Dr. Castaneda had a relatively easy day on Fridays.
By personal choice, he had decided that Fridays were days he didn't schedule classes. Much to the dismay of his students--and himself, honestly--there was a midday four-hour lab, but that was about it this semester. He had posted some office hours, but on Fridays, people rarely popped into those unless they needed something.
... or their name was actually Tobias Kasabian, but that wasn't a scholarly concern, per se.
Zebulon was on his way to those office hours with a sub from one of the myriad dining halls in hand. It was definitely cafeteria food, and honestly, the dining hall he grabbed it from was one of the worst ones on the campus, but he didn't feel like dealing with the crowds in the dining hall where they cut some of the deli meat fresh. He'd take his precut roast beef. Whatever. The school's priorities were sometimes bizarre in their attempt to attract more students--
His steps slowed as he realized there was already a pair of legs standing in front of the door.
... Alright.
This was going to be a busy office hour, then.
Zebulon started to roll the sub back in its wrapper so at least he wasn't greeting this student with food in his mouth. As he swallowed, he let his eyes drift upward to see which student he was facing. Was it Cristopher? He seemed to be struggling with the current unit, and the fashion choice seemed about--
His thoughts hit a record scratch as the person he was facing had considerably blonder hair, gorgeous green eyes, and a determined expression that seemed very unlike the oft-mousey student he was thinking of.
"... Teeg. What brings you round here?"
— AMA —
The nickname made him sigh internally, but only internally. Externally, Teegan met Zebulon's eyes with his own and offered a smile more formality than heartfelt. His blood was icy, but his heart was pounding. "Doctor Castaneda." Neutrally pleasant, like his smile. "I had some questions for you. May I come in?" He indicated vaguely with a clipboard he was holding. He had no intention of actually doing anything with the clipboard, but maybe he'd pass for someone wanting to conduct an interview.
Something normal.
Looking at Zebulon made his heart race, but it made it stick in his throat at the same time. His chest felt tight, but Teegan kept his distance. He didn't think Zebulon would do anything rash. But words said and time passed were hard to take back, and Teegan was taking a risk approaching Zebulon in person.
He was tired of being avoided. He was obeying the restriction Diryas had put in place, but Diryas hadn’t forbidden absolutely everything. He wasn’t approaching Zebulon at the house, but nothing had said he couldn’t approach him at work.
— SEI —
The address made his eyebrow quirk, but perhaps not as much as the clipboard had. Teegan was taking the approach of either being another student or someone working for the student newspaper. Zebulon wasn't quite sure what he thought about that, but he also wasn't quite sure what he thought of most of this. Why was Teegan here?
He could take some educated guesses. They had been interacting over text and an occasional phone call. They had all seen each other multiple times on Cybele’s homeworld when they were just trying to capture a damn jackalope and complete an obstacle course that felt like it belonged to his scout days. Teegan had asked, during their prior conversations, if they could talk more in person. Zebulon always had an excuse, usually work.
Hard to claim work as the excuse when he was at work.
"Ah." So he needed to drop the familiarity in his tone. "Yeah, certainly," with the ease of someone projecting more confidence than he felt, Zebulon slid by Teegan to unlock his office. "Close the door behind you, Mr. Hollenbeck."
As he waited for Teegan to follow him, Zebulon unwrapped his sub and took a bite. And after, when the door was shut, Zebulon dropped the pretense and asked, flatly, "What do you want?"
— AMA —
Once the door was shut, Teegan also dropped the pretense and lowered the clipboard held in one hand, pinching the bridge of his nose with the other. “I can just go if you want, but I did have a question that I figured was best asked in person.” Taking a deep breath helped him ignore the tightness in his chest. So he took one, and then he took another one—appearances be damned.
He had spent a considerable amount of time preparing what he was going to say and how he was going to lead up the question in, well, question. It wasn’t like he had anyone to practice it with. He could have asked Toby’s advice, sure, since Toby was the one he’d been seeing and visiting in person, the one who was actually still actively speaking to him. But bringing up the topic just seemed to make Tobias agitated that everything was taking so long to resolve.
Teegan was sure that, if Toby had his way, they would have all been forced to kiss and make up ages ago. Not an outcome Teegan would have minded, save for the fact that he knew it would rushing things. It would be especially rushing things for Diryas, who needed time to come around. A lot of time.
A lot of time.
Enough time that Tobias had already had to reassure Teegan that it would happen eventually. Granted, Tobias’ anger had been pretty short-lived and moving on had boiled down to one question.
'Did you want to do it?'
’”It”?’
’Any of it.’
'No, of course not.' For whatever it mattered that Teegan couldn't really remember what 'it' was, just that 'it' had been egregious. But Tobias wasn’t forthcoming with what he was actually referring to, and Teegan hadn’t had it in him to ask. He could guess, but no more than that.
And that had been it. No interrogation beyond that. No examining his deeper motives. Tobias asked Teegan if he meant it, and that was all he wanted to know. It was an ease that Teegan did not feel now, as he felt an unusual amount of struggle maintaining eye contact.
Spit it out, before Zebulon got more annoyed than he was--
"What are my honest chances? Of coming back?"
— SEI —
It confirmed a few things for him: that Teegan had worked to find him in person, that he made sure he would catch him, and that it was something he was comparatively less comfortable texting. It was funny to reflect on that and how much had changed since they had all started out, though perhaps all was a misnomer. He and Diryas had communicated plenty over text before the webcams had flicked on. His first conversation with Tobias had been over webcam.
'I feel like I'm getting interrogated,'
'That's because you are, Zebulon.'
With Teegan too, actually. Just later.
'Howdy.'
'So you're the Texan the other two are talking about.'
It was hard to look at Teegan the same way he had looked at Elliot with a bemused smirk and an answer of, Yup. He was glad Teegan was out of the Negaverse, deep down glad he hadn't succeeded and neither had Diryas, still felt responsible toward him after helping drag him out, but his feelings beyond that were still knotted in his gut. Why had Teegan done that? Why hadn't he left sooner? Why was the answer to avoid them? Why had the answer involved sleeping with other people without keeping their promise to each other? Why did it involve draining those people?
Perhaps karma had gotten its vengeance there, honestly--
Zebulon let Teegan take his time figuring out what he wanted to ask, eating more of his sub. Mediocre, as expected. He nevertheless eyed Teegan over it as he chewed, but had to nearly choke it down when the question got pretty deep really fast. He smacked his chest a few times for good measure.
It was a loaded question with a complicated answer and it felt like a lot for his open office hours. What if a student actually wanted his attention? "Is this really the right time?" It wasn't an answer, but it also wasn't an immediate response in the negative. "Or the right place?"
— AMA —
"Probably not." His shrug was a lot more casual than he felt. "But I knew you'd be here, if anything, and I'm expressly forbidden from the house. Plus, Diryas might be there," Dise's full name felt weird on his tongue, unfamiliar, "and considering our last interaction, I'd like to leave alive."
— SEI —
Teegan wasn't wrong, but perhaps that was part of the problem. Was there another reasonable place to ask him questions like this? The office hours were a bad choice, ultimately; he had no idea of the allegiance of half his students if they even had any, but if any of them were aware and were Negaverse, that was asking for death. Zebulon wasn't sure if risking the wrath of his husband was terribly much better, though.
For as seemingly unflappable as Diryas could often be, he felt all of his emotions as deep as the Marianas Trench. Zebulon had only seen Diryas truly angry a few times and it had never quite been at him. He had seen it toward Jason, certainly. He wasn't sure how Jason hadn't shat himself between the way both he and Diryas had acted toward him that fateful day when they had moved Tobias out of Jason's place whether he liked it or not.
So what was the third option? Teegan's house? His communal pad with like... ten other people? Zebulon knew none of them and hadn't made an effort to. Tobias had mentioned a few things to Zebulon about them--Diryas didn't want to hear a damn thing about anything involving Teegan--but nothing really stuck other than they were nice enough, he guessed. The dad was an accountant. Livie was adorable. The youngest never actually moved out, but that was okay since he was a knight anyway and his husband was a senshi.
All that really told him was that they weren't a threat. It didn't tell him they were people he wanted to air their dirty laundry around.
"Do you have a better alternative? My office isn't all that secure, especially not during open office hours like this."
— AMA —
Teegan gestured vaguely. "Not really? That's why I'm here. If all else failed, you could at least tell me where to meet you." There was the anonymity in a crowd of a packed restaurant or bar, but all that would take is one person who knew too much to overhear them. There was the park, maybe, but a lot of things seemed to happen in the park according to the news. Its safety was... questionable as far as Teegan was concerned.
And that was to say nothing of the fact that everyone was angry at him for something he'd done to Zebulon in the park. Something Teegan only knew vaguely through allusions Tobias made before quickly changing the subject. Everyone acted like he should know, but he couldn't remember more than half of the past few years. Abbán Elliot Isaac Donoghue was a missing person, a ghost no one could find, and a stranger in the back of Teegan's memory. Sure, he remembered himself as Elliot, but what did that matter?
Even some of those memories were spotty or outright missing.
How had he met Livvie? He just knew that they had both been purifications. He could guess based on his notes about her, but there was still someone in the household that he had history with, history neither one of them could remember. Even memories he knew had been formed, conversations he knew in his gut had happened while he stood as Elliot and not as a Negaverse agent were sometimes just... nothing.
"I don't know yours or Diryas' schedules this semester." Would have probably helped if he'd been around literally at all.
— SEI —
Teegan had no better ideas, and Zebulon's revolved around either airing their dirty laundry out with people who were literal strangers to him and Diryas or risking Diryas throwing him into a lava pit. Teegan hadn't suggested his own place at the onset, though, which implied he wasn't the most comfortable with the concept either. Hunky dory. Was it better to play with fire or play with ice?
At least his starseed was secure now--
He ran a hand over his hair, the first significant sign that he wasn't as calm as he might have seemed on the surface.
Teegan mentioning the schedules, though, had the gears turning in his mind. "Well, mine's easy enough. Full-time professor here. Bulk of my classes are on the MTWR block -- Friday's just got a long lab and office hours, and I didn't take weekend classes this semester thank ********. Diryas is an adjunct -- works industry during the day, takes evening classes. He'll get here in an hour or so and holds labs until about nine at night. He'll be home around ten."
Zebulon leaned back, thoughtfully, as he once again went back to his sub. He didn't really care if Teegan watched him eat. Maybe he could use some more uncomfortable squirming. "So that would give us until about 9:30 to make sure you're out if Diryas doesn’t wanna see you."
— AMA —
Teegan paused and then checked his phone. That was... several hours. He supposed that if they didn't get everything ironed out there, then that would give him the answer he was looking for in its own way, wouldn't it? "I'm free for the rest of the day. I don't have any sermons until this weekend." The church he was stationed at was actually very nice. If he'd known non-affiliated Catholic churches were a viable possibility for him, he'd have probably left his Vatican-affiliated parish ages ago.
Well, that and he wouldn’t have wanted to stop hanging out with Sister Gail.
He wondered how she was doing. If she missed him.
"Yeah, sure, if you're sure." He slid his phone back into the pocket of his smartly pressed blazer. It wasn't that Teegan didn't notice that Zebulon was also ill at ease. It was more that he didn't know what to do with that information. Pointing it out didn't seem like a good course of action, so he was going to ignore it instead. "What time?"
Hopefully, 'now'.
— SEI —
One of the first things Zebulon had figured out through their texts was that Teegan had gone back to the priesthood. It had baffled him. Why the hell would he have wanted to go back to that? He knew that Teegan was faithful-–baffling considering what they knew now, but that was his prerogative—but all the small things about the Catholic church and having to effectively hide his husbands had been a stress point.
It was something about how he discovered the unaffiliated Catholic community. Not really something the Roman Catholics spent their time spreading the word about.
"Hm. Give me a few minutes to send my students a note that I have to close office hours early today." Or immediately. This didn't feel terribly fair, but he could add a couple of extra hours to Monday, maybe. Fridays tended to be pretty dead though anyway; most students would rather just chill for the weekend. Understandable, he had been the same way.
The sub got set back down as he went to his desk and logged back into his computer. "So, how’s that not-affiliated life going?"
He could just ask more about it to fill the awkward dead air.
Zebulon missed talking to Teegan.
— AMA —
Teegan watched Zebulon buzz back and forth, responding at first with a wordless grunt of acknowledgment and looking idly around the room. A lot of it was as he remembered. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been there before, but none of the people outside would realise that. It had been now-missing-person Elliot Donoghue stopping in, not Teegan Hollenbeck, after all.
The question was one he should have seen coming, and he offered a shrug in reply. “It’s going pretty well. I’m at Christ the Good Shepherd for the most part, at the moment.” A pause. “It’s run by a married gay couple. It’s nice.” Nice being able to be open about being a bisexual man to more than a closeted lesbian nun.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Eventually he’d rotate more than he was, but the local independent group of Catholic churches didn’t know he’d been a priest in the city for years, so they were ‘getting him habituated’ first. Fair enough. 'Substitute priest' was not a career path he would have seen himself making, but it was one he was settling into.
"In about a month and a half you'll be able to find me at Church of the Blessed Cross, too. Their priest is having a baby, so she's going to be on maternity leave for a few months." Would Zebulon care?
...He hoped so.
— SEI —
He cared enough, at least, letting out a snort at the concept that there was a married gay couple running the place of all things. “Honestly wild to me that there are really Catholic churches that don't care about the pointy hat." And married and gay at that! And letting a woman be a priest who was having a baby!
How the hell did he even get that job back? A better question, how the hell was that Mauvian such a miracle worker? Hell, how had a woman faked her credentials, because he knew that the church was bad about that! And she didn’t have a Mauvian! Not really an issue he had in his own heritage, but...
"But suppose you’re giving me the proof. You’re fitting in well there if they’re giving you at least temporary permanent stations." How did he even start a more normal conversation? The last they talked extensively, they were talking through a crack in the door Tobias had allowed. Before that, Promethei tried to kill him.
Fair vengeance for Ransomite leaving him to die, but how did he cross that divide now?
He wanted to, right?
Zebulon pressed the enter key and carefully locked his computer back up. "Alright, got the message sent out. Lemme check to make sure Dise and Toby are where I expect them to be and then we can go." Not that Tobias cared! He had made it very clear to Zebulon that he was going to keep seeing and seeing Teegan whether either of them liked it or not. Zebulon had told Tobias two things: one, he was lucky Zebulon loved him, and two, Tobias owed him if he expected him to hide this from Diryas.
Tobias had supplied that he wasn’t hiding it from Diryas. Zebulon said alright, fine.
His funeral.
"Alright, it'll just be us. I'll take any heat from this." He was not looking forward to crafting that particular text. "But are you sure you wanna see this place?" Did they have another choice, anyway?
— AMA —
Teegan let out a slow exhale, rubbing the back of his neck again. "I mean, if you promise not to lock me in a bathroom this time." He used to go to their house all the time, until he'd stopped for some reason he didn’t remember. Then again, did he need to remember that? He’d been in the Negaverse, where he could only assume he was doing Negaverse things. Stealing energy. Stealing souls. That latter possibility made his stomach turn.
He wouldn't've wanted to bring that around them.
Though, if he had, then maybe they could've had that whole fight much sooner on, before he probably committed various atrocities he didn't remember. He hadn't written much down about being in the Negaverse. Teegan had sort of assumed he'd forget his normal life and had extensively documented that, instead.
The thought still hovered in the back of his mind that he’d deserved to forget his normal life, and that—in not doing so—he’d been granted a forgiveness he didn’t see how he deserved. Though it had been nice for those initial weeks where everything was a scrambled mess and Teegan was second-guessing everything down to the name he'd picked out for himself.
Anyway.
"After you."
— SEI —
Zebulon’s snort was stifled, and perhaps the closest thing to a smirk finally crossed his face as he replied, “Well, don’t deserve it this time.”
There was a part of him that felt a little silly about that whole situation. Holding a grown man hostage in his bathroom had not been his intention that day–or really any day, that wasn’t their scene. But what else were they supposed to do? Elliot had been Ransomite, and while Ransomite hadn’t ultimately killed him, that didn’t mean they could trust him. What the ******** would have stopped him from doing it at that point?
"Heh. Now that we're not in the thick of it, maybe you'll notice the changes. We have a video doorbell, for one. Diryas gets alerts for that, so just be aware of that." He pinched the bridge of his nose, much in the way that Teegan had before. Diryas was going to be upset, and he knew it.
But one step at a time. What was the other option? Not this place. Zebulon had certainly done some private things in here, but private identity-compromising issues during office hours were a whole different ball game to hide. He wondered briefly if their house could even be safe if the Negaverse had even an inkling that Elliot once regularly visited, but he couldn't let himself think like that.
Zebulon wasn't going to live in paranoia.
He got back out of his seat, scooped up a mostly finished sub and a sheet of laminated paper with sloppy marker writing, and clapped Teegan on the shoulder as he walked by him.
"After you. Gotta lock up here."
— AMA —
The slap to his shoulder took him by surprise and made him have to quickly shift his balance to keep from stumbling before heading out of the office. Honestly, this was further than Teegan had expected to get, considering the state of things when they'd last seen each other in person. He'd even been avoiding powering up, just in case he ran into Promethei or Imhotep on accident out on patrol. Would they even believe it was an accident?
The competition on Cybele’s homeworld notwithstanding, anyway.
In some ways it saddened him a bit that he didn’t power up. Emain Ablach felt like home, in ways he knew Ransomite hadn't even with the dearth of knowledge he had about his time as Ransomite. Though it helped that Emain Ablach had more close allies than Ransomite had ever had. His only friend... Well, he had no idea who Nectaris had been, and he knew that was on purpose, but she was the only one he had anything favorable to say about in his notes.
Everyone else was a description and a warning to stay the ******** away-- Well, whoever Fulgurite was had an exception next to his name, too, but...
Wait, Zebulon wasn't going to just kick him out and then lock the door, was he--
Heart in his throat, Teegan turned his head, immediately relieved to see that Zebulon was indeed posting up the sign about his office hours and locking the door. Now that they were out in the open, he made sure to show his clipboard again. He didn't want this getting back to Diryas before they were ready for it to, so he had to look as innocuous as possible.
"...Meet you there, then?"
— SEI —
There was the most minute temptation to simply kick him out and go back to business. Was this a good idea? Was this a mistake? Did he trust that Tobias trusted him, or did he disregard that because Tobias had been too willing to move beyond it? Did he lean toward Diryas' understandable anger and continued desire to keep Teegan away, or did he think Diryas needed to just talk to Teegan himself? Did he trust that his interactions with Teegan had been fine, even if strained, even if awkward and laced with his husband’s anger?
Where did he land?
There was a part of him that desperately missed Teegan. He missed their banter, their jokes, their ... fights, their entanglements, and it had felt so wrong to him when Elliot was missing that he overstepped his usual privacy inclinations to spill out his soul to a bartender. He wanted that back. Sending memes had felt better, sending brief questions felt better, but it wasn't enough. Could it ever be enough? Everything felt natural with him and yet it didn't all at once, and the awkwardness of the middle felt like it was going to drown him.
Zebulon, more typically glib about most things, didn't like this.
"Meet you there."
But he couldn't let this sit open and unresolved, either.
Seiana_ZI
