Teniel Cae remained in the showering room for a frankly excessive amount of time. Eden’s patience was wearing thinner, but xe would admittedly rather he be thorough than waltz out of there still stinking of virile avush. Poor Adva was unmated and had looked about ready to throw eirself at him, something Eden knew ey would be deeply embarrassed by later when the hormones wore off.
Besides, a delay would hopefully serve to throw off the throngs of media reporters waiting outside the space port. All day, security had been catching journalists trying to sneak out of the designated media point they’d set up. Eden had no intent in letting them get so much of a peak of Teniel Cae, and they all knew it, xe was sure. Teniel was, after all, a singular refugee deserving of privacy, not a damn celebrity. Xe also didn’t want to see what he did in front of an army of journalists with prying questions. Xe’d gone over what limited records there were of Teniel’s previous two years of exile, and while the alien had seemed increasingly irritated by the presence of any determined journalists stalking him down, he’d also never seemed uncomfortable or uncertain of what to say in front of a camera.
No, Eden would be all too happy to give him the privacy xe hoped he really did desire. So if he wanted to take half an hour in the shower, let him. Xe could wait. In the meantime, xe sent his clothes off to be laundered, thoroughly. The materials were light and airy, save the jacket, not at all suited for life in Hes’ger, but they were still his clothes. And the jacket was clearly of local make; properly cleaned and perhaps tailored, it would be of great service to him, certainly. It was always cold in Hes’ger.
Finally, the alien emerged. His hair lost a lot of its shimmer while damp, hanging heavy and black around his shoulders and down his back. Weighed down by water, it was even more evident how long it was, trailing down the entirety of his back and past the waistband of his pants. He had brushed his hair back, displaying all four of his eyes much more prominently—before, part had hung down into his face, partially obscuring the upper set just beneath the two horns that jutted from his forehead. It would have been jarring to most Y’tzur, but Eden had much more experience with aliens than the vast majority of people on the planet. Xe had also been studying him for the past week, and was very familiar by now with the peculiarities of his Levir face, with its small nose and excessive, pointed ears. And all the horns. It was actually the tail that felt the strangest; it rarely featured in interviews, and the only other alien species in Hes’ger with a tail had a shorter and much fluffier one. Teniel’s by contrast, was long and scaled, reminding Eden of a predator in the rivers of warmer climates, a long, scaled, legless thing that slithered through the water, lunging out at prey as they were vulnerable drinking water by the shore.
He looked peculiar in Y’tzur clothing, particularly in the more o’millui-style clothing that had been available in his size—he had looked taller on camera, and had definitely looked broader. Xe’d seen how thin his arms and torso were when he’d been pulling off his clothing earlier. From what little xe’d seen in interviews, exile was not treating him well, and the most recent had been from almost a full Union year ago.
“Thanks for the jacket,” he said, although it was currently slung haphazardly over his shoulder. “As always, alien pants are a struggle.”
Eden could see what he meant. The pants, designed to be higher waisted, were riding disastrously low along his hips due to the fact he’d tucked the back of the waistband under his tail. The shirt was long on him, which hid some of the excessive skin that was surely on display on his lower back, but it was still clearly awkward and probably not the most secure. Xe would have to give him a list of tailors in Hes’ger, sooner than later.
“Would a skirt be more comfortable?” Eden asked with a considering frown.
“For standing up, maybe, but the second I try to sit down in one it’ll become nonexistent,” Teniel said. “And considering how badly these underwear fit me, no one wants that, least of all the owner of whatever I have to sit down on.”
Xe should have planned better for this. It had been generally assumed he’d be arriving with… belongings. He had instead arrived with one set of clothes and a recently-gifted—very recently gifted—jacket, and precisely no belongings other than a factory-standard lightpad that he’d clearly just gotten. Whatever situation he’d been pulled out of was clearly worse than the media had implied… or perhaps, he’d just had no time to grab any of his belongings. He’d certainly responded to the situation fast enough—he was on the ship over by the time Eden had even become aware of the situation. Five hellish days had passed since then, and he was already planetside.
It was enough time to get from most places to Ab’ed, but part of Eden—a large part—wondered if he hadn’t had a head start. There was every reason to suspect that he’d been in on the plot to bring him to Ab’ed. The Levir hadn’t exiled their once-in-a-lifetime religious leader on a whim. This was a man with experience in destabilizing governments, and Ab’ed’s government wasn’t exactly what one would call stable to begin with, at the moment. One faction was still pushing for Union membership. One was eying the Krin Collective as more than just a way to get attention. And a prominent third was still standing firm against joining either. Y’tzur mixing with aliens had relaxed in the decades since they’d discovered that beyn were the sex for the job, but that didn’t exactly go over well in a society that’d had one and only one social structure for centuries, one that did not include beyn, of all things, being the face of the species.
In a tumultuous situation such as that, positioned in a city with global—and now galactic—attention that already felt like a keg of explosive powder some days… It wouldn’t even take a man as charismatic and troublesome as Teniel Cae to light the match.
Of course, this didn’t really affect the immediate reality in front of the two of them, which was that he needed pants.
“I apologize for the lack of foresight on my part,” Eden began, but Teniel waved his hand as if brushing the words away from him.
“I’m quite happy just to be here, let alone to have someone helping me get settled. I was not expecting you to have Levir-tailored pants prepped at the spaceport for me. I can keep these from falling down and causing an international incident for a day. And they’re a lot warmer than what I was wearing.”
“Very well,” Eden said, willing to forgo the issue of his clothing for now. It would be easier to take care of with him already settled. Everything would be easier to take care of with him already settled, frankly. As wary as xe was about the process of getting him safely out of the spaceport without drawing attention, xe would feel a lot better once he was in his accommodations.