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It didn't feel like much time had passed when Cecina returned, but it was hard to say. Hrvalye's reverie ran pretty deep. "Sorry that took so long. Trva is apparently out sick today, so I had to have one of the janitors scrounge around with me. Very helpful fellow, but very talkative and not great at taking a hint," she said, blowing some air out the side of her mouth in mild exasperation. "But, I have returned a hero!"

And what a hero she was! In one hand she bore gauze, antiseptic spray, and a new sock, with a roll of medical tape around her pinky. In the other hand... nothing? Perhaps it just looks more heroic to bunch everything up like she did.

Hrvalye took the ungrateful route. "Yellow?" he looked at the sock then back to Cecina and her newly arched eyebrow.

"Polka dots--or dot?" she responded, gesturing with her chin to the sock that Hrvalye was still holding next to his hoof. He'd completely forgotten about that, and now that he finally looked back down at it, he realized that some of fibers were left behind in the wound. Gross.

He looked back up at her with newfound gratitude, "Yellow."

"Good. It's one of mine, actually," she sat down next to Hrvalye and gently relieved him of the bloody sock still in his hand, putting it on the other side of the bench. Then she motioned for him to turn and straddle the bench as she was.

"Oh, thanks. I've been off in my own world." He sighed wistfully as he swiveled around to put his left leg on the other side of the bench and extend his right towards Cecina.

She nodded in response, seeming to sense and empathize with Hrvalye's troubles. Then she saw the matted mess Hrvalye's sock had left behind and grimaced, "Ick. Thank god for antiseptic spray." She set everything down behind her but the spray, which she gave a couple of shakes. "Brace yourself. This will probably feel cold and extremely uncomfortable given that I'm shooting it into a sensitive crevice."

She carefully bent Hrvalye's hoof to expose the whole wound, mildly vexed that he didn't fill or even notice the opening she offered him with her 'sensitive crevice' line. Still quite self-consumed, Hrvalye's only reaction was to blink in confusion.

Then came the spray. "Eeeeeeaaaaaagh!" Hrvalye reflexively tore his foot away from Cecina, causing him to lose his balance and tip backwards before she could reach out to catch him. Most of his back missed the bench, and he rolled off the side, landing squarely on his shoulder with a sharp, pained grunt.

Cecina bolted up and rushed over to him, kneeling down to make sure he was mostly conscious.

He was. "You..." he whispered, the pain from his shoulder worse than it really should have been given the short fall, "You murdered me." He closed his eyes and dangled his tongue out the side of his mouth as he made what he thought was a gag-like dying sound.

"Oh, shut up!" she shouted, shoving his other shoulder playfully.

This immediately elicited a cry of pain, and Cecina clenched her teeth in horror. "Sweet mercy! I'm actually hurt, you crazy woman!"

"Sorry! I'm sorry!" For a moment she frantically tried to find something useful to do, her hands independently darting a few inches this way, then that. After a few seconds, she settled on laying Hrvalye flat on his back, grabbing him by the chest and his good shoulder and slowly lowering him down while he protested with unintelligible snarling.

Cecina took visual stock of Hrvalye's left side. He didn't appear to have any broken bones, but his pain seemed real enough. "I'm going to go get help, all right?"

"Yeah," he muttered through gritted teeth as he closed his eyes and gently rested his head on the floor, "Good idea."

"By the way, who says twenty words when they need someone to stop causing them pain?"

Hrvalye tried to think of something clever to say, but his shoulder really was killing him and he couldn't think straight. He opened his eyes, lifted his neck up slightly to lock eyes with her, and yelled, "Murderer!" And then he dropped his head back down, closed his eyes, and lolled his tongue.

He braced for some witty retort or a gentle kick or something, but nothing happened. He slowly opened his eyes to find that Cecina was gone. Well, now he feels awful. He did yell much more loudly than he intended a second ago--that might have hurt her feelings or scared her off. But that's not her way. Probably she just feels guilty.

The pain intruded on Hrvalye's thought process. He never considered himself to have a high pain threshold, so it was hard to gauge how bad things actually were, but it certainly felt like his shoulder was rebelling violently against the rest of his body.

To distract himself he tried to raise his right leg up to see--oh, ow, no, that somehow put pressure on the shoulder. Bad idea.

Take two: he lifted his neck and pointed his feet up to see how they looked from here. He always thought his feet were one of his best features; soft alabaster fur, two strong and well-shaped hooves, and a perfect hoof-to-instep ratio. Most people would kill for these. But right now, as far as he could care to tell, one looks good and the other one bloody and ugly. He relaxed his neck again and winced as he his head landed not-so-gently on locker room floor.

Hrvalye was preparing to sing a sea shanty to pass the time when Cecina re-appeared.

He craned his neck up again, "Hey Cecina, I'm sorry I called you a murderer, and--" he stopped himself short as he noticed she was holding something in her hand, and advancing on him as though she meant to use it. "What's that--wait!" But it was too late. She knelt down and jabbed him in the leg with a syringe.

Hrvalye felt better almost immediately. "Oh, you angel! You can murder me any day." His head flopped heavily on the floor once again, but it was just fine.

Cecina smirked, "They said it would be fast, but I didn't realize what that meant. Now I know." She walked up next to his head and sat on her shins. "They're going to bring a medical cart over and take you to the hospital."

"Oh! That's along the central tunnel! I hardly ever get to use that! This'll be so cool!"

Cecina squinted briefly as she looked into Hrvalye's newly clouded eyes, then nodded, "Yeah. Super cool."

There was a brief silence, punctuated with Hrvalye's non-sequitur, "Hey, which of us will make the better human?"

"Me, obviously," she answered without taking a beat. "I'll probably be about average, but you're awful. But look on the bright side: you'll probably be a better American."

Hrvalye tried to take a second to process this, but didn't manage to get very far before giving up. "I don't even know what that means." He paused, thinking for another moment before giving up again, "We're both wonderful humans and Americans!" he said, trying to convince her that this was the conclusion she should also come to.

"Sorry..." she said, realizing that Hrvalye was far from the top of his game now, "I was just trying to be funny. Yeah, we're going to be great."

"Yeah!" Hrvalye was pleased, "Do you think they'll make us a couple?"

That was an awkward question, but it was on everyone's minds. It was but a matter of months before this cohort of Interfacers went to Earth, and decisions were being made about who would get paired up with whom, and who would fly solo. Most of the assignments had been given based on specializations and interpersonal chemistry, but Hrvalye and Cecina were two of the last, and both were solidly slated for placement in the United States. For them, it was a question of whether they would be together or each start out alone. They could also pose as siblings/cousins living in different parts of the country, but every new relationship between two separated lerians on Earth adds complexity and risk to the whole program. With two rookies it would be especially risky.

It was an unusual situation. Hrvalye and Cecina had been friends for years, with no romantic history, and everyone knew it. That right there would normally mean they'd be placed in different countries, and the problem would be avoided. Instead, the Interfacer Directorate focused on the fact that they were two of the best American English speakers, and they needed Americans. In retrospect, the Directorate would probably rather have shipped Hrvalye to England or something, but they were too far into immersion for that now.

"I don't know," Cecina said slowly, unsure of how to manage Hrvalye in his state.

"Well, I think we'd be a great couple. We get along super well."

"Super well," she nodded.

"And you are so nice."

"Mhm."

Finally he seemed to settle down, nodding slightly back to her and closing his eyes. After a few seconds, though, he had one final thing to mumble before signing off, "You have really nice horns, too."

Whoa.

Cecina blinked, frozen, unsure how to react.

That was extremely forward, and even drugged Hrvalye's eyes shot open as he realized with mounting horror what he had just done. Yes, Cecina's horns were resplendent: nearly ten inches long, two inches wide, and of a light mocha hue, with a pronounced but graceful arch that would only get better with age and a corkscrew shape that is rare these days. They went very nicely with her near-black fur and matching well-coiffed mane. But he never wanted to seriously think of her in a sexual light, and either way everyone knows that you do not compliment a coworker's dick, tits, or horns.

"Oh no, I'm sorry!" he sputtered, "So, so, so sorry! I don't know what I'm saying. It's like I'm on air, and my clouds are in my head and they can't think." No, that didn't seem right. There was panic in his milky blue eyes, "Am I even making sense?"

Cecina took a deep breath, "It's okay. The cart will be here for you soon. I'm going to go check to make sure everything is all settled. You sit tight, okay?" She stood up and looked away from Hrvalye as she brushed off her legs.

"Okay, but I'm really, really sorry. Please don't hate me!" he reached his good arm out after her as he pleaded, but Cecina walked away, raising a hand to rub her forehead. Hrvalye couldn't elucidate in that moment what her body language said in that moment, or what her eyes said as she'd looked away; but if you'd peeled away the haze of drugs and pain, he would pinpoint that Cecina felt that her trust had been betrayed. Hrvalye wasn't some ordinary office buffoon that she could shrug off. They were friends. Good friends. And in a moment of pure, unguarded honesty he'd revealed something that she was never supposed to know, changing the dynamic between them and damaging their friendship, perhaps irrevocably.

"Pleeeeeeeeeeease!" he started sobbing halfway through his last, anguished appeal, covering his eyes with the crook of his elbow. She was gone, and he was alone. Some rational corner of his mind tried to tell him to breathe, that everything would be okay, but all he wanted to do now was disappear.

Hrvalye couldn't tell how long he'd been crying by the time the paramedics showed up, but he was very embarrassed of the tear trails on his face, and he felt their judgment. With little ado, they put him on a stretcher and carried him to the medical cart. Safely buckled in, they drove down the hall to the elevator that led to the tunnel network--a useful thing to have when most of the vehicles manufactured by your world struggle to operate outside anymore. Hrvalye felt exhausted, and he could barely keep his eyes open. In no time at all, he was fast asleep.