"John 15:13," he says immediately. "Popular on dogtags. I think it's friends."

"Oh, cool. I guess it would be." She sorts it. "Anyway. This is it for me - barring my friends figuring out the secret to true resurrection, which, uh, not holding my breath - but... I guess I'm OK with it. I mean, like, I'm not OK with it at all, whenever I stop to think about it for a bit, but - I'm even less OK with abandoning someone else to it, and letting other people suffer in the mean time. And if that's what I got out of my Christianity this whole time, then - you could do worse, I guess."

"...I guess.

So you want to get married?"

"Honestly no? Like, I really have to think more about it, and you are sort of literally the only other human in the universe right now, so it's not like I have a lot of options on this front, but - I mean part of it is that I don't know that it'd be a valid marriage anyway, like, to be validly married under Catholic law no one can have been coercing you, and as much as I legitimately do think this whole insane plan is more my plan than anyone else's plan, I do not think I would have much trouble convincing people to give me an annulment if I got back home. Or, like, I wouldn't if the circumstances I would describe weren't, like, transparently insane. And then also for it to be a valid marriage you have to be willing to raise your children Catholic, and I don't really know how human sacrificing them fits into this but I kind of think they just turn the font up eighteen sizes and write "don't" if you consult a book about that one.

" - so - maybe someday, I dunno. But - it feels more - final, even though I'm damned either way? And I just - it might even help with the feeling - safe and comfortable, and stuff, but - I also feel like maybe it's better to reserve something for if we actually decide that we like each other someday? But I don't know, really, I have to think about it more.

"...do you wanna get married?"

"Uh, pretty much the same things crossed my mind except without the Catholic - can you even be Catholic without, like, priests? and popes?

- and with the addition of 'maybe I just got off on the wrong foot with Alex and am now interpreting him in the unfriendliest way possible all the time but it sure looks like he's planning to scoop you up as soon as you get to whatever age Quendi consider decent' -"

Shush, brain.

" - I really don't think there's an age that humans can get to where a thirty-four-thousand-year-old is going to consider it other than super weird to date them."

"Maybe not. Anyway, I think we should make that decision separately. If it'll make a big difference for you I'd be willing to think about it more, though."

"It - I dunno. Leaning towards no. There's - a part of my brain that would find it tremendously reassuring because it kind of thinks that people who've promised to be with you forever are much less scary - scary's the wrong word by itself, uh, much less people who it'd be scary to do sex things with, but there's - actually nothing about a wedding ceremony in itself that tells you how someone's going to treat you for the rest of your life, so I'm kind of leaning towards telling that part of my brain to shut up. But - it is continuing to make its case right now."

"It does seem like a conversation about what we imagine, uh, doing or being, after, like that's important."

"Yeah. I am - not really ready to think about what happens after. I think for now I just gotta get through this."

"...but it'd be helpful to know whether I'm going to leave after?"

"...maybe."

"I was kinda thinking about looking for the other humans, once it's safer. It'd be cool if you wanted to come too."

"...maybe. That sounds maybe OK, once it's safer. I'd have to ask my dog."

"Your dog is also welcome."

"He's a very good dog."

"- anyway I don't know if we should be married but I'm good with a long-term plan of - working on stuff, together. I can promise not to walk away from that."

"...OK. That's... something, yeah. Thank you."

"And I'm not, like, going to see you differently, or anything - or, well, this whole situation is probably going to change how we see each other in general but I've never woken up after sex feeling differently about someone than I did before except in, you know - I guess you don't - uh, there's a glow-y kind of nice feeling and I can expand on that if you want but it seems like maybe I should just stop talking about this actually."

" - nah, it's OK. I'm bad at talking about things, but it's, uh, possible I'll get better about it if my brain hears enough things that it thinks maybe that's a thing that people ever talk about."

"Okay." Deep breath. "So a thing that I like about sex is that after sex I feel warm and - secure, like to some extent most of the time I'm kind of tracking whether I'm an idiot, you know, and for a couple hours that just stops, and I feel very protective, and very in love, and - I don't actually know anything about biology but the way I always thought about this was, like, on some level, my brain knows that hey, I could have a kid, and it wouldn't be what we were planning on at the time but I have good benefits and a good salary and we'd get married and it'd be time to stop worrying about stupid stuff and be a man, you know. And for a little while it's just that - you, and someone you want to look after. But it goes away after a couple of hours and by the next day I'd feel pretty much the same way about my girlfriend as I did before which was the thing I was actually trying to reassure you about before I got distracted."

"That sounds. Really nice. Potentially."

"Oh. Well. That's good. - I feel kind of silly when I feel protective of you because you're the destined vampire slayer and stuff."

"Well, I mean, yeah, but I don't think that really gives me an advantage on - most of the immediately relevant fronts. And, uh, if this works, I'm gonna be pregnant, which I hear sometimes sucks, and I'm gonna have to give birth, and I'm not certain but I'm kind of skeptical that these people have invented modern medical care or anesthesia, and if it works then I get to kill my baby and - deal with whatever the mental fallout of that even is, so - this is not really the least scary thing I have ever done."

"Quendi have painless and perfectly safe childbirths for which they've never needed to invent anything and they find pregnancy dissolve-into-fits-of-giggles enjoyable, I asked."