Disclaimer - I do not own or claim to own any recognizable characters, places, etc.
Notes - there are going to be some similarities between this story and Days of Future Past. I started writing the series before Days of Future Past came out but since both involved Sentinels... well. So, I do hope you'll enjoy this!
New York - 1963
Ten o'clock at night found the school quiet, classrooms shut, lights off, and students mercifully asleep (or quietly pretending)—and Charles Xavier seated at the kitchen table, measuring out tea with care. He leveled off the spoon and emptied it into an empty teacup, then dipped it again into the jar of loose tea. On the stove behind him, the kettle approached boiling.
"What's the base?"
"Darjeeling."
Across from him sat Ruth Bat-Seraph. In many ways, they were opposites. He kept his appearance tidy and professional, while Ruth lived in jeans and had long since given up efforts to control her hair. She was as loud and expressive as he was quiet and reserved. His mutant ability was mental, while the sharpness in her head—split evenly between her mind and her tongue—had nothing to do with her supernatural strength, agility, and endurance.
"I see. And what is it you mix with it, is that cardamom?"
"Different things, but this is cardamom, yes," Charles replied, emptying a third spoonful into the teacup.
It was easier to focus on the teacup, mostly because he did not have all manner of inappropriate thoughts about the teacup. Ruth, on the other hand…
Continuing, as he dipped the spoon into another jar and once more carefully leveled it off, "I'm thinking about trying cacao." He said all of this with the sincerity of a man who did not realize the minutia of his interests might not interest everyone else.
"I wonder who that might be appealing to," she retorted, laughter in her voice.
For years, Charles avoided returning to his home in New York. He could give countless reasons, claim a rather quieter than average wanderlust, cite the opportunities in his field abroad, but the truth was much simpler: he did not want to go home.
It never really felt like home. For so long he had two things, his education and his sister, and only with Raven beside him had he been able to return. And after she left, it turned empty again.
The amount he despaired in the following weeks embarrassed him now. Charles considered himself an independent person, but losing her proved otherwise. He needed her. Losing his sister, his legs, and in a way his education wholly undid him. He had always expected to become a professor both because it was the best way to continue with research and because he knew no life without school.
Slowly, others brought him back, Ruth among them. She, too, had a jar in front of her, but hers was an old jam jar, rinsed and cleaned. She twisted the lid off carefully. Catching his eyes on her, she grinned. "We do not use enough jam for me to break another jar!"
"We may, actually," Charles replied, remembering the previous jar, which Ruth gripped too tightly and shattered. Of course at the time she had Laurie and Ororo fighting, Doug looking loudly terrified, and Scott and Alex either fighting or play-fighting—it was difficult to say which with them—but the important thing was that she had been distracted.
This time she twisted the jar open without breaking it and tipped out folded slips of paper. She began to sort them.
"I thought you said it would be random."
Ruth grinned. "I lied."
He laughed at her matter-of-fact response.
"Why are none of these yours?"
Ruth was the only person in the house with any range of cooking knowledge. Charles knew his teas, Scott could make pancakes, and he didn't want to know how many drink recipes Alex and Sean could recite from memory, but Ruth could actually cook. That meant real food—rather than pizza, Chinese, and peanut butter sandwiches.
He shook his head. "It was wonderful of you to let the children have input, but I have enough appreciation for what you do. I won't ask more."
"So you tell me more often how amazing I am," Ruth suggested—there were so many ways Charles could say that… "and also what you like to eat. Somehow I cannot imagine you are intimately familiar with—" she checked the paper "—sloppy joes."
"No, I don't even know what a sloppy joe is," Charles admitted.
She raised an eyebrow.
"You do?"
"Of course. Now I want to make sloppy joes, I want to see you eat sloppy joe. And mud pies."
Since of course this was a joke, Charles laughed.
"Do your worst," he invited.
Ruth responded with a wicked, toothy grin promising to do just that.
Oh, dear. Was she serious?
Although many in the mansion were reliable in their own way, only Ruth was really close to Charles in age, and her straightforward, trustworthy presence put him at ease. Time spent with her was always the most relaxing part of his day—aching, the way he found himself drawn to her, but relaxing nonetheless—even today, with a pressing concern at the back of his mind.
So it was with nothing but fondness that he told her, "I'd like some time to myself this evening."
The kettle whistled. It was the worst time in the conversation, but Charles emptied the kettle into the teapot, refilled the kettle and put it back on the stove. It took long enough for Ruth to leave, yet she chose to remain.
He was glad. Their conversation would have felt unfinished.
"Good night, then."
"Good night."
She squeezed his hand gently. "I will be a shout away if you change your mind."
Ruth's mind was impossible for Charles to read. He sometimes understood the thoughts of foreign children, but her thoughts were too complex for him to overcome the language barrier. Since she rarely said anything she didn't mean and felt no need to keep her thoughts to herself, he had learned to take her at her word.
Alone, Charles listened to the sounds of the kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator and the murmur of a not-yet-boiling kettle. He spent little time here, growing up. Now it was in many ways the center of the house, a natural result of a home filled with teenagers and people like Alex who, while not an actual teenager, had a comparable metabolism.
The kettle began to whistle as he heard footsteps approach. Charles tipped the teapot over the sink, letting steam cloud the window above it as hot water poured down the drain. It was all routine for him, no thought required as the mix of Darjeeling and cardamom went into the now-empty pot, newly boiled water over it, plastic hourglass flipped.
As the sands poured out, Charles reached for the teacups. Some things had been reorganized since the incident. They didn't leave everything lying around, but Charles, who could not reach the cupboards, had access to the basics. He could fix a cup of tea or a bowl of cereal without asking for help.
Behind him, the footsteps stopped.
To be continued!