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's heart is beating nearly as quickly. He buries his face in Hanguang-jun's shoulder. He doesn't know if he's going to cry or not, but his face feels hot, so this feels like a safe move.

[lightbearinglord]

This is so much easier, so much safer and so much more familiar than trying to claw his way through all the words that never want to emerge. As he often does, Lan Wangji cradles the back of Magnus' head with one hand, tucking his face in place against the shoulder Magnus has chosen.

[summerdude]

On the one hand, Magnus is used to being disappointed by father figures who he loves. On the other hand, Hanguang-jun isn't his dad, no matter how much (in Magnus's heart of hearts) he fills that role now. Usually he's much, much better than Magnus's dad. In particular, he's proven, time and again, to be reliable. Maybe this is why it stung so much, to learn he hadn't thought to ask about Magnus.

But he's reliable. He's made up for the slight. As hurt as Magnus's feelings are, he can't deny that Hanguang-jun immediately went above and beyond when he realized that Magnus might want a message, too. Shouldn't that matter more than the thought not occurring to him in the first place? Why does Magnus still feel hurt? "Thank you for playing it again," Magnus mumbles, muffled partly by Hanguang-jun's robes. "I know you don't like him." He means: he's glad that, additional useful questions aside, Hanguang-jun's care for Magnus outweighs his distaste for Shen Yuan.

[lightbearinglord]

"You're welcome," Lan Wangji says quietly. He strokes Magnus' hair, just a few times, smoothing whatever dishevelment it took on during the impact of this hug. He doesn't like Shen Yuan, that is true, although he has begun inexorably to see a fuller, less off-putting picture of him during these two sessions of Inquiry. But there is almost nothing he would not do for Magnus.

[summerdude]

"Is it because he defended Luo Binghe?"

[lightbearinglord]

There is another careful silence, this time the silence of Lan Wangji gathering himself to tell this particular story. In some ways, it is more difficult to tell than the one he told Claudius at the end of winter. It is more recent; it is fresh, and none of its hurts have been redressed. Luo Binghe shares a house with them. There is no escaping him.

"I have told you that Claudius came to me when he was in pain. He could hardly bear it." He thinks he will never forget the painstaking care with which Claudius tried to hold himself upright or with which he tried to ask casually for a moment of Lan Wangji's time as if his request was for a passing whim. He knows he will never forget the guttural growl of pain that took him over despite his efforts. "At that time, Shen Yuan still went by the name Shen Qingqiu. He presented himself as an immortal cultivator. Because Claudius' ailment was unfamiliar to me and because I could not stop the pain, I took Claudius to Shen Yuan to ask for his help."

That is something else that rankles now: the way he bowed to Shen Yuan, low and respectful, afraid for his new friend and hopeful that they would find their answers. They did find them, but they found none of the wisdom and kindness they were seeking. "He spoke to Claudius as if his life meant nothing. He deflected. He told Claudius to swallow his pride and beg for mercy."

[summerdude]

Magnus frowns. That doesn't sound like Shen Yuan. "Was that, like, right after he got here?" he guesses, after a moment.

[lightbearinglord]

"It was not long after. Previously, he had brought Galahad to me, asking for my help with and opinion about his memory loss." With that additional detail, Lan Wangji hopes that what he means is clear. He had thought Shen Qingqiu to be kind, learned, and inclined toward helping others. It was a bitter disappointment to swallow, knowing that he had brought Claudius to someone who seemed, at most, academically interested in the matter of whether he lived or died.

[summerdude]

"So you were fine at first," Magnus says, frowning. He sits back. "I wonder if he knew anything about Luo Binghe besides, like, the book stuff at that point."

[lightbearinglord]

He lets Magnus go, for now. "Luo Binghe was his former disciple." Lan Wangji remembers that well, because he remembers asking Shen Qingqiu to use his authority over Luo Binghe to compel Claudius' freedom from pain.

[summerdude]

"Yeah, but like, a different Luo Binghe, right?"

[lightbearinglord]

"What?" He gives Magnus a blank look.

[summerdude]

"Right?" Magnus says, frowning and trying to remember. "Shen Yuan died and he went into the erotica novel with Luo Binghe in it and ended up in Shen Qingqiu, who had Luo Binghe as his disciple, but when he came here, it was a different Luo Binghe who never had Shen Yuan take over Shen Qingqiu's body. So they didn't know each other. And I guess Shen Qingqiu was pretty scummy."

[lightbearinglord]

Surprisingly, Lan Wangji knew most of this, or enough of it that he can follow the remainder. He knew that Shen Yuan was dead, naturally, and inhabiting the body of a cultivator named Shen Qingqiu; he knew that Luo Binghe came from a work of fiction written by Shang Qinghua. He knew that Shen Qingqiu was not a good man. He frowns a little as he slots together the rest of the information. "What difference does that make to the way Shen Yuan spoke to Claudius?"

[summerdude]

"I dunno, maybe he was scared, too? He, like, blusters a lot. When he's scared."

[lightbearinglord]

"Maybe." Shen Yuan is a mystery to him in many ways, if one that is slowly unraveling at its very edges thanks to their unwilling time together of late. He still can't understand how a man who feels such apparent tenderness for Magnus and Galahad could have been so flippant when faced with Claudius, pained and afraid for his life with tears threatening in his eyes. If that was a role he was playing, he considered the role more important than helping them or, if he truly could not help, offering any sincere kindness after delivering to Claudius the news that he could die at a moment's whim from Luo Binghe.

[summerdude]

"If you ever wanted to ask," Magnus half-jokes, "now would be the time."

[lightbearinglord]

"If he wants to explain himself to me, I would rather he do it of his own volition." It means little otherwise. In that, though, is contained the assumption that Shen Yuan will, indeed, be returning. Lan Wangji finds that he believes it.

[summerdude]

"Yeah," Magnus allows. "That makes sense."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji stays quiet, folding his hands together in his lap again. He has said his piece; Magnus can choose to accept the explanation or not. He is certainly not going to try any more stridently than that to argue for his own right to dislike a dead man, nor will he let go of the anger he still feels when he thinks of that moment.

[summerdude]

Magnus is actually on another topic entirely, now -- he feels too fragile to dwell on Hanguang-jun's dislike of Shen Yuan. "Hanguang-jun?"

[lightbearinglord]

Naturally, Lan Wangji glances back to Magnus immediately. He doesn't answer aloud, mired in his own fragility and creeping exhaustion, but it should be clear that he is ready to listen.

[summerdude]

"I think..." he starts, slowly.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji waits and listens, attentive, angling his body slightly more toward Magnus. Next to him, the spirit attraction flag, which he has neglected to put away just yet and which is still planted in the soil beside the steps where they are sitting, flutters fleetingly in another gust of the spring breeze.

[summerdude]

"I think maybe... I think maybe I'm not really doing so okay anymore."