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It was Loki’s favorite place in the penthouse--in the whole Tower, Tony knew, and he could guess why. The chaise lounge was perfectly situated in a corner of the living area, offering an ample view of the sky without being directly in the sun. Loki swore his biology had no bearing on his tolerance of heat and light, but Tony couldn’t help but notice that the god stayed closer to shade, to shadow.
The lounge itself was perfect--a little ostentatious, of course, with the dull-gold crushed-velvet fabric and mahogany trim. At least it was modern, Tony thought when he got JARVIS to order it, with simple lines and a blessed lack of claw feet and consumptive heroines.
Something had told him that Loki would like its simple luxury and comfort--that it would be familiar. When he’d seen a similar piece in a store window a few months before, it had tweaked a suggestion of Loki’s mother, of furnishings Frigga might have had in her sitting room, a place Loki probably would have felt welcome. A place where he would have been welcome.
And, if Tony were being honest with himself, he’d admit that this is what he’d envisioned when he’d custom-ordered it: Loki, folded into the lounge, book open and forgotten in front of him as he gazed absently out the window. The book was wedged inside the angle of his chest and his prominent belly, pressed into place by one hand that held the pages open.
His other hand gently stroked--Tony craned his head to see--their sleeping son’s head. Somehow their two-year-old contortionist had managed to pass out during storytime with his head on Loki’s abdomen and his body wedged into the scant inches of space not occupied by his storyteller. Fray was only visible by a curve of dark hair and greedy arm draped over Loki’s side. They both breathed slowly, evenly.
Tony blinked. Smiled.
Uh-huh.
He walked up beside them, making enough noise not to be accused of--or guilty of--startling Loki, but quiet enough to avoid waking Fray.
“You know, he really should take his nap in his room,” he observed in a low voice.
Loki’s head fell back against the rise of the seat, and he met Tony’s eyes. “He doesn’t nap anymore, Stark.”
"'Tony,'" he corrected reflexively before giving the boy a pointed look. “So … what’s he doing right now?”
“Just … dozing. A bit. The book put him to sleep.”
Mm-hm. Tony swallowed his rebuttal, unwilling to actually bicker over it. Loki regarded him carefully and then returned his attention to whatever he saw beyond the window. He traced gentle fingers over the crown of their son’s head. Tony backed up a few feet and found a place on the sofa, pulling his phone from his pocket to give himself something to do.
Fray had gotten harder to lull to sleep in the middle of the day, which had the happy side effect of making their nights less dramatic--well, less dramatic in that way. But he and Loki had some disagreements on whether Fray’s rejection of his nap was in his own best interests. Loki gave Fray more credit for self-determination than Tony did (unsurprisingly).
While he seemed to occupy himself with files on his phone, Tony watched Loki from the corner of his eye. He wanted little more than to settle on his knees next to the seat, next to both of them, and touch Loki’s belly himself, as Fray did openly, comfortably. The god had been pregnant for ten months--still another few months to go, if this baby developed like its sibling. Loki was perfectly rounded and glorious, and, as much as Tony knew about pregnancies, not yet in significant discomfort.
Heavy with Tony’s child, and here, and beautiful. He hadn’t had this experience before, hadn’t been allowed it last time, and it made him want to be as greedy--as presuming--as their son.
But …
Loki had made it clear that even words of affection were unwelcome or even suspicious, cutting Tony off whenever his expression or tone of voice suggested that anything sincere was threatening to spill forth. And Tony’s attempts to touch his abdomen outside of the sex act were almost always avoided, Loki twisting from his grasp with a serpentine grace.
As a result, because it was the only window allowed him, Tony settled for copping a very pervy feel when they were fucking, when he was impaling himself on Loki’s cock or pressed behind him, and Loki had no interest in stopping Tony’s wandering hands from spanning his swollen belly, stroking it … He’d even managed some furtive kisses while teasing Loki during a particularly skilled blowjob. He’d had to mentally apologize to his son or daughter for the possible trauma afterward, but he couldn’t feel too guilty about it, when the alternative was keeping at least three feet of distance from Loki and baby at all times.
There had been only one other time Loki had allowed it, had encouraged it. One night, months before, he’d felt the first round of vigorous kicks. In a moment of sincere joy, he had rolled toward Tony in bed, eyes lit with pleasure. He’d taken Tony’s nearest hand and placed it just to the side of his navel, where a foot tapped out a prenatal message.
Tony had smiled so hard it hurt, laughed a little, even--and then Loki had realized what he had done, shut down instantly, and turned away. “Babe--,” Tony had said, frowning, reaching for Loki’s tensed shoulder.
The reply was immediate, the shoulder pulled farther away. “No. I just wanted you to know it is healthy.”
He didn’t speak to Tony the next day.
Now, on the lounge, Tony looked at the book balanced on Loki’s front. Tony had found it two days after the baby’s first kicks--the only ones he’d gotten to feel. “The Vicious Vikings”--leave it to Loki to find it thoroughly appropriate as toddler storytime fodder, despite the fact that it was meant for children four times Fray’s age. But it was the appeal of the subject matter and the fact that Loki could manage a magical translation easily enough--his attempts to parse Dr. Seuss had ended in bewildering failure for him and much laughter from Clint about the “Sneetches bedecked with stars” versus the “star-deprived Sneetches.”
A luxurious stretch of a little arm caught his eye just before his attention was demanded. “Daddy?”
Fray had lifted his head up, and Loki was watching him with an indulgent smile. Tony answered, “Yeah, babe?”
“Vikings are scary.” Fray pointed to the book Loki held.
“Yeah, they have been known to be.” His voice was perfectly sincere, and he very carefully didn’t look up.
Fray poked Loki’s belly, changing his target. “Faðir? Snack?” Loki raised his eyebrows, amused.
“I can do it,” Tony offered. “I should make myself something anyway.”
Loki frowned minutely, looked Tony up and down. “No … That’s fine. I’ve been here all afternoon. I’ll do it.” Loki stood, offering his hand to Fray as the boy climbed over the lounge. (Two-year-olds, Tony had discovered, liked to pick the most difficult way to do something, so walking around the lounge wasn’t as appealing as scaling the thing. Tony could relate.)
As they walked past, Loki moderating his pace so Fray’s stiff-legged gait matched, Tony admired Loki’s shirt. A Mediterranean blue, it really was just a simple long-sleeved tee, but it fit his current form perfectly. Tony had (happily) kept Loki in his old t-shirts for weeks after he’d discovered the pregnancy, but eventually Loki’s appearance grew … well. He’d caught Clint chuckling repeatedly when Loki swayed into the room looking like an escapee from the trailer park, old tee half-rucked-up over his stomach and sweat pants riding perilously low. All he needed was some food stains and a crumpled beer can in his fist to complete the look.
Tony would have let it continue--because, well, not only was it kind of funny, but it was strangely humanizing, and Loki could use all the help he could get with the others, especially Clint and Nat. However, the day he caught dour, always-respectful Steve smiling behind his fist, shoulders actually hitching with mirth, he’d called in a favor from a designer friend and had a wardrobe of clothing made specifically for Loki’s tall, lean, pregnant frame.
(He’d suspected the woman had needed a new dress form for the request.)
He was perfect, proportional, maternal--heh--elegance ever since, though Tony still caught Clint snorting when Loki absentmindedly scratched the tight skin under his shirt.
Tony listened to the activity from the kitchen. Fridge opening, faucet running briefly. Fray asking Loki for cookies (“Perhaps after dinner”) and ice cream (“Perhaps when your father takes you out tomorrow”), and eventually settling into near-silence whenever some god-approved treat was supplied. Loki spoke quietly to the boy, but the affection in the tone was open. Fray was the one being whose faith in Loki had never been tested.
Tony caught a few of Loki’s words: “daddy,” “Uncle Thor,” and “arm-wrestle.” He smirked at whatever was being promised, even though it would probably be at his expense.
Eventually he’d done a smidge of work--replying to some dozens of e-mails, sending a preliminary specs doc to the aeronautics department, reviewing and agreeing to Pepper’s tentative schedule of SI appearances for the coming month. By the time he became aware of his surroundings again, the sun was slightly lower in the sky, and the apartment was silent. Loki and Fray had either withdrawn to the other side of the floor, or they’d gone out on one of their field trips.
His stomach would no longer be ignored. Tony walked into the kitchen, finally, and and discovered the detritus of Fray’s snack--plastic-lidded cup toppled and dripping next to the sink. Bag of cheese cubes with the open end pointed generally in the direction of the fridge. Two-thirds of a perfectionally sectioned, cored apple spread directly on the table.
Loki didn’t clean.
He also didn’t cook, but …
There was a sandwich, on a plate, at the place where Tony often--usually--sat at mealtimes. It was … It was the homeliest sandwich he’d ever seen. The top bread slice was the meager heel of the loaf. The corners were askew, like a crushed pinwheel. The amount of lettuce was far out of proportion to the meat--it looked like a single slice of turkey breast had been draped limply over half a head of iceberg. And--Tony lifted up the bread gingerly--there was a complete lack of condiments, or even cheese.
Tony sat down at ate the whole thing. And as he put the plate in the sink and rescued the remaining cheese cubes from desiccation, he never stopped smiling.