"Stop being a shit and help."

Loki grimaced and flicked a glance at her from under his brow, which was one of the many pretentious reactions he still threw her way. "I might consider it more thoroughly were you to, as you say, 'ask me nicely'."

"I did ask you nicely," Cora grumbled, moving her bangs out of her eyes and smudging her forehead with powdered sugar in the process. "Like five times. There's a limit to my niceness."

"So I've discovered…," Loki sighed, prodding an egg boredly and almost sending it rolling off the countertop. Cora snatched it before it could fall, much to the God of Mischief's disappointment, and had to focus all her energy on setting it gently on the counter when she felt like slamming it. That would've amused the man on the barstool across from her and that was the last thing she was interested in doing at the moment.

"You seem to reach that limit fairly easily," she murmured as she measured out a cup of flour from its container.

"Funny, your grandmother found me charming," he said with a triumphant smirk and Cora nearly indulged her urge to retrieve the egg and break it over one of his sharp, annoying cheekbones, which she only found annoying in this moment because he, as a whole, was mighty annoying today.

It was true, her grandmother was very pleased with Loki as a whole, though she thought his name was a bit offbeat. Cora had neglected to mention his general otherworldly godliness, but she had the feeling her grandma had gotten an inkling that he was different, much like Cora, herself, was. She hadn't said a word though, as it had been the holiday for gorging oneself and getting along harmoniously with an assortment of relatives and, though her grandma wouldn't have had an issue with him one way or another as long as Cora was content, Cora's uncle was a different story.

She'd shown up the day before Thanksgiving less than a month prior and after extensive deliberation, Cora had brought Loki with her in normal clothes, or as he'd insisted, "plain Midgardian frocks." She knew she was setting herself up for something nightmarish, but the majority of her focus had been on seeing her sweet, lovable old grandmother, who she didn't see nearly enough with the gargantuan amount of distance between their residences. They'd taken a plane—which Loki hadn't been all that sure about—and had made to the hotel before her nerves had really set in. However, she'd walked in ahead of Loki, her grandma had taken one look at him, and then told her, "Why, Cora, you really snagged yourself a looker."

In that same instant, Cora had nearly choked and Loki had decided he rather liked the tiny, elderly Midgardian woman.

Her uncle had been less agreeable and had engaged in multiple, petty stare-downs with Loki across the table or whatever they happened to be standing at, particularly at Thanksgiving dinner when they'd begun passive-aggressively debating who should carve. Loki had shown zero interest in it until Cora's uncle had mentioned it being something only the "man of the house" could do. Then it was game on, apparently. All of that after Cora had calmly asked to speak with her uncle privately and then half-screamed at him for working with SHIELD and leading her to believe her grandma was dead over a year prior since she hadn't seen him in that span of time.

Idiots, Cora had thought then and again now as she recounted the evening. It hadn't been a disaster; hell, it could've been a lot worse. But it had been tense, much to the amusement of her grandma, which had softened her to the conflict incrementally throughout the visit. They'd departed on as fine of terms as expected and Loki had even stooped down to hug old Christina Dempsey—who was half his size—before they left. It was nice to have him meet her only real family in her world. Speaking of which…

"I think we should invite your brother over for Christmas."

It was like she'd dropped a soundproof box around the two of them. The utter silence even permeated the small noise of her scraping excess flour off the brim of her measuring cup, which was a strange act of nature she'd not experienced before. "Cora—"

"It'll be fun, Loki, come on!" she hurried to persist, stepping over to the sink. One of the strangest parts of being in the normal—relatively normal—world again was how much her budget had skyrocketed from the generosity of Asgard's king. He'd shown his gratitude to her for whatever she'd done that had mattered most to him—whether it be her influence on Loki or her aid in the midst of the Ragnarök—by giving her a cartful of Asgardian gold, most of which she'd parted with for a few high-standing museums interested in educating people about the other realms now that their existence was common knowledge. What had been left had put her bank balance in an eight-figure range she'd been depleting incrementally with occasional purchases and donations to charities.

She'd first purchased a new car because her old one was still somewhere in Arizona with an arrow in the driver's side handle. Then she'd moved out of her apartment for a slightly nicer one without a whiny roommate. Well… With a different whiny roommate. Then had come adding Midgardian wear to Loki's wardrobe, replacing a few things that needed replaced, and getting whatever else proved necessary for their new living situation. "Jane can come, too, and they can bring Erik, too!"

It had been a little over two years since the Ragnarök and, in that time, Thor and Jane had welcomed their first child into their finally happy home. Cora had helped where she could, but it was mostly Darcy—now Aunt Darcy—who had stuck around the happy couple and had helped with everything since she'd gone through the same with her older sister already. None of them, however, had been able to come up with a suitable name for the baby until the day he was born in early December, which was when Jane had quietly declared that she wanted to name him after Dr. Selvig, in honor of the sacrifice he'd made in effort to give her a chance at the life she'd dreamt of since slamming into a banished Thor with their van.

He grimaced a bit. "I'm never going to get used to that name being used for someone other than her scientist friend."

"I think it's nice. It is hard though, even though he's nearly a year old and I should be used to it by now."

"Perhaps we should grow accustomed to it before we—" He paused when he saw the look on her face. "What is all this for, anyway? Why invite them now?"

"Because it'll be Christmas in…," she paused to gauge how much time they actually had. "A little over three weeks."

"Christmas?" he repeated dubiously, his green eyes a bit murky with confusion.

Cora paused heavily and squinted at him as she tried to think of a way to explain it. "…Yuletide?"

"Oh, why didn't you say so," Loki griped quietly. "Midgardian's celebrate the hunt?"

"The tradition has been very altered from what you know, more than likely," she figured. "What does it meant to you?"

"Well, Yuletide signifies the Wild Hunt Odin has led for millennia," he explained.

"Did you celebrate it in Asgard?"

Loki glanced at her hands thoughtfully as she cracked a few eggs on the rim of her mixing bowl. "We feasted, but we did that a fair amount. Apart from that, I just remember Mother insisting that we dress more formally than usual, which was somewhat difficult to do given that we already dressed fairly formally…"

Cora smiled a little sadly, able to picture Frigga fussing over them very easily. "Here we do some feasting, but we also have gift exchanges and decorate a tree… And make cookies, obviously," she remarked, nodding at her handiwork so far.

"Is that what you're doing?"

"What the hell does it look like I'm doing?"

Loki licked his fingertip and dabbed it in powdered sugar on the counter. "Making a mess," he mumbled as he tapped it to his tongue, soon wincing with distaste when it turned out to be baking powder.

"Well… I guess I'm doing that, too," she murmured. When he met her eyes, she frowned and repeated a bit more amiably, "I think we should invite your brother over for Christmas."

Loki stared at her for a length of time. "I can't promise we will get along."

"That's a yes," she grinned, plugging in the mixer and sticking the beaters in the mess of ingredients.

"I did not say—" Loki was cut off by Cora turning on the beaters, which whirred loudly through the amounts of egg, flour, and assorted dry components. He waited until she'd cut the power and started to go back on what he'd said again, but she looked him directly in the eyes and powered up the mixer again, cutting him off a second time. He frowned at her and tried one more time, only to be muted completely this time as she turned on the mixer and started going at the bowl until it was filled with batter for the second time that night. She'd pulled the first batch from the oven ten minutes ago and now turned to the stove to check them.

Cora smiled, pleased, and announced, "I think these are ready to be iced." She didn't realize her fatal mistake of language until she saw the deviant grin spread the lips of the god at her breakfast bar out of the corner of her eye and then the cookies were encased in frost.

After his little stunt, Loki was banished to the living room, where Cora had parked him on the couch and put on How the Grinch Stole Christmas for him to watch while he stewed in "missing out on some crazy cookie fun." Loki occasionally glanced toward the kitchen doorway, catching glimpses of the fiery woman whenever she had to rearrange her baking station, but also watched the strange animation she'd put on the television. He'd learned some about television since moving in with her, but it rarely interested him as much as reading or going out to explore the city. Or teasing her, really.

When this "Grinch" being pulled an exceptionally wrinkly face, Cora paused in the doorway and pointed at the screen. "See that? That's what you are."

"I do not see the dilemma, I find him…it…rather agreeable."

She scoffed softly. "You would."

"Am I allowed back in the kitchen?"

She squinted at him and asked slowly, "Will you behave?"

"I am not a child, Cora."

"Sometimes I'm not so sure."

He smirked and dragged a glance over her before remarking, "You seemed sure last night."

Cora simultaneously blushed and glared and it was the most conflicted expression he'd ever seen her, so conflicted he lost his composure and laughed. "No, you sit there, finish your movie, and then maybe you can come back. Maybe. I'm not sure anymore after that."

He chuckled and watched her go before turning his eyes back onto the screen, knowing he wouldn't take orders from anyone else in all the Nine. A holiday with Thor and his family…, he pondered somewhat seriously after sobering a few moments later. I never could have anticipated this happening. Then again, what have I anticipated correctly about my future in these past four years…