Written to: Weight of Living part 1 (Albatross) - Bastille, crosspost from AO3, basically PWP but if you follow my stories you'll see that this is a clear continuation of Menage a Trois, which is a continuation of...I don't remember. Anyway, this is technically part of a series, but can be read stand alone.
Modi was unfortunately blessed with a particularly keen set of ears. They were keen enough that he could hear footsteps in the corridor outside the nursery, and if he was feeling up to it and wanted attention, he would start squirming and whimpering so that whoever happened to be walking by the nursery would feel obligated to go inside and play with him for a few minutes. Jörmungandr would then take this opportunity to twine himself around the unsuspecting person's leg and attempt to choke its ankle as part of his baby exercise routine; unfortunately, he wasn't very big nor very strong yet, and he often only slightly tickled the person.
And, more unfortunately for Thor and Loki, Modi's sharp ears very often meant that they couldn't indulge in sexual activities without waking up the baby. They had tried many things: casting spells on their bedroom door and the nursery door to muffle the noise, but Loki couldn't control his seidr well enough in the throes of pleasure to keep up the enchantments throughout; they'd tried putting tiny, fluffy earmuffs on Modi while he was sleeping, but Jory had chewed through those quicker than anything, and had the audacity to look completely disinterested when Loki scolded him about it the next day, bits of stuffing hanging from his tiny, blunt fangs.
Loki was more interested in getting a good night's rest, and would often tell Thor to go to the baths and relieve himself there, leaving Thor disgruntled and unsated. Although he couldn't blame Loki, really, he had just carried Thor's child and more often than not would be the one to get up in the middle of the night to calm a squalling Modi and an irritated Jörmungandr.
And Thor was really getting rather tired of the company of his own hand.
Anthony had wrinkled his nose when he'd told him. "Look, you're a great guy," he'd said, "a great god, I mean, whatever. But really, you REALLY need to be more aware of situations."
Granted, Thor had suitably shocked both the Lady Pepper and Anthony while he flew up beside their hot air balloon on their honeymoon above the French countryside. Thor absolutely did not see how this was a particularly fun pastime of anyone; wasn't the Lady Pepper fearful for her safety? She could not fly, and without the tin can Anthony insisted on wearing on their missions, he could not fly either. It would be quite dangerous, Thor thought, if the balloon were to somehow pop. But that was clearly not one of Anthony's concerns at the present moment, if his frantic shooing motions were anything to go by.
Thor eventually took the hint and flew off.
"Gags," Natasha told him definitively. "Gags, for sure."
Thor quirked his brow at her inquisitively. "...Gags?" he asked cautiously. That didn't sound particularly fun, nor pleasurable.
"Of course," Natasha said, and her voice brooked no argument. "They make all different kinds. Ball gags, O-rings, plain ones, you know, whatever you want, really."
As Thor edged toward the door, Natasha looked back from her position perched atop Clint's hips where he lay on the bed. "You remember how to get to the shoppe?" she called over her shoulder above Clint's muffled grunts.
Thor thought he knew, and so he nodded in assent, closing the door behind him.
"I am not driving you to a sex shoppe."
Bruce had been nowhere to be found, and Thor distinctly remembered something Nick Fury had said about castration (he'd used a Midgardian invention called Google to look up the definition of that, and it had been less than pleasant information), so that was out of the question. Anthony was on a honeymoon with the Lady Pepper, and that really only left Steve.
"I am not," he repeated firmly, shaking his head. "I am not."
Thor eyed him carefully, pouted, gave him puppy dog eyes like Loki and Modi both seemed particularly adept at emulating. Steve glared at him viciously, but Thor could see the corners of his eyes softening.
After a few minutes of Steve fighting some internal battle with his morals, he sighed in defeat, throwing up his hands. "I am not getting out of the car," he said firmly, more to himself than to Thor, who smiled gleefully as he followed Steve out the door.
Steve did end up getting out of the car. And entering the shoppe, against his better judgment. And purchasing something, much to his own horror. But what that was is a story for another time and another place.
Thor crawled into bed later that night, stroking his hand across Loki's calf, rubbing his thumb across the firm muscle underneath. Loki eyed him suspiciously over the top of his spell book.
"What is it?" Loki asked warily, making no move to close his book. "You have that look in your eye, the one you get whenever you have some horrid idea that you have mistakenly thought of as brilliant."
"I do, brother," Thor said, smiling up at Loki. Loki was not amused; he rolled his eyes and snapped the book shut, placing it carefully on the nightstand and folding his arms over his chest. "I am going to love you."
Loki scoffed. "I hardly think so. I just got Modi down to sleep, and I refuse to wake him again with noises from these activities."
"Ah, but that's just the thing," Thor said, rummaging behind him and holding up a black ball gag. "I have procured this for us."
Loki took it from him with the tips of two fingers, pinching it between his index finger and thumb and holding it as far from him as possible. "This. What is this?" he inquired, turning it this way and that in the flickering candlelight, watching the black plastic surface gleam and glitter.
And that wasn't exactly a no, so Thor, feeling encouraged, dragged Loki down into a kiss that had him squirming against Thor's steady embrace. "The Lady Natasha called this a ball gag," Thor explained in between breathless kisses in which Loki threaded his fingers into Thor's hair and held him close, despite his earlier protests. "It will muffle noise."
"Mm," Loki gasped against Thor's mouth. "Is that so? Midgardians, despite their idiocy, do seem to have a wealth of lovely inventions."
Thor smiled triumphantly as he pulled away from the kiss, leaving Loki's mouth swollen and red, leaving Loki's fingers clutching tightly into the front of his robes, clinging and wanton in the whiteness of his knuckles. Thor reached up, tapped Loki's lips gently, and Loki opened his mouth without further complaint as Thor fitted the ball in between his teeth and fastened it behind his head.
Thor reached out to slip Loki's sleep clothes off his slender shoulders, and as Loki obliged him and wriggled his arms out of the sleeves, Thor placed a firm hand on Loki's arm. His brother looked at him questioningly, arching an eyebrow at him at his hesitation.
"You must tell me if I am hurting you, or if you do not like it," Thor said quietly, admiring the way Loki's lips stretched obscenely red and swollen across the gleaming plastic.
Loki just rolled his eyes, huffed, and nodded impatiently before reaching out to unfasten Thor's trousers.
Thor had to admit there was a certain beauty about that sphere of black plastic, clutched tightly between Loki's perfect white teeth, capturing Loki's sounds and bottling them into his throat so he had to let them go through his skin with strangled breaths.
One of Loki's hands is curled tightly in the bedspread, the other tangled in the strands of hair at the back of Thor's head, pressing Thor's face close to his own. They would have been kissing if the gag hadn't been in the way, and Thor had to content himself with nibbling at the dramatic curve of Loki's lower lip around the plastic as Loki writhed underneath him with every thrust.
He felt Loki clutching tightly around him, hot and slick, looked down just in time to find Loki spilling himself across their stomachs with a scream that came out all choked and strangled.
"May I have you again?" Thor whispered into Loki's ear, after giving him a few moments to recover. "I fear I am not finished yet."
Loki reached behind his head, fiddled with the plastic straps before spitting out the ball gag into the palm of his hand and massaging his jaw with the other. He looked at the black plastic with a look Thor didn't really understand before twisting to place it on the nightstand by his spell book.
"You may," Loki added as he turned back to Thor, the pinnacle of generosity. "Gently, if you don't mind, I am rather tired."
And much to Thor's surprise, he watched as Loki lay down again, rolled himself onto his stomach and hugged a pillow to his chest as he nuzzled down into the mattress, Thor still firmly rooted inside him.
When he didn't continue, Loki craned his neck to look back at him over his shoulder, his eyes lidded. "Well?" he asked in a lazy, drowsy tone. "Get on with it."
"Are you going to sleep?" Thor asked incredulously as Loki lay his head back down on the pillow. When Loki nodded, Thor just stared at the soft rises of his brother's shoulder blades as he inhaled. Thor wasn't quite sure whether to continue or stop, wasn't quite sure whether to feel flattered that Loki trusted him enough for this or insulted that Loki wished to sleep instead.
"I am tired, love," Loki mumbled sleepily, "but I would not wish to deny you satisfaction. Take as you wish; it is not as if my body will not know how to love you back, even if I am fast in dreams. But, for this, I would ask you to be gentle."
Thor admired the way the softly flickering candlelight danced across Loki's sleek skin as his brother slipped into dreams. Placing his hands carefully on Loki's hips, he began to thrust again, deep, slow motions that had him rocking fully into Loki. Loki clutched, trembling, around him in rhythm, even as he held the pillow to his chest with closed eyes and drifted further into sleep.
Eventually, Thor realised he wasn't about to wake Loki up, and his thrusts became steadier, firmer, faster. Loki's whimpers were soft, muffled partially by the thick pillow, partially by the soft fog of sleep, as Thor rocked him further and further into his dreams.
As Thor's thrusts became more frantic, he reached around, hesitantly lifting Loki's head from the pillow and cradling his face in a broad hand. Thor swiped a broad thumb softly over Loki's lower lip, and when Loki's mouth fell open in unquestioning acceptance, Thor smiled and gently pressed two thick fingers into the warm, wet cavern of Loki's mouth.
Loki's tongue rolled over the digits in his mouth slowly, thick through the fog of sleep, and Thor marvelled at the soft, blurry reactions he is still able to pull from his brother's body. He bent his head down, resting his forehead against the soft skin in the hollow between Loki's shoulder blades, and bites his bottom lip to stop himself from crying out as he thrusts once, twice, thrice.
Loki muffles an unconscious sob into Thor's hand as he clutches involuntarily around Thor, tight and slick and hot like butter soft leather gloves, and Thor muffles a shout into Loki's skin as Loki's tongue rolls over his knuckles, and he comes with Loki's soft whimpers cradled in his palm.
Thor flops down bonelessly beside Loki's steady, sleeping form, and is dismayed when he hears soft cries and whimpers burbling from the nursery; no doubt he had awoken Modi with his shout, no matter how hard he'd tried to silence it.
He can see the tensing of Loki's shoulders in response to Modi's cries, knows that Loki is quickly swimming up from the depths of slumber, and makes to get up to snuggle Modi back to sleep.
"My apologies, fairest," he murmured to Loki, who was awake by then, if the stiffening of his shoulders was anything to go by. "I may have been too loud. I will take care of it."
Loki snorted, and didn't even crack open his eyes as the mattress shifted underneath him and he heard Thor's heavy footfalls padding across the floor, the soft creaking of the door's hinges and then the resulting bang as the door hit the wall with the force of Thor's opening it.
Loki smiled into the pillow as Modi's cries and whimpers burbled down to nothing, overshadowed by Thor's soft (if that could be called soft, it was perfectly audible from at least two realms away) reassurances.
Loki was asleep before Thor came back to the bed. He bent his head down, his beard tickling the smooth plane of Loki's left cheek as he pressed a soft, hesitant kiss to Loki's slack mouth, grinning helplessly in surprise and adoration as Loki smiled softly in his dreams and returned the kiss.