Their alarm goes off in the early hours; thankfully, it's one of those alarm clocks set inside in an automatic tea maker. They've owned one since the 1960s and with a little magical tinkering from Loki, it has never broken.

Sigyn is the first to open her eyes – albeit blearily - but Loki pulls the blankets over his head. Their pet dik-dik leaps from his basket onto their bed, making bleating noises for attention.

"It can't be the 20th already!" Sigyn groans, throwing an arm over her eyes. Dik the dik-dik snuggles up to her, licking her cheek with his delicate pink tongue. "We've got a million and one things to do and not enough time to do it."

There were reindeer to attend to, letters to read, lists to check, presents to make, sleighs to varnish...And with Jolnir and Astra away on a space cruise around the galaxy they had no one to help them. It was all a test really, to see how well they would cope on their own and Sigyn was determined not to fail.

"We'll just have to use a little time magic to help us along."

Loki moaned from under the pillow. The time spell would speed them up, allowing them to work at impossible speeds, but it burnt up a great deal of energy and often gave him a massive headache.

"You ought to know that I'm thinking of divorcing you," he said, sleepily.

"O-o-okay," she replied around a humongous yawn. "It's not worth it, is it?"

"No."

"Working ourselves to death just so that the trillions of children in the Nine Realms can have a little gift once a year? It's pointless."

"Hmmm."

"I mean we could just live for ourselves. Go on long luxury holidays and in-between those spend weekends in spas. We could have massages." She sounded wistful now.

Loki finally emerged from his cocoon to join in with her materalisitc yearnings.

"We could," he agreed. "And we could go to fancy restaurants, and wear nice clothes, and rebuild the castle..."

"Yeah, the kids wouldn't miss us."

"Not a bit."

"And I could have more time to paint and sculpt. You could work on your plays. We would have time to be ourselves. Maybe finally have a child of our own."

Loki smiled at her sadly, taking her hand in his and stroking his thumb across her knuckles.

They both sank into the same daydream, of a life with no real responsibility or cares. They were shaken awake again by the whistle from their tea-making clock.

Sigyn kissed Loki on the lips. "Come on then, sweetheart. Tea first and then to work?"

"To work. Roll on the 26th December."

000

Two days later...

"We should wake them up."

"We can't do that! Look at them, they're exhausted."

"Yes, but they also said that they wanted to come out for drinks with us."

Molly looked again at the couple. It was a little bit funny the way Loki and Sigyn were fast asleep on their sofa, with Sigyn lying on top of her husband; but it still seemed unfair to wake them up so soon.

"Are you sure that you want to wake them?" she asked, coyly. "When it could just be you and me."

It didn't take Sherlock long to rethink things. He arrived at his conclusion with smirk.

"Okay, then. But only for an hour. We can't leave them there all night. They have things to do."

Molly smiled happily, taking hold of Sherlock's arm.

"Good," she said, "Because we've been so busy lately we've hardly had any time to ourselves!"

AN: Thanks for reading!