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

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad wraps his arms around Magnus. It feels like holding Drosera when she was still a chick and would clamber into his lap in a ball of fluffy down and whine about food; he pets Magnus' hair the way he used to stroke her fur. "Be honest with me."

[summerdude]

"I like to think I pretty much always am," Magnus says. "I mean, like, I guess apart from that whole thing." His eyelashes flutter. "I don't ever want things to change with u-- no, that's not it. I want us to grow together. I don't want us to ever grow apart."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. I want that too."

[summerdude]

"I was worried," Magnus admits then. "When you first got married. That it would make things different."

[onthewillowsthere]

He tilts his head and then, remembering that Magnus can't see him, asks, "Different?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah." Magnus shrugs, a ripple against Galahad's body. "I don't know, before I got here I didn't really know any married people besides, like, gods. And Sam and Amir, who aren't married yet but who have been very clear about how things would change after. But in, like, books and tv shows and movies, a lot of the times when people get married, it's, like, this special club that non-married people aren't part of, and things get really different. And since me and Alex won't ever get married..."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad pauses, and then taps his fingers on Magnus' back. "I have more than one question. Wait for me." And then, tapping one finger: "What do Sam and Amir say will change?" Second finger: "Do you think I have changed since I married?" Third finger: "Do you think Claudius and I are different from you and Alex because we're married?"

[summerdude]

"Well, for one, you're asking multiple questions in a row," Magnus jokes, tilting his head so he can see the profile of Galahad's face. "One: I guess the stuff Sam and Amir talk about is mostly, like, Muslim stuff. Like being able to touch each other finally. But also... outside stuff too. Like changes in, you know, time we'd spend together. As, like, a group." He pauses. With a small measure of relief, he says, "Two: I don't think you have, no. And three... I don't know. Do you?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"One. Would they have spent less time with you once they were married? Three. Before I came here, I would have said we were. I would have believed it was a covenant between us and God that changed us and made us different from other people. But we are married, and our lives have not changed. I think it is a covenant that we have made only to each other. That matters more. What we are to each other is different. I don't think what you and I are to each other has changed."

[summerdude]

"Yes. She was going to aim for more balance. Do less stuff for Odin and Valhalla and more stuff for her family." Magnus sighs and sits up straight, but his fingers are still interlaced with Galahad's. "You said you proposed to him for a reason. Partly because of what it meant to other people -- choosing him, specifically, so he could be chosen specifically. I guess that gave me the impression that, like, it meant something categorically different."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I did say that." He considers. "What I mean is that there are things it means to be a husband, to Claudius and to me. But there isn't a rule that you and Alex can't do those things also, if you want."

[summerdude]

"Things like what?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Another long pause; Magnus keeps asking questions that he needs to think about carefully before he answers, ordering his words before he speaks them.

"In the time and place Claudius and I come from, marriage is about property and security, and it is about sex. The things that are mine have become Claudius's. If I die, they are still his. His protection is my responsibility, and his pleasure is also my responsibility. I want those things anyway, but now they're his by law." He looks away from Magnus at the sea, imagining it stretching all the way to Elsinore. "He is a prince and a second son. His brother could have chosen who he married. It wouldn't have been for love. And in Britain or in Denmark, we wouldn't have been allowed to marry each other. It would have been an affront to God," as he'd told Magnus once before. "It matters that we have taken the purposes of marriage for ourselves, and that we abide by them."

[summerdude]

"So -- and I'm not trying to, like, argue anything, I'm just trying to understand -- how can it not be different for me and Alex if marriage is, like, the law that gave you those things?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"We also gave Dionysus the right to apply that law to us. He is not a sanctioned officer of the church." He tilts his head a little. "It has to do with who we are. You and Alex should decide for yourselves. I don't know your world or your history."

[summerdude]

That last bit rankles with Magnus, but he can't place why so he tries to ignore it. "Is this different-religion stuff, different-country stuff, or different-time stuff?" he wonders, to distract himself.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's all three." Magnus is obviously not Christian, comes from a country Galahad didn't know existed before he came to the mansion, and a time some eight-hundred years after his own. The laws that govern marriage and its significance are surely different, and Galahad doesn't feel he knows Alex well enough to imagine what might matter to her. He knew about Claudius not just from the context they do share but from all the time he's spent listening to Claudius and saving his most idle thoughts, studying him like scripture. It would be presumptuous to speak on Magnus and Alex.

[summerdude]

"Huh. Okay." Magnus still isn't feeling very appeased on the whole concern-things-might-be-different front, but again, he can't figure out the source of the feelings.

[onthewillowsthere]

"What are you thinking?"

[summerdude]

"I think things maybe are different," Magnus says, slowly, trying to sort through his own thoughts. "Not in a bad way, like how I was worried it might be. But still... different."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Explain," Galahad says, not at all unlike his teacher.

[summerdude]

"I don't know how," Magnus says, still slowly. "I'm sorry, dude, I really do promise to tell you things and not, like, wave them off. This is just -- it's a vibe, not information. It's like..."

He breaks off, really pushing himself to try and understand his own knee-jerk reaction. "Maybe it's because we have such different frames of reference for this kind of thing?" he guesses.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods: this is what he'd meant before, when he'd told Magnus that he didn't know about his and Alex's world and history. "When you know more, will you please tell me?"

[summerdude]

"It means something to you. I want to understand. I don't know if I do, even though you've explained a lot. I feel weird about that. It makes me feel..." He rubs at a thinning spot on his jeans. "I don't know. I like being on the same page."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad is silent again. He's silent for a long time, listening to the waves lap against the longship and the newly attendant gulls scream (they remind him of Percival). He thinks about how different the worlds he and Magnus are from are, how differently they were shaped, in spite of the ways they're similar.

Finally he asks, "What does it mean to you to have Sagramore for your father?"