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]

Magnus closes his eyes for a long, long moment. "What have I told you about my quests? Before here."

[onthewillowsthere]

"You told me about the one where Alex almost got married."

[summerdude]

"Percy said my community was my strength," Magnus muses, opening his eyes again. He tugs Galahad's hand, inviting him to lie down next to him. "Annabeth's boyfriend. The one Apollo was a huge dick to."

[onthewillowsthere]

He lets himself be drawn down to the grass, still in his cat-patterned apron, and keeps listening.

[summerdude]

"It's like, it's always on me," Magnus continues. "Dad said I was the last thing standing in the way of Ragnarok. I was sent on all these quests to help keep it from starting. My friends helped. The gods could have helped but mostly didn't. I— I know— you help me all the time. But I know how they all fit into quests, back home. I didn't have to think about it. I knew what I could ask and expect, and what I shouldn't." He shifts a little, knocking his head lightly against Galahad's. "And they were always shorter. Before. The quests. Like I said. A lot of stress and action and then done. This is a lot of stress and not a lot of action and I don't know when it will be done."

[onthewillowsthere]

"And you're tired."

[summerdude]

"I'm so tired. And I don't know what I can ask. And we decided -- Nina and Luo Binghe and I -- that we should keep Shen Yuan's stuff under wraps at first, because we didn't know what was going on, but now we do and I don't even know what we can do to prepare for, like, whatever's going to happen with the person." He glances over at Galahad. "Shen Yuan doesn't want to go into the body until the, um, threat has been dealt with. Because he doesn't want her to be able to fuck with his memory, since he knows things now."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad plucks a blade a grass and crinkles it between his fingers. "I think... you don't have to figure out what to do to prepare by yourself. We can talk to Claudius and Lan Wangji about it."

[summerdude]

Magnus blinks. "Huh."

[onthewillowsthere]

"They have both been to war. They have lived longer. They will know things."

[summerdude]

Magnus takes a deep breath and lets it go. "Okay."

[onthewillowsthere]

Very seriously, Galahad says, "I love you."

[summerdude]

"I love you too," Magnus says immediately, squeezing Galahad's hand. "That's never, ever going to change, dude, you know that, right?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I wasn't sure," he says, even though he would like to say I know -- he doesn't know how to lie. But he wasn't certain, in that moment when Magnus wasn't being normal, when he wasn't sure whether it was because he was training with Lan Wangji. He's used to stepping off that cliff, even if it hasn't happened often since he's come here. "I didn't understand what was wrong."

[summerdude]

There's another flare of guilt. "I'm sorry."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't understand people very well. I understand you because you always say what you mean. But you didn't," he tries to explain. "Claudius doesn't say what he means either, but he told me so from the beginning, so I knew. He told me to study him."

[summerdude]

"I don't know that I didn't--" Magnus sighs. "Maybe I didn't, but it wasn't, like. Exactly on purpose. Do you ever get, like, really frazzled, and it's hard to think through things clearly, because you're so focused on just trying to, like, get one foot in front of the other? And half the words you hear are just, like, Charlie Brown adult noises? Um, in the tv version, they just make these, like, trombone noises instead of words. And I just feel so freaking guilty all the time, and that makes it... hard. Like it swallows my own trombone noises. Does that, um. Does that make sense?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Was it a very long panic attack?"

[summerdude]

"Something like it, yeah. That's a good way of putting it."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods and begins tearing the grass blade into tiny pieces, and placing each piece on top of Magnus. "I think I understand."

[summerdude]

Magnus glances at Galahad again. "Yeah?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Sometimes, I feel as if my soul stops living within my body. I feel as if I'm watching it from far away and can't get back inside it. It used to happen often. Less now." He plucks another blade of grass to begin sprinkling deliberately on Magnus. "It didn't happen when Shen Yuan died, because I had to take care of Claudius. But after Nina told us there was something that could be done, and Claudius began to feel better, he didn't need me in the same way, and I became... unattached."

[summerdude]

Magnus rolls over, dislodging all of Galahad's hard work with the grass, and flings an arm over his chest, pulling him in for a cuddle. "Yeah," he says; he's not given to disassociation himself, but he's pretty sure it's in the same ballpark. Like two different Valhalla recycling chutes dumping einherji escaping to Boston in two different parts of Fenway, or whatever. Guiltily, he adds, "I'm sorry I wasn't there."

[onthewillowsthere]

He settles against Magnus' chest. "I wasn't there either." It's a joke, but he also means: he was training with Lan Wangji, and taking care of Claudius, and maybe this whole thing got out of hand because of both of them.

[summerdude]

Magnus snorts, because he's reattuned to Galahad's sense of humor, and then sighs. "Do you think I'm gonna stop feeling so, like, guilty all the time? Eventually?" he asks, quiet, vulnerable. He's talked about it with Alex, but he's Magnus's one respite from all of this -- unlike with Galahad, almost none of the guilt is attached to him -- so Galahad's answer feels differently important.