 but if you have what it takes to return to where all the world knows your name,
then que sera, let's go sailing on
Considerate of Arthur to not start straight away. Mallos seized on the silence and used it as an opportunity to try and fix his phone.
His muscles relaxed and his face neutral, he gave the impression of not even noticing the tension in the room. Imposing silences were an age-old technique when giving a scolding, and Mallos, as an age-old person with a habit of running up scoldings, had long since learned how to turn them around to make the other person feel uncomfortable instead. The only thing which showed his internal discomfort, in fact, was the very thing which gave him the air of being at ease – he couldn’t keep his hands still. Since Arthur had ignored his genial question, he in turn ignored the king’s less-than-friendly silence, pulled the pieces of his phone back out of pocket and started to clip them together again. The SIM and SD cards were a little fiddly to inset, but once they were in it was easy enough to snap the battery and backing back into place. Having reassembled the phone, he turned it over and switched it on. He hadn’t really expected it to boot up, but the endurable little thing did – and with only a few apps missing on the homepage to show for its being dismantled and reassembled by an amateur. Mallos loaded the app store, searched and downloaded the missing apps and replaced them on his homepage before putting the phone to sleep and slipping it back into his pocket. Arthur had, very considerately, remained silent the entire time.
Mallos lounged back on the chair, tapping the arm lightly with the fingers on his right hand, and raised his eyebrows at the king to indicate that he was ready now. That’s when Arthur did possibly the most devastating thing he could have done under the circumstances – he reached under the desk and pulled out the papers Mallos had thrown away earlier. The very same ones. He could tell they were his because of the word urgente stamped across the top; he didn’t think Arthur received many urgent letters in Spanish.
The irascible Spaniard had been throwing documents away (not all of them – just the really boring ones) for centuries, and this was the first time the abandoned letters had ever made their way back to him. He kept his expressions in check, giving no outward indication of his feelings, but instead reached across and ran his thumb down the edge of them. Arthur made the mistake of falling silent again then, so Mallos jumped at the opportunity to fill it.
“You know, I wondered where they had gone,” he mused innocently. “Aww, look – you even tied them up with a little bow. It’ll be so much harder to lose them now.”
His tone made it sound like a challenge.
He withdrew his hand, leaving the papers to sit on the desk, and went back to tapping the armchair. The tapping was usually a subconscious habit he employed when he was thinking or concentrating on a problem; now, however, it was indicative of his internal and otherwise invisible restlessness. Arthur apparently hadn’t learnt his lesson about silences yet, because he employed another one after passing a comment on the duck. It took Mallos a second to remember the duck incident, but then he grinned cheerfully.
“If you fancy venison tomorrow, I can probably manage that,” he suggested pleasantly in a way which made it unclear whether he was joking or not. Probably joking – but then, Mallos would probably also consider setting a deer lose inside the castle a joke too. Arthur dragged this silence out, so Mallos pulled his phone out of his pocket, brought up a picture of a deer and showed him the screen. “One like that? Or would you prefer…” he scrolled through the pictures, selected an alternative and offered it to the king.
When Arthur did speak next, it was woefully insulting. Mallos considered himself a much more difficult person to ‘deal with’ than any thirteen year-old, even one who was his grandson. If Arthur thought him Tristan’s equivalent, he was just going to have to try harder.
He studied the king’s face, searching for any trace of mirth or light-heartedness, but found none. Either Arthur was playing the game very well, or he was being genuine. Mallos imitated the king’s expression (having had plenty of occasion to view Arthur’s stern faces in the past, and being an accomplished actor, he managed this very well) and altered his posture to mirror him.
“Arthur,” he replied in an uncannily accurate impression of Arthur’s accent, voice and tone, “why is it, I not only have to deal with Lorraine, and then also have to come home and deal with you as if you were my mother?”
mallos
there's a wise man in every fool
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