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The first time that Sarah Jane offered food to the strange child whom she would later call her son, he had marveled at tea and sandwiches and simply asked, "Which is which?"
There were a lot of things that Sarah Jane found quite difficult in the days following the sudden addition to her limited household, and while teaching Luke about food and how to eat hadn't exactly been difficult, it had been a strange journey for the both of them. He could be agreeable, overtly so (and when Sarah Jane brought this up, Luke had simply done what he did best, and agreed), but getting him to be brutally honest about what he liked and what he didn't like weren't difficult.
It was strange. It had been so long since Sarah Jane had given thought to having children that she could no longer remember exactly what it was that people always said about feeding them. Luke wasn't exactly an infant going from milk to partial solids, but he was starting from scratch, and introducing him to different things had been an interesting experience.
Luke was an amalgamation of thousands of people, primarily children, and while his genetic makeup and health had certainly been tweaked to a certain degree, he still carried some mutations -- he carried the mutations that resulted in fair skin and blue eyes, after all. What he did not carry however, was the mutation resulting in lactose persistence, as he and Sarah Jane found out quite quickly when all that he had eaten for breakfast, lunch, and tea was reduced-sugar cornflakes and dairy milk because of Sarah Jane's own procrastination of going out and getting groceries.
But he knew what he enjoyed.
Cornflakes (this time without milk) were in, and so was a slice or two of bacon. Honeycrisp apples were nice, but not pears. He liked oranges too, but unlike Sarah Jane, he didn't enjoy the bitterness of the peels.
He had learned the art of peeling oranges, slicing up apples, and pouring dry cornflakes without any issues. Despite his relatively short and confusing life, Luke didn't have any deficits in his motor skills that Sarah Jane knew of, though given she had little idea what the Bane had intended to use him for beyond experimentation and how long they intended for his body to have remained in a sedated state of limbo, she found herself quite surprised. But everyday with Luke was a new surprise.
One thing that Luke hadn't immediately figured out was relatively simple: how to work the toaster.
"It's quite straightforward, really," Sarah Jane explained as she plugged the toaster in and placed the loaf of bread on the counter. She twisted open the plastic packaging surrounding the loaf and pulled a single slice of white bread out for Luke to try. She dropped it into the opening at the top, and pushed down the press handle as the toaster hummed. "It just takes a moment."
Luke stood on the edge of his toes to look directly above the opening, then asked, "Should bread always be hot?"
"Hmm?"
"When you made sandwiches," he began, "Back before I was Luke -- when I was still called The Archetype -- you made sandwiches. They didn't look hot. Should it always be hot?"
Sarah Jane pressed the button on the side of the toaster, and the spring released as a half-toasted slice of bread popped out of the toaster's opening. "It doesn't have to be. It depends on what you're putting on it." She pulled the half-toasted slice out, and laid it on a plate, then unplugged the toaster from the wall's outlet. "Why don't you try?"
After a moment of looking at the toaster, Luke gingerly picked up the half-toasted bread slice and dropped it back into the toaster. He plugged the toaster back in, and pushed down the press handle. The toaster immediately began to hum once more.
"Was that good or bad?"
"That's good," Sarah Jane assured him with a small smile. "That's all there is to it."
"So what now?"
"You wait."
"For how long?"
Sarah Jane paused. She had never given thought to the amount of time that it took to toast a slice of bread -- it had always been just a minute or two, and she never changed the settings on the dial on the side. "Just... till it's done, I suppose."
"How long is that --?"
Before Luke could finish his sentence, the springs of the toaster released and the slice immediately popped back up -- and Luke flinched, staring at the newly toasted slice in surprise.
Sarah Jane couldn't help but let out a chuckle at the sheer suddenness of it all, and even Luke himself cracked a small smile. Before they knew it, they were both laughing.
"Is that good?" asked Luke through his own laughing, "Is it supposed to do that?"
"It's --" Sarah Jane realized that she had never told Luke how it would actually happen naturally, "Well -- yes, it is. That's how you make toast!"
"Why is it funny?"
"You're asking me why it's funny, but you're laughing too!"
"I'm laughing because you're laughing." Luke glanced back at the toaster. "That's brilliant!"
Once Luke had finally calmed down enough to pull the slice of toast from the toaster, he sat down at the kitchen table and stared down at his sample.
"You know, most mums have photographs of their toddlers eating solids for the first time," Sarah Jane spoke as she sat down at the table across from Luke. "They get the food all over their faces, and it can be quite comical, actually. You'll have to forgive me for not doing that with you. I just wish I had a video, instead. Of your reaction to the toaster."
Luke nibbled on the edge of the crust of the toast. "Am I allowed to take this piece off?" he asked, "Like the peel with the orange?"
Sarah Jane nodded, and watched as Luke peeled the crust off of his toast all the way around the slice. He bit into the side of the toast and smiled.
"I like this," he nodded, "Can I eat all my sandwiches like this from now on?"
"You can eat your sandwiches however you'd like," Sarah Jane told him. "Once I run to the store, I might be able to find margarine, or jam -- something for you to eat on it. A lot of people eat butter on it --"
"But I can't have lactose."
Sarah Jane nodded once more, then sighed as Luke put down his now half-eaten slice of toast. He asked, "Can I try that again?"
"The toaster?" asked Sarah Jane, and Luke nodded. "I suppose you can... just don't break it."
Luke immediately hopped up from his seat and ran back to the toaster, which was still sitting on the kitchen counter.
Another food that Sarah Jane introduced was a hit! Once they had a proper grocery store trip, then perhaps she could expand Luke's palate and give him something else.
But at least he liked toast. Or, at least, that was what Sarah Jane thought he liked about breakfast until she noticed that Luke once again peeled off the crust, ate half of his slice of toast, and then immediately got up to make his third helping. Then, once he had deconstructed his creation for the third time, he stood once more, and headed back to the counter. Sarah Jane followed him, her own plate in her hands.
"You're making another slice?" asked Sarah Jane as she washed her own plate in the kitchen sink. Luke's plate was still sitting on the kitchen table with his previous three half-eaten slices of toast and his abandoned crusts. "Are you still hungry?"
If this was any normal child, Sarah Jane would've just assumed that they were picky and likely would've been more annoyed than anything else. But this was Luke, and she suspected that he was having far too much fun without even realizing how much of a mess he was making.
"I am," Luke placed another slice into the toaster and examined the settings on the side. "And I think I like it."
Luke was a growing boy, albeit on the smaller and skinny side, and she had hoped within the last few days that his appetite would eventually become more normal.
Just as they'd accidentally discovered Luke’s lactose intolerance, the previous few days following Luke's adoption had been full of discovery.
Though Sarah Jane quickly figured out that Luke could master speaking, walking, and reading in a matter of minutes -- if not seconds -- he wasn't quite as fast at understanding his body's signals. He had had a rather difficult time differentiating between hunger and thirst, and between a full stomach and a full bladder. Thankfully, he was getting better and better each day at understanding physiological cues.
Sarah Jane watched as Luke popped yet another piece of bread into the toaster and pushed down the press handle, then began counting.
"What are you counting?" she asked, placing her plate in the drying rack.
"How long it takes to make the best slice of toast," Luke pressed the button on the side of the toaster, and the prematurely cooked slice popped up. "Exactly two minutes and forty-five seconds --"
"That so?"
"It is! And you said we could go to the store, too!" Luke began to hastily peel the crusts from his newest creation, tossing them into the rubbish bin. "I've never had jam, but Maria said it's great on toast and I've read that Americans sometimes mix it with peanut butter to make a cold sandwich. I'd love to try a cheese toastie, too --"
"Luke," Sarah Jane unplugged the toaster, "You've got the brains of thousands of people, so tell me this -- what does cheese have in it?"
"Cheddar only has approximately point-four grams of lactose in it," said Luke matter-of-factly, "I remember that... and some lactose intolerant people can have up to twelve grams of lactose a day. So maybe I'm one of those people."
Maybe Luke was slightly too smart for his own good. With a sigh, Sarah Jane nodded and mentally added lactase tablets to her shopping list. Among other things.
(Luke had never been to a supermarket before, and she had a good feeling that she would have to reign him in if he got just a bit too excited around the sweets aisle; if he was already this fixated on toast, of all things, then she could only imagine how he would be around sugar.)
Cheddar cheese, fruit, lactase tablets, and... maybe another loaf or two of bread to replace everything that Luke had dissected as part of his breakfast experiment.
As Sarah Jane opened her cupboard to see what exactly it was that she needed to add to her list, she saw Luke plug the toaster back in out of the corner of her eye.
"What're you doing there, Luke?" she asked, then turned to see him dropping in yet another slice of bread, "I thought that was your so-called 'best slice of toast'!"
"Maybe there's a better way to do it," Luke shrugged, "Maybe it should go longer."
Sarah Jane stared at him for just a moment. "You know, when they say young boys eat their mothers out of house and home, this isn't quite what I pictured happening."
"Is that bad?"
"No," she said quickly, as the smile had dropped from Luke's face. The last thing that she needed was to accidentally give him some sort of complex about food. "No, it's -- it's fine. Just... get dressed, get your shoes, and we'll head off to the supermarket."
"Alright." With this, Luke left the kitchen, leaving his still cooking toast behind.
Sarah Jane picked up his plate, which had still been left on the table, piled high with his half-eaten science experiments. She ate the discarded crust from one of the slices, then brushed the rest of them into the rubbish bin and placed the plate in the sink. Grabbing her notepad from the kitchen counter, Sarah Jane paced and scribbled down a few odds and ends, then found herself at the window in the sitting room.
She looked out on Bannerman Road, and noticed Maria's father on a ladder on the left portion of their house across the street. Alan had complained about the gutter recently, and despite Maria simply telling him to call someone who actually knew what they were doing, Alan had apparently taken it as a challenge.
Luke passed her, and Sarah Jane turned just in time to see him disappear right back into the kitchen, likely to finish off the remaining slice of toast.
Logically, she knew that children had their oddities. One young child of one of her former coworkers, a little boy of around five, had once talked about vacuum cleaners at length until his father had finally asked him to talk about something else, like the newest episodes of 64 Zoo Lane that he had watched that morning.
And apparently, Luke just very much enjoyed Sarah Jane's toaster.
She chuckled to herself, and made a mental note to keep an eye out for Christmas sales. If Luke could find so much joy in something that others would call simple, then she was alright with that -- it made him happy.
He wasn't hurting anyone as long as he didn't manage to burn himself or set the kitchen on fire (Sarah Jane didn't want to think about having both of them be inept in the kitchen -- she was already bad enough), and while it confused her, she would much rather have her son be preoccupied by toasters than whatever other trouble his age group could get up to.
A toaster and a loaf of bread. That, it seemed, was what she would get him for Christmas.
Maybe this "parenting " thing was going to be easier than she thought.
The smoke detector went off, followed by Luke's voice from the kitchen.
"Sarah Jane!"
It couldn't be that easy. It could never be that easy.
Sarah Jane hurried back towards the kitchen, her previous hopes for easy parenting having immediately been squashed.
At least it was just toasters.