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

[charlesmacaulay.livejournal.com]

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



Charles was antsy and bored and wearing a trench in the stone floor of his room from pacing. He needed distraction, somebody to talk to so he could avoid thinking about the honeymoon. Camilla would come back, yes, and his plan could go forward; but for now the fact that she was with Henry, on a honeymoon, was driving Charles crazy. But drink he would not, not after the last time. That just led to mistakes, and Charles refused to make mistakes. Not now. Not this time.

Which mean he couldn't go to Francis. Francis would just encourage him to drink. Or more. More was not a good idea. Richard was out, either - Charles was in no mood to deal with his unrequited melancholy over Camilla. This did not strike him as ironic in the least.

Charles was at a loss: he needed somebody, a friendly face. Someone who could take his mind off of what was likely happening in a hotel room in Mykonos. It occurred to him, somewhat belatedly and after some thought, that there just might be someone who could do that.

Susan. Camilla's friend and maid of honor.

Granted, he'd only just met her, but he'd liked her. Really liked her, not in a sexually predatory way but as a potential friend, and Charles had forgotten how good simple friendship could feel. It had been years since there'd been anyone who was just his friend. She'd seemed to like him, too. Maybe she'd be willing to help take him out of himself, stop him from sabotaging everything he wanted and ruining everything he'd risked.

Maybe she'd know what Camilla was doing.

With this in mind, he sent her an owl, carrying a bag of mini-marshmallows:

Susan,

Come to Hogsmeade with me for some hot chocolate and a change of scenery?

Charles

((Edited for more clarity on Charles' thinking. Shouldn't affect the actual RP at all. :) ))

Comments

[charlesmacaulay.livejournal.com]

"You don't like cream cheese and marmalade sandwiches?" His astonishment wasn't feigned for humor. It was genuine. The twins assumed everyone liked cream cheese and marmalade.

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

Susan laughed. "Not together, no," she said. "Then again, I'm not really fond of tea sandwiches in general. They don't fill you up--all they do is make you hungrier."

[charlesmacaulay.livejournal.com]

"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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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 (https://www.jollygrub.com/OnLineStore1/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=195&zenid=9cde4c3bf87269f02aadc53d53c74b03), 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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

"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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

"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.livejournal.com]

"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.livejournal.com]

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.

"You want to know what Hampden was like? I wouldn't say it was the standard of any educational system any more than Hogwarts is. We used to say it was the last place on earth for the worst people in the world. A really small liberal arts college, third-tier -- that's pretty low, in the national rankings -- and it'd take just about anyone who could afford the steep tuition and who could cast their dubious academic record in a good light. They didn't say any of that in the promotional literature, of course. It all sounded very high-minded and forward-thinking, you know, tailor the curriculum to the individual. I don't think there's many schools that would have let us do what we did in terms of our own curriculum -- we classics students. It really was awful, and also kind of wonderful."

Charles rubbed his palm against the thigh of his slacks, then leaned his chin on his hand. "I dunno. What is it you want to know about it?"

[usethepoker.livejournal.com]

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 somehow he projected a different...vibe...than Camilla and Henry. Whether illusory or not, there was something a little more open about him than there was about the others.

[charlesmacaulay.livejournal.com]

(( 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).

"If they don't volunteer information that's probably because there isn't much worth telling," he lied straight-faced. "Or because what they remember isn't something they feel like sharing. They were closer than I knew at the time." There, that might be a nice spot of misdirection. If Susan suspected something hidden and secret in their collective Hampden past, he'd offer up something she already knew about, leaving the subject of Bunny entirely untouched.

"I don't really see how it would sound interesting. I guess it looked glamorous from the outside -- to people like Richard. That's just because they're fooled by the surface of things. Francis likes to dress up, and Henry looks like an undertaker, and Camilla's ... Camilla. So it's picturesque." Notably he left himself out of this description, though he was as much a part of the picture as the rest of them: the handsomest of the lot, the golden boy, carelessly debonair in his white tennis sweaters, like something out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. "But that's all surface. Just like I was telling you earlier -- it makes people feel provincial but it's all show. There wasn't anything special about us. We were just a little clique like any other clique of kids. Our classes were fascinating to us, but let's face it, Julian Morrow wasn't exactly Richmond Lattimore. He hardly published at all. I doubt he was particularly well known in the international academic community. The only one of us who went on to grad school was Richard, and he did his PhD in English lit, nothing to do with the classes we took together at all."

Charles shrugged. "It was college, that's all. I bet that's what really interests you about it -- the general framework of it, because it's different from school where you come from. There's lots of novels and stuff about the American college experience. Maybe you should read some of those."