ax_main | Teddy and Tessa | Backdated to 10/15

Tessa encounters Teddy attempting to bake his troubles away in the kitchen. There follows a typically-direct conversation regarding the source of his anxiety and instruction in the preparation of sugar cookies.

As late as it was, as busy as the last couple of days had been, Teddy was in absolutely no mood to go back to his room. It was late, for one thing, which meant that Billy would be there. Or worse, that he wouldn't be there, and Teddy would have to think about where he might be. And with who.

It wasn't that he didn't like Kurt. Kurt was awesome, and Billy deserved to have that kind of person in his life. But Kurt was... not Teddy. And seeing the two of them together at the party the night before had hit Teddy harder in the gut than he'd imagined it would.

And he only had himself to blame for all of it. A thousand 'if onlys,' and not a single way to fix it. Even if he could get up the courage to come out to Billy now, he couldn't - wouldn't - do that just when Billy'd found someone else. That would just be cruel on all sides.

So instead of going back to the room and doing homework, or trying to sleep, or even hanging out in the lounge (because Billy was in the lounge a lot and then Teddy would have to talk to him), he found himself in the kitchen.

He hadn't really been in there much, not when the cafeteria had everything. But there was something soothing about the particular kind of alchemy of baking, in the precise measurements and in sinking his fingers into dough, and the little marching rows of brown sugar cookies (the simplest recipe he had memorized) on the first tray out of the oven made him feel a little bit better.

By contrast, Tessa was in the kitchen more often than the cafeteria; she enjoyed preparing her own meals, and since she and Jean-Paul had started cooking for each other in a periodic, if not particularly regimented, way, the time she spent there had only increased. Only the library or the Danger Room were more likely places to find her, lately. She paused in the doorway, however, when she noted Teddy's presence, watching him labor over his baking with minute attention to detail for a moment before addressing him cordially.

"Good day. I did not expect to find the oven in use at this time. If you desire to complete your activity in solitude, please alert me of that fact. I will not be offended." She was not, after all, one to impose her presence where it might not be desired.

Teddy had only half-registered someone there, still lost in his own muddled thoughts. He glanced up when Tessa greeted him, still distracted, but frankly he was so grateful that it wasn't Billy standing there that he shook his head and managed a smile instead of telling her to go away. (Besides, he was in a public area of the school, and that would have been rude.) "It's fine. Did you need to use it? I've still got-" He looked at the bowl of cookie dough guiltily. "A few batches to go."

"My need is of no special urgency," she reassured him, then arched a brow at the amount of cookie dough and other ingredients remaining. "And forgive me for contradicting you, but I suspect you may have more than a few batches remaining." Even without falling back on telepathy, Tessa could tell that something was amiss, but elected not to call direct attention to it; the others were not always as straightforward as she when they were troubled. It was possible she could provide comfort in alternate ways.

"If you do not object, perhaps you would allow me to assist you? I am not very well acquainted with Western culinary traditions and would welcome the opportunity to expand my repertoire."

"Um. Sure?" Teddy wasn't quite sure what to call Tessa, even in his head. They weren't really friends yet, not in the 'hang out and make fun of terrible movies' or 'call down to the gym for a pick-up game' sort of ways he was used to. But there was something to be said for a more ... straightforward kind of companionship. He could use a little more straightforward and a lot less (self-inflicted) bullshit at the moment. "That'd be cool."

He stepped aside to give her room at the counter, the roll of parchment paper shoved toward the back and a lined and half-filled cookie sheet in front of him. The globs of raw brown dough didn't look like much, but the cinnamon-caramel smell rising from the cooling rack was already making him hungry. "It's just drop cookies, nothing super-fancy."

After washing her hands in the sink, she joined him beside the counter and studied the raw materials before them. "I am not familiar with cookies, fancy or not," she told him. "Such confections are more luxury than I am used to. But I look forward to addressing that deficiency." She glanced toward Teddy. "If you will describe what task I may perform, I can begin at your convenience."

Teddy took a second to reset from 'doing this myself' to 'teaching someone else,' and nodded. "'kay. I'm just filling the tray- hang on." He grabbed a second spoon and held it out for her. "The style is called drop cookies because that's all we have to do. Scoop some of the dough on the spoon and put it on the parchment paper, with space in between them for spreading." He paused, then went ahead and asked. "Have you really not had cookies before?"

"Occasionally, when they were the most convenient source of nourishment available," Tessa said. "Which was not often. I tended to favor nutritional balance, in any case; standard-issue US Army MRE's were typically the most logical choice, though I cannot recommend the flavor." She carefully carved a dollop of dough from the main mass and applied it as Teddy had indicated; it's shape was unusually, if not perfectly, symmetrical, in contrast to the more irregular shapes on Teddy's previously-prepared tray. "I also have some experience with traditional Afghan cuisine, though I never paid much attention to sweets."

MREs? Afghan cuisine? That painted a whole new picture of -- well, he hadn't really assumed anything about her background to begin with. Maybe it would have been better if he hadn't mentioned his father, when they'd talked before.

"Yeah, these are definitely not what you'd call nutritionally balanced. They're mostly sugar and butter, but they taste good." He caught up with the conversation, scooping out some dough for more of his own blobbish sort of lumps. That was fine; they'd all even out in the oven. "I don't know much about Afghan cooking. What's it like?"

She continued to deposit her strangely-even spheres of dough onto her own baking sheet. "It is mostly slow-cooked, spiced curries of locally-available meats and other ingredients, coupled with rice or occasionally dumplings." She glanced toward Teddy. "If you would like, I could prepare a meal for you, sometime. It might not be entirely to your taste, but I think you might find some of the dishes palatable."

He'd stopped and was watching her work with a morbid fascination. "I'll taste pretty much anything once, but that actually sounds really good." Teddy tried to figure it out, but there was nothing immediately obvious - "okay, how are you doing that?"

"I have been reliably informed that my skills at preparing such dishes are serviceable." She told him in answer to his initial statement. Dark eyes then moved from Teddy to the sugar-flecked dough. "Muscle memory is another aspect of my gifts, and I make a point of practicing economy and precision of movement at every opportunity. Is that not appropriate to this activity?"

"No, no, it's fine -- it's just impressive. Not necessary, mind you, at least not if you're putting extra effort in. The dough will do a thing where it melts and reforms into a circle shape on its own. Surface tension will pull it into shape." That sounded about right, anyway. As far as cookie fluid mechanics went. "And I have got to show you how to make truffles someday. That's one where the shape actually matters." He'd been wallowing in his own bitterness only minutes ago, and now he was thinking about candy. Distractions from his real problems were wonderful things.

"If it is irrelevant to the process, I shall continue," she said. "As I mentioned, the practice is welcome. I would also be most amenable to further instruction in Western dessert items; I do not have a particular taste for sweets, myself, but I think some of my other friends and friendly acquaintances would appreciate the gesture." Tessa studied the cookies which were already prepared, those presently in the oven, and the bowls of batter left to be spooned out onto their own trays.

"If the question would not be unduly prying, your current efforts seem somewhat in excess of what a single individual could reasonably expect to consume. Is there some occasion approaching of which I am unaware?"

"I- no. No occassion." Teddy's discomfort returned, and he focused on the dough in his bowl, and on placing his last couple of cookies. "I figured I'd leave them in the lounge. They'll go pretty fast." He felt the weight of her question and grimaced, that awful mix of jealousy, self-recrimination and shame bubbling up from where he thought he'd had it buried. "It's about the process. It helps me relax."

"And why," she went on, knowing it was pressing, but also recognizing that something was weighing on Teddy beyond a mere desire for nutritionally-deficient foodstuffs, "would you require help relaxing?" The dark turn of his thoughts was not lost on her, but she could not attribute those feelings to any specific source without outright invading his mind.

The next lie was on the tip of his tongue -- stressed over schoolwork, worried about the X-Men and the Brotherhood, invent an illness for this mother... and he couldn't do it. The heaviness of it was just too much. If he could just talk about it to someone, lance the boil, let some of the poison out, maybe it wouldn't eat away at him so badly. And if there was anyone at all in the school who would give it to him straight, Tessa would be it.

Teddy shoved his tray into the oven and set the timer, then sank down to sit on the floor, his back against the cabinets. "I made a mistake," he confessed, his chest and throat tight. "A big one. And I can't fix it."

"Ah," said Tessa, returning to the task of spooning dough onto the tray before her. "No human is a stranger to error; we all make them, at one time or another. We all feel the sting of dissatisfaction with our own conduct. But what has led you to believe that this particular situation is irreparable?"

"Because I can't fix it without hurting someone else." He tipped his head back against the cabinet and watched her, so matter of fact and calm. Tessa wouldn't have screwed this up the way he had. Or maybe she just wouldn't care as much.

"I lied to someone I really care about. No... I didn't lie. But I didn't correct a bad assumption, which had the same end result.

"I let them believe something that isn't true, and which means we can never, ever have the kind of relationship I want. I had the chance early this year, and I chose to stick with the lie. I blew it because I was scared, and I can't tell them the truth now. It's too late.

"So it's better to leave things the way they are. And I just have to figure out how to be okay with that." God, that idea hurt. To sit and watch while Billy found love, moved on... all while thinking of Teddy as nothing but the dumb jock he roomed with once. Tears stung the corners of Teddy's eyes and he tried to swipe them away unnoticed.

Tapping the last of the dough from the bowl she'd been attending onto the tray in one last, nearly-perfect sphere, she turned to regard Teddy with more-than-typical interest, for all her expression remained stoic as ever. "I see. You have erred, and prefer to compound your error with further dissimulation rather than acknowledge your fault." She rested the spoon in the bowl once more. "Deceit cannot lead to happiness; it cannot even lead to basic satisfaction. Honest acknowledgement of your feelings, while no guarantee of an optimal outcome, at least afford you the opportunity for mutual understanding, and a chance to move beyond what presently drives you to seek any possible distraction." The cyberpath shrugged. "It is, ultimately, your choice, however. But leaving things the way they are seems more an act of submission than of strength."

Closing his eyes only helped a little, at least in terms of keeping his tears bottled up properly. "That's just it. I'm a coward. The last time I wanted- the last time I trusted someone with the truth like that, it went very, very badly." And that was the understatement of the century. "I'm still not sure this is worse."

"Past experience must inform present action," Tessa acknowledged. "That is only rational. But are you certain you are not pressing a false equivalency onto your current circumstance? Lacking the necessary details, I can only speculate. However, I would assert that I do not think you are a coward. You wish to spare yourself, and even moreso those you care for, pain, if you believe that you can. That is laudable. But pain is an unalterable fact of life. And retreating from it is not always desirable."

Billy wasn't anything like Greg; even only two months in Teddy could be sure of that much. But then he'd thought Greg was pretty great at first. No -- that wasn't the problem. And if Billy wasn't with someone, then maybe... maybe. But now Kurt was involved somehow, even if Teddy didn't exactly know the extent of it. Except that Billy had danced with him, and just seeing the two of them together like that had made Teddy feel all... possessive. And sad.

"Maybe it wouldn't be the same," he conceded, opening his eyes again and nodding. The smell of warm sugar filled the kitchen, and that made him feel a little better again. "But it feels selfish, making someone else unhappy to ease my own conscience. At least this way I'm the only one who's hurting."

"Pure altruism does not exist," she said matter-of-factly. "We can only project possible outcomes based on our own experiences and our personal biases. But in either case, I think your strategy is sub-optimal: you deny the object of your affection the opportunity to return or refute your feelings, and in so doing deny yourself the opportunity to achieve your objective. Or, at the very least, to begin to heal."

Tessa moved the tray of cookie dough she had recently completed to the side of the oven, where it would be ready to place inside once there was room available. "I prefer directness in my interactions, and particularly with those I hold in esteem. Ambiguity, I find, only heightens anxiety and distorts one's clarity."

"Yeah, you could definitely call my clarity distorted right now." Teddy sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. "That's how you'd deal with it? Just... spill my guts and hope for the best?"

"I do not recall mentioning anything about hope," she said with a faint smile. "Hope is as much an enemy of logic as despair. What I suggest is action, rather than inaction. We can only speculate regarding the consequences, but in any case you will have achieved something. Unhappy stasis is most definitively not to your advantage."

He made a discontented sort of noise, cycling through the various things wrong with her advice - at least this way he and Billy could stay friends; it was a dick move to confess right after Billy had started something with someone else; what if, what if, what if. Excuses, all of them, because yeah. He'd rather 'compound his error' than admit to betraying Billy's trust. "When you put it like that," he replied dryly, and pushed himself to his feet. And crammed a cookie into his mouth, because it was better than continuing to unravel.

"It is your decision, ultimately, of course," she told him, but she did rest a companionable hand on the taller boy's shoulder as he rose. "My input should not be mistaken for a directive; it is only my analysis, based on the available information, and the conclusions I have derived from the same. I am not trying to tell you how to live your life, Teddy. I am only here to learn to bake cookies." Anything else that might result was merely a benefit of happenstance.

He leaned in to the touch almost inadvertently, the physical contact as welcome as it was unexpected. He'd always been a hugger, his mother's easy affection something he'd taken for granted until he was suddenly without it. Phone calls and texts just weren't the same. He managed a smile, laying his hand carefully over hers and giving it a squeeze in return. "I appreciate it, honest. Thank you for letting me vent."

"It is no trouble," she said. "If it were, I would have told you as much. I have observed that talking one's way through a difficult problem with an sympathetic associate can lend one an enhanced sense of perspective on the matter. A small enough price to pay, I think, for lessons in baking." Tessa was not a hugger; Tessa only rarely initiated physical contact, and then typically in small ways. But that was not so much a lack of affection on her part as it was an expression of the self-control which governed most aspects of her behavior. She rarely demonstrated it overtly, but the cyberpath had come to care for many of the students at the Institute, Teddy among them.

"I guess we should get on the actual lesson part of this, then." Teddy's smile was closer to full this time, even if his exhaustion was still obvious on his face. He let her hand go, even that small moment of contact soothing to the soul. "Other than the 'putting things on trays,' part, which you've got down." He did hesitate, catching his lower lip with his teeth. "Only, I know I probably don't have to ask, but would you keep this between us? Not the baking part obviously, but the 'Teddy had a minor meltdown in the kitchen' part of things. Just I'd rather that not get around."

"I will keep the interlude in the strictest confidence," she said. It would avail her nothing in particular to disclose it, after all. And if that was Teddy's preference, she no reason not to accede. "You may rely upon it."

That was one very nice thing about Tessa's manner, even when he sometimes found her hard to predict. If she said a thing, she meant it, and he had absolutely no qualms about trusting her word. It was a nice feeling. "Thank you." The oven beeped at him and Teddy grabbed the pot holder to slide the tray out, and put Tessa's in its place. "So," he said firmly, focusing on the now, instead of the 'was' and the 'might-not-ever be.' "Cookies. What do you want to know?"