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]

Lan Wangji is quite content to lapse into companionable silence as the three of them work together. He makes his way through his quantity of peppers, roasting them one by one and then setting them aside to rest. In the interim, he examines the large pot that is still simmering. Determining that the pork is ready enough, he commences wielding forks for the first time in his life in order to remove those pieces of meat and begin shredding them.

[summerdude]

Magnus looks over -- he's finally whipped the lard to the consistency described in the recipe, and he's about to add the masa. "If you hold them upside down the shredding is easier," he says, helpfully. "Not, like, upside down by the tines upside down, but upside down the hump thingy is up upside down."

[sagramore]

Sagramore glances over from mixing the sweet dough and laughs.

[lightbearinglord]

Perhaps Lan Wangji deserves that laugh after thoughtlessly handing chopsticks to Sagramore a few months ago. As instructed, he gamely flips over those forks and resumes his work. "Thank you."

[summerdude]

"Sure thing, dude. I had the hardest time as a kid, switching between chopsticks and forks like every other day."

[sagramore]

"You grew up with both?"

[lightbearinglord]

Naturally, Lan Wangji prefers the precision and control of chopsticks, but he has to admit that these implements are proving effective at reducing the pork to shreds. He continues to listen to Magnus and Sagramore as he completes that task, setting aside the bones for making stock later. He returns the shredded pork to its vessel, in which most of the liquid has reduced, and then fetches that sauce. It takes him a moment to work out how to separate the blender from the base (also known as the part that prompts it to make such ear-splitting noises), but he does manage it so that he can pour the sauce over the pork and give it all a brisk but controlled stir with -- of course -- his trusty cooking chopsticks.

[summerdude]

"Oh yeah, me and my mom lived in an apartment above a KBBQ place when I was growing up." Magnus stops, still mixing his masa, and then amends without prompting, "Korean barbecue. Uh, Korea is also in Asia, so: chopsticks. It's, like, this peninsula to the east? North-east? of China. We'd eat at the restaurant a bunch on days when mom was too tired to cook. It was a family-run place and the grandma took it upon herself to make sure I knew how to use chopsticks."

[sagramore]

It's all mixing over here, alternating dry and wet ingredients into the whipped lard. "You've lived a fascinating life."

[lightbearinglord]

A peninsula to the northeast. Lan Wangji thinks Magnus must be referring to Samhan, but he was unaware that they had such renowned barbecue. He supposes he must be grateful that someone from that region taught Magnus to eat properly. He coaxes the heat up a little to convince the contents of this pot to return to a simmer.

[summerdude]

"I think it was pretty normal," Magnus tells Sagramore, and then -- briefly forgetting his audience -- jokes, "I have died a pretty interesting death, though."

[sagramore]

Sagramore manages to restrain himself from saying anything, but he grimaces.

[lightbearinglord]

"Magnus," Lan Wangji says quietly. It is the kind of quiet that once made all of his students snap their attention to him at once, a quiet considerably more effective than raising his voice. It's not a reprimand, only a reminder.

[summerdude]

"...sorry, Hanguang-jun," Magnus says, immediately recalcitrant, and very bravely doesn't start to argue that it's true, though.

[sagramore]

Magnus isn't his child, and he's nearly old enough to be Gareth, Sagramore reminds himself sternly. It's not his place to fuss about Magnus' life or his death. He focuses on the tamale mixture instead.

[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.