A pause told Cafas that his charge (as he was increasingly thinking of Adder, who could apparently not be trusted to take care of himself) was having second thoughts about being in the same room as the metal manipulator. He wasn't exactly sure why. Still, it was there only briefly before food won the wolf boy over. That was a pretty reliable tactic honestly.

"With tea eh? Kitchen can handle that. You sure you don't want to go somewhere that professionals cook the food? I'm only really a passable cook." The conversation could be had on the way to the kitchen. It meant less delay.

Tea... Hmm maybe something herbal, Adder's tense enough without caffeine.

Cafas set off walking. It would be far more brief with both of them back to full speed. Students and teachers alike stepped aside as the X-man strode through the building. It never payed to be in the way of an X-man in a hurry, and people that lived in the Mansion tended to learn that lesson fairly quickly. Eventually, as coudl be seen, it became habitual to make a hole for them to move through.

If I could not have Ludacris running through my head, that'd be great.

"If not, I'm gonna guess you're a fan of meat?" Cafas ran through things he regularly ate, cross referenced by the most nutritionally dense, filtered that by things he currently felt like eating, then finally narrowed it down by things the Mansion likely had ingredients for. The list was still absurdly long. Maybe he should apply a fat content filter? Actually, he knew he should, he just didn't want to.

Pretty sure this isn't how brains work...

Professionals? Passable cook?

There were two very different reasons for Adder not having a quick answer to the query. One. He wasn't completely sure what Cafas meant. People who thought that everyone else had a magical knowledge of all the words they used were stupid. Two. Adder didn't care at all how 'well' food was cooked. Food was food, right? Different foods tasted different, sure, and some filled his belly more than others, but other than that..?

His bare feet were quick on the floors, and he did normally move at a decent, fluid pace, but he wasn't used to walking with people of any height. People drastically taller than him? Er. Not his usual targets for pickpocketing, and walking kind of beside someone was different from mirroring them from behind. His skin crawled as he tried to find some sort of half-increased gait that was reasonably close to Cafas' speed so he didn't have to keep an eye on the guy's feet all the time.

The word meat managed to get past his ears and actually into his distracted, underfed head, and Adder looked up long enough to forget about his pacing and slip back into his slightly-faster-natural-pace, except then he was ahead of Cafas so he had to drop back into the slower one, and then try to stretch that up a little bit so that he didn't just fall behind.

"I like food. Meat is good. Rat is almost more effort than the food is worth, though," he said, genuinely casually as he focused on keeping the same relative place beside Cafas.

Adder seemed to be having a hard time picking a pace. He also took his time in answering. They were halfway to the kitchen by the time he gave a reply at all. It nearly made Cafas stop in his tracks. Rat. It had been years... Oh God did Adder have a point, but food was food, and traps made it a less energy intensive process. The whole thought process and flashbacks manifested as a mere faltering in his gait. Also a slightly grossed out expression.

"Luckily, we won't be having to eat rat. Or catch our own food. We'll be pulling it out of the fridge, conveniently pre-portioned, and cooking it. Or, like I said, we can go somewhere people will cook it for us, and it'll probably be nicer than I can manage." Not that he had a problem cooking. Heck, his short list was down to the final five by the time they turned into the corridor that connected to the kitchen.

"So,what type of tea do you like?" Cafas was almost praying he didn't say black tea. God forbid green tea. The boy did not need more energy. Though it might explain the constant edginess. Why would he be spending money on tea rather than food though, while living on the street. Cafas couldn't imagine doing the same.

Too hungry to go drinking tea.

No, something like a chamomile or peppermint for young Mr Adder in Cafas' opinion. He'd learned his lesson, giving coffee to Rowan. Maya was less than sympathetic about the whole thing when he brought it up. It was uncharacteristic, really, but she'd warned him and he hadn't listened.

Fool of a Johnson.

"That is more efficient," Adder agreed when Cafas did respond. If he'd noticed the rat-related expression, he would have remembered that most people thought that most things related to survival were gross and shrugged it off, but instead he was trying to neither pull ahead nor fall behind. Dealing with people was hard and there were so many weird things he didn't expect to be involved.

Other people were also very concerned with cooking food, and how food tasted (and they used so many weird, pointless words about it), and all sorts of other things that in no way affected how useful it was. Sure some things tasted kind of gross, but even most of them were still foo-

....kind of tea?

Uh

Uhhhhhhh

Adder tried very hard to remember the details of his last encounter with tea. Had there been different kinds? Had he smelled more than one kind, or had Maya just made tea? However tea was made. Putting hot water on a bag??? That didn't make sense but it apparently worked. There were definitely things that other people knew more about than him. The making of things in general was kind of outside his knowledge.

How was he supposed to answer that question?? They were almost there. He could smell the general chaotic FOOD-people-familiarplace swarm of kitchenness now very clearly, and he found himself slipping into too-fast-pace more than into too-slow-pace. Oh!

"What kinds are there?" Safe answer! Plus then it made Cafas answer. Take that.

What kinds? Oh gosh. Uh. Cafas floundered through his brain to try and come up with a list of just the teas he'd personally had. He was drinking so much more tea since the number of Coffee's he'd shared with Maya approached 100. Maybe he was just suddenly aware how much of it he went through? Yeah, sure, that was it. Nothing to do with vain hope.

"Uh, there's heaps of types of tea. I suppose the Mansion probably only has a few, but this place has surprisingly deep cupboards. You can almost always find what you're looking for. Seriously I wouldn't even know where to start. there's three main groups I can think of. Black, green, and herbal. Herbal is strictly speaking not tea, but other plants." Cafas seriously couldn't think where to go from there. Tea was a surprisingly difficult thing to list. It almost seemed to have infinite varieties.

The kitchen was already in use, as was usual. A few students moved around cooking things of varying complexity. Everything from pot noodle, to a mixture that Cafas assumed was going to be souffle. The place was built to cook for dozens of students at a time though, so it was conveniently large enough to fit at least one more cook.

Probably something quick.

Adder didn't seem to adore attention, and crowded rooms in the Mansion made it near impossible to avoid. To Cafas, this sounded like a job for steak soft tacos. Seriously, it was probably the quickest and meatiest thing he could think of. Everything in them was a synch to come across pre-made.

Adder regretted his question almost as soon as Cafas started to answer. First, though, there was a moment of .......whuh.

A substantial moment.

He filed the description (which he didn't really process and would almost certainly not remember - nope, already forgotten) away with the ways rich people described their food. Which he also didn't remember.

"Tea that... isn't tea?" Okay, he got a fragment of something out of that. It was bewildering and confusing and got to go on its own to a different category: what in the world was wrong with people who named things.

The bewilderment was so strong that Adder made it several steps into the kitchen before he noticed the other people present, and he automatically moved to the wall. Not abruptly, for that drew more attention from most people, but casually. And then he refused to go any farther into the room.

"Tea that... isn't tea?"

"Yeah, tell me about it." Cafas knew why they called it that, but it was still more complicated than it had any business being. Why was tea not just tea, and there could be a different name for other drinks made by infusing hot water with leaf flavour? Whatever, as far as he knew, there wasn't, so he'd just have to deal with it.

Aaaaaand he'd lost Adder. Nope, there he was, casually off to the side doing nothing in the exact way casual people didn't. Really, in such a small community as the mansion, there was just no avoiding attention if you wanted to. Unless you just stayed in your room, but then you became that one person that no-one ever saw except at meal time, and that came with its own attention. Cafas approached gently.

"You coming? I feel like you could use a cooking lesson." Cafas eyed the small group of students that were far more interested in their food than in the people around them. Sure, they glanced up, noted who was where, but that was the end of their attention. His eyes returned to Adder, a smile touching his lips. "And you have no-one to fear here. Especially not with me around."

No-one wants to break rules in front of X-men, even if we hold no real power. Probably shouldn't let on about that.

"Come on." Cafas walked over to the fridge, rummaged, pulled out sirloin steaks, sour cream, and cheese. The pantry was raided for avocados, onions, tomatoes, pretty much anything else that seemed like it would go well on a tortilla with steak. Oh! and tortillas, couldn't forget those. Seasoning too. Cafas found himself making far too many trips, taking back one item at a time as others came to mind.

If there had been any significant texture to the floor, Adder's feet would have been locked into it even if it squished his toes. As it was, even when Cafas came back for him he kept his weight low and towards the wall. He didn't want to move, he didn't want to go over there, yes he wanted food but he didn't want to deal with more people. Dealing with one he'd met before was too much already, he didn't need more.

Even if the random other people didn't give him a second glance. Was he still invisible to them? Did they truly not care, or were they just pretending not to? He still didn't want to go over there. What did he want?

There was too much chaos swirling in his head, and too many layered smells, for him to think that hard. He couldn't even wade through all the different scents. People he had smelled in hallways before, fingertip-traces left on walls and stair railings and doorknobs. So much stronger here, so close to the source of those smells. Plus all the food things they were messing with. Doing whatever it was they were doing. Those smells would be stronger over there, closer to them all.

He still wished very, very hard while edging after Cafas that his mutation provided invisibility. People were so sight oriented, if they couldn't see him then things would be so much easier. He'd just disappear.

Why did Cafas have to keep moving around? It made it impossible to keep the guy between himself and the other-people. He kept the wall to his back instead, though it was a poor alternative, and then thought of something.

Cafas was putting perfectly eatable things down. With some strange plan for them, but Adder wanted food now, and most of it was currently food, so..? Adder edged away from the wall a bit, snagged a tomato, and leaned back against the wall to eat it. In all of one and a half fang-flashing bites. There may have been some stray juice and seeds from between the bites. Anything that made it onto his hands made it into his mouth soon enough anyway.

Adder was still nervous. Cafas could tell by the amazingly obvious way he acted nervous. It was a real blessing for Cafas to finally be able to understand someone so easily. He was still learning with Maya, but Adder wore his emotions on his proverbial sleeves.

Cafas returned to the bench for what should have been the final time to find a tomato missing. He had specifically counted out four. He was sure of it. His eyes flashed to Adder, and the seeds that were around his mouth. The X-man sighed, smiled, rolled his eyes and went back for another one. "You have tomato on your face." He chuckled as he passed Adder, clapping the boy on the shoulder.

When he returned, he re-counted his ingredients and got to work. It wasn't too difficult. "Okay, so, seasoning. Really you can do what you like, but I use cumin, cayenne, paprika, a little cinnamon, and the secret ingredient, nutmeg." He didn't really bother with measuring, Cafas just threw things in at rates that looked right. It was a stark contrast to the care he took at the forge.

"Onion sliced in half, north to south. Then you take the root off and slice it thinish." Adder most likely wasn't listening, but Cafas kept running him through the quick and easy cooking process, slapping his hand away whenever the boy reached for ingredients he needed, a slight chiding note to his otherwise cheerful voice as he encouraged patience.

Kid's gotta learn to eat things cooked, or he's going to get sick...

"Okay, you take your warm tortillas onto a plate, slice the steak into strips... And you're done. Assemble to your own liking, then eat." All i nall, it had taken ten minutes from spice rub to turning the gas off. "Safer to eat than raw, and tastier at that. Plus the added oil is like liquid calories." Cafas offered Adder a plate and indicated to the tables. "Come on, let's go eat this, that's enough patience for one day."

Adder had a brief, internally enormous, pause of crystalline panic as Cafas moved past him - but it was just a not-angry pat on the shoulder?

He still scrubbed the tomato residue off his face with the back of his wrist immediately behind Cafas' back, and stuck himself to the wall a little more. He could still smell everything from there - a little too well, in all honesty, and he fought the urge to sneeze and claw at the burning insides of his nose and throat when some of the spice containers were open, but he had enough presence of mind to listen to some of the names. He definitely smelled them. There was no avoiding smelling them. Not by a long shot.

Cayenne. So much burning. Nutmeg. Much better. Almost like it numbed his abused airways.

Only to breathe in another assault. Onions weren't this bad when he'd come across them before! Not that he exactly ate them much. They scared away bugs, though. Some. Until they turned blackish and whitish and fuzzyish and super nasty. Ugh.

Rubbing at his face and trying to block some of the onion smell with his hand, Adder gave into temptation and tried to wash away the burn. That's all! His whole face was burning and he wanted it to stop, but Cafas just whacked his hand, so he slunk farther away, ears low, and wished the smell were something more tangible so he could tear it apart and get rid of it. Most of the stuff he was saying didn't make any sense at all, so it wasn't like he needed to be closer to listen to it, even if he could go anywhere in the room and not hear him. He huffed a little bit. What was north to south supposed to mean anyway?

"Raw's never hurt me," he muttered as he finally trailed away from the wall and counter, lured purely by food through his very worn-down wariness. Onion-burn was so bad; he couldn't find it in himself to care about all that much anymore. Even his eyes ached.

He managed to balance the plate in one hand well enough to start eating the rolled up food thing while walking, though, mostly to spite Cafas.

Cafas chewed a mouthful and rolled his eyes. "Raw'sh nev'r 'urt you ye'." Cafas emphasised his point by pointing two thirds of a tortilla at Adder. His well articulated point. So easy to understand. Cafas didn't care, there were meat juices in his mouth, satisfying a very primal instinct. He could almost feel the energy returning to his muscles, which was of course patently ridiculous, he hadn't even swallowed a mouthful yet, let alone metabolised it.

Can't help but feel I forgot something.

His plate clattered onto the table, allowed to half drop, half slide the final inch. The metal manipulator finished chewing and swallowed as he sat. Almost immediately the urge to stand again swept in, competing fiercely with the comfort of taking weight off tired legs. He was just far too energetic for his own good. He'd actually noticed his energy levels increasing the longer he was off the booze, and the couple of psych appointments certainly hadn't hurt.

Been doing good actually... Well, relatively speaking.

He'd chewed his way through the rest of his first tortilla before he broke the silence. It didn't need breaking, but it was that or get up and pace. "So, aside from the fighting, how are you getting on here?" Cafas half looked up from his plate where he was busily preparing another tortilla, glancing at Adder through a pink fringe. "Been okay?"

Nomph. Savoury juices, sour cream, spices, heaven. Actually, no, heaven was... Probably best not to, never know when a psychic was hovering nearby that really didn't need to know the details of two X-men's private lives. Yeah. Eating a well deserved meal after a hard work out ran a close... Probably third. Maybe fourth. Look, top ten for sure.

Could use a drink to go with it.

Adder eyed Cafas over his food. He could hear every sound the metal manipulating x-man made, down to the soft rustling of his clothing as he shifted and the fainter gurgling of his food-excited guts. However, being able to hear that mangled smush of sounds did not translate to magical understanding. He got 'raw,' and what was probably 'never.' Everything else was sketchy at best and completely unintelligible at worst.

He slid the last bit of his wrap into his mouth and made short work of it as well; his teeth went through the meat with as much ease as a human's teeth would have gone through the tomatoes. Now he was thirsty.

...

He'd almost decided to bring it up when Cafas spoke and interrupted the hesitant process before it had a chance to show itself. "M'fine," he muttered. What was he supposed to say? How was he supposed to describe life? It was life. It existed and he did stuff. And did Cafas even really care? No one else would or had, not in close to his entire life. Besides, there were more important things going on right now, or rather not going on. He looked at Cafas.

"Tea?" he said, somewhere between masquerading as a question and bluntly reminding Cafas of what he'd agreed to.

"M'fine,"

Yeah right. He was getting more out of him than that. Just as soon as he got back from fetching drinks, they were going to have a talk, because "M'fine" doesn't cut it when you just had to have your mouth healed of that level of burns. If you were out getting into fights, things at home weren't fine. Cafas was gonna find out what was wrong.

"Tea?"

The look Adder affixed Cafas with was entirely unnecessary. The memory clicked back into place, complete with all his musings about what type of tea to give a hyperactive shifter. Cafas chuckled to himself, head shaking at his own distraction. "Right, right. I'll go get that now." That's what he got for having too many things on his mind. It had been lost somewhere among the meal prep thoughts.

Probably peppermint. I could go some peppermint.

Two mugs, two teabags, two big ladles of water stolen from a pot boiling on the stove. It earned him a confused glare from the student standing beside it, salt in one hand, dry pasta in the other. Much faster than boiling the jug. He returned to the table a short while later, setting a mug in front of Adder.

"There you go, tea." Cafas grinned and leaned back in his chair. "Now, wanna elaborate on that fine? Because around here the logic tends to be that if you're out getting in fights, you're not fine." The X-man arched an eyebrow, a look of concern, usually reserved for Rowan, crossing his face. "And I can only help if I know."

Adder snorted quietly and let his ears settle back again, and even waited quietly while Cafas made the tea. This time he watched more closely, but Cafas used water from some other kid's pot on the stove??? That was not what Maya had done.

He shifted a bit higher in his chair, sitting on his ankles as usual, and inhaled deeply as Cafas turned and headed back with the two mugs. Mint? And it didn't smell like there was anything weird in it, despite the strange water source. He reached for the mug-

and then Cafas wanted to talk more. Adder'd already talked a lot today! More than most days ever, probably. And Cafas wanted more? Sure, words weren't a horrible trade for food, depending on the words, and he had brought tea even if it was late and too hot to drink yet if the words made his throat hurt. He huffed. But what else was he going to do? Steal the mug in front of a very fit, very large x-man and try to go to ground somewhere with it without spilling boiling water on himself?

Fine. He could try to talk for a bit. A little.

Not that he had an answer that seemed like it would satisfy Cafas one bit. "I am fine. It's not like I started the fight. The other guy did." He prodded the mug with a finger. Still too warm, gah. "I can't just sleep all day." Never mind that he still didn't really sleep much most nights, although these days it was more just nightmares and less jumping at every sound and vibration.

"I am fine. It's not like I started the fight. The other guy did. I can't just sleep all day."

Cafas' expression didn't so much as flinch. If Adder thought he was gonna just shift blame and have Cafas' concern melt away, he had another thing coming. the X-man brought his mug to his lips and blew gently on his tea, as if it was going to seriously impact cooling time. It clunked back to the table gently. "So you're bored?" Cafas let the question hang, eyeing Adder, but already certain that was the problem.

"Well, I think I can help you there. If something to fill your time is what you're looking for, there are plenty of options." Another wrap was assembled as he waited for his tea to cool, and a hand waved over the food to remind Adder it existed and he could have as much as he liked. "You could do some classes. Never hurts to finish your education." Though somehow he doubted Adder would go in for that. He seemed too fidgety for sitting through a class.

"You could get out and meet the other people that live here. Someone's always playing soccer, or basketball, or video games. Bit of socialising, make friends. You live with them, so they'll be constantly dragging you out of your room to do stuff, trust me." He'd seen it happen. For all he preached making friends, Cafas usually didn't. His group of friends was actually pretty small come to think of it. These days he had more kids he felt a need to look after than he did friends.

"Or you could train with me. I train every day, in the Danger room if it's free. Might do you some good to burn off all that energy I can see pent up in you." Though the last time he'd taken on a charge to train... He was sure Sam had done his best. Maybe he was right. Maybe his power had just killed him. It happened from time to time. Who takes a barely trained city kid to the Arctic Circle though? Maybe try camping in the back yard first.

"There are so many options, and I encourage you to exploit your opportunities. Maybe stay off the streets, too, because it seems like you get in a lot of fights." With fat men, and hot mutants.