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Late in the next morning would find Mal giving Blaise a lazy house tour. (There's ample antiques, as always, but lacking the coherency the Medraut parents professionally aimed for; their son only favoring whatever looked good and felt good as was his wont. There's more oil paintings of Malory in period clothing here than when he'd seen in Europe; most of them featuring the three little black dogs introduced as: Dirk Bladegod the Excellent, Dreary Day Raven Sway, and Darkest Knightsbane. There's a door gestured to as belonging to the dogwalker.) And then they moved to the back yard, sitting comfortably at a table by the natural rock pool, under the shade of a large umbrella. The brunch in front of them was a matter of delivery from an upscale local eatery.

The orange juice was fresh squeezed by the dogwalker.

Taking a sip, Malory leaned back in his chair. Wearing silky pajama bottoms with a sheer black and and floral dressing gown, he was dressed like a gothic Golden Girl and absolutely ready to gossip like one too. "So tell me more about Grandpa sending you here. Did something happen?"

"Oh my god," Mal gasped with extra drama, "are you being taught an important life lesson?" The scandalized tone was only half joking. Important life lessons were the worst. Which was why he tried to never learn one.

Picking up a grape, thoughtfully peeled by his dog walker, Mal looked at it for a long moment before popping it in his mouth and chewing it thoughtfully. "DCU has been fun so far, and it won't be hard for you," he added, because of course Blaise would be fine. The older boy had been the pinnacle of smart and capable to a ten year old Malory, and those rose colored glasses hadn't dimmed with time at all.

"Does that mean a job?" His eyebrows scrunched up in confusion, the concept of needing a job was utterly strange, especially when applied to Blaise, dignified and full of pride. Jobs for people like them were only meant to be for fun, like a hobby. Needing one, though...

Mal gave a small shudder and took a drink. What an awful thought.

Going quiet, Mal considered the question, tilting his head one way and then the other in thought. The three dogs patiently waiting next to the table mimicked the motion in time with their owner. It really was a tough question.

For one, he was completely unfamiliar with the process of getting a job, and he'd only ever hired a person once: to be his dog walker and all the many, many additional tasks that entailed. Completely unsuitable for Blaise. Imagining the older boy in any number of visible job positions summoned up a feeling of both both dread and morbid excitement.

Blaise in a McDonald's uniform, telling people they were eating slop.

Blaise working at the Gap, telling people to try dressing like they have some modicum of personal style while glaring at an ugly mannequin.

Blaise, working at a bank...oh wait no, those were exploding recently.

"MMmmmm....maybe you could be a critic?" He didn't bother specifying what sort. There were way too many options, really. This older brother figure of his always had a lot of knowledge and opinions when it came to culture. "I've started doing, well, not a job really." He did kind of treat the Dark Mirror as an employer, though. "A sort of extra-curricular thing that would be work? But I found a way to just, do it along with the sorts of things I do anyway. Which makes it not work."

"Maybe both? I think a lot of them do both these days." Traditional publishing for cred, online publishing for actual relevancy. But maybe that would be a lot of actual work-work.

Mal's eyebrows rose at the idea of paying someone to peel his grapes for him. "Oh...oh no. This isn't his job, he just likes doing little things like this for fun." That reminded him though...

He picked up another grape, placed it in his lips, just barely biting into it and snapped a quick selfie. As he set it with a little text of praise, he continued, "I pay him well, but for all the extra little things, he prefers gestures other than money. It's very cute, really."

Text sent, Mal fixed his attention on his big brother once more, "What classes are you going to take? Performing arts has been extremely fun." Required core classes didn't matter very much to him, they were things to deal with exactly as much as needed to pass and no further.

"Oh I send him pictures sometimes, and let him brush my hair. If he's doing some kind of arts and crafts, I'll let him keep the hair in the brush..." he trailed off, before assuring Blaise, "Not that there's much. My hair is still very healthy."

Malory is a person of priorities.

He gave a little pout at the idea of going to school for business. The only thing fun about business school was that business students threw what might be the wildest, most ridiculous frat parties in the city. In Mal's minds eye, he pictured Blaise wasting away in the boredom of some accounting class, turning to salt, turning to angry salt, telling off the professor...taking over the class.

Well, he'd be fine. At the very least, French would be nice! He'd be able to correct people's accents.

"Maybe if you do something business-y over the summer, your grandpa will send you some extra money. Or just wear a business suit and I'll take pictures of you in an office to send to him?" Grandpa surely wouldn't be able to tell the difference, right?

Laughing at the thought of sending Thackery a dickpic and all the horrible but fun reactions that might garner, Malory shook his head at the concern. "He would never be so disrespectful."

Mal gave Blaise a look of profound pity at the phrase office job. He should really give his parents a call tonight and thank them for letting him be happy and have fun without having to deal with the more tedious parts of so-called adult life. (In the end, he just posted a selfie of himself on facebook, captioned it with "blessed", and tagged them in it.)

"Quite a few," Mal assured him, chin on hand. "It's not New York or LA, but Destiny City does have a fairly respectable restaurant scene." He idly swiped a finger across the phone on the table, bringing up his preferred reservation app. "How about we visit one tonight? My treat."

After all these years of being spoiled him, it was probably about time Mal treated other boy back.

Sitting up, Malory seemed to preen a little bit, smug and proud to be the one showing Blaise around now. "Let's go to the Good Mall™, then. It's got several boutiques along with the better brand stores, and it even has an aquarium." The latter was clearly the main draw for Malory.

"There's a local art museum not far from it if you want culture to go with your Orange Julius." Well, at the very least, Malory liked a smoothie of some kind to accompany him when approaching culture.

"We can get drinks after, the drag bars should be open by then and the locals go all out for Pride after all. Drinks, and a show, and then a nice dinner?"

He still didn't feel up to becoming Hybris and making out with/draining the energy of the clubbing populace of DC anyway. At least not tonight. Instead he could be a different kind of energy vampire and try to exhaust Blaise instead. Physically or just his patience, either or both would undoubtedly be fun.