♜:Shoulder rubs/♣:Back scratches
It was a tense few minutes, Phil sat on the couch trying his damnedest not to fall asleep as he read by the blue glow of his tablet while Jemma worked at the massive holo table, needing the space to organise her thoughts.
But she recognised the signs. She’d seen them before.
"Sir…" she started, hesitant to interrupt for something as irrelevant to their respective tasks as this was. "Forgive me for asking, but… have you not been sleeping well?"
Phil blinked behind the rims of his glasses, making the mental shift between subjects. Admittedly, it was a slower shift than usual at the moment.
"That obvious, hmm?" His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes as he turned back to the tablet.
"If I may…" Jemma stepped from behind the table, still keeping a few steps’ distance. "I think it’s a very simple problem." She realised what she’d said, her conciliatory smile soft. "Partially a very simple problem.” His look said he was listening, so she stepped closer.
"There’s a muscle that looks to be strained, from the way you turn your neck." And though she was no therapist, she’d put Fitz to rights once or twice — so she held up open hands now. "May I?"
"Be my guest," he answered after a moment of hesitation, pulling his jacket off. They didn’t have time for this — they never did — but he’d also kill to get rid of this headache. Excedrin had stopped being so effective after he’d come back.
She nodded once, slipping two fingers beneath the starched collar of his shirt, naming the muscle groups in her head. It was all cause and effect, push and pull — you just had to visualise where each muscle anchored and which movements it could create, which would also tell you which it would hinder.
The first press of her thumbs had him shutting his eyes, a hand reaching to pull his glasses off as he fought to keep silent.
"How’d I do that?" he asked shakily when she paused, ostensibly to let him process.
"Just lucky I’d guess, Sir."
Another six minutes of her hands had drained the initial tension from his neck, and by the ten minute mark he couldn’t make out words on the screen any more; they’d all gone to a blur.
The last thing he remembers before falling asleep is the sound the scratch of her nails over the tight weave of his shirt makes.
