Tea helps [Tag Professor Xavier] on Teppenpaw Commons

Dorian Montoir

July 07, 2019 12:04 AM

Tea helps [Tag Professor Xavier] by Dorian Montoir

Dorian had a problem, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it, but he supposed that the first step was to talk his Head of House. The reason for this was because it was said Head of House who was at the centre of the problem, and even if he didn’t really know what he could do about it, that seemed a logical place to start. Professor Carter-Xavier was absent because she was ill, and it didn’t take a Teppenpaw to figure out that Professor Xavier was going to be having a very difficult time of things right now. Again, Dorian wasn’t really sure what he could do about that. He was fairly sure that the Professor would not want to discuss his personal life with his students. However, just ignoring the fact that Professor Xavier was clearly in pain right now was not very Teppenpaw. Professor Xavier looked after and cared for all of them, and he deserved the same in return.

He thought tea was a good option. Tea was a good prop when you weren’t sure if you could really manage a full conversation with someone, and it also cured pretty much every known ill in the universe. However, it would be odd to just waltz into Professor Xavier’s office and offer to make him tea, so Dorian had waited until there was a time where they overlapped in the Common Room. This was not hard to find, because Professor Xavier spent plenty of time there. Dorian was reassured to see he was still doing that. He was still doing all the normal Professor Xavier things on the outside, but Dorian knew how easy it was to force yourself to go through the motions even though, on the inside, you felt like you were drowning.

He fetched his tea things from his room. Dorian making tea in the common room (or in any part of the school) was not an unusual sight, and he was always perfectly willing to share if anyone else expressed an interest in the beverage, although he was just as equally content to sip in contemplative and calming solitude. It was another of the ways in which tea worked for every situation - emotionally and temperature-wise, it suited every mood and weather, and it cured all manner of ill-health, but it was also versatile in its sociability; it could be bright and convivial or quiet and solitary. Or, as he was aiming for today, somewhere in between.

He made his way over to Professor Xavier. Melodie, knowing that tea was often accompanied by prolonged periods of sitting, trotted eagerly at his ankles, mewing expectantly, for all the world as if she was interested in taking a cup too.

“Hello,” he gave the professor a small smile, more or less devoid of shyness, although it might have been creeping back in at the edges. Dorian was very capable of being friendly, certainly, but he was unlikely to ever be described as ‘outgoing.’ “I was just about to make some tea, and I wondered would you like some?” he asked.

13 Dorian Montoir Tea helps [Tag Professor Xavier] 1401 Dorian Montoir 1 5

Nathan Xavier

July 10, 2019 3:38 PM

It certainly has its good points by Nathan Xavier

Nathan smiled a smile that almost reached his eyes when he saw Dorian approaching with tea making supplies. His mother was British so Nathan was no stranger to tea time. He was an American mix, though, so he was just as likely to go for the coffee pot as the tea kettle in the staff lounge and, to be perfectly truthful, he preferred hot chocolate to either.

But it wasn’t so much the beverage that was important as the thought and history behind it, and he knew from previous years that Dorian deeply valued tea, which made his offer to make some for Nathan all the more appealing.

“Thank you,” he agreed, “I’d like that.”

“Hello, Melodie,” he added to the cat, having made a point to learn the Teppenpaw pets’ names whenever he could. “You’re lucky, Dora is with a sitter this afternoon.” With another smile for Dorian, one that appeared more genuine than his first (it was easier to forget he was worried about his wife when he was thinking about his daughter’s latest antics), he added, “Theodora is not Alice’s favorite person at this age. She likes pulling tails and hugging too tight. It’s a wonder she hasn’t been scratched yet.“ But then, Alice was getting to be quite old for a cat, and she’d always been a bit on the lazy side. Getting bothered enough to hiss or scratch might just take too much energy for the old girl.

The smile faded. With luck, Alice would have many more years with them - familiars often lived longer than their counterparts - but what if something happened to her, to either of them, this semester and Isis had already given her last pet to the fluffy Persian mix?

No. He shook his head slightly to dismiss the thought. Alice would be fine, and so would Isis, and they would be reunited over midterm. It really wasn’t all that far away. Just a few months. Hardly a blink in his fifty-one years. Hardly a blink in Alice’s nineteen years. They were all going to make it to Christmas and that was that.

Alice still had the good sense to run and hide when she saw Dora coming, so she couldn’t be too far gone yet.

1 Nathan Xavier It certainly has its good points 28 Nathan Xavier 0 5

Dorian

July 11, 2019 7:59 AM

But it can make people ramble by Dorian

Melodie gave a happy mew at being greeted by name and jumped lightly into the Professor's lap. She probably would have done this to anyone with suitably horizontal legs but the big human smelt of sadness, and Melodie was just the right combination of caring and conceited to think that offering herself up for petting was the logical thing to do with that problem. Plus Dorian would be doing such unsuitable things as leaning forward and messing about with hot water for some time yet to come. Dorian supposed he should not have been surprised that the Professor knew her name, because Professor Xavier took a lot of time to get to know things about all of them. He wondered whether their pets' information was noted in their school files, like their birthdays, or whether Professor Xavier had had cause to get close enough to read the little gold disk, inscribed on one side with her name, and on the other 'DXM, Tepp' - and, if this was the case, whether it was because of Melodie being affectionate or whether he had caught her sticking her nose into things she ought not to. He hoped it stemmed from friendliness on Professor Xavier's part rather infamy on Melodie's.

Professor Xavier seemed to get lost inside his own head for a moment, and Dorian wasn't sure whether her should do something about that, but the Professor seemed to shake himself out of it.

"Mm, I am not sure how she does with small ones," Dorian mused, picking up the thread of conversation Professor Xavier had started, "She never did meet any." Except Ailuros, but that was rather different. Melodie had not engaged in her knittenish antics, instead primly sitting on Dorian's lap and making sure to rub herself against him as thoroughly as possible. Melodie was still young enough to be quite playful, and he suspected she had been Making A Point. He hoped Alice wasn't going to mind Professor Xavier coming back smelling of other felines... As for how Melodie would do with human babies, he wasn't sure. He wondered what 'hugging too hard' meant. When he was feeling sad, he had been known to scoop up Melodie and just squeeze her like a peluche. Obviously not hard enough to hurt, which a one year old might not know the line on, but she allowed Dorian to forcefully snuggle her, and do beeps on her nose and wiggle her little kitty toes. He knew she was a living creature and not a toy, and needed to be treated with respect, but sometimes it was just hard to resist because she was so squishable and he needed cuddles rather often. "She is quite patient," he shrugged. "And we will be always happy to see Dora," he assured Professor Xavier, because it was true but also because he suspected that looking after her was currently a lot more challenging that it had been, and he hoped that knowing Dora was still an honorary Teppenpaw even if she pulled tails would help, even just a very teeny tiny bit.

"I have many teas," he ventured, deciding to continue with the safe and neutral line of conversation that was the stated purpose of the interaction. He set the teapot with its straight sides, bamboo handle and little rabbits, evoked by minimalist calligraphic brushstrokes, onto the table, taking a seat opposite Professor Xavier. "I have a reasonably standard black tea, but also smoked oolong, white, green, or jasmine. There is also some Earl Grey. This one is teabags beacause Mr. Fox-Reynolds gave to me. The rest are loose leaf and-" he was about to say 'all single estate and mostly from my grandfather's tea plantations in Xi'an' but he was afraid that sounded rather snobby, when he was really just trying to share information because such things as a tea's point of origin were important to him. However, many people did not really bother about such things, and he was aware he may have already lost Professor Xavier when he introduced concepts beyond 'black'. "Sorry. I can be overly detailed about tea," he apologised. "My mother is just always very specific."

13 Dorian But it can make people ramble 1401 Dorian 0 5

Nathan Xavier

July 31, 2019 10:53 AM

That is by no means a bad thing by Nathan Xavier

Nathan smiled when Dorian assured him that Melodie was very tolerant and Dora would always be welcome, though the proviso that Melodie did not have much experience with very small children inclined him toward keeping the cat and the kiddo a safe distance apart, at least until Melodie learned Dora was . . . relatively unthreatening. She loved kitties. She just needed to learn kitties were not stuffed toys and squeezing was not appreciated. They’d been working on the concept of ‘gentle touches’ for a while now but Dora wasn’t quite there yet.

At least she’d mostly stopped grabbing handfuls of fur (or hair) and pulling, so there was that. She still liked inspecting his teeth and yanking on his ears, so his Nathan’s own head was not yet in the clear, but at least he wasn’t losing hair faster than its natural rate anymore.

When the conversation turned toward the specifics of tea, Nathan got a little lost. He recognized most of the words as tea related words, but he was not nearly enough of an aficionado to have tried all of them, never mind have an opinion on one versus another. “Whichever you recommend,” he said, deciding this was the safest route.

“My mother is British,” he added, not certain if this was something Dorian would have known already. It was by no means a secret, and he had mentioned it once or twice to students before, when it seemed relevant to a conversation they were having, but there were very few hints to it in his own American accent. “So I understand about having long detailed conversations about tea.”

He smiled in fondness for his own mother. ”She’ll be pleased to hear I’m expanding my tea horizons beyond black and peppermint.”

1 Nathan Xavier That is by no means a bad thing 28 Nathan Xavier 0 5

Dorian

August 01, 2019 8:38 AM

Oh. Okay. by Dorian

There was not really a single tea that was objectively better than the others. It really came down to a combination of factors like mood and time of day as well as subjective opinion. However, he recognised that he had somehow ended up in charge, presumably as the owner of the teas, and that the onus was on him here to make a decision. He assumed that Professor Xavier was doing this to be polite, or that at most he did not have a strong opinion on the matter, the way that Jehan depressingly and routinely failed to. It didn’t really occur to him that an adult might be baffled or overwhelmed. After all, they were adults. It was only him who was an anxious mess incapable of acting decisively and hopefully he would grow out of that in a couple of years.

“Ah. Yes, I remember this,” he acknowledged with a smile when Professor Xavier stated that his mother was British. It had come up in the discussion of how Dorian’s English wasn’t a bad influence on Dora - or at least, his accent wasn’t. At that point, it had been because she was still just learning to be interested in people and words, so far as he remembered, and her literary collection had been well within his capabilities. He wondered whether she was going to outgrow his usefulness at some point, once things like her getting grammar right mattered. Still, that was not a problem for now, as she was not here, and apparently the main area of concern right now was grabbing kitties too much.

“Does this mean that you will take tea with milk?” he enquired. He had observed Professor Hawthorne doing this, and it was apparently a British thing. His Mama had allowed Tatiana to furiously dump sugar into her nice black teas even though that was an abomination, so he supposed he would have to allow Professor Xavier to do that if he wanted to. The point of tea was to be comforting after all, and if British people needed to ruin tea in order to feel better, that was just what had to happen.

13 Dorian Oh. Okay. 1401 Dorian 0 5