Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
MATEO
Despite talking to his roommates and easing the tension in the condo, something still felt off to Mateo.
All weekend, he had a steady sense of anxiety thrumming in his chest. He also couldn’t seem to make himself feel happy, no matter what he was doing.
He tried to force himself out of the funk, not wanting to ruin Dax’s weekend after begging him to stay over, but by the time the weekend was over, he was just as stressed as he had been before Carmen’s visit and finally talking things out with his roommates.
Frustrated with himself, he made up an excuse about needing to check in upstairs to avoid joining Dax at the pool for a soak first thing.
His boyfriend had been accommodating all weekend by only soaking in his bathtub and Mateo didn’t want him getting sick by not getting his normal pool time, but he wasn’t really in the mood to join him.
He thought maybe it might be better to give Dax some space until he could at least be sure he wouldn’t bring down his boyfriend’s cheery mood.
Whenever he’d glanced in Dax’s direction, the kraken had given him one of those sweet and reassuring smiles and for a minute, Mateo would feel better, but then he’d turn away and the unhappiness would come back.
Something was definitely up, but he had no idea what. Why was his brain like this?
He met with his team on the IT security floor, almost immediately being waylaid by Deshawn who took his arm and pulled him over to his desk to talk before Mateo could even set his bag down.
“Dude. We need to talk.”
“About what?” Mateo frowned, his eyes momentarily dropping to Deshawn’s mess of a desk before jerking away again. Goddess, had it somehow gotten worse? Why did it look like it was starting to spill onto the floor and no one noticed?
Deshawn moved into his line of sight, making a face at him. “What are you doing?”
“What?”
He looked down at his desk, the back at Mateo. The calculation in his expression was so pronounced, Mateo could practically hear him thinking out loud. And when his eyes drifted to Mateo’s pristine desk, he huffed a laugh.
“Don’t judge me for my desk, kid. I’m a techno mage literally surrounded by tech. I forget I have a body sometimes.”
Mateo blinked at that. “Really? Wait. Kid?”
He wasn’t sure which thread to follow, and Deshawn didn’t let him get distracted by it. “Not important right now. Have you had any other people not wanting to work with you because of your species?”
That wasn’t what he was expecting to talk about first thing in the morning. “Uh, maybe once or twice. Not often. Why?”
Deshawn scowled. “Because I don’t take that shit lightly. If someone’s giving you trouble, you send them to me. I’ll take care of them.”
The offer was a surprise, he had purposely avoided his coworker because his messy desk made Mateo think they wouldn’t get along. That Deshawn was so fiercely protecting him made no sense.
“Did something happen?”
Deshawn’s expression darkened. “Let’s just say I’ve got issues with people who hate on humans for no good gods damn reason.
I know we’re supposed to report that shit to SR, but I want you to come to me first. I’ve seen assholes get a slap on the wrist for that kind of thing and that doesn’t fly with me. ”
Like he could see the disagreement on Mateo’s face—Mateo didn’t want to make enemies in the office, nor did he want to ignore protocol if the behavior was bad—Deshawn bartered with him.
“Come to me first, and I’ll give you full control of my desk. You can organize it to your hearts’ content whenever the hell you want.”
Mateo’s gaze snapped to Deshawn’s desk, and it seriously made him hesitate. The idea was appealing. Maybe with a project like that, he could clear his head enough to figure out what was going on with his unstable emotions.
“Okay, sure. I’ll go to you first. Unless there’s threats of violence or something because I’m not putting my safety on the line–”
Deshawn put up his hands placatingly. “That’s fine. We draw the line at that. If someone threatens you physically, go straight to security. But anything else, even just rude comments, you tell me. Deal?”
He was still curious as to why, but figured what the hell? It wasn’t like they were necessarily doing anything wrong. If the issues were anything like last time, the person wouldn’t want to work with Mateo anyway. He’d just go to Deshawn first to switch out before bringing it to Jonah.
“Deal.”
They shook on it and Deshawn kept a hand on his shoulder the whole way to the Medical Innovations research floor, like some kind of silent body guard or something. It was… odd. But Mateo had too much to think about to worry about his coworker’s behavior.
His eyes sought Dax automatically when they arrived, and he found the sweet kraken at his workstation, staring off into space instead of typing away like he normally would be.
Mateo’s feet wanted to turn him in that direction right away to ask what was wrong, but Deshawn’s grip on his shoulder kept him where he was and when Jonah assigned him a workstation, Deshawn escorted him to make sure things were good before walking away to his own assignment.
The first workstation was being used by a young cyclops woman who was very sweet but also very anxious about Mateo touching her computer.
She kept asking how much longer and couldn’t focus on her own work for very long.
It wasn’t until her project manager came to get her that Mateo could fully focus and that only lasted so long before he was interrupted again.
“Gods, tell me they didn’t hire another human researcher,” someone demanded in a tone so snide, it made Mateo’s head jerk up.
He was surprised to find three guys in suits all looking at him in disgust while standing just far enough away that it seemed like they hadn’t intended for Mateo to hear them when they were speaking.
When they noticed his attention on them, they gave him their backs, but continued to talk crap like he couldn’t hear them talking.
“The first one was bad enough. He wastes company time, got an intern fired so now we have even less help around here, he’s basically just taking up space.”
“He’s probably just a diversity hire or something,” someone else commented. “Showing the community that Spellbound is ‘all about the community’. Complete crap in reality.”
“It might have something to do with the CEO,” a third added. “Since he mated a human, more and more of them have been showing up in the office.”
“Aren’t both CEOs mated to humans?” the second one asked.
“Ugh. This whole company is tainted,” the first one grouched. “Humans are disgusting.”
Mateo felt his shoulders raise almost to his ears with each comment they made.
He’d had people turn him away before, but never outright talk shit within earshot of him.
The school he’d gone to for his degree was really progressive and a good twenty five percent of the student population was human.
And nothing about his interview process made him think Spellbound had any problems with humans working there.
Hell, his boss was human. No one said anything to him about it.
He thought about telling Deshawn like he asked, but the shit-talkers weren’t people whose stations he was working at.
They were just there. Deshawn probably couldn’t do anything about it.
And he didn’t want to confront them himself.
He couldn’t tell their species, he kind of sucked at that kind of thing if a species looked human, but if they were complaining about humans, they were obviously stronger than he was.
He didn’t want to invite that kind of attention his way.
“Mateo? Are you ready for lunch?”
Dax’s voice behind him had his breath leaving him in a rush of relief. He turned in his chair, forcing a smile for his boyfriend, and waggled a hand side to side. “I need like ten minutes for the scan to finish. Do you mind waiting?”
Dax shrugged his agreement and sat in an empty chair nearby. His presence seemed to force the shit-talkers to move on, though one did shoot a dirty look at Mateo over his shoulder.
“Is everything okay?”
Mateo thought about telling Dax what happened, about the guys talking crap in a way that Mateo felt was way more antagonistic than they made it seem.
They might not have been talking to him directly, but they were being loud enough for him to hear, like they were trying to get a rise out of him.
But then he thought about all the work he’d done to get to a better place.
He’d just told Dax things were better, and they had an easy weekend together.
He didn’t want his boyfriend to have to rescue him again.
He’d get tired of it eventually. Mateo could handle a little talk himself.
He was just being sensitive because he hadn’t been feeling that great.
It wasn’t like supes hating humans was a new thing.
“No, I’m fine,” Mateo finally said, glancing over his shoulder to check the scan again. If only people were as easy to work with as computers, then his life would be seriously close to perfect.
Maybe it was because he was feeling off, but it felt weird that Dax didn’t argue with him or push at all.
Normally, he wouldn’t be satisfied with Mateo’s half-hearted reply.
He would keep pushing until he figured out why Mateo’s posture was off or why he couldn’t quite look Dax in the eye when he replied.
Unless… Was that why he felt so off? Was something going on with Dax and he’d been picking up on it?
After the scan finished, he locked the system so the cyclops who owned it wouldn’t come back and start messing with it before he could install the new firewalls.
Only an admin password would get her back in.
He stood from the desk, giving Dax what he hoped was an upbeat smile that faltered when Dax gave him a forced one in response.
“Shall we?”
“Uh, yeah… Cafeteria?”
“Sounds good,” Dax agreed with a bob of his head.
Mateo watched him with confusion as his normally bouncy and energetic boyfriend stared straight ahead in the elevator and only gave polite smiles as he made his way through the crowded cafeteria.
Mateo wasn’t the only one who noticed, people doing doubletakes when they passed and frowning at Dax’s back.
By the time they were seated at a mostly empty table, Mateo was sure there was something wrong.
He was going to ask, but Miles dropped into the seat next to Dax with a scowl on his face, distracting him as he complained, “Gods, The dating scene sucks. This weekend was a shitshow. You two better hold on to each other because the pool of available people is full of assholes and creeps.”
Mateo saw the flicker of emotion that passed over Dax’s face and felt his blood run cold. Why did that look like regret? What about Dax’s comment would make him feel regret?
…Was it Mateo? Did he finally realize after the awkwardness of the weekend and seeing just how much of a clean freak he really was that Mateo wasn’t anywhere near his league?
Did he regret asking him out? Or promising to stay?