summerdude | If Alex Came Back We'd DEFINITELY Be The Local Power Couple [open post]

Tress pops her head in near the start of office hours and smiles a little bit. "Hi, Magnus. I'm pretty sure I can't need relationship advice, but I think it's a good idea and I'm glad you're offering it to people."

"Tress!" It's been a while -- since his birthday party, probably? -- and he's happy to see her. He gestures for her to come in. "Hey! Have you noticed how, um, new some of the people here are to being in a relationship, too?"

She steps in and takes a seat. "It makes sense, really. A lot of people thrown in from all over the place, of course they'll start forming new relationships."

"Oh, for sure," says Magnus, nodding. He's not actually interested gossiping about his friends, so he just leans back against the couch and says, "I've spent so long being, like, 'I'm super new to dating! I'm the baby boyfriend of the friend group!' because me and Alex have only been together for, like, just under seven years and our friends Mallory and Halfborn have been dating for like fifty years, and our friends Hearth and Blitz have been dating for over a decade, and even Sam has been engaged to Amir since before me and Alex even knew each other, that it was kind of weird to realize how new so many of the relationships here are, though?"

"Oh, wow, yes, it's a totally different frame of reference. So now you're the old hand at relationships who gets to pass on wisdom instead of the new one getting wisdom."

"I am no longer baby," Magnus confirms. He thinks about joking I want power, but he's pretty sure Tress doesn't know about memes. He's also pretty sure he remembers her mentioning -- "You have someone back home too, right?"

And at that question, her smile grows a bit wistful. "I do. Charlie. I miss him."

"I feel that," emphatically. "Tell me about him?"

"Oh, he's... so sweet. He's a wonderful storyteller, and he always listened to me, even when nobody else bothered to. He's braver than he ever thought he was, and he worked so hard to protect me even when protecting me would have hurt him. He's just... you know when you've had a good pair of gloves for a while and they end up fitting so well that you might even forget you have them on? That's Charlie."

"He sounds great," wistfully. "How long have you guys been together?"

"He is great," just as wistfully. "How long? I guess it depends on how you count it. And how much it counts as being together when you're apart."

Obviously you're still together if you're apart. Magnus is recently an expert on that, too. "What do you mean, how you count it?"

"Well, I wouldn't count when we were first getting to know each other, I guess. But you might be able to count it from when he started being the first person I'd go to with things, just to have him tell stories about them and spend time with him. Or from when he had to leave the Rock with his family because his father wanted to marry him off to a princess. He said he'd avoid marrying any of them because I didn't want him to. He called me his gloves too, that day. But then he was gone for more than a year. I don't think I would count it from when we saw each other again, because he'd been turned into a rat and I didn't know it was him for a while. At the very latest, though, it would be when we told each other we loved each other in the Sorceress's tower. So.. At least a few mo-- Well. A year or so, if you count my time here. Add another year and a bit, or a couple more years, depending on which one you pick."

"When do you count it as starting?" Magnus asks, and then, in case it helps Tress make any kind of decision, he adds, "With Alex I count it from the second time he kissed me."

"I think... I think I count it from when he left the Rock. Or technically the day before."

"So that's... a year? A couple of years?"

She nods. "A couple of years, yes. A few months of which we've actually been able to be in the same place at the same time."

"That blows," Magnus says, with great feeling. "Coming here is the first time I spent more than a week or two away from Alex, and I gotta say: Not the biggest fan of it."

She shakes her head. "No, it's pretty awful, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's the worst." Magnus slumps back into his seat. "Maybe I should be asking you for advice. On the whole no-contact long-distance thing."

"I don't know if I'd have the best advice right now, really. It was easier when we were separated at home, because there was at least... I could see a way, you know?"

"Yeah." Magnus is quiet for a little while, and then makes a face at her. "I'm sorry."

She nods. "I'm sorry for you, too." She manages a little smile. "There's always hope, though, right?"

"Yeah!" Magnus musters up a smile, too. "Alex came here when we all got our visitors. Maybe there'll be another visit day."

Tress' own smile slips a little. "Maybe. Maybe I'll get a better visitor next time if there is."

"Oh no." Magnus gives Tress a dismayed look. "I'm sorry, I didn't even ask you earlier. You had a bad visit?"

She nods. "A pretty awful one. It's okay now, but... there really aren't many people I would have been less happy to see again."

"I think it really sucks how some people got bad visitors," says Magnus, remembering -- again -- having to Peace of Frey Wei Wuxian's maybe-brother, and also the guy who was trying to find Laertes.

She shrugs. "Just unlucky, I guess. I'm glad a lot of people got good visitors."

"That's true!" Though Magnus is starting to wonder if he's the only person who really did get a truly good visitor.

"Honestly, it would have been hard in a different way if it was someone I liked and I had to say goodbye to them. So I don't envy you that part."

Yeah. Yup! Totally. Okay, time to stop dwelling!! "Charlie sounds awesome though," Magnus says. "That glove thing is so romantic."

She smiles softly. "It is. I wish you could meet him."

"Tell me more about him? What does he look like? What's his favorite food?"

"Well, he's taller than I am by several inches, he has dark hair which he keeps short, but you can still tell there's some curl to it because it won't comb straight. He has a wide smile and his hands are so very soft. And warm. He likes a lot of different foods, but he always liked when I made him a meat pie."

"Was he a super cute rat, when he got turned into one?" Magnus asks. "Alex can turn into different animals and they're all extremely cool."

She laughs a little. "I mean, he looked pretty much like most rats, but yes, he was still super cute."

"Alex turn into a really great and really wonky flamingo sometimes. It's really good." Magnus gives Tress a crooked smile. "I guess it's different if you're not an animal on purpose, though."

"It was especially tricky because he couldn't let me know it was him."

"Part of the -- curse? Spell? Thing?"

She nods. "Her curses prevented their subjects from talking about the specifics of their curse. So he couldn't tell me who he was, that he'd been cursed in the first place, or how to break it."

Magnus gives a low whistle. "Wow, that's tricky!" he says. "How'd you figure it out?"

She laughs a little. "We made it all the way to the Sorceress. She agreed to give me Charlie back. As we were leaving... The Charlie she gave me, he was exactly like he was before either of us left the Rock. It just felt wrong. And I realized it wasn't him, and I realized what happened, so I turned back around."

"You and rat-Charlie made it there?"

She nods. "He insisted I take him with me for the last part of the journey. I wouldn't have made it without him."

"So he was a talking rat?"

"Oh! Yes, he was a talking rat."

"And he couldn't tell you who he was?" Magnus shakes his head. "Wow. That seems like it would make things both more and less complicated. How did you figure it out? Besides the false Charlie."

"I figured it out from what he had said and done. He was trying to protect me the whole time we were together and I hadn't even really realized it."

"Like how?" Magnus pauses. "You don't have to say, of course. I'm just -- it's nice to talk to someone about missing someone back home, you know? Sharing memories, that kind of thing."

Edited 2024-02-11 06:34 (UTC)

"No, it's fine." She smiles softly. "I was trying so hard to get to him and rescue him and... Well, the Sorceress had told him how to break his curse, which was to get me there to curse instead. So he was trying to stop me or dissuade me the entire time, and I wasn't listening, of course."

"Oh wow." Magnus, who is a bit of a self-sacrificing fool himself, likes the sound of the guy immediately. "And it was like, 'this is just some talking rat trying to get me to stop from rescuing my love?'"

"Exactly. When we got really close, he even had someone start throwing some of our food supplies overboard. I was... shocked. And angry."

"Oh my gods. That's... I'd be so mad, too."

"It makes sense now, but... Yeah. It wasn't so much that we were going to starve, but it was enough that we would have had to turn back to resupply. Except that the crew said they were willing to eat verdant vines as a stopgap. Charlie didn't know that was an option. Neither did I, at the time. So it didn't even work."

"What do the vines taste like?" Magnus wonders, and then: "How did he convince someone to get rid of the food?"

"They're... fine, really? They need a lot of preparation time to make them able to be eaten, but they're... okay in a pinch." She looks thoughtful. "I wonder what could be done to make them actually tasty. Oh... right, that's beside the point. Another one of my crew had also gotten cursed by the Sorceress, earlier. He was still in his regular form but he had... Well, his thoughts were a bit jumbled, so when a rat told him it was very important to throw the marked food overboard, it must have been very important."

"This Sorceress sounds like bad news," Magnus says. "Did you have to fight her?"

"We confronted her in the end. I suppose you could call it a fight."

"What would you call it?"

"Just a confrontation. No one really ended up getting hurt in the end, so best outcome for everyone, really."

Oh. "That's nice," Magnus says, feelingly. He likes when confrontations don't involve fights or bloodshed or death.

She nods. "Charlie and Hoid both ended up getting their curses reversed and the Sorceress left our world, hopefully to go back where she came from."

Magnus smiles. "That seems a lot more efficient than flyting her into a walnut shell," he says. "That's what I had to do with Alex's mom."

She laughs a little. "I summarized it a little. There were a few more steps. But the walnut shell thing sounds impressive."

Magnus laughs, too. "I think it would've been more impressive if that could have stopped Loki in a meaningful way."

"Maybe, but little steps count too. Stopping him even in a small way probably did some good, right?"

"Oh, sure. It pushed the apocalypse back a little while."

"There you go, then. You did a good job."

Magnus just shrugs, but then he smiles and holds his hand out for a high five. "Go us," he says. "We both kick ass."

And Tress has fortunately at least seen a high-five or two, so she reaches over and slaps his hand. "I guess we do."

"May our partners arrive ASAP so they can continue to kick ass with us," says Magnus, solemnly, like he's making a toast even though he doesn't even have a drink.

She smiles a little and nods. "Let's hope."

Sagramore is bothering Magnus not so much because he thinks he needs the advice, as because it's been a minute since they last talked, and he has a daughter to show off.

Szarka is still really too young for anything but the most rudimentary of leash training, and she still doesn't have a collar that said leash could clip to, so he's been alternating between letting her follow him and carrying her around. In the three days they've had her she's already fully absorbed Sagramore and Laertes as her packmates, and her preference is for both of them to be with her, but she endures when it's only one or the other. She is enduring now.

More specifically, she's trying to herd Sagramore through the door he's already chosen to enter, jumping at his heels to encourage him forward.

"Good morning," he tells Magnus cheerfully. "You're providing a new service?"

"The doctor is in," Magnus confirms, though he's pretty sure that of all the people here, Sagramore probably needs his advice the least (adult-shaped adult that he is). "What's up, dude, how have you -- oh my gods who is that?! Hi precious, I'm Magnus, who are you?"

"This is Szarka, she's learning to come to heel."

She has begun to make that connection, and she tells Magnus ecstatically that she is indeed Szarka and Szarka means her.

"Szarka does mean you," Magnus confirms, sliding off the couch so that he's more on a level with her. "Where did you come from? Are you learning a lot of new things with Sagramore?"

She doesn't know who Sagramore is -- her conception of her fathers is very much of two great creatures who love her but whose names she doesn't know -- but she is learning things! She's learning how good food is and how to make her packmates happy and she loves them!

"Are you talking to her?"

"Oh, yeah," Magnus says, glancing up at Sagramore. "I've been able to talk to animals for about seven years now. She says she loves you." He turns back to the puppy. "This is Sagramore. Your other dad is Laertes. I bet they love you too, like, a lot." #NotAllDads, or whatever?

Szarka is delighted to learn that her fathers have names, and she chases her tail about it for several moments before plonking down on the floor.

"You might have told me that. I'm sorry, I'm rather absent-minded."

"Oh, I probably didn't," Magnus shrugs. He offers a hand for Szarka to sniff; it likely smells strongly of Drosera. "It doesn't come up a lot in, like, casual conversation, you know?"

"I don't know, if I could talk to Fenyes I'd probably tell everyone I met."

Cat-bird is a new smell combination for Szarka, and she starts barking.

"None of that," Sagramore says at once, motioning at Magnus to stand up and stop interacting with her.

Despite his extreme lack of experience in both areas, Magnus knows enough about both kids and pets to know that you listen to whoever's in charge of them when it comes to interacting with them. He stands. "At least there's a couple of us here who can talk to Fenyes for you?" he says. "In case you need to." He nods at the puppy. "I've been working on socializing Dro — you heard about Drosera, right? The griffin baby me and Galahad found? Anyway, I've been getting her used to Hanguang-jun's rabbits so they know each other as, like, friend, and not predator and prey. So let me know if you wanna set up a playdate?" That's something people do with children, right? Playdates?

She barks several more times, but quiets down at being ignored before flopping down tragically on Sagramore's boot. "Sorry, I don't want her barking all the time at everything. And yes, Qi Yan told me he could speak with Fenyes, which is rather marvelous. And yes, I've heard about Drosera. I suppose when Szarike is a little bigger that might be doable."

Oh, good, Sagramore already knows about Qi Yan, so it's fine for Magnus to say, "The day the translator broke, me and Qi Yan just talked horse to each other to cope," which is one of the coolest facts he has -- but one he feels like he shouldn't tell anyone who doesn't already know about Qi Yan's ability.

A delighted laugh. "Of course you did, that's perfect. Qi Yan is an absolutely excellent fellow. He's helping to look after Fenyes now she's with foal."

"Oh right, you did say that she might be, huh." Magnus shakes his head, awed. "So many baby animals... No rush on playdates or anything, obviously, by the way. I just want Dro to recognize animal friends as friends, you know?"

"Right, right, you want her ti distinguish between friends and food, I get the idea," with a laugh. "I think Szari can manage that in a week or so."

"She really is so freaking cute," Magnus says, grinning down at her. "I see she has as many nicknames as Dro."

"She has acquired her fair share already. Eh, Szarike? Szarkácske?" An excited yip; she lifts her head.

"Are those all..." Magnus tries to remember the word. "Diminutives?" To Szarka, he asks, "Do you recognize all of them?" and then, to Sagramore, he adds, "Dro's name really just keeps growing. I think right now it's Her Royal Beakiness Princess Drosera Dinosaur Hungry Silly Baby Kitty McBirdface Magnahad the Fluffy-Pawed and Murder-Taloned of Shed Kingdom, First of her Name and Cutest and Most Ferocious in all the Worlds."

"Quite a title! I'm impressed. Where is she today? --Oh, yes, all diminutives."

"Huh? Oh, she's with her other mother right now."

"I suppose there are advantages to not having to amuse a child every moment of your day," blithely. "Do you think she's going to nature more like an eagle or a lion? Or something else entirely?"

"I don't know a lot about lions or eagles," Magnus admits. "But I found some stuff on griffins in the library, and it seems like it's definitely a combination."

"And you can speak to her, as you do with other animals?"

"Yep! Mostly all she says at this point is 'hungry baby!' and 'mama play!' and stuff like that."

He laughs. "Ah. She's a child indeed."

"Her feathers are starting to come in!" He's proud as he says it, even though objectively he does recognize she looks extremely weird right now. "But yeah. She's super young. Luckily she's cat enough that Mothwing and even sometimes Angus can help out where the books fall short. I've tried asking some of the other birds here for advice, too, but mostly they freak out because she screams baby predator."

"Yes, I suppose eagles don't engender a great deal of security in other birds." He has no idea, Magnus. He's just guessing. "I suppose she'll be able to fly, then, when she has all her feathers?"

"That's the idea!" It's bright as he says it, but almost immediately Magnus sighs heavily, though. "I don't know how we're going to teach her to do that. If Alex was here--" he cuts himself off there.

"I don't know that anyone teaches birds anything," reassuring. "I believe it's an instinct."

"Or maybe we could ask the swords!" Magnus says, aiming for 'upbeat' and mostly hitting it.

"Magnus," gentler. "She'll learn what she needs to learn. Are you all right?"

"Huh? Oh, I'm fine. Why?"

"Because you sound like you're making a concerted effort to be cheerful, and it's not particularly convincing, mainly. I assume it's not all down to new motherhood."

Sagramore really is unique among all adult-shaped adults that Magnus knows -- nobody else would call him out this directly! Magnus gives him an appreciative sort of look and, for a really brief and weird moment, has a particular pang of missing his mom. "Yeah, I'm fine," he says, a little more calmly. Why is he feeling weird, actually? He misses Alex, obviously, but he's been missing Alex pretty much this whole time. It's almost like he's going through another adjustment period to being here, but why? He really is fine!

Well, at least there's one obvious answer he can give. "It's just, like, winter, you know?"

"Because you're a demigod of summer?"

"Yeah! This is my, like, slow season."

"Is there anything that helps you feel better? Other than going home and seeing your Alex, obviously."

"Oh, I can never go home again," Magnus says; this is the most genuinely cheerful he's sounded in at least ten minutes (he's committed to his path, and thus accepted it). "I think I just gotta figure out a new, like, destiny or whatever. You know?"

"Ah, a minuscule sort of undertaking, of course." Szarka whines and he picks her up, bouncing her gently in his arms.

"Maybe 'calling' is a better word for it," Magnus muses. "There's so much free time here." There was a lot of free time at Valhalla, too, but at least being temporarily dead for a little while every day ate into it. "Can I pet her?"

"You may absolutely pet her. And yes, the amount of free time does occasionally present a problem."

"Sure beats dying, though," Magnus says, reaching for Szarka so that she can sniff his hand again and get used to his smell. Or, well, his recently-held-Drosera smell.

This time she doesn't bark, though she sniffs eagerly. "Well, yes. Generally speaking. I just mean, if there's something I can do to help you feel less at loose ends, I'm more than happy. I'm always at some project or other."

After a moment or two, Magnus moves to gently scritch behind Szarka's ears. "What projects do you have going on right now?"

"Ah, well, right now it's mainly her. But Grantaire and I were thinking of working out how to distill alcohol, and -- this is still only in the idle thought stage, but there are so many people here I worry about. Laertes likes drawing people into his orbit, but it's not realistic for him to make supper for everyone here day after day. I think I've talked to at least one person about communal meals, and I keep coming back around to it, but it takes organizational skills, of which I have none."

Magnus brightens at the thought. "I was talking to Claudius about that a few weeks ago!" he says. "Valhalla had feasts every night, which is, like, a lot if you don't have a kitchen duty rotation, but the vibes -- it's just really nice to come together for a big family meal. So maybe a potluck dealio could be fun? Or a rotation? Lan Wangji and Gu Xiang are both great cooks, too. And Galahad. I... made toast without burning it last week?" He sighs then. "Something I've been thinking about a lot ever since I rebuilt my camp is that, it's nice to do things with my hands, you know? Like, it's cool that this place gives you basically whatever you need, but that just starts to feel lazy, you know? Alex is really into crafting and has a lot of opinions about how that's a lot better than mass production, and I've always mostly agreed, but here, I'm starting to really get that."

"A potluck? Is that taking turns? I think that would be better, Laertes was rather spent at the end of all that cooking." He pauses, to let the rest of Magnus' words sink in. "Ah, yes, I do agree. There really is a satisfaction to making something oneself. I think the benefit of this place is that because it attends to our needs it gives us time to work out what we want, what we like. There's plenty of time to perfect a skill without the interference of having to survive. And then if course sometimes it's too much time, but generally-- what have you been making?"

"A potluck is where everyone contributes part of the meal," Magnus says. "But I bet it might be easiest to have, like, a rotation of groups of maybe three or four people to make elements of a shared meal every few days? It would probably be easier if there's just a couple of dishes every time, too." He can deal with the second part of Sagramore's question in a minute -- what has he been making, lately? What counts?

"I think a potluck would be an excellent idea, in that case. Perhaps if anyone wants lessons with cooking I can offer those. I'm already teaching Nina a bit."

"I want to learn, too," Magnus says, immediately. "I've been learning a little from everyone I can but I would still only classify myself as an expert in camp cooking."

"Well, in that case. I did win Laertes by making him a fried egg, so I suppose that dovetails nicely with your project of learning how to make love to Alex."

"Hanguang-jun has been learning how to make Mexican food so he can teach me to make it for Alex," Magnus admits, blushing a little at the thought of the look on Alex's face, if she ever comes back here and gets to find out that he's learned it for her.

"That is extraordinarily charming. Have we had Mexican food yet? Was there any at Wanderers Gather? I'm unfamiliar with the country."

"I don't think there was anything from any of the Americas," Magnus says, trying to remember. "Mexico is the country directly south of the one I come from. Alex's family is from there. Great food. Lots of corn, lots of chiles. Have you ever heard of tamales?"

"No, I don't know tamales. If I beg Laertes to try his hand at them, will I be usurping Lan Wangji? If he's learning to cook something special for you I don't want to steal any thunder."

"Oh dude, I'm not gonna gatekeep Mexican food," Magnus says. "I can actually fill and tie tamales like a pro, too, so I can even help Laertes out with that part. I can't make the masa or the filling very well, and I'd probably screw up actually steaming them, but it's like folding dumplings. Give me something to stuff and wrap and I can do it for hours." Something occurs to him, and he grins. "Or maybe we could get Hanguang-jun in on it, too, and start practicing for round-robin potlucks."

Edited 2024-02-12 03:38 (UTC)

"I actually think this is a brilliant idea. Laertes needs more help and more rest -- perhaps you and I and his lordship can be students together."

Whoa. Hanging out with two whole adult-shaped adults simultaneously? Magnus is so curious to see how they bounce off each other. Maybe he can kick Laertes under the table about it while they fold tamales. "I'm so in," he says, emphatically, and then, back to a part of the conversation he'd put a pin in, a few minutes ago: "Hey, maybe folding food can be my new thing that I make. That new guy started teaching me cooler ways to mend my clothes than how I did it when I was homeless, but I ran out of holes to fix. And I think I've given up on knitting, for now. Dro is way too interested in the yarn to try to get better at knitting more than, like, accidental loofahs."

"The new guy is lovely. --listen, folding is important work. I'll talk to Lan Wangji." His eyes sparkle with the pleasure of a New Project.

"Awesome," Magnus says, contentedly. He nods at Szarka. "Can I hold her?"

"Certainly." She wriggles gleefully at the opportunity to be held by a new person, licking Magnus' face as she's passed into his arms.

"Hi, baby girl," Magnus tells her, laughing at the sensation. "I'm your uncle Magnus. If you ever need help communicating with, uh," what does Mothwing call them? "Twolegs like your dads, I can translate for you. Or if you want to talk to any of the cats, bunnies, horses, or griffins around here." He's not actually sure if they can talk to each other or not. "Or squirrels! When you're a little older, I'm gonna teach you all about how the squirrels are off-limits, okay? No eating Uncle Magnus's daily soap opera."

"She's a herder, not a hunter, fortunately, so I think she'll probably leave the squirrels alone. But if you could tell her not to annoy Mothwing, I'd appreciate it."

"Hi, sweet Szarka," Magnus says, making eye contact with her. "Do you know what a 'cat' is?"

She cocks her head in a manner that is, honestly, very reminiscent of the way Sagramore does it. Cat is new to her. So many things are new to her.

"Cats are the other main kind of pet," Magnus explains. "They have long tails and whiskers and most of them have ears that always stick up. There's one here named Mothwing -- me and her are clanmates, okay? She's really nice, so be sure to be polite to her and not chase her or attack her or anything." Then he remembers Angus. "And there's another one named Angus. He's probably a little more playful, but you should ask first. And if you, uh, don't speak the same language, let me know and I can help you out, okay?"

Szarka is definitely interested to meet these cats, which are probably another kind of dog?? But Magnus is nice and so she will try to be polite, even though her impulse control is quite bad.

"I know it is, sweet girl, you're a little baby," Magnus says, soothingly. "Dro's is too. It's just, like, a fact of infancy I guess. Doing your best is all that I ask."

"What's she saying?" Sagramore asks, openly curious. "Insisting it's her right to chase cats?"

"She's saying she's excited to meet cats and is concerned that her impulse control isn't very good," Magnus laughs.

"Well, she fits right into this family, then."

Magnus laughs. "Hey, Szarka," he says. "Is there anything you want me to tell your dad for you?"

Szarka yips excitedly -- the thing she wants Sagramore and Laertes to know is that they're her pack, and she's so happy about it.

Magnus grins up at Sagramore. "She really loves you guys," he tells him.

"Does she?" breaking into a grin. "Can you tell her we adore her?"

"Your dads are totally obsessed with you," Magnus tells her. "They love you so much."

She is so happy -- all she wants, at this point in her life, is to be loved as deeply as she loves her packmates, and this assurance is everything. She squiggles in Sagramore's arms until she can lick his face happily.

"I'm pretty sure you don't need me to translate that one," Magnus laughs.

Never has a man been more delighted to have his beard get covered in dog spit. "No, I have the -- ugh," as her tongue goes briefly in his mouth, "--I have the idea--"

"Isn't parenthood sublime?" Magnus says, peaceably. Drosera vomited half-eaten raw meat on his hair two days ago. He loves her so much.

"I've wanted this my whole life," he agrees, with a laugh, which hopefully downplays the fact that it's pretty much true. "How's the princess?"

"Oh, a wonder," Magnus says. "Her feathers are coming in and she's so funny-looking right now. I'd murder a man for her if it came to it." (This, of course, is a much bigger declaration, from Magnus Chase, than saying he'd die for her; he's died a bunch. He's also killed a bunch, but he's never specifically, directly murdered a mortal human, even if he does blame himself for his uncle's death.)

"My friend, our hearts are in one accord."

Magnus grins and holds up a hand. "High five?"

"Is this another kind of modern greeting?" He shifts Szarka in his arms so he can hold up his own hand.

"Yeah! It's a gesture of, like, camaraderie," Magnus says. "Or approval or excitement. Or respect -- the 'mad props' genre of respect, specifically. I'm on mission to teach everyone here the magic of the high five. You, uh, slap them together. The louder the better. It helps if you look at the other person's elbow."

"All right, let's go," drawing back his hand.

Magnus does, too, and then swings it forward again in a high five.

It's a very pleasing impact; he does it again, just to make sure he's got it. "You, sir, are a font of knowledge."

"That's me, Knowing Stuff Guy," Magnus says, and laughs. "You wanna know my secret?" He stage-whispers, "It's being from almost everyone's future."

"That probably does make a difference. --Actually, let me ask you a question? It's all right if you don't know the answer."

"Yeah man, what's up?"

"I know you can heal wounds. Can you heal other afflictions of the body? Or is it only things that are acute?"

Magnus hesitates. "It really depends," he says. "It's... mostly wounds, but not exclusively wounds? I can't do chronic illness." He's still bummed he couldn't heal Qi Yan.

"Understood. Thank you."

"I can sometimes do, like, individual symptoms as they arise, depending," he continues, thoughtfully.

Sagramore makes a listening sound, inviting Magnus to continue, although he's more or less decided he's not going to ask for help with either of his two chronic illnesses (a term he mentally makes a note to look into and then promptly forgets about).

Magnus looks at Sagramore. "Why do you ask?"

"Idle curiosity," he says, kissing the top of Szarka's head -- and then, because he can immediately and vividly imagine Laertes being disappointed in him for that answer, he does add, "I have seizures. But that sounds out of the scope of what you do."

Seizures, huh? "Can I ask what kind?" Magnus asks. "Like... do you have a sense of things that might trigger them, or the parts of your body that are most likely to be affected?"

"You can ask, though my knowledge is limited. They tend to come on at times when my mind isn't sharp -- when falling asleep or waking up, or when I'm overexerted, or if I've indulged too much. Afterward I'm very tired and generally have a terrible headache and weakness." It has the air of a recitation.

"I can't make them stop," Magnus says, immediately -- that's a chronic illness; he can't do anything about it. "But if you ever had one while I was there, I could probably make it a lot shorter and make the fallout less gnarly."

"Well. I'll take that under advisement, although I rather hope I don't have one while you're there just on principle."

"That's fair," Magnus says, offering Sagramore a crooked smile. "Wouldn't it be nice if there was, like, a pharmacy here? Then we could find the antidepressants Claudius was asking me about a few weeks ago, and anticonvulsants for your seizures, and, like, Advil or Benadryl or whatever." He doesn't need Advil anymore -- perks of being dead! -- but surely some people do.

"Wait, wait, wait, I have more questions. Firstly, antidepressants? That's a medicine? Is Claudius all right? Is he sick?" There's a hint of urgency in his voice that he doesn't notice -- he isn't sure he trusts Claudius to be someone who asks for help when he's sick. "And-- anticonvulsants? Does that mean there's a treatment for seizures in your time? Can they be cured?"

"Claudius is totally fine," says Magnus, who doesn't actually know if this is true or not but is pretty sure if he wasn't, Galahad would let him know. "We were talking about Crowley and Aziraphale's love melancholy and how the humors are fake and it just came up naturally, because I was like 'I don't know what melancholy is but it sure sounds like depression.' And yeah, there's definitely a treatment. I don't know about a cure. A lot of homeless people have epilepsy? And there was a guy with it who would take a bench near mine in my favorite park a bunch when the shelters were full, back before I died. Sometimes he'd tell me about it, and the meds he'd take when he could afford them."

Claudius has depression goes in the same mental file as chronic illness, and even the act of shelving something like that reminds him that he had other things in there he'd meant to ask Magnus about, and he says abruptly, "Magnus, who is George Michael?" before he can forget it. "A medicine, a medicine that actually works?"

"George Michael isn't a medicine," Magnus says with a frown. "I think he was some kind of singer? Maybe a gay singer. I don't know. I think he was before my time and, like, bigger in Britain." And then: "Yeah, Carl said it worked really well. It didn't prevent them entirely but it made them happen a lot less?"

"Georgia said he was my culture, or something like that. --I suppose it's too much to ask for something like that here? If Laertes can find me a dog, then surely a medicine--"

There's a part of himself, the part that got its hopes up every time the queen found a new physician with a new remedy, that catches on to this and clings. He should really know better, and yet-- what if he could find it? What if there truly was an herb to steep or an amulet to wear against his chest that actually changed things? He wouldn't have to worry Laertes by drinking Luo Binghe's blood. He wouldn't have to feel as if he's always waiting for the moment Laertes -- any of his friends here, but especially Laertes, who's with him the most -- can't stand cleaning up after him any more; for the moment Laertes just gets tired. A remedy feels like the promise of new life. Of course it was just a matter of going far enough unto the future, of course eventually someone would work out the cure. Now if he could just have it--

Magnus squints. "Aren't you, like," he says, a little awkwardly. "Not British, actually?" He can see the look on Sagramore's face, though, and decides to shuffle over so that he can lean against him. "It might be worth looking?" he says. "Um, but, Carl said there were a ton of different kinds and they all work a little differently. I bet the library has books on medications, at least? With information about what they all do? And then at least you'd know what to look for."

He laughs. "I am, in fact, not British. I hated Britain. Thank you for remembering. " Then, as Magnus leans, he makes a soft, slightly surprised sound and sets his arm around Magnus' shoulders. "The library does have everything. I'll look later."

"I wasn't that impressed, either, the one time I was there," Magnus tells Sagramore. Since he's this close to Szarka now, he can't not scratch her soft little head.

She likes those scritches a lot! She's sooo happy. "A rather backwards nation," Sagramore tells Magnus conspiratorially.

"I helped Alex and TJ semi-accidentally destroy a square in York while Sam and Mallory and Halfborn fought vatnavaettir -- um, water horses," Magnus shrugs. "So I didn't get a great look at it. But from what I saw? Yeah, totally."

"Just tragically uninformed about medicine, about countries other than itself, about science, about religion, about music, about art--" only too happy to enumerate Britain's failures.

"Also imperialism and colonialism are, like, extremely bad," says Magnus, getting into it. "You know they tried to expand the British Empire to, like, basically literally everywhere else? They messed up a lot of places."

"What, that pitiful little country? How?"

"From what I understand? Ships, slavery, and smallpox, mostly."

"Lovely."

Arguably, the Ottoman Empire is going to be pretty bad also, but whatever, he doesn't know about that. Also, hating colonial Britain is something everyone can agree on.

"I'm pretty sure they hit every single continent," Magnus says. "Even Antarctica."

"Christ have mercy."

"They did lose a lot of it eventually!" Magnus says, brightly, even though he's pretty sure they lost a lot of it in the stupidest and most destructive way they could.

"At least there's that."

"Anyway." Magnus makes a face. "I don't get the George Michael thing."

"She asked if I was gay and I said I was queer, but she seemed mildly horrified by that. But it came somewhere in there."

"Oh, gay culture, not British culture," says Magnus. Was George Michael gay? He still doesn't really know who George Michael is. "Yeah, 'queer' used to be, like, an insult. But so did 'gay'? So really I've got nothing."

"I suppose that's no particular surprise, since neither are well-liked in my time."

Magnus squints. "I thought they had, like, different meanings in old-timey times. Happy and weird, or whatever."

"Oh." He laughs. "I mean, queer people, gay people. The words themselves do mean other things."

"It's still pretty contentious in my time," Magnus admits. "Like, probably better than yours? But..." he shrugs. "Not, like, ideal."

"So it's not just me thinking this place is remarkably accepting?"

Magnus pauses, mouth curling around the word Alex, but shakes his head. That's her story to tell, not his. "Let's just say that when I was homeless.. a really huge percentage of the other teens I met were queer. Especially trans or nonbinary, but, like, gay or bi ones too."

"I suppose we should be grateful for the panacea we have," he says, though he's frowning slightly. Obviously he knows, intellectually, that there are people in his own time who have been hurt or shunned for being queer, but Magnus saying teens is making it very easy to picture Gideon or Magnus himself (even though Magnus isn't a teen!), and it's -- genuinely kind of upsetting! He doesn't like it!

"Like, gay marriage is legal now, and I live in the first state that had it in my country," Magnus says. "So it's been allowed since I was, like, five. But that doesn't stop the assholes from being assholes."

"There are a lot of assholes in the world."

Magnus huffs out a half-laugh that's only about 25% amused. "You can say that again."

"I really do appreciate your counsel. Even if it's not on the subject you advertised."

"Oh, anytime," Magnus says, and then twists to look at Sagramore more directly. "Do you want any relationship advice?" Of everyone here, he's pretty sure Sagramore probably needs it the least.

"I think I'm all right. If that changes, though, I'll find you."

"Cool," smiling.

As it turns out, Claudius could use feedback on a relationship matter, one that also concerns Magnus. It's a bit of a shame -- he and Magnus truly never got to do their worst to Lancelot. By the time they declared their mutual enmity, they'd already compromised on just-in case plans and contingencies. Wise as it was for Galahad to intervene between matters escalated, Claudius almost wishes he hadn't, so that one of their contingencies could activate. Instead, Claudius had to negotiate a ceasefire before a single proper battle.

Claudius considers bringing a bottle of wine, but he's never seen Magnus drink¹. He has seen Galahad save a bag of cool ranch doritos for Magnus for months, so he brings one of those from the pantry, and a six-pack of bottled drinka produced from the fridge. The drinks are vividly colored, like the most concentrated of tonics, and labeled Jarritos.

"Magnus," he says, setting his offerings down on the table upon entering the parlor. "It's a pleasure, as always. How have you been?"

¹ To be clear, Claudius has no reservations about giving wine to someone in the body of a teenage boy -- he just doesn't know whether said teenage boy prefers whites or reds.

Edited 2024-02-09 15:21 (UTC)

"Holy crap, Jarritos," Magnus says, immediately leaning forward to grab a bottle of guava and then grinning up at Claudius. "I'm good, dude. How are you? How's the--" he lowers his voice to a stage whisper for the next two words. "Bamboo propagation coming along?" He's been increasingly eager to start growing Lan Wangji his little grove since he delivered his successful attempt to get old bamboo to sprout again to Claudius and Galahad's room.

"Oh, magnificently," Claudius says with smiling pride, plucking up a bottle of bright mango and taking a seat on the corner of the table. "Bamboo propagates with remarkable speed, compared to the slower-growing magnolia. I've sections of your sample sprouting roots already, and if they continue to grow, I may section off more. It's quite the elegantly constructed plant, when you look at it. Each stalk is a climbing series of nodes and internodes, and each nodal joint is a site of potential growth. Wherever did you find it?"

"Oh, I finally found an old stick with enough juice I could still wake it up," Magnus says. He had ransacked several sub-basement rooms for it. They're probably still a mess. Whatever, he'll dig his way back down there to clean them up again during the next blizzard. He twists the cap off his soda and holds the bottle up so Claudius can clink his against it, a little toast to their mutual dedication to Lan Wangji's happiness.

Oh, that's a satisfying clink. "Well-done. By the time spring comes around, we'll be able to fill a garden with it. It may end up filling my workshop in the meantime."

Magnus laughs. "I heard that in some parts of Asia, sometimes bamboo grows fast and strong enough that it can grow right through your floor. Like, unexpectedly."

"Now that would be incredible to see. But no," Claudius says, apparently resolving a debate he just had in his head about growing bamboo deliberately to crack through the floors of his workshop, "I can always experiment more with future propagations. Lan Wangji's grove takes priority. Do you have any ideas about where you'll want to plant it?"

Actually, Magnus is a little embarrassed to admit that he doesn't know a huge amount about Lan Wangji's personal life. "Do you know if there's any part of the woods he likes to hang out in particularly?"

"I might," Claudius says, which honestly surprises him. "There's a part of the woods he flew me out to on Bichen."

"So maybe there?" Magnus purses his lips. "Or would that make it easier for him to figure out we're doing this?"

“I don’t think he’ll have much reason to return there now. He’s cleared most of the trees.” Should Claudius explain why he and Lan Wangji were practicing a little amateur forestry in the middle of the woods? No, absolutely not. “But I think it would charm him, to revisit the place and find it transformed.”

"Cool," says Magnus, and takes a delicious swig of his soda to seal the deal. "What's new with you, man? Get into any new exciting PDA in front of unsuspecting party-throwers lately?"

"And here I thought you'd been entirely suspecting," Claudius says cheerfully. He savors some of the mango flavor, which is shockingly sweet, but pleasant. "Consider it a further lesson in dressing to effect -- the effect such schemes procure. I do appreciate your advice in doting over Drosera, and I may have a gift or two to present Her Highness in the future. I'm enjoying having projects to work on. My longest-running goal has been reached¹, and my most recent is ..." He sighs. "Less than enjoyable. I wanted to talk to you about that, actually. Galahad inspired me to make peace with his father, and ... yes, I'm realizing now making peace with fathers isn't your particular area of expertise, but you did call yourself a long-term relationship expert."

¹ That long-term goal is 'Aziraphale and Crowley kissing on the face,' which has been his goal since his first week in DF when he met Crowley. All his pre-DF goals are on permanent hiatus, but he did get the brother-murdering done and say 'I love you' to Gertrude.

"Yeah, he told me that things were cool between him and that asshole," Magnus says, nodding solemnly. "I said that didn't stop Lancelot's insane cop energy. You actually specifically made peace with him?"

"We shared a toast at Wanderers Gatherer. In Denmark, that's practically signing a treaty," Claudius says with a sigh. "The formalities were, of course, perfect. But I also feel like Lancelot has insane cop energy. And, as I told you, my brother had insane cop energy." Claudius truly does appreciate how frankly these terms let him express the problem. "I have trouble trusting men with cop energy. Does that make sense?"

"Oh, totally. All cops are bastards," Magnus says. "Every last one. And so if someone has cop energy they're probably either a bastard already or about to have their final bastard evolution, unless your cop-dar is totally off. But mine isn't. Mine is finely honed. I can smell a cop from a mile away, basically, even if they're plainclothes." He tilts his head. "Lancelot reminds me of some real bad hombres, and he reminds you of your brother, so he's, like. Super unpleasant to be around, with or without definitive bastardry. Right?"

"Exactly right," Claudius says, snapping his fingers. "You understand my feelings in this. Of course you do -- you have since the start of these hostilities. Which," he sighs, "were disappointing, regardless. I gave Lancelot the cut direct all night at the dance, and he did not notice even once. I don't think cops have the requisite class and discernment for that."

"Okay," Magnus admits, "I don't think I know what the cut direct is. What's the cut direct?"

"Well, first you have to understand that I was hobbled, socially speaking¹. I couldn't disinvite him altogether because he was friends with both the grooms, and denying them would appear ungracious. A social cut is most effective when it's a tool to excise those who have done something you've deemed socially unacceptable, which would be -- as you know -- his treatment of Galahad. But for it to be truly effective in this situation, he would've had to do his duty as a guest and attempt to greet me as the host. I would then give him the cut direct, by looking directly at him without acknowledging him. It would communicate that while I could not disinvite him, I do not welcome him, do not condone his conduct or consider him fit for civil discourse. Well-employed, the cut direct's absolutely devastating. If the queen were to give the court direct to a courtier, for instance, it would be social death. A queen like Gertrude had to entertain many men with brusque manners in her court because of her husband's warmongering company, but if one approached her and she gave him the cut direct, it would be clear to him -- and to all watching -- that the queen had not accepted him into her society." And it made a young Claudius's heart catch with admiration, when he watched her do it. "Unfortunately, Lancelot had no sense of his duties as a guest, and I don't think it even occurred to him to thank me for hosting. He might not have known -- he's that oblivious. So I made some show of moving to greet him, before giving him the cut indirect. Indirect is when you simply pretend not to see someone, but in such an obvious way that it's clear you're snubbing them. Utterly wasted. The most obvious of cuts could not be obvious enough for him."

¹ Does he? Well, Claudius thinks it's important context.

"...Whoa," Magnus says, after a moment. "I feel like I should be taking notes, actually! Dude, this is why we gotta pick up diplomacy lessons again. That's so high-level. I bet Sif would know about the cut direct." Sif is the coolest and most elevated of the gods, obviously. "But Thor, who has big Lancelot vibes, absolutely wouldn't. Even though they're married." He sighs. "I've just been over here calling him an asshole to his face every time I see him and flipping him off instead of, like, waving hello or goodbye or whatever."

A pause, while he takes a big sip of his soda. Then, thoughtfully, he says, "I've also been explaining to him why he sucks and giving him tips for sucking less, but honestly I've been falling short on that front and mostly just telling him books he should read to become less sexist. And that's more because I drink my respect women juice every day than something specific to him." Wait -- does Claudius know about sexism and respect women juice? Magnus decides he doesn't want to know if he doesn't, so he goes right ahead and explains: "This is because I'm a feminist and anti-sexist and an ally to women, which means that if some guy is sexist in front of me I gotta step in so that women don't have to shoulder the burden of educating odious jerks like him themselves all the time."

Edited 2024-02-11 01:22 (UTC)

Claudius reflects on the conversation he had with Mothwing, the medicine cat, about human monarchy, and on how useful it would've been to explain you see, Mothwing, twoleg society can be very sexist. Even Rousseau didn't touch on the sexism inherent to primogeniture, which seems like a failure on Rosseau's part¹. It's a failure Claudius can admit he'd shared, with all his schemes to grant Gertrude the sovereignty she deserved returning to sexist assumptions and strictures he took as a matter of course.

"You are an absolute fount of resources," declares Claudius, meaning it. "If Lancelot hasn't picked up one of these feminist texts, that's utterly wasted on him, too. Hold on -- you say you flipped him off? What does that mean, socially speaking?"

¹ This is, unfortunately, because Rousseau was sexist. Sorry, Enjolras, you have to side-eye your philosophical heroes sometimes.

Edited 2024-02-11 15:37 (UTC)

"It means I'm saying 'fuck you,'" Magnus says, promptly, and demonstrates the sign for Claudius.

Claudius copies it as he would any other sign Magnus teaches him, and finds it pleasing and simple to make. He can easily imagine deploying it in a scrimmage of wits with someone whose society he rejects. "Now this is an elegant masterstroke," he says. "You may not know about the cut direct, but you've customs every bit as eloquent for expressing disapproval. And just telling him he's an asshole -- I wish I could've seen it, frankly."

"You probably still could," Magnus says, thoughtfully. "I'm not going to, like, put legos in his shoes or whatever, since Galahad wouldn't want that, but I'm pretty sure I can get away with still calling him 'asshole' all the time because at this point I think he thinks I think it's his name. So stopping would probably be worse than keeping it up."

Edited 2024-02-11 21:44 (UTC)

"You make an excellent point. Really, it's upon him to correct you, or accept the title as given. If he's too prideful to do so, continual greetings of 'asshole' are the well-earned wages of pride." But Claudius did deliberately seek out Laertes's perspective for help reinterpreting the man's actions. Drolly, he wonders whether this is how Sagramore would train a soft dog that bristles at men who remind it of its former master -- by gradually introducing it, letting it perceive differences -- or whether he'd have something better. "He may be too shy to do so. That's what Laertes insists, at least -- that Lancelot isn't a proud man, but a shy one, uncertain of his place among men. Rather like Galahad himself." Which is irritating, given Claudius's soft spot for Galahad and shy men. He takes a long, considering drink of Jarritos, which might be improved through vodka.

"Sagramore," he continues, "described Lancelot as an arrogant and charmless man -- presumptuous and careless -- prone to wearing other men's devices in combat to improve their reputation. Cop energy, in its quintessence. Lancelot was also the best friend of the king, entangled with the king's wife, which no doubt protected him from some consequences while making him warier of others. If it were some landless, lonely stranger that Lancelot mistook for a portent, perhaps there'd be no consequences for him. But if he were a visitor in another kingdom, and struck a man of good standing there, one with a devoted lover, a loyal friend? Feuds have been started for less. I can imagine Lancelot going through life the shy, oblivious favorite of the king, unaware of who he might be insulting when wearing other knights' devices. I can imagine he made his share of enemies, started his share of feuds, and had no notion why. It nearly makes me feel sorry for him."

Edited 2024-02-12 19:08 (UTC)

Magnus glances up at Claudius. He doesn't like sharing other people's business, especially when he learns it through magical means, but -- "You know how I see memories when I heal people?"

“Yes, you mentioned it before taking care of my arm.” When his head was full of thoughts of kissing Galahad.

"I have a policy of not telling anyone's memories to anyone else unless it's, like, a matter of life or death," Magnus says. "And this isn't life or death. But I did heal Lancelot that same day. And I guess... talking in generalities is okay."

Claudius was already serious, but his expression shifts even moreso. "Speak in generalities, then. Or speak on thine own feelings, and share only what context thou must. It may be my current project, but Lancelot's feelings hardly matter to me as much as thine." Now if you asked Claudius if he wanted to hear every memory glimpsed by Magnus in the greatest detail, he'd say yes, of course. He wants to hear -- and to know -- everything. But Magnus's feelings on that matter more, too.

"Galahad told me that Camelot is, like, an attack-first, ask-questions-later kind of place," Magnus says, slowly, working through his thoughts as he talks. "So is Valhalla. And, like -- I know Lancelot has been, like, hurt. But I still think that's not an excuse, you know? Like, you can make the choice to break the cycle. It just reeks of a flimsy excuse. And, like... I read some stories about him, when I was a kid. He's pretty much a Bad News Bear for Camelot. And, like, I knew about the queen. I asked him about the queen when I first met him, before I knew about what a dick he was. He was totally sexist about the queen. It was not a good look. I guess he might be shy," he allows, "But that doesn't give you a, like, permission slip for being a dick, you know?" Then a smile breaks out over his face. "But dude, Galahad wiping the floor with him... that was an awesome memory to see."

“What I would give to see that." Claudius still savors the thought of Lancelot losing a fight and facing his rightful comeuppance, even as he reminds himself Galahad had no choice. Galahad had no choice but to defend himself, to act as a weapon of God, and what he chooses now is peace. But even so. "Elsinore isn't Camelot …but in many ways it wishes it was. It wishes it was Valhalla. For all the court is nominally Catholic, it’s still enamored with Denmark’s Viking history, full of soft courtiers who adore tales of violence. But we paper it over with propriety and ceremony. Everyone loves to go on about how King Hamlet defeated King Fortinbras in single combat, but first they preface it was a sealed compact, ratified by law and heraldry¹, as though that makes all the difference. You see, when you kill a king in public, it's a heroic military feat. Only when you do it in private does it count as regicide. Not, of course, that I'm excusing myself — or excluding myself from the ranks of soft courtiers. I’ve the same weakness for righteous violence as the rest of them. I told Lancelot when we met: I wasn't comforted by piteous excuses, only pleased to know he'd been made to regret his actions immediately, and would regret ever trying it again. I was under the influence of a truth spell, as you'll recall," he adds rather dryly, "or I may've kept that to myself. But perhaps the only way I'll ever tolerate the man is if we have a tourney and I can see being him beaten multiple times.”

Claudius could and likely should say more about how the court used propriety to paper over the violence of his own childhood, since that’s the thing that influences him the most and drives so many of his instincts. But he doesn’t.

¹ Sorry, Horatio, Claudius isn't deliberately shading you. (He also probably doesn't know who you are.)

"Crossing my fingers," Magnus says, suiting action to word. "Hell, I might even pick up the old sword again even though I'm no longer Fighting Guy, if there was a formalized way to kick his ass just once."

"You can wear my colors. I'll choose some colors, just so you can wear them -- Galahad and I have already have half a coat of arms planned." His fingers flicker through the combined signs of their names, flower and dragon. Smiling, he says, "The whole puzzle of in-laws aside, I do have happy news in that regard."

It is only by the grace of Magnus's einherji reflexes that his guava Jarritos doesn't end up on the floor after he drops it in shock. "Wait," he says, clutching the neck of his bottle barely a few inches off the ground. "Wait. Claudius?????!"

Edited 2024-02-15 04:50 (UTC)

"I'm waiting," he says with affected innocence.

"Claudius?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!?????!"

“Oh, I suppose this might not be common knowledge in your time,” Claudius says, blithely aware he’s burying the lede. “When two houses are united through marriage, they impale their heraldry — that means they combine their coats of arms. But I’m no longer a prince of Denmark, and Galahad is no longer a knight of Britain, so we’ll be creating something new between us. Like in every other stage of our courtship. The wedding will also take some invention, and it may be a long betrothal … but the proposal was all by Galahad’s initiative. He wrote me a love letter.” He flashes the opal ring on his fourth finger. “And he gave me this.”

Obviously Magnus knew about individual pieces of all of this -- the letter, for example, and Galahad's quest for a perfect romantic gift, but they hadn't caught up on the specific outcome of all of that yet. (Magnus spares a quick second of regret for being so grumpy about missing Alex lately.) "Yeah," he tells Claudius, excitement oozing out of every single one of his pores. "I have a lot of feelings about the impaling of heraldry. I think it's so important. Definitely the most important thing you've said to me today."

"Consider it part of your education in European diplomacy."

"Claudius!!"

“The announcements will, of course, all need the appropriate seals.” He idly turns his other ring, the signet ring, but not from nervousness. He’s rather enjoying himself, and Magnus’s reaction. “But conferences with close friends come before announcements. I expect to follow Lady Post’s advice — if you’ve never read her, I think you’d like her. She writes rather frankly on the importance of a group of friends to sound out potential suitors, the way you sounded me on our first meeting. It’s more important than the approval of a father, I think. And while it’s the mother-of-the-bride who’s entrusted with spreading good news, I fully expect we’ll be handing that duty to you.” Right now, in fact, Claudius is handing Magnus that duty. It’s all practically decided on. There will be seals.

Magnus, who is the mother of one groom's child, nods; this seems like a totally reasonable extrapolation. "You sure can't give that duty to Lancelot," he says, earnestly and a little grimly. He doesn't really know who Lady Post is, just that Galahad talks about her sometimes, but he can read between the lines, especially when something is clearly stated outright. "And obviously I'll wait till you're done with your, um, conferences. Is this a conference?" He thought they involved, like, board rooms.

"We're discussing matters of importance in the privacy of the parlor," gesturing with his Jarritos bottle, "with refreshments. If anyone inveigles you into conferencing without refreshments, I suggest the cut direct. It depends on the time of day, perhaps, and on what matters are under discussion ... but in general it shows a woeful lack of consideration."

"If there's one thing the Norse are good at, it's making sure there's a feast during all discussions," Magnus says, thoughtfully. "Except like, 60% of the time, some jotunn will eat everything and not leave anything behind for any hungry einherjar."

"Jotunn," Claudius says with a sigh, as though he understands the type. He doesn't. With a little creative imagination, he thinks he could, but he really doesn't.

"Yeah, they're masters of illusion magic and trickery. Never let a jotunn tell you they're going to 'share' a meal with you. You'll get, like, crumbs."

"Mn," Claudius says, as he considers whether he does know the type. "Would you describe a jotunn as a scrub?"

"It depends on the jotunn, I think. Utgard-Loki has scrublike tendencies but sometimes he's okay? Thrym was definitely a scrub. So was Thrynga. Skadi definitely isn't a scrub. I don't know about Gerd; I've never met her. Surt... Surt is just scary." There's obviously hundreds more, but this seems like a pretty good assortment to start with.

“I see. So a decent proportion of scrubs, with powers that would tend to underscore one’s scrublike tendencies. A guy who thinks he’s fly is even more unbearable when he’s a master of illusions and trickery, and swindling someone of their share of a meal is his idea of a clever jape.”

"You can say that again," Magnus laughs. "It's all, 'you're under my protection by rule of guest rights!' until you realize they're going to deliberately misinterpret everything you say in a way that will let them try to kill you anyway."

Claudius shakes his head. "If I can thank my upbringing for anything -- and I can thank it for very few things -- it's for impressing on me the importance of hospitality." Magnus won't hear it, but he says the Danish word, gæstfrihed, guest-freedom.

"Yeah, Jack taught me all about that stuff. He cares a lot about the proper way of doing things."

"I like to know the rules of the game I'm playing, whether it's propriety or impropriety. In a place like this, where people come from all worlds and our hosts are invisible, we've no standard but the ones we set ourselves. Each new guest becomes the next host. Which is why this whole business with Lancelot stings," he says with a sigh. "It's not an unreasonable thing, I think, to hold a guest to account for striking a host. Even if he thought his host a portent. Yet Lancelot still couldn't seem to grasp why I took exception to him, or why loving Galahad might make me protective. I had to explain it to him, and when I asked for his empathy ... well, you would've thought I asked for much worse. For a moment I thought he might strike me, but that's likely because of my own history." The last he dismisses with a wave of his hand, rather than dwell on. "Ultimately, he responded quite civilly. It's still tiresome."

Magnus makes a face. "I think he maybe gave me good advice, that day I was asking everyone about sex," he says, in tones of greatest commiseration. "It was infuriating." Then he brightens. "I pissed him off by thanking him by giving him a self-improvement reading list."

“You know just how to cheer me,” Claudius says, brightening alongside Magnus. “What a beautifully veiled provocation. If he did read some books, perhaps he could learn some empathy without needing it exhaustively pored over by the very people he’s hurt.”

"I just think he needs to understand that first of all, sexism is bad, and B of all, having trauma is no excuse for making it everyone else's problem."

Claudius is appreciating Magnus's creative turns of phrase, when it occurs to him to ask, "What do you mean by trauma?"

Magnus is about to answer, when he thinks to check: "In the context of Lancelot, or the meaning of the word itself?"

"The word itself. I do appreciate how many you're adding to my vocabulary."

"Okay, so. You know how sometimes bad shit happens and you end up, like, with a bone sticking out of your leg or disemboweled by burning asphalt, but other times bad shit happens and you feel, emotionally, like there's a bone sticking out of your leg or that you've been disemboweled by burning asphalt even though physically you're actually mostly unharmed?"

"I've not been through that exact set of circumstances, I'll admit. But I've been through war and seen wounds as gruesome, bodies I'd scarcely recognize as human." He twists the silver band of his ring, recalling his odd feeling that afternoon he watched Enjolras fire his musket, a feeling he sometimes still has when tracing the bullet-wounds on Grantaire's chest. He doesn't like to dwell on it. All the same, "I'd say I've spent the better part of my life with the emotional equivalent of a bone's sticking out of my leg. As inconvenient as it is painful. But," to what he believes is his credit, "I nevertheless stand on it and smile."

"Yeah," says Magnus, nodding seriously. "There's different kinds of traumas. Like seeing a ton of death and gruesome injury, or of being essentially a homeless orphan kid for a couple of years -- actually, that's a double whammy -- or, like, assault." He makes a face at Claudius. "You gotta take care of the injury, though, so infection doesn't set in. If you catch my drift. Like, sometimes we can't process our mom's murder because we have to spend two years in hiding because the cops think we did it, and then we die and have to save the world three times in a row, but it'll catch up with you eventually and you're going to have to deal with it. And, kind of to the point of Lancelot, just because you have a gnarly broken leg doesn't mean you should go around breaking every other leg you see. Or even just, like, giving everyone a solid punch in the face, so they can know a small bit of the pain you're feeling, or because you think it's the best way to reduce your own ache, or whatever."

That's a number of alarmingly specific examples, but Claudius supposes that's fair. He's sped through the unpleasant details of his life before, archly matter-of-fact -- they are matters of fact, banal realities he's had to live with, until he couldn't imagine living otherwise. Life goes on, or goes on until you die and ascend to Valhalla, and you forget to tend the jutting broken bones. It doesn't matter if you can still walk on them, however much you might wince. It's surprising, and revealing: he and Magnus have more in common than he'd thought.

"It's tempting at times, I admit," he says. "Passing one's pain on to others. I have a vicious, vengeful streak in me. My brother beat it into me. Of course I can hardly ask sympathy for childhood beatings, given how things ended between us ... but it may be a trauma I've yet to treat. Another reason why all this has rattled me." With genuine curiosity, and genuine respect for Magnus, he asks, "How do you handle the ache of your traumas?"

"Oh, same, dude," says Magnus, with a wry sort of expression. "Like I said, Lancelot has cop energy, and I have... cop issues. Obviously. And I think... I think you just have to stop running from it, sometimes, and face it head-on. But, like, realistically?" His expression deepens. "Well, one time I broke an entire room. Broke a sofa in half, punched through a solid rock wall... I had just died, but still. And this other time I moved outside for months? But the rest of the time... talking to friends about it when it hurts and explaining why and letting them be there for you is really helpful. Your fiance is really good at listening to that kind of stuff, for example."

"Yes, my fiance is a wonderful listener," Claudius says with a soft smile of sheer love. "When I go into raptures over Galahad's gaze, it's partly metonymy. He doesn't look away. There are so many unspoken rules governing where a person's allowed to look, times you’ll be considered presumptuous for looking someone straight in the eye, or dishonest if you don’t. I could write a book twice the size of Emily Post’s Etiquette on the subject. Quite frankly, it’s exhausting to keep all those rules in mind without a manual — but that doesn’t matter with Galahad, because Galahad doesn’t follow them. When he looks at you, he looks intently the entire time. I’m not measuring my words against his glances, waiting for him to look away in boredom or disgust so I can rein my words in. In fact, I know it’s pointless to. He has ways to tell me when I’ve said too much too fast, but he hears what I have to say, and listens intently as he looks.”

"What's metonymy?" Magnus asks, since Claudius is the kind of guy it's easy to share vocabulary shortcomings and curiosities with. Then he nods. "Okay, well, firstly, it sounds like the Danish court lowkey sucked, if you had to be that concerned about all that kind of thing all the time. Second, yeah, Galahad is the best. I mostly meant that he asks good questions, though." Magnus himself has become so much more of a questions-asker since he and Galahad have become friends. "The eye contact is great too, though. Really makes a guy feel heard."

"You're naming all the things I love best about him. You'll compose an incredible toast someday," Claudius says, and all these wedding thoughts do warm him. "Metonymy is when something associated with a concept is used to refer that concept as a whole . When I say I represented the crown of Denmark abroad, for example, I mean I represented the royal family and their interests. Crowns are really only used for coronations and ceremonial events, anyway, and have no interests to speak of. But the association's strong enough that one can stand for the other -- an ornate piece of headwear for the power the ceremony grants." That said, Claudius would've liked to have worn the crown at least once. "Galahad's eyes are one of the things I love about him. They're so beautifully clear. But I might be speaking of his eye as an artist, and mean what he focuses on in his sketches, the devoted care in each pencil stroke that show how long and how patiently he looked at his subject and recreated the most precious details. Or, in this instance, I speak of his eyes that never look away, and I mean the way he focuses on people and makes them feel heard. There are so many things he does." And Claudius is absurdly in love with him.

"Man, you are down bad," says Magnus, in tones of deepest approval. "I think that being in love can be a salve, too, in a way. You know? Like, the bad doesn't seem as bad, and also, there's someone to call you on your stuff when you're in the thick of it."

"It's a new experience for me, being openly in love. Perhaps it's because my origins are in tragedy, but I'm used to fraught silences, hidden sacrifices, feelings that were never spoken. I intended to lie to Gertrude for the rest of my life about killing my brother for her ... but there was never a moment where she didn't know. That's tragic irony for you." Perhaps this Shakespeare has earned his widespread fame, if he can construct tragic circumstances so neatly. Thoughtfully, Claudius asks, "What does 'down bad' mean?"

"Like, extremely into someone," Magnus says. "You'll put it all on the line for them. You're horny for them in interesting ways, like for example rhapsodizing about their eyes for a million years. I'm down bad for Alex, obviously." He tilts his head, regarding Claudius. "I'm glad you can live openly now."

The word is a much-welcomed addition to Claudius's vocabulary. He can already think of multiple ways to use it in his sentence, multiple people in his acquaintance who have it down bad for each other. But before he can test it out, the rest of Magnus's words catch up with him. "Magnus," he says with a sincere smile. "I'm rather touched you said that. I'm glad of it, too, of course, but ...you've helped me realize how glad. Living openly wasn't among even my highest ambitions. It's a rare gift."

"Really?" Magnus considers this, head tilted, and then nods. "I get it. My biggest ambition for the longest time was just to survive. You too, right?"

Claudius nearly laughs, nearly disagrees. His ambitions were loftier than survival -- no less than murdering his brother, taking his crown, and sharing it with the woman he'd loved all his life. But then he remembers the whole mad plan began with the fear his brother's jealous rages could take Gertrude's life. He remembers convincing himself that coming between them by any means but murder would hazard Gertrude's soul. It all felt like life or death. Since the first broken bone, when he realized none of the courtiers would condemn the future king, so he lied and said he broke it climbing trees. He couldn't rely on anyone, but he could always lie. "Yes," he says instead. "Me, too."

"I thought so," Magnus says, with another nod. "It can be hard to even think about living openly when you're just trying to make it, in whatever way you're trying to make it."

“You’ve remarkable insight, Magnus Chase.” That’s serious, when Claudius breaks out both first and last names. He thinks he’d trust Magnus’s insight on Lancelot more than anyone, and if Magnus came to change his mind, he’d weigh that opinion more than anyone else’s. No offense to Laertes, of course, but that man’s smitten. “I’m grateful. I look forward to being family.”

"I try," Magnus says, and grins at Claudius. "If Galahad is like my brother and your best friend is lowkey like my dad except the mythical kind that doesn't suck, but I'm filling the role of Galahad's mom slash dad for ceremonial purposes, what will that make us?"

Edited 2024-03-04 22:31 (UTC)

"Two men who've looked at our family trees and decided to do some grafting. Between you and me, I've come to think of Lan Wangji as the ideal brother ... but I'm disinclined to call you nephew."

"Yeah, that would be weird," Magnus agrees immediately. He grins, though. "Claudius, it's an honor to be bamboo with you."

“I’ll toast to that.” Claudius holds up his Jarritos bottle to do so.

Magnus clinks his bottle against Claudius's and takes a big gulp. "Oh, hey, dude," he says, as he swallows. "You know about bachelor parties, right?"

It would be utterly impossible for Lan Wangji to resist rising to this absurdly endearing occasion. At the top of one of those advertised office hours, he strides into the parlor in question, takes a seat across from Magnus, and fixes him with an expectant look without saying anything.

"Hanguang-jun! What's up!"

Lan Wangji's mouth twitches, just a little, with suppressed amusement. "I am awaiting your advice regarding my relationship." He folds his hands in his lap.

Magnus suspects that he might be getting teased, but he still sits up straight — it feels special that Lan Wangji is coming to him for his proffered advice!! "What do you want advice about in particular?" he asks.

Lan Wangji was, indeed, teasing him, but Magnus is too sweet for him to maintain that approach with much success. He's silent as he considers whether he does need or want any advice regarding Wei Ying. Once, he would have felt desperate for guidance on that front, if too proud to accept it from anyone. Most of his lingering concerns would involve revealing significantly more to Magnus than he has yet. He hasn't kept these things from Magnus out of shame, precisely. It's only that he looks at Magnus and sees Sizhui, and Sizhui's ignorance was a matter of his own safety for most of his life. "Have I told you that Wei Ying was dead for thirteen years?"

If anyone has mentioned this to Magnus, it most certainly hasn't been Lan Wangji. "You sure haven't."

Truthfully, Lan Wangji already knew that. He would have remembered it if they had discussed it. He holds Magnus' gaze for a moment, then drops his eyes. "Mn." It is a little dizzying, at times, to consider the fact that he mourned Wei Ying for longer than he ever knew him in his first life.

Magnus tries to guess at what Lan Wangji is hinting at. "Do you want advice about being with a dead guy? Because I do have plenty of that!"

"He is alive now," Lan Wangji points out, with some fondness and amusement creeping back into his voice. Another pause, and then he continues, "Those years are lost to us, but at times, Wei Ying feels he must make them up to me."

Oh, so he got better. "Can you tell me more about that?"

"I have loved him since we were fifteen." Lan Wangji has no trouble saying that much, at least. "If he had lived, we might have had more years together." And then he lets another significant pause hang between them: or not.

"Yeah, but don't you guys live, like, a really long time?"

With a fleeting frown, Lan Wangji says, "Not necessarily. It depends on one's cultivation. True immortals are rare." In a great show of restraint, he says nothing about how little Shen Yuan deserves his own immortality.

Huh. "What's the average lifespan of cultivators like you and Wei Wuxian?"

"We may hope for a few hundred years, or more if we are very diligent. Immortality is the aim, but almost none achieve it." Even Baoshan Sanren is only, technically, rumored to be immortal.

Magnus refuses to entertain the idea of Lan Wangji dying, actually! Gods, being immortal kind of sucks. "But you get more than, like, twenty or thirty years."

"Mn. Wei Ying owes me nothing." There's a little edge of extremely sincere intensity in the way Lan Wangji says this.

"Yeah, that's my point," Magnus says. "You gotta live in the moment. Even if the future is foretold you still don't know what exactly it'll bring and when, so. All you can do is celebrate the time you have while you're having it."

Lan Wangji looks up again, then, and meets Magnus' eyes. "We do. I do." He lost Wei Ying once and lived for thirteen years with the burden of all of that regret. If he loses him again, it will tear him apart, but there will, at least, be nothing left that he wishes he had done.

"Have you told Wei Wuxian with your words that there's nothing to make up for in the past as long as you're together in the now?"

"I have. I will continue to until he believes it." Lan Wangji allows himself a hint of a smile as he admits, "I don't believe I need your advice. I merely took the excuse to seek your company."

"Aw, shucks," says Magnus, who is both genuinely touched but also a little disappointed that Hanguang-jun doesn't actually want his advice. "I do have advice about more things, though! I was telling Tress this the other day, but I recently realized that I went from being in the newest and shortest relationship of all my friends -- like, Halfborn and Mallory have been on-and-off again for over fifty years, and they're just getting started, too -- to being one of the longest-term ones here. I think, at least? Me and Alex are going to hit seven years during Eid, and I'm pretty sure that's next month. If Galahad's calculations are right."

Lan Wangji makes a faintly surprised face in answer to that. He had not realized Alex and Magnus had been together for so long. Wasn't Magnus only recently asking him for advice on how to declare his love for Alex? They have been courting for nearly seven years without Magnus stating the truth of his feelings?

Obviously, he says none of that. "That is longer than I have been married," he allows. "If there is further advice you want to give, then do so."

Well, Hanguang-jun, it's different, okay? Seven years might as well be seven weeks to an einherji!

"What topic?" Magnus asks. He makes a face. "It's actually kind of hard to just, generate advice without a starting point. I could say, like, 'happy wife, happy life,' but neither of us have wives, and Wei Wuxian seems totally happy with you already, so."

Happy wife, happy life actually seems perfectly applicable to Lan Wangji, for all that the rhyme is lost in translation, and his mouth quirks into another almost-smile about it. "What do you know now that you did not know after only a year?"

Magnus squints at Lan Wangji for a moment. "I'm guessing you of all people don't need to advice about how to say things without saying things."

Lan Wangji, again rising to the occasion, says nothing. He only lifts his eyebrows the slightest bit, asking, What do you think?

Magnus snorts. "Do you need advice about saying things with words?" Shen Yuan definitely needed that advice.

In the interest of honesty, Lan Wangji does devote a moment to weighing the question. "When you asked me about declaring your love to Alex, I told you that I have loved one person all my life and could only recently bring myself to speak of it. That was true."

"Remind me why?" Magnus asks. "Um, if you don't mind."

Lan Wangji's expression turns almost helpless. Where to begin? He straightens his back, although he was not remotely slouching, and glances down at his hands again. "Circumstances were complicated," he says, at length. "We were young. By the time I found my voice, it was too late."

"He died before you got up the nerve to tell him?" Magnus guesses.

"I told him. He died. He does not remember that." Two days of a confession, enshrined in no one's memory but his own. A great deal of that pain is blunted now by the eventual happy outcome, but not all of it.

Oh, Lan Wangji looks sad. Magnus gets up and moves so that he's sitting next to him and can lean against him, calling up just enough warmth to maybe be a comforting presence. "Did you think he did remember, when he came back?"

Magnus' warmth is, indeed, comforting. His presence is even moreso. "I did." Lan Wangji had been so utterly certain of what he wanted, finally, and they had done such an abysmal job of understanding one another.

"How did you figure out that he didn't?"

"I have my brother to thank. I was prepared to accept that Wei Ying knew my feelings and did not return them." The specifics of some of this story are not appropriate for sharing with Magnus.

"Your brother asked him?"

"Mn." Lan Wangji gives Magnus a sidelong glance, almost sheepish. "Wei Ying was the one to speak first."

"He couldn't tell from all your extremely evocative facial expressions?" Magnus is only 15% teasing, and it's mostly based on his broader point about the importance of clear communication. He thinks he can read Hanguang-jun pretty well, and so surely everyone else can, too?

Essentially illustrating Magnus' point, Lan Wangji makes a fairly subtle little dubious face at him, one side of his mouth quirking and his eyebrows twitching up for less than a moment. "I believed my intentions were obvious. I should not have."

"This is why, even if it's someone you understand really well and can communicate without saying anything, you still gotta say words sometimes," Magnus says, wisely.

Lan Wangji learned that lesson vividly, as they have just discussed, so he nods in acceptance of Magnus' wisdom. "I will remember that over the next six years."

"You planning on having something change six years from now?"

"By that time, Wei Ying and I will have achieved the longevity you and Alex have now," Lan Wangji says serenely. Is he teasing Magnus again? Perhaps. Most likely.

"Yeah, but in six years I'll be on the verge of thirteen, sooooo."

"I will expect considerably enhanced wisdom by that point." As ever, he manages to deliver every word with completely credible seriousness.

Magnus, meanwhile, pretends like he knows Lan Wangji isn't joking. "Either Alex will be here by then helping me give a masterclass," he says, earnestly, "or I'll have figured out a way to carry out interdimensional conversations."

Lan Wangji nods, still quite serious, but then the solemnity becomes real as he looks toward Magnus. Six years is not forever, of course -- especially not to Magnus -- but it is a long time. He hesitates. He would like to promise that Alex will be here by then, but of course that is an impossible promise. He lets his shoulder press a little more firmly against Magnus'. "We will find a way."

"Maybe your brother can figure out a way to let you know how your interdimensional letters work."

Another little hesitation. "If I see him again."

Magnus decides to Helheim with it, it's time and transitions from leaning against Lan Wangji to slinging an arm around his shoulders in a half-hug. "I'm glad you have your husband here," he says.

Lan Wangji bestows a fond little look down upon Magnus. He doesn't precisely relax into this partial embrace, but he shifts into it, to make it clear that it is welcome. It's as he said to Nightingale, once, months ago: if Wei Ying had not arrived, he and Magnus would not be speaking now. Lan Wangji isn't certain what would have become of him by this time, but he might well still be in the woods, burning through his qi, desperate to force his way through the fabric of reality. It is one thing to grieve a dead man and another to endure a separation from a living one. It would be cruel, however, to say something like that to Magnus, who is without his Alex. So instead, he only nods, and then asks, "You are still caring for yourself appropriately outside?"

"Yep! I'm keeping warm and safe and everything." Magnus pause for a moment, leaning more deeply against Lan Wangji. "Me and my mom used to go camping every weekend when I was a kid. Rain or shine, winter or summer, hot or cold. I didn't realize until after we both died but it's how she wanted me to feel connected to my dad. Which..." he trails off. "But I'm really good at, like, camping skills. Even without the--" he wiggles his fingers, to indicate his summer powers.

There always comes a little pang whenever Magnus brings up his mother. She deserved much better than her fate, and Magnus deserved to have much more time with her. Lan Wangji considers, but only very briefly, before tucking his own arm around Magnus in turn. He does trust Magnus to care for himself, but he can hardly help the flutter of worry each time he visits Magnus' room to tend to his plants and finds it, again, empty of any other life, devoid by now of the warm remnants of Magnus' spiritual presence. "Mn," he allows, then. "Will you stay out there?"

Magnus shrugs. "Galahad said he'd help me adjust back to sleeping inside if I need or want it, but honestly I kind of like being out there^*," he says. "When I first got here, I kept, like, going to that clearing to pray every day? To try and get my dad to, like, do anything?" He doesn't even bother trying to hide the implication beneath the words: that his dad, like all gods, is pretty useless. "And I guess I still do, but mostly at this point, it's, like -- me and mom would camp literally every weekend, and sometimes me and Alex go camping when we can get away from Valhalla or the Chase Space because he likes it, too. So it's, like. A little bit like celebrating my actual -- uh, my loved ones, staying out there, even though they can't be here. For various reasons."

*This is what we call foreshadowing!

As long as Magnus is safe and unharmed, it makes little difference where he sleeps. He nods again and gives Magnus a relatively gentle little squeeze with the arm still around him. "If there is anything you need, I'm here." The unspoken implication of his words, naturally, is that he will answer to Magnus, unlike Magnus' actual father. No prayer necessary.

"I know," Magnus says confidently, leaning his head against Lan Wangji's shoulder. "I appreciate you."

A smile curls Lan Wangji's mouth, just for the space of a single breath. He lets silence stretch out for several more breaths, content with Magnus' head nested on his shoulder and the knowledge that Magnus trusts him. Then, in time, he says, "I have promised to teach you several things, not only handstands. Do you still want to learn?"

"Yeah, of course!"

"Where would you like to begin?"

"What do you think the coolest thing is?"

That gives Lan Wangji pause. He is uncertain how to evaluate his various skills by this metric. "What makes something cool?"

"Exciting and fun to you, impressive to other people," Magnus says, immediately, and then sits up straight for half a second before relaxing back against Lan Wangji. "So I was talking to Sagramore."

That description mostly calls swordplay to mind, but Magnus has already decided he doesn't want to fight anymore. In any case, he is clearly going somewhere with this, so Lan Wangji only gives him a single prompting glance.

Edited 2024-02-15 16:00 (UTC)

"We were talking about how -- you know how you're learning to make Mexican food so you can teach me? We thought it would be fun if you and me and he and Laertes -- and Wei Wuxian, obviously, if he wants to come -- got together to make a bunch together. For, like, anyone who wants it. I can fold the tamales."

Thus far, Lan Wangji has primarily made an impossible number of tortillas from scratch, then fed them to Wei Ying as he attempts to perfect them, but he has begun branching out recently. Pico de gallo proved easy to master. More importantly, he's already read the Mexican cookbook through which he is slowly working in its entirety, so for once he knows exactly what Magnus is talking about. "I would like that," he agrees easily.

"Cool. So that should go near the top of the list," Magnus says.

"Is that cool?" Lan Wangji asks, somewhere exactly between genuinely curious and teasing him again.

"I sure think so."

"Then we will begin there," Lan Wangji assures him. "You have also expressed interest in calligraphy, painting, and meditation."

"I still got it," Magnus says, immediately. "The interest. I wanna learn calligraphy first, I think. It looked really cool when you were doing it when the translator broke."

Edited 2024-02-16 04:27 (UTC)

Lan Wangji nods again, giving him another somewhat soft-around-the-edges glance. "Calligraphy is cool." He has also agreed to teach Crowley, but he will not attempt to combine those lessons.

Except - "Will the translator working again get in the way, do you think?"

The thought of Lan Wangji's painstakingly beautiful and precise characters being reduced to twenty-six letters, no more, is disheartening. "Occasionally, certain rooms here will fail to translate the written word. I was able to demonstrate some characters to young mistress Nina that way."

"Oh! Good." Magnus grins. Hey, maybe he can learn a little Chinese this way, too, in case the translator fails again! Gratitude suffuses him as he directs his grin at Lan Wangji -- he's just really glad that he knows the guy, that's all, and that he's able to play around with him and learn stuff from him. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Lan Wangji says dutifully. The more heartfelt answer comes as he scoops Magnus up into a real hug, privately relieved to be hugging him not as an expression of extreme heights of emotion but simply as an impulse born of quiet tenderness.

Since the day she'd spent with an ugly mind, Tally's been thinking a lot about how bubbly-making Aziraphale was for Crowley, and how bubbly-making Zane had been for her. Kissing, undoubtedly, is totally bubbly-making.

Now that she's learned that Gideon isn't dating Nina, or anybody, Tally's been having a hard time putting aside the idea of maybe, just maybe, kissing Gideon. Gideon likes girls (a LOT), she's Tally's friend, and Tally trusts her more than almost anyone else here. It's not like Tally really likes her, or anything. She's an ugly. But maybe she'd be okay with providing something better than caffeine for staying bubbly? It makes Tally totally bubbly to think about, even though it's also utterly embarrassing.

Tally plans to ask Georgia for advice, of course, but when she passes Magnus's sign, she stops and thinks it over. It can't hurt to get a second opinion, can it? Plus, maybe Magnus will feel happy that Tally wants his advice, and start liking her more. Tally had always felt so belonging when Shay asked her for fashion advice.

She goes to the room at the appointed hour, after she's thanked Gideon for her daily coffee delivery and shooed her away much faster than usual.

"Um, hi, Magnus-l--Magnus," she amends, remembering that Lan Wangji hadn't liked her jumping to -wa too quickly. "I saw your sign."

"Oh, hey Tally." Magnus still doesn't really know what to make of her, but now that he knows a little more about what her whole deal is, he guesses she has her reasons. He can't help but be a little excited at the prospect of someone coming to him for actual advice. "What's up?"

"Do you know much about... um... lesbians?" Tally says tentatively.

"Um," says Magnus. This -- wasn't really the sort of question he expected! "Like, as much as any cis^* guy^** can, I guess? I mean, I have lesbian friends. Why?"

^*?
^**??

"Well, where I come from no one really picks a gender like that," Tally explains. "So... like... I don't know what the rules are. Do you also have to be a lesbian to, um, kiss one? Or be butch if she's butch? I think the butch thing is totally bubbly, but I'm not sure if it's what I want to do?" Tally feels like this is her first day in New Pretty Town, trying to learn which clique is which.

"Wait." Magnus sits up a little straighter. "You're nonbinary?"

"I mean, picks a gender to pursue, like, romantically. Is that what it's called when you like both?" The term is familiar, but somehow doesn't seem quite right.

Oh. "Oh. No, that's bisexual. Nonbinary is when you're neither male nor female."

"Bisexual! Yes. That's me. Nonbinary sounds bubbly, but how do you ever know what to wear?" Tally asks. "It's hard enough to pick between pants and a dress when you're a girl. At least with butch it mostly just seems like boy's fashion on a girl. The number of choices you could get from mixing and matching sounds dizzy-making."

"Clothes don't have... gender," says Magnus, who regularly wears the dress that reminds him of Alex and who has seen Sagramore rockin' a gown. Also Alex wears the same clothes regardless of gender, so. "Like, anyone can wear anything and it's fine."

"Not anything, not if the bash has a dress code," Tally says. "Like, what if you showed up in formal at a casual party? But I get your point. A boy could totally wear a ballgown to a ball. But we're getting utterly off track."

Magnus has never had that problem. The sorts of parties he gets invited to, you end up wearing either blood or chocolate. But Tally is right, he's gotten side-tracked. "Lesbians can and do date bisexuals," he says.

Edited 2024-02-09 22:28 (UTC)

"Really?" Tally feels like there's a hot air balloon in her chest. "Okay, bubbly. Thank you. I'm totally not used to Rusty gender and sexuality stuff."

Magnus squints at Tally. "...what else do you want to know?"

Tally fiddles with her hands nervously. "I mean, I guess I was just thinking about asking one of my friends if she wants to kiss me, and you said you were a relationship expert... any advice on how to bring it up?"

Magnus is pretty sure Qi Yan doesn't self-identify as butch, even though he's kind of mentally categorized her in that way. He also gets the sense that she's not really looking. "Um, can I have more context?"

"It's Gideon. You know, from the hand-chopping plan...?" Tally looks at him expectantly. "Um, I mean, which is probably not a go. But yeah. Also don't tell her, please."

Oh, right. Gideon! "Obviously I'm not going to tell her that you have a crush on her, that's your business."

"It's not entirely, like, a crush," Tally says. "I just want to kiss her." Obviously, those things are different. "It's much easier where I'm from, because everyone acts the same way. Here... I don't know."

"Why do you want to kiss her if it's not a crush?"

Ugh, this is so embarrassing, but Tally does nothing if not commit.

"It's to stay bubbly," she says. "I need to get my heart rate up to think straight, and kissing definitely helps that."

"Oh, like the cold thing," Magnus nods. "But does kissing someone you're not interested in get your heart rate up?" He can't imagine it would have the same effect.

"I'm impressed you remember the cold thing," Tally says. "I don't know... it's a risky activity. Maybe I shouldn't mess with our relationship like that?"

Magnus is trying so, so hard to understand, but he's still extremely confused. "Why would kissing someone you don't even have feelings for be a risky activity? Is this butch lesbian trying to kill you?"

"No, because it might ruin the friendship!" Tally exclaims.

"Oh, so you want to put your friendship in jeopardy specifically to make your brain work right?"

"Okay, yeah, maybe that's why I needed advice," Tally says, stung. "It is a bogus idea, isn't it." She feels unaccountably disappointed.

"I mean, like, if it's the endorphins you need, couldn't you just, like. Masturbate?" Magnus tilts his head. "Unless you really are willing to lose the friendship."

"I'm definitely not," Tally says. "I'm just going to climb more tall stuff instead."

"Unless, of course, you did like her. In which case it might be worth asking her to kiss."

Tally looks at him, her face red. "I guess it would," she says finally. The thought is nerve-jarring enough to help her remember David. He'd been ugly, too, but like Gideon, he'd paid attention to her and made her feel important. He'd had amazing survival skills like Gideon's, even in the face of... Tally. What she'd done.

Tally sits down heavily. "Love is bogus," she sighs.

"Uh, chyeah, if by 'bogus' you mean kickass," Magnus says, even though it is bogus that Alex is worlds away from him. "Wanna tell me about it?"

Her memories of David are bubbly in a totally not-fun way, but bubbly is bubbly.

"I dated this guy, and then everything went wrong," she says. "I basically stole him from my friend Shay, and then I accidentally got his town destroyed, and now he's gone and didn't rescue me from New Pretty Town." Tally's eyes well with tears. "It's all my fault and I can never make up for what I did to him. Maybe it's too dangerous for me to date anyone."

Okay! That is a lot! Also, something about Tally on the verge of tears makes Magnus want to reach out and take care of her, even though he still doesn't really like her, which is weird. Okay, time to focus on her eyebrow again! Aiming for a thoroughly non-judgemental and neutral tone, he says, "Okay, so can you break that down for me a little further? How did you steal him from Shay? How did you 'accidentally' get his town destroyed?"

"Shay totally had her eye on David before I came to the Smoke," Tally says. "But he asked me out instead. He gave me these gloves..." Tally realizes she's totally blubbering. "I'm sorry. I'm so sense-missing. Um... I kind of ran away from home before I got my operation to try and go find my friend Shay, and I found her, but the reason I went is because the authorities back home made me do it or they wouldn't turn me pretty, and they put a tracker on me. I got to the Smoke--the place people go when they run away--and I ended up actually liking it there. I tried to destroy the tracker, but I set it off instead." The memory is painful. "The Smoke was destroyed because of me. David's home."

Magnus looks around for a minute, and then pulls a spare t-shirt out of his backpack. "Here," he says, offering it to her. "So you can blow your nose. Did you know she liked him? Did he know she liked him?" He wants to know just how badly Tally violated bro code.

"Thanks," Tally sniffles, taking the shirt. It kind of smells like the wild, which only makes things worse. "He knew she liked him, but I didn't until Shay saw me with these gloves David gave me. In the Smoke, you can't just get new things out of the hole in the wall. Everything's handmade. The gloves were really valuable. Shay and I had the same size hands, and David gave them to me and not her." Everything is coming back in the telling: the way David had called her ugly face beautiful, how he'd kissed her, how he'd said she was more serious than Shay. "She confronted me and I stopped wearing them, but then David introduced me to his parents..." A sob catches in Tally's throat thinking about Az.

"Oh, so you didn't know she liked him?"

"Not when he first started being interested in me," Tally says. "I don't know, he was like... this mythical figure? He showed up at the Rusty ruins outside town to try to recruit tricky uglies to the Smoke. I never met him like that, but Shay did, and she always talked about him like some kind of, like, bubbly cryptid. I didn't think she really liked him. But then again... I should have known. She talked about him all the time."

Magnus gives Tally an assessing sort of look. "Are you a mind-reader?"

"What? No. I don't have magic or anything in my dimension." Where's he going with this?

"Then why should you have known something Shay didn't tell you?"

"Oh!" Tally laughs a little. "That was kind of clever. I guess... yeah, I couldn't have known for sure." Tally still feels pretty sure a lot of it is her fault, but Magnus does make a good point. "It doesn't change how terribly it ended, though."

"You mean how the cops used you to further their own objectives?" At least that sounds like what Tally had described.

"Yeah. And I didn't stop them." Cops is a funny archaic word, but it's definitely appropriate.

"Because they lied about how the tracker worked, you mean?"

"Yeah... but I threw it into a fire. It seems sort of obvious in retrospect that might set it off."

"You wanna hear a proverb of my time?" Magnus asks, and doesn't wait for Tally to confirm. "'Hindsight is 20-20.'"

Tally laughs again and wipes away her last few tears. "Okay, I get your point. You're pretty bubbly, Magnus."

"Anyway, my point is, just because you had one, uh... kind of wild experience doesn't mean all love sucks," Magnus says. "So if you do have a crush on someone that you want to make out with, that's okay. Um, unless it's me or Tress. Even though neither of us is dating someone here we're both spoken for. Separately, obviously. But also neither of us is a butch lesbian, so... probably not, right?"

"Definitely not," Tally says. "But I like both of you a lot as people. As for my... um... I guess I'll think about it." Maybe Magnus has a point, maybe he doesn't. "If I were to ask someone to date, how do you, like, do that? I've never been the asker."

"Well, how have you been asked out before? And what worked for you?"

Edited 2024-02-14 17:35 (UTC)

"Well, Zane--I went on, like, one date with him before I woke up here--just kind of asked me to breakfast and kissed me, and that was bubbly because I already thought he was the best," Tally remembers. "David... he asked me to do a bunch of stuff with him and then he called me beautiful, even though I was ugly at the time."

Okay. Magnus isn't going to have a knee-jerk reaction this time; he's had some context now. Thanks, Gideon? "Can you explain that to me, too?" he asks. "'Ugly at the time.'"

"Before I had my operation," Tally says carefully. She also has some context for how Rusties respond to the way she talks now, though it's still really hard not to put down her past self. "Generally people I met didn't think I looked good, before, and he did. He also thought I was beautiful... for the way I thought, and acted." But he was wrong about that, she knows.

Personally, Magnus thinks this is all incredibly weird. But he's getting back in the practice of asking questions he wants to know the answers to. "Do you think everyone here is ugly?" he asks, curiously. "Since none of us have gotten that operation you had."

"I mean, scientifically, yes. It's nothing personal, just evolution. There's certain things that human beings are hardwired to look for--big eyes, clear skin, facial symmetry--they're all signs of someone you want to protect and have healthy children with." Tally's eyes linger on Magnus's uneven face, then glance away. "I used to think my world was really fair, because everyone got to have the operation. Total equality. But I also recently learned they kind of lobotomize people at the same time, which is pretty bogus. I thought that the equality of beauty was what prevented war and conflict, but now I think a big part of that was just because most people literally couldn't think straight? Everyone still looks ugly to me, but... maybe that doesn't matter as much here?" Tally sits up suddenly. "Oh, except Luo Binghe. He looks almost pretty."

"Yeah, Shen Yuan says that he's from, like, an erotica world," Magnus says, and then everything Tally has said hits him and he does a double take. "That's, like, so fucked up actually." Another beat of him processing, and then: "But I guess that does explain why you look like my aunt."

"An erotica world? Oh my god. Is that why Gideon's always talking about porn?" Tally's head spins. If the residents here have books written about them, then of course some of them are probably erotic books, just statistically. Is Tally from porn? Surely not, or she would have gotten way higher on the snogging scale by now. Is Gideon??

"That seems way more fucked up than my world, if I'm being utterly honest! But what do you mean, your aunt? She's a natural pretty, or something? They always told us a few Rusties--people in the time before the operation was invented--were born pretty. That's what I thought Luo Binghe's deal was."

"I have no idea why Gideon would be talking about porn," Magnus says, promptly. "Maybe she just likes it or something, though." He's becoming well-versed in porn himself with increasing rapidity lately. Some of it is pretty good! "And... no. My aunt is the Norse goddess of love and beauty." Magnus pauses. "Um, and war. And magic. And Folkvanger's glorious dead. But mostly love and beauty. So she's, like. Beautiful, obviously."

"Oh, um, bubbly!" Tally says, privately thinking, I'm as pretty as a goddess? It sort of makes her feel gorgeous, but it sort of makes her worry. There's a big gulf between a goddess and mortals. She thinks of Gideon's bogus space god, and also Galahad's. "Is she, like, nice?"

What a complicated question, Tally! "Well, she's a god," Magnus says, like that's a complete explanation to anyone who doesn't know chapter and verse of his opinions about gods.

"So no," Tally says, as if Magnus knows her opinions on gods. "Goddess of love, though. No wonder you're such an expert."

"Please say that to me in front of my girlfriend someday," Magnus says, immediately. "I wanna know if it's possible to laugh so hard you pass out."

Tally grins. "Totally. She's not here, is she?"

Thanks for the reminder, Tally! Magnus's shoulders slump. "No," he says.

"I'm really sorry, Magnus. That's totally bogus. I left people behind, too. Obviously."

"Zane?" Magnus guesses. "...David? Shay?"

"Yeah, all of them, plus my best friend from when I was a littlie, Peris. And my whole clique. And my parents, I guess. I miss them all." Tally actually doesn't miss her parents that much, but that seems bogus to say. "I hope we can both get visitors. But at least we've both met bubbly people here, right?"

Magnus doesn't particularly want a visitor, even though he misses all his friends a lot. Magnus just wants Alex, but only if she wants to be here for more reasons than just because 'here' is where Magnus is. But there is a bright side to look at, so look he shall (try)! "Yeah," he says. "I wouldn't know Galahad or Hanguang-jun or anyone if I wasn't here. Plus there's no gods, so that's a relief. And if I keep Jack here, maybe everyone back home will be safe forever."

"What? Who's Jack?" Tally agrees on the no-gods thing being bubbly, and on being glad she met Galahad, but is Magnus keeping someone prisoner here?

"Oh, you haven't met Jack yet?" Magnus asks. He reaches to the pendant on his neck -- the one that looks Norse, not Lan Wangji's jade token, which he's still wearing all the time too -- and pulls it free.

Jack springs into shape. "It's about time, señor!" he says. "I've got a hot date with Xin Mo tomorrow! I have to get ready, I have to get spruced up, I have to -- oh, heyyyy, Freya!" This last is said more coldly, because Jack doesn't like Freya. "What are you doing here?"

Edited 2024-02-17 05:57 (UTC)

Tally jumps backwards a little. The way the sword comes from nowhere is disconcerting, but she's glad she saw it, because otherwise she'd definitely think it was a drone. As it is, this is clearly magic.

"Um, hi," she says, wondering if she should offer to shake hands. "It's Tally, actually." She looks at Magnus like what??

Jack flies closer. "Are you sure?" he asks. "I can't see, obviously, since I don't have eyes, but I can tell these things."

"She's not Freya," Magnus tells him. "She's not even from the Nine Worlds. Um, I think."

"Nope," Tally confirms. "Just the one normal world. I'm just, um, really pretty." It's totally shaming to say this in front of Magnus, but it's a fact.

"Do you have a sword?" Jack asks, hovering around Tally.

"Yes," Tally says proudly, though she's yet to actually use it. "It's a swept hilt rapier. It's totally pretty."

"Jack will want to meet it," Magnus says, loudly, over whatever statement Jack is trying to make. "And maybe also date it. He's polyarmorous."

"I'm not totally sure it's, like, alive," Tally points out. "Not the way Jack is."

"All weapons are alive," Jack interjects, swooping in a way suggestive of a swoon. "Like Red Hilt... what a dame!"

"Red Hilt seems inanimate to me," Magnus mouths. He signs it, too, just in case Tally knows sign language -- Jack doesn't have eyes. Or ears, really, for all that he can hear. But he can hear, and Magnus doesn't want him to hear that.

Tally can't help it, she has to laugh.

"Sure, sure," she says. "I'll totally set you up with my sword." She winks at Magnus. "But why would bringing him back to your world be bad? Is your world populated by totally pretty swords he's gonna hit on?"

"Hey Jack," Magnus says, loudly, giving Tally a warning look. "Why don't you go see if Red Hilt is up for a date right now? Really get warmed up for Xin Mo tomorrow."

Jack hovers. "Are you trying to get rid of me?" he asks, suspiciously.

"Never," Magnus promises.

"...Okay," says Jack. "Great idea, señor! I'll see you later." And he flies off.

Magnus waits until he's fully out of earshot. "He's going to be a key feature in Ragnarok," he says. "That's the final apocalypse. I figure if he's not there, it can't happen."

"I've heard of Ragnarok!" Tally says excitedly. "It's part of one of those Rusty religions. But it's totally bogus that you have to keep him here. Being in charge of not ending the world sounds utterly nervous-making."

"'One of those Rusty religions,'" Magnus repeats. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"You couldn't just leave Jack here and go home yourself?" Tally asks, then winces. "No, that would be utterly unfair to him, wouldn't it."

Magnus shakes his head. "Also," he explains, "If I can go back, then there's no point in even trying, because it means Surt could come here, take Jack, and go release Fenris Wolf and kill my dad and end the world anyway." He makes an apologetic face. "I know it sucks for a lot of people to be here... I miss a lot of stuff back home, too. People, and the Chase Space, and Fadlan's Falafels, and -- but I have to kind of hope that no one can ever leave. You know?"

"Maybe. I don't know." Tally feels a weight in the pit of her stomach. Part of her wants to protest that it's only Magnus's world that would end, not hers, but Magnus's world is clearly full of people, and swords or whatever, who are real and don't deserve to die in an apocalypse. "In my world, I was a big part of trying to help the Smokies find a cure for pretty-mindedness. Without me, I don't know who they can test the cure on. Maybe Zane is enough, but I have no idea. I'm not sure they have anyone else who'd want to give themselves up and have their brain changed, and would have the kind of opportunity I did. I don't know if me staying here is dooming my world to being totally brain-dead forever."

Magnus grimaces. "That's -- that's really rough, Tally. I'm sorry."

"Maybe the mansion will hear us and send me home and not you, and it'll be fine," Tally says unconvincingly.

"Maybe!" Magnus hesitates again. "What will you do if you can't ever go back?" Wait, that sounds like too confrontational a question. He shakes his head. "Are you going to try to get a message back, at least?"

"I don't know how. I asked Lan Wangji, and he just said you needed cultivation, and no way I have the patience for that. Plus no one in my world is magic at all, so how would they even get a message? Like, would it just appear as a ping?" She snorts. "Hi, Zane-la, I'm trapped in a bogus Rusty dimension forever, don't wait up!"

"I mean, it's worth a shot?"

"I guess it is," Tally frowns. "But, like, is there anyone who could teach me cultivation besides Lan Wangji? I'd really rather not have him as my teacher."

"Why wouldn't you want Lan Wangji to teach you? He's the best," Magnus enthuses, but he's considering the question. "Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe and Wei Wuxian can also cultivate, I think. And Gu Xiang has qi, but I don't think she's a cultivator."

"I don't think he likes me. Maybe I'll ask Luo Binghe instead. He seems nice."

"He's fine, but Lan Wangji and Shen Yuan have, like, had students before," says Magnus. "But what if there's a way to do it without cultivation?"

"I'd love to do it without learning a skill that you're supposed to start as a littlie."

"That sounds like a fun sort of purpose," Magnus say. "Figuring out how to, like, phone home." He does ET hands in emphasis

Tally does the ET finger back. "Yeah, sure. Totally."

Magnus tilts his head. "Any chance that, instead of chopping off your hand, you could jury-rig the evil spy bracelet into, like, a backdoor that would let you contact people back home?"

"SecUnit-la seemed to think no, but maybe," Tally says uncertainly.

He slumps. "I guess SecUnit would know about that kind of thing," he says.

"Yeah, they've obviously had an operation, too," Tally says. "No brain damage, though, they're so not pretty-minded. Which is great, honestly."

"I think SecUnit uses 'it,' not 'they,'" Magnus says, thoughtfully. "It had an operation?"

"I've never heard of someone doing that," Tally says with surprise. "But I think so, yeah. It's definitely not just an ugly, even though it--well, it doesn't have a pretty face. But it's like a Special from my time, someone who's augmented for power and stuff."

"Huh," Magnus says. "I guess it does control a bunch of drones with its mind." He hesitates as something -- borne of the the meandering direction their conversation has gone -- occurs to him. "Do you know any genderfluid people where you come from?"

"Um... no," Tally admits, feeling a little uncool. She has read the term somewhere, probably in a glossary of Rusty words. "People generally pick a gender and stick with it. Like I said, the wardrobe options would get totally dizzy-making."

"Have I told you about Alex?"

"No, who is that?"

A goofy smile crosses Magnus's face, because Magnus can't think about Alex without smiling. Even when he's going through a period of intermittent temper tantrums because he's worried he'll never see him again. "Alex is my girlfriend," he says. "Most of time. Sometimes Alex is my boyfriend instead."

"Oh, you have it bad, huh," Tally giggles. "Okay, genderfluid, I see. Bubbly!" It makes her feel like butch does, like everything she knows is expanding at a head-spinning rate. It's complicated and confusing, and she feels like if there was a test she'd never be able to pass it, but she likes the rebelliousness of it.

"Oh, yeah," Magnus says, totally unselfconscious. "I sure do. He's not here right now, and I don't know if --" he'll ever be able to come back. He shakes his head sharply -- "but if she does come back for another visit, I want to be sure people know to respect the gender, you know? So she doesn't have to spend a lot of time explaining it."

Tally nods, eyes wide. "Totally. It would be so missing if everyone was just going around, like, what's this gender thing, Alex-wa?" Tally herself totally would have done that, if Magnus hadn't explained it right now.

"Yeah, exactly! You get it."

It really is nice that Magnus is trying to help her look less totally missing. They're totally off track from kissing, though. She stands up.

"Totally. Um, thanks for your help with stuff."

Magnus is a little surprised -- he's starting to have fun hanging out! -- but he just nods. "You're alright, Tally," he says. "Good luck with your mystery butch."

"I totally told you it was Gideon," Tally says, then laughs. "Oh, right, but it's a secret." She's been having fun, too, but she doesn't want to push her luck and start getting pretty-brained and saying bogus things again. "See you later, Magnus-la."

Crowley doesn't need relationship advice¹ -- but you know what, he's in a good mood. A great mood, in fact. Let's see what the demigod child has to say.

"Hey," he says, with a little knock. "Magnus. The atheist, right?"

¹He probably most needed it a few days ago but he would never have asked for it or accepted it then.

"Uh, yeah." Magnus hasn't talked to Crowley since he got here, but he remembers who he is, partly because Galahad has been giving him occasional updates via Claudius about his love life. "What's up?"

Crowley shrugs. "Just swinging by. Checking in. I haven't talked with some of the people here much. I've been a bit, er, occupied." Occupied with acting like an absolute idiot.

Magnus tilts his head. "...Okay," he says eventually. "Do you need relationship advice?"

Crowley looks at him for a long moment. "Look, since I'm here, I'll take it," is what he says.

"What kind of advice are you in the market for?"

"Look," Crowley says in hushed tones, as if he's in a spy movie, "I just--" He waves a hand, in a gesture that possibly means I just got into a relationship if you squint at it. "Aziraphale. It's only been a few days. But-- you know¹." He makes another gesture that could technically mean I messed up everything leading up to it so badly that I don't want to mess this up. Sure, let's go with that. "I guess what I'm saying² is... the basics."

¹Does he?
²Which isn't much.

Oh! Magnus bets Claudius is thrilled about this! He nods solemnly, but inside he's grinning. "Well, have you let him know that he's the bet thing to ever happen to you yet?" That's what he'd done, a few days after Alex first kissed him.

"Er, not-- not exactly in those words," Crowley says¹.

¹Now that we have a better idea of what happened on the date.

"Okay! What have you told him?"

What has Crowley told Aziraphale? Not much, honestly. Their date had been so piecemeal, with some chaotic flirting and a Ritz roleplay thrown into the mix. Oh, but there was one thing-- "That I waited almost 6000 years for him... but would have waited 6000 more," he says, slightly more subdued than normal.

"That's a good start," says Magnus, encouragingly. He's only known Alex for seven or eight years but he shares the sentiment.

"I also told him I was jealous of Oscar Wilde. The writer." Crowley grimaces lightly. He still isn't sure if Aziraphale actually had something with him or not and he suspects he'll never know.

"Who?"

"Exactly," Crowley says, with feeling. "Thank you."

"No, I mean I've never heard of him."

"Phenomenal," is all he says, clearly pleased. "We can move on now."

"Let me guess: he was some kind of fuckboy?" Magnus asks, and then shakes his head. "Sorry, sorry moving on! It's good to be honest with a partner and to make sure you're on the same page."

Crowley shrugs. Easy enough. He's misdirected Aziraphale before¹ -- but he's never really lied to him outright for more nefarious purposes. "We're working on it."

¹The theft of Emma comes to mind.

"Yeah?" Magnus says, tone prompting.

"There wasn't a lot of room to talk about things. Angels and demons are supposed to be enemies."

"Haven't you been friends for, like, a million years?" Claudius really made it sound like they'd been friends for a million years.

"Six thousand. Ish. Might as well be a million, though. But we never really used that word, not until we came here."

Oh, right, Aziraphale had mentioned he'd come from some weird uber-christian world or whatever. "Then what did you call it?"

"The Arrangement," Crowley says, a little wryly. It seems so silly now. "Work acquaintances. Coworkers."

Magnus snorts. "I can see why Claudius was so obsessed with you guys," he says, thoughtfully. "That's really intricate, dude."

Claudius is still obsessed with them but that's another story for another thread. Crowley shrugs. "Isn't all mythology?" He means that in a broader sense, not that it's a false idea, but in the sense of religious mythology.

"No, I mean it in, like, a 'the rituals are intricate' kind of way," Magnus says.

Crowley considers it. "I guess. Do you know what HR is?"

"...human resources? Yeah. Valhalla isn't big on that sort of thing."

"It was kind of like that. A human resources department, keeping tabs on you and making sure you didn't make a false move or, you know, have the wrong friends. Lots of paperwork to do." He frowns slightly. "Punishment when you slip up."

"Okay, that sounds pretty awful. Helgi just makes Hunding do all the cleaning and yells at him a bunch."

"Yeah, Heaven and Hell are awfully bureaucratic. Corporate. But not effective enough to make it work well. Anyway-- that made it tough to talk about anything happening, even friendship." Granted, they've figured some things out but they still have 6000 years of history to slowly untangle.

"Okay, so the intricate rituals had to be signed in triplicate," Magnus nods. That does sound really awful. "I get it. So you're, like, trying to adapt to a new normal? Being able to actually say things?"

"I suppose so," Crowley muses. He briefly wishes he had a drink in hand for this conversation. "It's tough to know where to start."

"Well..." Magnus thinks about this for a while. "Is there any kind of stuff you wish he knew for sure about you? Or your feelings?"

Edited 2024-02-21 17:21 (UTC)

Crowley is certain that Aziraphale knows a lot about him and his feelings but he isn't sure if Aziraphale knows how he feels about how Aziraphale feels about those feelings-- It's a bit complex. There's something about Magnus being a demigod that makes Crowley want to open up more about it, but it's also in his nature to just stay closed up.

"There are some things I could clarify," is all he admits.

Magnus nods, seriously. "You can't just expect someone to be on the same page as you even if you've known them for thousands of years," he says, wisely. About 83% of the problems in his source pantheon have come from just that sort of thinking.

Crowley looks at him curiously. "Sounds like you have experience."

"Dude, the pagan afterlife I came from is Norse," Magnus says, as if that explains everything.

"Right, of course," Crowley says. "Gods. Eternity's... well, eternity. It's easy to get it all mixed up and tougher to sort it out if you're not on a set timeline."

"Yeah, especially if you have, like, prophecy BS mucking things up too."

Crowley nods, knowingly. "We had that too. Well, some people consider the Bible prophecy-- but it's not. Not really. There was another book, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of, er, whatshername."

"...huh," says Magnus. "Never heard of it."

"Yeah," Crowley waves a hand. "Only Aziraphale had ever heard of it. Completely right in every single prediction, but kind of a boring book."

"Prophecies are more trouble than anything," Magnus says, confidently.

"Absolutely," Crowley agrees. "Say, have you been taking care of some of the plants in the greenhouse? They keep telling me about you."

"No, not really, I thought that was, like, Claudius's thing and I didn't want to intrude," Magnus says, and then blinks, impressed. "You can talk to plants? Like Ragnelle?"

Edited 2024-02-27 16:01 (UTC)

"Partially my thing. Kind of." By thing, he means threatening the plants to grow better, otherwise they'll get thrown out of the greenhouse. He still hasn't carried through on any of the threats, though -- but he's absolutely capable of it. "But yeah, they keep talking about how great you are."

"Whoa. Really?"

He shrugs. "I mean, you bring warmth and you can encourage them to grow. I suppose plants like those things."

"Huh." A smile unfurls over Magnus's face. "That's cool."

“Well, except for the orchids,” Crowley confides. “The orchids gossip.”

"Okay, well now you have to tell me what they gossip about," Magnus says, immediately.

Edited 2024-03-08 03:31 (UTC)

"You're reading Emma for the angel?" The bright purple orchid asks Crowley, in judgmental yet intrigued tones. The rest of the orchids in the center of the greenhouse hear this and quake slightly, excited for whatever new information the conversation could dredge up. "Do you think it'll win him over? Is this really the smartest idea you could come up with?"

Crowley ducks his head a little lower behind the book, pretending he can't hear it. "I'm sure he's trying his best," the pink orchid says, in a kinder tone.

"His best is an idiot's worst," the purple one snickers.

"Shut up," Crowley mutters, "or I'll put you in direct sunlight."

"You wouldn't dare," the purple orchid says. "I'm the pride and joy of this greenhouse. Claudius in particular-- oh, someone's coming! Is it for the party?" The orchids quiver at the idea of a party. A large gathering in the greenhouse! So much discussion! Crowley's fight or flight instinct is to stash Emma somewhere behind the bench he was reading it on and then turn into a snake. The purple orchid very slowly shakes its petals right before the first of the cake is carted in, as if its worst assumptions are confirmed. "Idiot."

---

"Uh," Crowley says. "You know what, forget about it."

Magnus squints at Crowley, suspicious. "Okaaaaaay," he says, slowly. "Keep your secrets."

"They gossip about us," Crowley tells him, keeping it vague. "They're kind of rude about it sometimes too. The purple orchid is the worst. The ringleader. They enjoyed your birthday party though."

"Is talking to plants something a guy could learn, or is it just another thing demons can do that regular old dead teenagers can't?" Magnus asks, genuinely curious. Ragnelle couldn't teach him to talk to trees, and Luo Binghe wouldn't teach him how to manipulate his own dreams, but maybe Crowley and his plants are a different story?

"You know, I'm not actually sure. I can do a lot of things other demons can't. Or maybe they just don't try¹, but--" He shrugs. "We could try it at some point."

¹They aren't typically demonic activities, after all: bringing doves back to life, mothering plants, or producing boxes of chocolates for angels.

"Cool," Magnus grins. "I keep thinking how weird it is that I can control plants but I can't talk to them."

"Most of them don't choose to say much. To me, at least. It's mostly just the houseplants or the ones that are around humans a lot."

"I guess that makes sense. More exposure, or whatever." Magnus looks up at Crowley. "Crows like to talk about their doctoral dissertations. Squirrels like to talk about their interpersonal dramas. I guess chipmunks are the most gossipy animal."

"Doctoral dissertations?" Crowley asks, more impressed than disbelieving. "I personally enjoy ducks."

"Ducks are pedantic as hell," Magnus offers. "It's actually very funny."

"Maybe that's why I like them so much."

"You like 'em until you get into a super involved conversation with them, and then it's like, rules-lawyering Connect Four vibes up in that pond," Magnus says. He's been in that exact situation at least three times. "And then you don't wanna talk to them nearly as much."

"Maybe it's best if I can only understand plants, not animals. They don't like me that much anyway."

"Why not?"

"Demon?" Crowley says, with a shrug.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Magnus asks, curious.

"A lot of animals have a sense for that. That something's wrong with me or I'm unnatural. Spooky," he adds, unconvincingly.

Magnus laughs. "Could've fooled me," he says.

Crowley remembers when he gave the people playing paintball at Tadfield Manor real guns and only also gave them near misses and protection when Aziraphale protested. That felt like so long ago. Perhaps he was sharper back then, more demonic.

The change doesn't upset him. He shrugs. "So people tell me. Maybe I'm mellowing with age," he says dryly.

"That's cool, man," says Magnus. "I wish Loki would mellow with age."

"Loki... He's the troublemaker, isn't he?" Crowley's grasp of Norse mythology is tenuous but it's present. "What's he like?"

"The worst. He wants to watch the world burn. He's like the only god I know who's actively involved with his kids, but like, it's not in a good way. I had to flyte him to keep him from starting Ragnarok."

"Gods" Crowley says. "More trouble than they're worth."

"Dude, you can say that again."

Laertes sees the sign on the kitchen door one morning, and he makes note of the time of Magnus's office hours. For the next three days, he makes note of the time of Magnus's office hours, promptly forgets that he was making a note of it, and remembers with a sense of guilt and regret the next morning. On the fourth day, he takes himself to the parlor immediately after making his breakfast deliveries, and he sits there with a book on electrical engineering until Magnus arrives.

Magnus comes into the room about two minutes late, squeaky clean with his still-damp hair staining his shirt with water. His skin is still definitely extremely pink from the heat of his shower. When he sees Laertes, he brightens. "Hi!" he says, automatically launching into signing as he talks.

"Hello," Laertes answers, signing back. Thereafter, although he doesn't translate every word he says, he does punctuate his words with meaningful signs and signs he remembers. "I didn't realize thou wert an expert on relationships."

"Honestly? me neither, but then it occurred to me that maybe I am, since apparently I've been in one longer than anyone else here?"

"How long?" Laertes asks; he bookmarks his page and sets the book aside.

Magnus comes over and flops on the couch next to Laertes. "Going off of Galahad's calendar? Seven years next month."

"Seven years! Nearly the whole of the time thou hast been einherji," says Laertes, wonderingly. "I hadn't known it had been so long. For myself--I think it's been some four months?"

"Oh, me and Alex started two years after I became an einherji," Magnus says. "That particular anniversary was my birthday." He grins at Laertes. "The four-month mark, huh?"

"Something like--and three of them married," Laertes says with a light laugh. "Had someone asked me what to do, in my place, I would have urged them against unseemly haste--but I have no such patience, myself."

Magnus laughs, too. "By Valhalla standards, I'm pretty sure I'm moving fast, too," he admits.

"Seven years is nothing, to eternity," he acknowledges. "But thus, I find myself here--I'm untried in the ways of love. Sagramore was my first. Whatever wisdom thou canst impart, I'll hear it."

Magnus purses his lips. "Mostly I've been trying to get people to embrace the importance of open communication, I guess."

"Then we're allies in this aim," says Laertes, sitting up straighter. "I've told Claudius more than once--I wish him to speak plainly to me, and not to lard his words with softening clauses to suggest that he had not said what he seemed to, or if he did, he did not mean it."

"Claudius?!" Magnus says, surprised, before he remembers some of Galahad's stories about Claudius and -- well, Grantaire, actually, but Magnus supposes where there's smoke, there's fire, or whatever. He course-corrects: "He's always super straightforward with me but I guess I'm no trying to be in a relationship with him. I think with some people though it can be hard to be emotionally vulnerable." Like Alex. Alex finds it hard to be emotionally vulnerable. So does Magnus, sometimes, but he's working on getting better at it.

"I think I remind him of Elsinore," says Laertes, a little more softly. "It was not a place that rewarded honesty; to make disengagement easy was a kindness he learned to cultivate."

"Have you told him you don't like that? Like, I mean -- how do you tell him to speak plainly?"

Edited 2024-02-12 06:01 (UTC)

"Oh! I meant not to ask for advice on him," says Laertes, raising his hand a little in a quelling motion. "Only to commiserate--we've resolved that difference, and he speaks to me now as plainly as I should wish."

"Oh." Magnus flushes. "Of course, yeah. Good!"

Laertes inhales. Unconsciously, he moves into the rhythm of breath that he uses for meditation. "I suppose ... what I mean to ask is how I might be a good husband, when my husband cannot bear himself. How I might lead him to see himself with as much joy and adoration as I do."

"Oh," Magnus says, and then "Oh. Sagramore has depression?"

Laertes dips his head. "I know not what to do," he says. "For although his temperament is as sanguine as they come, there lies beneath it a deep, black melancholy, thick as pitch."

Magnus says, "They've disproven the humors, you know? I think depression is about, like, serotonin actually."

"Ay, Claudius has spoken to me of the new humors," says Laertes. "The mechanism of it, the chemistry of the body, is as yet beyond my ability to grasp. But I need not grasp it to stand beside him when he hates himself, and offer succor. I need only know what kind of succor would be most needful, for a husband."

Edited 2024-02-13 15:45 (UTC)

"What's 'succor?'" Magnus is picturing, like, depression meals.

Laertes sits back, glancing up at the ceiling as though the answer will be written there. "It's care," he says at last. "The kind of care that eases hurts."

"I'm pretty sure the best care for depression is, like, therapy," Magnus says thoughtfully. "In which case you might want to talk to the new guy. He mentioned his school had daily group therapy, so he might know more than I do." Magnus might be an expert in relationships, but the closest he's ever come to being in therapy was his middle school counselor back when he was getting written up all the time. Anyway, part of expertise is knowing when to defer to someone else's knowledge. "But as for caring for someone who has, like, struggles? I think maybe one of the bigger, less obvious things, is that you have to take care of yourself."

Laertes turns to face Magnus, head tilted slightly in puzzlement. It is, he thinks, possibly the first time anyone has ever told him to take care of himself. "I'm not sure I understand."

"Which part?"

"Why I should turn from my husband, when he ails, and instead devote my efforts to myself, who is still hale."

"I'm not saying to ignore him, I'm saying -- you know that dude with the rock? And the gods were, predictably, mad because he was rude to him, and not because of his actual atrocities?"

"Thou wilt have to be more specific. Rocks and gods are of about equal antiquity in human memory; they oft appear together."

"He had to push it up a hill?"

"Sisyphus," says Laertes immediately. "Condemned always to have his work undone, his stone returned to the mountain's foot, and thence to return to the task anew with each new day."

"Yeah, that guy!" Magnus snaps his fingers. "My cousin's boyfriend met him once. Total asshole IRL, apparently. Which I guess you could have guessed, from all the atrocities. But my point is -- it's not that the work would be undone, it's just that you never know when that rock is going to roll back, with depression. It comes in episodes. And no matter how much you love someone, if you wrap all of yourself up into trying to make them get better, or keeping, like, vigilant for their suffering so that you can immediately swoop in and try to improve their situation... you're going to get frustrated when it doesn't work, or doesn't follow a predictable path. Even if you're committed to not getting frustrated. Because you're also going to get burnt out. And that doesn't serve either of you, you know?"

Laertes lays his hands over his knees and curls his fingers to fit. Before Wanderers Gather, he would have said that he didn't know what Magnus meant by burnt out--but now he knows it all too well, that feeling of being a candle at the end of its wick. The way even things that brought him joy and purpose became dull and grinding, by the end. He imagines what it would be like to feel that about Sagramore, and he really understands for the first time what Sagramore fears about people who care for him.

His love for Sagramore is infinite and ever-replenishing. His ability to care for Sagramore is not.

"I understand," says Laertes slowly. "How ... how might I keep my candle burning, and yet not burn it out?"

Magnus -- who has been drawing this particular advice from Hearthstone and Blitzen's relationship more than his own, since Hearth has these really intense grief spells -- tries to think of useful advice. "Well, for one, you can't be everything for him," he says, after a moment. "Like, I know you guys are, like, polyamorous or whatever." He might not get it, but he does respect it! "So I wanna be clear that that's not what I mean. If you're therapist for your partner... I'm pretty sure that's a fast-track to resentment. On both ends. You have to make time for yourself, and take care of yourself, and both set and respect boundaries. Instead of, like, tilting at windmills and trying to defeat his bad feelings when he has them, you should get comfortable with making space for them, a little? He's gonna have them no matter what you do. When he's in a good place, ask him for specific things you both are interested in you doing to help, and do those. Talk about the boundaries you're both establishing. I don't know, he might like hearing that you're thinking concretely about this and have a plan to help you both with the bad spells. Maybe he has other friends he can talk to about the stuff that you're not covering, if you're both willing to set up that kind of structure."

Laertes nods, trying to commit all of it to memory. Make time for yourself. Make space for Sagramore's feelings. Talk about boundaries. Make a plan. Bring in other friends. "Sagramore and I ... are not well suited to structure," Laertes admits. "We do better at striving in all directions at once."

"Oh, you mean like ADHD?"

"Like what?"

Right. Laertes still believes in humors. "It means, uh. Something." Magnus wills himself to remember. "Attention deficit and.... something. Hyperactivity, or something? The Greek demigods all have it. Like... you get distracted easily, you have a hard time paying attention to the 'right' stuff --" (He says 'right' using scare quotes) "-- or doing stuff that you don't find interesting or fun, it's hard to be organized, sometimes you have way too much energy?"

Laertes blinks several times. "Ay, something like that," he hazards. "Is it an affliction?"

"Depends on who you ask," Magnus shrugs. "But I think most people would say yes."

"Dost thou share it?"

Magnus shrugs. "I was never diagnosed, but I'm also a high school dropout, so... maybe I would have been eventually? They say it runs in families and my cousin has it, but having parents who attract gods apparently also runs in families, and Annabeth's mom is Athena, and like I said, she says all Greek demigods have it. So who knows? I bet there's books on it in the library, though."

"It's a place to begin," Laertes acknowledges. "What was it called?"

"ADHD," Magnus says. "Um, in the past I know it also used to be called ADD. Attention deficit disorder."

"Has it any associations with melancholy? Or--" he tries to remember how Magnus had phrased it "--depression?"

"Maybe?" Magnus makes an apologetic face. "I'm sorry, dude, I definitely dropped out of school before I was eligible for AP Psychology. I spent a couple days in a library when I was fifteen looking up the mental health stuff that tends to crop up with other homeless kids, and I know a ton about panic attacks because I for sure get those, but apart from that it's kind of like, 'what do I remember overhearing about once or twice' territory."

"It's been of great help nonetheless--I've begun with less," says Laertes. "What is a panic attack?"

Magnus hesitates for a moment, trying to think of how to describe them. "Do you know what asthma is?"

"It's from the Greek," he guesses. "For breathing heavily, or panting?"

Magnus nods -- that's close enough. "For me, before I died, it was like someone tightening a belt around my chest until I couldn't breathe," he says. "At totally random times, but especially when I was sleeping inside or playing. For me, panic attacks are kind of like that, but scarier. Sometimes they're in response to something, like being around too many people, or if there's a wolf, or even if it feels like an asthma attack is coming on, even though dying cured me of the asthma. Being in my inside room here, right after the zombies. But I think that they can feel a little different for different people."

Laertes recognizes that feeling--as though his body is failing, heart and lungs pressed under iron bands. Panic attack is such an evocative term for it: a madness and false feeling of being hunted, as though he were stalked by Pan. "I wish it were not so, for thee," he says at last. "It's a hard thing to suffer."

Magnus shrugs. "It is what it is," he says, and hazards a grin. "But once you know what's up you can adjust, right? Like, for a totally random example out of nowhere, becoming Outside Guy, cuz for you the biggest thing that helps you breathe through it is going out to a place that feels wild, green, and fresh."

"Is it difficult for thee, to be here right now?"

"What?" Magnus processes the question and shakes his head. "Nah, now I'm pretty much just out there because I like it better."

Laertes musters a smile. "Then I'm glad for thee. A panic attack is no small thing; I would not wish it on thee, not even for the sake of all thy sound advice."

"You get them too, huh?"

The slightest of nods. "The day when the visitors came ... it went hard with me."

Magnus nods, too. "I met that guy," he says, a little cautiously. "While Alex was taking time for herself to, uh, process, and after I Peace of Frey'd Wei Wuxian's visitor. I, um. Tried to get him lost."

Edited 2024-02-15 02:23 (UTC)

Laertes cannot remember whether Magnus ever told him that Alex was his visitor--but the more he thinks about it, the less sure he is that Magnus was lucky. One thing had to be said for Reynaldo: Laertes was glad to see the back of him. "Thou hadst an eventful day," he says. "And so did he. Sagramore meant to kill him, I think. My thanks for defending me in thine own way."

"I told him my dad was a pretty big deal in Denmark and leaned into the whole, you know." Magnus gestures at himself. "Thing where I look really young. And then I took him past the -- you know the crevasse?" But this isn't about what Magnus did, this is about Laertes. "You panicked?"

"I saw him, and I fled into the woods. I was too far gone for thought; I was a hare pursued by a hound. I ... remember little of what happened, before he found me," says Laertes. "Only being cold, and afraid, and unable to breathe past the top of my chest."

"That'll do it," Magnus says. He scoots over a few inches, so that he's closer to Laertes, and bumps their shoulders together.

Laertes exhales, long and slow. "It was well enough, in the end. I bid him take back to my father that I had no wish to return, for I'd married a Hungarian prince and had no desire to repent it. He seemed pleased enough to carry that message."

"Dude: major upgrade, by the way."

"Major," Laertes agrees. "Hast thou any further advice for how I might best savor my good fortune?"

"Obviously," Magnus says. "Tell him you love him as much as he'll let you."

"That will be no hardship at all."

"Oh, and," Magnus says, remembering his mission to spread the good word to the entire Mansion. "It doesn't hurt to high five him after a particularly good -- well, with me and Alex, it's still just kissing, but I'm given to understand that a solid follow-up high five can improve any, uh, moment of... successful intimacy."

"High five?" Laertes is doubtful that he should be taking advice on intimacy from someone who can't even seem to clip words around it, but he'll suspend his judgment.

"Yeah, like, 'high five, well done, that was great.' High fives denote respect and, like, camaraderie and approval. Not just after sex or whatever, anytime and with anyone."

"How does one do it? Just say 'high five'?"

"Put your hand up like so," Magnus says, demonstrating. "Basically you slap your palms together. The louder, the better. You can say 'high five' to indicate that you want to, uh, initiate the ritual."

"A very solemn ritual," Laertes laughs, and brings his hand up to smack against Magnus's.

"Oh, it's extremely serious business," Magnus laughs. "That was a good one. If you look at my elbow, you can get a bigger smack."

"Like in fencing--following the movement of the whole blade, and not merely its point?"

"Yeah, exactly! You get it."

"Hast taught me much today," says Laertes. A part of him wants to delve deeper into what Magnus has said about himself, but Magnus was very clearly trying to deflect worry, and Laertes decides not to pry. Bracing his hands against the edge of the couch, he leans forward and pulls himself to his feet. "I'll go to research what thou hast told me, and to see what answers the library offers."

"Sure thing, dude," Magnus says, leaning back in his seat. "I'm here if you wanna talk more about any of this."

"I will--and if thou shouldst need a listening ear, let me offer mine."

"Thanks, man," with a little smile. "I don't know if Sagramore mentioned it to you yet, but I'm looking forward to our upcoming kitchen adventures with the three of us and Lan Wangji."

"Ay, he has," says Laertes. "I look forward to learning a new cuisine."

"Me too," says Magnus, with great feeling. He tilts his head. "Before you go -- you good, by the way? That was a lot, the stuff we talked about."

Laertes hesitates before answering. Is he good? Much of what he's learned today will require further study before he can even begin to know how to feel about it. "I am," he decides. "I've carried these questions for long months--and it's helped, to speak them at last."

"Oh, good," with evident relief. "We can talk about this stuff whenever you want, okay? You know how to find me."

"If I didn't, thy suppers would be much diminished," says Laertes. "Farewell." With a smile and a dip of his head, he heads out to search for books while the memory's fresh in his head.

The book he'd brought to keep him company while he waited for Magnus, he forgets on the table beside the couch.

Enjolras has been haunting the café, as per usual —and he is not precisely in search of relationship advice; but he is certainly willing to spend time with Magnus. So he stops by with a flier of his own—the one he and Grantaire had made about their meeting, and pokes his head in the parlor, giving a wave. “Good morning.”

"Enjolras! What's up, my dude?" Magnus doesn't bother asking if he's come for advice. Most people haven't.

“I brought you a handbill of my own,” he says, and offers it. “I thought it might be nice to have a general meeting, if not a meal; just to see how it might work here.” A beat. “I also wanted to say hello.”

"Hi!" Magnus looks at the flyer suspiciously. "This isn't to the death, right?"

He laughs a little. “It is not, I assure you. There probably won’t even be any physical fighting; as Bahorel will not be there. Unless things get quite heated.”

"Probably???!"

He laughs again, and shrugs teasingly. “I cannot make promises for everyone! Grantaire is quite good at savate, and I will make no excuses for him.”

"I'm anti-violence now," Magnus says, passing the flyer back to Enjolras. "So maybe I'll wait until you know for sure."

He relents at that, and shakes his head with a grin. “Very well. There will be no violence, I assure you. Temeraire will also be there to make doubly sure.” There is a beat. “I do think you would enjoy yourself; though I do not know how many people intend to come.”

"Okay, then! I'll think about it." He'll go if Galahad goes.

"Please do," he says, and it is truly genuine. "I would like to spend more time with you, and it is -- sometimes difficult for me to be social."

"Because I'm, like, Outside Guy and you're Cafe Guy?" Magnus asks. "Or do you mean, like, you'd rather just be in a crowd of people who are all talking so that you don't have to talk unless you feel like it?"

“A bit of both, if I am being honest. Though for the most part I am inside these days because it is too cold outside, and I do not especially like the cold.”

"Yeah, it might get cold enough here that even I can feel it," Magnus says, thoughtfully. "Depending on how long winter lasts."

If Alex Came Back We'd DEFINITELY Be The Local Power Couple [open post]

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