Nice to see you liked the last one! I'm planning on having Hel be more involved, as time allows, so we'll see how that goes. She's been chatter recently (read: actually contacting me as opposed to me not noticing anything related to her) so I guess this is partly for her :) We'll see how it goes over.
I don't know how much time I'll have to write, since my English teacher keeps giving me books to read! I mentioned the Color Purple to her because of the Tonys and now I have her Women in Lit class's 'Books I Wish We Could Read' list (I finished the Color Purple, and the musical must be good if the book is any standard to judge by). Then again, school will probably be over by the time I actually post this.
Important plot stuff is happening that will potentially be relevant later, so pay attention to this one!
As a reminder, italics = speaking Old Norse :)
Loki looked at the clock after the fourth round of what probably counted as at least an attempt at Game Night, and said, "Whoops."
"I've been waiting for you to realize how late it was for the past three hours," Hermes commented, from his position on the sofa, the snakes restored to their stylized position on his phone.
"We can't stop now," Slepnir protested.
"You're only saying that because you're winning," Jormungand grumbled.
"You're biased since you're losing."
"What game are we even playing anymore?" Loki questioned, putting his cards down. "I have a hand with a blue three, two aces, a queen, and a 'Sorry' card. Which one of you mixed up the boxes?"
"Who said it was us?"
"You're the one who set the couch on fire," Jormungand pointed out.
"That doesn't count, that was years ago," Slepnir said, aggravated.
"Admittedly, worse things have happened to that couch," Loki mused.
"Like what?" Hermes asked incredulously.
"Use your imagination, it'll probably be nothing worse than anything you can come up with." Loki dropped his cards into the box. "We should maybe consider putting this game, whatever the hell it is, on pause-"
"Noooo," Slepnir groaned.
"It is almost midnight, I have to keep up some kind of responsible parenting," Loki replied.
"You just want to know who has the joker card," Slepnir said sulkily, but he tossed his cards down too. Jormungand stopped pretending to be subtle and picked them up to see which one's he'd had.
"Yeah, yeah." Loki pointed towards the hallway. "I'll clean up. If all three of you are in bed before I make it upstairs, I'll tell a story."
Fenris, who was not playing, perked up slightly.
"We get to pick," Jormungand said immediately.
"Don't you always pick?" Loki was grinning as he flapped his hands at them. "Go. And don't just jump straight into bed, because that doesn't count!" He had to call after them, because Jormungand was already tugging Fenris into the hallway by his shirt, and Slepnir had darted ahead of them, making for the stairs.
Fenris didn't feel like running, but he kept pace with Jormungand until they all tumbled into the bedroom. Scully, already in her bed, looked up sharply with a curious whuff.
"Dibs on the bathroom first!" Slepnir practically sprinted for the bathroom door.
"All you're doing is brushing your teeth!" Jormungand shouted after him. "What do you need privacy for?" Scully barked loudly, shouting with him. Fenris petted her to make her calm down.
"I have to change," Slepnir said, voice muffled by the now-closed bathroom door.
"Your clothes are out here!"
"...Can you hand me my pajamas?"
When the door creaked open, all three of them looked up expectantly.
"Impressive," Loki said in Norse, kicking the door shut behind him. "You're all actually in bed." The covers had been pushed down and only about half of the pillows were where they were supposed to be, but they were all definitely on the bed. Scully had curled up in hers again, and if she wasn't asleep she was ignoring any noises they made.
"Slepnir's still wearing socks," Jormungand said.
"I can wear socks if I want," Slepnir argued petulantly, reaching over Fenris to poke Jormungand.
"Socks in bed are questionable, but I'll allow it," Loki said, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. He wasn't wearing his jacket, which meant he was going to sleep, too.
"You promised a story," Fenris said, softly.
"I did," Loki agreed. Slepnir scooted out of the way to let Loki take his usual spot in the middle of the three of them. "Any demands?"
"I want an America story," Slepnir said. Fenris shoved himself close to Loki, under his dad's arm and snug against his chest.
"America, huh?"
"Something cool," Jormungand said imperiously.
Loki laughed. "I'm always cool."
"No you're not."
"Don't be rude to the storyteller." Loki reached over to ruffle Jormungand's hair, not that it could really get any messier. "Now gimme a minute to think of a good one."
Fenris could hear Loki's heartbeat, with his ear pressed against his dad's chest. It beat with the same even tempo that Loki breathed, chest rising and falling and moving Fenris's head along with it.
Fenris, who had been on a strange kind of edge for no reason at all for most of the day, felt his own heartbeat begin to calm down.
"Alright," Loki said eventually, "I've got one." He flicked a hand in the approximate direction of the light switch, and the lights obligingly dimmed. "So, a long time ago-"
"How long?" Slepnir interrupted.
"Oh boy. Uh, three hundred years? Something like that."
"Where in America?"
"Nowhere in particular," Loki said flippantly. "Are you going to keep asking questions, or can I tell this story?"
Slepnir settled down in a very pointed way, using his feet to pull the covers up, and looked at Loki expectantly - or at least Fenris assumed he did, he couldn't see Slepnir's face from this position. "Go ahead."
Fenris closed his eyes as he felt Loki breathe in. "As you all hopefully know," Loki said, "there was a guy, a while back, who sailed across an ocean and found an extra continent or two in his way, and him and the rest of his continent proceeded to exploit it as much as possible. Taking resources, gold, all that jazz, but mostly they sent people over to live there.
"Some people went willingly. Some were soldiers following their explorer bosses, some were there for religious purposes - you know Christians, very taken up with saving the souls of people who already have perfectly good gods - and some people came over to make money off of the new world. But mostly people came to escape whatever they had waiting back home, or they were sent over as punishment.
"It was a punishment, back then. America was mostly wilderness and people who spoke different languages than the Europeans. I thought it was ridiculous at the time, all these people just strolling in like they owned the place. 'Course I was occupied at the time and half a world away. Definitely too busy to go take a look.
"The thing was, though, that all these people coming over and settling - well, squatting, more like - brought more than just things with them. They brought their beliefs, too."
Loki paused, like he was settling in for a dramatic bit. He was very good at telling stories, especially when he told them in a way that made Fenris fall asleep before his dad got to the end, but this one was too interesting.
Besides, if he fell asleep...
"The thing is," Loki said softly, "we are very much grounded in belief."
He'd told them that, before. He'd said it a lot. But gods never really needed to be told that.
"No one actually left the realms we came from," Loki said. "We stayed where we came from. But not all our followers did, and they took little things with them - practices, superstitions. And they took us, too, in some way.
"We weren't there, but they believed we were, so...a version of us was."
Loki settled further back into the pillows, head tilting back. "America's an odd place, really. The gods that were there first were nearly forgotten and only half belong there, and the rest of us never belonged there in the first place, but we were brought there anyway. The place doesn't suit any of us very well."
"I don't get it," Fenris murmured.
"Enough people believed that we were there, with them, that they created what I personally call copycat gods," Loki explained, in the same 'story voice'. "Not nearly as powerful as the real thing, and closer to popular opinion of what we were like than what we were actually like, but...close enough, I suppose."
"You?" Jormungand asked.
"Yeah, me too. Not a bad guy, but we generally stayed out of each others' way, or else it got awkward quick."
"Us?"
Loki's breath caught for the briefest second. So did Fenris', because he could guess what 'popular opinon' of him was. If there was someone like that calling himself by Fenris's name out there...
"I dunno," Loki said slowly. "If there was, I never met any of them."
"That's weird to think of," Jormungand said.
"It's weird for everybody," Loki said. "Now seriously, bedtime, it is way too late for any of you to still be up." He yanked the covers up so that they gently settled over all four of them. Fenris could hear Jormungand shifting around and turning himself into a bundle of blanket.
Fenris kept himself tucked up against Loki and tried to concentrate on Loki's breathing and nothing else.
If he could just break this last one, they'd let him go, they'd turn him back, they'd promised-!
"Fen, hey-"
Fenris startled awake with a gasp.
"Sshhh," Slepnir said hurriedly, one hand hovering like he wanted to touch but knew that would just make it worse. "Jor's still asleep."
There was no Loki in between them on the bed. Fenris pressed his face into the pillow. His face was already wet, what had he been doing before Slepnir woke him up?
"Are you okay?" Slepnir asked, very quietly. Fenris scrubbed at his face and shook his head.
He knew perfectly well what he'd been dreaming about, and he didn't really feel like sharing.
"Where's dad?" He asked, the pillow muffling him slightly.
"I dunno," Slepnir said, sounding apologetic. "He wasn't here when I woke up." It was implied, when you started making noise. Jormungand was still dead asleep on Fenris's other side, somehow. Fenris inched closer to Slepnir.
"Do you want...?"
"Don't touch me." Fenris said it desperately, barely a whisper. He could still feel the ghosts of hands on him, something cold winding around his legs.
"Okay." Slepnir drooped minutely, disappointed, but he took his hand back and tucked his arm next to his chest instead. Fenris curled around the pillow and stole as much of the blanket as he dared back from Jormungand, trying to warm up and stop shaking.
He gave up after about four seconds. Slepnir sat up as Fenris crawled around him and slid off the bed.
"Where are you going?" Slepnir whispered.
"To go see where dad is." Downstairs was a good bet, so Fenris crept down the big spiral staircase, which looked gloomy in the middle of the night with moonlight coming in through the tall, atmospheric windows. There was light coming from down the hall, so Fenris tiptoed down towards the living room, where it turned out that Loki and Hermes were watching something on the TV.
Loki glanced up almost immediately, away from the show he was watching with what looked like an intense seriousness. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Fenris, but patted the space on the sofa next to him in a clear invitation.
Fenris slumped against his dad, face buried in Loki's shoulder. Loki absentmindedly dropped a kiss onto his head. The volume on the TV decreased, but Fenris could still hear somebody talking about cooking.
Hermes muttered something about getting a snack and stood up.
"You want something, too?" Loki asked Fenris. Fenris shook his head. Loki must have gestured at Hermes, because he didn't say anything but Fenris could hear Hermes walk away.
Loki patted Fenris's hair. "You'll be alright," he said, even though Fenris hadn't said anything about nightmares. "Off day, huh? You seemed quiet earlier."
Fenris made a noncommittal noise. Loki pressed a kiss to his head again and then, thankfully, dropped the topic.
Hermes came back after a short time with something that crunched every time he bit into it, and there must have been a lot more than one episode of whatever show they were watching, because the TV kept going in the background. Fenris stayed where he was with little inclination to move, and very nearly fell asleep again once or twice, but managed to jerk himself back into wakefulness both times, sprawled in some new and vaguely uncomfortable position over his dad.
After the second time, Loki tried to make him lie down, but Fenris stubbornly clung to wakefulness and his position with one head pillowed (a little uncomfortably, maybe) on Loki's shoulder.
"Okay," Loki said, rolling his eyes. "But I'm going to bed, so I don't know what you're thinking of doing."
Fenris was too tired to give Loki a proper pleading look, but he tried.
"No," Loki said. "Bed. If it takes making you that weird sleep tea Adam likes, then so be it."
"Sleep tea?" The name made it sound like some kind of potion.
"It's supposed to help people get to sleep easier," Loki explained. "Or help them sleep better, I don't actually know how it works, probably something to do with the specific combination of herbs or something." He gave Fenris an unusually serious look. "If I make some, will you drink it?"
Fenris shook his head.
"Fen," Loki said cajolingly. "You can't stay up forever."
That was debatable. Loki seemed to catch wind of Fenris's thoughts, because he sighed and said, "Not even if I have some too?"
How was that supposed to persuade him.
"I'll compromise," Loki offered. "You can have the tea and see if that helps, or you can tell me why you don't want to go to sleep."
...Ugh. "Okay."
Fenris fell asleep at the table.
He didn't even get to finish the tea (not that Loki was ever going to hear him complain about that).
Haha, I spent the entire day basically alternating between writing this and watching Nintendo E3 videos, summer is crazy.