You Say Overkill, I Say Due Diligence [open post]

[summerdude]

Magnus copies the sign onto seven different pieces of paper. It reads:

WANT TO LEARN NEW SKILLS? ME FREAKING TOO. I (Magnus Chase) Will Trade Lessons In Any Of The Following For Something You Know:

• ASL (Alf/American Sign Language)


• Camping (pitching tents, campfire safety, celestial navigation)


• What To Do If You Find Yourself Lost In The World Tree Yggdrasil


• Pickpocketing (But only if you promise to use it for good (stealing ONLY from dickhead rich people) and ONLY if you have to!)


• Swordfighting for Beginners (I am intermediate but Jack is advanced and he can help!)


• What It REALLY Feels Like To Die (NOT ADVICE!!!)


• (Trans)Gender Identity and Fluidity (from the perspective of a cis guy) (Alex-approved content only)


• What To Do If The God You're Talking To Is Super Obnoxious Particular


• Why Falafel is the Best Food in the World

All skills welcome! But if you know any of the following I am especially interested: Cooking, Geometry, How To Declare Your Love To Your Partner, Hand-to-Hand Combat, Balancing a Budget, Writing Poetry, Social Studies, Codebreaking.

(Sorry but I will not learn pottery from anyone but ♥Alex Fierro♥. I hope you understand.)

PS if there's enough interest we can maybe do full classes where everybody gets to take turns teaching and learning?

He adds a note about the areas where he can most frequently be found and then posts one sign in each of the two kitchens he's encountered, one by the welcome table, one on the door to the greenhouses, one in the library, one on his bedroom door, and one by what he believes to be the most-populated lounge. Then, with a great deal of eager anticipation, he goes about his day.


[A note from Magnus's typist: Open indefinitely!]

Comments

[timebethine]

Laertes immediately recognizes it, that flourishing swish (like a foil, he thinks, a light and whippy blade), and grins. "Couldst show me the sheath of it again? I missed that part."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, for sure," Magnus says, and repeats the motion, much more slowly. "You can also just do it one-handed, with the swish. It means the same basic thing."

[timebethine]

"Like saying only 'didst' instead of 'thou didst'--the conjugation implies the subject, as the act of unsheathing implies the sheath," says Laertes musingly. He copies the motion, but makes an L for the sheath. "This might make a fine name. It's pleasing to my hands."

[summerdude]

"That's good," Magnus says. "That's important. You want a name to feel right." Lightly blushing, he adds, "I was also kinda thinking-- I mean, obviously, pick what works for you, or have someone you really care about pick for you, but..." He makes two fists, one on top of the other, and bumps them together, first with the backs of his hands facing outward, then his knuckles. Then he repeats the gesture, but instead makes an L with his top hand on the second bump.

[timebethine]

Laertes copies the gesture--he mirrors, at first, left hand doing what Magnus's right hand does, then corrects himself. "What does it mean?"

[summerdude]

"Make," Magnus says. "Or create." He gives Laertes a crooked smile. "It seemed appropriate. Plus --" and this is something he privately finds very funny and cute; he's been thinking about sign names for everyone here since Galahad gave him a new one, and about this possibility in particular since Nina started to teach him about flirting -- "your husband likes coffee, right? The sign for that is really similar." He demonstrates this, dominant hand maintaining contact and moving in a circle instead of bumping against his other fist. "You could just... exaggerate the S, I guess. If you wanted to match."

Something occurs to him, then. "And actually you had it right the first time; I'm left-handed so I have a different dominant hand. The dominant hand goes on top."

[timebethine]

"Oh--make." For a long moment, Laertes just sits there, practicing the sign, first with and then without the L.

It's overwhelming to him, that the first thing people think about when they think of him is no longer the sword. It's no longer his gentlemanly graces, his polite manners. The first things that Magnus thinks of are the things he shapes with care and straining hope, like the boat or the tarte tatin.

Magnus threw off the sign of the crown and embraced the sunlight, and it shines in him. He is more than his father's summer; he is a light all his own, and he illuminates everyone he touches so that they might better see themselves.

"Yes," says Laertes quietly. "Yes, that is a fine name."

[summerdude]

"You like it?" Magnus asks, half-eager and half-embarrassed. "You don't have to keep it if you don't want to, though. Like I said."

[timebethine]

"I love it," says Laertes. His voice is a little thick; he clears his throat and continues, "And I like Sagramore's, too, although I'll happily call him by any name he chooses." He signs S-coffee idly, making sure to mirror rather than reverse Magnus's signs.

[summerdude]

Magnus hesitates for a moment, still a little flushed, then says, "The sign I've been using the most since I got here is this one," and hooks his index fingers together twice, switching the orientation of his hands in between. "It means friend."

[timebethine]

"Ay, Galahad showed me that one--I think I'll use it often." And he signs Magnus, friend, easily and fluently, as though it is the most natural thing in the world to say.

[summerdude]

Magnus grins. Laertes, friend, he signs back. And then, signing and talking at the same time, he says, "Oh, dude, on that note --" (it's not) "-- I figured it out."

[timebethine]

"Oh?" Figured it out is a fun one to copy, both hands making vees.

[summerdude]

It occurs to Magnus, abruptly, that he's calling back to a conversation they had nearly three weeks -- four weeks? In Mansion time? Twenty days -- ago. Oh well, nothing to for it; Laertes is the one who really got him thinking about this in the first place, so Magnus is going to tell him. "How--" old he is? Long he's been dead? "--long I've been around," he says. "Aziraphale told me what year it was, back home."

[timebethine]

"How old art thou?" Laertes asks, leaning forward a little.

[summerdude]

"Twenty-four," Magnus says, and wrinkles his nose. "Aziraphale said I could count my age as the years since I'd been born, not just when I died. Except Hanguang-jun said I didn't have to be sixteen or twenty-four or an ageless being. I can just pick."

For Hanguang-jun, without thinking, he makes the following sign: Hand, held up, fingers outstretched and palm out; thumb tapping against his temple and then dragged across his forehead like a head ribbon.

[timebethine]

Laertes copies that sign, too, committing it to memory. "What hast thou chosen--hast thou chosen?"

[summerdude]

Magnus touches the jade token hanging next to his Jack pendant for a moment, and then continues signing and talking: "I haven't, yet," he says, and smiles at Laertes. "I know I don't feel sixteen, but I know I look sixteen, and that's about as far as I've gotten. What do you think?"

[timebethine]

Laertes considers the question, sitting back with his hands sinking into the mossy ground. "When I was sixteen," he says slowly, "I held myself apart from boys of mine own age. In part because I was awakening to new desire, which I was at great pains to conceal--but in greater part because I had been trained since mine earliest youth to do nothing foolish or immoderate that might stain my father's reputation. And so I fear I missed much of what other boys learned, in each other's company. Now, although I've passed thirty years, a part of me that was held frozen at sixteen is beginning to quicken and thaw ... and I think it may be the same for thee, as well. Twenty-four thou mayest be, but that part of thee that was sixteen still craves fulfillment."

[summerdude]

Magnus reflects on this seriously for a few long moments. His signs are slower, more reflective when he starts talking again. "My mom died and I went on the run when I was fourteen," he says. "I don't know if that makes me feel younger or older. I don't really have an easy, like, way to compare my stuff to anyone else's, though. Two years on the streets, and then I died, and then eight in Valhalla. And now I'm here." He quirks a smile at Laertes. "Sounds like you don't either though, dude. Do you mean -- you don't have to say. But. Desire for guys?"

[timebethine]

"Ay, and women, too--but that much, I might have shared with them, if I dared." He shrugs a little. "For all that, I led an easy life. I never wanted for food or shelter. My father yet lives, and loves me, and would do all in his power to see me untouched by suffering or scandal. I don't mean to set myself within thy sphere. Only ... only, I suppose, to say that thou art not alone."

[summerdude]

Magnus gives Laertes an assessing sort of look. Slowly, guessing with each word, he says, "Just because a dad loves you and doesn't want you hurt, doesn't mean it's actually... easy. Especially when people have a particular, like, image of him."

[timebethine]

Laertes privately notes that the sign for dad looks almost identical to the sign for Hanguang-jun, but it's only a passing thought. "Ay," he says, remembering all he'd said under the influence of the truth spell. "When I was traveling abroad, he set spies on me, and hired my friends to inform on all my doings--and only then did I realize that he must have done the same in Denmark. His way of loving was to exert control in all things, and even mine own mind became an instrument to that purpose. I knew no greater virtue than discipline, unless it was moderation. And still there was no thing I could be that would please him. He ... he loves me, but I doubt he likes me. And he would like me less, to know all that I've done here. He would see my happiness as a problem to be managed, and manage it he would."

[summerdude]

That's so fucked up??? That's so fucked up. Magnus considers his words for a second.

"My father," he says, finger-spelling F-R-E-Y instead of signing 'dad,' "Is one of the good ones, I guess. He loved my mom, and sometimes he helps me out on my quests to save the world." He shrugs. "Loki tries to command everything Sam and Alex do. Including their heartbeats, if they're fighting him. Mr. Alderman -- my friend Hearthstone's dad -- wanted him to be a different son than the one he was. Not Deaf, for one, but also willing to fall in line with Mr. Alderman's picture of a perfect, like, I don't know. I hesitate to say 'family.'" A reflexive, fleeting grin. "I should probably say that I've defeated Loki in a couple of different ways, and Mr. Alderman twice. I, um. Got Mr. Alderman turned into a ring dragon, and then I killed him, and accidentally ate his hearts-blood. That's why I can talk to animals."

It's not an offer, per se, but Magnus does think that all his friends who clearly have really bad dads should know that his main talent, besides being a good friend, is defeating bad dads.

[timebethine]

Laertes blinks. "An thou art offering to turn my father into a dragon, please stay thy hand."