Owl to Susan Sto Helit (closed RP for Susan and Charles Macaulay)

[charlesmacaulay]

((Backdated to just after Henry Winter and Camilla Macaulay's wedding.))

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[charlesmacaulay]

Too much alcohol killed the chocolate? Too much alcohol killed a lot of things. That was the whole point of too much alcohol. Charles sauntered off to the bar, where the bartender -- as grizzled as the tables were greasy -- gave him the requested cocoa. He probably thought the doctored-up cocoa was for Charles and the straight stuff for the lady. In truth Charles wasn't finding it hard to refrain. He liked being in a bar, even when he couldn't drink, the same way he liked being around Camilla even when he couldn't touch her. Bars felt like home. Camilla felt like home

[charlesmacaulay]

"That just goes to show you haven't had a proper cream-cheese-and-marmalade sandwich. It ought to be on really thick bread, ideally wheat or even pumpernickel if it's around. It's substantial in its own right," Charles insisted, wide-eyed and earnest. "Tea sandwiches are little flimsy thin things. A good cream cheese and marmalade sandwich is anything but."

[usethepoker]

Something about his earnestness made Susan smile. There was something almost childlike about it, even though there was nothing childlike about Charles himself. It was a different sort of earnestness than Camilla's, certainly, even if in some ways they suggested one another.

"I might have to try a piece of one, maybe," she said, somewhat doubtful. "Though I think it might wind up with nougat on the 'not a chance' list." There were few things Susan genuinely hated, but nougat was one of them.

[charlesmacaulay]

As quick as that, Charles was up from his seat and over at the bar, having a word with the barman. He appeared to be having an almost showily surreptitious conversation with the man -- whether for Susan's benefit or the man's might be hard to say, but all evidence pointed to the latter, considering that when the man disappeared into a back room for a moment, Charles threw a quick look and a wink over his shoulder to Susan.

Whatever twin-magic he'd worked, Charles returned to the table with a grubby checkered cloth in which was wrapped the queen of all cream-cheese-and-marmalade sandwiches, made to the specifications he'd just mentioned: a thick crusty dark bread, probably what the barman himself liked, spread thickly with cream cheese and with a tart golden citrus jelly. It was in fact bitter orange marmalade, which Charles believed made the cream cheese seem sweeter. He'd become a connoisseur of marmalades.

"There." He placed it on the table before Susan with a triumphant expectant air. "I'm throwing down the gauntlet."

[usethepoker]

Susan stared at the sandwich a moment, and let out a peal of honest, unreserved laughter. "Oh, well, if it's a dare, I suppose I have no choice," she said, unwrapping the cloth. She took an experimental bite, hoping she wasn't about to be utterly sickened. Much to her surprise, it was rather better than the anemic sandwiches she'd had at Madam Puddifoot's. It wasn't something she'd choose to eat every day, but it wasn't grotesque, either.

"Not bad," she said. "Though I don't think I can eat the whole thing." It really was a huge sandwich, and while Susan had a capacity for food that seemed rather astonishing for her size, there was no way she could eat it all.

[charlesmacaulay]

"Don't worry, we won't let it go to waste." Charles took it from her and tore off rather a sizable chunk before handing the rest back. Sticky-fingered, grinning, he munched at his hunk of dairy-and-citrus bliss. It was childlike, in the way Camilla could sometimes seem too -- childlike without being childish or twee, somehow. Innocent.

[usethepoker]

All right, it was quite impossible to remain in a brown study when the person across from you has just taken a giant bite out of your sandwich. Susan snorted into her cocoa, very nearly sending it out her nose, and managed to laugh and cough all at once.

"Well, that's one way to solve the problem," she said, wiping her mouth on her handkerchief and taking the sandwich back. The piece she took was not nearly so large as Charles's, but she was certainly doing her part. She tried to imagine Camilla doing such a thing and failed, but certainly she must have at some point, having grown up with Charles. Then again, if one took into account Camilla's ability to climb trees like a monkey, it made it easier to picture.

[charlesmacaulay]

"So, the verdict?" Sandwich in one hand, he extricated his handkerchief from an inner breast pocket with the other, and laid it out as an impromptu placemat on which he could then set the sandwich down. "I could live on this stuff, personally. I think Camilla and I both did, for weeks on end. Especially when papers were due."

Cream cheese and marmalade were the flavors of a happier time.

"My feelings won't be hurt if you don't like it, of course," he assured Susan. "More for me that way. But if you end up not liking Lucky Charms either, I might start to think it's personal."

It was a light little joke -- he clearly didn't have any personal attachment to Lucky Charms cereal (though his relationship to cream cheese and marmalade sandwiches might be perceptibly fraught). Susan's reaction to the sandwich, cocoa-spluttering and all, had launched him into a more effusive and jovial mood.

[usethepoker]

"Better than I expected," she said. "Though I can't say it will ever be a favorite. The bread really does make a difference." That, and perhaps the fact that it hadn't been put together by some matronly little witch at Madam Puddifoot's. "As for Lucky Charms, it would be hard to dislike anything with marshmallows in."

She drained the last of her cocoa. "What was it like, your school? Hogwarts can hardly be the standard of this world's educational system--Camilla's told me very little about Hampden, other than that she and you, Henry, Henry's best man, Francis, and that odious Richard all went there." Susan Did Not Like Richard. At all.

[charlesmacaulay]

Odious? Ha. There was a time Charles would've said something in Richard's defense. That was before Richard had ratted him out to Henry

[usethepoker]

Odious. Definitely odious. The man had insulted her to her face--the fact that he'd done so in a language he did not expect her to understand didn't make it any better. An insult was an insult.

Honestly, Hampden sounded like the sort of place Susan might have liked, in terms of being able to tailor curriculum--if she'd had a choice at school, she wouldn't have subjected herself to Literature or History. It wasn't until the mess with the glass clock that she'd had even a glimmer of interest in history, and even then it was because she'd finally noticed just how weird the history of the Discworld actually was.

"All of you," she said. "Your little group. I've heard only a few passing words from Henry and Camilla about school, about the classes you took and the things you did." They would all have been so young, then--twenty, twenty-one? "What little I've heard sounds interesting, but neither of them really volunteer information, and I haven't wanted to ask." What made her feel it was all right to ask Charles, she didn't know, but

[charlesmacaulay]

(( reposted because I tag better when I'm not falling-over sleepy >> ))

Of course she was curious. Everyone had always been curious. There had always been rumors. Charles would have to be careful what he said and didn't say; but he was used to that, too.

All of you, she said. He had to restrain a wince. All of you properly included Bunny Corcoran, and she'd seen him at the wedding reception being disruptive. A late and ineffective disruption, damn it (though Charles had since realized that it had been a desperate and foolish hope Bunny could really put off the wedding anyway. Delayed it, maybe, that would have been the best he could hope for