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]

He hadn't been looking -- due to the aforementioned strawberry topping -- and he glances up.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji has a new theory. The mansion is an experiment designed to coax him into humiliating himself. The tips of his ears turn a little pink. "I like whatever fruit Wei Ying wants to eat from my hand," he says, as evenly as possible.

[summerdude]

"Oh." Magnus blinks. "That's cool. Wait, that's a thing?" He tries to picture feeding Alex these tamales, but all he can envision is Alex lightly stabbing him a little for trying to feed him tamales. Well, that might be nice, too. What's a little stabbing when you're in love and can heal from it in like five minutes?

[sagramore]

Ah. A grin overtakes Sagramore's mouth, with a slow-spreading inevitability, as if there's nothing he could do but grin. He withholds comment, but he appreciates it.

[lightbearinglord]

"It is a thing." Lan Wangji's thoughts want dangerously to drift again: Wei Ying's mouth, sticky-sweet, the tilt of his smile, the freckles he begins to sport in the summer. At least Lan Wangji has considerable practice at thinking indecent thoughts about Wei Ying without showing it. He begins, at last, to lay out the corn husks so he can begin assembling the pork tamales.

[summerdude]

Magnus thinks about it for another moment, then nods. "I get it," he says, and then he glances back over at Lan Wangji and what he's doing. He immediately abandons his cheese. If it wasn't enough when he asked before, it definitely is enough now. "Oh, dude, this is the the only part I'm good at."

[sagramore]

He laughs. "Don't deny him his only talent."

[lightbearinglord]

It is tempting to protest that Magnus has many talents, but Lan Wangji catches himself before he fails to take the joke appropriately. "Then show me how it is done," he says to Magnus.

[summerdude]

"I mean, I bet you can do it really well too," Magnus says, a touch apologetic. He lays out a corn husk, and then puts a smear of masa on it. "But I've trained in proportions exhaustively." He flexes his bicep, 99.9% to be silly. It's not actually all that impressive. He does have actual muscles, thanks to dying, but they don't look like much.

True to his word, though, he's actually extremely good at filling, wrapping, and tying tamales. He does the steps slowly, glancing between Sagramore and Lan Wangji while he does it, just in case they have any questions.

To Sagramore, he says, primly, "I'd say I'm also good at simping, but I guess arguably I think this fits into that umbrella."

[sagramore]

"Please tell me what that means." Sagramore is watching his hands, picking up the steps.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji, too, observes as Magnus completes a few of the tamales. Once he is sure of the technique, he steps back in and starts on doing it himself as he awaits an explanation of the word simping.

[summerdude]

"It's kind of like being a wife guy on steroids," Magnus explains, and then realizes that this is another bunch of words both of the adult-shaped adults in the room might struggle to understand. "Um, like, when you're like super devoted to someone you love?" Peaceably, he adds, "I think some people joke about simps being pathetic but I think it's only right."

[sagramore]

"Could you argue that I'm both a wife guy and a simp?"

[lightbearinglord]

If considerable devotion is the qualifying factor for this terminology, then surely Lan Wangji qualifies easily. For every order he issues to Wei Ying, there are a thousand fleeting moments at which he is blazingly aware that there is nothing Wei Ying could not coax him into doing or giving. He looks from Sagramore to Magnus. "And me?"

[summerdude]

"Oh, sure," Magnus says, easily. With all the conviction of a young man who has no way of fathoming any possible way this might have the possibility of getting back to his partner at any point in the future -- and certainly not the imminent future -- he says, "I'm a wife guy and a simp. It's all in your state of mind, not your, like, actual marital status or sexual orientation or anything. If you search your heart and find that it feels true, then it's gotta be true."

[sagramore]

Sagramore puts down the strawberry knife and holds up his hands for double high fives. "To wife guys such as we, then."

[lightbearinglord]

Ah; Lan Wangji knows this one, thanks to Mothwing and, subsequently, Magnus. He slaps one of Sagramore's hands, remembering just in time to temper his strength so that it merely constitutes a firm, resounding smack rather than an impact that will actually hurt Sagramore.

[summerdude]

"Hella," says Magnus, also slapping five and also tempering his strength. Then he goes to wash his hands again, since he's handling food and everything.

[sagramore]

Sagramore looks very pleased at having gotten this right, and goes back to finishing up the strawberries as efficiently as he can.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji watches as Magnus washes his hands, then decides he may as well follow suit. The importance of cleanliness is one of those lessons that he could likely recite on his deathbed, thanks to Uncle. Once that is finished, he returns to wrapping tamales. It isn't too difficult, and there's a pleasant rhythm to the repetitive task.

[summerdude]

"I'm so glad high fives are spreading," Magnus says, turning back to his tamales, too. This stage of things is meditative. He could be filling-and-folding guy any time.

[sagramore]

Once the strawberries are finished he divides the masa he was working on and adds them to the one half -- the other half will get chopped apricots.

"Is this finished, then?" indicating the strawberry batch. "Ready for folding?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji looks to Magnus, who is the authority on tamales if not the authority on cooking generally. "Unless there is anything else Magnus knows that the book does not."

[summerdude]

"I mean, there needs to be a filling inside the masa, right?"

[sagramore]

"Not for the sweet ones, right? Everything is just mixed together. I could be wrong," he adds, because -- obviously -- Magnus is the authority.