Chapter Text
“We’re gonna get yelled at,” Bucky said. He said it in the superior tone of someone who, by ‘we’re gonna get yelled at,’ meant ‘you’re gonna get yelled at.’
“That’s awful,” Sam said. He refused to be talked down to by a man giving a grown woman a shoulder ride. “You know I literally dodged bullets in midair yesterday? But some college-age zoo intern yelling at me, man, I might cry.”
“No one’s going to yell at Sam.” Steve drew himself up, shoulders squared, and glared down at anyone unfortunate enough to be wearing a sweatshirt or windbreaker with the National Zoo insignia within a fifty-yard radius. “Anyway, it’s not his fault, he’s not doing it on purpose. Right?”
“Aren’t you?” Natasha asked around the straw of her milkshake. She sounded utterly unruffled, which was rich given she'd vaulted onto Bucky’s shoulders the second a bird got close enough to touch her. “If I were you, I’d be doing it on purpose.”
“Natasha.” Sam raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t decide, ‘I’m going to magically summon the peacocks from the flight run, because that’s a thing I can do and it’d be fun for them,’ no.”
“Did you do it because it’d be fun for me?” Bucky looked at the peacock, short-tailed for winter but brilliant blue from the shoulders up, pecking his bootlaces. He wiggled a wistful finger several feet above its bent head.
Natasha knocked her heel into his ribs, splattering slush on his coat. “If you lean down to pet that bird and make me spill my milkshake, it’s all going straight into your arm.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Sam said, and spread his hands. He meant the gesture to indicate his innocence of any involvement in the peacock escape, and he felt the peahen that flapped into his open arms undercut his point. He caught her anyway. “Oof,” he protested, at least for form’s sake.
“We’re definitely gonna get yelled at,” Bucky said. “Now you’re stealing zoo property.”
The bird pecked one of Sam’s buttons. It was like getting flicked in the chest by a super soldier. Her feathers shed chilly raindrops on his fingers. Sam ignored how soft she felt, even through the sleeves of his jacket, and he ignored the comforting press of the cold pebbled surface of her long legs against his hands. “I’m not stealing anything!” The brown crest on her head jerked as she inspected his face and turned back to his jacket.
“Why not? Can I?” Bucky held a hand out.
“This milkshake,” Natasha said, “is strawberry. It’s very good. Real strawberries, tiny seeds and all.”
The bird at Bucky’s feet found a piece of pretzel and performed a snakelike wiggle of its neck as it swallowed. He dropped his hand. “Steve, Sam wants a peacock.”
Natasha kicked him again. “He does not!”
“No, I don’t. They’re not pets. She’s going to shit on me any second now, I want you all to know. And they’re loud as hell.” The peahen, as if in confirmation, yelped. The last one, over by some abandoned French fries, yelped back.
“They sound like seals,” Bucky said. “I want one.”
“Sir,” said a college-age zoo intern, rushing up to Sam. She looked frazzled. “I really have to ask you to put her down. They’re not tame, they’re not even nice, and we need to get them back in their habitat.”
Steve stepped between them, all chest and jaw, and Sam had his hands too full to intervene. “Miss, he’s not hurting it, and it’s not going to hurt him. Why don’t you concentrate on the one in danger of getting stepped on.” He pointed at the one splitting its time between stealing French fries in flurries of movement and keeping an eye on a nearby raven of unusual size. It wasn’t, that Sam could see, in danger of being stepped on. In danger of becoming a very minor celebrity on YouTube, maybe; there weren’t many people around, but the ones who were had their phones out.
“This is what we get when you wind him up like that,” Sam told Bucky. “He’s going to make this child cry.” He stepped around Steve. The hen made a rattling sound and ripped his button off, and he freed a hand just in time to confiscate the choking hazard. “How about if I put this one back?”
Steve, grumbling, appeared to join the last peacock in staring down the raven. It had been joined by an equally large friend.
The intern smiled the dazed smile of someone who didn’t have time for another self-proclaimed Doctor Doolittle today. “That’s very nice, but if you just set her down, we’ll take care of—”
“You can trust him,” Bucky said. “He’s an Avenger.” He waved mournfully at the peacock that had abandoned his boot.
Head bobbing, it made its way over to Sam and started jabbing at his elbow. The white on its back was gray with rain and its feet were muddy. It was fine that he couldn’t pick it up. He didn’t even want to. “Sorry, I don’t have any food,” he told it.
Bucky patted his pockets but came up empty of treats. “If Sam gets them all put away do we get to keep one?”
“No,” the intern said. She stared at Bucky’s hand, and at Natasha’s hair, and at Steve’s… at Steve. She turned to Sam. “I was supposed to clock out ten minutes ago,” she said. “If you’re seriously the Falcon, then yes, please, go ahead.”
“Sure,” Sam said. “No problem.”
It turned out to be a little bit of a problem.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Sam was having a weird day. He was beset by super-powered blonds worried about birds.
Thor touched down outside his house at 0800, thudding into the thin crust of snow in the back yard and scaring the cardinals away from the feeder. Sam welcomed him in and gave him a seat at the table, but kept getting ready to go to the VA. He assumed Thor was there to confer with Steve or wrestle with Steve, or wrestle with Bucky, or wrestle with both of them, all of which were wonderful sights but not worth missing the one day a week of normal work he carved out from the superhero gig.
Except: “Sam,” Thor said. Sam was screwing the lid onto his thermos of coffee, practically out the door. “My friend. I wonder if I might speak to you a moment on a matter of—some delicacy.”
Steve went from what Sam identified only belatedly as a background hum of tension into high gear, hands on the table and jaw jutting. Bucky glanced across the table at him, then leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach like he was relaxing, which meant he was doing the opposite. “I’ve got it,” said Steve. “Tony told me. I said I’d talk to Sam.”
“Hey,” said Sam. “I’m right here. Too late. What’s the problem, Thor? In,” he checked his phone, “under five minutes.”
Thor, who actually wore the gifts Tony gave him, poked a knob on his ridiculously expensive watch. “You have my father’s ravens, Hugin and Munin. He would like you to send them back immediately, as he depends on them for information.” He grinned and poked the knob again. “Nine seconds.”
“Huh,” said Sam, and ducked to look out the nearest window. The Tower of London-grade ravens he’d first noticed at the zoo were still there, perched in a leafless tree and watching the fence for victims. Since they’d started hanging around, the squirrels had stopped stealing the sunflower seeds and suet from his feeder. The ravens seemed pretty happy. Also, Sam had just been given lip in his own kitchen. “Well, I don’t have them, so I’m not sending them anywhere, either. Tell your dad he might need to look into employing a new set. Maybe give them better benefits.”
Thor shuffled. His chair creaked. “The Allfather has suffered several grievous blows of late,” he said. “This would come at a poor time. I would be grateful if you could ease his mind in this small thing by returning his—by returning the ravens to him.”
Bucky put his feet on the table and balanced his chair on its back legs. “If it’s a small thing,” he said, “your dad can let it go.”
Steve nodded. “I might not have said it exactly like that.”
“You probably would’ve.”
Steve ignored Bucky. “But Sam’s not doing anything. You’re not doing anything, right?”
“Why am I being asked that so much all of a sudden? No, I didn’t use bird witchcraft to make Odin’s personal spy ravens hang out at my house. I trust Fury to do enough spying for one household.”
“See? And it really can’t be that big a deal. He’s got Heimdall, and… I mean, he’s a king—”
“It sounds a lot like he’s an emperor, technically,” Sam muttered.
“—I assume he has other spies.”
“The ravens,” Thor said, “have sentimental value.” He was starting to get the panicked look Sam associated with Thor having found himself already halfway through a sentence about his brother.
“Thor,” Bucky said. “You’re not seriously telling us to be worried about your dad... seeking reprisal. Over some birds.” Steve planted his elbows slowly on the table. His biceps bulged. Bucky let his head drop against the back of the chair.
“My father,” said Thor, who for someone with such a booming voice could speak very quietly, and who for someone so forthright could look remarkably shifty, “has made decisions of late which I find increasingly hard to understand. And while you may not hold them here intentionally, Sam, you must admit birds—”
“Flock to you,” Bucky said, unable to contain himself.
“As at the zoo,” Thor continued. “Those were not, as I understand it, pet birds. Yet in the images Tony’s collected—”
“Okay,” said Sam. “Look, I don’t have magical bird powers. If your dad has a problem with his ravens, he can talk to them. If he has a problem with me, he can talk to me. I’m going to work.”
So that was his morning, and by the time he got back from two groups and a shitload of paperwork, Steve had found a way for his afternoon to top it.
Sam opened the front door and tried to kick his boots off without scattering slush all over the front hall. Steve jumped off the couch and stood in front of it. “I got you something,” he said, in a tone better suited to, ‘I broke something of yours.’
“Yeah?” Sam put his bag down, in case he needed his hands free, but slowly, in case sudden movement was a bad idea.
“A Christmas present,” Steve said.
“He did,” said Natasha. “He really did.” Sam hadn’t noticed her, because she was on top of his media cabinet. That wasn’t a place he checked for guests. Natasha, when she relaxed, had some strange social habits, but climbing the furniture wasn’t usually one of them.
Sam unzipped his coat and wondered whether he’d be better off getting rid of it for ease of movement or keeping it for an extra layer of protection. “It’s November. Is my present dangerous?” Sam asked.
“No,” Steve said.
“Define ‘dangerous,’” Natasha said.
“It’s not! It’s adorable.”
“Don’t say that to me, Steve. You’ve got an adorable superspy on top of my TV. She’s not non-dangerous.”
“It’s only a pet,” said Steve. He beckoned Sam into the living room and around the couch, his face a shining beacon of hope. “A rescue pet.”
Sam left his coat on. “Rescued from what?” he said, but walked over, mentally listing the answers he didn’t want: rescued from an evil scientist, from an alternate dimension, from another planet.
“From the Humane Society, actually. He was the only bird they had.”
Sam rounded the couch and stopped. He took a second before he said, “Is that a partridge? Is that a dog crate with a partridge in it?”
“Its name is—”
“Nope! Don’t tell me. We’re not naming it. We’re not keeping it. Steve, we can’t—one partridge? They can’t live alone. We’d have to get at least two more. And we can’t house three partridges. Hell, we can’t house one, in D.C. in the winter. They’re not indoor pets.”
“No, I know, but hear me out, these are special circumstances.”
“Special circumstances,” Natasha repeated, and laughed. The partridge made a sudden move toward the door of the crate and she tucked her feet onto the shelf above Sam’s DVD player.
Steve glared at her. “Let me tell him. Sam, Le—the bird—he was an indoor pet, and he’s confused about what to do with other partridges.”
Sam, who knew better than to do this, who knew himself and birds and Steve’s damn puppy dog eyes, crouched so he could see in the door of the crate better. The partridge backed up a step, head snaking down. A thick black band of feathers covered its brown eyes and swept down around its neck, ringing a white patch. “Chukar, huh,” he said. “Okay, what’s its problem with other partridges?”
“He responds to them aggressively,” said Steve. “Really aggressively. He, um. Kills them. I mean, I know birds fight, but the farm that had him before the Society had to get rid of him because of the death toll.”
“Tell him the rest,” Natasha said darkly.
“The rest isn’t even confirmed. I just thought, since the Humane Society couldn’t keep him any longer, we could take Lecter and give him somewhere to relax until he’s up to interacting normally.”
“Lecter,” Sam repeated. The Chukar bobbed its neck back out, twisting to examine him with a bright eye. Its spurs were short but looked wickedly sharp. “Steve. Is this thing eating the birds it kills?”
“Yes,” said Natasha. “It’s evil. I’ve seen evil, and I don’t use the word lightly. That bird is evil.”
“Oh, for—one of the volunteers at the Humane Society claimed someone on the farm saw Lecter pecking one of the corpses. I’m sure he was looking for bugs. Anyway, Natasha says that ‘I’ve seen evil’ line about most birds.”
“I do not!”
“Last week a cardinal rated ‘pure malevolence from the coldest pits of hell’ for shitting on your car.”
Lecter finished examining Sam and threw himself bodily against the door of the cage. He was easily a foot long, and solidly built. The door bowed slightly before he rebounded. He charged again and tried pecking the bars. Mostly he scraped his little gray head and chubby white cheeks. “Ah, shit,” said Sam, and unlatched the door. Lecter barreled out, dashed up Sam’s thigh, and thudded into his chest. He sat there, quivering. Sam could feel his heartbeat shaking his whole body. “Goddamnit,” said Sam.
“Yeah,” said Steve. “It’s, uh—his first owner was this retired guy who raised him alone, so he thought that guy was his whole covey. Then the man died, so Lecter got put on a farm, and it didn’t… take.”
“God,” said Sam, with great feeling, “damn it.” Lecter turned on his thigh to back up under the flap of his coat and peer out at Steve.
“We can help him,” Steve said, brimming with conviction. “It was too fast a change, is all. He’s still young. We’ll get him used to other birds slower. I’m not saying it’ll be easy—”
“Easy? Steve—”
The front door banged open and Bucky came in, stomping snow off his boots and ruffling it out of his hair. “Natasha,” he said, “what the hell are you doing?”
“Steve messed up,” Natasha said with relish, and pointed down at Sam.
“I didn’t mess up,” Steve said. “It’s gonna work.”
Bucky kicked his boots off and leaned over the back of the couch. His eyes went round. “That,” he said, “is a fat bird.”
“Oops,” said Natasha.
“Yeah,” Steve said, with insufferable smugness. “He’s pretty fat.”
“He’s spherical,” Bucky said. “He’s a fucking beach ball.” He looked at Sam and blinked rapidly.
“Don’t,” said Sam. “Do not bother. Buck, he’d need someone with him all the time. He needs sand to dig in, bugs, and it’s winter in Washington D.C. We’d have to get more birds and… I don’t know, give them supervised visitation. We’re too busy.” At some point during his speech he’d reached over and put his left hand under Lecter to help him balance. His fingers were encased in feathers and the bird’s heart rate was dropping to something more reasonable.
Bucky had worked up some tears. “I’ll take a leave from the Avengers,” he said. “I’ll build him a huge sand bath in the basement.” Now he’d achieved a choke in his voice, and went for broke. “Hydra never let me have pets.”
“We could try for a few weeks,” Steve said. “Give him a chance, right?”
“Shit,” Sam said, lingering on the vowel in an attempt to buy himself some time. Bucky, eyes red-rimmed, sniffed dramatically. Steve looked up from under his eyelashes. Natasha crossed her legs under herself, bringing them further out of reach, but looked interested. Sam gave up. “This is not my Christmas present, you hear me, Rogers? This temporary arrangement is your Christmas present.”
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
After that for a morning and afternoon, Sam got this for an evening: A should-have-been-wild-or-barnyard fowl running in thumping circles around the bedroom. The bed, the dressers, and the chair by the window were fair game in his circuit. The Humane Society had been giving Lecter chicken feed, so his droppings were a runny mess. Bucky was still enchanted enough to clean up after him without being asked, but Sam’s expectation of that continuing for long was low.
Sam took his spot in the middle of the bed. Bucky came out of the bathroom and crawled over Sam to get to his side. Steve, shirtless and smelling of Sam’s toothpaste, might have circled the bed for the express purpose of crawling over both of them to get to his side. The man did know how to pitch an apology.
They’d shut Lecter in the room with them so they’d know what he was up to and that he was okay. The flaw in this plan became apparent when Steve hit the lamp and the bird ran up Sam’s legs onto his stomach and started turning in circles like a dog.
“Well,” said Sam. “Didn’t think that one all the way through.”
“He likes us,” Bucky said. He curled a flesh knuckle into the bird’s side. Lecter ignored him and kept turning in circles, shaking his wings and clawing at the blanket.
“Yeah, he likes us, we’re his covey. His covey should be other partridges.”
“We’ll get him other partridges,” Steve promised. Lecter dropped onto his front, still trying to squirm, beat, or kick his way through the blanket, one side at a time. Sam rubbed his chest, keel firm through feathers. Lecter let out a shrill cheep. “And then he’ll have time with his new bird friends. A superhero intervention squad for when he gets testy.”
“It’s still a really drastic plan,” Sam said. “For a Christmas present. In November. You want to tell me what this is about?”
“I just,” Steve said. “I thought. I know you’re not trying to keep the ravens. But they do like you. Birds like you. They don’t—Hugin and Munin?—they don’t just hang around the house in the morning. They follow you. Tony has pictures, they’re everywhere you are, for months now. And they seemed kind of pissed about the peacocks, so I thought maybe if you had another bird and they got jealous, they’d leave. Go back to Odin, or just—away, so he can’t blame you.”
“Really?” said Bucky. “I’ll just kill him if he tries shit. You can have the ravens too, Sam.”
Steve snorted. “Yeah, thanks, Buck, you kill the king of the only other planet definitely in Earth’s corner. Who is also our friend’s dad. Can we just try my plan first?”
Bucky made a doubtful noise. Lecter burrowed his head into Sam’s ribs, pushing to the right for a few beats and then to the left.
“Sam?” Steve said.
“Asgard sounds like mostly assholes, and it isn’t in our corner,” Sam said. “Thor is. But… yeah, we’re already dealing with a cranky god. Let’s try your weird plan. As long as you know once Bucky gets sick of cleaning up Lecter’s shit, it’s your job.”
“Deal,” Steve said, and kissed him.
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Sam’s Wednesday was spectacularly weird, but he figured Thursday would be better. He woke up sandwiched between two super soldiers, which made it hard to worry about some old dude on another planet. He also woke up with a colossally fucked up partridge snoring on his chest, which made it hard to think about anything else.
He spent the morning puttering around to see what Lecter did in response. What Lecter did was follow him. Sam made coffee with Lecter on the counter, organized a bookshelf while Lecter thumped around the living room, and tried to reread some Coates while Lecter stood on the coffee table and pecked the spine of the book. Sam set it aside and let Lecter jump on his lap, where he hunkered down and started up again with the trilling cheep.
Steve pressed a kiss to Sam’s temple. “You need anything? Now that you’re stuck.”
“Yeah, how ’bought you grab me my laptop and an eight-course breakfast.”
“I can do three courses before we run out of groceries.” Steve dropped a hand onto Sam’s leg and slid it along Lecter’s side, smoothing the tan strokes edged with black that barred his wings. “Then I’m gonna find us more birds. Bucky wants me to get baby gates for the stairs, too.”
“He knows Lecter can fly, right? This is a plot so you can turn around when it’s all over and tell me hey, we’ve got the stuff we need for a dog.”
“Don’t even say that, Bucky’ll start in about wanting a borzoi again.”
Lecter peeped and lunged forward under Sam’s hand. Sam tapped along his back. “Yeah, that would be nuts.”
Steve huffed into his ear. “I’ll make you breakfast in bed every day we have the bird….”
“Start by making me breakfast now.”
Steve kissed his cheek with an obnoxious smacking sound and retreated to the kitchen.
Lecter got up shortly, but Sam got his laptop and breakfast delivered anyway. He searched YouTube for videos of Chukar partridges and confirmed that Lecter shouldn’t still be peeping. The bird, ignoring the host of clucks and warbles and squawks from the computer, ran back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, careening into Steve and skittering across the back of the couch to brush against Sam’s neck.
Bucky emerged from his construction project in the basement to get breakfast on his way out the door with Steve. “Gonna break the news to Fury,” he said. He scratched Lecter’s neck goodbye, clicking his tongue at him, and then caught Sam’s expression. “I said I’d take time off. You didn’t believe me?”
“Sorta thought that was the heat of them moment.”
“This is the heat of the moment,” Bucky said, and kept one hand above Sam’s waist during their goodbye kiss, which for Bucky was pretty romantic.
And off they both went. Sam was alone when Odin got there.
He was outside when it happened. He thought for the already-dubious plan to work, it might help for the ravens to see Lecter, whatever Steve’s opinion of the psychic ability of birds. He put his coat and boots on, and even that was enough for Lecter to start running in a circle around his ankles, peeping loudly. “Well, we can’t call you dumb,” Sam said. “You know what that means, huh? Don’t worry, you get to come too.” He scooped Lecter up and into the folds of his coat, which he closed most of the way around the bird. He hooked his fingers around the scaly little legs to prevent a panicked flight into the mouths of any beasts and walked into the back yard.
Sam might have thought Steve was overreacting to Thor’s news, and he might have thought Thor’s news was based mostly on his dad’s paranoia. He stepped outside holding Lecter, though, and two ravens larger than some dogs hit the roof of his car.
“Jesus,” Sam said between his teeth.
He hadn’t heard them coming, but their arrival was too big an event to miss. They had managed a graceful crash-landing. The roof of the car screeched and thumped under their weight, and snow sprayed down the windshield. They folded their unruffled wings, black legs steady, talons clicking. One of them opened a hooked beak and hissed. The other’s shaggy throat swelled and bristled. One of them let out a deep, vibrating note.
“Hi,” Sam said, because it seemed like he should say something. He curled an arm in front of Lecter, who was holding very still. Sam sympathized. The raven on the left twisted its head back and forth on the axis of its beak. Its eye was rimmed ice blue. It arched forward. Sam had never been so acutely aware that a bird could, if it wanted to, swallow his eyeball. The other one dipped down, croaking. Its sooty tongue shook and it shrugged its wings with each call. Lecter stuck his fool head out of Sam’s coat and peeped.
“Sorry about that,” Sam said. “He’s probably being rude. But you’re not allowed to eat him.”
The croaking one stood up straight and shuffled back and forth. It inspected him from the left and then the right. Its eyes had amber at the edges, which struck Sam as marginally less weird. It looked from his arm to his face and bobbed in place. Then all three birds froze. Their heads twisted skyward. Hugin and Munin took off simultaneously, silent.
Thor had tabs with several municipalities specifically for damage caused by his arrival via the Bifrost. Sam was pretty sure Tony paid the bill, if only because he had bank accounts instead of fistfuls of gold. The sky ripped open and unleashed itself on Sam’s back yard, and he wondered whether the D.C. tab covered damage to private property. In the middle of the blinding light thundering down, he could make out the silhouette of a huge dude holding a big goddamn spear.
Sam squinted at the smoking splinters of his birdfeeder and the runic knot burning itself into the slush of his lawn. “Hey,” he called over the scream of the collapsed depths of space. He didn’t manage even the level of friendliness he’d found within himself for the ancient alien life forms in the shape of ravens. “You want to turn that thing off?”
Probably-Odin probably did something with his spear. It was hard to tell. The light coalesced into a single point and disappeared.
“Thanks,” Sam said, in a tone he hoped communicated the profundity of his irritation. He was going to spend all week apologizing to his neighbors.
It was Odin, all right. If Sam had ever wondered how Thor would look if he were really old and really worried, here was the answer. That didn’t mean Odin was unimpressive. He had all Thor’s theatrical size and wardrobe and all Fury’s gravitas. It worked for him. It wasn’t going to do anything for Sam when Mrs. Perle across the street spent the next month making passive-aggressive comments about the sanctity of her morning naps, though.
“Samuel Wilson,” Odin boomed.
“You found him.” Sam ran his free hand down Lecter’s neck and under his raised left wing. Under the fluff and fat, his ribs pumped against Sam’s palm.
“I am Odin, Allfather, King of Asgard, and I will thank you to return my property,” Odin said.
Sam chose maybe not the best moment to get sick of telling people he wasn’t doing anything. “No,” he said. And then, because Odin was his friend’s dad and capable of declaring war on the entire planet, he added, “How about you come in and have some lunch. Since you came all this way.”
Odin’s good eye narrowed. Sam had the same in-the-crosshairs prickle at the base of his skull he got when Fury stared him down. Odin, though, didn’t have the power to ask Sam ominously how a six-week mission to Alaska in December sounded. Also, the eye-narrowing might have been confused rather than threatening. He looked a lot like Thor making sense of some bizarre human take on a proper Asgardian custom when he said, “Then we will negotiate over a meal.”
“Something like that,” Sam said. “Just come inside, it’s cold and you’re scaring my bird.”
Which was how he ended up warming leftover ribeye to serve the King of Asgard at his kitchen table. Lecter clicked around Sam’s feet, slipping on the linoleum and crashing into Sam’s ankles. Odin had left his huge-ass spear, which doubtless doubled as some kind of high-tech gun, leaning next to the door. Lecter, during one of his spinouts, slid too close the thing. “Sit down before you hurt yourself,” Sam told him. He was using the oven, so he didn’t mean ‘not only should you physically sit down, you should do it on my foot.’ This was what Lecter did. “Right,” Sam said. “You know what, while we’re at this, I’m gonna open the window in case our friends have anything to add to the discussion. Especially since it’s them you should be talking to, full stop.”
“They will do as instructed,” Odin said, “so soon as you release them from your thrall.”
“I’m not holding anyone in thrall. For the love of Pete.” Leaning over the sink to get the window was tricky with Lecter on his foot, but he managed it. Snow blew into the sink.
Odin glared at him from behind bristling beard and eyebrows. Sam wondered whether he could get him to pose for a picture in a Santa hat. If Thor didn’t make such an effective betrayed face, maybe. “All right,” Sam said. He picked Lecter up to free himself to move and laid out two plates of the steak he’d grilled night before last. “Dig in.” It was eleven in the morning, and normally he’d have served a guest something light, but judging by Thor, this was light in terms of the Asgardian appetite.
Odin took three appreciative bites before he reached for his water with a glint of fear in his eye, which was two better than most white guys and one better than Thor.
“The bread helps,” Sam said, pushing the loaf across the table.
Odin was less intimidating with his eye watering. He continued just as snappishly, “Every moment I indulge this parlay rather than simply taking back what is mine is another moment I humor my son.” As much as he looked like Thor, the way Odin talked—even his voice—reminded Sam a lot more of the footage he’d seen of Loki. “Thor’s vow to protect the Earth and its inhabitants carries no political weight, now that he’s forfeited his claim to the throne. I demand that you release whatever hold it is you have on my ravens before my patience thins further.” Odin was like Thor in that he kept right on eating through this speech. Thor’s mid-meal speeches were more fun.
Sam looked over at the kitchen window. Hugin and Munin were perched there. One of them, the one with brown eyes, flapped to the floor in a gust of rot and cold. The other one shifted from foot to foot on the windowsill. They were both looking at Sam. He beckoned, thoughtless, and the one with blue eyes sailed in. Which was a coincidence, like Lecter sitting down when Sam told him to had been, but even knowing that, Sam could see that it looked—
Sam would have liked to think that he considered the language Odin was speaking and decided to make a risky but legitimate attempt to speak it right back. He was concerned that what had happened in reality was that he didn’t think at all. “No,” he said. “It’s not some spell I can lift. They’re not yours and they never were. They’re mine. All birds are.” Evidence that he hadn’t thought this through included his instant panic that Odin might claim Hugin and Munin, as ancient alien life forms, weren’t birds. If he could get that far through the gales of laughter.
Instead, Odin stopped eating.
Sam, if he was going to get killed by an old guy with too much power for his own good and kick off an interplanetary war with his death, was going out big. “You know,” he said, “you should be grateful I’m not demanding back taxes. You’ve been taking advantage of my subjects’ skillset for how many thousands of years, now?” The Second Alien War Begins, this chapter in the history textbook would be entitled.
Odin took a sip of water and another slice of bread. Sam lowered Lecter to the floor beneath his chair so the bird wouldn’t get fried when Sam did.
“Asgard,” Odin said, “pays its debts.”
“So I hear,” said Sam, who hadn’t.
Odin tore off a hunk of bread and ate it contemplatively. “If I have been remiss, I will set it right,” he said.
“Yeah?” said Sam. Holy shit, he bought it. “Well, look, like you said, we’re all friends of Thor here, so how about I let that slide and you don’t break your boy’s heart.”
“I will pay my debts,” Odin repeated sharply. “When I have done so, we will revisit my arrangement with Hugin and Munin. Tell me, then, what it is I owe you.”
Sam would have liked to text Thor to find out what he could ask for that Odin couldn’t get, delaying the renegotiation indefinitely. Pulling out his phone would look suspicious, though. “Well,” he said, “I’ve got birds to take care of. So the going currency is black oil sunflower seeds. I don’t know if you’ve got those on Asgard, though.”
“We do not,” said Odin.
“That’s a real shame.”
“I will acquire them.” Odin stood. He’d finished the meat and used bread to mop the plate clean. His eye was still watering. “I will return within the month with your first payment. By then I trust you will have reached a decision as to the amount.”
“Uh,” said Sam. “Good. Sure I will.”
He was saved having to say anything more when a cackle drew their attention to the three birds—all three of them together. Lecter, crouched into a waddle, was approaching Hugin and Munin. The one with blue eyes had its mouth open; its head jerked in circles. Lecter straightened abruptly and bicycled with a spurred leg. The brown-eyed one whipped a wing out and buffeted Lecter over the head. It knocked him flat.
“Hey,” Sam said, trying to figure how he was going to grab Lecter without hurting any of them. “That’s enough.”
Both ravens took a step back. So did Lecter. Sam walked over and picked him up before he could think too hard about that. “See you later,” he said to Odin. “Good luck with the sunflowers.”
Odin nodded and, finally, looked directly at the goddamn ravens. “Farewell.”
Sam listened to the Bifrost’s electric charge from safe on the other side of the kitchen door, sitting on the floor with his back against the cupboards and Lecter in his lap. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Holy shit.”
The blue-eyed raven sidled close enough to tug at the lace of his sneaker. Lecter peeped at it. The brown-eyed raven cocked its head at Sam.
“Okay,” he said, “so I pulled some shit. Don’t think I don’t know you two are up to some shit yourselves.”
The brown-eyed raven walked over to Sam’s side, right up to him. It looked like an oil slick, and smelled like ozone and something so rotten it was sweet. It flapped onto his raised knee. “Sure,” Sam breathed, and didn’t fold his lips in or close his eyes to minimize the surgery he was going to need if that beak got aimed his way. “We’re all friends here, right?” Lecter peeped and wiggled close enough to the raven to push his head into its stomach. “He’s just saying hi.”
The raven made several gargling little chuckles, bent over, and vomited next to Sam’s leg before sliding down his shin to the other bird. They took off together and circled. They filled the kitchen, wingtip to wingtip too big for the space. One after the other they dove out the small window over the sink, wings tucked in.
After they’d gone Sam realized the blue-eyed one had stolen his shoelace.