It's a rare moment when Loki goes to bed alone.

It's an even rarer moment when he wakes up with someone by his side.

Today is one of the ordinary days. He wakes up alone, and as he rests his palm against the other side of the mattress, he can tell she's been up for a while. It's not always quite this cold. It must have been a particularly bad night.

He yawns and reaches his arms up, stretching his upper body and getting all the creaks and cracks out. Sometimes he feels like he aged a few hundred years in the two weeks or so he was in the TVA – which is ridiculous because there's no time there so obviously he couldn't have aged, but it seems nobody told his joints this. (Or maybe it's just the wear and tear of traversing the universe for a year, facing Thanos's reign of terror, and getting Hulk-smashed into the floor of Stark Tower repeatedly. That would make sense, too, he supposes.)

But right now, he has much more important things to attend to – namely, his wonderful girlfriend, wherever she may have wandered off to today. If she's been up for a while, she's probably calmed down from whatever nightmare doubtlessly woke her this time, but he still wants to do his boyfriend duty by making sure she's okay (and maybe kissing the top of her head and telling her he loves her, too, just in case she doesn't remember).

It's not hard to find her today. It's the sound of the television that lures him in, and if she's watching TV, there's a good chance she'll be fast asleep by now. It won't stop him from kissing her head and telling her he loves her, but he'll have to be quiet about it. She needs the sleep. She may know she's safe here in New Asgard, but her body isn't so sure, and she's still getting used to resting for more than a few hours at a time.

So he sets off to see his girlfriend in the living room. He's quiet as he walks and his fuzzy-socked feet barely make a sound as they step against the floor, but somehow, Sylvie knows he's there. As soon as he steps into the room, she looks up at him from where she's sprawled out on the couch, and it takes every ounce of self-control within him not to run over and pick her up in his arms and kiss her cute little nose.

Is he stupidly lovesick? Yes. Does he care that he sounds like a pathetic little fool because of it? Not really.

As soon as she sees him, she asks, "Is Christmas real?"

Loki raises his brows. "'Is Christmas real?'" he repeats, dumbfounded. That's not quite the good morning he'd expected.

"Mm." She nods, and the way her messy, tangled-up, half-curled hair falls in her face somehow makes him love her even more.

He cocks his head to the side. "It is," he says cautiously. "Why do you ask?"

She jerks her head toward the TV, and it's almost physically painful to look away from her in her comfy, bedheaded state. Admittedly, he's not fully sure what's happening on the screen, but he watches it for a few moments to try to make some sense of it. There's a guy and a girl dressed in comfy sweaters and scarves and winter jackets, standing in the snow-covered yard of a house covered in little lights as they have some conversation he's doubtlessly missed the context for.

Finally, he asks, "What am I looking at?"

"It's almost Christmas," she says.

Loki does not know what today's date is or when Christmas is celebrated, but he'll take her word for it.

As though reading his mind, she adds, "In the movie. It's almost Christmas in the movie."

Loki mouths a silent "oh."

"In all of the movies," she says. "This is the third movie in a row about Christmas, and they all make Christmas look so..." She trails off, shaking her head helplessly. "I don't know. It's so Christmas."

Loki blinks a few times.

Okay...

"Well, yes, Christmas is real," Loki tells her. "One of the Midgardian religions celebrates it. I don't know which; I don't consider myself an expert on the matter."

Sylvie's face contorts with distaste. "None of the movies mentioned any religion."

"Really?" He was pretty sure... Isn't it from one of those monotheistic religions? It's Christmas. It's the Christ one. Right? What religion is the Christ one, again? These cultural classes were so long ago. He hardly remembers anything he learned from them.

Sylvie shakes her head. "Nothing."

"Hmm." Loki shrugs. "Maybe the humans forget where the holiday originates. They don't live very long. I imagine stories get lost easily between the generations."

"Maybe," Sylvie agrees.

"Is there a reason you're asking about Christmas?" Loki asks her. "Other than fact-checking your movie marathon?" He suspects she either loves it or hates it. If he knew anything about the holiday, he could probably guess which it is, but as it is, he hasn't the slightest idea how it's celebrated.

"No, no reason." She lies back down on the couch, using her arm as a pillow as she turns her attention back to the movie.

Loki leans against the doorway, watching her with a fond smile. She really is the cutest. All the shit they went through to save the multiverse was absolutely worth it for this chance to love his favorite little lovebug.

If she didn't flat-out say she hates Christmas, he has to assume she finds it interesting, so he decided to ask.

"Do you want to celebrate Christmas?" Loki asks. He glances at the transparent white words in the bottom corner of the screen. "Hallmark style? Religion-free?" He doesn't actually know what Hallmark is, but he has to assume it relates to these movies if the word won't leave the screen.

She lifts her head to look at him. "Do you want to?"

He shrugs. "That depends on what your movies say Christmas entails."

She sits up on the couch and brushes her hair out of her face. "I don't really know," she admits. "A lot of decorating. They have a weird obsession with trees?"

Loki huffs a laugh. Well, there's no shortage of trees around New Asgard, so they have that covered.

"Every time two people stand under mistletoe together, they're expected to kiss," Sylvie tells him. "That might be a Midgardian religious ritual?"

Loki shrugs. "Maybe." He can't imagine another reason to do that if not because their God expects them to. It sounds like it could lead to some uncomfortable situations between friends – or, worse, family members. He tries not to think about that.

"They always exchange presents on Christmas day," Sylvie continues. "And there's a lot of food involved. Families get together to celebrate it, and they drink hot chocolate and eat cookies and just be merry."

Loki can't help but smile. "It sounds like a lot of fun," he says – the kind of fun he suspects that she would really like to have. "When is it?"

"I don't know," she says. "Winter. Usually in the snow. Whenever that is."

"I don't know if it snows here at all," Loki tells her. It certainly hasn't snowed yet – which isn't to say it definitely does not snow in New Asgard, but so far, it's just been cold.

Still, with no snow, it's hard to judge how close to Christmas they actually are. What time of year is it right now? When is Christmas? Is it close? Is it passed? He needs to look into this.

He clicks his tongue once. "I will be right back."

Sylvie furrows her brows. "Where are you going?"

"I need to find that cell phone that OB gave us," Loki tells her. "There should be some way to research this."

Sylvie huffs a laugh. "'Research this,'" she repeats under her breath, shaking her head to herself. "You don't have to–"

"But I'm going to," Loki says firmly. "We are going to have a Christmas if I have to steal Thor's cookie recipe to do it."

~~~

Loki does not have to steal Thor's cookie recipe, because it's actually on the back of the chocolate chips that Thor recommends he try. Instead, Loki teleports to the grocery store, steals all the baking ingredients off the shelves, and teleports back home to get everything set up.

He dumps everything on the counter and starts setting up the mixer he also stole from the grocery store. It can't be too hard, can it? It's just a mixer. It doesn't even look like many different pieces. He can figure this out with no problem.

"What's all this?" Sylvie asks from behind him.

"We're baking Christmas cookies, obviously," Loki tells her. He pulls out the two little metal beaters. Does it matter which one goes in which slot? He should probably use the instruction manual – but that sounds like so much work. Should he just wing it? That sounds like it could end poorly, though.

"Oh, are we?" Sylvie asks, and he can hear the amusement in her voice.

"We are," Loki replies. "And Christmas is on Monday, so we have a few more days to decorate." He looks over his shoulder at her. "Did you know that there are places that only sell trees for Christmastime?"

Sylvie scoffs. "That's absurd."

"That's what I said!" he agrees. "And people buy a new tree every year!"

Sylvie gapes at him. "Why do they need so many trees?"

Loki gestures to her emphatically. "Exactly!" he says. "Why do they not just reuse their trees?"

"What do they do with them when they're done with them?" Sylvie asks incredulously. "The trees in these movies are not small!"

Loki shakes his head. "I can't even imagine," he says. "I think we should grow our own tree from seed."

Sylvie stares at him. "Loki, that would take years."

Loki rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. "Obviously we would use magic."

"How?" Sylvie asks, putting her hands on her hips as she looks up at him. "What kind of tree-growing magic are you going to showcase for this?"

"All they need is energy," Loki says. "Why give it to them through water, soil, and sunlight when they can have it straight from the source?"

Sylvie huffs. "And you're the source?"

"No, we're the source," Loki corrects her. "It will be our tree, born of our magic."

"Our tree child," Sylvie says skeptically.

"Exactly," Loki replies.

Sylvie shakes her head to herself. "You're ridiculous," she tells him, joining him at the counter. She gestures with her head to the mixer. "Would you like some help from the more tech-savvy god in the room?"

"The tech-savvy god in the room is already working on it," Loki tells her, "but you're welcome to watch."

Sylvie scoffs, playfully offended, and he just smiles to himself.

A look at the instruction manual shows that it does matter which slot the beaters go in, and from there, it's smooth sailing to set everything up. A few minutes later, they have a fully functioning mixer and a counter full of carefully laid out cookie ingredients.

Sylvie looks over the back of the chocolate chip packaging. "We're making chocolate chip cookies?"

"I thought we would," Loki tells her. "Unless there are specific cookies for Christmastime?"

"No, these work," she assures him. She looks over the recipe on the back. "So we need... flour." She looks up at the counter to ensure it's there, then moves it to the left side. "Baking soda." She moves the baking soda to the right of it. "Salt." She puts that next in line. "Flour." She moves the flour, then the box of butter, then the granulated sugar, and so on until the ingredients are lined up in order of use.

"Perfect," Loki says, though he would have been more than content to just have everything lying in a pile on the counter until they needed it.

"Okay, first up," she says. "Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl."

Loki looks between the two glass bowls included in the mixer. He pauses, thinking, then hands her the smaller one. If it says small bowl, it probably wants the small one for a reason, right?

She takes it without looking and puts it down on the counter, her gaze still on the recipe. "It says the butter should be soft. How do you soften butter?"

Loki shrugs. "Microwave?"

Sylvie looks up at him for a few moments, a look of uncertainty and reluctance on her face, but then she shrugs. "Want to microwave some butter?"

"Sure," he says. "How much butter?"

She looks at the recipe. "Three-quarters of a cup."

Loki takes the box of butter and pulls out a stick. One stick is half a cup, so a stick and a half... Should he cut the big stick in half, too, then? Three halves? Will that cook better? Is that a mistake? How does baking work?

"Can I have the measuring cups while you're at it?" Sylvie asks him.

Loki flicks a hand in their direction, and the box of measuring cups floats out of it and onto the counter.

She looks up at him. "One day, you need to teach me how to do that."

"I think that can be arranged," he agrees. There's a fair bit he'd like her to teach him, too – an equal trade off, he'd say.

As Sylvie begins preparing the dry ingredients, Loki prepares the butter. He does end up cutting both sticks in half, only because he expects them to microwave better. The only problem is that he doesn't actually know how to microwave them.

He puts them in for three seconds.

They don't change very much.

Three more seconds.

They still haven't changed too much.

Three more seconds.

They're feeling a bit softer–

"Loki, what the hell are you doing?" Sylvie asks, exasperated.

"I don't want to over-soften them!" Loki says defensively.

Sylvie shakes her head to herself and turns her attention back to the flour in front of her. She scoops out a cupful, and, with the back of a knife, she carefully scrapes off the excess, letting it fall back into the bag to ensure she has the exact amount the recipe asked for.

Suddenly, Loki feels like he should have found a ruler to cut the butter. Clearly, Sylvie is committed to perfection. The pressure is on, then, with softening the butter just right – and he'll have to hope the stick he cut in half really is exactly(ish) half.

He sets the microwave for two more seconds, and this time, the butter feels just right. He could be completely wrong – how soft is soft in this instance? – but he's not going to find the answer on his own, so he just carries the butter over to the counter and waits for Sylvie to tell him what to do next.

Sylvie finishes scraping off the next cup of flour before looking at the recipe again. "That goes in the bowl with three-quarters of a cup of granulated sugar and three-quarters of a cup of brown sugar."

Loki pauses. She has the bowl. She's preparing to put non-sugary materials in the bowl. This feels wrong. He's very confused.

Wait.

"The big bowl?" Loki asks.

"Probably?"

Loki nods once. He can do that. He unwraps the butter and plops it all in the bowl. It feels so... indelicate. Sylvie is being so careful scraping the excess flour off of this final quarter cup, and he's just throwing butter in a bowl and calling it a day.

He's sure he should get started on the next step, but he's just so fascinated watching her. She really is being extremely careful. As strange as it sounds, he could watch her make cookies all day and he wouldn't get bored.

It's only when she's done with the flour that Loki pulls himself together. What did she say he needed to do next? It was sugar, right? Three-quarter cups of each type of sugar. (Why are there two types of sugar? Does it actually matter if he uses both types? One day, they should test that – or he could search it on his phone, but he really doesn't like using it when he doesn't have to. He should ask OB to search it for him. OB loves these weird technological things.)

"A teaspoon of baking soda," Sylvie reads quietly to herself. She picks up the teaspoon and grabs the baking soda.

Loki turns his attention to the task at hand. He has to dig a bit to find the right measuring cup, and he scoops out three-quarters of a cup of granulated sugar fairly easily, shaking off the excess in a way that he would say is good enough, but with how hard Sylvie Is working, he feels he should probably try to match her energy. He holds out a hand, and a knife floats into it.

Without looking up from her work, Sylvie says, "You're going to kill someone with that."

"I have killed many someones," Loki tells her, "and none have been due to any floating knives." Flying knives, yes, but only ones that were thrown with the sole purpose of killing someone.

"None yet," she corrects him.

Loki rolls his eyes goodnaturedly. He is very confident in his ability to not accidentally murder somebody with the magic he's been practicing for centuries.

He uses this new knife to scrape the excess sugar off the measuring cup and dumps it in the bowl, and then it's onto the brown sugar. He tries to scoop it out with the measuring cup, but this sugar has a much different texture than the granulated sugar – maybe that's why they need to use both? – so he settles for scooping it with his hands and putting it in the cup instead. He makes a mess while he does it, but it's already looking to be quite the cleanup process. What's a bit of brown sugar on the counter added on?

Sylvie finishes her dry ingredient bowl and turns her attention back to the recipe – and just in time; she skims the next steps, then tells her boyfriend, "It says compacted brown sugar. I think you need to..."

As Loki puts the next little handful in the measuring cup, he presses it down, compressing it and making room for much, much more. He raises his brows. This is good to know.

"I'll do the vanilla," Sylvie tells him.

So Loki finishes the brown sugar and Sylvie adds the teaspoon of vanilla, and then it's time to mix it. Loki steps back, letting Sylvie do the honors. She turns the mixer on, and it's all going really well until it isn't.

Sylvie turns the mixer off and crosses her arms, eyeing it with a frown. "I need something to scrape the bowl with."

"That's ridiculous," Loki remarks. "If you need something to scrape the bowl when using a mixer, the mixer should come with something to scrape the bowl with." He heads over to the silverware drawer. There has to be something in here they can use. Would a spoon work? Is a knife better? What do humans use for this?

Finally, he just takes out a spoon and tosses it to her. She catches it with ease, and then they're back on track.

As she scrapes the cookie dough off the side of the bowl, she tells her boyfriend, "We need two eggs next."

Loki grimaces at the thought. "You can crack the eggs."

"I'm already mixing everything," she reminds him. "You go crack two eggs."

"I hate cracking eggs!" he complains. "I always do it too hard or too soft and get the shell in them."

"Just another reason for you to practice." She flashes him a smile.

"Sylvie!"

Sylvie rolls her eyes. "You are a thousand years old," she tells him. "You have to learn to crack your own eggs."

"I've gone a thousand years without needing to crack an egg," Loki reminds her. "I see no reason to start now."

"No shit; you lived in a palace!" Sylvie exclaims. "You're a prince! Of course you never had to crack an egg. There were a thousand people who would have begged you to let them crack an egg for you!"

Loki scoffs. "No, there were not," he says indignantly. "There were only a few dozen. I was not that popular."

Sylvie groans. "Just crack the eggs!" She slides the egg carton toward herself and takes an egg out, and Loki is lucky she's so predictable, because if he didn't know she was about to throw it, he would not have caught it before it splattered all over everything.

Loki grabs a bowl, and then it's time. He takes a deep breath. He can do this. He can crack this egg. He'll just hit it on the sharp corner of the counter, it will crack, and he can open it up and dump the inside in a bowl. It will be fine. It will be easy. He can do this.

He hits the egg against the corner of the counter.

It completely shatters, covering the counter, the cabinets below, and the floor in egg goo.

Loki lolls his head back, exasperated. How is one supposed to know just how hard they should hit the egg? There has to be a better way to do this – some sort of formula instead of this game of chance.

Sylvie just takes another egg out of the carton and tosses it to him. "Try again."

Loki holds the egg, getting a feel for it. He can do this. He'll just hit it less hard this time. It will be fine. He'll be fine. He'll be great.

He gently hits the egg against the corner of the counter.

It barely cracks.

Fuck.

He hits it again, just as hard as the last time, but it doesn't do very much, so he must not be exerting enough force. He hits it a little harder–

"Oh, fuck me," he groans. There goes another fucking egg. And now his socks are covered in gross eggy goo, too, which means he's going to have to go put new socks on, and that just sounds like so much work.

"Not until the cookies are done," Sylvie says teasingly.

Loki pauses. "But after the cookies are done...?"

Sylvie just smirks, which is the best answer Loki could have asked for. Suddenly, getting raw egg all over his socks doesn't seem like something that's going to ruin his day.

Sylvie takes another egg out of the carton and tosses it to him. "So you better hurry up with those eggs."

"Or you could–"

"Nope."

Loki sighs. "It was worth a try."

He only wastes three more eggs in his egg-cracking struggle before he's successfully cracked both that the recipe called for – and though there was a bit of a struggle to get the little pieces of egg shell out of there, he considers it a victory.

Sylvie mixes the eggs in, one at a time just the way the recipe says, and then slowly adds the dry ingredients in. That's a pain in the ass to mix with just a spoon to scrape the sides of the bowls – they'll have to ask Thor if there's a better way to do this – but then they're ready to add the chocolate chips.

Sylvie dumps the package of chocolate chips in and reaches to turn the mixer back on, but then she pauses. "Will this break the mixer?"

Loki furrows his brows. "Why would this break the mixer?"

"Because they're big chunks of chocolate," she says. "I don't know; I feel like that's something that could break the mixer."

Loki shrugs. "Probably not."

So Sylvie rests her hand on the dial, ready to twist it and turn it on, but still, she hesitates.

Loki holds out a hand, and another spoon flies into it. "Want to mix it the old-fashioned way?"

"Absolutely," Sylvie agrees.

She lifts the top of the mixer up, and the dough falls from the beaters in gross-looking clumps. Loki expects this to be his cue to join her in mixing the dough, but instead, Sylvie grabs a fingerful of cookie dough off the beaters and sticks it in her mouth. She hums, a smile on her lips.

Loki raises his brows. "How is it?" It sounds like she's enjoying it, but he can't imagine that this gross beige goopy stuff actually tastes good.

"Delicious," she replies. She scoops off another fingerful of dough and holds it up in front of his face, and Loki forces himself to disregard all of his (very strong) preconceived notions about how this is going to taste and takes her finger and all its dough in his mouth.

"Mm!" Loki lets her take her finger back. "That is delicious!"

"I hope it tastes this good when it's baked," she says.

"I'll be happy if it tastes half this good," Loki remarks. These are delicious. He's never had much of a sweet tooth – his time in the TVA proved that; if Mobius ever makes him eat another pie, it will be too soon – but this dough is amazing. (He wonders how much of it is because the dough itself tastes good and how much of it is because he made it with Sylvie, and that automatically makes it perfect.)

"Time to mix the chocolate chips?"

"Absolutely."

It's a bit of a challenge, both of them mixing the dough at once. It would probably be easier just to let her do it. They certainly wouldn't be hitting each other's spoons so much if there was only one spoon in the bowl. But it's weirdly fun, mixing it together. Everything, he's come to realize, is better when he does it with her.

"How do we bake them?" Sylvie asks.

Loki pauses.

That...

Is an excellent question.

She looks down at the now-empty bag of chocolate chips. "It says we need a cookie sheet?" She looks over at him. "What's a cookie sheet?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Loki admits. "Thor would, I'm sure."

"Want to go bother Thor?" Sylvie asks.

"Always," Loki replies.

~~~

It's about half an hour later when Loki and Sylvie finally return home, two cookie sheets in tow. And, really, it should not have taken half an hour when his brother lives no more than a five-minute walk from their home, but it's hard not to get distracted by Love and her overall adorableness. It's probably a good thing that they haven't preheated the oven yet. They could have burned the house down.

As Loki sets the cookie sheets down and Sylvie turns her attention to the oven, she asks her boyfriend, "How much dough do you think is supposed to be in one cookie?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Loki admits. "How many cookies should we put on each cookie sheet?" If they know that, they can probably figure out a general idea of how much dough goes in each.

Sylvie shrugs. "I guess we'll find out?"

Loki cracks a smile. "I guess we will," he agrees. He loves how she's willing to just go for it. She's somehow both calculated and impulsive at the same time. It's one of the many things he loves about her.

No more than 20 minutes later, they're both sitting on the counter, each with a cookie in hand. They both take a bite, and their smiles are instantaneous.

"It's ever better than the dough," Sylvie says through her cookie-filled mouth.

Loki hums in agreement, but he waits until he's finished chewing before he speaks. "We should make cookies more often!"

"We need to try all the other types of Christmas cookies first," Sylvie tells him.

Loki looks at her curiously. "What other types of Christmas cookies are there?"

Sylvie just shrugs. "I don't know," she says. "I'm sure we can find out."

"We could make a different type of cookie every day until Christmas," Loki suggests.

Sylvie gestures to him emphatically. "Yes!" she agrees immediately. "And we can give some to Thor and Love and Mobius for Christmas – and maybe bring some to the TVA, too, for OB and Casey and B-15."

"Absolutely," Loki agrees. "We can't eat all these cookies ourselves."

Sylvie takes another bite of her cookie, a content smile on her face. "This is going to be a great Christmas."

Loki leans over and presses a kiss to the top of her head. "I agree wholeheartedly."