New Plan, Step One: Provide For My Community [open]

[summerdude]

Magnus needs something to change, so when a Mansion calendar helpfully informs him that it's International Falafel Day back on Earth, he goes to the library for some cookbooks, and then to the kitchen.

He lays out ten different falafel recipes. He gathers the ingredients they list, as best as he can understand them. He has canned chickpeas and fresh chickpeas and dried chickpeas and chickpea flour and box mixes of falafel that say 'just add water!'

Cripes.

"I can do this," he says, peering at the assorted recipes intently for a good ten minutes, and then takes the dried chickpeas over to the sink to rinse and soak.

Comments

[summerdude]

"I figured I'd get Sunny to help me after her nap, but yeah."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He chuckles, and says with mild disbelief, "Sunny?"

[summerdude]

"Oh, have you not met her yet? She's the best. She's about this big--" he stretches his hands apart, indicating roughly the size of a watermelon "--um, she's a baby, to be clear. I thought I'd have her open cans, maybe help prep the herbs. Shape the balls, that sort of thing."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"No, I have met her -- she is delightful." Lancelot's expression lightens in that way it often does when he has found an unexpected connection with someone. "But... I grant that I know very little about babies, but could she do all of those things?"

[summerdude]

"Oh, totally. Have you seen her teeth?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He's perplexed, "Well, yes, but--"

[summerdude]

"She could probably out-bite Drosera," Magnus says, fondly. "She can definitely open cans."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Can-- can all babies do such things?"

[summerdude]

"Dude, you think I've ever met a baby before Sunny?" Fortunately, there is an age minimum for getting into Valhalla. Magnus made it by one (1) day.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot gives one of his illustrative shrugs, "I don't know what others know. I only know that I know very little."

[summerdude]

"You and me both," says Magnus, neatly ignoring the fact that this is a greater overture toward camaraderie than he usually grants Lancelot. To date, he's mostly conspired to hang out with Sunny after someone has changed her, and let her hang out with someone else when it's starting to seem like maybe someone ought to change her again soon. So far no one has said anything about it to him, so he's pretty sure he's getting away with it.

"She's pretty good about telling me what she needs, though." He's also been trying to do some reading, but it turns out that What To Expect When You're Expecting isn't altogether helpful with a baby Sunny's age.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"How so? When she was with Susan, it felt we were... almost guessing." That's not quite fair to Susan, but it's certainly true of Lancelot.

[summerdude]

"With her words." Magnus has, by now, figured out that for whatever reason, he's like the only person here who can understand her words -- thanks, Mr. Alderman? -- so he is being something of a little shit, as per.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"She does not yet speak English."

[summerdude]

"Really? Huh. You don't say."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot gives him A Look.

[summerdude]

Magnus laughs. "Look, I don't know for sure why I can understand her, I just can. Plain as day."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Well, that is useful," he allows.

[summerdude]

Since Lancelot has (Magnus is forced to admit) been demoted from 'worst guy here' for weeks, if not months, now, he says, "She likes you, you know. She wasn't sure of you at first but she thinks you're really... nice." And since Magnus does genuinely like being impertinent to authority figures even if he does think they're mostly okay, he makes a face, then, like wild, right?

(The fact that his own impression of Lancelot could be argued to have followed somewhat of a similar, if longer, trajectory clearly doesn't bear mentioning.)

[lanselos_du_lac]

If Lancelot was aware of how pleased he looks at hearing this, he might be a little embarrassed. But he says, "She is probably right to be skeptical-- Susan knew what to do and I know nothing, except that I enjoyed seeing Sunny happy."

[summerdude]

"Dude, you and me both," Magnus says, and chooses not to confide his very strategic plan to not have to change any diapers. "You, uh. Haven't spent a lot of time around babies?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Sunny is the first baby I've held," a little shrug, "I haven't been much around small children since I was, myself, a child."

[summerdude]

Magnus squints at him. He knows that Galahad hadn't met Lancelot until he was sixteen, but it's still tough to square never held a baby with father of my best friend even so. "Huh," he says, ever the eloquent communicator.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot gives a helpless shrug, "I was a knight, and unmarried. I had little opportunity to see infants, once I was more than a boy myself."

[summerdude]

Magnus tilts his head. "I'm gonna assume this is, like, complicated or whatever," he acknowledges, which goes to show just how far he's come on the guy, "given, like, everything about the situation, but do you wish you knew Galahad as a baby?"