Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DAX
Dax was writing a report on the gap in his results for phase one when he noticed Taron visiting with Mateo.
That wasn’t really surprising, the shapeshifter liked to wander to think and popped up every once in a while to chat with people.
What surprised him was how uncomfortable Mateo looked, especially when Taron handed him a box.
He found himself wandering over, overhearing the tail end of the conversation.
“...Since the residency program is run through the company, it still counts as being covered by a company phone. I already plugged in the essential numbers so there are no more excuses for missing a house meeting either.”
He didn’t sound mad or even annoyed at having to replace Mateo’s phone, but Dax’s eyes flicked to the box in Mateo’s hand, then to Mateo’s face. His poor mate looked incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of taking the phone, even if Taron had a point.
Deciding his mate needed a rescue, he set a hand on his shoulder, giving Taron a big smile. “Thanks, Taron. I just got my company phone this morning, too. You never realize how much you need it until you don’t have it for a while.”
Taron bobbed his head in agreement. “If Tony ever caught me without my phone, he’d…” He paused, pursing his lips. “Well, Tony’s not one to do anything to make me feel bad, but he’d definitely tell Zephyr. He’d be the one to chastise me.”
Dax snorted. He didn’t envy the shapeshifter. It was hard enough caring for one mate. Trying not to disappoint both of them would be no walk in the park.
Taron’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it out, a smile overtaking his face.
“Speaking of which, my mate is summoning me.” He tucked the phone away, giving Mateo a pointed look while jabbing a finger at the phone.
“I’m planning a lunch meeting with the rest of the residency program since I can actually get Louis to join if it's inside the office. Wednesday afternoon. The phone is already set up so there are no excuses for lateness. See you later, Mateo. Dax.”
Dax watched as the shapeshifter headed out before turning his attention back to Mateo. He tipped his head at the deep frown on Mateo’s face, spinning his chair to turn him around and squatting in front of him. “Mateo? What’s wrong?”
Mateo shook his head slowly. “The company shouldn’t have to replace my personal device. It was my own fault for getting it wet.”
“Technically, it was my fault,” Dax argued.
Whipping his head up, Mateo looked aghast at even the idea of Dax blaming himself. “No it wasn’t. You got hurt taking care of me. It was my fault you were out in the sun in the first place.”
Not technically. Mateo was mostly asleep in the cafeteria. He hadn’t been the one to suggest going outside. But arguing with him wasn’t going to help. Instead, Dax tried to appeal to Mateo’s logical side.
“Think of it this way. This phone can be used for work stuff until you can get your personal phone replaced. You don’t have to keep it forever, and you can return it once you’re done with it.
Or I think you can actually just buy the phone from the company and switch it over to your provider if you want.
But for right now, it’s a work device, not a replacement.
You need some way to talk to your team, right? ”
Blowing out a slow breath, Mateo nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Roz especially likes to communicate through text a lot. I was prepared to have to check-in more often or carry around my laptop for a while.”
“Exactly,” Dax agreed. “Try not to stress so much about it.”
As it turned out, Mateo was not just a little weird about germs. Apparently, receiving gifts was another anxiety point, a truth made even more obvious when Dax tried to give him his own gift when they met at the pool after work.
“No, Dax. That’s way too much. We’ve only just started dating. I–”
Putting his hands up, Dax took a step back, giving his mate space to breathe while he tried to explain himself. “It’s not just jewelry, Mateo. It’s a charm.”
Mateo, who looked close to bolting at the idea of receiving jewelry from Dax, jerked his gaze from where he was glancing over his shoulder toward the exit. “What?”
Slowly so he didn’t startle the man, Dax moved closer, holding out the necklace and pointing to the tiny runes engraved in the metal.
“It’s actually more like an amulet, but there was a whole debate on what to call it, and since the stone in the middle isn’t actually expensive or rare, most of the people on the research team with me at the time agreed charm was better.
The rose stone in the middle holds the spell under water better than the rest of the stones we tried, even the more rare and expensive ones.
It’s got a depth limitation—it’s technically old tech since we’ve switched to potions for the most part—but unless you’re going like ten meters deep, I prefer something like this.
Charms and amulets don’t wear off like potions do. ”
His mate finally came in close enough to give the charm a real look, taking it when Dax offered it to him. “What does it do?”
“It’ll let you breathe under water.”
His head snapped up almost comically, making Dax chuckle. Mateo’s eyes narrowed. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not,” Dax swore, crossing an ‘x’ over his heart.
“I was on the team that originally made charms like this. I still had a spare in my desk since I feel like it can be improved. I’ve been meaning to work on it some more in my free time.
I want to try a combo of a light spell with the breathing spell to see if it can go deeper, but I’ve been busy and haven’t gotten around to it. For now, I want you to use it.”
It had absolutely nothing to do with Dax being possessive and not wanting another incident with that merman again. Nope. Definitely not.
“So… I’m borrowing it,” Mateo hedged, eyeing him suspiciously.
Granted, it did look expensive. If it had been a real ruby or pink diamond of some kind, he could understand Mateo’s hesitance.
They hadn’t known each other long enough to be buying gifts like that.
But one of the great things with this project was how cheap it was to reproduce.
The rose stone had been an impulse experiment he and another researcher had tried out and it was incredibly common to find.
They hadn’t actually thought it’d work that well.
He could see it on Mateo’s face that he was going to be stubborn about this, so he dipped his chin once to acknowledge him. “Sure. I still want to do more experiments on it anyway. But it’s just been sitting in my desk gathering dust, and after last time, I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
That made Mateo snort. “I wasn’t really worried. Aside from that one incident when you were too sick to focus, I have never had any close calls in the water. Grew up near a lake, remember?”
Dax shrugged. He couldn’t tell the man his instincts were way louder than logic right now. He wanted his mate in the pool with him because it felt like that’s where they belonged together, but he didn’t want to risk his safety by bringing him there. This was a good compromise for him.
“Try it on. It’s water activated, and I want to test that it's still functioning properly before we get in the deeper water.”
Mateo did as asked, slipping the charm over his head.
The light red stone sat in the middle of his chest, and Dax fussed with it a little, worried the chain was too long and it’d slip over his head.
One of the reasons the stone held the spell so well was because of how light it was.
The denser the stone, the harder it was for spells to stick.
“It’s fine, Dax,” Mateo chuckled. “Now did you want to get in the pool or not?”
Lured toward the water by his gorgeous mate and the idea of swimming with him, Dax let go of the chain issue for now. He’d see what he had to replace it later. The pool wasn’t that deep anyway so if it did somehow slip off, it wouldn’t be hard for Dax to get Mateo to the surface quickly.
Instead of jumping in, he had Mateo get into the pool on the shallow end, walking deep enough to expose the stone to water without going fully under.
When the stone started to glow a pale pink, he nodded once in satisfaction.
It’d been a while since he last touched the thing. He was glad the spell still held.
“Okay. So I want to take this slow since the volunteers for this device weren’t human, but–”
Mateo rolled his eyes, a smirk on his face like he thought Dax was being ridiculous. Maybe he was being a little overcautious, but this was his mate, not some random volunteer. He refused to be the reason Mateo needed resuscitation from overconfidence in a charm made several decades ago.
Without waiting for Dax to continue to fret, Mateo sucked in a breath and disappeared under the water.
Dax let out a startled squawk, diving in after him, only to realize belatedly that his mate was a lot faster than he expected.
In the few seconds Dax had floundered, Mateo had gotten a lead and was swimming away from him.
Dax’s eyes narrowed. No way was his mate going to get away from him in the water. This was where he thrived.
Darting off after Mateo, Dax came up underneath him and popped up in front of him right as Mateo looked over his shoulder to see if Dax was following. Before they collided, Dax snatched his mate in his tentacles, giving him a wide grin when Mateo let out a gasp of surprise.
“Gotcha!”
Thankfully, the charm was fully functional because the gasp didn’t send Mateo clawing for the surface to get air. He actually looked surprised that nothing happened, taking another deep breath and gifting Dax with a startled grin.
“It works!” He blinked, eyes widening. “I can talk too?”
“Of course you can talk,” Dax laughed. “What would be the point of using something like this if you couldn’t talk to your companions? It’ll also start flashing if you’re getting too deep, but we don’t need to worry about that in here.”
Blowing out a slow breath, Mateo grinned at the bubbles that escaped him without him having to worry about needing more air. “That’s really cool, Dax. I don’t even feel that pressure I normally do when going into deep water. What other kinds of things have you made?”
“Hmm…” Dax hummed thoughtfully, moving them lower until Mateo stood on the bottom of the pool.
He still needed to use his hands to keep him under like before, humans were naturally buoyant and charm or not, he’d resurface eventually, but he looked almost giddy about being so deep and being able to breathe, swimming in a tight circle around Dax and letting out a little laugh.
He was mesmerizing when he was this happy, and it took Dax a minute to remember to answer the question.
“Uh, a few things I guess. Recently I’ve been working on a thermal spell that works in deep water.
Krakens are naturally adaptive to heat and cold, but when other supes go under water, they can’t adapt like that.
It’s harder than it looks since, like the rose stone, not a lot likes to stick when you get to a certain depth, but most research like this takes time. ”
Mateo swam closer, putting his arms around Dax’s shoulders. Dax felt his breath catch, his hands automatically grabbing his mate’s waist as he leaned in to brush his lips against Dax’s. “Smart and sexy. I’m a lucky man.”