timebethine | [Closed Post: A Shared Meal]

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[Closed Post: A Shared Meal]

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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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.

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.

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?"

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."

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

"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."

"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.

“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.”

"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.

“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.

"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."

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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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?"

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.

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."

"Please understand, I have no theses to nail to a door," says Laertes. "My thoughts begin to take shape, the longer I spend here, but they are as yet ill-formed as fresh-dug clay."

He sits back, sipping his wine, considering how best to frame his convictions. "If the world is a prison," he says, "if it is some grey promontory from which we behold damnation, and despair--then of course there is no hope for us but to beg for salvation. But instead, God hath given us a world of incomparable sweetnesses. What kind of God would lay before us a banquet, and require that we never taste it so that we might earn the great feast hereafter? What kind of God would make us with a love for pleasure, and then ask that we absent ourselves from it?" Another slow, considered sip. "What kind of God would see His people, mired in all the urgent duties of the mortal world, and say, 'Turn thee from it; thou hast a higher charge'?"

The wine tastes sweeter now, Claudius thinks -- when he first reached for it, he didn't pause to taste it, and it's lusher and fuller of the flavors of fruit than the dryer reds Claudius tends to prefer. He savors it as Laertes frames his thoughts, and it's more satisfying than he'd imagine it would be. He could've gently steered the conversation towards what he wanted to hear, but he asked, and Laertes answered. He's still a surprising young man, but perhaps that says more about Claudius's capacity to be surprised.

The blasphemies are as sweet to his soul as he hoped they'd be. "The only God I know," he says, "is a God who gave us every pleasure, and a list of sins that come from passion and the desire to taste the world's sweetness. A God more like a pagan Zeus, tormenting Tantalus for the presumption of tasting ambrosia, and trying to steal it for mankind. I've never been able to live with God peaceably, to believe and trust His plans have a purpose that any of us could understand. I can't reason myself into thinking God wouldn't be cruel enough to create me with desires and punish me for them. Perhaps, in the fullness of God's perspective, His cruelty has a purpose, too. Perhaps He is cruel to be kind, and a world of greater kindness awaits after we've denied ourselves the pleasures of this one. But I can't deny myself and, whenever it comes to it, I can't repent of any sin I've committed. Particularly the lighter sins." He laughs wryly. "The sin of meeting a sweet, shy boy with hair like gold and silver and eyes that look through me, of seeing him blush and desiring to give him every joy of the flesh -- it isn't a sin like murder. Perhaps more akin to adultery, swaying someone to break an oath. Sins like that won't trouble my sleep, and the joys are well worth it. But I don't expect to win an argument with God, or see any absolution for my worser sins."

He turned absolution away. It was a choice he made.

"We weave our moral world of strands of sin," says Laertes wryly, releasing Claudius's hand to serve a slice of roast beef onto his plate. "What, then of the sacraments? What of extreme unction, of marriage and baptism, of holy communion? The business of this world matters to God, or there would be no sacraments. I cannot think that God would appoint us to care for each other, and then despise us when that care begets pleasure. Surely a glad wedding is as pleasing to God as a solemn one--and there is something holy in coupling, which is written not in scripture but on my bones."

"You'll notice I'm unmarried," Claudius says, his only ring the signet ring he spins around his finger. For now he puts his hands to and fork, and returns to the feast that Laertes created for him -- never mind God. "I've never had a love recognized in a holy sacrament. But I admit," taking a more teasing tone, but sincere, "I look forward to whatever holiness thou hast seen in coupling. What moves thee, when thou art with a lover who inspires thee to scriptures?"

"That, I couldn't answer," says Laertes. "I could count my assignations on one hand, and have fingers to spare. I only know that, when I'm with him, I feel a love that touches everything--I feel a part of the world, involved in its happiness, when I have set myself so long apart from it."

"Thou know'st he wishes to give the world to thee." And Claudius is starting to see why. Love, of course, is as transformative as a philosopher's stone, and it's plain that Sagramore is besotted with Laertes -- but it's hardly that Sagramore has made gold of base metals. Laertes is beautiful when talks about the world's happiness, and joining the world after being apart from it, in a way that Claudius want to touch him and teach him every pleasure his body can give him. But also, he thinks, he could learn from Laertes. Sagramore called him weightless, without his family expectations. When they danced, Claudius nearly felt weightless with him.

(Like sharing a bed with Laurel, and leaving the window open so light streams in the morning and catches in his hair like a halo of flame. And holding Laurel, with hierarchies between them and no fear of being burned. That kind of weightlessness.)

"He said he would have forsaken all others for me," says Laertes, looking down at his plate with a distant fondness. "But the man I love asked me to bed after we had spoken not a hundred words to each other, and I have never repented answering him ay. To ask him to be anything other than what he is would be to diminish him."

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