"I think you put your role on your driver's license next to gender and there are hairstyles and restaurants are set up in the expectation a couple will have one person sitting at the table and the other person kneeling at their feet and there's great controversy over same-role marriage? It's weird."

"Oh, that kind of kinky."

"And my poor alt was very worried that he and local Rebecca would not be compatible - he couldn't, like, torture her, even if she was into that - but they're all right except for the weird thing you all have is more pronounced."

"...we all have a weird thing?"

"You all have a weird thing! It's that - I understand being delighted to hook up and therefore not urgently needing to know what would happen if you didn't want to, but - most people I know would eventually want to know the answer to that, because they wouldn't like or respect someone if his answer was 'well, what are you going to do about it' -"

"...it might've occurred to me to wonder but, like, if one of the outcomes of asking a question is 'now I'm having way less fun' and the other is 'I have some information I did not even need' why go there?"

Nod. "The notes from your alts said that I was much likelier to - mess up at making you feel wanted - than do something you didn't want and didn't know it was safe to refuse - because I'd notice if you weren't happy and because you, uh, would be happy. So I didn't worry. But apparently my alt with the kink-world you explained to her that where he's from even after marriage she can turn him down and she was terribly disappointed because that's not hot at all."

"...well, it's not! I mean, I don't find it anti-hot, personally, but there is nothing actively hot about being allowed to shove your spouse off you, so if one expects more than no hotness in that vicinity of one's life..."

Snort. "I suppose. He found a way to cheat, so they're all right."

"Cheat?"

"He can read minds. I can't, you shall have to use your words or at least make faces, but he can, and she doesn't mind, and he can obviously decline when he pleases and obviously prefers to whenever she would refuse it if that were allowed. Without the mindreading it'd be so so hard to be sure enough but with it I suppose they'll be fine. Maybe he'll get a helpful marriage blessing - they get them at random instead of selecting the ones they want like civilized people -"

"Oh that's cute," says Peka, of the mindreading. "Maybe a little much for day one? I'm getting the impression that I am maybe less the thing we are than all the rest of me."

"It might be environmental? The early 1800s on Earths were really absurdly sexist and I am not sure they'd invented consent as a concept and they didn't have divorce - and then Beka's from Angband which is, whatever you're imagining, much much worse than that. I do not mind if you are not the thing at all, it's not - I wouldn't raise a daughter believing it, at least, even if I can see how under some circumstances it'd be adaptive -"

"I have a concept of consent!" Peka assures him.

"Oh good. You could of course stay here in arbitrary material luxury forever whether you wished to have a whirlwind romance or not, and no matter what you do we'll do the same things for all the reds on your home planet, too - well, I guess, if you marched across the street and told them I kidnapped you then I would not be involved in the handling of your planet because of being arrested and that might affect minor details -"

"I am not going to go attempt to turn you in for kidnapping. This has been the best kidnapping."

Scoop. Kiss. "I was assured of as much in advance!! - but it does, in fact, make it hotter, at least for me, that you could, that the only thing on the scales for whether you are in my bed is how much you want me -"

"You're so wantable! Did you not know?"

Kiss kiss. "It actually hadn't escaped me! Though I haven't been taking advantage of it, we've been really busy ever since the end of the war and - Elves are very socially conservative, though catching up with the universe a bit, and running off with a series of girls would look vaguely exploitative even if they all had a lovely time."

"Aww."

"During the war we fed my home planet into a black hole. I helped plan it."

"...uh, why?"

"The Enemy agreed to stop the war if we did it. And could bindingly commit to that with magic. And the war was really terrible, and we could bring most of them back. - all of them, as it happened, but we didn't know that at the time."

"Oh. The war I was in was over the other guys letting reds handle their food exports."

"Is that dangerous or something?"