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]

Lancelot does not want to point out to Magnus that by that point he was already likely over-cold and probably dissociating. Instead he says, "I was rather distracted, thinking about what else I needed to bring to Lan Wangji."

[summerdude]

"I have no idea why you'd be distracted," Magnus allows. "It's not like there was a lot going on or anything."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"You're very funny, did you know that?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah," Magnus grins. "If I hadn't been recruited into Odin's army of eternal super-warriors by my untimely death I could've gone into stand-up."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Explain 'stand up'?" Though this is a clear, open question and not the short directive it sometimes is.

[summerdude]

"Oh. It's a kind of comedy. Someone stands up on a stage and tells jokes. They interact with the audience and stuff too, I guess." He shudders. Public speaking is not his idea of a good time. "I've never actually seen one because in Valhalla if they don't like your joke they kill you and sometimes a guy wants to only be a body once per day, you know? But sometimes we'd do, like, mini talent shows with the kids at the Chase Space, and one or two of them would tell jokes, so that's, like -- similar, probably."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I see. A performance."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, basically."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Perhaps," with a note of teasing, "it is better that you were offered the opportunity to become a super-warrior, then."

[summerdude]

Magnus sighs heavily. "I guess. At least I don't have to deal with being in front of an audience this way."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"You don't like to perform for an audience?"

[summerdude]

"Gods no."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I find it can be very exciting."

[summerdude]

"You like audiences?" Magnus asks, shocked.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Only under certain circumstances," he clarified.

[summerdude]

"Fighting doesn't count," says Magnus, immediately, going to check the recipe a third time to make sure everything necessary is in the food processor bowl.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Then, no. I don't."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, that's what I thought." What Magnus means is that he's the same way -- fighting in front of other people doesn't count; up until he started training with Lancelot, all his fighting had an edge to it, a sense of being observed. Partly because most of it was in the form of a hundreds-of-thousands-strong daily Battle Practice where everyone wanted to see if the Vanir-spawn would ever be able to hold his own. Also, in the course of their near-daily training, he's started to get the sense that there are ways in which he and Lancelot are pretty similar, actually. Luckily he's come around enough on the guy that this doesn't horrify him. Whether Lancelot groks his true meaning is another matter entirely.

Meanwhile, Magnus, satisfied that everything that needs to be in the food processor is in the food processor, attaches the lid and tries to pulse it. But for some reason, the chickpeas don't grind? They just shoot around the bowl like little projectiles.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Magnus might be surprised to learn (if he ever does) that Lancelot was sincere in this -- he does very much enjoy an audience when fighting is involved, provided that fighting is for sport. He often felt at his best on tourney days; he knew what the crowds, what the Queen, expected, and he knew how to give them that. This resulted in their praise, adulation, and it was almost a side benefit that it helped to justify all of the time and effort and the sheer quantity of his life that had gone toward training.

Even outside of that, it was one of the few places where he could show open devotion to Guinever. If he was the Queen's Champion, wearing her favor while he won a match (of any kind), then it was right to publicly present himself to her, for her, it was right to receive her attentions upon winning. That, too, helped to make all his work worthwhile: her love, her praise, the ability to show everyone why she favored him.

He does miss that. He does miss Guinever. He gets, he thinks, what Magnus is saying, though, so he doesn't argue.

When Magnus starts the food processor, he finally moves closer. "I'm not sure," he says, mildly, "it's supposed to do that."

[summerdude]

"No," says Magnus, glumly, turning the processor off and then on again to see if it'll do anything different this time. It doesn't.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Should they be softer?"

[summerdude]

"I soaked them! It said to soak them and I did!" Magnus turns the processor off again, takes off the lid, and takes out a chickpea. When he squeezes it between his fingers, it splits in half, but doesn't smush at all, and he's using a lot of his strength. "How long do you even have to soak these things for them to work?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Did it say how long? Perhaps there is a cookbook here that will tell us."

[summerdude]

There are like ten different cookbooks laid out around the kitchen. Magnus picks one at random and starts leafing through it, frowning.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot takes up another book, leafing through as well. As he does, he says, "What about the other sorts of-- beans?"