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]

"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?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

He has one of those moments, where he worries he might slip sideways -- just the question on its own brings up a rush, a surge of emotions, none of which he can grasp. He thinks, given when he was at Corbenic, how long he was at court before he came here, and how long he has been here, that Galahad must, in his own time, be there. A baby, less than a year old. Smaller than Sunny. He can't even make himself imagine how small, what it might be like to see or hold him. It makes him dizzy to even think this far on it, to say nothing of the rest of the swirl of thoughts or wishes or... anything else.

Lancelot takes a little breath and forces himself to focus on Magnus, the array of ingredients, the kitchen. Here. He says, carefully simple, "Yes. I do."

[summerdude]

"You didn't even know about him when you came here, right?" See, Lancelot, he was listening all of those times he was lecturing you on fatherhood!

[lanselos_du_lac]

He shakes his head. "I did not. When he said-- when he said I was his father, that first day, I thought it must be a lie. A trick."

[summerdude]

Magnus slouches against the counter. "Yeah," he says -- admits, really. "I guess I can see that."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I had been deceived before," he says, as if any other explanation is needed.

[summerdude]

"Yeah. Okay."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He takes another deep breath. "So."

[summerdude]

"Anywaaaaaayyyy," Magnus drawls.

He has two options here: to drag the conversation back to something maybe-safer, like how great Sunny is, or to double down. Lancelot isn't, like, bearing a naked blade right now though, and while they have training later, Lancelot probably won't hurt him then, either.

So of course he doubles down. "What do you want with him now?"