" [closed post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan prevaricates for several days about whether to approach Sagramore. She's a little lost with respect to her feelings about him, particularly after the one-two punch of being charmed by his teenaged self and then having her own eight-year-old self being so thoroughly taken by him. (And isn't that queer, to remember it after the fact? She'd been so convinced he wouldn't remember their encounter in the kitchen, but... what if, like her, he has?)

Sagramore is a good man, which she's known for a while now. He doesn't like her, which is fine, because while she hasn't disliked him for months, she hasn't exactly given him reason to change his mind about her outside of a few awkward conversations. She thinks, perhaps, that there might be a world in which they get along. It isn't this one, clearly, but - the possibility is there, in some alternate dimension; perhaps one day the mansion's nonsense will bring it to bear for a few short hours and in its aftermath they will be none the wiser.

Regardless, she finds that she likes that they've got a truce, and not just because they've got people in common. He's an asset to the community, and Susan likes to keep close inventory of assets.

It's a hot day, and the queerness of the month is in full effect. Perhaps that's why Susan decides, in the midst of a fit of research, that Sagramore - who is ever so well-connected - might make a good co-conspirator for her newest project. (It is also - though Susan doesn't realize it - exactly one Earth-year since their ill-advised assignation. In truth, she's placed that encounter almost fully out of her mind, and while she does make a close study of her days here, she's merely noticed that she's known Lancelot for a year now, and refrained from considering the rest.)

And so she prepares her bribes offerings. She makes coffee the way Sagramore's teenage self taught her: with the grounds and the spices and the sugar and the water, boiled three times and decanted into a thermos. (She's also made tea for herself. She knows better than to pretend she's going to try the coffee again.) The thermos itself is a gift; it's a kitschy little affair that reads If found, return to Dad, and part of a number of queerly-labeled items that she's found populating her parlor (which is now attached to her room by a door next to her closet) since Rainbows began. While savory bakes aren't her forte in the same way sweet ones are, she also prepares hagymás tekercs, with the hopes that they're to his taste. Once she's got everything - coffee, tea, and rolls - packaged up, she places them carefully away in a satchel along with her notebook, a pen, and several samples of the focus of her true agenda. This time she hasn't got a list of conversational topics. She rather thinks she shan't need one.

To her relief, as she makes her way to his cottage, she sees that Sunny is off playing in Crowley's automobile, and Laertes is walking along the forest's edge with Magnus, seemingly deep in conversation. While it wouldn't matter if either were home, their absence shall make this discussion easier.

As before, she squares her shoulders. Then she knocks firmly on the door.

Comments

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Cannabis, truly?" Susan asks, surprised. "My word! What a funny little man." She rests her hand on Janet's hip for a moment before reaching for the bottle herself. After a swig, she says, "Yes. I've--" a brief pause "--recruited Sagramore to solicit the participation of a number of men here, but I thought you might enjoy directing the photographs themselves."

[sorrowandsorrow]

What a funny little man makes Janet laugh again. She's tipsy, and this is one of her favorite kinds of Susan: postcoital, warm, affectionate. "Aw, telling a bunch of men what to do so they can be objectified? You shouldn't have."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I thought it might appeal to you!" Pleased, Susan takes another sip from the bottle, then leans over Janet to return it to the night-stand. "You may be as strict a taskmistress as you like, naturally."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet grins broadly. "That goes without saying." She coils a few locks of Susan's hair around her fingers. "What's the lineup?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Mmm." Susan turns her head and presses a kiss to Janet's wrist. "Most men of reasonable age. None of the truly intolerable ones."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Another laugh spills out of Janet. "You mean no Enjolras."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I do," says Susan, settling down - for the time being - at Janet's side. Well, mostly settling. She makes sure their legs are tangled together first. "And," with a dramatic little delicate shudder, "Apollo."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Like the gentlewoman and queen she is, Janet pretends to gag. She's steered clear of Apollo for a lot of reasons. Fuck gods and their bullshit is reason numero uno. "You didn't want to subject him to me going harpy on his ass? I'm not sure if I'm flattered or insulted."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"As jolly appealing as it would be to see you defenestrate a piddling excuse of a god or a man," says Susan, letting a hand drift lower, skimming the skin of Janet's side and then curling it over her thigh. "And believe you me, I would find it tremendously satisfying to watch... but best to simply not include a poor offering in a gift."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Another laugh, and she shifts slightly, welcoming Susan's touch. She still has Susan's hair wrapped closely around her fingers. "I'll have to find another time to tear him a new one. I'll carve it out of my packed schedule."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Do please apprise me of when you pencil it in," says Susan. "I should like to see it." She pauses, then - mildly tentatively - says, "I believe Sagramore might like to watch, too."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet's quiet for a single beat, but then she relents, more of a snorted huff of a laugh this time. "He always did like it when I was a bitch to him. Maybe he'll get off on watching me do it to someone else."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Mm. Perhaps."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"What, you don't think so?" She nudges Susan with her hip.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan smiles, dropping a kiss to Janet's shoulder, and then another to her collarbone, and then she wrests her head back lest she get distracted trailing lower. "I think it might be equally the subject and the object of the defenestration."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet digests this for half a second, letting Susan's hair slither out from between her fingers, then turns understatedly gleeful. "Does Sagramore not like someone?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, he's jolly sore with Apollo," says Susan, delighted by Janet's glee. She drags her hand up, curling her fingers around the dip of Janet's waist.

[sorrowandsorrow]

God, Janet loves it when Susan says things like jolly sore. "Why? Did he do something?" she asks, shamelessly digging for the gossip.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Did he! He rather stuck a foot in it - rather badly, I gather. It was the sort of thing Sagramore was already inclined to dislike, I've surmised, but he also did it in front of Sunny."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Asshole," Janet says cheerfully, but then she does admit, "I made Sunny cry in front of him. I didn't know she was a mutant baby who understands everything you say."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Does she indeed!" says Susan, turning this over in her mind, along with the queer sort of insistence with which Sunny asked questions of Susan when Susan was a child.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Yep." Janet manages to shrug despite the way she's sprawled on the bed. "Found that out the hard way."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan sighs. "I suppose I ought to speak to her, then."

[sorrowandsorrow]

This is very much Janet's trying not to look as intrigued as she is face. "Did you say something insensitive to the baby?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Certainly not! I - hm." Susan makes a face. "I gave that boy a dressing-down in front of her."