WHAT: Teela catches Adam up on home while they eat bagels, then Feelings Talk WHERE: Vallo City WHEN: Backdated to the day after Serendipity Hills ended WARNINGS: Feelssss STATUS: Complete
Adam would be lying if he said that Serendipity Hills hadn’t been a lot of fun. Even looking back at it now, he couldn’t deny that. Except… well, now things were a little awkward.
Adam had had feelings for Teela for a long time now. If he was honest with himself, making things right with Teela had been as big, if not a bigger, reason for Adam returning to Eternia from Preternia as saving Eternia from whatever threat no one is telling me about was. Even if he never got a chance to tell Teela how he felt, he still had to make things right.
And now he had told Teela how he felt. Except it hadn’t been him, really, and he wasn’t sure if it counted, and really, this whole thing was way too confusing.
He’d taken Teela to the DOA nearly as soon as they’d gotten back from Serendipity Hills, heading off most of Teela’s questions on the way. The DOA could explain things better than Adam could; he hadn’t been here long enough to really know the whole spiel in the first place. He’d gone to pick them up smoothies at Cafe Tropical while she’d been getting the rundown. But now Teela was done with her orientation and Adam was feeling…
Awkward.
Very awkward.
“Your hair looks great, by the way,” Adam said. “I don’t know if I mentioned that. I mean, it looked great when it was short too, but I’ve always liked it long. Not that it really matters… you know… what I like.”
Which was another thing Adam didn’t quite understand. Why was Teela’s hair long?
He cleared his throat. Awkwardly.
Serendipity Hills was a dream.
When Teela woke up, she expected it to have been a dream, anyway. It had felt very real, incredibly vivid, like an actual life she’d lived, but that came with the Sorceress territory. Now that she was tuned into every bit of life on Eternia, she could exist in more than one place at once. She could live a thousand different lives, but her own always took priority. Keeping Eternia safe, for the sake of the universe itself, was what mattered most.
So, waking up in an unfamiliar apartment and stepping out into the living room to find a frazzled-looking Adam waiting for her was kind of a shock.
Part of her still didn’t want to believe it, despite all the evidence the DOA provided that it was true and despite what she felt herself. Magic permeated Vallo the same way it permeated Eternia, but it was its own unique magic and a melting pot of different magics all at the same time. It was a strange feeling but one she could adjust to and work with.
Not that she had much choice in the matter.
Now armed with information and proof that Vallo and Serendipity Hills were both very real (thanks to a reality-warping native witch) — yeah, there was some awkwardness. Mostly because, well, she and Adam had been close there. Not any closer than they’d always been at first, but at the end of it all, it had felt like they were a breath away from sinking into what that part of her she’d buried had always wanted.
But she wasn’t about to let that awkwardness ruin things for them. They had each other here and that was what mattered. They could handle the feelings Serendipity Hills had dragged up to the surface. At least there was no denying that those feelings were there now. And without the fate of the universe in the way, it was probably past time they worked all that out.
“Thanks.” She brushed a few stray locks back behind her ear. “Comes with the Sorceress gig, apparently.” She wasn’t complaining. The short hair had been practical and she’d liked it, but it had also been a very pointed move, meant to communicate that she was out of the royal fold. She liked it long; she’d missed it.
She turned to face him fully, reaching out to grab his hand and squeeze. “You can breathe now, you know. It’s just me.”
“The Sorcer…” Adam started, and then trailed off. He was missing something, and maybe he should have known that from the moment he’d seen Teela with her long hair, and had known who they actually were and how things had been the last time they’d seen one another.
He flushed a little when Teela took his hand, but he squeezed back and could feel the tension leave his shoulders. “It is you. You know, I wasn’t really sure until I saw you here,” he said. “I thought maybe Serendipity Hills… I don’t know, like I’d dreamed you up or something instead of it actually being you. I’m glad it is though.”
If he’d missed Teela before Serendipity Hills, he couldn’t imagine how much he’d miss her after that.
“So, tell me about this Sorceress gig. How’d that end up happening?” If she’d been the Sorceress when she’d pulled him out of Preternia, he thought that someone would have mentioned that. Like her mother, maybe, when they’d made it back to Castle Grayskull. “Wait! Hold on to that thought. Are you hungry? Because this sounds like it might be a story best told over bagels, and there’s a bagel cart not far from here. Glenn will give you your first one for free.”
Teela could relate and gave his hand an understanding squeeze. It had seemed dreamlike. She really had believed that was all it was and that she’d wake up in her new room at Castle Grayskull back home. But instead, she’d woken up here in Vallo. She was still processing that, but if Adam could adjust, she knew she could, too.
Before she got to open her mouth to respond or give him any of the answers he was asking for, he decided they were better off talking about bagels and Glenn. Okay, then, rolling with the punches.
“Bagels sound great,” she agreed. “Lead the way to Glenn, whoever that is.”
Adam led the way, pointing out a couple of local attractions on the way to the bagel stand, and when they finally reached Glenn’s bagels, Adam greeted him like a friend, asked after his family, and introduced Teela as his very best friend from back home. Once they had their bagels - Adam had gotten a rainbow one, as they’d turned out to be his favourites - Adam led her to a nearby bench.
“Alright, so, tell me all about how you became the Sorceress.”
Glenn seemed sweet, and Teela made sure to flash him a smile and sincerely thank him when he presented them with their bagels. She’d gone with the same rainbow one as Adam because she trusted his judgment when it came to food.
She had to bite back a smile when Adam introduced her, though. ‘Very best friend’ was such an Adam thing to say and not inaccurate. They’d been friends since the day he was born. That would never change, no matter what did or didn’t happen between them.
“Gods, it’s a long story,” she sighed. “Brace yourself. You’ve missed a lot since we came back from Preternia. You sure you want to hear it all?”
Adam nodded and steeled himself - his back a little straighter, his expression taking on a heavier seriousness. He hoped she wasn’t about to tell him that he’d come back from Preternia just to die again, but he was prepared to hear it.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Adam said. “Tell me everything.”
“Just remember, you asked for it,” Teela warned him, her tone light and teasing, despite everything she was about to say. It was over now, all resolved and wrapped up with a neat little bow — for the time being. But she knew that wouldn’t be the end of the trouble they faced; there would always be something else out there.
Her tone became a little thicker with emotion as she spoke. She told him everything, per his request. The loss of her mother; Skeletor taking the Sword and the Power; the appearance of He-Hulk when Adam summoned the Power without the Sword; their reunion with Randor and Marlena; Evil-Lyn taking the Power from Skeletor and the necessary team-up between them and their most formidable enemy; how she’d accepted her destiny and taken her mother’s place as the Sorceress to a put a stop to the end of the universe at Evil-Lyn’s hands; Evil-Lyn’s — Lyn’s — defection to their side.
All of it, with very little pause despite the emotion involved.
“It’s over now,” she sighed in conclusion. “There’s peace, but you know how that goes. Never lasts.”
Adam frowned, listening. He had wanted to know, still did, and he didn’t regret asking. When Teela mentioned her mother, he reached out and took her hand - keeping Teela’s heritage from her had been almost harder than keeping He-Man from her.
Adam had always wondered what it would be like to call down the power, and now he was glad that he hadn’t had cause to try it here. But the whole story was a mix of emotions - he wondered, almost jealous of himself, what it would be like to hug his dad and make amends, and then brushed the thought away; it wasn’t important now.
He realized, by the time Teela finished speaking, that he hadn’t let go of her hand, and he did then, a tinge of pink in his cheeks.
“It really is just one war after another,” he sighed, leaning back on the bench. “But maybe this time it will last. It has to eventually, right?” And if he’d trusted Skeletor enough to give him the Power, that meant he had to have seen at least something worth hoping for there. Especially if Evil-Lyn had come along to their side.
Adam was taking this in stride, just like Teela had expected from him. She knew she’d heaped an overload of information on him, things he’d been there for but hadn’t witnessed because of this timeline weirdness. It was strange, and yet, he just pushed forward, optimistic and kind as always.
(She missed his hand the moment it slipped out of hers.)
“It’s possible,” she conceded. She would give him that. She wasn’t holding on to the same hope, but she wasn’t going to crush Adam like that. She never could. She felt something else coming, but they weren’t there now. If they ever went back, they would deal with whatever that meant then.
“Now, you wanna talk about the other elephant in the room here?”
Adam hesitated. He thought, maybe, that he knew what Teela was talking about, but he couldn’t be sure. She’d told him what had happened in the future, but he hadn’t lived it. He didn’t really know how things stood between them. “I don’t know if you noticed Teela, but we’re not in a room,” he said, shooting her a smile.
Teela gave him a look, but yes, she smiled. His jokes may be lame and brimming with puns, but she liked them. And his stupid, pretty-boy face. “You know exactly what I mean, doofus,” she teased him, knocking her shoulder against his. “We were… getting kind of close in Serendipity Hills.”
"Right," Adam said, teasing smile fading into something a little more nervous. Serendipity Hills had been great, but it hadn't been real and Adam had no way of knowing if Serendipity Hills had changed Teela's feelings, just a little, so they'd be more in line with his, or if that's how she'd actually felt about him.
Well, no way of knowing except to straight up ask.
He'd known his feelings for Teela for a long time, and if it hadn't been for He-Man, he probably would have told her about them years ago. But he could have never told her, could never have tried for a relationship with her, with such a massive secret between them. Not even just that, but everything. Teela Na being her mother, and all the other secrets Adam thought he could never tell her.
But she knew all of them now. Likely knew more about Castle Grayskull and the Power than Adam could ever find out.
He reached for her hand again. "Teela, I've had feelings for you since…" he thought for a moment, and then gave up. "Since longer than I can even remember. But I don't want to make things awkward between us. If you don't feel the same, you can let me know; I'd rather have you as a friend than as nothing at all."
At this point, Teela had expected to need to prod Adam more or for him to outright reject her. If this was so hard for him to talk about, maybe she had been misinterpreting their closeness in Serendipity Hills. They had been best friends all their lives, both here and in that weird world. Holding hands, cuddling, teasing each other, none of that was necessarily out of the norm for best friendship, right? Right.
And then he actually said it. By some miracle, her mouth didn’t drop open in shock, but her eyebrows did raise and she started to grin again.
“I don’t know how the hell you never noticed, but I feel the same way,” she told him firmly, squeezing his hand and meeting his eyes. She didn’t want to leave any room for uncertainty in what she was saying. “Pretty much always. I never knew how to tell you, but it’s been there for - yeah, as long as I can remember sounds about right.”
If Adam had wanted to stop smiling, he probably couldn’t. He didn’t want to try to temper his smile though, so he didn’t, rubbing his thumb over Teela’s. “Well then,” he said, leaning forward to rest his forehead against Teela’s. “If I like you, and you like me, then we should probably do something about that then, huh?”
“We probably should,” Teela agreed, leaning in to press a kiss to his cheek. “I really want to, but I’m thinking we should take our time. We could rush right into this, but it’s all new and… I want to do it right.” She met his gaze, quirking a challenging brow at him. “No more secrets, right? Promise me.”
That was okay with Adam. He and Teela had all the time in the world to get things right, and rushing into things wasn’t really either of their style. Getting careless and making mistakes didn’t work when facing off against the forces of Snake Mountain, and it wouldn’t work now, either.
“I promise you, Teela,” he said. “I don’t ever want to keep another secret from you again.”