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 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.

[lightbearinglord]

This is yet another joke that means nothing to Lan Wangji. He has accepted that Magnus occasionally laughs without explanation. Wei Ying is the same way. "You should," he agrees, leaving the ink to dry for the moment.

[summerdude]

"Cool," says Magnus. He's pretty sure his masa is ready, so he sets to the task diligently. "Sagramore, what kind of food did you grow up with? I know you had kibbeh but that's all."

[sagramore]

"Oh, Christ. Well, you know, I lived in Hungary until I was about ten years old, so lots of spices, all kinds of spices. Lots of kefir and cheese, lots of stews. Cold soups like meggyleves, fermented vegetables, things like that. One of the cooks used to make kifli. And then when we moved to Constantinople, that's where I had kibbeh, except we call it köfte, and where I started drinking coffee, but what I remember most was the abundance of fruit -- apricots, pomegranates, dates, figs and quince, all kinds of fruit. A lot of rice, yoğurt, minced meat-- oh, dolma and sarma, but I always hated those. That might be more answer than you're looking for."

[lightbearinglord]

With Magnus asking Sagramore questions again, and Sagramore answering at length, Lan Wangji is perfectly content to drift back into silence and listen. Little of this sounds familiar, aside from the fermented vegetables and a few of the fruits, but it's peaceful to absorb the information. In the meantime, he begins pulling the corn husks out of the water and patting them dry with towels.

[summerdude]

"Do you think one of those would be better than dates?" Magnus asks. He's looking at the dates. He likes them, likes how sticky-sweet they are, but they're not, like, revelatory to him the way they are to Sam. He's a little worried that they might be dry in all that masa. "Do you think any of the fruit you grew up with would work?" he asks. "It sounds like Turkish fruit is kinda similar to Iraqi fruit anyway." He sighs. "I guess we could also definitely use a Mexican fruit. Guava might be nice? But I also can't stop thinking that it would be cool to do a nod to Sam with these guys."

[sagramore]

"What about apricots? They're not too sweet -- they're used sometimes in meat dishes too. And if they're dried they won't add too much liquid to the masa."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji glances up from his quiet little husk-drying project. "Sizhui likes apricots," he offers. They are a fairly rare treat at the Cloud Recesses, where most meals are roughly the same day to day, but he had never been able to resist spoiling his favorite disciple just a little when returning from summer night-hunts.

[summerdude]

"Sizhui?" Magnus asks, trying -- as usual -- to pronounce it right. "Who's that?" To Sagramore, he says, "It's worth a shot, right?"

[sagramore]

"We might as well." But then he falls quiet, in case Lan Wangji wants to answer the question.

[lightbearinglord]

"Lan Sizhui," Lan Wangji corrects himself. "A Lan disciple. I have mentioned him to you." It's nearly the most evasive answer possible, which is objectively ridiculous. In this setting, he could as easily say Wen Yuan, who became Lan Yuan, who became Lan Sizhui, the only living remnant of everything that Wei Ying once stood, and ultimately died, for and suffer no consequences. Protective habits are not easy to break.

[summerdude]

"Oh, the one who's like," Magnus starts, and then cuts himself off, clearly amending his thought. "Really important to you?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji catches that redirection, but doesn't comment. "Yes." Really important to you is as good a description as any. He pauses in his work to think of Sizhui, whose birthday he recently missed, who was unerringly kind to Wei Ying from the moment of his resurrection, whose voice he hears, from time to time, when Magnus says Hanguang-jun! in that sweetly uncomplicated, trusting way. If not for A-Yuan, he would be a different, much colder man today.

[summerdude]

It would be so stupid for Magnus to get a little jealous at everything clearly packed inside that simple little 'yes,' so he absolutely totally 100% doesn't. "So let's try apricots, then!" he says. Honestly, if it turns out bad, it's everyone else's fault. They both know he doesn't know the first thing about how to make cooking work.