Crosspost from AO3, written to My Body - Young the Giant
Loki woke up three days after his and Thor's movie date with a tickle in his throat and a slight whistle deep in his chest on every breath. Not for the first time, he cursed the hellishly cold New York November weather and his apparent inability to absorb warmth, no matter how many layers of wool clothes he wore, no matter how closely or tightly he cuddled up to Thor's side in bed.
Thor seemed absolutely fine, blustering and bumbling about as always, scooping up tiny children and tickling them fiercely with his beard and laughing. Loki stared grumpily at his brother's back as he walked to the dining hall for breakfast, and crossed his arms over his chest with a sigh. If Thor noticed his brother's sulking, he didn't say anything about it; the more likely scenario was that he just didn't see, and Loki knew this very well, his brother was notoriously oblivious, but that didn't stop him from pouting all the way to the dining hall.
At breakfast, Thor laughed and joked with Odin and Loki silently, sullenly spooned porridge and honey into his mouth. Frigga looked at him with concern.
"Loki, darling, your face will stick like that if you keep frowning at your brother," she said, reaching over and rubbing the creased area between his eyebrows. Loki relented, but only the tiniest bit.
Loki could hear the clang of Mjolnir on Sif's shield as Thor and Sif trained in the gardens below. Their laughter and shouts and weapons colliding on hot steel rang through his head and he swore he could feel his brain pulsing behind his eyeballs as he tried to read the same paragraph on dragons and their wing anatomy for the fourteenth time that hour.
The tickle had evolved into a full blown scratch that Loki could feel itching at the back of his throat with every swallow. He kept trying to clear his throat, to no avail. A cool breeze came blowing in, filling the library curtains so they looked like smooth white sails, and Loki only shivered and got up to close the windows.
As he stood at the balcony, the afternoon sun playing across his face, Thor looked up and shouted.
"Brother! Come down and join us!" he shouted up at Loki, a tiny doll holding aloft a hammer. Loki looked down, rolled his eyes, shook his head.
"You will get sick, being cooped up with all those books!" Thor's voice was tiny and small behind the window, but Loki was still rather impressed with his ability to project his words so far and so clearly. He scoffed as he turned back to his books and the warm fire, and frowned when his humph turned into a coughing fit that left him clutching the back of his armchair and gasping for breath.
By dinner that evening, Loki had had to start breathing through his mouth and his m's and n's and b's were muffled and stuffy. The serving girls set down platter after platter of food in front of him, and normally he would have delighted in what they were serving; in honour of his and Thor's upcoming millennial anniversary, the cooks had really started to outdo themselves, with the most exotic ingredients (dragon's heart and mermaid hair among them) and Loki really did appreciate it, but he simply wasn't hungry.
He pushed the pasta around on his plate forlornly, and Frigga watched him with a small frown.
"Loki, darling, surely you must be hungrier than that," she said, after watching him twirl his fork around his plate three times while next to him Thor demolished an entire cow. "You still need food so your brain can work and let you read the books you love."
"Oh, hush, Frigga," Odin said beside her, the bones of a horse piled up messily beside him. Frigga wrinkled her nose in distaste; between her elder son and husband, it was a miracle Asgard hadn't run out of livestock. "The boy eats like a bird, it's no wonder he can't use any of the weapons in the armory."
Loki rolled his eyes, and when Odin's back was turned, stuck out his tongue childishly at his father's back. Frigga smiled at her younger son and flicked him on the shoulder.
"You know, young princes can't have dessert until they finish their dinner," she whispered in Loki's ear. "And no amount of pouting is going to get you out of that," she added, as Loki pouted.
"I'm not feeling so well, Mother," Loki admitted, as he watched Thor stick an entire ham into his mouth and pull out only the bone. "May I take my leave?"
"Of course," Frigga said, gently patting his cheek. "Feel better, darling."
As Loki got up to go to his bedchambers, she grasped him by the sleeve and pulled him down to whisper in his ear. "And I'll have a maid send up a slice of cake for you. It's your favourite, raspberry jam and cream."
Loki smiled, trying to ignore the stuffiness in his head. "Thank you, Mother."
Thor laughed loudly and threw the bone down, loudly clamoring for another, and Loki quickly hurried from the hall before he could be witness to the destruction of another ham.
When Thor knocked on Loki's bedroom door later that night, he was heady with a generous portion of that night's mead, which had been of a particularly good vintage. Loki didn't answer the door, and Thor was quite sure he was knocking loudly and clearly, and he was a tad miffed that his brother seemed to be avoiding him.
He'd noticed Loki had eaten hardly anything at dinner that night, even though the cooks had made him his favourite food. He frowned as he stared forlornly at Loki's chamber doors, which were still firmly shut. Could Loki have somehow discovered that the dragon's heart and mermaid's hair was actually just a fancy name for Midgardian spaghetti and meatballs? (He'd gotten Loki to believe that particular deception a few centuries ago when dragons had become endangered and mermaids in the Asgardian Sea went on strike. And really, it all tasted the same anyway.) It wouldn't be good if Loki had discovered that lie, Thor thought, chewing vigorously on a hangnail and pacing back and forth in front of his brother's door. He'd meant to have Loki tonight, and Loki was never fun in bed if he was upset.
Thor paused in his pacing for a moment, wondering if Loki was ill. His brother might be a picky eater, but he always stayed for dessert, and tonight had been his favourite cake. Clearly Loki wasn't feeling well.
Thor frowned and placed an ear to the door, listening intently. He could make out flames crackling in the fireplace, and could hear something that sounded vaguely like a dying walrus. After listening carefully for a good few minutes, Thor deduced that it was either one of Loki's experiments coughing up a hairball or was in fact Loki himself.
Through the haze of mead and meat in his belly, Thor thought about this turn of events. Loki wasn't feeling well, was possibly throwing up even though he hadn't eaten anything...
His eyes widened, and he pressed his shoulder against the wood of Loki's bedroom door and cracked it wide open. The wood splintered around him as he rushed in, running to Loki's bath, his heart thudding in his throat.
Loki was bent over his sink, his hands gripping the edges of the white basin inlaid with sapphire quartz. His brother's knuckles were white from his grip on the porcelain, and he didn't appear to notice that Thor had entered the bathroom.
Thor ran over and reached around, grasping his brother's shaking shoulders firmly even as Loki continued dry heaving and coughing into the sink. Once Loki's coughing fit was done and Loki was rinsing out his mouth with water, Thor looked down at him and asked him, "Loki, fairest, are you with child?"
Loki just stared at him in the mirror. "Am I what?"
"Are you with child?" Thor repeated, one of his hands releasing Loki's shoulders and darting underneath his brother to pat at his perfectly flat stomach, as though he could feel a baby growing there. "What shall we name it?"
Loki pulled Thor's hand away, and Thor wondered why his brother's skin was so warm. "I'm not pregnant, you bumbling buffoon," his brother hissed at him, his consonants coming out all blurry. "I'm just sick."
Thor looked at Loki, at the way his dark hair stuck and curled across his forehead, how his cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright, even though Thor hadn't kissed him yet. Loki looked ready to be ravished, and Thor vaguely remembered his mother teaching him about jötnar mating periods when he had decided to take Loki for the very first time.
"Now, Thor, darling," she'd told him, patting his head fondly, "the jötnar are a very temperamental people..."
And she'd whispered things to Thor that Thor would never have believed if anyone besides his mother had told him, and even then, the fact that his mother knew all about jötunn men and women was...rather frightening. Thor hadn't been able to look at his mother for an entire month afterwards.
But this wasn't like that time, he was sure of it. Loki wasn't clinging to him, begging him for more; his legs weren't wrapped around Thor's waist, and there wasn't any sweet, pervasive scent of cinnamon and peppermint that usually clung to Loki's skin when those times occurred.
Thor looked at his brother's thin wrist in his own, watched the soft, steady pulse fluttering beneath the delicate skin as Loki tried to pull his hand away.
"You are quite sure you are not pregnant," Thor repeated, stroking his thumb along Loki's veins. "Quite sure?"
"Certain of it," Loki snarled weakly, slumping against the sink again and coughing. He really did sound quite poorly, Thor thought to himself. He could hear a whistle like a far off storm in Loki's chest with every shuddering breath he took. He patted Loki's back unsurely, but Loki whimpered breathlessly at him to leave him alone, and Thor complied.
"Loki is heavy with my child. Yes, I am sure. 100% certain," Thor announced that very week at the Avengers Thursday night meetings. This was a bit of an exaggeration; Loki's belly was still very flat and angular, but Thor just wanted to stress the fact that he was about to become a father.
His news was met with mixed results.
Bruce looked at him over the tops of his spectacles, made a sort of confused sound, and jotted down the information on a notepad in front of him before sketching the outline of a person and corresponding anatomy.
Tony informed him that he wasn't ready to become an uncle yet, he still wanted to spend time sleeping around and doing drugs, and he didn't want to be that creepy uncle with the goatee that went around wearing black trench coats and flashing young children in the parks. Pepper kindly informed him that that wasn't something an upstanding citizen would do anyway.
Clint asked Thor if the baby would be able to do magic. Thor had no idea, and anyway, he couldn't really look at Clint without remembering him bound and writhing on Natasha's bed.
Natasha filed her nails, and shrugged in indifference when Thor asked her what she thought about the whole thing.
Steve just took one good, long look at Thor, and upon deciding that Thor definitely wasn't kidding, passed out on the pile of Scientific American magazines that Bruce had so thoughtfully put in front of his place at the meeting table.
Thor was absolutely delighted with this information. He had not yet had the joy of conceiving children with his brother but was a kind uncle to several of Loki's spawn (even though Jörmungandr had been known to bite him, on more than one occasion). He hoped that his and Loki's baby would be at least human looking; he doubted there were any stores on Midgard that would cater to clothes for baby dragons or whatever Loki felt like having.
He spent hours looking through plenty of Midgardian books for suitable names and even attempted to hand knit a hat for a baby that came out looking more like a tea cozy.
After purchasing a beautiful crib of dark cherry wood complete with a mobile that played a tinny little jingle when wound up and nothing less than twenty-seven soft, fluffy stuffed animals, Thor flew back up to Asgard, eager to present his brother with his gifts.
Loki was faring only a little bit better when Thor returned. He was sitting up in bed, reading a book. His nightstand was cluttered with wads of tissues, and a half-empty bowl of clear soup rested haphazardly on the edge. Thor moved it back to the center of the table before looking at Loki with a huge smile and thrusting his arms out.
"Look at the items I have procured for the royal babe," he proclaimed proudly, showing Loki the clothing and toys he had managed to smuggle into Asgard. Heimdall, gratefully, had not said anything. Not that he ever said anything, but he looked a bit less judgmental than he had the other time.
Loki looked up from his book, raised an eyebrow at the items in Thor's hands, and rolled his eyes before sighing exasperatedly.
"I am not with child, Thor," he repeated before turning the page. "I have no plans to be with child in the near future."
"You are with child," Thor said, smiling triumphantly and depositing the things on Loki's dresser before clambering up onto the bed beside his brother. "You have been ill recently."
Loki sighed again and closed the book, setting it on his nightstand. "I have been ill because I am ill," he explained patiently. Thor only smiled at him.
"What shall we name the child, beloved brother?" he asked, reaching over to pat at Loki's stomach. "It shall be beautiful, truly it must be."
Loki wanted to tear his hair out.
"Will you be sensitive again?" Thor wanted to know. "I remember the last time you were with child, with Sleipnir, was it?" Loki nodded in agreement. "How you begged and pleaded with me then," Thor said, smiling in reminiscence. "You were so wanton, brother," - here he ran a hand up Loki's thigh over the blankets, and Loki looked pointedly at him in disgust, but Thor was having none of it - "and you came at the slightest sideways breath. It was truly delightful."
Thor turned to Loki, and Loki could clearly see the lust dilating his brother's pupils.
"I remember how you could not catch your breath, how your pretty skin was all flushed and rosy and your hair curled around your ears so lovely," Thor murmured, rolling over and holding himself over Loki. Loki had his hands on Thor's chest, trying to push him away, but his cold had sapped most of his strength and anyway Thor was a man on a mission.
Thor bent his head down and caught Loki's mouth in a gentle kiss, his tongue pushing insistently against the seal of Loki's lips in askance. Loki sighed a breathy, wheezy assent as Thor ran his hands gently up underneath Loki's cotton nightclothes, his fingers dancing along the soft skin covering Loki's ribs.
"Hmm, you taste like..." Loki mumbled something unintelligible in Thor's ear before lying back and letting Thor do all the work.
Thor unbuttoned his brother's cotton night shirt and peeled it away from where it stuck to his skin. His brother's skin was rosy in the candlelight, and Thor smoothed his hands over the creamy planes of skin, reveling in its lush warmth and smoothness. Loki lay back, his eyes glazed, his hands curled underneath his pillow as he watched Thor lick cooling stripes across his chest.
Loki gasped and arched into Thor's hot mouth as Thor took a nipple between his lips, swirling his tongue around the tip, needling it slightly with his teeth before clamping his lips down around it and sucking firmly.
"Can you imagine how you will look, with your breasts all swollen with milk for our child?" Thor breathed, teasing the other nipple to a red and rosy peak. "You'll have to tie me to the bed so that I don't eat all of our babe's food."
"'M not pregnant," Loki protested, but his argument was weak with moans and whimpers. "'M not. Really."
"It's alright, brother," Thor breathed, mouthing at Loki's stomach and biting delicate kisses into the skin above his navel. "I will protect you and the child, even if it bites me and tries to strangle me every time I visit the nursery." Loki had never quite gotten around to teaching Jörmungandr that it wasn't socially acceptable for one to try to kill one's own uncle (but secretly Loki had never been prouder).
Loki laughed, a high, breathless, wheezy one that devolved into a shuddery moan as Thor undid the drawstrings on his cotton pants and peeled them away, one leg at a time. His head was spinning again, and he coughed into the crook of his elbow as Thor smiled gently and took Loki's cock into his mouth.
Loki gasped and bucked his hips weakly as Thor took him deep into his throat. His belly was roiling with pleasure that threatened to burn him up from the inside out, and it was too hot, it was really too hot, he thought to himself as he kicked the blankets away from his legs and dug his heels into the base of Thor's spine. Thor was more than happy to oblige, and swallowed and hummed around him, his lips sealed firmly around the base of Loki's erection.
Loki cried out, his voice a soft wheeze as he writhed and flopped weakly underneath Thor's ministrations.
"Thor," he sobbed breathlessly, every syllable a whimper. "Thor, oh, Thor, please, again again again..."
Thor looked up at him with merriment in his blue eyes and laughed. The vibrations travelled up Loki's cock and wormed their way up his spine and all through his nerves, causing him to shudder violently. He could see white sparks fringing on the corners of his vision, and he really did have better stamina than this, really, truly, but the room was spinning around him and he couldn't see straight for the lust clouding his eyesight...
Loki shouted when Thor pressed two oiled fingers into him, stroking, curling, tapping against that place that had him seeing starbursts. His scream came out as more of a sobbing wheeze, and he could feel Thor smirking around his cock.
"Wait, Thor, please," he begged futilely. "I'm going to come."
Thor made a sound in his throat like a question, and Loki screamed like he was being murdered as Thor swallowed around him and pressed his knuckles roughly against Loki's insides. It was too much, he thought vaguely to himself as he spilled himself into Thor's mouth and reveled in the tight, moist clench of Thor's throat around him.
Thor kept his fingers pumping gently into Loki, milking his brother of his orgasm, only stopping when Loki started squirming away from him and whimpering breathlessly. After Loki was done shuddering, Thor smiled up at him, wiped his mouth on a nearby sheet corner, and crawled up to where Loki was resting against the headboard, his shirt still unbuttoned, looking absolutely debauched.
"You truly are more sensitive when you are with child," Thor murmured in awe, laying a hand on Loki's sweaty belly and patting.
Loki made another feeble protest, but Thor's hand really did feel good and he was sleepy. He cuddled up to Thor, who opened his arms and pulled him tight against him, chivalrously ignoring the bulge in his own pants.
The next week, when Thor fell ill, Loki popped his head into his brother's chambers and innocently asked him if, just perhaps, he was with child.
Thor harrumphed in irritation, and Frigga smiled to herself as she spooned some more chicken broth into her son's mouth.