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"I really shouldn't," he said, eyeing the flute wearily. It had been clinically proven that Octavius Pepper and alcoholic substances were unmixy things to the utmost degree of unmixability. Granted, he was less of a mad person than the previous three months had caused him to be, but there was still a chance for insanity to take hold of him and have him stripping off his shirt and dancing on a table.

But his sister was making eyes at more blokes than he was comfortable with (the number he was comfortable with being Zero), so it was probably for the best if he un-sobered himself a little. "But—well, why not." He clinked his with hers before taking a healthy sip.

Octavius was eternally grateful Nora was coming and her insufferable boyfriend was still breaking curses in Libya, or Egypt, or wherever it was. As happy as he was that Rose and he were on a better footing, it took a much stronger man than he to actually be pleased to have to attend a wedding at which the same ex-girlfriend would be a guest. And he hadn't even been much of a wet rag!, he thought. Although it did strike him that this was the first wedding he'd been to since, apparently, his own. Barring, of course, the first attempted one of this in January, which didn't count. He was almost entirely sure it hadn't been real since Brunhild kept kissing his cheek and calling him Pepe Schatz, but who knew?

Sometimes, when work was too much, and his siblings and friends were being nuisances, he often thought of what it would have been like to have said, "No thanks, I'll just stay here with my new German wife and her farm," and raised livestock. He probably would have been expected to butcher some of them at some point, however, and promptly decided he didn't have the stomach for farming.

"You know, it's a shame you never met Brunhild," he said, setting his glass on a nearby table. "Sweet girl. I think. Made the best pancakes I've ever put in my mouth, bar none."