"Right, yeah, guess it's personal. It's a good thing the Enemy got him, he's kind of impossible to perturb. If they were gonna get someone, I mean. Anyway, have a popsicle."

"...Sure." Loki has a popsicle.

"There's also vodka werewolf popsicles. If you want."

"I don't like being drunk, but thanks."

"In case Moringotho comes by personally?"

"No, if I needed to suddenly stop being drunk my healing spell actually counts alcohol as a poison, but I don't like the state itself."

"Okay. Bother you if other people are? Because I kind of want a vodka werewolf popsicle."

"I don't mind being around drunk people, although I do not prefer to stargaze with drunk people."

"Oh, we can't accidentally get married," she says.

"Even on my planet, where literally no one can get accidentally married, I prefer not to stargaze with drunk people."

"That sounds like an adventure," she says. "I think people'd be much less ...behaved."

"If by 'behaved' you mean 'steering clear of the sort of behavior that gets Quendi accidentally married', then yes. Yes we are."

"I'm pretty sober."

"And you will become still more sober with time. Or I can hurry it along if you're in a hurry." She wiggles her fingers.

She looks at the vodka werewolf popsicles, looking terribly torn. "Would you?"

Poke.

She smiles back. "If no one's worried about accidental marriage...why?"

"Why what?"

"For partners to be sober. Do people not drink at Asgardian parties? Or not hook up after them?"

"People drink a lot at Asgardian parties, and do hook up after them. The usual Asgardian line on too drunk is if somebody won't remember the event later that's too drunk. My line is that I prefer knowing that anybody I'm in bed with is very much there on purpose, per occasion, and anything past 'tipsy' makes me uncomfortably unclear on that."

"And you haven't known us all for five hundred years. Right. Fair."

"Even people I have known five hundred years, 'per occasion'."

"I don't mean that if I hit someone up every Awakening festival I don't need to check if she's in the mood, I just mean it's a little easier to tell. It makes sense to be cautious across, uh, a species barrier. And culture barrier. And dimensional barrier, I hear it told."

"Yeah, whole 'nother dimension. I have no idea why my transport managed to shunt me here."

"Maybe it figured we needed you."