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

[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?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Almost immediately, he says, "Only what Galahad is willing to give."

It has the sense of something predetermined, if not rehearsed, but it's clearly sincere.

[summerdude]

"But, like, ideally?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I would like to know him better. To spend time with him." He takes another breath, "It is not my place to ask for these things. I have caused him enough harm, and I would rather see him happy."

[summerdude]

Magnus studies Lancelot for a long moment. "I'm, like, pretty sure he doesn't think of you as his dad," he says. He hasn't asked, and Galahad hasn't said specifically, but he's pretty sure it's as much because Lancelot is different from the guy Galahad knew in Camelot as it is because (he thinks) Galahad never really thought of the other, older Lancelot as his dad in any consistent way either.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Fair enough, but I don't see what difference that makes."

[summerdude]

"It means -- well, in your opinion, what harm have you caused him?" There's the obvious, of course, but Galahad has told Magnus that he forgave Lancelot for that. That's the only reason Magnus had that first serious conversation with Lancelot in the first place.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I am sure he has spoken of it to you. How I failed him both before he came to court and after."

[summerdude]

"I thought you said you didn't know about him before you got here."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I didn't. But I have been told of what things were like, what I was like, in his time and Sagramore's."

[summerdude]

Something about this isn't connecting for Magnus, and he finds himself frustrated. He turns to run his hand through the wet chickpeas, which are still all hard as little rocks. "Explain to me how that's, like, you though?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot's brow furrows, "How is it not? It is not as if it was some other man. Both he and Sagramore knew me on sight, even if I am younger than they recalled."