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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.

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

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."

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?"

"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.

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

"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."

"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."

"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.

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

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

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

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

That boy presumably being Magnus. Janet does actually like Magnus fine, and she doesn't really get the extent of Susan's beef with him, but it's so fun when Susan has beef with someone. "What'd he do? Or did you just not like his vibe?"

Susan knows Janet likes when she complains, so she's got no issue hamming it up a little as she says, "He's got no respect or care for the ramifications of his actions. He was enabling her in scribbling all over the walls in the hallway! Clearly he's trying to indoctrinate her into his bad behavior."

She doesn't mention the secret training; Lancelot has mentioned that Magnus has ended the secret -- far too late, if you ask Susan! -- but she's still genuinely angry about it, and doesn't want to feel genuine anger when she's tangled up with Janet like this.

Half of Janet's attention is going to the irritation etched into Susan's face instead of the gist of her complaint, but she gets the idea. "I mean, babies do things like that, right? Maybe she's indoctrinating him and he's just not putting up much of a fight."

Susan blinks. Perhaps she's had a little too much wine to follow. "I beg your pardon?"

"I don't really think Magnus has the strength of personality to indoctrinate anyone," Janet explains, possibly badly. "Unlike Sunny."

Susan doesn't know about all that. After all, Magnus roped Lancelot in to his stupid secret fighting scheme. "I suppose Sunny does rather seem to know her own mind," she hedges, thinking of her eight-year-old self's interactions with the baby.

"She definitely does," Janet says with a laugh. "So, yeah, maybe you do need to have a chat with her."

"It does feel a little ridiculous," Susan says, with the lightest of eye-rolls.

"Totally ridiculous," Janet agrees, "but less shitty than making the baby cry."

Fortunately, Susan hasn't made Sunny cry, but she is picturing her as the tiny head of some sort of protection racket. Very well, she shall kiss the ring. "Then I shall add it to my to-do list," she says. "And in the meantime--" she leans in to kiss Janet.

Janet half-laughs into the kiss, but then she rallies. Pulling her focus back around her, she tips her head into the kiss, turning it sharper and deeper. Never let anyone say that Queen Janet gives half-assed kisses.

Oh, in for a penny. Susan slides into Janet's lap, pushing her hands into her hair, matching Janet's sharpness with her own, skimming a hand up and down Janet's side. "Might I interest you in a third round?" she asks, the words a mumble against Janet's lips.

There's another laugh, looser and warmer. "Aw, did thinking about me telling people what to do get you all hot and bothered?"

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