It has come to my attention that I have several song headcanons that I've never told any of you about.
Dear Theodosia (Hamilton the Musical): If there was ever a song that could sum up Loki's attitude towards the kids perfectly, I'm pretty sure I found it.
Like the Dawn (The Oh Hellos) and Gimme that Swing! (Cissie Redgwick) are two of my favorites for Angrboða and Sigyn, respectively, but I've always thought that if the moods of the songs were switched then it would suit each woman much better. Sigyn's really the more sedate and quieter of the two (however mad she got at Loki). But it would probably be too much to ask to find three perfect songs.
Also, several gods who will be introduced have already appeared in Supernatural. Since Supernatural's writers did a complete hack job with them, especially re: casting, please feel free to just forget everything you think you know about them. I will do my best to fit my story into the restraints of canon, though.
I'm gonna have to be careful and make sure I actually explain stuff, in case I forget that you guys don't know everything I know. Feel free to call me out in reviews, though, if I'm not being thorough enough.
Fenris stayed in bed for as long as he could before the sunlight shining in his face got too irritating.
He rolled over and was immediately greeted by blond hair in his face.
Fenris pushed at the person in front of him, vaguely registering that the hair was too light for it to be Loki's. "Move."
"Hey," Slepnir complained.
"Your hair's in my mouth," Fenris protested. "Where's Dad?"
Slepnir rolled over onto his stomach, blearily turning to look at Fenris. "Uh..." He rubbed at his face. "I think he went to your teacher to yell at her for letting you get poisoned."
"Poisoned?" Fenris's stomach dropped (luckily not in an about-to-throw-up way). His first thought was Tyr. His second thought was, What about Lysander? His third was that Lysander had been fine when he'd left, so probably nothing had happened.
Probably.
"Yeah. He was really mad."
Loki hadn't seemed like he was, but then again he wouldn't have been mad at Fenris.
"You're okay now, right?" Slepnir questioned.
"I think so," Fenris said. "I feel better."
"Good," Slepnir said, "because you're not allowed to ever get poisoned again, because no one would tell us anything and it was really scary and Jor cried because he thought you were going to die."
Fenris felt vaguely guilty, even though it wasn't like he'd gotten sick on purpose.
Slepnir breathed in deeply and then let it out in a huff before sitting up and turning towards the other side of the bed.
"Where are you going?"
"I promised Jor I'd tell him when you woke up." Slepnir paused, turning back towards Fenris. "Are you hungry? It's been a while since you got home."
"How long?"
"Two days."
That was longer than he'd thought. Fenris nodded. His stomach didn't hurt, and Loki had given him that weird herbal thing, which had probably been a cure. So he wasn't sick anymore.
Slepnir left the door open when he left. Fenris was alone in the sunny bedroom for all of a minute before Scully came trotting in, jumping up onto the bed and wasting no time in curling up next to Fenris.
"Hi." Fenris petted her, glad that she wasn't trying to lick his face. Scully nudged his cheek, looking at him with dark eyes. "Did you miss me?"
Scully licked his face. Ew. "Scully."
Jormungand practically knocked the bedroom door off its hinges coming in. Slamming it open wasn't even really necessary since it wasn't closed in the first place.
"Jor-" Fenris barely got through the first syllable of his name before Jor was hugging the breath out of him. If he'd been sitting up, his brother probably would have knocked him over.
"Are you okay?" Jormungand demanded.
"There's someone's knee in my stomach, but other than that, yes," Fenris said sarcastically. Jormungand hurriedly got off him, moving carefully to avoid sitting on Scully.
"No one would tell us anything. I got worried," he said, looking profoundly relieved. He held Scully in his lap to stop her from worming in between them. "Slepnir says dad said it was poison."
Fenris vaguely remembered talk of poison, and a curse. He shrugged. "I didn't hear much." He'd been pretty out of it the whole time. "I was asleep for most of it."
Jormungand accepted it at face value. "I'm glad you're okay," he said, holding Scully tighter until she whined to be let go. He let her pad away to lie down by their feet.
There was a weird expression on his face, and Fenris wasn't quite sure what it meant, but Slepnir came back before he could try to decipher it.
"I made toast," Slepnir said, in English. He clambered onto the bed and held the plate over his head when Scully jumped to her feet. "No. Jor, can you hold her?"
Jormungand crawled down the bed to grab Scully and keep her away from the plate as Slepnir handed it over. Scully's nose followed it.
Fenris had to sit up to eat. Sitting up made him lightheaded and dizzy again, probably because he hadn't eaten anything substantial for two days, and he caught Jormungand's wide-eyed worry once he stopped seeing spots.
He took a big bite, just to prove he was okay, and then noticed something he hadn't when he was lying down. "Your ears!"
Jormungand's eyebrows went up, but they went back down when he smiled. "I persuaded dad. They're little owls, see?"
"He got bats for Halloween," Slepnir added, as Jormungand leaned forward to show off the little gold owl earrings.
"Why not keep the bats? It's only just been Halloween."
Jormungand shrugged. "I got new ones. I like owls."
Slepnir interrupted with the story of how they'd gotten it done, going downtown into London which had been fun except there had been far too many people. Fenris ate the toast (he hadn't realized how hungry he'd been) and listened intently, and maybe fed a few crusts to Scully, but it wasn't like any of them really minded.
That was how Loki found them, caught up in a conversation that Fenris was only technically participating in, all crowded together on the bed.
"Knock, knock." Loki tapped lightly on the doorframe. Scully barked, wriggling out of Jormungand's hold to dart over to him, twining around his feet and wagging her tail so hard it was a blur. "Am I interrupting?"
"Dad!" Fenris brightened, and made an effort to sit up a little more, because he'd slipped down at some point in the conversation.
"We were talking about why there are so many birds," Slepnir said. "Um, pigeons." Fenris was pretty sure he'd pronounced 'pigeons' wrong.
Loki smiled, moving around to sit on the end of the bed near Fenris's feet. "The scourge of the town. I haven't been anywhere I haven't seen at least a few." He patted Fenris's feet, taking in the plate full of crumbs and the pillows he was leaning on. "Feeling better?"
"Yeah." He did, even if he still felt a little tired. "Why did I get so sick?"
Loki's smile faded. The lines in his face seemed to be set a little deeper than they usually were. "What do you remember?"
"You came to get me from Hogwarts." That was clear enough, compared to later events. "I...ate something?"
"Poison," Jormungand said, very quietly. Scully was back in his lap, this time not protesting Jormungand's grip.
"Was it Tyr?" Fenris wasn't sure who else it could have been.
There were a lot of unsaid things in the thin line of Loki's mouth. He didn't voice any of them, though, nodding once.
"What was he doing there?" Slepnir's forehead had wrinkled into puzzled lines. Jormungand appeared to still be in the process of digging Tyr out of his memory.
Fenris explained about the transfer students, how Tyr had managed to put himself in the position of their teacher. He watched his father's face while he talked, but he didn't see anything change.
"I don't understand," Slepnir said, when Fenris had finished talking. "How did he get here? You had that confusing conversation about this being a whole different World Tree."
"Someone must have figured out a way," Loki said.
"Just to get to us?"
There was the barest moment of hesitation, and Fenris could see how much Loki really, really wanted to lie in that moment. "Yes," he said, after a heartbeat.
"What did he do?" If anyone deserved to know, Fenris was pretty sure it was him. He was the one who'd gotten poisoned, after all. "You said mistletoe, when you came to get me."
"Mistletoe?" Jormungand's grip on Scully relaxed slightly as he looked up.
"It's a very long story," Loki said. "Someone died - this was a while ago, by the way - and Frigg took offense at me for it. The whole mistletoe thing is ridiculous, anyway, it wasn't even mistletoe that was originally used - but people started believing that it was, and so she cursed that, too."
"Was the one who died poisoned?" Slepnir asked.
"No, it wasn't poisonous until after she cursed it. And it wouldn't do that to just anybody." Loki smiled briefly, and humorlessly. "She blamed me, so the curse was on my name."
Fenris was about to object, because his name was Fenris, thank you very much, when he realized what his dad meant. "Oh," he said. "Lokison."
"It really is a dangerous name to bear."
All four of them swiveled to face the door.
"Hermes?" Fenris questioned, because he was sure he didn't remember Hermes being there before.
"You eavesdropper," Loki said, but his grin had reappeared. "Come in if you're going to listen in."
"I only heard a little bit," Hermes said, but he did come in. His hair looked different, a shorter cut that got longer the closer it was to the top of his head. It wasn't surprising that his appearance had changed, even if he didn't look any older, seeing as the last time Fenris had seen him had been so long ago he couldn't name the year.
"When did he get here?" Fenris asked. Slepnir shrugged unhelpfully.
"Some time ago," Hermes said, and then (to Fenris's relief) Loki interrupted him, saying "I invited Hermes over while you were still at school, since he was looking for somewhere out of the way of his family."
Fenris didn't blame him for that. He'd only ever heard stories, but Hermes's family sounded like the kind he'd try to avoid, too. "Okay." The word turned into a yawn before he could finish it.
"You need rest," Loki said immediately. "C'mon, all of you, out."
"I'm staying," Jormungand said stubbornly.
Loki didn't try to contest his decision, only glanced at Slepnir's similarly stubborn expression and then said, "Scully, c'mere."
Scully obediently jumped off the bed, trailing Loki as he threw an arm over Hermes's shoulders and pulled the other god out. The door clicked gently as it closed behind him with a flick of his fingers.
Jormungand wasted no time in burrowing under the covers next to Fenris, pulling him down so that he was no longer sitting up. They settled into their usual places, or what their usual places were without Loki in between them. Jormungand left space in between the two of them, and Slepnir let him curl up back-to-back.
There was a moment of quiet, after they all stopped rustling the blankets around.
"Fen," Jormungand said, into the quiet, "I just - I know you don't like people touching you usually but - you did just..."
He trailed off without finishing.
Fenris was pretty sure he knew what Jormungand meant.
"Okay," he said, and rolled over, pulling Jormungand's arm over his chest loosely. He could still move his arm (the one that wasn't under his head, anyway) and the blanket wasn't so heavy as to keep him from kicking around if he wanted to.
Besides, sometimes having other people in the bed but not touching him felt lonelier than just being alone in a bed.
Jormungand's arm clenched briefly around him, and then he found Fenris's hand and held it tight, and he seemed to relax a little.
"He's fine now," Slepnir said, already sounding muzzy and half-asleep, but a hand that wasn't Jormungand's patted at Fenris's shoulder.
This was mostly what Fenris had missed, staying at Hogwarts all year 'round.
Happy New Year, it's five minutes into 2016 and I figured it would be mean not to post a chapter.
Review, please!