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Teegan’s always tried to be a good influence. Not just with Elro, either— but mostly with him, these days.
Still, she’s not immune to the pleasant buzz of the moonshine, and the way Elro’s shoulders bump against hers. He doesn’t smile at work– he’s not very expressive at all, actually. But alcohol has a way of pulling things out of people, and something warm spills out of Elro in the parking lot, out behind the Concern apartment building where all the in-city employees live. (It’s just metaphorical, and not vomit this time. It’s usually vomit.)
Honestly, she doesn’t think half the people out here are even Contra. But no one’s immune to a good 2AM party, if you can call a bunch of overworked scientists bringing out the folding chairs and illegal spirits a party. And you can, if you work for the One Concern long enough and forget what actual parties were ever like.
“Hey, Tee,” Elro mumbles, swirling his mostly-empty cup. “Think I gotta get going. Train leaves at ten tomorrow.”
The project they’re working on isn’t over yet. They're still a few weeks out from having anything they can actually show the agents or the suits, but he’s got a good family back in Blockrock, and… Teegan can pick up the slack every now and then, especially with how hard it is to get Ivory out to the countryside settlements these days.
Ugh.
She knows him too well— if she lets him go now, he’ll go find some dingy spot to nap in the train station until dawn.
“Stay at my place tonight,” she says, against her better judgment. It's a waste of a good night, she thinks, to just pass out on a bench like that when Teegan has a bed to herself. As the moonshine reminds her, her living space is woefully empty these days, and… maybe she can be a bit of a bad influence on him, just this once.
“So you don’t have to pay for a capsule room,” she tacks on, to save him a little dignity. She knows him better than that. He knows she knows him better than that. She'd like to say she's being altruistic, but that's the furthest thing from the truth.
She can be selfish, for now.
He stares at her in reply, though, and the chair he’s in creaks as he leans back, pulling his eyes away to look up at the sky. There’s a few moments of silence, drawn-out, as the radio across the lot crossfades from one song to the next.
“Okay,” he says, finally.
Teegan’s two-room apartment, like the rest of the residences in the building, is tiny, hardly bigger than the rooms in the downtown hotels. Two rooms is two rooms: there’s a wet room, sure, but everything else is sandwiched into one big space, from the kitchenette to her mattress, a sad little thing tucked into the corner.
“Sorry, it’s a mess,” she says, mostly out of politeness. She doesn’t usually have anyone to impress, so the dishes pile up in the sink, and her meager attempt at a bed is hardly more than a bundle of fluffy pillows and a blanket. A lone stuffed rabbit lays on her still-unrolled yoga mat, knocked over sideways at some point unknown.
Elro makes some noncommittal noise in reply. He doesn’t have room to talk about messes, and so neither of them say anything else. It’s too embarrassing that way. Too real, even. Instead, he unceremoniously drops his backpack behind the kitchen counter, and meanders off into the bathroom. Teegan disrobes, too, throwing on a t-shirt and flopping face-down into a pile of cheap fabric and plastic-furred stuffed animals. Her senses are beginning to come back to her, dulled by the alcohol and revitalized by the slow realization that now she has to spend at least six hours in close quarters with Elro.
She should’ve taken that couch she saw on the street last week, or… something. But she can’t kick him out now, so when Elro settles in behind her, she tries not to think too hard about the feeling of his back against hers. Should’ve gotten a bigger mattress, too, or maybe not invited her coworker over for the night in the first place.
He’s not broad, per se, but he’s taller than her, wider, and it leaves her sort of squished between him and the corner. A little bit claustrophobic, a little bit comforting, at least when pink faux fur keeps her from whacking her head against the wall.
The silence weighs heavy in the air, tense with the weight of their shared apprehension– and, maybe, a shred of expectation, too. Sleeping together as adults carries a connotation neither of them are willing to address aloud.
“Tee,” says Elro, carefully, and the surface tension ripples without breaking.
“Yeah?”
“Can I roll over?”
“…Yeah.”
Distantly, the thought rings in her head that this might be Penance-worthy. Elro has a wife. Not that either of them seem to like each other, but that’s not really her business, is it? He’s still married. Still married, she thinks, as he loosely tosses an arm around her. She can feel his breath against her hair, and the rise and fall of his chest. She’s probably a sinner for this. She can’t find it in her to mind.
It’s been a long time since she’s shared a bed with someone else. Surely, if the Great Space Worm Himself has it in Him to care about something like this, He can spare some pity for her, too, and blame the alcohol. Her hand comes to rest over Elro’s, willing her eyes to finally close.
This doesn’t have to mean anything. And it shouldn’t, with the way things are. With the way both of them are. A part of her still wishes it could, if only so she could say she means something to someone.