I don't know why I wrote this. My mind just went: babies.
Once Loki got over the whole pregnancy thing and how unbelievably painful actually getting the baby out was, she thought Slepnir was very cute.
Newborn babies were definitely not, but she saw the appeal even though the entire lower half of her torso hurt like hell.
"Boy," the midwife announced, a good woman named Alfdis who was unlikely to mess anything up. Human - gods, least of all anyone in Asgard, could be trusted to be discreet about this. "Do you want to hold him?"
"Of course I do, I didn't just do all that for nothing. Give him here." Loki let Alfdis help her into a sitting position, because Norns damn it her crotch hurt.
Slepnir was a tiny little red-faced lump with his face screwed up in a way that suggested that he was distinctly unhappy about the turn of events. He'd started wailing as soon as he came out, but two arms around him made him quiet down to sniffles and whines.
"He seems very healthy," Alfdis said.
"Of course he is," Loki murmured, strangely enraptured by the tiny godling. Slepnir whined, loudly, and Loki cuddled him closer in an attempt to quiet him.
"He's probably hungry," Alfdis advised her. "Give him some milk, but be quick, you're not done yet."
Loki frowned. She was already topless, so she let Slepnir fumble for her breast with only a little help. "What do you mean?"
"Gods, this is your first child."
As it turned out, the baby was not the only thing that came out during labor.
Loki silently swore that she was never doing this again.
Ever.
During the first few years, Loki was very glad she didn't need as much sleep as humans did, because she was sure she'd have gone mad for lack of it otherwise.
Slepnir was, to say the least, not a restful baby. The only way she could get him to sleep was by letting him sleep with her, but she was worried she'd roll over onto him in her sleep or something else horrible, so even when he slept through the night she didn't get much.
"You," Loki told him, "are going to ruin me. I don't even want to think about how I'm going to explain why I've been away so long."
Slepnir burbled back at her, one hand firmly clutching the fabric of her tunic and getting it somewhat damp, since it had been in his mouth before he'd grabbed on.
"I'm telling the truth." Loki walked around, talking absentmindedly to Slepnir, who was a very good audience as he couldn't talk back yet. "I'll have to think of something. Odin will know most of it's a lie," she admitted to herself. Her brother was just as perceptive as she was. "You're a troublemaker and you can't even walk yet."
Slepnir said something in baby-talk that probably meant Good, I like trouble.
"Who knows what they're going to think of you," Loki mused. Odin had spent a very long time teasing Loki for her supposed 'celibacy', since she'd had no children to speak of while Odin had Thor and Baldr and all the little bastard gods or demigods here and there. "Probably tell me that it's about time."
Odin would be thrilled, for sure, or at least congratulate her and then ask who the mother was. Loki snorted to herself. The mother. She could probably get away with claiming half-human parentage - she'd be away long enough for the only candidates to be dead or nearing it.
Loki walked, and Slepnir drowsed cradled in her arms, and she let herself enjoy the clean-baby smell and the warmth and the lack of any of the usual chaos Asgard (barely) contained.
"Maaaaaaaaaaaa."
Loki ticked Slepnir's stomach, making him squeal with delight. "Da."
"Ma," Slepnir said stubbornly. Loki no longer having breasts, since Slepnir had stopped breastfeeding, did not deter him in the least from calling Loki 'ma'. He hadn't gotten a handle on 'mother' or 'father' - or very many other words, to be honest - so 'ma' or 'da' it was.
"Da."
"Ma!" Slepnir kicked excitedly and nearly unbalanced himself, tilting sideways before Loki managed to catch him and prop him back up into a sitting position.
"Well, you've certainly got my stubbornness."
Slepnir said something which involved a lot of sticking his tongue out at Loki and might have been an attempt to parrot the sentence back to him.
"Oh, really?"
"Enh," Slepnir said agreeably, and then stuffed his hand back in his mouth to suck on.
"You are going to make your fingers so wrinkly they stay like that forever," Loki informed him. Slepnir seemed unbothered by the vague threat. "I'm telling the truth, for once," he continued. "Little wrinkly fingertips until you grow as old as I am."
"Okay."
"You little smart mouth."
Once he started walking, Slepnir was a bit of a disaster.
"Careful!" Loki narrowly averted Slepnir's collision with the door for the third time that morning. Slepnir giggled, wriggling until Loki let go of him again. "Watch where you're going-"
Slepnir tried to walk forward again and this time, he did hit the door. He sat down with a thump, looking confused. "Ow," he said, but he didn't look like he was in very much pain.
"For the last time, you can't walk through solid objects."
Slepnir stared at the door like he couldn't believe it had just done that to him. He looked up at Loki, pointing at it. "Door," he complained.
"Yes, that's a door."
"In there," Slepnir said insistently.
Loki opened the door with a flick of his fingers. "What's in there?"
Slepnir used Loki's pants to hoist himself back to his feet, then toddled through the doorway contentedly.
"Don't trip over anything," Loki called, and then sighed as there was a thump from the other room. "Maybe that was too much to ask for."
"Why don' I have a dad?"
"Of course you have a dad, how do you think I had you?"
Slepnir made a face. "He isn't here."
"Ah." Loki raised his eyebrows. "Are you asking if I know where he is, or why isn't he here?"
"Both." Slepnir was a small, stubborn godling, even at an age where he could easily have been mistaken for a four-year-old, and he looked up at Loki expectantly. "Why didn't he stay?"
"Because he didn't know I had you," Loki said. "I didn't either, at first."
"Weren't you married?"
"Oh, Norns, no," Loki scoffed, and then paused at Slepnir's disappointed expression. Maybe that had been the wrong thing to say. "You know I prefer looking like this, anyway. It would have been odd for an Ás-"
"Ás? He was Æsir?" Slepnir interrupted, eyes wide.
"Yes," Loki said patiently, "and it would have been weird for someone he called his wife to go about looking like a man all the time, wouldn't it have?"
"But you can look like a woman."
"I don't prefer it, and I certainly wouldn't change myself just to be acceptable to Asgardian society." Loki replied. "Remember that, Slepnir. Do things for yourself and no one else."
"You're changing the topic," Slepnir complained. "Who was he?"
"He was just a man I met." Albeit a very handsome one, for an Ás. Loki shrugged. "I never found out much about him."
Slepnir's obvious disappointment made him wish he had more to offer.
"What was his name?" Slepnir asked after a moment.
"Auðunar." Loki had never found out his last name, not that he'd particularly wanted to know it.
"...Did you mean to get me?"
"No," Loki admitted. He reached out to tousle Slepnir's hair. "Doesn't mean I don't love you, though."
"...Okay." Slepnir reached up for Loki, a silent question.
Loki smiled and picked him up.
Slepnir had been worth it.
Baby Slepnir :) I know at the end it seems like he can suddenly talk really well, but picture him speaking in a little-kid voice. It's been a while but he hasn't gotten that much older.