Avery Jones (sanandum) wrote in commandhq, @ 2018-03-02 18:18:00 |
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Avery rubbed her hand over her face and stretched her arms over her head as she stepped out of the stairwell and turned into the hallway that contained her barracks. She was tired, partly because she’d been in the gym that morning with Lucas - who had been making her run - and she’d seen a couple of folk who had been injured in the hologym. She’d headed back to her room with the intention of sleeping until the early evening but there was a crack of light underneath Theo’s door, so she changed her plans at the last minute and let her feet carry her to Theo’s door.
She pushed it open without knocking and closed it behind herself, eyes widening comically when she realised that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Her cheeks flushed and she stood stock still for a moment, staring dumbly at him before turning around quickly and looking at the wood of the door.
“Sorry- I- shit- sorry, I didn’t- I’ll turn around again when you’re all… decent and stuff.”
Theo had in fact just stepped out of a shower when Avery let herself into his room which normally wasn’t a problem as they did have an open door policy when clad in nothing but a pair of low hanging sweatpants and nothing else then it became something more an issue.
“Shi-” was halfway out of his mouth when he realised he was no longer on his own but then Avery had caught herself and was now blushing quite ferociously so he just shook his head. “You’re lucky you didn’t come in any earlier.” Because if she had she definitely would have seen a whole lot more of Theo.
He soon tugged on a t-shirt and raked his still damp hair into a low ponytail. “You can look now, I’m decent.”
“You promise?” Avery asked, because honestly that was more of Theo than she probably should have seen. She knew that when the team trained together they saw each other in various states of undress all the time but it was still weird for Avery and honestly seeing people half-naked felt like an invasion of their privacy and maybe she should have knocked?
She chewed on her lower lip, tapped her fingers on the door and then turned around again in a smooth move that would have been impressive if she hadn’t slightly overshot the turn and ended up doing just over 180 degrees.
He had a t-shirt on now, that was good. Yep. All was right in the world now.
“Maybe we need a ‘I’m naked don’t come in’ signifier too, on the door, you know? So that I don’t walk in like that again. I’m so sorry, Theo,” she babbled, still a little pink-cheeked. “I- I’m sorry.”
Theo shook his head with a chuckle. “It’s alright, honestly. I mean could’ve been a whole lot worse.” Plus it was Avery, it wasn’t like her to intend on doing anything that might upset or offend people. “But next time I’ll put something on the handle or something so you know to come back a bit later if that would help?”
He ushered her into his room.
“What’s up?”
So ushered, Avery sat down on the edge of the bed and toed off her sneakers, wriggling up and flopping backwards, effectively claiming half of the space as hers. “Does something need to be up for me to come see you?” she asked, “There was no telenovela drama when I burst into your room today, can’t we assume that means everything’s A-OK and I just wanted to come and hang with my best Theo dude?”
She didn’t proper herself up on her elbows, she just looked at him from where she’d laid back with her hair fanned out underneath her head.
Theo gathered up the towel from where he’d left it on the ground and then draped it over the nearby chair before he watched with some amusement as Avery made herself perfectly comfortable on his bed. “Alright, alright,” he said as he lifted his hands to signal his surrender before he padded over barefoot to join her on the bed where he too laid back.
At this point he turned his head to look at her.
“You doing okay?”
Avery turned her head to look at Theo and nodded, “Yeah?” she asked, because she was okay she was just sore and tired and sometimes she thought that maybe there was a line that should be drawn as to when people came to see her but she wasn’t going to be the one to draw it and maybe it wasn’t actually necessary.
“Mm,” she added a moment later, looking back up at the ceiling in the hopes that he wouldn’t notice the way she winced ever so slightly with the movement, “yeah, ‘m fine. Lucas had me in the gym earlier. Sometimes I hate him. I had to run, Theo. I was running.”
“Just checking,” Theo said with a pointed look because he knew Avery and knew her well enough to know that she’d overextend herself if it meant helping somebody else. It irritated him that people just didn’t think.
Of course as she moved there was a wince and his eyes immediately narrowed in suspicion.
“Pretty sure that’s what you’re supposed to do in the gym.” Now Theo rolled over until he was facing her, his head propped up in the palm of his hand. “I’m pretty sure that isn’t why you’re wincing though.”
“It’s evil that he makes me go to the gym,” she complained, “It’s not like I need to be able to run for my life on a mission or anything. God, the last time I was on a mission I nearly blew it because I tripped over.” She grimaced in memory of the last time she had been off the base. “You’d think I’d be going stir crazy,” she blithely ignored the comment about wincing, because if she just kept talking maybe he’d forget and let it drop. “But I guess I don’t know anything else so I don’t really know what I’m missing. In every area of life, I suppose.”
She blew out a breath. “The SEA’s meant to be going through soon,” she told him, “isn’t it? I thought so, anyway. I mean the young people are all talking about it.”
“I’ve been plenty of missions,” Theo pointed out. “Running comes in handy.” And she clearly didn’t know Theo very well because he was stubborn and not easily swayed, Avery might be trying to gloss over the wince but he was still very much focused on it. Just needed the right moment.
He shrugged his shoulders. “If I were a betting man I definitely wouldn’t call that a sure thing.” It was realism on his part rather than pessimism, Theo just didn’t think the world would be that willing to turn over a new leaf.
“So, why the wince?”
Avery thought it was a skill that Theo could shrug his shoulders so effortlessly from a position where he was lying down. She couldn’t do that without rucking the sheets up underneath herself but then she hadn’t tried all that often. She wasn’t ever really joined in her room, and her time in here with Theo was precious to her. She didn’t want to fill it with anything that might make him worry about her. She was annoyed that she hadn’t been able to control the flicker of pain on her face more than she was that he’d caught it.
“Other than the fact that I was forced to do gym stuff? Gruelling routine that my body is definitely not used to?” Avery asked, “And I don’t go out on missions, like, ever, so I don’t need to know how to run.” She lifted one leg in the air, “Does this leg look like the leg of someone who would ever willingly run?”
She sighed, knowing now that Theo wasn’t going to let it go. “Sprained upper back and neck muscles,” she told him. “Partly my own, partly from the tear I healed earlier.”
Theo turned his gaze to the leg being presented to him and chuckled at her comments before his attention latched onto the fact she was hurting. Both because she’d been training and she’d also healed somebody’s injury, again.
“Whereabouts?” He inquired, tilting his head in consideration.
Avery waved a hand, vaguely gesturing to her left shoulder area though she was lying on her back. “They took a dodgy fall, dislocated their shoulder so we popped it back in and then I fixed the torn rotator cuff and muscle across the shoulder-blade.” She waved her hand again, this time dismissively. “It’s no big, it’ll go away soon. Then I’ll just be left with the results of my horrendous unfitness. Which is the rest of the ache.”
She wrinkled her nose and then turned her head back to Theo. “Your hair’s gonna leave a wet patch on the bed.”
“Well it is my bed,” Theo pointed out with a distinctly unimpressed expression. “That makes it okay.” He blew out a breath and shifted to be in a seated position before he gestured for Avery to do the same.
He had a very “do not argue with me” expression on his face.
Avery groaned dramatically, “Please don’t make me move.” He might have had his ‘do not argue with me’ face on but Avery pouted her lower lip a little in response. “I can’t move now, I’m stuck.”
Theo rolled his eyes at Avery’s dramatics and merely gestured for her to turn over because she could at least do that with limited complaint. Hopefully.
Avery barely hesitated before she did as she was told and rolled over onto her stomach, wriggling a little so she didn’t fall off the edge of the bed. She settled herself again and then, a moment later, lifted her head to look at Theo as much as she could from the awkward position.
“Why am I doing this? We were comfy.”
“You talk too much,” Theo pointed out with a smirk as he moved that bit closer. “Anybody ever tell you that?” He then rubbed his hands together until he was certain his hands were warm rather than cold - not that he needed to worry because Theo always ran hot - and with an unsurprisingly strong hands he began to work Avery’s left shoulder with the press of thumbs and smoothing of fingertips.
Sometimes the best cure for aching muscles was massage and he had been told in the past he gave a fairly decent one.
“No, I don’t think anyone’s ever told me that I talk too mu-umph-” Avery’s words were muffled when Theo started applying pressure to her shoulder because the movement pushed her face into the bed. She quickly turned her head properly again so that she wasn’t being suffocated by Theo’s sheets (and also so that she didn’t end up drooling on them or something equally offensive).
As his fingers dug into her muscles, she let out another sound, this time more like an audible grimace, fingers flexing. She’d only really ever had shoulder massages from Hector, and they’d always felt… different. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why.
“You know you don’t gotta do this, right?”
“Yep,” Theo offered simply as it said everything that needed to be said, he was after all a man of few words and one could easily do the work of many. His face was a picture of concentration as he sought out sore muscles and worked his thumb and fingers over them in the hopes of making it feel better.
The more he rubbed the warmer his hands seemed to become, warmth clearly evident through the fabric of Avery’s top and present with every press and pass of his hands over Avery’s shoulder.
“Lemme know if it gets too painful.”
Avery fell quiet while Theo’s hands worked over her sore shoulder, his fingers digging into and finding parts of the muscles that were painful, testing and working out the knots there that had been partly from her terrible posture, partly from her rigorous exercise regime that Lucas had put her through and partly from the damage she’d absorbed earlier that day that still hadn’t disappeared.
“I’ve had worse,” she told him, though that didn’t stop her from flinching every now and then under his touch when he caught on something painful. She turned her face into the sheets, breathing in deeply and trying her best to be brave and ignore the more tender parts. It was easier to know that Theo wasn’t trying to hurt her, but help.
And in fact, the more he worked over her shoulder, the sleepier and warmer she felt. Like, all over.
She hummed contentedly, awkwardly reaching up to rest her hand on Theo’s knee.
“Not sure if that makes me feel better,” Theo replied with a rueful smile as he continued to focus his time and attention on the shoulder. It was as he felt something jump under his thumb that Theo removed one hand and one hand only, fingers extending until he latched onto the ball of metal he had resting on his desk. Under his influence it dissolved into a puddle before with the smallest ministrations he began to break it up into smaller puddles until those same puddles began to take the form of balls and once complete he pulled them to where he was.
He twisted his hand and as he did the balls fell into place and alignment with the tips of all fingers and thumbs. “This is going to feel a little weird,” he advised Avery as he then with the opening and flexing of his hand pressed the metal #into Avery’s shoulder and moved in slow circular movements not too dissimilar from a shiatsu massager.
Avery lifted her head, turning it to look at him. “You’re not wrong,” she muttered, face returning to being pressed into the sheets as the magnetic massager pressed into her shoulder. She mumbled into the sheets and flexed her fingers where they were resting on Theo’s knee.
She did miss the warmth of his hand, but the new sensation was just as peculiar as he had expected it to be but she could still feel it pushing into her sore muscles.
She was half tempted to tell him that her legs were sore, too, but she refrained.
“D’you do this on yourself?” she asked him, words muffled by the sheets. “No wonder you’re never sore.”
Theo glanced to where Avery’s hand was on his knee and used that as a sort of guide on whether or not the massage was doing what it should. “Mhm,” he replied with a nod of his head. “I’m pretty good at self care.” And he was, especially as he’d been doing it a long time.
“How’s it feeling?” He asked, the balls continued to work under Theo’s influence as he shifted and shaped them as needed when he needed to get at a particularly tight muscle and the pressure increased or lessened depending on what Theo could feel with his other hand.
Avery hummed, “‘s nice,” she admitted. And it was. It was nice as much because of the massage as it was that she was getting to spend some time with Theo on her own. Theo was one of her favourite people in the world, along with Lucas and Hector and Marigold - though she’d just been transferred out again and that had made Avery sad because they hadn’t even had a chance to catch up. Getting to spend time with her people - who often had other friends - always meant a lot to her. “Weird, but nice.”
It was the kind of massage she saw on TV, different to the sitting-up shoulder rubs that she got from Hector when he was fussing over her and certainly different to when she used a tennis ball and a flat surface to try and ease her knotted shoulders.
“Kinda thing I could get used to,” she said, following it up very quickly with, “not that I will, or anything, I promise.”
“I think I’ll take that as a compliment,” Theo replied with a smirk. Weird, but nice. A lot worse things that it could be called. He withdrew the balls and then left them rotating in the air as he pressed both hands back into Avery’s shoulder, using his fingertips to feel out if he’d gotten deep enough and released most if not all of the tension. “It feels better,” he shared with a nod. “A lot less tense than when I started.”
He shifted a little and then with a final push used the balls to catch on a remaining tight muscle he felt under her shoulder blade and it was only after he was certain that it had been worked out that he withdrew them, returning them to their original location.
“You doing alright?”
Avery hummed contentedly, her hand gently squeezing Theo’s knee in an assertion that she was alright. She actually felt kinda sleepy, if she was honest, sleepy and limp like a noodle.
“‘s definitely a compliment,” she drawled, turning her head once more to look at Theo. “You’re good at that.”
Theo chuckled and leaned back to rest his back against the wall, head tilting to meeting Avery’s gaze. “I don’t give just anyone massages you know.” That was much the same with a lot of things with Theo, he was quite selective with his attention.
“You look like you could fall asleep.”
“You don’t?” Avery asked, blinking sleepily at Theo and squeezing his knee gently in appreciation, patting it a moment later. “Not even your, uh, beneficial friends?”
She hummed, “I could definitely take a nap,” she said, “but my bedroom’s so far away.” And her body felt so relaxed she doubted her muscles would even hold her up anymore.
“Whole different kind of massage,” Theo assured her with a smirk before he took a hold of a pillow and moved it to where Avery could rest her head. “So get some sleep, not going to hold it against you.”
Plus she healed a lot of injuries, that had to be exhausting.
“Won’t tell a soul, promise.”
Avery reached out and took the pillow when Theo gave it to her. She smiled up at him and rolled onto her side a little, tucking one arm under the pillow and curling her knees up.
“Well, you’ve just had a shower and a work-out, right? You wanna nap with me? I won’t tell anyone,” she added cheekily, “not a soul.”
Theo eyed Avery and snorted at her suggestion that he napped with her. It was tempting. Really tempting. And he could trust Avery to keep this between them, she wasn’t the sort to gossip.
He pushed a breath, rolled his eyes and pulled another pillow towards him this time and proceeded to lay his head down, weight resting on his side.
“I’ve a moody reputation to maintain.”
Avery chuckled and turned over, wriggling a little until she caught the blanket that was folded at the bottom of Theo’s bed with her feet. She’d toed her boots off and dragged the blanket up, covering herself and - after a few moments of fussing - Theo as well.
“I know,” she told him, turning her back to him and wriggling a little closer. It was chilly in his room and he was warm. “Promise, it’ll stay between us.”
Theo watched with some amusement as Avery fussed with the blanket and it wasn’t long until they were both covered and somehow she’d gotten even closer. Sneaky Avery was Sneaky.
“Just between us,” he echoed as he rested his head back down and looped his arm around Avery’s waist before he closed his eyes, relaxing and letting sleep overwhelm him.
Thankfully he trusted Avery so he could relax with her.