I Up My Boyfriend Game With The Help Of My F̶a̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ Bother Figures [closed post]

[summerdude]

Magnus shows up to the kitchen earlier than the agreed-upon time, since he's actually really excited to fold tamales (and learn how to prep the individual components thereof) with a couple of his favorite people. When he gets there, he remembers having to teach Galahad about hand-washing, and thinks about the fact that both Sagramore and Lan Wangji are from old-timey places. When they arrive, they'll find him scrubbing down the countertops, making sure they have a clean workspace.

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[lightbearinglord]

It is true, which is what makes it a painful reminder. It would be impossible to winnow Lan Wangji's objections down into succinct words, especially in front of Sagramore, a friend with whom he has only just begun to share a few small parts of himself, and Magnus, who sees him as a figure of parental authority. He walked away, once, handed himself over for punishment trusting that Wei Ying would survive the way he impossibly survived everything, and he was wrong. If he had come to the Burial Mounds even a day or two later, A-Yuan would not have survived, and instead of a living, wailing reminder of Wei Ying and the Wen remnants, he would have found the cold body of a lonely orphan.

Magnus is neither of them, and they are both alive now. Lan Wangji has a talent for seeing their ghosts regardless. If Magnus had lived, doubtless they would not be here now, making tamales in the kitchen, and yet the injustice of his death rankles anyway.

He takes a careful breath as he steps away from the stove to begin peeling the blackened skins from the peppers. "There is no need to be sorry." Perhaps he overstepped. He only wants Magnus to know that his death is not a trivial matter to him.

[summerdude]

Wow, Magnus feels really bad now! Hanguang-jun looks sad, and Sagramore seems to be focusing really hard on that masa. "I'll stop joking about being dead," he promises...

..."even though it's, like, fine. I'm fine, and it's not like I didn't choose this." He says it earnestly; he doesn't want them to worry about him.

[sagramore]

A very faint frown. "Nuszka-- what do you mean, you chose it?"

[lightbearinglord]

As ever, Lan Wangji has done his best to remember everything that Magnus has ever told him¹, so this is not a surprise to him. He glances at Magnus as he discards a piece of pepper skin. "You chose Valhalla."

¹Accidental gaslighting earlier in this thread notwithstanding. Someone meddled on that one.

[summerdude]

"Yeah," with a nod to Lan Wangji. To Sagramore, he says, "Odin -- that's the All-Father, he's, like, the boss of all the gods and the guy in charge of my section of the afterlife -- he gave me a choice as a reward for stopping one of Loki's plans to kick-start Ragnarok. I could stay one of his einherji in Valhalla, or I could be transferred over to become one of my aunt's army of the glorious dead in Folkvanger, or he could make me alive again. Send me back to Earth, give me my old body back, the whole nine yards. I chose to stay."

[sagramore]

"Why?"

[lightbearinglord]

The last time they discussed this, Lan Wangji had only recently met Magnus. In fact, retrospectively, Magnus must have still believed he was a god at the time. So although he knows the answer Magnus gave then, he still listens with interest, peeling the final pepper and retrieving a knife to begin slicing them.

[summerdude]

"Like," Magnus pauses. "Being Peace Guy at the War Hotel isn't actually all that bad, even though literally everyone else with Vanir heritage like mine goes to Folkvanger, just like anyone with Aesir heritage goes to Valhalla. It's probably the easiest choice I've ever made, actually. Being alive would be, like, nice and all, but my mom would still be dead and I'd still be an asthmatic homeless teenager and my living family would still be either working for Loki or off being a kickass Greek demigod fighting her own battles in a place someone from my pantheon couldn't even access. And there'd be no guarantee about how long I'd stay alive, or if I'd go back to Valhalla when I died again, or -- any of that. All my friends were in Valhalla, one way or another. I had a room there. I had a purpose. Dad said I was the last hope of summer before the long winter of Ragnarok. And the nightly feasts weren't too shabby. ...also, Folkvanger is weird." He shudders. "But mostly... I had a community in Valhalla. I had kind of a found family situation going on. You know, my elf dad and my dwarf dad and my three dead human einherjar siblings who were probably all older than me and Hearth and Blitz combined. Plus my valkyrie best friend, of course. ...This was before Alex arrived. I'd choose Valhalla extra hard for him."

[sagramore]

That, actually, makes perfect sense to Sagramore; it feels not unlike the choice to stay here. There are things he misses about Camelot -- or, mainly, people he misses -- but he would choose this place, for all its tricks and curses, a thousand times over. He'd choose Laertes and Szarka and their family of three, Claudius and Grantaire and Aleksander and Kade and Nina and Shen Yuan, Gideon and Tress, even Asmodean. And it would be an easy choice. He nods.

"Fair enough."

[lightbearinglord]

There is no hardship, no cruel world, no inconvenience or curse that Lan Wangji would not choose if it kept him by Wei Ying's side. That much is effortless to understand. He stays silent, listening, as he slices peppers, however, and turns the phrase found family over in his mind, and feels something troublesome as a shadow at the back of his mind. For the first months after he came here, even with Wei Ying returned to his arms and his bed, he longed for the Cloud Recesses every day. It pulls at him still, circling him like a koi that occasionally nips at his feet. His brother, his uncle, his sweet students and their unpolished cultivation. He has duties, and he has abandoned them, voluntarily or not.

With time, as if by accident after accident, he has accumulated duties here, too. He has a part to play in Claudius' wedding, and he would like to see the first time that Claudius wins a game of weiqi. He brings food to Qi Yuanjun, and intermittently to Aleksander. He has promised to teach Magnus countless things, beginning with calligraphy. He even has promises to keep to Crowley. When he shared tea with his brother, he was privately and shamefully grateful that Wei Ying was still in his bed. It spared him an impossible choice. That choice feels more and more impossible with each passing day. Once, sitting with Claudius over tea, he envisioned a path back to the Cloud Recesses, and he knew that he would take it, Wei Ying on his arm, without hesitation. Today, he can no longer be so certain.

It is petty and selfish, but he hopes that this choice avoids him for a little while longer. He finishes slicing the peppers and sets his knife aside.

[summerdude]

Magnus is looking up anxiously at him when he does. "Hanguang-jun," he says. "Sagramore. The recipes don't say anything about adding fresh sweetcorn to the masa. But we should."

[sagramore]

"You know better than any book does," with supreme confidence in Magnus' recollection of his true love's favorite food.

[lightbearinglord]

"As Sagramore says," Lan Wangji agrees, easily. He lets his expression soften a little as he looks back down at Magnus. "Otherwise, I believe we are nearly ready to begin assembling them. You should decide what to put in the sweet tamales."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, but what if I do it wrong?" Magnus asks, going to get some ears of corn from the fridge anyway. "What if it messes up the, like, texture balance or whatever? What if--" he cuts himself off and nods, getting a knife so he can carefully cut the kernels from the cobs anyway. "What fruit do you think would taste good?"

[sagramore]

"These are a practice run, then." Sagramore is used to being reasonable about food that doesn't work out; Laertes tends to be devastated by failure, even when he does his best to downplay it. "Alex isn't here yet, so she won't get have to know. Do you think dried or fresh fruit would be better?

[lightbearinglord]

Indeed, Lan Wangji would like to reassure Magnus by promising that they will turn out well, but that would be impossible to know for certain. Sagramore is already addressing the matter of fruit, so he watches with intent interest as Magnus cuts the corn, given that corn is so new to him as a staple ingredient.

[summerdude]

Magnus isn't great at cutting off the kernels -- they keep flying everywhere -- but at a certain point, a memory from childhood kicks in, of his mom showing him how to stand a corn cob up and carefully work a knife down its side so the kernels shed onto a plate or into a bowl, rather than just rotating it on the cutting board on its side and hoping for the best. He smiles a little to himself, and then registers Sagramore's question. "Um," he says. "I don't know. I think you can do either? The biggest difference would be, like, wetness, right?"

[sagramore]

Sagramore laughs. "Right. I've never thought of it that way, but yes. A question of wetness."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji makes a subtle and delicate little expression of distaste at the phrase a question of wetness. "Surely the texture of fresh fruit is superior."

[summerdude]

"Oh," says Magnus, carefully stripping another cob of its kernels. "I was gonna ask if you thought dates might be okay." He makes another cut, and then clarifies: "I think it's almost Ramadan back home. Alex's sister -- our valkyrie -- she's observant."

[sagramore]

Sagramore hears ramazan, a Turkish word for the Saracen month of fasting, and recognizes it immediately. "Christ, is it time already? It can't be. When I left Camelot it was hardly the end of summer."

[lightbearinglord]

It is hardly uncommon for Lan Wangji not to know what Magnus is talking about, but this affliction is less frequent with Sagramore. He recognizes the mention of Samirah, who took Magnus to Valhalla, but the rest of it means nothing to him, unless one counts the inexorable passage of time. He, too, left Gusu in the heat of late summer, and the days have tripped past in fits and starts. It was, by his own calendar, the new year only a handful of days ago. Carefully neutral, he asks, "What is Ramadan?"

[summerdude]

"Me and Alex started dating during Ramadan, so it's always on my radar," Magnus assures Sagramore. To Lan Wangji, he says, "It's this religious thing for Muslims... um, Sagramore would call them Saracens... I don't know what year you're from, but uh, it's possible... you know the Silk Road? Some of the people to your west might have observed it? Anyway, it's a month of fasting and worship. Samirah says it makes her closer to god. She was fasting when we went to flyte Loki -- it gave her the strength to resist him, too. Since, you know, he has a thing for punishing his kids for standing against him by, like, ordering their hearts to stop beating and stuff. And the fast is always broken at sunset with dates. So even though I wasn't fasting, we'd have a little moment every night on our boat where we'd share dates."

[sagramore]

"Is Muslim the right word now?" Sagramore asks, since in his experience Magnus is something of an authority (or at least he talks with the confidence of one) when it comes to terminology.

[lightbearinglord]

Resigning himself to once again having large swaths of his own apparent ignorance¹ revealed to him, Lan Wangji listens. At least he has no difficulty grasping the concept of fasting for religious reasons.

¹For instance, the Silk Road wasn't called that until the nineteenth century.