~ [closed post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Now that the Mansion is producing goods again, it's very easy for Susan to compile a picnic basket full of, essentially, the makings of a rather international charcuterie board. Four cheeses (a good British cheddar, a French camembert, an Italian sheeps-milk ricotta, and a wedge of Dutch Leyden), three meats (jamon Iberico from Spain, mortadella with pistachios, and something labeled as an American bison-blueberry salami), along with some honey, fruits and fruit preserves, a baguette, olives, nuts, and crackers. She tops this off with nice linens and silverware and all the necessary ingredients for French 75s. It's definitely more than enough for two people.

Something about the end of that dreadful month has her considering wearing color again. As a first step toward moving past mourning clothes, she experiments with a very flattering deep navy dress that's definitely not black, though it looks it in most lights. She adds a coat of lipstick, and then takes herself and her basket to Janet's room, where she raps lightly on the door.

NSFW!

Comments

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Very thoughtful," Janet tells her, in the kind of airily joking tone that indicates she actually means it. She leans her shoulder against Susan's again. "Laertes agreed to help me judge the new game."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Has he! Very good," says Susan, approvingly. "Have you decided whether to teach him some magic?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Not yet," Janet admits. "I've navigated some insane social dramas before, but your husband married you, didn't tell me, then fucked me, and you were the one who accidentally broke the news to me has been a weird one to get past. We're a little..." She grimaces. "We're fine, but sometimes it feels like Laertes and I are kindergarteners learning Friendship 101 again."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Ah," says Susan, wisely, in a way she hopes will make Janet laugh. "That old agony aunt classic."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Susan is wholly successful, and Janet snorts out a laugh. Luckily, she's not in the middle of a bite, though she does have a slice of baguette in one hand. "Exactly. And he feels so guilty, but it's not his fault. He doesn't control Sagramore."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"He certainly does not."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet briskly spreads ricotta on her baguette slice. "I got stuck in a closet with him. Sagramore, not Laertes. This mansion thinks it's so fucking funny."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Do you reckon Laertes is homosexual?" Susan wonders, before she processes what Janet has said. "Did you! That sounds dreadful. I got stuck with Enjolras."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"What--" Janet laughs again, this time with the sheer surprise of their insanely crossed wires. "The blond Frenchman? At least he's easy on the eyes. Laertes is obviously not heterosexual, but I'm guessing that's not the question?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan shall address these things one at a time. She takes a sip of her drink and starts with, "It was too dark to make him out, and anyway, Enjolras is a terrible bore¹. I asked him if his disrespect for me was general or specific and he told me it wasn't because I'm a woman, given that women are the mothers of the republic and ought to be treated as such."


¹Or did she say boor?

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet rolls her eyes expansively and pops an olive into her mouth. "We're the mothers of the republic, huh? Every single one of us? How fucking generous of him to acknowledge our vital wombs."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"He seemed rather perplexed that I would take issue with the claim, but as we hadn't anywhere else to go at the moment, he became party to some of my concerns," Susan says, primly. Next topic: "You were stuck with Sagramore?" She swallows the are you all right brimming at her lips, and leaves the question as the mildest of prompts.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Yep." Janet knocks back the remainder of her cocktail, because it feels like the appropriate time to do so. "I was pissed, and he was just so..." She shrugs, as casually as she can. "We hadn't talked since I tore him a new one after Laertes broke the news. I've never seen a man with his tail so firmly between his legs."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan glances at Janet and then says, delicately, "Perhaps if a man is so full of regret for his various actions, he ought to choose different actions."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet starts to say something, hesitates, and then gives Susan a sharp look. "Did he do something to you?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, no, not at all," says Susan, who doesn't think of her assignation with Sagramore as him doing something to her, and who certainly doesn't mind that he was thinking about Janet the entire time, or want to tell Janet that Sagramore was thinking about Janet the entire time - she suspects Janet mightn't be so sanguine about it. That is, he apologized, which she doesn't care for, but she's never been interested in friendship with one-off sexual partners, so it barely registers.

Susan isn't typically very open about her assignations; this is partly because to date, there haven't been many important enough to bear mention, and partly because her friends, save Ingrid, had unwelcome opinions about their frequency and volume. Perhaps she ought to have mentioned this when it first came up? Now it feels like, if she doesn't mention it now, she's making it out to be a bigger deal than it actually is. Certainly the sex hadn't been good, but it had been pretty standard for most of her couplings immediately before her arrival, too, so it only stands out in the slightest in that she encounters Sagramore with greater frequency than 'never at all.' Ugh.

She rolls her eyes, conveying with every scrap of posture, tone, and expression that she can command that this is an entirely neutral tidbit that she's sharing, and clarifies, "I suppose I initiated a rather maudlin assignation when I first got here, and he's avoided me ever since. I don't mind, naturally; we don't get along. I just think that if there's a pattern of regretted behavior it ought to be a sign that the behavior should change. Otherwise it stinks of self-flagellation." Which she'd just been talking with Laertes about. Could he have meant...?

[sorrowandsorrow]

The sharpness of that look doesn't fade away from Janet's face as she takes this in. Now she wishes she hadn't just finished her drink -- she could have used the time it takes to nurse a sip to get her shit together before she has to say something. Objectively, it's not a big deal. Sagramore has sex with a lot of people. Janet always knew that, abstractly, and took it as a relief that she wasn't solely responsible for whatever was going on with him. And Susan was wildly different when she first got here, for obvious, depressing reasons.

Objectively, it's not a big deal -- but it is, also objectively, kind of weird. "You didn't tell me that," she says.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I didn't think to," Susan admits. She doesn't apologize (yet, at least), due to her policy, but there is an apologetic note to her voice.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Huh." Janet doesn't enjoy introspection. It's not her strong suit, it mostly makes her feel stupid, whatever. So she's actively trying to avoid figuring out why this is bothering her. "Maudlin?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan glances at Janet, and then leans against her, and then selects a shiny firm grape and offers it to her. "Extremely maudlin," she says. "I rarely think about it." She also, frankly, remembers little of it.

[sorrowandsorrow]

After a split second, Janet takes the grape. She rolls it between two fingers as she says, "Too bad. He and I usually had a pretty good time in the sack, actually."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"He wasn't the only one that week, and—" since Janet has said she enjoyed Sagramore, Susan shan't say 'nothing to write home about,' actually. "—I've got stronger memories which far overshadow any sex I was having then. Playing darts with a gorgeous woman, for example." Susan lets her hand drop to Janet's knee for a squeeze, and then she leans forward to start mixing them each a second drink. "But your time in the closet. You're alright?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

Just like it was probably meant to, Susan's flattery pulls a little flash of a grin out of Janet. She eats the grape. "I'm all right. It just took the wind out of my sails. It's not that fun to be pissed off at a man who's already doing all the work of hating himself for you."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"The audacity."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"It's fucking rude," Janet agrees. "Like, you start whaling on a punching bag and it collapses immediately? No fun."