if his knees feel unstable too, or if that's just her.
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Astrid checks her phone on the bus back from the game, resting her feet on the seat ahead of her and frowning at the voicemail from Dr. Haddock's office, left yesterday evening while she was trying to clear her head and focus. She elbows Ruffnut to shut her up and presses play, holding the phone to her ear as a blanket of dread settles in the pit of her stomach. She remembers the feeling of Dr. Haddock's lips on hers, his initial hesitance.
'Hi, Astrid, this is Kathy from Dr. Haddock's office, he has just informed me that he can't treat you as a patient anymore due to personal reasons and he wanted me to pass along this list of referrals in the area. There's Dr. Jameson in Lakewood, his phone number is…"
She sets the phone down on her lap and wipes her hand across her face, pressing the pads of her fingers to her eyelids and groaning, head falling back against the seat.
Great.
Personal reasons, like that's not horribly obvious and frustrating and—Great. Just great.
"Everything ok?" Ruffnut asks, picking up her friend's phone and checking for any incriminating texts. Astrid snatches it back and deletes the voicemail, deleting the contact number while she's at it. It feels better to burn this bridge than fix it, even though she's still absolutely stuck on that kiss.
He must have felt it too, at least. If he hadn't cared, he could have just shut her down and…
"Everything is great," she lies. "Perfect. We're going out to celebrate tonight, aren't we?"
"Of course, I'm thinking that new bar I found with the delicious bartender. Why? Are you in?"
"Absolutely," she wipes her hand down her face and swallows, trying to forget how it felt yesterday, the whole month. "I'm in. Let's go get you a bartender."
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Dun Dun Dun….