milk and sugar
Levi wouldn’t care for the way I take my tea at first.
All he’s ever drank is black tea, and sometimes I would humor him in taking it that way with him, but wouldn’t it be a little better with some milk and sugar?
He rolls his eyes and continues to take it black.
Of course whenever he makes a cup for me, he’ll add milk and sugar. Sometimes a little less milk and a little less sugar, an ongoing half-joke that he can wean me off of it and drink “real” tea, “unadulterated” by additions, but I can always tell when he does that. I don’t mind; I think it’s funny. Tea is tea, no matter how you prepare it, and for him to go out of his way to make tea for me is sweet enough to appreciate it regardless.
But then I take him home one time. He loves my mom and loves how much she loves me. But I tend to gatekeep her tea. So when he wakes up at the buttcrack of dawn and makes good ole black tea for himself, he’s being honest when she offers to make tea for us both and he says he’s alright. But one morning we sleep in a little, maybe after a night of covert hanky-panky, and I rouse to his sleep-tousled hair, still in bed as he snoozes. My mom wakes up pretty early too, so I slip out of bed to go spend some one on one time with her before he wakes.
When he finally shuffles in, still wearing pajamas and uncharacteristically unkempt (the way we prefer it in my moms’ house), my mom’s eyes light up with a “good morning!” and a “can I make you two some tea?” I accept with a grin, always ecstatic to drink the nectar that is her way of preparing tea. Without thinking he mumbles an appreciative thanks and accepts as well, neglecting in his exhaustion to specify he takes it black.
I hardly even think about it in my excitement to get my own, but when my mom comes back with two mugs of creamy-brown liquid, after gratefully taking one from her, Levi just stares at it. He’s too polite to decline it, and has already thanked her for it, so he supposes he only has one option. Tentatively, he raises the mug to his lips. It smells heavenly, he has to admit. My mom and I are still engaged in full conversation when he takes his first sip and has something of a religious experience in his own little world.
He’s halfway through the drink before he thinks to look up at my mom for the superior tea she’s prepared.
“Is it alright?” she would ask. Suddenly I’d come back to my senses, realizing he hadn’t taken it black, and I would start to apologize on both their behalves, “oh, I’m sorry, he-”
“It’s incredible,” he’d say so directly to her. I’d whip my head towards him.
“Wha-”
“It’s the best tea I’ve ever tasted. I understand why she’s always going on about this now,” he’d say with the utmost seriousness. “Thank you.”
When I bust out laughing, I’d fill my mom in on the whole thing and we’d laugh about it together. Needless to say, he would drink it the way she prepared it for the rest of the visit, and though the way I make it isn’t quite as good as hers, and he would still often take it black, every so often he’d ask for milk and sugar :)
