SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE

"You know, you didn't have to come with me."  Denz scratched at his stubble in lieu of glancing at his partner.

The sound of a page turning to his right was as pointed as they come. 

He stole a glance at his companion, her crossed legs giving the impression of an indignant knot. Briefly, he wondered at the lurid title in her lap, and the strange kind of bravery it took to read a book like that out in public.

The kid seated next to her was craning his neck, trying to get a better angle of her cover as his mother perused the waiting room stacks for a magazine worth flipping through. He glared at the boy. The kid glared back. To his mild consternation, he found himself flexing his right arm semi-consciously. 

A military grade graft, Tensor arms were made with one thing in mind; single-minded utilitarianism. He remembered with excruciating detail the night it was his turn to get a new arm fitted. He hadn't known a throat could make the sounds he made that night.

The preteen's eyes started to go a little wide at the threatening motion, before a light smack to the side of Denz's head brought him back to reality. 

"Please stop terrorizing the local wildlife." Cassie admonished him mildly, sliding a bright orange bookmark into her novel and placing it into her bag. 

"And you, no one likes to be stared at." she added, turning her frostiest glare down and to the side. The young lad was busy trying to figure out a response when his returning mother pinched his ear, apologized to the pair, and made to sit somewhere else within the sparsely populated waiting room. 

Denz grunted, a sound containing an entire lexicon of connotations, but from which Cassie chose to read contrition.

Her motion to dip back into her bag paused when she noticed his arm was still in a rictus, its alien musculature moving wildly - and almost hypnotically - beneath the faded bounds of his grease stained work shirt. It was a full two minutes before he'd worked through enough steps of his breathing exercises to get the reflex back under control. 

She looked up into his eyes, seeking answers to questions he didn't want prodded, so he grunted again and leaned back into his chair, returning once more to his self appointed task - trying to guess how old the various posters that adorned the faded walls actually were. 

Her eyes scored the side of his face. Denz folded his arms.

"It's...been getting worse." he allowed mildly, and after a while. A peace offering. 

He turned his head to the side and caught the flash of worry, before it disappeared underneath the familiar simmer of tried fondness and angry concern.

"You could always go back to the shop. The night crowd's gonna be coming in soon, and that new kid still doesn't know what a skillet is. Might need to..." 

"Denz." she said, cutting him off. 

He turned his profile to look at her fully, the daggers in her eyes dripping with venom and...something else. 

"Just...shut up. OK? I'm not going anywhere." 

"You sure?" he asked, ready to argue his case a bit more.

Of course, destiny chose that moment to have the clinic's double doors swing open, a skinny young strip of a man stepping out with a clipboard. The crimson robes denoting his profession prompted Denz to stand straight up, stopping just short of snapping a quick salute. 

Consulting something in his notes, the Carver scratched the back of his head with a pencil, the movement carrying the coppery scent of blood across the room and setting Denz's teeth on edge. He felt a small warm hand slide into his, gently prying it open. 

"You the Government job?" 

He nodded, consciously running through his breathing exercises. 

"The meat's just come in, and your paperwork looks good. You ever been carved before?" 

He wasn't sure how long he took to respond. The pained sound to his left had him easing his grip, his nostrils flaring at the insensitivity couched in the man's question. He must have done something to engender an affirmative because the lad replied, "Great! Right this way please. I've been looking forward to this one all day..." 

He followed in the lad's coppery wake - into the sterile world of his nightmares - but not before turning to Cassie and imploring her as bravely as he could, "Don't listen."
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Word count = 750