milliways_bar | (no subject)

As usual at this hour the kitchen is deserted apart from Gil and the rats. Much though he values his staff he quite likes these quiet times when he can just potter around at his own pace.

Sooty is sleeping - sort of - and the Bar is quiet and breakfasts and lunches are all prepared and ready to go.

"What shall I do, Ratty?" Gil asks. "Even dinner is easy tonight - chicken casserole, spinach and ricotta quiche and beefsteak with chips, onions rings and peas."

Ratty, trying to impress upon the remaining eight baby rats the importance of staying out from under peoples' feet, squeaks unsympathetically that she has enough trouble thinking for her offspring without doing it for him and he grins at the babies' sympathetic looks.

"All right," he says. "In that case - since I haven't done much to help with the building I'm going to do some decorating. There are lots of walls that need some undercoat - it's hardly skilled work. Then at least I can say I've done something to help."

Ratty squeaks loudly and chases him across the room to the back door with the babies whooping in pursuit.

"Of course," Gil protests, rolling his eyes. "I know where the dustsheets are kept. No, I won't. Yes, I'll be careful. I won't go up ladders on my own." Then he sighs and looks down at Ratty with a frown. "I can read you know! Emuslion is for walls and gloss is for woodwork. Even I can't get those muddled up, they smell different."

He smiles at her, waves at the babies and goes to the new wing. Ten minutes later, happily perched on a ladder, he is applying white emulsion to the magically dried plaster work and humming to himself.

It's almost as much fun as cooking.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hei, Gil - you are painting walls!"

There is a very sheepish and slightly sleepy small purple god turning up in the new wing - building site no longer, really.

"I seem to have overslept terribly..." he adds.

Gil, with paint in his hair and on his nose, smiles down at him.

"Yes, sleepyhead, you did. My fault I suppose for wearing you out." Gil's grin is completely unrepentant.

"Well, in that case, I would have worn you out as well - but here you are, fresh as a daisy, and painting walls. Bernard and Tonks have already moved into their palce, imagine that! Ever since Boromir started helping with the kitchen cabinets, things have been falling rapidly into place."

Asar-Suti touches his hand to Gil's leg, feeling the need to touch him in some way, even though climbing up the ladder with him to kiss him would not be a good idea.

Gil smiles down at him as his stone warms against his chest. He finishes the bit of paint on his brush and climbs down the ladder and sets the paintpot and brush to one side.

"Now," he says, "shall we say hello properly?"

"Oh yes please," Asar-Suti says, setting his coffee aside and holding out his arms for Gil.

Gil steps into them, careless of paint because there are baths and scrubbing and, if that fails, magic. he rubs his nose across Sooty's then tilts his head to kiss him - a long slow gentle kiss that says all kinds of things ...

- I've missed you
- it seems ages since I last saw you
- mmm you taste nicely of coffee
- wait until later, my kisses will be different then

... simple little things like that.

Asar-Suti pulls Gil into his arms and kisses him back, feeling that sweet list of simple little things, and smilng into the kiss - Gil is so very lovely. Loving. Wondeful. Much better than any Dark God ever deserved.

Asar-Suti is suddenly very glad that he's not a Dark God any more, but simply this oldnew version of himself that can be with Gil.

A little rub of nose against nose. "Can I help you paint so we, erm, are through faster?"

"Of course," Gil smiles. "Accio brush." He snatches the clean paint brush from the air and passes it to Sooty. "Do you want to be on the ladder or shall I carry on?"

"You carry on on tha ladder, I do the lower part, you drip paint on me a lot and then I get my hair washed in the bath?" Asar-Suti suggests, with a broad grin.

Gil isn't going to 'drip paint a lot', of course, but a bath together will be nice afterwards, anyway.

Gil frowns at Sooty, then grins. "Ha ha," he says and climbs back up the ladder. "I think one coat should do it, then the proper colour will go on much better over the top. I'm astonished," he said, "how quick Bernard and Tonks have been to move in. Everyone must've worked really hard."

He layers the paint on quickly.

Asar-Suti starts painting the wall as well. "Yes - he must have done something with Millitime, grabbed enough of it so he could finish it. He did it for Tonks, of course, so what's a bit of Millitiming if you make your love happy? He's the Barman anyway."

Asar-Suti grins; he started doing his part of the renovations for Gil's sake as well, but found he enjoyed it on its own.

"I spoke to Bernard, by the way - I can do a bit of gardening in the back, now that spring is starting, so there can be a place later for people to sit and take their drinks outside," he then tells Gil while rapidly painting the wall.

"What a good idea!"

Gil does splash just a bit of paint in his enthusiasm.

"I wonder if we could do one of those mixed gardens with flowers and fruit and vegetables all mixed together so it looks really pretty but I can make food we've grown ourselves?"

"Of course we can - when we go away for the grimoires Ginevra talked about, then we have to drop by some Earth version and buy gardenin books!" Asar-Suti says, full of enthusiasm.

Whee, another project! And this one, he can do with Gil. And for Gil. The small pruple god of magic can imagine happy months of spring and summer ahead...

"Mmmm, fresh fruit and vegetables," Gil says. The stuff in the pantry is fine but you can't beat picking something and eating it straight away. Then he grins. Given a little leeway with the design he's sure they can make little tucked away areas for schmooping in.

"Oh, yes, Soots," he breathes. "There's so much to look forward to this year."

Asar-Suti likes it when Gil calls him 'Soots', and he ejoys thinking of wonderful things ahead.

So he paints a bit faster.