#inspired by my tea enthusiasm and coffee hatred

[sword-dad-fukuzawa]

i'm a huge tea enthusiast so i want nothing more than to project this onto my faves. however. vash is the kind of guy who gets a cup o' joe from the dunkin donuts every morning and wolfwood drinks multiple shots of expresso. neither of these bitches drink tea. KNIVES ON THE OTHER HAND.

I AM GIVING HIM THE PRETENTIOUS INTERESTS HE DESERVES. he hates the smell of coffee. can't stand the taste of it, bristles like a cat if any of it gets near him. has a special tea timer specifically for brewing, and all sorts of fancy tea pots and tea strainers that fill a whole cabinet in his apartment.

he breaks vash's coffee machine one morning out of sheer spite and vash retaliates by flushing his expensive-ass-imported-straight-from-china oolong tea leaves. he nearly kills vash for it (this is a normal tuesday).

he has an entire shelf full of the different teas he drinks. there's everything from genmaicha to osmanthus oolong to white peony and if you dare ask if he's got any lipton, he has to visibly hold himself back from biting you dead.

wolfwood has, of course, tested this empirically. knives did, in fact, try to bite him dead and only the timely intervention of vash coming home from work was able to keep his fool ass alive.

rem was super concerned about knives's budding anger issues when he was growing up and a child psychologist friend of hers suggested that knives get a hobby he could really get obsessed about, just so his yandere tendencies don't get any worse. rem bought him tea.

it wasn't all that fancy--just an 8 dollar jar of tie kuan yin from the local asian market--but knives adored it. rem still sends him a new jar every year on his birthday, and even though knives swears he thinks it's cheap trash, he still somehow portions it out to last the whole year until rem sends him the next one.

when wolfwood came to, uh, "ask" knives if he could date his little brother, he came bearing a tea plant. it was ridiculous, because it's not like knives has the room in their apartment to grow it properly.

but it was just surprising enough, just thoughtful enough (he'd been expecting that the little shit would fight him for vash's hand, tbh) that he accepts the gift. it takes up half the kitchen and he's named it sonata. not that he'll ever admit that to vash, but his brother has sharp ears and heard him whispering sweet nothings to it. it was cute.

and when wolfwood decides he wants both of the twins, he asks knives out to the most expensive, most pretentious teahouse in the area. they have to drive for an hour to get there and knives nearly jumps out of the car/tries to kill him three times.

but the look on his face when he tried their matcha? exquisite. wolfwood is going to savor that expression of sheer delight for a long, long time.

he gets another date out of it, though knives still refuses to kiss him if he tastes like coffee.