Work Text:
English Breakfast, 90C, 3 minutes, no sugar, splash of milk.
It's the standard every morning. Ever since Nathaniel severely cut back on coffee (which was in itself a multiple year journey), tea has been his choice of morning pick-me-ups. It's been the norm for years, so much so that they buy the jumbo 200 pack of teabags.
English Breakfast, 90C, 3 minutes, no sugar, splash of milk.
He didn't realise when it started tasting bland. Brewing snobs would have given him all sorts of reasons why the drink wasn't doing much for him.
Not brewing enough, brewing too long, milk goes in first, milk should never go in first, no sugar, yes sugar...
Maybe it was the slump.
English Breakfast, 100C, 20 minutes, down the sink.
Yeah, there was no salvaging that one.
It wasn't like his life was bad. He was living in a nice apartment with Marc, they had a nice cat, monetarily things were fine, he still had a good streaming community...
Getting turned down from a job was rough.
English Breakfast, 90C, 3 minutes, 1 sugar, lemon
Maybe that worked? It tastes different today. Of course it does, there's sugar and lemon it. But more than that, it feels different.
During the weekly grocery trip, Marc was surprised when Nathaniel bought one of those sampler packs of tea with all the different varieties. He's not opposed to it; it could be fun to try something new. But he does swap it out for a different pack that doesn't have Earl Grey. For multiple reasons.
Chamomile, 90C, 3 minutes, no sugar, no milk.
Okay, not the best start. If he'd known herbal tea was the trick to immediately going to sleep, he would have been drinking litres of it in high school.
Then again, he didn't need any help falling asleep then.
Still, it helped him realise that the world felt different when he got enough hours of rest. Everything felt sharper, more in focus. And it convinces Nathaniel to maybe spend less time awake after midnight.
Peppermint, 100C, 3 minutes, 1 sugar, no milk.
Now that's a pick me up. It's perked him up enough that he convinces himself to take his sketchbook to try doing some work.
It starts as a still life from out the window, and then he extends the picture beyond what the frame obscures, filling in the gaps with his imagination.
It's not real, there isn't a five legged cat behind the wall, or a car flying like a hot air balloon.
But it's the most inspiration he's had for work in weeks.
Chai, 90C, 3 minutes, 2 sugars, no milk
It's a shock to the system. That's a whole lot of spicy flavours he didn't think would go well in tea. But as he reads the back of the sachet for the ingredients, he finds that the unusual aspect of it is...
Interesting is as close as he can get to putting it to words. His sketchbook comes out again, this time imagining scenes with a random introduced element.
Marc comes back from his morning run to two panels of a four panel comic strip.
It's... comforting to see him like this. Drawing again, inspired by his imagination.
Just being Nathaniel.
Vanilla Caramel, 100C, 3 minutes, 1 sugar, splash of milk, two cups
Marc surprised Nathaniel with breakfast in bed that morning; some pain perdu with fruit salad and tea.
It's a barely concealed celebration of Nathaniel bouncing back, seeing him smiling and making sarcastic quips about things again.
And it's the weekend. They're allowed to spend as much time in bed together as they want.
The last bag of the sampler pack was a blueberry and blackberry infusion. Nathaniel looked at it somewhat wistfully. It was strange feeling nostalgic over a pack of teas from the grocery store.
Marc knows it's more than that.
It's why he doesn't bat an eye when Nathaniel admits to his new idea.
He wants to experience all the different types of tea there are.
If they ever visit their friends back in England, they'll try to attend a traditional cream tea, and possibly start a feud depending on whether the Devonshire or Cornwall have the better method.
They still want to visit Japan together, and he'll try to find a place that does a traditional tea ceremony.
Nathaniel wants to try all of it: from traditional Chinese tea, to special leaves like matcha. From the origins of bubble tea in Taiwan to... whatever blasphemous monstrosities they make in America.
He wants to try new things, and tea was his way of stepping into being more adventurous; to shake up routine.
Marc thinks it's a wonderful idea. And he already has some plans.
For starters, they should get a tea set for the apartment.