YOU Get A Big Banana, and YOU Get A Big Banana, and YOU Get A Big Banana! [closed post]

[summerdude]

"Okay, just another minute," Magnus says.

It's a hot day out, so holding Galahad's hand is a sweaty affair... and Magnus's current use of his alf seidr isn't making matters any more comfortable. The grass is tickling at Magnus's back -- his shirt has ridden up while he lies, spread-eagle, in the middle of the lawn. Galahad is always so smart about his clothes, Magnus bets he's not getting the grass itches at all.

But he can put all that aside. Grass tickles are good tickles, and the heat of the sun is -- to Magnus -- always more refreshing than it is annoying. There's a trickle of sweat at the side of his neck, but even though it's hot out it's not really a temperature extreme, so as usual he feels regular about it.

All his attention is on the plants around them. Feverfew and milkweed, black-eyed susan and queen anne's lace, aster and boneset and flowering spurge and yarrow and tickseed and teasel and wild thyme and forget-me-nots and poppies and and and -- well. He's not sure what else is in the mix. He's been trying to get better at plant identification with Claudius's guidance, but the package he found earlier that morning only said FIELD SEEDS. He's doing his best! Right now, his 'best' is less focused on identification and more focused on growing them to flower, high enough that some of them are providing shade to both him and Galahad, in a very neat outline of the grass they've politely crushed between the two of them.

Eventually, he's done all he can without overtaxing the plants. "There," he tells Galahad. "Summer snow angels, check."

Comments

[summerdude]

"Okay, so... His face is, like," Magnus gestures in the vague shape of it. "Square-ish, I guess? Strong jaw. His chin gets pointy when he grins. And his whole face gets caught up in it."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad begins to sketch. Hearing Magnus say it, he does remember the way Percival's smile takes up his whole face.

[summerdude]

"He has dimples," Magnus says, poking his own cheeks in the appropriate places. "His eyes are a little more deepset than ours, but not by much, and he has these straight eyebrows. Thinner than mine, thicker than yours."

[onthewillowsthere]

Percival has dimples. Galahad's body suddenly feels tight and fever-hot as he sketches.

[summerdude]

"His nose is kind of... flat and broad? But still kind of pointy. Um." Magnus frowns, closing his eyes, calling up the memory. "It's like, big-ish. Broad. Looks like someone pressed the tip of it, like putting a thumbprint on a cookie, so it squished a little but rose back a little, too." ...Do cookies rise? Magnus resolves to find out.

[onthewillowsthere]

A broad nose, as if someone had pressed a thumb to it. Galahad tries to imagine pressing Percival's nose. He thinks Percival would have laughed, the big, warm laugh that made Galahad feel as if he were the only person in the world who mattered, that made him feel as dizzy as exertion after fasting. Magnus makes him feel special, but the difference in the way he feels about them seems obvious right now. He loves Magnus. He wanted to sleep with Percival.

Even as he thinks it, he feels a keen bolt of shame. Desire may be a sin he's chosen to indulge, one he loves to share with his husband, but Percival is holy. It's not right to think about him like that.

He concentrates on the shape of Percival's nose under his charcoal pencil instead.

[summerdude]

"Dude, I don't know what you're thinking, but whatever it is, don't think it," Magnus tells him, after Galahad's face does a (tiny, but -- to Magnus -- extremely loud) thing. "Or else I, um... I won't tell you about his mouth."

[onthewillowsthere]

His mouth. That makes it worse! For a moment, Galahad indulges himself by just burying his face in his hands.

[summerdude]

Magnus squints at Galahad for a long moment. "It's fine to be horny about him and not just in love with him," he guesses. "If that's what this is about. It's normal to be horny about people you like."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's not fine. It dishonors him."

[summerdude]

"Why?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Because he's holy."

[summerdude]

"Okay?" Magnus blinks at Galahad. "I'm gonna need more of an explanation. I don't think I'm following."

[onthewillowsthere]

"He's too important. He's sacred. What I feel for him is-- wrong."

[summerdude]

"None of your feelings are bad or wrong," Magnus says, stoutly.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's wrong to think about Percival like this," just as stubborn.

[summerdude]

"Would he be mad?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad's mouth goes dry. "I don't know." He and Percival never spoke about desire. Galahad doesn't even know whether Percival ever wanted anyone besides the woman in his vision.

[summerdude]

"Obviously I've never personally actually met him," Magnus says. "But his vibes were really strongly seemed, like, at worst he'd be confused but flattered."

[onthewillowsthere]

He shakes his head. He doesn't know how to say how much the idea frightens him -- even the possibility of Percival being repulsed by him is overwhelming.

[summerdude]

Magnus sits back and waits, ready to listen.

[onthewillowsthere]

"He is... how I imagine Christ," Galahad says slowly. "Someone good. Faithful. The most important person there is. I'm afraid to-- sully him."

[summerdude]

"A of all," says Magnus, "You know that arrows guy^* in all those paintings? I'm pretty sure catholics are horny about saints and stuff all the time. And Jesus, too; I'm pretty sure there's a ton of horny Jesus art out there. There's like songs about him being sexy or something⁺. And movies about how he fucked^$? So even if Percival was Jesus Christ, it would be fine to, like, be in love with him and think he's hot. B of all, you could never sully anyone, ever, because you're not, like, morally or literally dirty or diseased or anything. C of all, I might not be, like, well-versed in your religion beyond what you've specifically told me, but wouldn't Jesus, like, be down with love? Especially loving someone important to you?"

*Do I even need to clarify that he's thinking of Saint Sebastian?
⁺Nice job finally working in a Hamlet 2 reference, S
^$He's thinking of the Da Vinci Code...

[onthewillowsthere]

"Saint Sebastian," he says automatically. Then he's quiet again; now he is rubbing his watchband and its familiar braid. He doesn't know how to tell Magnus that this doesn't help -- how to put it into words that make sense, how to explain that he's always been precise in his feelings and practices, and what Magnus is describing is choosing imprecision. Eroticizing the saints and Christ is something people do because they don't know or don't care about sacredness. When Galahad chooses to sin, he is breaking the rules he knows better than his own body, the scriptures he committed to memory when he was still a child (Magnus knows what he was like back then, serious and certain and unwilling to deviate from God's path). He isn't rejecting religion; he never has. He is a disobedient son shaming his Father in ways only his Father sometimes sees.

He doesn't know how to say that in Camelot he was scorned and hated for caring too much, and he's never stopped caring. He doesn't want to do what Magnus is describing, and apply himself haphazardly, to stop being precise about what matters because everyone else doesn't care. Even the thought makes him uneasy.

He reminds himself that Magnus doesn't understand -- he said so himself. Magnus understands him, but not God, not God's rules, not the way it feels to have them inscribed on the very cells Claudius has shown him in the microscope.

[summerdude]

"And D of all," Magnus says triumphantly, "nuns! Don't they literally fantasize about being married to--" he clocks the cast to Galahad's eyes and cocks his head. "I'm way off base, huh," he guesses.