{.blind.} tea && new [ blood ]

so there i was
just walking down the hall

then i decided i needed some tea
and almost spilled it all over me

Andre pushed up his sunglasses subconsciously with his free hand, using his foldable cane to move from his office down the hall. Down the hall there was the kitchenette - among other things - and that was what he was after. The kitchen, that is. He was determined to get some tea today. "Hola, que tal?" Andre asked to an unseen person - his earpiece to his phone in his right ear. He shrugged to the person on the phone as he walked, effortlessly gliding through the corridor, moving around a few boxes, "Meh ... regular. Gracias." He was just chatting with a friend, very casually - in Spanish. Well, he did know a lot of languages. "Mi casa es su casa," Andre said, laughing as he uttered the words and shaking his head. A friend who was coming into town. After a few more moments of chatting back and forth, Andre knew he was coming up on his destination. "Hasta luego, mi amiga," he smiled, pressing his finger to his ear to cut off the bluetooth.

Licking his lips, he moved to where the teapot was normally kept and started making tea. The problem, though, was choosing what tea he wanted to drink. Picking up a few of the teas - nothing with the paper tea bag on the string, you could literally taste the paper. Taste the paper! Shaking his head as he passed over the other teas, he came to one that was chocolate and hazelnut. That one did not need sugar unless he needed a head rush. He had a decent smell, but it was all about the taste. Letting the aromatic flavors wash over his tongue. The bitterness of the leaves quelled by the sweetness of the chocolate and the robust hazelnut. Smiling, he could just smell it and know what it was going to taste like. Mostly because that was his tea. He did not think anyone else liked it. Last time he offered it to someone, they ran away down the hall looking for Listerine or hard liquor. Crazy people. They needed to be ... more tender to what they were tasting. Use their other senses. Maybe he just took his for granted sometimes because he was blind. Maybe seeing people took their sight for granted most of the time because they could see. The had never been blind before. It was just something he lived with. Something he overcame by using his other senses. Putting his cane into the pocket of his blazer, he continued making tea just as easily as any seeing man of his abilities would be able to. Getting water and boiling it with no problems. If someone didn't know him, they might not realize he was blind. Other than wearing sunglasses in the building - as he was still the only one that was allowed to, last time he checked.

Someone was walking up and he tilted his head to the side. "Care for any tea?" He asked the newcomer, not thinking he knew who it was yet. Maybe someone he could convert to avoiding the paper tea bags. Maybe someone who would not run down the hall when he gave them some of his prized possession. Well, one could hope, anyway.

[ Translations:
Hola, que tal = Hey, what's up?
Meh ... regular. Gracias. = Meh ... so-so. Thanks.
Mi casa es su casa = My house is your house
Hasta luego, mi amiga = See you later, my friend (female) ]

Not many kids would be up on a Sunday, not only working but also thinking. In fact, Mikey often spent a lot of his Sundays thinking, whether he wanted to or not. If it was up to him, he would sleep most of the day only to arise when afternoon was beginning to turn into the evening, but he actually had responsibilities around the house and a job (a very low-paying job that almost no other teenager had, but a job nonetheless). So, he had been awake since about six in the morning, and was starting to feel the mental exhaustion of thinking all day - unfortunately, he just couldn't get his brain to stop! In fact, even as he was on his way to the kitchen to relax and grab something to eat, Mike had to force himself not to bring his calculus notebook. That was just an unfortunate side effect of being him - he couldn't stop thinking about everything until he'd thought about it all! Even the boring homework that he hated doing. Fortunately, he would graduate soon - had he lived in England longer, he would have graduated when he was 16, but as he had moved there a couple months ago, it was decided a year of school and he would graduate and go to university - and once he went to a place of higher education, Michael could actually take classes he wanted to take and not 'waste' his brain on hours of conjugating French verbs or English literature that was never going to apply to his life.

Michael wandered down the hall - though he hadn't been working there very long, he had a photographic memory and could develop a map very quickly of his location, and so found himself at the kitchen with very little trouble. It wasn't surprising, considering his social skills, that Mikey easily became comfortable in new surroundings, but took a long time to warm up to the people there. Which was why he didn't really greet the man making tea as he walked in - rather, he wrinkled his nose slightly at the smell of tea, made a note that he had no idea who that guy was, and then went to the refrigerator to grab his chicken soup. Mikey remembered exactly where he put it, but it had been moved in the process of others coming to find and grab their own things. As he searched, Mikey heard a question directed to him and looked up. "No, tea gives me a headache," he explained, somewhat rudely, in his painfully obvious American accent (he subconsciously bit back his New York accent, though). Actually, pretty much any beverage that wasn't water gave him a headache - or, rather, he just didn't like it.

Finally, Mikey found his soup in a plastic container, lifted the lid a bit so it wouldn't explode, and popped it in the microwave. He could already smell the warm, homeyness of the soup, and almost couldn't wait until it finished its few minutes of heating up. Michael realized he hadn't eaten pretty much the whole day, aside from some toast that he'd choked down in a hurry that morning. As he did so, Mike suddenly remembered that his cousin (second-cousin... family friend... something like that - he'd never really bothered to figure out the exact relation) had turned thirteen today. As he watched the microwave plate spin around, he brought out his cellphone and called up Isaac. "Mazel tov!" he said, and they began to speak to each other in a rapid combination of English and Yiddish, and Michael's accent became more and more prominent as the conversation went on. The conversation mostly consisted of 'Hey, what's up? Happy birthday, wish I could be there' and so on, and they also talked about what embarrassing things their relatives had done at the party (not the Bar mitzvah ceremony, which would be that following Saturday, but his birthday party). Then Isaac had to go, and Michael's chicken soup was a few seconds away from finishing anyway, and Mikey said zay gezunt (good-bye/stay well) and sat at the table to eat his soup.

(ooc; Major fail this post is. x_x But I have a play-off game to go to in two seconds, so it'll have to do.)