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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[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.

[summerdude]

"Islam is the religion, Muslim is the practitioner," Magnus nods, finishing his current cob and then regarding the volume of kernels on his cutting board. That sure is either too much, not enough, or just right. Then he glances at Lan Wangji. "What year did you come from?" he asks. "I don't think I actually know."

[sagramore]

"Thank you." He glances curiously over at Lan Wangji -- he's never particularly been able to pinpoint whether Lan Wangji is from his past, present, or future; there's enough familiar, and something timeless, about him that makes it difficult. Magnus is obviously futuristic, but Lan Wangji is a mystery.

[lightbearinglord]

Magnus will need to determine whether that is the correct volume of corn. Lan Wangji certainly doesn't know. With a little surprise at the question, he looks back at Magnus. He is completely certain that they do not share a calendar, unless the mansion's esoteric calendar counts, but he says, "When Wei Ying and I left Gusu, it had been the Tianjian¹ era for several years. It may not be anymore." The state of non-cultivation politics is roughly as dire as the state of cultivation politics.

¹天監, for reference; this era covers 502-519 CE. Please note that Mo Dao Zu Shi is a deliberately ahistorical melange of several time periods riddled with anachronism, so this is a fundamentally impossible question and the typist is partly basing this answer on a throwaway line in the donghua, despite not considering the donghua canon to this version of Lan Wangji. Help.

[summerdude]

"Can you write it down for me?" Magnus asks, carefully dumping a double handful of kernels into his masa and mixing it in. He's never going to be able to figure anything out from just the word, but if he can hold the name up against the books in the library until he finds something that matches, maybe he can find something relevant.

Okay, it looks like he can add another double handful. He transfers the kernels into the bowl, and then pushes the cutting board with the rest of it over to Sagramore.

[sagramore]

Sagramore takes the cutting board and retrieves the knife from the drying rack to scrape the rest of the corn into his own mixture. If Magnus didn't mean for him to use all of them, he would definitely have said that explicitly.

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn." While Magnus and Sagramore are occupied with their dough, Lan Wangji returns to the stove to check on the pork, now gently simmering in the red chile sauce. It smells like something Wei Ying would like, which he will presume is a generally good sign.

He crosses to the kitchen table and pulls his writing supplies from his qiankun pouch. Since they are in the kitchen, it is easy to fill the inkwell with a little water, then to grind a small amount of ink, produce a piece of paper, and neatly write 天監.

[summerdude]

Magnus squints critically at his dough and Sagramore's. Yeah, they both look good. Sagramore's has more corn, but Magnus is pretty sure that's right for sweet tamales.

"Thanks," he says to Lan Wangji. "Should I start, like. Cutting the cheese, or something?" Then he snorts, because he may be a twenty-five year old adult, but in some very salient ways, he has the sense of humor of a high school freshman.

[sagramore]

Oh right, dates, they were literally just talking about this. He goes to search through the cabinets.