[Closed Post: A Shared Meal]

[timebethine]

Laertes has spent all day bent over a cookbook, preparing a meal that he hopes a prince will have no cause to criticize. He's made flaky little apple and brie pastries with their crusts twisted in whorls, roast carrots swimming in honey sauce and garnished with walnuts; for the main course, he's been stewing a pot roast for hours. The entire kitchen smells of beef and and onions, celery and parsley and rosemary.

Now, as he arranges his bounty on the table in his rooms, there is just enough space for anxiety to score a touch. He knows full well that, if this night goes as he expects, he'll be taking Claudius to bed--and that will be a choice that he can never take back, if this long dream ends and he finds himself in Elsinore again. He knows that if there is a way that Claudius can use this tryst to his advantage, he will, even here in what might as well be Arcadia.

He shakes his head as he works free the cork of a wine bottle--sweet and red, of no vintage he can recognize. What will come, will come. He has no reputation here to protect, and that's perhaps the most freeing thought he can imagine.

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[wickedwit]

Claudius comes to dinner neatly-dressed, but that's no surprise -- he couldn't leave his room without his tie precise and correct, his sleeves gartered for the length of his jacket, and even then he'll unbutton and readjust his cuffs when they're perfectly straight but not straight enough. He had a thought of bringing flowers, but then the sight of red columbines crushed his heart and he couldn't breathe.

But he's too mannerly to let himself be waylaid by personal grief from an appointed dinner. Laertes won't be impressed by manners, but (Claudius thinks) there's nothing more miserable than waiting for an assignation that won't come. Perhaps they can still talk about God. Perhaps Laertes will have more pleasant blasphemies. It would be a balm to blame God and not himself for his miseries, but Claudius doubts Laertes will spare any blame owed to him.

He sighs, after knocking on Laertes's door, and redoes his cuffs once more.

[timebethine]

Laertes is dressed less well, in dark trousers and a dark cable-knit sweater that looks incredibly soft to the touch. He swings open the door, a ready smile prepared for Claudius ... and then takes him in, posture and dress and expression, and asks, "What's happened?"

[wickedwit]

“Straight to the point, without pleasantries?” asks Claudius, which is a rather ungrateful response to an expression of concern. He tries to make his voice light, but there’s not enough air in it, so it simply sounds reedy and thin. At least Laertes smiled to see him. He can hold on to that before delivering disappointments. “I’ve some news,” he says with a hollow laugh, “that’s all. And I don’t have a gift for dinner, so I hope you’ll excuse the discourtesy.” He doesn’t say forgive because he couldn’t bear it.

[timebethine]

"Come in," says Laertes, gesturing Claudius into the narrow sitting room that adjoins his bedroom. "Drink, eat. Unfold thy news when thou art ready." He pours wine for them both, then begins serving carrots and pastries onto Claudius's plate.

[wickedwit]

Claudius goes for the wine at once, but the nostalgic scent of rosemary reminds him how little he's eaten all day -- it wasn't a priority. "You prepared all this?" he asks with a short, disbelieving laugh, a dismayed smile. "And to think you made your skills sound so modest."

[timebethine]

"It was from a book," says Laertes, with a small smile. He starts carving the pot roast, pleased to find that the knife parts the meat easily. So it has grown tender as it cooked--he hadn't been certain it would. "My skills are yet unpracticed, but I can follow simple directions."

[wickedwit]

Laurel, Claudius wants to say, reads voraciously, he'd devour the words and then everything you made from them. Why does he want to talk so desperately about Laurel and to say nothing at all? "It's more than I can do," he offers instead. "The height of my culinary accomplishments include the ill-fated soup I told you of, and a batch of a crispels. Also from a recipe from a book." And he gave the first to Laurel -- Claudius can't even keep the name from his head. It isn't the right one any longer.

[timebethine]

Ah, so Claudius is back to you--Laertes lets that be what it is, and persists. "If thou desirest to study further, there's much that would go more quickly with two," he offers.

[wickedwit]

Claudius laughs at that, a fuller laugh. "I suppose that might make up for the aforementioned ill-fated soup. A shared project in the kitchen where I won't walk away with parasites in my blood." He takes a swallow of wine, and -- for all that he's starved -- a delicate taste of pastry with knife and fork.

[timebethine]

The pastry is a little on the dry side; Laertes would do well to add a little syrup next time he bakes them. However, the apple and brie marry well together, and the pastry dough is delightfully flaky. Laertes watches him eat, anticipating his judgment with a singular focus. "Is that what's dampened thy spirits?" Laertes asks. "Didst thou encounter him again?"

[wickedwit]

It's charming, Claudius thinks, that Laertes would share a recipe before he's mastered it, and await judgment with such anticipation. He wonders idly whether Laertes was always like this in his pursuit of courtier's and scholar's skills, or whether he'd be warier of sharing any imperfection with his father's spies around.

"No," Claudius replies, simply enough. Of the pastry, he says, "You've learned well from your eclairs. Which were delectable enough, but you've a skill for preparing dough that now suits the savory as much the sweet. Laurel would no doubt like it if were drowning in syrup." He couldn't keep the name from his mind, and now he's said it. "He would have, at least. He isn't ..." Claudius sighs and saws with his knife, trying to get through what he has to say. "That's the news. He's Galahad again. Memories miraculously restored. I don't know if he cares for sweet things any longer."

[timebethine]

"He's parted ways with thee," Laertes guesses, and reaches across the table for Claudius's hand.

[wickedwit]

"You might say that." Though he keeps a casual formality, easier now than any clumsy attempts at familiarity, thee from Laertes still feels like a flower tucked into his hair, a hug when his small heart was breaking with hope. Claudius doesn't deserve any pity. Yet he takes Laertes's hand, absently twining their fingers together. "Sir Galahad ... was a holy knight with a God-given purpose. A future saint. I nearly cost him his sainthood. I've no doubt God forgives His chosen when they pay penitence, but I'm unrepentant sinner. Less philosophically ... he's sworn never to cross my path or speak to me again, and I promised to leave him as long he promised not to die. So ... it's rather final."

[timebethine]

"Is there nothing that can be done?" Laertes asks, even though he knows full well that if there were anything that could be done, Claudius would have done it. He longs for a problem that he can address with his hands--someone to fight, something to build, something nourishing that he can tend for hours at the stove.

Having nothing else, he holds Claudius's hand like the hilt of a blade.

[wickedwit]

“I’m doing it,” he says rather drearily. His hand doesn’t stay still in Laertes’s, but it does settle in, fingers tracing the back of knuckles and seeking out the shape of them. “I’m staying away. Believe it or not, I don’t try to be a rake. It’s the same in Elsinore. There are always people who value chastity more than life, who’d consider their daughters as good as dead if they suspected any unchaste action … and young women who’d swallow poison if they lost their family’s good opinion. Galahad’s family happens to include a lout of a father who had him raised in a nunnery, and God.” He’s speaking lightly, trying to frame it in the context of courtly flirtations, but courtly flirtations that end in suicides are no less dire. He laughs with no humor in it. “I just want him to live. And for you to know, I suppose, because …” He still can’t quite explain why, when Galahad didn’t want anyone to see him. “You were a friend of Laurel’s.”

[timebethine]

"I am," says Laertes. "Does he not ... remember anything that's passed since he first lost his memories?" Would he not remember me? is the question he means.

[wickedwit]

“He remembers all of it.” Claudius shouldn’t say it with confidence — they shared so few words, after all. Claudius good at reading people, up until he’s spent too long in silence and his own cynical imaginings take over. He knew. He remembered. He offered absolution. “You haven’t sinned against him, at least. I hope you have the chance to meet him again.” For that his voice turns soft, sincere.

[timebethine]

"I wish I had better answers for thy griefs," says Laertes. "Eat and drink your fill. Stay here, if thy bed is still girded round with sharp-edged memories. I'll sit vigil over thy sleep."

[wickedwit]

It isn't fair, Claudius thinks, for Laertes to surprise him again. He expected Laertes to be harder on him, to push him more on his pauses and suspect him of evasions, to bring the conversation back to Claudius's responsibility and role in this fresh disaster. He's not a fool. He knows Laertes doesn't trust him, and if he came to Laertes smooth and charming he'd never get such easy charity. "Am I really such an obvious mess?" he asks. "I didn't think you'd pity me."

[timebethine]

"Thou art grieving," says Laertes simply. "If he remembers, I can hope that he will remember how he loves thee, and find his way to thee again. And I can hope that one day, he'll dance with me again--bright and shameless as he was, I wished that he should be spared every sorrow." His voice cracks just a little. "I wanted so badly to be his friend."

[wickedwit]

"It made me think better of thee," Claudius says, soft. "That thou couldst be his friend, hearing his secrets and fears, and entreat me to be gentle with his heart."

[timebethine]

"What would you have of me?" Laertes asks, softer. "How can I help?"

[wickedwit]

"All I need is thy company," Claudius says. And his fingers tremor a little around Laertes's, so he's tempted to pull it back, to hide his weaknesses. But all he does is gaze down at their hands, and continue tracing his fingers along the sides of them "It's enough to be talking over dinner like this ... and I'd like to talk a while after, if you'll allow me here with you. And if thou wouldst have me in thy bed, I would be thine. Wilt thou have me?"

[timebethine]

This is not the Claudius whom Laertes first met, when he came here--a schemer towering with indignation, trying to aim Laertes like a cannon and make him fire of his own accord. There is no angle that Laertes can divine here, no advantage to be seized.

Claudius looks defeated. He looks as though, for the first time since he was a child, he has met a weight that pretty words cannot lighten.

He is not asking for much, and he is asking it as directly as Laertes could wish. He wants only the comfort of something steady and predictable--a shared meal, pleasant company, someone he can touch. Normalcy, amidst the wrack of grief.

Laertes traces his thumb over Claudius's knuckles. "I will," he says.

[wickedwit]

It's a strange relief, to have made himself vulnerable again and not hurt by it. He laughs a little with it, before leaning back. "We can talk about other things, if you like. But ... I would still like to hear thy ideas of God, and what good a God should be to men. And I suspect one thing will have me thinking of the other."