#running behind

He's sat at the desk in the corner of their sitting room, writing some notes. Oh, he should not bring work home, he knows, but sometimes thoughts are like fish, they come when they choose, you have to be ready, and catch them when they do. He shifts a little, or tries too. His left shoulder refuses to move, and there's a scream of resitance down his side.

The light tap of feet. He can just about turn his head to see Andrew scampering in from the dining room towards his side, clutching the wooden, wheeled train which is his newest favourite toy.

"Dadda, Play." The boy babbles his current eqivilent of the words, smiling brightly.

"Not right now, Andrew." He manages, somehow, to keep his voice calm and even, keeping the tight pain from it, "You go and play train with Teddy instead. Where's Teddy?"

"Tedy!" Andrew scampers off again, back towards the kitchen, so Teddy is probably somewhere underneath the kitchen table, in his 'Home'.

A tiny part of his mind, not subsumed by the wave of echoing pain in his side and shoulder, hopes that Rose's toes don't suffer from the wheels he's just sent in her direction.

He thinks about probing it with his other hand, then abandons the idea and just tries not to move too much too quickly. Keep your eyes open, Christopher. Keep part of yourself out of it and here instead.

"Kit?" Her feet as soft as her voice, Rose is striding up the room, a light wrinkle of concern on her face.

He tries to speak, his shoulder twangs again and he can only gasp against the pain.

"Shoulder?" Rose says near his ear, one of her hands settling gently on each of his shoulders.

"And Side" He says on a short breath.

Her left hand slips down, carefully probing and pressing around his shoulderblade, onto the slight ridges at his side, the set muscles around them

Arh

"Don't fight Kit, don't go stiffer on me, I know it hurts- I know - I know." Rose speaks soft and low, a long flow of soothing words.

He does his best, to not flinch away, to not freeze up further, as her fingers work into the muscles and scar-tissue, but;

Got-in-Himmel,

Hurts.

Hurts too much, too sharply to scream, he gasps instead, gaping. Ahhh

"Steady... Steady Kit, it's alright. eeeassy" She's gently gripping the top of his arm, pushing, moving it about, then working back to the most solid part of the lock. Something gives, a little, then a little more up at his shoulder, right in the point

"Now just put your arm out and try and move it round."

He does so, waiting for the protests, the impssibilty, but it moves. Still hurts a fair bit, but it moves. He tries his neck, and that turns aas it should.

Rose's hands are settled onto his shoulders, cradling over them for a moment longer "Better?"

"mmhm, thank you."

"Keep it moving for now, don't let it set again." There's a brisk 'nurse' efficiency there, and he can hear not the VAD she was, but the Matron and Sisters she served under when they met. He smiles

“You looked all day,” Ironhide growled, “time to turn your optics on something else. 'Looks' like that could get you punched when I was your age, unless you'd been going out with the mech a few days at least.”

“Sure, but back then it took a few days just to sync up your systems for a frag.” Sideswipe produced a grinding, musical tone he'd picked up on Earth, a colloquialism with very specific meaning to young humans. A 'dial-up' tone.

Ironhide seized him by the scruff of the neck before he could duck away. “Listen, you-”

“Ow!”

“Before you start any feuds, just remember where we are. This scrap of land we're all sharing isn't big enough to be avoiding mechs just because you tried to get under their panels and got shot down. Maybe the humans give us more room later, but right now this is it. If you start a fight, it's you I’ll cut from patrols and any offshore work. Understood?”