Monday, March 10th, 2008 Who: Keagan and Adora When: Around lunchtime on Monday Where: The Cafeteria What: Adora runs into Keagan and tries to give him a few pointers on how to integrate into cultures
Classes were cancelled. Normally, that would have meant that Adora would have the day off as a teacher, but as Hope's assistant, that meant she had even less to do in the event of classes being cancelled. Hope had already called people for repairs, so Adora had basically decided to take a couple of hours off and to go get lunch. She figured Duncan was still chilling in his room, as he didn't teach today. So, that meant a lunch alone. Fantastic.
Keagan had the day off, apparently, so he had spent the morning in the Library, reading current events and history of the last twenty years on his laptop and in a handful of periodicals. It was very slow going. He'd managed to get through American political history up until the '92 election when he felt his stomach rumble. He had skipped breakfast, and now that it was lunch time it was probably not wise to skip another meal. So, he packed up his messenger bag and headed toward the cafeteria. He had his nose in a book he had checked out, so he missed the fact he'd walked past Adora.
Adora had just stepped into the cafeteria when a tall figure passed her, nose effectively stuck in a book. Raising an eyebrow, Adora smiled as she realized who it was, and she took a few longer steps to catch up with him. "Keagan!" Adora tapped his shoulder for his attention.
Keagan looked up, then back around at Adora, "Oh! Hello, Miss Adora."
Adora rolled her eyes at him and chuckled. God, what is it with people these days? "Ugh, don't call me Miss. I get that you're older than me, but, c'mon. Just Adora works." She glanced over at the book in his hands. "The Routledge Dictionary of Politics? Oh, that sounds like it's so dry you need to add water before reading."
"Well maybe that's why I'm feeling so parched." Keagan said with a strait face. He then gave her a slightly apologetic look, "And I cant help it, I'm still fairly old fashioned."
Adora chuckled wryly at the joke, then reached up to pat him on the back playfully. "Well, Keagan, may I offer you some advice about how old-fashioned you are, my good old man?" She was enjoying being able to call him that, because for all his innocence about the last 20 years, she had spent enough time talking to him Sunday to know that he certainly was not young. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."
He flashed her a broad grin, "What, you mean get drunk nightly and fornicate? I didn't even do that when the Romans did."
Adora laughed, rolling her eyes. "I should have expected that." Which did beg the question of whether or not Keagan had fornicated at all. Huh. Something to test in the future. "No, I meant to get with the times, hun bun." Adora reached up and threw her arm over his shoulders, pulling him closer. "If you're gonna pretend to be a student to the masses, then you better start acting like one. Y'know, get a little more caught up and social." Adora pulled away so she could go step into the line to get her food.
Keagan looked a little confused and flushed from the hug. Women really were so much more... he didn't know. 3 millennium of separation of sexes, then suddenly in the last 50 years or so, women are on par with men again. And true, women were more equal with men in the Roman era, but he honestly didn't speak with mortals often then, not on an informal basis at least. It was so different. "Yes, but if I am pretending to be a student, that makes you an authority figure who is due respect."
He stepped into line behind her and nabbed a tray and roll of silverware.
"Cute, cute, but I don't even let my students call me Miss Adora." Adora paused as she grabbed her silverware. "Back when I had students..." Shrugging, Adora glanced through the food set up for lunch. Hm, fish sounded like a good idea at the moment. "Speaking of being social, how is your spritely little gossip of a friend?"
"She's good. She was mad she had a detention. She's not used to getting them." Keagan ordered his lunch, sticking to healthy things. Veggies and fish and a roll and an apple and milk.
Adora had picked up a fairly healthy lunch, although the brownie on the tray certainly didn't qualify. "Yeah, well, hopefully she will stop talking about me and Duncan now. Not really her business." Adora rose an eyebrow. "Have you considered telling her about what you're actually doing here? She seems to be pretty attached to you."
Keagan shook his head some, "No, She'll treat me like an old man. Or worse, not know how to treat me at all. If she thinks of me as a younger friend she's got to look out for, she'll teach me more about how to deal with her culture." He picked up his tray and turned to find a table.
"Ah ha..." Adora nodded, actually understanding the train of thought. He was completely out of touch, and if he wanted to learn the culture, immersion was the way to go. Adora followed him with her tray, nodding to a table out of direct sunlight. "There look good?" She glanced over at him. "You didn't think I was going to let you not have lunch with me, did you?"
"Well, I didn't think it would be proper, a student eating lunch with a staff member." Still, he followed her to the table, "Though I suppose we could say we're talking about art club." He gave her a slight smile, "Any in closed group of humans like a school will lead to gossip."
Adora shrugged, then slid into a seat, immediately taking a sip of her water. "Well, this is me you're talking to, and I'm the hub of gossip. But, I don't do students." Adora chuckled, then glanced over at him. "But, you are kind of an exception, aren't you? You're not really a student. And treating you like one is patronizing, to say the least."
He slid into the seat across from her and shook his milk carton before opening it and dropping a straw into it, "Well, I could make a statement about us all being students, but I think you'd kick me, and I saw the points on your shoes. I rather like my legs unbruised."
"Good man. Smart man." Adora chuckled, holding her fork up to point at him. "You are not a student. At least not to me. I should be taking lessons from you. You worked with the masters." Adora took a bite of fish, then paused. "Do you actually socialize with these kids like you're one of them, albeit, sheltered as all get out?"
Keagan had merely shrugged off her comment on her learning from him. He ate a roasted potato, then gave a thoughtful look in response to her question, "I try to, but lots of students think of me as a nerd."
"You know what would fix that?" Adora answered casually, taking another bite of her fish. "If you dated someone."
Keagan looked sheepish and tore off a piece of bread, "I don't know if that's the best of ideas."
"If you're a student, Keagan, then you have to act like one. And that means going through the delicious rigamarole that is dating. The kids around her hook up and break up faster than I find new meals." Adora sighed and took a bite of her cheese-covered broccoli. "It's kind of a social rite of passage."
"But it's not something I've ever had to do before." Keagan seemed unsure of himself. Nervous. The idea of dating was a little.. well.. scary.
Adora smirked, looking him over. "Let me guess. You chose knowledge over women, right? In the past? Cause you definitely seem the type."
Keagan nodded and ate a green bean solemnly, "Yes. And in the past, well, most societies have fairly strict rules about young males and females socializing. It was taboo, unless you planned on marrying a girl. And it wasn't like I could do that, exactly. I don't age."
Adora nodded, still eating and trying to think at the same time. If this guy had never slept with a woman, that was possibly one of the worst travesties against mankind possible. If Adora wasn't trying to hard to be good and stay on a one-man diet, she would really be trying to fix that. "Well, nowadays things have changed. Older woman who date younger guys are called cougars, but for the most part, people kind of leave it alone now. As for kids, they're hyper-sexualized. I'm sure more than one of them has thought about what it would be like to sleep with you."
Both Keagan's eyebrows went up, "I doubt that!"
Adora chuckled, a low purr practically as she gave him a smug look. "You wanna make a bet?"
"I highly doubt that the student body would be so forward as to think like that about someone they hardly know." Keagan's naivete knew no limits. This really was a case of him not remembering what it was like to truly be 18
Adora nearly choked on her sip of water, and she laughed, putting her glass down before she actually spit water on him. She swallowed, then held her hand up at him in complete disbelief. "Oh, please tell me you're kidding. Please tell me you don't actually believe that." Adora looked around the cafeteria quickly, then pointed to a student she saw just leaving the cafeteria. "Girls like her think about it. Guys like him think about it," Adora motioned to a guy on the other side of the cafeteria. "Hell, just look at the movies that come out these days. Even a PG-13 film has a sex scene in it."
"But.. but they are all just children." Keagan's eyebrows were knit together,
"To you, maybe. But many of them are adults. Most of the kids we have here at the school are, at the youngest, 17. And the 20 year olds? Oh, forget it, they're adults in their minds. And to most of society, they are, too." Adora smirked, taking another bite of food. "Just cause you're super-old doesn't make them children."
Frowning, Keagan finished his roll. "I know they are not technically children anymore, but... They should be focused on school and learning, not base instinct."
Adora laughed. "Spoken like a true bachelor scholar."
"Well, it's true. They cant really worry about propagating the species if they dont know the culture they will pass on to their offspring, or how to make a living to support them." Keagan pushed his fish around on his plate some. It was something he'd always been annoyed with humanity about. Was it so hard to exercise a little planning?
"It's true, but they're not thinking about propagation. They're thinking about pleasure and self-gratification." Adora rose an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you missed the 60's, too."
"I didn't miss the sixties." Keagan said, a bit defensively, "I was a hippie guru living in a self sufficient commune for the entire decade.
"So you're telling me you were living as a guru and ignoring the fact that people were making love and not war?"
Adora popped another piece of broccoli into her mouth casually.
"I was trying to ignore the fact that we were all under constant threat of nuclear annihilation. I picked a valley that was remote enough at the time that I thought we'd be free of the touch of warfare and I harbored draft dodgers." He was rather matter of fact, and popped another forkful of fish in his mouth. "We attempted to live more akin to native Americans, and what my original idea for Communism was."
That made Adora completely forget her conversation about trying to make him live life as a young man again. "Your idea for Communism?"
Keagan nodded and ate another green bean. "Well, mine and Karl and Friedrich's."
Adora's forkful of fish still hung in the air as she looked at him with a completely stunned expression. She knew that he had spent time with lots of people, but... really? "You... and... huh. No wonder you don't know how to interact with girls, you spent all your time with the 'great thinkers.' And sounds to me like you never met any of the women ones."
"Women werent 'great thinker' in society's eye until this past century. Prior to this, any great woman was passed off as a ghost writer for her husband or a lunatic." His tone was again matter of fact, "You yourself have certainly seen this."
"Yes, I have. I was also not at all worried about being a great thinker. I was a great lover. That was my thing." Adora chuckled, then finished off the last of her fish, pulling her brownie towards her.
"I will admit that I've not been around many women in my life." Keagan was back to being sheepish again, "When one lives the life of a scholar, knowledge becomes his mistress. And when one lives life eternally looking as young as I do, well. A wife will grow old, wont she? People will be suspicious, seeing her husband looking like her child." Besides, messing in mortals affairs and sleeping with their women was what Ahehtohs called Zeus or the other mages of his day did.
"Well, yes, I understand that. It's the same reason I never stayed with a man for a long time.Or, if I did, it wasn't public, I was hidden away somewhere." Adora sighed, taking a bite of brownie. "But you were never even... attracted to a woman?"
"Of course I was attracted to women. But that was three thousand years ago. But... It wasn't my calling." He shrugged, "Being a lover? A husband? I had things I needed to do that I thought were more important. Things so other men could be husbands and lovers." There was no sorrow in his voice. No regret. It was simply how things had been.
Adora had rested her chin on her hand as he kept talking, her gaze growing more and more thoughtful as he kept speaking. When he finally finished, Adora simply gave a quiet "Huh" and then cleared her throat, biting into her brownie. "I thought I couldn't fall in love. I've spent the last 250 years thinking that. And I'm pretty sure that I can, then no one is immune. Not even you. I just think you haven't found the right person yet, the right time." Adora chuckled, rolling her eyes. "Ugh, listen to me."
A very sly smile crossed Keagan's face, "Oh, so is there any truth to Astrid's observation?"
Adora blinked, taking a second to realize what he was asking. "About Duncan and me? What? No!" Adora shook her head and sighed, waving her hand in dismissal. "We are friends. I am not in a rush to place anything upon our friendship other than what's there, thankyouverymuch." Of course, had Adora realized she'd just said thank you very much like how Duncan said it, she would have swore. "Your friend is seeing something that isn't there."
The sly smile simply broadened, "If you say so." She was a little quick to jump to defenses there. Just because he had never experienced it for himself did not mean he had not seen countless others fall in love.
"The point is, you're trying to change the subject." Adora pointed her brownie at him, in a motion that would have been more common for Astrid to do, but it just so happened the brownie was in her hand. "And just because you've been a bachelor scholar all this time does not mean that you can't use your rebirth into the current culture as an opportunity to try new things."
Keagan had his reservations. To get close to a girl like that, it meant her possibly falling for him, or vice versa. Which meant eventually, someone's heart would be broken. He instead let the subject slide. He bit into his apple, then put it down again, frowning some, "Mmm... not really apple season any more."
"Hence why I went for the brownie." Adora paused, her face flickering with emotion as she suddenly felt the baby move, and she stopped chewing, looking down at her stomach.
"Are you ok?" She had stopped chewing mid sentence, and the look on her face was an odd one.
Adora nodded slowly, then cleared her throat, finally looking back up at Keagan. Well, he wasn't really a student, she didn't think it would hurt to tell him. "I'm fine. I'm just... pregnant, and the baby started moving last week, so it's been kind of odd to get used to."
Keagan smiled broadly, "You are? Congratulations! I take it that it's not knowledge for the general population."
Adora shrugged, chuckling. "Well, I'm gaining weight. I'm sure in about three weeks people will notice that I have an actual stomach. Right now it's just pudge. It's not meant to be a secret, I just haven't thought to tell any of the students yet." Adora's hand drifted down to her stomach, rubbing gently, an action she was totally unaware of. "It's been sinking in these last few days."
"Well, it's really no one's business if you are or aren't, but I do wish you the best." Keagan had noticed the action. It made sense, if she was pregnant, that she was actually entertaining the idea of romance and love. She was probably obsessing about it. Keagan wondered who the father was, but given what Adora was, he wasn't sure it was polite to ask. She might not even know.
"Well, thank you for the well wishes." Adora chuckled. "I've been spending the last few months sitting here going 'how can I not turn out like my harpy of a mother?" Adora paused, realizing he would probably need more information to understand her. "She left me alone when I was 13. She figured I knew enough about how to feed and vanished."
"Ahh." Keagan nodded, "Well, you don't want to make that same mistake, do you?"
"Exactly. And I don't plan on it. It's why I've done a lot of the things I've done since getting here." Adora smirked. "I sleep with only Duncan. I don't want my kid to grow up thinking he or she has to jump from meal to meal, so I'm trying to see if by being monogamous, it's actually beneficial for the baby." Adora muttered softly to herself. "Where the hell is that Korean know-it-all when I need her?"
Keagan didn't catch the last part, and he had a feeling he wasnt supposed to, "Well... then I'm sure you'll automatically be a better mother than yours was."
"Hm. You're not the first person to say that," Adora chuckled, polishing off the last of her brownie and sitting back. "In the meantime, I have been working on all the artwork I can stomach. I'm running out of room in my apartment for any of it."
"Getting rid of nervous energy?" Keagan asked simply. "You know, you could always just sell it.
Adora laughed, unable to stop herself. "Oh Judas Priest, shut up, you sound like Duncan,."
"Just think of it as your child's college fund. Or a way to buy all the diapers you'll need." And then he added, as an afterthought, "Or just hire a nursemaid to change the diapers for you."
"That's true. I didn't really consider it like that..." Adora sighed some, chuckling. "Hell, if I'd known the Son of Man was going to be such a fucking hit, I would never have let Magritte paint a copy. I would have just sold the damn original myself. It's still sitting in my room."
It was Keagan's turn to be surprised, "You painted 'Son of Man'?!"
Adora nodded, chuckling. "Magritte and I were very good friends from about 1961 to 1964. He was getting sick by that point, and he had the talent, but he was running out of ideas."
"Now it's my turn to be astonished. That is a wonderful piece of art." Keagan had finished his meal, and was polishing off the last of his milk. "If the rest of your art is indicative of that, you'll make a fortune."
Adora shook her head, reaching up and pinching her nose between her thumb and index finger. "Ha, except I'm pretty sure my style is about 30 years too late now. I don't like this damned 'modern' and 'post-modern' art shit, I much prefer actually painting something of worth. Of value. An idea. Surrealism was my favorite, because we took real images and changed them, played with them."
"I think you'd be surprised what people want in their houses. It isn't always strange modern things. At least I hope not." He watched her weary look with a peaceful one of his own, "I'd gladly be your Patron, if I had more space in my room."
That gained another laugh from Adora, as she'd heard those words more than once or twice throughout her life. "Hmmm, my Patron. Except, see, Keagan, you'd wind up being the first patron I never got full payment from." Adora winked at him, hoping that the innuendo would sink in. It would do him well to get a damn blush or something.
"You've never had a patron pay you in full?! That's... that's...." realization of what she meant kind of sunk in and he turned a lovely shade of pink.
The chuckle that he got for that was a thoroughly pleased one, the kind of satisfied chuckle she gave Duncan after a nice night. "There you go. Glad you're coming with me on that one."
Keagan was still blushing fabulously pink a minute later, "Well, I mean, I would pay you... but.. That is to say..."
"I think we both know I'm not talking about money there, Smallville." Adora hadn't used the nickname in a while, and she had a feeling if she kept using it, it would keep flustering him.
"I know that's what you mean." He flushed darker, "I mean that I've never paid anyone that way before."
"Well, no, I imagine you wouldn't. But, y'know, if there ever comes a time... I'll let you know if I'm interested." Adora took a sip of her water innocently, taking a deep breath. God, he was an easy mark. Easier than Duncan. Duncan was worlds better in bed, though, she knew that much. Hell, he was just by default.
"Right... uhmn" Keagan quickly stood up, "I should really get back to studying. Thank you for having lunch with me..."
Adora knew she had a tendency to fluster guys like him, and she sighed, nodding. "Don't, uh, don't jump up too fast there. I don't bite. Nor do I take without asking these days." Adora smiled, winking at him and finishing the rest of her water. "I'll see you Wednesday, Keagan."
"Right... see you then." But Keagan couldn't run off fast enough. It wasn't often he got flustered.