Closed Post: Practice

[sorrowandsorrow]

Thank Christ that wedding dance is over. Janet had felt it looming, like exam season at Brakebills but way, way worse, and it had made her feel like she was being stalked. It's over, and Susan came to keep her company, and she still has a bottle of wine stashed in her closet about it. Spoils of war.

In a better mood all around, Janet's in a sitting room not too far off from the main drag of the mansion. She's cross-legged on a couch, in stocking feet but with her boots tucked up against the side of said couch, and she's essentially playing with dolls.

Okay, it's a little more grownup than that. She has a couple of those ubiquitous green toy soldiers, the ones every kid ends up with whether they want them or not, and she's practicing a Cavaleri Animation, making them march around and aim their tiny plastic guns at each other.

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[timebethine]

Laertes only realizes something's amiss when his boot crunches on a far-ranging scout. Curious, he reaches down to pick up the plastic man, and then his gaze naturally falls on Janet as he rises. "My apologies," he says. "I did not see this valiant soldier. I beg your mercy, Queen Janet. Permit me to make amends."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Oh," Janet says, but she segues pretty smoothly into, "hey." She looks at the fallen soldier in his hand and narrows her eyes for a prolonged moment as if she's weighing an incredibly important matter of state. "You're forgiven. Just this once."

[timebethine]

Laertes rather wishes that he'd kept his one forgiveness in reserve, because he has a strong feeling that he'll need it before the end of this conversation. "I'd been hoping to see you," he says. "There's to be a great feast soon, on the second of Hesione, and I wished to know what you would have me make for you--a dish from your home." He hesitates, then steels himself and gets the rest of it out: "If you would rather not see Sagramore, I would bring you your meal in your room, of course. But I hope you will come."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Oh, God, another big event with Sagramore at its center. Janet sits up a little straighter, eyeing Laertes. It's really not his fault that he got caught in the crossfire there, and honestly, she's survived worse -- or, at least, weirder. She's listened to Alice revenge-fucking Penny and laughed it off with Eliot.

"Okay," she says slowly. One question at a time, maybe. There are about a million dishes she could ask for. She's from Los Angeles. But nobody will have to know how sentimental it is of her to request this specific one. "Let's go with pasta amatriciana, because I assume you're not going to take I'm fine, actually for an answer." Stalling tactic successfully deployed.

[timebethine]

"From Amatrice, in Italy?" Laertes asks. He hasn't made much pasta during his brief but prolific career in cooking--only a couple of dishes, a beet ravioli stuffed with goat cheese and mint and a lazy aglio e olio--and he's never heard of pasta amatriciana. But he's somehow persuaded the refrigerator to produce pavenders (or at least, a fish that will suit), so he's certainly willing to fulfill Janet's humble request. "What's in it?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Got it in one. Pasta," she says, then rolls her eyes at herself, like, obviously. "Guanciale, if you can get it, but you can do bacon in a pinch. White wine, fresh tomatoes, a dried chili pepper, and then -- okay, you're technically supposed to do pecorino amatriciano, but that's impossible to find. Pecorino romano is fine. It's pretty easy to make, and also pretty easy to eat with a big old glass of red wine."

[timebethine]

"That sounds delicious. My stomach's groaning for it," he laughs. "I'll be sure you have a full plate, and plenty of good wine to drink with it."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Ugh, he's so nice. Janet flicks a hand and makes a toy soldier march over his foot about it. "So what's the seating chart like for this feast?"

[timebethine]

"Erratic," he answers. "One banquet table, but seats of several kinds scattered around a bonfire. I expect there will be much moving about and conversing as people fill their plates. Nina will be there, and Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe--and Lancelot, and his young lady Susan. And a dozen others besides."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Lancelot and his young lady Susan! Come on. At least say Susan's name first. She's so much more interesting than Lancelot. Janet puts that aside so she can say, casually, "Okay, fine. I'll come if it won't be a wicked fairy godmother situation where everyone gets weird the second I walk in."

[timebethine]

"Sagramore may get weird" and almost certainly will, because a part of him is still heartbroken over her "but do not concern yourself with him. Your friends love you, and will welcome you as you deserve." Laertes smiles, small and flickering but sincere. "How do you, Janet? I've seen little of you, of late." Which has been partly by design, but also partly by accidents of timing; it isn't that Laertes has seen her and fled, but only that he's never seemed to find himself sharing space with her until now.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"I'm fine," Janet says, on auto-pilot, but then she reevaluates just a little bit and adds, "I'm okay." She's been spending a lot of time with Susan, but that doesn't feel like something she wants to go talking about just now. "I think I sent a telegram to Eliot, but fuck if I know whether he got it or not. He'd have to know where this world is to answer, and I don't even know where it is."

[timebethine]

"One of your schoolfriends?" Laertes asks. "Would you tell me of him?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"And the High King of Fillory," Janet says with a grin. She tucks her feet up closer to herself on the couch, in case Laertes wants to sit instead of standing in the doorway talking to her. "Eliot's my best friend. He's one of the most talented magicians I've ever known -- like, naturally. He doesn't even have to try. Asshole."

[timebethine]

Laertes recognizes the invitation, and takes it--still guarded, but at least he doesn't crunch himself up against the other arm of the couch. "At times, I think that you're cruelest with your words where your heart is most nearly touched," he says mildly. "And if that's so, then I can see how you care for him."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet huffs a slightly indignant breath. "Tell me what you really think, why don't you? I just said he's my best friend."

[timebethine]

"I heard. But I'm not sure I would've believed, without the 'Asshole.'"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"He's the High King. I have to keep him in his place." She raises an eyebrow. "So can you do magic yet?"

[timebethine]

With a wry murmur of lux, Laertes summons a werelight into his palm. He raises his brows at her as the fat spindle of it spins.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Holy shit!" Janet stares at it with sincere interest. "That Nightingale, huh? Is it hard?"

[timebethine]

Laertes closes his hand over the light, snuffing it. "This is the only art I know," he admits. "And at first, it went quite hard with me--the spell has not only a word but a shape, a feeling. For what felt like a long time, it was as though I viewed it through a pane of glass, or heard it like a melody from another room. But then Nightingale said something, and it ... shifted. All at once, I could lay my hand upon it."

[sorrowandsorrow]

She hums sympathetically as she watches the light go out. "Magic is insanely hard. I don't even think this magic is the same magic as mine, but still. That sounds familiar. It's like having a song stuck in your head, but you can't remember the name -- and then suddenly you do, but you can't replicate that for every song. They're all different."

[timebethine]

"Exactly--it's exactly like that." He sits back a little against the couch, letting it hold his weight. "What helped you to learn to hold those songs in your head long enough to sing them?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet grimaces, almost an apologetic expression. "You're not going to like this answer, but... you just have to work your ass off. You spend hours and hours poring over these boring textbooks, getting all the Circumstances just right, and then something clicks. Then you do it again." She snorts out a laugh. "Being held hostage in Antarctica by an insane Russian helped, but I don't think that's an option for you."

[timebethine]

"No, I have no recourse but to be held hostage in this mansion by forces unknown," he says wryly. Then what she said clicks, and he leans in. (The people here have the most alarming habit of saying horrific things as though they're matters of course!) "What happened to you? I can see that you're well, but that must have been a harrowing ordeal."