[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.

Comments

[timebethine]

Everyone. She speaks of it so matter-of-factly; she has had a long time to come to grips with her anger and grief, but he cannot imagine it doesn't still burn like a wound. He cannot imagine losing everything and not wanting to tear the world apart. "I'm sorry," he says again, uselessly. "Thou hast a will of iron, to forge a life for thyself here after so much sorrow."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

It's hazelnut time! Susan takes the rolling pin and sets about crunching the nuts, albeit a little less aggressively than she could - it's more of a press than a smash. "I've always been remarkably stubborn," she says, wry. "I was rather lost when I got here. I think ultimately being removed from my surroundings has been helpful. But perhaps you can see how my social skills might have... atrophied."

[timebethine]

"I think we both had more practice in how to slip an intimacy than how to strengthen one," says Laertes, a little wry. "May I help thee?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

At that, Susan laughs. "Oh, rather," she says, and then nods. "Do you mind terribly stripping the thyme leaves from their stems?"

[timebethine]

"Gladly--all of it?" He starts with the woodiest piece of thyme, which he pinches between thumb and forefinger and scrubs free of leaves. Its delicate green branches are trickier; they break under his fingers more than once, leaving him to pluck off the leaves from the stems by hand.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan glances over - she's really getting her back into crushing the hazelnuts; they're nearly done. "One more sprig should do it."

[timebethine]

Then Laertes dutifully strips another sprig and sweeps all of the little leaves into a small bowl, setting the bare stems in the compost container. "Is there more thou wouldst have of me?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You might add the thyme to the butter, and blend it well," says Susan, who is now measuring out flour and mixing the nuts throughout it. "Or - I would ask -" She purses her lips, and reaches for a fortifying sip of tea. "Have you found a way to improve in the practice of strengthening intimacy?"

[timebethine]

"To be plain in speech, and to show by deed what thou hast declared in thy words," Laertes answers immediately as he starts to mix the thyme into the creamed butter and sugar. "I've ... not always held to that ideal. Not even here. But where I've failed, I've regretted it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan is thoughtful as she sets her bowl of flour and nuts aside. "I believe I already do that," she says, and then thinks of her conversations, across the past month, about taking female lovers. Wryly: "As much as I am able, at least."

[timebethine]

"At times, it feels as though to speak the truth is to court disaster--there is no graceful exit, no way to play it off as a frivolous remark said in jest. The consequences thou fearest are an axe above thy head," says Laertes, with a sympathetic look. "But for me, there is no other way. To speak in circles, to make halting advances and teasing retreats, will ever keep other people at a remove."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

That's never really been Susan's primary concern - or secondary, and often not even tertiary - but she elects not to say as much, instead reaching to take the butter-sugar mixture from Laertes so that she can start blending in the flour and nut mixture.

But as she mixes, she realizes: "I find it easy to be straightforward about things I've mostly always been straightforward about," she says. "And impossibly hard to gain the habit where previously there was none. The inertia, you see."

[timebethine]

"Is it a habit thou wouldst like to learn?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

What if Janet, like Lancelot, should be interested in Susan talking about her with others? "I believe so."

[timebethine]

"Canst practice with me," Laertes offers. "I'm nothing to thee; there's no risk, shouldst thou speak a dangerous thing."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No?" Susan goes to get some waxed paper so she can roll the dough into a log and set it in the icebox to chill. "I'd rather thought you might become a friend."

[timebethine]

"Well--then the kind of friend I am will be shaped by thine honesty, and not thine omission."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Very well, then," says Susan, and offers him a small, tentative smile.

[timebethine]

He smiles back, and then starts tidying the counter. "If there is something thou wouldst say, then say it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose I have got some questions," Susan says and then, teasingly (mostly at her own expense), asks, "Would you like them alphabetically or chronologically?"

[timebethine]

"By color," Laertes decides.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"By color!" Susan nods, faux-seriously. "I suppose the most drab of the questions is how much longer the rolls have got to rise."

[timebethine]

"Until doubled in size," says Laertes. "I know not how long that will be--perhaps an hour?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

So they've plenty of time to kill yet. "Then on to my purplest question," Susan says. "Or rather, I suppose it's more of a prompt." She leans against the island in the center of the kitchen, carrying her tea with her and propping her chin in her hands as she regards Laertes. "I'd like to know you better."

[timebethine]

Seeing her teacup set on the island recalls Laertes's to him; he picks it up again to find it cold. "I am the son of Denmark's lord chamberlain, older brother to a younger sister. I love music, and yet I haven't managed to play a note in months. I had not the patience for astronomy, and I have spent my whole life regretting this as a moral deficiency. I learned every art of the shipwright's trade for long enough to build a boat for Annie, and if my life were forfeit, I could not remember enough to make another. I know not what to say when a young woman tells me that she would like to know me better."