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He leaned his elbows on the table, holding his cup with one hand. Saimin was noodly, yeah. Udon, too. Ignacio was still trying to teach him the actual difference, as Richard had the tendency to just call all of them "ramen". No noodles? His eyebrows raised a little in surprise, but he listened attentively. That... actually sounded really good, and he made a mental note that he was definitely going to have to try that, sometime. Hell, if Seren did end up coming to one of their barbecues, she was more than welcome to bring it. Maybe it was possible to scale it down to appetizer size? That way she wouldn't end up doing a lot of work to feel his giant family potluck-style. It wasn't like they wouldn't be sending a week's worth of leftovers home with her in return, but still.

He noticed her distant tone and made note of it, nodding in understanding as she tried to explain herself. "No worries! It's understandable." Honestly, if she was worried about being indebted, should she like kids, she could probably watch his nieces or nephews for a little bit? But Mikki could be a lot to handle by himself, to say nothing of his brother and the other kids, so Richard didn't really want to dump that on her out of her feeling obligated to it. He loved his nieces and nephews, he did, but... they were still little kids. "No pressure or anything. Just consider it an open invitation!"

Richard chuckled. "If you make dessert for my family, they'll probably adopt you on the spot." An incorrigible sweet-tooth ran through all members of the Bell clan. And Ignacio, too, honestly. Especially if she made cupcakes. She would probably want to make a double batch if she made cupcakes. Ignacio would probably make fully half of them mysteriously disappear. Like magic.

"My oldest brother loves cooking, so the two of you should compare recipes, or something," he mused into his own tea. "Hell, I'm pretty sure if you asked, he'd hand you a copy of his recipe stash, or something. I don't know where he keeps it necessarily, because it's not like I've ever seen a cookbook lying around, but I know he has one." He wouldn't be surprised if Garber just had a bunch of recipes on some online drive storage. They were probably alphabetized and everything, because his brother was a giant dweeb.Or, maybe on an external hard drive that he could plug into a laptop when needed, because that would probably be easier for Garber in the long run.

Though, honestly, Richard felt he would benefit from a cookbook stand, but who was he to judge his brother's culinary practices?

“I really think he has them either memorized or—and this wouldn’t surprise me—on laminated sheets in a binder, or something. My nephews are twin menaces, at least when they were little, and into everything, so it wouldn’t really surprise me to find out he has some kludged-together recipe repository.” Richard chuckled into his tea. “If he doesn’t have them laminated and in a binder, maybe I’ll get that done for him one year for his birthday.” Or Christmas, since his brother’s birthday had already passed for the year.

“Any other summer plans, by the way?” Aside from a potential summer family barbecue invite. “I’m probably going to be helping my mother with some rennovations to the studio.”

Richard loved talking about his nephews and nieces, and the eldest pair were a particular delight if only because of their ages. "One of them has always been a quiet kid, but his brother has always been into whatever there was to get into. If there is trouble to be found, dirt to be brought inside, a mess to be made, that kid was in the middle of it."

Aaron, on the other hand, abhorred the messes that Mikki got into. Now that the boys were older, he was often the first person to tell Mikki that maybe he should chill out. Richard had been there for a couple of minor arguments between the twins, where Mikki was getting too excitable even for Aaron's seemingly infinite patience, and Aaron was, sometimes, a bit of a stick in the mud compared to Mikki's preferences. They were having to work out compromises between their differing energy levels and socialization needs, and Richard thought it seemed to be going pretty well, so far.

Another sip at his tea as he listened to her talk about her brother. This was the most he'd heard her mention anyone in her family. After she finished speaking, Richard ventured a cautious, "what's your brother like?"

Richard sipped as his tea silently as Seren spoke, paying careful attention to what she said. Willful... He sounded stubborn, honestly, if Richard was understanding Seren's description properly. Not that being stubborn was necessarily a bad thing... Being bull-headed ran in Richard's family, so he'd be throwing stones from an awfully transparent glass house if he tried to knock anyone else just for being stubborn.

He didn't know what the "things that had to happen" were, and... he was tempted to ask. However, he quashed that temptation, burying that curiosity. It was none of his business, frankly, and he knew that. Born when Seren was five? That meant that there was an age gap between her and her brother that was similar to the one between Richard and his eldest brother. He didn't know if he always felt young to Garber, but he supposed he must, on some level. Garber had been married, divorced, had two children--the previously mentioned twin nephews--not to mention that he was a partner at their father's accounting firm... For Richard, he had his MBA, but he hadn't taken over their mother's dance studio, yet.

Hell, he still lived at home with their parents. Now, granted, the largest part of that was that they'd told Richard that, once he was settled in professionally, they'd be looking at giving him the house and moving away. The house they all lived in now was, quite frankly, too big for them. They didn't need a six-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath endeavor now that all of their sons were grown up and all but one had left the nest. That one was Richard, of course, and it looked like he might not ever leave the nest if he was going to be essentially inheriting the nest.

Besides, his parents figured that he and Ignacio would have more use for a house that big than they would. If anything, worse came to worst, Richard had been given full permission to--once the house was his--turn the upstairs into an apartment area of sorts. He wasn't sure how he'd work the stairs situation, because the stairs to the top floor were kind of centrally situated, but... The master bedroom was on the bottom floor.

When Seren mentioned her brother was fond of shocking her, Richard also chuckled. "Well, if he's ever in town, I can introduce him to one of my brothers." Constantine wasn't at Harvard, but he was just about finished with his JD. Sometimes he'd get into the intricacies of immigration or civil rights law, and it would make Richard's head spin... "He's in law school, too. He's going into family and civil rights law, with immigration as a specialty. He should be done in less than a year, if he can get the last bit of the residence requirement out of the way."

Richard had waited patiently, sipping slowly on his tea, watching Seren's skin lose colour after she mentioned her brother going into child protection law. He watched the way she bit her lip, too hard to be accidental or just a normal train of thought, but fortunately not hard enough--as far as he could tell anyway--to draw blood. He was careful not to move too fast, not to make any noises above the general ambiance of the tea shop. He didn't want to startle her, after all. He didn't know how she'd react to being startled.

Ignacio, in the beginning, had sometimes lashed out in perceived self-defense when he'd gone "away", then withdrawn in shame when he realised what'd happened. Richard had had to learn how, exactly, to bring Ignacio "back" without frightening him further. Richard neither wanted to startle her nor embarrass her. Not to mention avoiding the possibility of getting splashed with hot tea if she were to lash out against an imaginary threat...

And so, when she looked up and smiled at him, he smiled back, trying to be reassuring without calling attention to it.

"He might just not want to mix money with liking coding," he gave a nonchalant shrug. "I had a classmate in uni who liked drawing, and was pretty good at it, but knew she'd hate doing it for money. So she went into biology instead." Richard chuckled. "Yeah, law's pretty stable, that's for sure. Especially that area of law." It was part of why Constantine was going into it, as much as he'd always told Richard he'd be glad for the day he was unemployed due to lack of work. Richard gave a low, impressed whistle when she mentioned that her brother could afford Harvard.

"Hey, if it works out, it works out." Realizing his tea was empty, again, Richard glanced towards the counter, debating internally for a moment if he wanted to get up and get another, or if he was tea'd out.

Honestly, other people's money was one of those topics that Richard firmly considered "None of My Business". Unless explicitly invited, of course. The invitation to a cookout at his parents' house was one thing, even though it was spurred by the knowledge that she lived on very stereotypical college kid fare. Asking why she had a sibling that, somehow or another, could afford Harvard of all places and she had to eat cup noodles was quite another. She seemed to be a bit skittish about the topic of her brother, and Richard was trying to keep it relatively superficial. She had already insinuated that they didn't always get along at the very least, and Richard had no desire to go exposing old family wounds. At the very best, it was rude.

At the worst, it would be hurting her, and for what? His curiosity?

Nah.

"Speaking of college," at least he had a convenient segue to try and get it away from a potentially painful topic? "How're you looking forward to this upcoming semester?" He remembered how proud she'd been to talk about her major and figured she might like the chance to talk about something happy, something that she was clearly passionate about.