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

[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."

[lightbearinglord]

There is some tiny measure of relief in the admission -- only because it means that Lan Wangji has not been deluding himself, that he does know how to read Magnus, that he was right to worry. His face softens, subtly but unmistakably, with concern. He considers his options, and then tugs Magnus close again with a firm arm around his shoulders.

[summerdude]

Magnus leans against him. "I think maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew. Like, by myself."

[lightbearinglord]

"With Shen Yuan's body?" Lan Wangji prompts. There must be more, but he hopes this will invite Magnus to explain at more length. He squeezes Magnus' shoulder.

[summerdude]

"With, like, everything."

[lightbearinglord]

"Tell me," Lan Wangji says, and it's gentle, inasmuch as he can sound gentle when he is this weary, but it is a command.

[summerdude]

"There's just -- so much to take care of," Magnus says. "Like, obviously I'm fine with a lot of responsibility, but it's a lot."

[lightbearinglord]

"Claudius will help you with Shen Yuan's body," Lan Wangji says again. "Tell me what else is burdening you."

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "It's just, like, everything?" he says. "There's so much to do every day, and it was, like, fine at first, because being busy felt good, but even my longest quests back home didn't last more than a week or two, tops."

[lightbearinglord]

Everything and so much, while evocative, do very little to illuminate to Lan Wangji what it is that has Magnus so bothered. He shifts a little again, so that he is facing Magnus, keeping a hand at his shoulder. He makes eye contact. "What is there to do? What is this quest you are on?" And, for the third time, he tries a direct order: "Tell me."