I Lose All Sense Of Reason [open post]

[summerdude]

Magnus is walking down the front steps of the Mansion, freshly-loaded bag of food in tow, ruminating on a few of his most recent and devastatingly embarrassing conversations, when he hears footsteps behind him.

Well. He did tell Galahad he'd ask everyone. Might as well start now. "Can you explain the birds and the bees -- I mean, sex -- to me?" he demands, even before he sees who it is.

Comments

[sorrowandsorrow]

Right. Because he's been sixteen for multiple years. "Delicious," Janet says, "if you like tequila."

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "I like mead," he says. "As long as it doesn't get weird. And I don't like vodka. That's all I know."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Vodka is the most boring liquor there is," Janet informs her, "so you're on the right track. Does it count as serving alcohol to a minor if I make you a margarita?"

[summerdude]

"Yes," Magnus tells her, very somberly. "I'm a minor. My twenty-fifth birthday is next week and they ply us with mead every day in Valhalla. But that's, like, just details. You'd be a very bad person if you made me a margarita."

[sorrowandsorrow]

All right, okay, that makes Janet laugh. "You're almost twenty-five and you've never had a margarita? I'd be a very bad person if I didn't make you one."

[summerdude]

Magnus laughs, too. "If you say so!" he says. Alcohol doesn't actually interest him that much, but he's curious enough to give it a shot.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Do you want your margarita right now, almost-birthday boy? Or would you rather stand here and interrogate more people about sex?"

[summerdude]

Magnus blushes. "I'm definitely done with asking people about sex," he says.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Come on." She jerks her thumb over her shoulder back toward the inside of the mansion. "Unless that stuff you've got needs to go somewhere."

[summerdude]

"Nah, none of it is going to go bad anytime soon," Magnus says, shouldering his bag. "Lead the way."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Usually, when Janet enters mixology mode, she goes for one of the bars or lounges or something, but she's pretty positive Magnus is going to be a blended margarita sort of guy, so she heads for the kitchen. There's a liquor cabinet around the corner from it that she immediately raids for tequila and triple sec before she pops back into the kitchen and hauls a blender out of a cupboard. "You like salt?"

[summerdude]

"Sure," Magnus says. "You put salt in those things?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"You put salt on those things." Feeling irritated gratitude for this stupid mansion and its endless¹ store of magic, Janet rustles up a few long-stemmed margarita glasses -- for the vibe -- and then a lime, which she slices in two and runs around the rim of each glass. A little kosher salt in a bowl and bam, she's got salt-rimmed glasses.

¹Gentle lever tap.

[summerdude]

Magnus watches, frankly a little fascinated. This kind of thing has never really been on his radar or in his world before. His primary association of booze is that it's a crutch, and one that he has a lot of really complicated feelings about. Oh, he's had his experimentation with drunkenness -- who hasn't? -- but he was still alive at the time, and it's not like he and the other street kids were trying to make fancy little cocktails or anything. He's never really thought of it as a fun thing to explore flavors with, except for when Aegir was blabbering on ceaselessly about his mead microbrews, and that was just a quest hurdle to weather.

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet juices a couple of limes, then starts pouring ingredients into the blender. Tequila, lime juice, triple sec, agave, and a fuckton of ice. She shoots him a little grin as she pops the lid on and hits blend. It's not too long after that that she's handing him a fairly respectable frozen margarita, garnished with a lime wedge and everything. "You're welcome."

[summerdude]

"Thank you," Magnus says, tentatively poking it with the tip of his finger and then sticking his finger in his mouth. "This looks very... fancy."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"I don't half-ass cocktails," Janet informs him gravely. She pours her own, sticks the lime wedge in, and takes a long sip. "You can do flavors, like mango or pineapple or peach or whatever. But this is your basic marg."

[summerdude]

Magnus takes a careful sip. Mostly it tastes cold and -- "Sour," he observes.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Yep. Lime juice." She takes another sip of her own. "Maybe I should've made a flavored one for you."

[summerdude]

"No, I like lime," Magnus says, and takes another sip. "Maybe it's the booze? I don't really know, like, how to drink."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Well, you can do it a lot all at once, have a good time in the short term, and then regret everything in the morning. Or you can take it slow. For you, I recommend the latter, but who am I to tell you what to do?"

[summerdude]

"Oh, I've been drunk," Magnus says. "A few times, like ten years ago." Then he wrinkles his nose. "I don't even know what einherji metabolism would do if I drank like that again. I still can't even really figure out if Valhalla mead has alcohol in it or not. I know Shen Yuan's weed wore off a lot faster for me than for him or Galahad."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Thank you," Janet says to him firstly, "for the hilarious knowledge that you, Shen Yuan, and Galahad smoked weed together. If the question is about how to like alcohol, it's an acquired taste. Unless you go for garbage like Mike's Hard Lemonade."

[summerdude]

"It's more, like," Magnus pauses and takes another sip. It still mostly tastes cold. He does like the salt, though, and licks some off the rim of the glass. "I forget what I told you about myself when we talked before?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"You fell into a river and died, and you've been sixteen for -- I guess almost nine years now. Summer, healing, and peace. Valhalla, alf seidr, Boston," Janet recites. She caps that off with another sip of margarita.