Me and My Best Friend Put On A Show That Would Make Freya Totally Jealous [closed post]

[summerdude]

Magnus wakes up, normal again except for how he's in an unfamiliar room. Not Galahad's old room, either. A nondescript one that, as far as he can tell, just has a bunch of clothes and stuff. Also he's wearing silky pajamas he'd never pick out automatically on his own?

It doesn't take long for him to feel like the walls are closing in on him. It's out of respect for Aornis that he stumbles out of her room through the door (barefoot and in the silky pajamas) and goes outside the normal way. Once outside, he flops into the snow, calling summer and feeling the way the snow steams against his skin as it melts.

He's not feeling totally regular again when he sits bolt upright, remembering that Drosera is probably in Galahad's old room with two people that aren't Magnus or Galahad. Existential crisis over, there's a child to retrieve! And hopefully, he'll run into Galahad in the halls.

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad just lets the warmth of that approval sit in him as he dips into the closet again. This time he gets Magnus a formal shorts suit in a pale shell pink, although instead of a collared shirt there's a deep grey tee with floral block letters that say MAY THE FOREST BE WITH YOU. The suit jacket sleeves are pre-rolled to elbow-length.

[summerdude]

Magnus is hesitating in front of the closet, trying to decide what to pull for Galahad. "Casual and comfy, or formal and cool?" he asks. "Or a different vibe entirely?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Formal and cool."

[summerdude]

The closet gets confused, probably because Magnus has difficulty narrowing down, actually. He pulls out a gown with a fitted bodice and a flouncy skirt, frowns, and casts it aside. Next, there's a cropped t-shirt and jorts, which absolutely doesn't work.

Finally, finally, he gets something good. It's not really what he was going for -- honestly, he's not really sure what he's going for; the only 'formal dress' occasion he's been to was Alex-as-Sam's fake wedding to Thrym slash battle against Loki -- but he thinks it's pretty cool and formal. It's a pair of dressy black pants shot through with silver-thread pinstripes, so wide-legged they look kind of like a floor-length skirt. With it is a silvery sheer button-down shirt made out of some slinky fabric that feels so smooth to the touch, and about twenty different necklaces of different lengths. He turns to Galahad with a hopeful expression, hands full.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes," as fervent as his toneless voice can get. He holds out his hands. He already knows he's keeping that shirt.

[summerdude]

Magnus passes it over, grinning, and then take Galahad's selections. He's not convinced of the short suit -- it makes him feel like he looks even younger than usual -- but he absolutely loves the t-shirt. He's totally keeping the t-shirt forever.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad unties the dungarees and pulls off the sweater so he can slide the button-down shirt over his shoulders. The smoothness and the sheerness of the fabric feels decadent. He's less certain of the pants -- the silver pinstriping reminds him of Claudius, but the cut and length are a lot -- but he happily layers the necklaces on.

[summerdude]

"Awesome," Magnus says, watching as the necklaces slide against each other. "Dude, you would make a killing in my time. Supermodel."

[onthewillowsthere]

He laughs. "Supermodel?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah, they're like, people who wear high fashion clothes and look really cool doing it, basically, but for, like, a job," Magnus says. He has a very loose understanding of supermodels.

[onthewillowsthere]

"That sounds better than being a knight."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, I think all you have to do is wear clothes and walk and lean and not smile with your mouth," Magnus says, thoughtfully. "You could kick ass at that."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I smile other ways?" This is, in all honesty, a fraction of a tease -- he's learned to pick the smiles out of Claudius' eyes and the set of his shoulders and he's fairly sure this is what Magnus means.

[summerdude]

"You're smiling right now, aren't you?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Am I?" deadpan.

[summerdude]

Magnus rolls his eyes at him. "Obviously, dude," he says. "Look at you. That's--" he squints. "Smile number 23." (The number is total B.S.; he made it up on the spot.) "The one when you're trolling me, obviously. It's--" he taps the corner of his own eye. "There."

[onthewillowsthere]

He breaks into a proper smile, his thin mouth curving. "You're a scientist. Recording observations."

[summerdude]

"Who needs a formal education?" Magnus laughs, slinging an arm around Galahad's shoulders and pulling him into a half-hug.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad hugs back, lifting Magnus off his feet -- maybe there are some things he likes about his own body, and the strength to do something like this is one.

They spend the next hour or so pulling outfits. It's a luxurious experience; Galahad has gotten plenty of clothes from the mansions closets for himself, but Magnus chooses more extravagantly and knows about more kinds of fabrics and styles, and he's constantly pulling things Galahad wants to touch and wear, things he wants to wear for Claudius. Galahad is aware that clothes are for affecting other people as much as for one's own pleasure (how could he not, living with Claudius, watching him so closely?), but his choices have tended to be focused. Other than at the dance, when Shen Yuan helped him dress, he hasn't tried to pick clothes with Claudius in mind. Now he has a much more vivid idea of what things he would like to wear to be admired in, to see whether he could make Claudius as speechless and overwhelmed as he was by the skinny jeans and t-shirt.

He also loves choosing for Magnus. There's an element of science to this, too: he has to take what he knows about Magnus, what he's observed and what Magnus has told him, and create clothes based on that knowledge. It's like creating a hypothesis from the given facts, and the experiment is whether he's right. He doesn't mind when Magnus doesn't like something he picked; it's more data. He loves the feeling of pride and satisfaction when he chooses well.

Eventually, though, Drosera wakes and comes off the bed to nip at their heels. She's bored and hungry and unwilling to be ignored. After they feed her a quick snack of raw fish, Galahad asks, "Do you still want to cut off your toe today?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah, might as well," says Magnus, as he finishes neatly folding the pile of clothes he's decided to keep. It's more than he expected to, but still really restrained -- he liked a ton of what Galahad selected for him, but he can't shake the feeling that more than his ten favorite items is an insurmountable excess. Heck, even when he first got to Valhalla, he only added three complete outfits (all green t-shirts and blue jeans) to the single change of clothes he had on the streets... and he didn't bother adding more to that until Alex, conspiring with Blitzen, first got her hands on his wardrobe a year and a half later.

He looks up from the clothes. "What do you think is best? Why am I asking, it should definitely be Jack, right?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Jack knows you, and he can do it without you wielding him." Galahad could also do it, he's pretty sure, but he's deferring to Magnus.

[summerdude]

"Or would some enormous scissors be better? More controlled," Magnus says, musingly. He kicks off his latest pair of shoes -- a fun set of gladiator-style sandals Galahad had pulled, which he thinks he might actually keep, for the vibes -- and then peels off the socks he's been wearing pretty much all along, and regards his toe. Then he draws Jack from his necklace. "Hey buddy, do you think you could chop off my little toe without getting anything else?"

Jack does a little swoop. "Oh, sure, señor, I'm the sharpest sword in the Worlds. It'll be a cinch!" Then he stills in midair. "Why do you want to chop your toe off?"

"To see if I can reattach it."

"Weird," Jack comments. "Well, okay. I've destroyed a few feet in my time. Do you remember the jotunn in Flam? And how we stabbed it right in the tootsie? Man, that was a good fight. It would've been better if--"

"So," says Magnus to Galahad, sotto voce. "Jack is an option."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad gives him a yeah, okay kind of look. "In the bathroom. You can bleed into the bathtub. And there are towels."

[summerdude]

"I was thinking the same thing," Magnus nods. He sighs, and pulls off his pants, too. He's pretty sure toes don't bleed a ton, but he'd prefer not to get blood on anything nice.

Jack is still talking, so Magnus wraps his hand around his hilt. "C'mon, Jack," he says, and -- whoa! It's kind of weird to be actually wielding a sword again (by some value of wield) for the first time in months. He finds himself automatically wanting to sink into a fighting stance, but he squelches the urge with a weird little look down Jack's blade. "You're the precisest sword in the Nine Worlds, right? We only want the little toe off."

"Boss, I sewed Tiny's bowling bag, I can cut off a toe," Jack says.

This -- doesn't actually follow, in Magnus's estimation, but he does trust Jack with his life, so he just shrugs. "Okay, dude," he says to Galahad. "I guess it's all sorted. To the tub?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. From something of the same impulse, he strips down to the sensible underwear -- he's certainly seen limbs cut off before, if not specifically a small toe, and he's deeply uninterested in getting blood on his clothes.

The bathroom is small and clean, and Galahad assesses it briskly. "Sit in the bath," as he grabs an armful of towels.