[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

[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."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Well," frank, "In this I've learned a little of the ways in which you're hard on yourself." She looks at him for a long moment, mind working. "Would you fancy trading questions?"

[timebethine]

"Very well--what dost thou miss most about thy home?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, the hustle and bustle of it all," Susan says, immediately. "I like crowds, and new people to meet - but also the ability to walk away and not see someone again if you've erred. I miss my classes and my job and my flat, too, but I've kept up with my studies somewhat with the books here, and there's rather no need to work when lodging and food are both provided to you by magic."

[timebethine]

The distractions, Laertes thinks. The way it might be possible to absent oneself from oneself, for a time, and gain distance to breathe. He is not unfamiliar with that impulse. "Hast thou made a space thine own here?" Laertes asks, since the flat seems unaccounted for.<sup>1

1</sup> The mansion's translation took an interesting detour for flat, into the Latin insula, and so the word as it comes to Laertes has connotations of a place that is private and interior and secret.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, my rooms are fine," Susan says, a little dismissively. "Though I miss my flatmate - we used to throw parties for our friends fairly regularly. And I suppose my rooms aren't quite the same because I didn't come with anything from home. There were... some belongings I cherished. But then again, one couldn't find Calormene rugs in London like one can here, so I suppose in some ways it's like comparing apples and oranges." She pauses. "I should like to know your favorite place you've ever traveled, and why."

[timebethine]

Laertes thinks for a moment. It's in him to say here, but he hasn't really traveled here, exactly; he's only appeared as though in a dream. "I think it must have been Caen," he says at last. "For there I met some of the most decent Normans one might wish to know, and I wish I had known them longer. Alas, the work of diplomacy did not permit my family stay."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Caen," Susan repeats. She knows of a Caen... and what became of it, during the War. "I'm afraid I haven't had the pleasure. What did you like about it? Primarily the people?"

[timebethine]

"Ay, the people above all else. Paris and Toulouse are unmatched for architecture; Lyon lies glittering upon the river's edge; the Alps ring Grenoble around like banks of heightening clouds. The eating in Marseille and Bordeaux alone is worth the travel. But ... nowhere but Caen did I feel as though I might be home, until I came here."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

It's good that Laertes preferred the people; Susan wouldn't have the heart to tell him the city itself is still struggling to be anything but ruins. "So you've a fondness for France, then."