Notes: The Wool-White, Bell-Tongued Ball of Holidays begins!

Warnings: For impending fruitcake.

Chapter Four

By the time Loki made his way downstairs, everyone else had already gathered in the dining room. The formality of the chamber was at odds with the cheerful confusion of places being set and serving dishes carried from the kitchen, but the long dining table was obviously the only place to accommodate such a large group for the meal.

Loki, finding himself in the way and solving the problem by stepping in to help, had taken a dish of roasted vegetables out of the hands of a woman before recognizing her as Agent Maria Hill.

"Hi, Loki," said the agent. "Nice to see you under... less exciting circumstances." Loki smiled in agreement. Technically, the last time he had seen Hill was at the celebration in Asgard after Hydra and the Dire Wraiths were defeated, but he assumed she was speaking of the chaotic battle in New York that had been the cause for the celebration.

He had just set down the vegetables when Thor appeared, bearing a basket of bread rolls.

"Brother!" he exclaimed. Steve quickly relieved him of the bread, which was a good thing because Thor seemed to have completely forgotten he was holding it. The brothers embraced as Rhodey and Bruce edged past them bearing plates and cutlery. "I did not mean to miss your arrival. Rhodey was showing me how to make wreaths out of boughs of evergreen, which we will decorate and hang tomorrow. I hope you have brought your kittens? Are you settled in your room?"

"I have not yet unpacked completely," Loki said, when he was finally able to insert a word. "Philip and Elizabeth are in the bedroom Annie and I will be occupying, and JARVIS has kindly offered to inform me if they do anything too outrageous. We missed you on our train journey, although you might have found the carriage rather cramped."

"Excuse me," said Agent Coulson, edging past them to put another serving dish on the table. "Hi, Loki. I don't believe you've met my mother, Gladys Coulson."

"I have not," Loki said, turning in pleasure to greet the woman at the agent's side.

She did not look at all the way Loki had expected. He had leisure to think that, before realizing that what he had expected was something in the nature of Neville Longbottom's method of dealing with a boggart. He had, in fact, been cherishing an unacknowledged and ridiculous vision of Mrs. Coulson looking like Agent Coulson dressed up in women's clothing, in the manner of Professor Snape in the garb of Neville's grandmother.

Mrs. Coulson turned out to be an attractive yet somehow inconspicuous elderly woman with shining silvery-white hair. She smiled at Loki with what he could only describe as an air of competent friendliness, and he was reminded of a nursery teacher greeting a new pupil.

Loki found himself revising his original impression: Mrs. Coulson did not look like Coulson in women's clothing, but once you looked past the merely physical, the resemblance was astonishing.

"It's very nice to meet you," said Mrs. Coulson, in a quiet, even tone. "Phil has told me so much about you." Her tone was still perfectly friendly, but Loki still caught himself casting a hasty glance at Agent Coulson, who rolled his eyes a little and murmured,

"Nothing terrible."

"That is a relief," Loki said, as if he was joking.

"Mrs. Coulson has offered to let me help her prepare our Christmas Eve feast," Thor spoke up, managing to sound as though he was not rescuing his little brother from an awkward moment. "Perhaps you would also care to join us? I believe Clint has also offered- ?"

"Yeah," Clint said, rather sheepishly. "There's going to be a lot of chopping, so..."

"When Phil's father and I were first married, one of our neighbours taught me how to make a Lake St. John tourtiere," Mrs. Coulson explained. "It's a kind of meat-and-potato pie, and any time we planned to have a big group at Christmas I used to make it."

"I'd say this qualifies as a big group," Fury said, appearing at Mrs. Coulson's elbow with a glass of wine. She accepted it, and Fury looked around with an air of command. "Everyone, take a seat." It was not a suggestion. Loki obediently looked for an empty place.

"For the last meal we won't be responsible for this week," Tony spoke up, holding a chair for Coulson's mother to the left of Fury's place. To Loki and his friends, he explained, "The staff made tonight's- what would you call it? Dinner? Tea? Whatever- before they all went on vacation and left us here to fend for ourselves. Probably the last edible meal we'll have this week. And it's all on your head, Steve."

Steve smiled. "Then we should make the most of it, shouldn't we?"

"And after... whatever this meal is... we can map out our plans for the week," Tony added, with a return of enthusiasm. Loki suspected they were all going to need a holiday to recover from this holiday, but he found Tony's excitement both infectious and endearing.

"I hope you have highlighter pens," Annie called from across the table. "You can't make a good plan without highlighter pens." Loki laughed as he walked around to join her. Clint took the chair at Mrs. Coulson's left, and Annie led Loki to the far end of the table on the opposite side. "Do you have any idea how much Mrs. Coulson knows about us?" she asked Loki in an undertone, smiling at him as though engaged in ordinary social conversation.

"None whatsoever," Loki admitted. "I find myself thinking of her as an agent, herself, but I realize that makes no sense."

"I should probably be careful where I sit at meals, so she doesn't start to wonder why I'm not eating anything," Annie said. "Just until we're sure. And I hope she's not the kind of mother who wants to take pictures of everyone."

"If that is the case, Mitchell may also need to be aware of his activities," Loki agreed.

"On the other hand," Annie said wistfully, "it's nice to have someone's mother around for the holidays."

"It is," Loki agreed, watching Clint and Bruce helping Mrs. Coulson to rice pilaf and vegetables. "Were you accustomed to assisting your mother with the preparations?"

Annie nodded. "Especially after Becky left home. Until... well, Bristol." Until Owen, she meant. Until her life was taken over by someone with no regard for her holiday traditions, or her family loyalties, or any of her wishes.

Loki picked up the wineglass that had been set at his place and raised it to her. "Well, it is high time you had some new traditions, then."

Annie smiled and lifted her own wineglass, although of course she did not drink from it. "That's a wonderful idea."

~oOo~

After the meal, Loki offered to look after the washing-up- by which he meant, "do it by magic, if someone would engage Mrs. Coulson in some other activity in the meantime so she does not catch me."

"Oh, we won't leave you stuck like that," Steve said firmly.

"And by we, I assume you mean me, too?" Tony spoke up, in a voice too elaborately resigned to be a genuine complaint. Steve smiled brightly at him as Pepper invited the female guests to withdraw, in a manner Loki recognized from the "period dramas" Annie liked to watch on the television.

"That's a little old-fashioned," Rhodey remarked as he watched them go.

"That's the girls not getting stuck with the dish-washing," Bruce reminded him.

"Good point," said Fury, drained his wineglass, and got up to follow. "You all can bring your dishpan hands to join us later," he said over his shoulder.

"This is all part of the joy of doing things for ourselves, I take it," Tony said.

"But using magic to perform such tasks is doing them for myself," Loki pointed out, although he had little expectation of Steve relenting, and also was not entirely sure Tony really wished to be rescued.

"And that would deprive the rest of us of the chance to do the same," Steve said cheerfully.

"Of course," Clint said, with an expression on his face that left little doubt he would joyfully accept liberation.

"Cheer up," Tony told him. "I'm pretty sure one of the appliances in the kitchen is a dishwasher. Maybe more than one, I can't remember."

"A dishwasher?" asked Loki. "What is a dishwasher?"

Everyone stared at him.

"You know," Rhodey said, although if he did he would not have been asking. "A machine that washes the dishes for you. I take it you don't have them in Asgard."

"No. In the palace, dishes are washed by the more junior of the servants. And in Bristol," Loki added, to head off any pointed remarks about the uselessness of royalty, "they are washed by us. Are you telling me there is a kind of machine that can do this?"

"We don't have one," George explained to the others. "Come to think of it, I suppose there's no reason for Loki to have ever heard of them."

"You'd think he'd have heard me complaining about our not having one by now," Mitchell said.

"Mitchell, none of us listens to you complaining about the washing-up anymore," George replied.

"Well, how is using such a machine different from me employing magic?" Loki demanded.

Everyone looked at Steve. Steve looked at everyone.

"I think he's got you there," Mitchell snickered.

Steve laughed. "I think he does," he admitted.

~oOo~

When the washing-up was finished (the entire group had remained in the kitchen with Loki, who had therefore made perhaps a little more of flying plates and self-propelling scrubbers than strictly necessary), everyone gathered in the large room with the couches and the television. There were drinks. Loki sat on the floor in front of Annie's place on the longer of the couches, and Scamp crawled into his lap, looking rather as though her feelings were wounded.

"I didn't think I should let her up on Tony's furniture," Annie explained to Loki in an undertone.

"I doubt very much that it would matter to Tony, even if it mattered," Loki replied, referring both to Tony's easygoing ways and to Scamp's status as a ghost.

"Well, in front of Mrs. Coulson- " Annie said quietly, and let the remark trail away. Loki nodded his agreement with the sentiment. He, too, had no wish to present the image of a thoughtless guest taking advantage of Tony's good nature. "We've got to ask Coulson exactly what he's told his mother about us," she added, just as Tony and Steve came in, carrying a large flip-chart between them.

"Oh, for the love of God, Tony," Agent Hill spoke for everyone, drowning out a muttered oath from Fury.

"Hey, Annie asked for highlighter markers, so Annie's getting highlighter markers," Tony replied unrepentantly. Annie put a hand on her heart in a gesture of gratitude, and Tony grinned at her before going on, "I promise, this is the last time we'll be doing anything like this. But we've got a lot to cover in the next few days and we don't want to miss anything."

"Of course not," Rhodey murmured.

Tony quickly used a black marker to draw a grid on the top piece of paper, labeling each of the boxes with a date from the twenty-first- the current date- to the twenty-eighth. He switched to a blue marker to scribble Travel in the first and last boxes, then picked up a red marker and tossed a green one to Steve.

"Okay," he said expansively, "here's the plan as Steve, Pepper and I see it." Pepper, beside Annie, did her best to look as though she had contributed to the plan, as opposed to simply serving as a sounding-board for all Tony's ideas. Steve did not even manage that. Tony did not seem to care. Instead, he made quick X's on several squares in the grid. "Tomorrow is kind of a prep day, with the actual celebrations beginning on the day after, with Festivus."

"Do we yet know what Festivus is?" Loki whispered to Annie, who shook her head. They returned their attention to Tony, who was speaking as he wrote in the squares.

"After Festivus, we have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Sorry, I didn't mean to give that one more time, it just sort of… got away from me. The day after Christmas is- "

"Boxing Day," Loki called helpfully.

"Kwanzaa," Tony corrected.

"I am fairly sure it is Boxing Day," Loki argued.

"It's Kwanzaa," announced Fury, with a definite hint of threat in his voice.

"Of course. Kwanzaa," agreed Loki, who was not stupid.

"It can be both," George offered. Fury gave him a look, and George wilted. "Or not."

Tony went on blithely, "And this year, the final day of Hanukkah falls on the twenty-seventh."

"That worked out well," Jane remarked, from the armchair she was sharing with Thor, who gave every sign of thinking all sorts of things were working out well.

"It did, didn't it?" Tony agreed. "Now- " he gestured at Steve, who stepped forward and briskly drew a cone-like tree in the space representing the next day. "Okay. Tomorrow, we'll do some decorating. Find a Christmas tree- that okay with everyone?" he asked, carefully not looking at Mitchell.

"Pagan-derived symbol," Steve murmured. "I'm sure it'll be fine." He cut his eyes toward Mitchell, who nodded slightly. Really, Loki thought, they must ask Coulson what he had told his mother about Loki's friends.

"Also, Rhodey and Thor started making wreaths today, so they might want a hand finishing those. And Pepper- ?"

"Will be making popcorn and cranberry strings, and drying citrus slices to decorate the tree," Pepper announced. "Which I have to admit I haven't done since I was a little girl, so I'd appreciate all the help I can get."

"And there are boxes of decorations in storage upstairs somewhere," Tony added. "Dad used to bring us here for Christmas sometimes, and he always had the place all... Anyway, we can have a look through those and decide if there's anything there we'd like to use. How about we get together again tomorrow, after breakfast, and everyone can say what they want to do?"

"Sounds fair," Coulson said, and Agents Hill and Fury nodded. Tony looked rather startled by the agreement, but rallied quickly.

"Great." He looked around with a big smile. "The Wool-White, Bell-Tongued Ball of Holidays is officially underway."

"I'll drink to that," said Clint.

And everybody did.