"Maybe," Magnus says, and now he's thinking out loud, distracting himself from the lingering badness of the day by focusing on an impossible, unlikely goodness. "If Alex ever came here, we could go on, like, a double date." He's trying to picture what that would look like. He just knows that's a thing you do, when you and your best friend both have really cool boyfriends. He hasn't formally tried it before with any of his coupled-up friends. Double dating with Halfborn and Mallory would definitely end in someone's bloodshed (probably Magnus's), and with Hearth and Blitz it would mostly feel like being chaperoned or pulling a shift in the Chase Space. He guesses they've done it with Samirah and Amir, but Alex (child of Loki) technically was serving as a male chaperone from Sam (daughter of Loki)'s family every time, and it always felt like it would be too unbalanced if he tried to hold Alex's hand when Sam and Amir couldn't.

Of one thing, though, he's relatively certain. "I think Claudius and Alex would be really funny together," he adds. "We could just watch them be extremely clever at each other and exchange smug glances about our excellent taste every few seconds."