Work Text:
This was supposed to be a convivial and pleasant dinner, but the young, gaunt man had looked terribly upset all evening. Sure, he had engaged in polite conversation with his fair share of interlocutors, but there was a hollow sadness in his eyes, especially when he glanced over at the girl. The older man felt a pang of compassion in his heart, because it was so easy to see what was going on and so impossible to do anything about it. And so, like an astronomer, he could only observe. The older man did what he could to get him to put down the telescope. And he did the only thing he knew how to do.
“. . . and so, I would take credit for the all the bread this evening but really it was a joint effort,” said the older man.
“Proper attribution of credit is a virtue,” said the younger man, almost automatically. The double meaning hadn’t even registered, as far as the older man could tell. And what was worse – the statement was the kind of empty statement of fact that is difficult to hook a continued conversational hasp into: a statement designed to let the talking fade out, an invitation of silence. The younger man wanted to gaze at his meteor and watch it combust in the atmosphere.
“Another virtue,” the older man hastened to add, “is being genuine. Bone-a fide, if you will.” He was really racking his brains for this, it was certainly not his best material. But by good fortune, he would spare no fuel and take no quarter to cheer this thin little bespectacled man up just a little bit, just once. Just a smile, as long as it wasn’t one of those wistful ones; this young man had had enough of wist, he could tell.
But the young man just nodded. He had invited silence, and he was going to keep it companion even if the older man refused to. It was over twenty minutes until they spoke again—the older man was host after all. But he had not stopped thinking about him, of course, and he had mentally filed away all the things he could say.
“Was the tea to your liking?”
The young man nodded again. “It is an excellent cup, thank you.” He didn’t meet his eye. The hollowness was yawning, the meteor was burning.
A skeleton walked up to them and started picking up their dishes to carry back into the kitchen. The older man nodded at it, pleased that his timing had worked out. Now it was all about delivery. “Say,” he said.
The younger man slowly turreted his head toward the older one, though it was still apparent that he kept his attention on the conversation at the other end of the table.
“You know what I call those little kitchen helpers?”
“What do you call those little kitchen helpers?” the younger man asked.
“Skull-ions.” He chortled at his own joke but tried to compose himself.
“Because their skulls are visible and scullion is a word that means kitchen helper,” the young man filled in. Oh no, this was bad. This was worse than before. Of course the young man was perfectly aware of what he had been trying to do all along. Everybody said how fiercely intelligent he was. The older man couldn’t help but let his face fall a few inches at the realization.
“Is there nothing I could do to make a . . . dent in your sombre mood this evening?” the older man said.
“I am fine, Magnus,” the younger man said. “And you have been the perfect host. If I thought you weren’t, it would be even more apparent that I’m not the Ninth House.”
The younger man put a hand on the older man’s shoulder, and the older man tried to make his eyebrows connect with each other.
The girl with the dark glasses from the Ninth House was nodding at everything the other girl was saying, was so obviously being courted by the woman who owned the young man’s heart. Another skeleton was stacking their dishes, but the girl had to take every plate and glass and item of cutlery first and hand it to them, awkwardly. The sick girl almost had her hand on the Ninth House girl’s shoulder.
“Pardon?” the older man said at last.
“I would make no bones about it.” And the younger man awarded the older man with a thin smile before he walked away.