Hello! This is my first Thor fanfiction. I don't own Thor. Upsettingly. Officially I'm pretty sure the legends belong to the Nordic people... but I'm no lawyer. Enjoy! And a better Author's Note is at the end! (; ALSO I have more planned and I'll write personalized messages to every reviewer. SO REVIEW!
Sif hates mornings. It could have something to do with the fact that one fine morning she woke up in a pile of her blonde curls. Sometimes it's better to stay asleep and postpone facing the music for a more reasonable, much later hour.
Young Sif was swaddled in fur pelts, recovering from her coming-out ball. Sleeping was an infinitely preferable past-time to dancing. But the ball had been fun.
Vollstagg had nearly broken all of her toes and Fandrall had sweaty palms. Thor had spun her so quickly that she had been genuinely noxious.. But he looked so handsome, and her hand curled around his arm had sent shivers down her spine.
And best of all: no one noticed that she was wearing her most comfortable leather boots under her all that silk and tulle.
"Good Morning Sif," a voice purred. Sif's brown eyes snapped open and met a pair of mischievous blue ones.
She jumped, nearly slipping out of her bed. She reached out, catching herself on her satin sheets and silky locks of hair.
She screamed, her hands flung at her head, grasping at spiky, short strands.
She shoved the spindly adolescent out of her bed and raced for the looking glass propped against her vanity.
"It's black!" It's black!
"Well it certainly would appear so, Sif," he said, picking up a handful of gold and throwing her hair like confetti.
Her mind flashed back to the ball and Thor telling her that her hair burned brighter than the sun.
"Why?" she cried. Tears were threatening to tumble out of her eyes. Her sword was at the blacksmith's but she could always club the prince to death with her shield.
"Don't blubber. It's only temporary. I can change it back any time," he jumped onto her bed and fluffed the pillow to his liking. Her hair was Loki hair, wild and black and stick-straight.
"FIX IT THEN!" she hollered, thundering at him with shield raised threateningly above her head.
"First you owe me a dance," he muttered, unafraid, and his mischievous front slipping, revealing a perturbed, impatient look.
"What? You didn't even ask me to dance," Sif yelled. Was Loki standing off to the side at the ball last night? Leaning against a pillar? Reading a leather-bound spell tome? Charming hair?!
"Fine! Whatever! I'll restore your stupid hair!" he straightened up, and motioned for her to sit between his legs.
She hesitated for a moment before begrudgingly complying, climbing onto her own bed and squirming to make herself comfortable and make sure her nightgown wasn't riding up and that Loki wasn't looking down it.
He was so tall. For a couple hundred years he was even taller than his older brother. He had the clumsiness to accompany his height. He wasn't as spindly as he was a child. While no warrior, his clothes had ceased to hang on his frame.
Sif, on the other hand, was dwarfed by Loki, but her baby fat had matured into some semblance of curves. Close company to Loki made her feel like she looked as plump as Volstagg.
He laced his long fingers through her hair, and she had to pretend she didn't like the attention, even after injury. She had to pretend that the shivers he sent down her spine were tremors of anger and frustration- that his cold fingers ghosting her scalp and his chest against her back and his lithe, leather-bound legs grazing against her bare thighs only fueled her frustrations. She focused on that anger, but only found sadness.
Thor said her blonde hair was beautiful... What would he think of this hair?
"It's not working right." Loki sounded generally concerned. Probably for his well being, because being an insufferable farce earned him a nasty shiner on that poor porcelain skin. But Sif kept a reminder of that good morning with her for the rest of her immortal life.
Over the decades, still in the throngs of adolescence, Sif would try to accustom herself to her unusual wake-up calls. The dark-haired Prince of Chaos seemed to make every morning an opportunity to perfect his magic craft.
Lately that had become teleporting her mahogany bed all over the kingdom.
She awoke in the great hall, surrounded by clusters of guards, a furious Allfather, and Loki being reprimanded by his golden-haired mother.
"This isn't any way to show her that!" Frigga told her son. Loki, observing Sif's open eyes and tilted head gave a wave.
"GOOD MORNING SIF!" he hollered across the hall.
Sif didn't break off her headboard and murder her prince with it, but she got her revenge later.
After palace guards managed to extricate her four poster bed, and after a hard day of training, the hall was reopened and a feast was spread out on the sprawling tables.
Sif's father had even allowed his warrior-princess (all of Sif's friends had snickered) a half a glass of molted mead. She downed the glass and tried to follow Thor's suit, slamming the crystal against the table, much to her father's amusement, but not compliance.
Loki walked up to her, brushing her hair back and tapping her on the shoulder. Her black hair had grown past her elbows, only to be hacked away, this time by her own hand, and the locks fanned out around her shoulders. Her mouth went dry at his touch and she gulped.
Loki had come to mean either horrible tricks or other feelings, equally horrible, easier felt for Thor. And Sif even wondered if there was a difference in the way she admired and desired Thor and the way her stomach twisted when Loki played his pranks and smiled up at her.
"Would you like to go for a walk around the lake?" the hall was so loud that he had to lean over and move closer to her ear, and in the mass of consonants and vowels, his lips accidently touched the shell of her ear and she jerked forward. She glanced nervously around. None of her other friends had observed, so she glared and nodded her consent.
If a prince walked with a girl in a gown he might offer her his arm to hold. But Sif was in dirty armor and Loki was awkward enough around girls in gowns. So they walked near each other in uncomfortable silence.
Boys don't ask a Shieldmaiden to take strolls through gardens with them. Ever. They stopped near the lake.
"My mother and I were speaking and she thought I should apologize to you."
Sif knew that it would mean this prank war of theirs would never end and he would immediately recall his apology and that it wasn't coy or womanly, but that they were flirting in their strange way... Maybe. Whatever! He wasn't planning on courting any girls like her anytime, anyway. So she pushed him into the lake.
He emerged coughing and spluttering, vowing his revenge- which he more than achieved when she woke up the next day- her beloved four poster bed slowly sinking to the bottom of the lake- her in it.
Loki was sitting on the shore, watching her struggle to the banks in her nightdress- and after taking ample time to admire the layers of creamy lace and short silk clinging to his immortal frenemy's curvy frame, he offered his customary good morning and his overcoat, like any polite gentleman would.
But for now, with Loki in the lake, Sif said "Good night, Loki."
Sometimes mornings were less comfortable- more comfortable? Less of a struggle? More of a struggle? Different. Very different.
Sif was a girl with principles. She didn't sleep in any bed besides her own and if a boy joined her, it was Loki and it was a prank.
One day, however, Sif woke up in a bed with softer sheets than even her own. Watered silk that flowed in real liquid rivulets over her bare legs. Then Sif's eyes widened. Because this wasn't her bed. Which meant it was probably a boy's bed, which meant that after drinking just one full cup of mead, she had lost her chastity to someone in the castle.
But she was fully clothed, and that knowledge allowed her to breathe easier. The knowledge that she was lying, legs tangled with another's- nestled in the crook of a man's arm was more dizzying.
She focused on the man- surely she would recognize him. He, unlike most Asgardian men, was sleeping with pants and an untied tunic. Sif's hand had wheedled under the hem of his cotton shirt and lay splayed across bare skin of his stomach. It wasn't Thor or any of his friends, assuredly, the muscles under her fingers were understated... and cold... and he smelled a little icy like mint leafs- and- and like musty library books.
"Loki!" Sif barked, legs still entwined, and hand still straying.
"Good Morning, Sif," he muttered groggily. Rubbing tired eyes with the hand not trapped under Sif. He slipped his left leg out from under Sif's leg and stretched. Sif felt the muscles along his arm flexing against her neck.
"What am I doing here?" Sif continued, voice still cutting.
"Isn't it obvious? You drank an entire cup of mead and stole my chastity."
"You stole my chastity."
"Oh, right," he yawned and turned over to face Sif. He let a hand sneak under the blanket and Sif felt fingertips graze her knee then stray higher, stroking along just under the hem of her dress. She was burning up. The blue eyes, the touches. It was all too much too earlyin the morning. But could she fault him when her own hand had been so desperate for his skin? It still rested there, on his stomach, fingers extending farther and feeling more with every breath Loki took.
She either swatted his hand away or it grew tired of exploring her thigh. She swatted. She definitely swatted.
"You put me here and we didn't do anything," she accused. Loki shimmied down, pulling his tunic further up. Sif quickly retracted her straying hand and tried to avert her eyes from the expanse of skin where muscles lightly protruded like an ivory topography map.
"Your powers of deduction are even more impressive than your beautiful face," Loki muttered sarcastically, tugging his tunic off altogether. Sif burned bright red. Beautiful?
"But, I can't assume all of the responsibility for our... arrangement. Your hands move on their own volition."
"As did yours!" Sif rebuked. Loki grinned.
She slapped Loki and told him that the next time he tried one of these tricks he would have a blade in his back. He laughed at her as she tried to stealthily sneak back down corridors to her own chambers.
Later the group had gathered around Loki in the library and Thor was asking his customary daily question.
"What are you studying today, brother?"
Loki rolled his eyes.
"I'm not reading today, I'm writing. I have a theory."
"Share your magical theory. Enlighten your warrior friends."
"It's about magical resistance. If you're trying to use a curse to kill someone, for example, their entire being creates this oppositional friction that your power must overcome."
"I see, continue," Thor prompted. Sif angled her head to get a better look at the parchment Loki was scratching on.
"But if... As another example... You wanted to teleport a girl- a woman-into your bedchambers..." Fandrall and Thor's eyes lit up. Loki was older now and much less shy with women. Their magic man might have some useful information for once.
"If the woman is more than willing to share your bed, then she puts up less resistance to your magic. Practically none in a best case scenario."
Sif blushed and looked away, praying none of her friends would catch Loki's eyes focused on her.
"And just how would you know?" Fandrall drawled skeptically, already considering himself the most womanly prolific.
"I have a more-than-willing test subject."
Sif hated mornings for all of the little reasons, all of the early morning pranks, however many times she woke up to Loki's goading face too close to hers, or Loki's goading face disguised as Volstagg or Heimdell too close to hers.
For when she shuffles out of bed and down the corridors to scrape up some sustenance, still squinting from sleep, a prince in green runs past and ruffles her long, black hair.
"G'morning Sif." The high pitched wine matures to something deep and different. Heady? Not hardy, or loud. Soft and... oh Gods no, seductive.
She hates mornings because of all of the pranks she wakes up to or all of the bad news that could have been put of till noontime... Or never.
Loki fell off the Bifrost. Loki's destroying Jotunheim... destroying Midgard. Thor has a mortal lover, Loki's been imprisoned on Asgard. Loki died... honorably in battle, but dead all the same.
An official end to any good mornings.
Sif hates mornings for early callers.
"The Allfather requests your presence," a guard announced, like she wasn't sound asleep. Couldn't he have sent in one of her Shieldmaidens in waiting to dump a pail of cold water on her head? Wouldn't that have been as pleasant?
"It will be a minute. I'm not yet presentable," Sif muttered, setting about to find her clothes. She was about to tug off her nightgown and shrug into her underclothes behind her dressing curtain when the guard's voice interrupted.
"The Allfather anticipated as much and said that time was of the essence and..." the guard hesitated, Sif peered out and observed his cheeks coloring.
"What?" Sif asked, a bit sharply, impatiently, as she wasn't the Goddess of Early Morning Battles or Embarrassed Guards.
"You are to come in... whatever state of indecency ensures your quick presence. The Allfather goes so far as to request as great a state of undress as you have the luxury to afford."
Indecency? Sif was flushing, a difficult feat. The fields of war allowed for no decency but Odin? Good Gods. Only Loki could persuade a blush from her cheeks.
Sif draped a red wrap over her nightclothes, which weren't at all indecent and found her house shoes, thin moccasins, before plodding grumpily to the throne room. It wasn't uncommon to see Lady Sif looking so disheveled in the early morning.
A Harold announced the arrival of the Lady and she entered the throne room. She knelt to the mourning Allfather, and a crooked grin broke out on his usually so somber face. She arched a brow at the aging king with his legs splayed over the arm of his throne.
His eyes roamed over her and her eyes widened in outrage. She stood, stammering and spluttering. Then everything snapped in to place.
"Good morning Sif."
A/N: Hello world! I'm rarely truly inspired to write fanfiction, but this came to me. I'd love if you took time to review, I will thank each of my reviewers personally if I am convinced to continue. I'll continue with some unrelated/ inter-related one shots if I get some reviews. I'm embarking on a different quest... into the world of using as a foreign language teacher. So yep: next year I'm writing a bunch of one shots IN SPANISH! If Spanish is your first or second... Or third or whatever- language, then please offer me some advice. Love to hear from you!