{ Food Headcanons }

• The one thing Theodore misses most of all when he is out to sea and away from home ( aside from spending time with his sisters and dear Bumble! ) is Adella’s cooking – and in particular, her raisin bread and the way it fills the entire little cottage with the most wonderful and homey aromas. 

  Due to how much he adores his sister’s cooking, he does all that he can to contribute by way of using savings to purchase new cookware for her, or special spices. Whenever he is in town he does the grocery shopping, and helps out with basic chores of cooking along with Eudora, such as washing and chopping the vegetables in preparation.

• Theodore doesn’t like how alcohol tastes in the slightest and considers the scent to be very unfavorable. He does not partake, and when he is coerced to do so he proves to be a susceptible lightweight who is dangerously easy to manipulate – which, of course, is all the more reason to avoid the stuff full stop in his books!  

  Catching Theodore drinking is never a good sign – for either he is in a position where the cost of not drinking is greater than the risks of doing so ( generally, this is the fault of admiralty pressures to be ‘sociable’ ) or in the far more likely scenario, he is aware that his position is reliant on his ability to manipulate a man sexually, and this is something he knows himself to be capable of best when he is at least a little tipsy. 

  In his life he has only been in a situation where he felt it necessary to drink three times – and to manipulate under one overall circumstance.

  Two of the necessary drinking periods were during his affair with Lord Byron, while the other was during a party hosted by the admiralty where his behaviour served as a direct reflection on his superiors. His refusal to drink was causing haughty remark, and finally he chose for the sake of his friends to partake – by staying close to Gillette, all disasters were averted in the wake of doing so.

  And all other times came during the ‘abuse storm’ we do not talk about. All in all these experiences have hardly endeared alcohol to him by any stretch of the imagination.