Hug. Slightly limp floppy hug.

"I feel like 'while you are on opiates and considering wheelchair acquisition' is a really inauspicious time to kiss you but I wish to register that I considered it."

- giggle. "I know for sure I like you when I'm sober."

"You recently turned half your nervous system off, I want you to fully appreciate it when I kiss you."

Snort. "Okay. I love you."

Two weeks' work gets him able to mostly replicate the desirable effects of a cocktail of pain medication without the pain medication. Doesn't do much for the tissue damage; reading about it only helps so far because even humans only know so much about medicine and human circulation injuries look a little different anyway. He drags a plastic chair into the shower once it's obvious that he's not going to be standing any time soon. He can't braid his hair afterwards; he ties it up in an ugly twist and is vaguely self-conscious. 

He smiles at Lorica constantly.

"Do you want me to fix your hair or would that be weird. - Do you want Rete to fix your hair."

"We haven't even kissed yet! - Rete could try that'd be less weird."

"I am not well-calibrated on how big a deal braiding your hair is!"

Rete can put his hair into a snug and tidy braid with one of its converted bots.

"There're hairstyles that are only for married people because you can't do them yourself and you'd never go around with hair that had been braided by someone else while not married."

"What do kids do?"

"Learn pretty young, use clips and so on while they haven't the dexterity. - though parents helping kids isn't the same as adults who like each other."

"Fair enough."

"I'm going to get my fingers back first thing - if nothing else there's old-fashioned physical therapy - not being able to walk is only mildly annoying but not being able to type quickly is very annoying."

"Rete can do voice recognition or gaze tracking."

"...I should teach Rete good enough Quenya I can talk to it and still have some privacy."

"It knows the contents of the thesis but it's thin on vocab, go nuts. Be advised that it can't lock me out so I can get anything I really wanna get."

"I really cannot imagine you trying to read my notes for a bad reason."

"I won't."

So he teaches Rete Quenya and gets little elastics to stretch between his fingers and do boring finger-exercises and he looks back over his notes on mortality and has some ideas and makes some progress. And he writes a detailed account for an audience at home of Earth and humans and how they are mostly terrible but there is one and how it would be a failure of the essential Noldorin virtues to go try and fix them even though wow do they really really suck.

Lorica rebuilds her helmet and the rest of her suit. She's partway through when her dad visits.

There are hugs.

"Thank you."

"Shoulda thought of it sooner."