[Closed Post: Cinnamon Roll]

[timebethine]

A few days' recovery have left Laertes feeling refreshed enough to return to his baking, although not quite ready to dive into anything particularly complicated. Thus, he abandons the more complex direktørsnegl recipe he'd been meaning to try in favor of perfecting the humble cinnamon roll.

The days are getting shorter--even Laertes can feel it, though his sense of time is poor. He can no longer rely on the sunrise to wake him at a decent hour for baking, and so today he's up a little before the sun, kneading the bready dough by hand rather than using the paddle of the stand mixer in the hopes that the physical exertion will wake him up a little. It's not working particularly well; his eyelids keep drooping.

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[timebethine]

The war in which the atom was split, laying waste to cities. "I might have told myself such stories, in thy place," he says quietly. "Little wonder thou wouldst dream of being a hero."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Halfway through a nod, Susan shakes her head, rueful and a little wry. She blows on her tea, fishes the bag out, and takes a long sip. "What a heavy topic before the sun has even risen!" she observes.

[timebethine]

"At least thou wilt only ever have to tell me of it once," says Laertes as he starts spreading the filling generously over the dough. "What wouldst thou speak of instead? That project of organization thou hadst begun?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, I can finish the story, if you like," Susan says. The sip of tea has fortified her; she takes another. "I don't believe I answered all your questions." She peeks at the recipe again. "What do you think - the vanilla icing, or the cream cheese?"

[timebethine]

"One for each batch? I enjoy cream cheese, but Galahad ill likes its sourness." A little more gently, "I mean only to know thee better--not to prick thy tender wounds."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I did prepare to tell you - what was it you said? Chapter and verse," Susan admits. There's no point in starting the icing when the rolls still need to rise and bake. She thinks for a moment, then pulls out the ingredients for Edmund's favorite biscuits.

[timebethine]

"Then by all means, finish thy tale," says Laertes. He sets the bowl of filling aside and begins to roll the dough up, careful to keep the roll even across the entire length.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan starts creaming butter - by hand; she hasn't bothered to learn of the appliances that make the process easier. "You'll stop me if it's too much?"

[timebethine]

"Ay, I will--but anything thou would say surely weighs heavier on thee than on me."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

At that, Susan laughs, a short, sharp sound. "You haven't any reason to know this," she says, squinting at the butter and trying to decide if it's soft enough to start adding the sugar. Ah, well, if she can't decide, it likely could use more attention. Continuing to beat the butter, she says, "I've decided recently that I might try understanding things in full rather than in pieces. This sort of thing is good practice."

[timebethine]

The dough has been rolled into a long snake; Laertes takes out his sharpest knife and starts dividing it into individual wheels. "Say on."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You asked what made me yearn to remember?"

[timebethine]

"I did."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

The butter's texture is looking much improved. Susan measures out her sugar into a separate bowl and adds a few spoonfuls to the butter, beating it in. "Absolutely nothing," so matter-of-fact that any ruefulness gets lost. "When I got here I was fully convinced Narnia was a silly fiction and that my siblings had, by the end, gone mad with their insistence it might be anything else. Do you remember the day when people started speaking only the truth?"

[timebethine]

"All too well," says Laertes. The firm sound of the knife on the pastry mat is comfortable, grounding; it lets his brain focus on the context of the question as well as the question itself. "Thou wert compelled to be honest with thyself?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

A single, sharp nod. "I'm jolly glad I've remembered the truth of it," she says. "But it was all rather--"

[timebethine]

Laertes wants to leap in, to supply some answer--alarming, perhaps, or a renewal of long-forgotten griefs. But she will not thank him for it. He holds his tongue, and lets her finish.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Overwhelming," Susan decides, once it becomes clear that Laertes is holding his tongue.

[timebethine]

"And now, as though thou hadst lost a limb and had it miraculously renewed, thou art striving to remember how it felt through exercise and flexion," Laertes guesses.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"More or less!" The butter is ready for another few spoonfuls of sugar; Susan adds them and shakes her hand out before starting to beat this in, too. "It's all been rather queer."

[timebethine]

"This place is rather queer," Laertes answers. He starts arranging cinnamon rolls into round pans for their rise, carefully nudging each one into position against its neighbors. "I'll take all its queerness, though, and take it gladly. I'm happy here. Despite everything, I'm happy here."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan hesitates for a moment. She hasn't even told Laertes of the loss she'd mentioned at the feast - she's been working up to it - but now she spots an opportunity to gather some important data. Perhaps a question to add to Nina's and my census? she wonders, as she fixes Laertes with a wry sort of look. "Might I ask you a... rather a silly question?"

[timebethine]

"Of course. Anything."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

The butter's probably ready for more sugar? Susan adds it. Then, exuding as much nonchalance and behavioral normalcy as she can muster, she asks, "How did you come to understand that you were in love with Sagramore?"

[timebethine]

Laertes leans back, bun arrangement only half-finished, and folds his arms over his chest in consideration. How did he come to understand it? It had felt so clear and obvious at the time, undeniable as the fact that he lived and breathed. By the time he'd had the courage to speak it, it had felt like something he'd known all his life, although he'd known rationally that he and Sagramore had only been acquainted for a few weeks. Not even that, perhaps. "I imagined a life without him," he says at last, "and it seemed fundamentally insupportable to me."