st_ormbreaker | (no subject)

It couldn't be anything important.

That's what Thor decided first. If he was going to lie to Valkyrie, it was going to be over something pointless, something trivial. Something that didn't matter. The first lie is a small one -- a message sent to her from his notebook:

I need to talk to you about something.

Truth be told, Thor had nothing of significance to talk about. The two of them chatted enough that there generally wasn't anything new to discuss about their day-to-day. The one truly significant thing he had to talk to Valkyrie about he had done so shortly after arrival, and even then he didn't feel particularly inclined to give out anything more than just the essentials -- then or now.

Pool Bar, one hour.

The Pool Bar was unoccupied this time of year. During the spring and summer months, you'd find people there all hours of the day, making their own drinks to suck down as they lay out at the pool's edge. Winter made the location less appealing. It was private, the perfect place to discuss something important.

That is, if Thor had something important to discuss.

Thor is sitting at one of the tables in the pool bar, notebook open, two bottles pulled from the bar's shelves: a Johnnie Walker and a newly-discovered malt scotch he'd pulled from the shelf based on name alone (Highland Park Valkyrie). It felt appropriate somehow.

Thor idly writes in his notebook as he waits, brows furrowed with thought.

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Thor tries (and fails) to look less satisfied than he feels.

"Actually, we're already married."

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow. "That was quick."

"You can't tell anybody," Thor says, as if he's a child swearing a sibling to secrecy. "We're still planning on having a formal ceremony. I still want you and Loki to be a part of it."

"What would you have me do, Your Majesty? Help you find the goat?" Valkyrie had little concept of Midgardian marriage rituals, but Thor had already stated that Tony was amenable to some of Asgard's..

Thor winces.

"That part was a lie as well," he says. "We can have goat at the reception, we just can't sacrifice it as part of the ceremony."

Unfortunately.

"I'll escort the both of you to bed but I'm leaving the moment you get there." Valkyrie had to draw a few lines in the sand of her own.

Thor turns himself around in front of her and begins walking backwards. "You could give me away in place of my father."

Thor always found that part of the ceremony utterly bizarre. Who was a person to be given away to another? A person's life was no one's but their own.

Valkyrie cast a doubtful look. "Give you away? Am I delivering you from something?"

This is where Thor's understanding of Midgardian culture falls flat. He started asking Jane about this part of the ceremony during her sister's wedding, but she quickly shh-ed him, leaving him to conjure up with his own conclusions.

"It's Midgardian custom -- you gift me to my partner to express your approval of their character."

"Am I expected to speak?" Rather difficult to speak for a man she barely knew. "Or do I literally pick you up and pass you off?"

"Something like that," Thor says, vaguely. "You have to walk me down an aisle first, then hand me off."

"I think I understand." Valkyrie snapped her fingers. "I hand you off in a big bag. Like this Santa Claus."

"It's not quite like that," Thor says, grinning. "I think I prefer your method, though. More entertaining than reality."

That much was true.

"Midgardian weddings are pretty dull affairs." At least compared to Asgardian ones, which leaned towards wild. "I nearly fell asleep during the one for Jane's sister."

He had actually dozed off for a moments -- just long enough for Jane to nudge him in the side.

"I could mount you on my back. Room for air?" Valkyrie sized Thor up in her head. "Or simply carry you."

"You really think you can carry me?" Thor seems excited at the prospect; he hasn't been carried in well over a millennia, when he'd been injured badly enough in battle to have difficulty carrying himself off the field of battle on his own two feet.

And that wasn't quite a real carry.

Valkyrie grappled Thor, tossing him well up into the air--just shy of launching him headfirst into the ceiling--and holding up an arm to catch him by the rear with ease with her palm. Balancing him with a large grin, she rolled him down to sit on her shoulder.

"Like a bird perched on my arm."

A smile bursts on Thor's face as Valkyrie easily tosses him and catches him, as if he were hardly a burden at all.

"Carry me to my room?"

"As you wish, Your Majesty." The man really was an enormous boy at heart. She turned a corner and made for his room. "I've heard 'tipping' is a Midgardian custom for these types of services."

"No money," Thor says. "A favor instead."

"I'll get back to you." Valkyrie kept Thor balanced as he had to bend in to fit through the door to the outside hallway leading to his room. "Off we go, Your Majesty."

"I'm sure you will," he says, ducking his head. Valkyrie had no compunctions about taking what she was owed.

Which reminds Thor. "Did I sell for a good price?" he asks. He'd bragged about the amount before, but he wasn't exactly sure what 10 million credits was on Sakaar.

“Pretty decent.” Valkyrie lowered him, not that he had far to go before his feet touched the floor.

Thor lands on the ground with a solid thump.

"Pretty decent?" Thor repeats, incredulous. "That wasn't the highest price you were paid for a person?"

"It was close." Valkyrie gave him a thin, somewhat awkward smile. "The bounty I gleaned from The Beloved Champion was never topped."

Thor is insulted that the Grandmaster wouldn't pay as much for him as the Hulk. He doesn't say anything, but it's clear he's sulking.

"You never told me how you managed to bring him in," he says. "The Hulk is an almost unbeatable force."

Almost unbeatable.

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