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 think she rotates?" She said something about a lot of different people.

[onthewillowsthere]

For Galahad, who was raised by about thirty nuns, this seems not unreasonable. "Who is her favorite?"

[summerdude]

"Crowley, cuz he can turn into a snake and he takes care of her. And me." She hasn't said this, but Magnus wants it to be true so he's assuming. He hesitates for a moment, glancing sidelong at Galahad, and then carefully says, "She also, like, really likes your, um, uh, Lancelot?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He blinks. "Lancelot?"

[summerdude]

"She says he's nice and, like, insightful apparently? Kind of clueless about the, um, baby care stuff, but his girlfriend has that covered and he's otherwise, like... good."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Oh." He shells a few more chickpeas. "Good."

[summerdude]

Magnus reaches to help. "Yeah."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad keeps working in silence (working in silence is familiar, something he knows how to do. He used to have his chores in the nunnery) while he sifts through the grains of this. There is a small child here now, and she likes Lancelot among the best of the adults who have cared for her. Lancelot is good with children.

[summerdude]

Magnus is quiet, too, chewing on his lip while he shells more chickpeas. Should he say anything? Why does this feel so awkward? Like, it's an awkward topic, but usually he feels like he knows what to say with Galahad!

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you think--" he begins, and then presses his lips together, changing his mind. A moment later he says, instead, "Do you like him now?"

[summerdude]

He studies Galahad for a moment, again sidelong, trying to figure out what he was first going to ask. Then he shrugs. "I don't know. He's not the worst guy here."

[onthewillowsthere]

There is, he thinks, a part of him that wonders whether Lancelot would have been a good father, if he had been given the chance to be one, and how that might have changed things between them. But even as he wonders it, he doesn't want Lancelot to be his father. He still feels no need for any father at all, now that he no longer has God.

"He is not the worst guy," he agrees."

[summerdude]

"I think maybe he wants to get to know you better, but he feels like he'll be pressuring you too much if he asks. Or like it'll be, like, traumatic or something."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Traumatic?" His associations with trauma are the things Claudius has been through -- the brutality of his brother, his torture at Luo Binghe's hands -- and talking to Lancelot, even a bad conversation, falls shockingly short of that standard.

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "Cuz of Camelot, I think. Stuff his future self did."

[onthewillowsthere]

"That was a different Lancelot. Not him."

[summerdude]

"That's what I said," Magnus sighs, with an extravagant eye-roll. Underneath it, he feels, like, weirdly relieved that he... read his best friend right? Came to the correct conclusion that Galahad would also feel that way? What the Helheim is going on? Obviously Magnus would be right. He and Galahad are, like, mutually experts on each other at this point. Magnus shells some more chickpeas, movements slow.

[onthewillowsthere]

After several more minutes in silence, Galahad asks, "Are you all right?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah, why?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Your vibes are weird."

[summerdude]

Another few chickpeas shelled. Magnus is gonna become an expert at removing chickpeas from their pod-y fates. "Weird how?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad frowns at him -- that minute drawing-together of his brows, the slight thinning of his lips. He's not as good at reading Magnus as Claudius, but--

"You want to talk about something. But you aren't. You always talk about everything."

[summerdude]

Huh. Weird. Magnus has no idea what that's about. "Do I?"

[onthewillowsthere]

The tiny frown deepens. He could be wrong; he's not good at reading people.

[summerdude]

"Don't give me that look," Magnus says (begs? says), a spike of anxiety lancing through him. At this point it barely registers. "I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying... do I talk about everything? I have no idea."