[open post -- winged and once-winged insects]

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad has collected every insect guide he could find in the mansion's library, and now he is camped out in a laboratory it seems to have created particularly for him and Susan -- the room has its own microscope, so that he can stop borrowing Claudius', and every single shelf is filled with glass habitats or mesh tents for keeping insects.

With his single-minded determination, he has filled many of them -- the tents house carefully potted foot-high milkweeds with tiny butterfly eggs affixed to their leaves, or potato plants he hopes will soon harbor potato beetles, or butterflies resting on the mesh. In the glass habitats there are millipedes, gleaming tenebrionid beetles, huge and bumbling scarabs, the dogbane leaf beetle Lancelot helped him capture, shiny blister beetles, leafhoppers in every shade of green, a pair of picasso bugs, an mantis he found in the greenhouse pretending to be an orchid flower.

Many of these insects stay only long enough to be identified and documented. Galahad and Susan between them take careful notes, make drawings, take pictures. When possible, they identify to species; more often, they identify genera or family, country of origin if they're lucky. Then they let their subjects go again. Neither of them has the time nor the inclination to feed and care for the immense diversity of insects living on the mansion's grounds. Potato beetles are one thing, but catching other tiny insects for the tiger beetles every morning is unsustainable. Galahad doesn't mind. Once he has a picture and the notes, the insect is saved, even if they don't see it again.

In the morning he trains with Lan Wangji, so it's an afternoon now when he's perched on a stool in front of the microscope, inspecting a chlaenius beetle to see whether it's possible to confirm a species. Unfortunately, these beetles are too fast and squirmy to put on a slide alive, so he's ethered it first. Now he's working diligently on his sketch, his pale head bowed as he studies the tiny body.

[Open especially to anyone who needs to be reassured that Galahad is back after the mod event and he's just fine now]

Comments

[summerdude]

"Wonderful things?" He's definitely waggling his eyebrows over his blush.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's private," laughing.

[summerdude]

"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine," mostly teasing.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad knocks against his shoulder. "Alas."

[summerdude]

"How much more stuff do you have to do here?" Magnus asks then, leaning back against him.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I can stop," Galahad says. He's trying to spend more time with Magnus, after their conversation over the falafel. "We can hang out."

[summerdude]

"I'm chill to hang out here," Magnus says. "I just need to, like, find Angus. Or Sunny. Dro is still in the hall." It's not that Sunny is now one of Dro's babysitters, it's that they babysit each other. "But I was thinking if you were done, we could go on a ghost hunt."

[onthewillowsthere]

He tilts his head curiously.

[summerdude]

"Try and provoke Shen Yuan into, like, interacting with us," Magnus clarifies. "I think passing out again just to see if he's hanging is, like, not smart. But he did the flowers for you, and he told Hanguang-jun sometimes he hears what I say to his new body, and I think maybe we can do something that makes him, like, show up and prove he's chilling with us. Maybe not being loudly wrong about Pokemon, but something." They have, by tacit understanding, not worked on their gift for Shen Yuan since he died, first because he was dead and then because the ghost could be anywhere, spying.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad doesn't think of Shen Yuan's presence as a ghost. Rather, it's Shen Yuan's soul that he imagines is watching and listening to them. Once Magnus has clarified, though, this makes sense to him.

"We could play Smash. We could choose the wrong characters."

[summerdude]

"And do the wrong moves?" Magnus asks. Like, he's probably going to do the wrong moves anyway, because he's not good at Smash. But he can do them extra wrong.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes."

[summerdude]

"Sweet," Magnus says. "Let's do it."

[onthewillowsthere]

So Galahad puts the lens cap back on the microscope to protect it from tiny scratches, and places the chlaenius sp back in its little box, and buckles his swordbelt back on. "All right. I'm ready."

[summerdude]

Magnus takes Galahad's hand in his and leads him to the game room -- via, of course, the kitchens; it wouldn't be a Shen Yuan-Approved Game Session™ without snacks and sodas.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad has largely given up fasting, even on Fridays, although he hasn't said anything about it (Claudius will have noticed, obviously, but that's different). He likes indulgence; he likes sinning. Since God took back His gifts, Galahad has found much of the self-denial that used to be second nature is no longer meaningful to him. It just feels like punishment for sins he's only now beginning to commit, sins that for years were completely unimaginable.

He removes several bottles of Mountain Dew from the fridge and gets a container of carnitas taco Pringles from the dry goods cabinet.

[summerdude]

Magnus throws a bag of Fizzing Warheads into the mix, too. When they reach the game room, he drops the food on the table and goes over to the TV to try and figure out the setup. "Wow," he says, loudly, with a wink to Galahad. "I sure do wish there was someone here who could explain this to me."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad is busy opening the bag of Fizzing Warheads while Magnus does setup, but he looks up and says serenely, "We should kiss."

[summerdude]

"What," says Magnus, looking back at Galahad with a grin. "You think we should make out in a friendly way because we're best friends and that's what friends do?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. It's normal for friends to kiss each other when they spend time together."

[summerdude]

"It sure would suck if anyone was vindicated by showing up while we engage in normal friend activities," Magnus sighs, connecting the final wire triumphantly.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It would be very embarrassing if it were Shen Yuan, since we told him we never do this usual friendship ritual," Galahad agrees, unwrapping a Warhead.

[summerdude]

"So embarrassing," Magnus says, grabbing the controllers and coming over to sit next to Galahad. "Whaddya say, a normal friendly four?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Four kisses?" The Warhead on his tongue is ... bad, sourness and the fizziness together are a sensory unpleasantness that he finds strangely appealing. He scrunches his face up at Magnus.

[summerdude]

"On the scale." It's drawn out (three and a half minutes or more) but also closemouthed. That seems reasonable. Like, Magnus doesn't really have any intention on following through with this bluff, but it seems like a, like, reasonable bluff to make.