New York, present time

"I thought you said he's about six months along?" Tony looked Loki up and down critically. "He doesn't look very pregnant."

Loki frowned. Should he be flattered? Offended? Something else altogether?

Tony glanced at Stephen, doubtful, as if his friend had been telling a fib all along. "He looks just like me after three burritos and a beer on any Friday night!"

"Hey!" Now that Loki took offense to.

Stephen frowned. "It is quite peculiar. Usually with subsequent pregnancies, women tend to show more and much earlier too." After a beat, "Well. Human women do anyway."

Bruce adjusted his spectacles so they sat straighter on his nose. "The first scans you did confirmed the period of gestation, I presume?"

"Yes." Stephen looked worried now. "Granted, the last scan I did was over two months ago…"

"Hmm." Bruce shrugged. "I suppose we'll take a look soon enough. I've got the latest scan machine in my lab," Again, Loki frowned at how excited he sounded.

Bruce could not stop giving his two cents' worth, "Hey maybe he's just carrying high, you know like your grandmother used to say...it's a girl this time right?"

Tony just stared at him blankly. "Your grandmother had seven PhDs too? Because that sounds like a crock of shit – "

"Well, isn't this grand. Care to include me in the conversation, gentlemen, since as it happens, it is about me?" Loki unconsciously pulled his coat tighter around himself, rendering his barely visible belly even more invisible.

"I'll have you know I come from a long line of insanely smart people. My grandmother was the first scientist in her village."

"Didn't you tell me she was a hoodoo priestess?

"That too."

Stephen was touching him now. "Loki, what was your birth weight as a child? Small babies can run in families…" he murmured, a frown marring his handsome features. "I was a massive eight-pounder."

"I'll eight pound you if you don't take your hands off me right now, husband or not." An icy gale blew through the room despite the closed windows.

Bruce guffawed. "That doesn't make any sense, Loki."

"There was a time when I struck fear in every living soul in this city." A sick whisper. A pale hand rose to grip his forehead. "What have you done to me?"

"Now, now, Loki…" Stephen held out a hand placatingly.

"When this is all over, maybe I will take over this city agai – oof!" Loki sank backward into the large, plushy sofa, its beanie bag consistency almost swallowing him whole as his legs flew out from under him, sending his arms grappling the empty air and his belly sticking out –

Tony only stared. "Yep. Make that two burritos."

"Stark!"

"You are sure about the date of conception?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Absolutely, definitely, to-the-death sure."

Stephen only shrugged at Bruce's inquiring gaze. He flicked his wrist in agreement. "What he said."

"Hmm." Bruce gently felt Loki's abdomen and measured the fundal height again. Just by eyeballing, Stephen could tell Loki's bump was smaller than it should be. "Yep. Still the same. Twenty centimetres."

Loki eyed the identical frowns on his husband and friend's faces in turn. He decided it was still too early to get pissy at what was clearly the beginning of a let's-keep-things-secret-from-Loki-because-it's-fun conspiracy, so he only asked lightly, "I take it that twenty is not our lucky number today?"

"It would have been…three weeks ago." Bruce was never one to be brought down by uncertainties so he only smiled brightly. "Well. Let's just give my new machine a go, shall we?"

Stephen took a seat on the other side of the examining table. Unlike Bruce, he could not bring himself to smile. Loki would only catch him out anyway. "Could just be wrong dates."

"Let's not jump the gun. My new baby will tell us more, it gives very accurate readings with discrepancy between estimated and actual foetal weight to the nearest 100 grams or less." The probe hovered an inch over Loki's abdomen as Bruce awaited his consent, "You ready?"

Loki shrugged. "I suppose. Better be quick about it before Thor comes back."

"Thor came with you?"

"He's at Central Park taking Stian on one of those horse-led carriage rides," Loki murmured, shifting slightly as the cold gel on his skin gave him a startle.

Bruce's face clearly brightened, for he did have a soft spot for the little Prince. "But now let's take a look at the little Princess.."

The next few minutes passed in total silence save for the occasional clicking as Bruce recorded and saved his measurements.

Stephen stole a glance at his husband. Glued to the monitor on the image of their daughter, Loki's eyes had taken a soft appearance and his smile was wistful, small though it was.

He grabbed Loki's hand and felt his squeezed in return.

"All parameters seem to correspond to somewhere between nineteen and twenty weeks," Bruce muttered finally. "Amniotic fluid is a bit on the borderline low side…you haven't experienced any leaking or anything like that?"

"Leaking?" Loki looked to Stephen blankly.

"If your water breaks prematurely sometimes it happens in gushes or small leaks, you may mistake them as involuntary passing of urine?"

Loki shook his head slowly, a look of utter horror on his face. "How very unsightly."

"Well on the bright side, the placenta is as high-up as you can have it this time around so. Have at it guys!" Bruce nudged Stephen's shoulder with the back of the hand holding the probe; the human sorcerer had suddenly leaned forward over Loki's supine form to peer at the monitor.

"Those small, white spotty bits over the placenta. Are those calcifications?" Bruce's vulgar comment in jest was completely lost on Stephen, whose face had suddenly turned very serious.

Bruce adjusted the dial setting to correct the echogenicity. "Looks like. Are they important?"

"Important in the sense that they can be entirely normal or dreadfully pathological."

Loki could not take it anymore. A dagger appeared in his hand. Stephen quickly palmed his wrist, holding it down. "Patience, darling. The doctors are talking."

"Not when I'm done stabbing one or both of you if you don't start telling me what is going on."

After a second's hesitation, Bruce decided to take pity on him. "The baby is a bit on the small side, Loki. But we can't tell for sure just from one scan, we need to do serial scans and monitor the baby's progress to really say for certain – there can be a number of things that can affect the baby's growth…you have been ill up till recently, haven't you?"

"Very," Stephen murmured.

Loki frowned deeply. "But I'm better now."

"Well, hopefully once you start eating better and getting plenty of rest, she will catch up soon enough." Bruce eyed him surreptitiously. "You are positively scrawny. And your colouring is way off."

"You should have seen him last month. He looked like something out of a concentration camp." Bruce handed Stephen some tissue paper which he then used to wipe Loki's abdomen clean, completely ignoring all the glares Loki was sending his way.

"So we'll see you back in a month?"

"Absolutely." Again, Stephen answered for him and Loki bristled. That could only mean Stephen was worried, and a worried Stephen was one Hel of a control freak.

The controlling Loki could handle (he would just keep doing what he damn well pleased). It was the secrets…the withholding of information that he had a problem with.

"What are you not telling me?" Loki asked quietly after Bruce went out of ear-shot to return the machine back to its storage place.

Stephen stood to discard the used tissue paper. He did not turn around. "It's nothing we should be worrying about. Not yet."

"Stephen," Loki said warningly.

"It's nothing, Loki," Stephen growled. "You just – " He inhaled deeply. "You just need to focus on getting better. That's all you have to worry about."

"Not this again, Strange." Loki palmed his eyes tiredly. "Give me a break already. Am I going to have to bombard you with questions and hope one of them randomly hits your nerves enough for you to give me a straight answer?"

"Brother!"

"Pappa!"

"What is that on your face?" Stephen's hands automatically flew to his hips.

"Mister Stark gave it to me, Daddy, he made me eat it."

"Stark, please tell me that is not Stark Raving Hazelnut you have given my son?" Stephen glowered.

"It's Uncle Tony, Stian, Uncle Tony!" Apparently bribing the kid with ice cream was not enough to endear the snooty little brat to him.

"Now, now, brother-in-law, do not fret so! The ice sugar confectionery is mine, actually, I only let him have a taste, it was the only flavour they had at the store –"

"Because it's bloody awful no one would buy it, that's why!"

"Hey!" Maybe Tony should buy him horses next time, the kid seemed to love them.

"Stian!"

"Uncle Bruce!" Stian unceremoniously dropped the cone onto the floor and squealed in delight before jumping into Bruce's awaiting arms.

"Nooo…" Tony buried his hands in his hair. "No, no, no, no!"

He pointed at Bruce accusingly but directed the question at Loki. "Why is he Uncle Bruce and I am the nasty Mister Stark? Did you have anything to do with this?"

"Why, Stark, I didn't know you thought that highly of me." Loki wrapped his trench coat around his middle, his words light-hearted, yet his movements were jerky and testy. "I have no idea how that happened."

"I am in the dark. As always." He viciously tied the belt around his waist and without another word, stalked out of the medical bay.

And suddenly Stephen found himself the center of attention as Tony, Thor and Bruce turned to look at him.

Stephen looked up from the pool of melted ice cream on the floor, only to offer in a dead-pan manner, "Hormones?"

New Asgard, way back when

Stephen had never been a heavy sleeper as his vocation of choice never really advocated quality sleep, but in the recent years (and certainly ever since his car accident) it had become worse. Now the slightest sound would wake him up.

Tonight however, it was the complete and utter silence that did.

At least when they had gone to bed, despite the frosty exchange of goodnights, the sound of Loki shuffling under the covers and the subsequent deep breathing as he drifted off was enough to lull Stephen into sleep himself.

The Egg Benedict lay half-eaten on the bedside table by Loki's side of the bed; Loki barely managed two bites before apparently abandoning it. So not even Stephen's cooking could whip up a serviceable appetite; the sight of the hollandaise sauce congealed in a puddle of rancid goo was enough to turn his stomach.

Loki was nowhere to be seen.

Stephen pushed himself up to a sitting position, pushing the covers back. He listened for any sound from the bathroom. He heard none.

"Loki?"

He followed where his feet led him as they moved on their own volition toward the annex. He hesitated only for a fraction of a second, for the wards lifted just as his hand touched the knob. Silently he pushed the nursery door open.

The ghostly figure he could see sitting quietly in the rocking chair beyond the railing of the empty crib held their sleeping son closer to his bosom.

"It's just me." Which would have gone without saying, but the relieved look in Loki's half-lidded eyes told him that the Prince was not quite as alert as Stephen initially thought he was. Loki looked exhausted.

"Can't sleep?" He could not think of a better way to start the conversation, with it being 3 a.m. and all.

"Staying awake means I can enjoy the pleasure of living for longer hours than had I spent them sleeping," Loki murmured. "It is a myth that children grow taller in their sleep, is it not?"

He swept a lock of hair off Stian's forehead. "And yet I can dare say that it is entirely true."

Stephen walked over to clasp the railing of his son's crib, but did not come any closer.

"Does staying awake also mean staving off nightmares?"

"The pain was bearable at the time it happened, at least up till the point I lost consciousness." Loki closed his eyes. "It comes back ten-fold when I dream."

The air became still, as all breaths halted.

"You should have told me. I could have helped you." Stephen gripped the railing so hard his knuckles stretched white and numb. "I am right here."

"You weren't before. I do not want to get used to it." There was no malice in Loki's voice.

Despite it, the blood still rushed to Stephen's head and his face, his chest burned. "That is not fair."

It did not seem as if Loki was listening.

"It stole the very breath out of me. Would have liquefied my insides had I been a lesser sorcerer and the agony, I would not wish on anyone." Loki's voice was calm. Just like a river. "As the blood filled my mouth and my belly and my lungs, all I could think about was you."

His next words replaced the fire in Stephen's blood with ice.

"And you weren't there."

The paralysing, tingling sensation crept all the way to Stephen's legs and he sank into a chair at the opposite end of the room.

"You could have called." Was perhaps the only thing anyone in his position could say, really. The alternative would have been staying silent, but Stephen could not take it, he could not accept the silence anymore –

"You mean the same way you called when the Dragon sank its teeth into your chest cavity and the only reason why you are still alive right now is because Wong had more sense than the lot of you combined and sought my help?"

"What?"

"Where did you think the healing stones he used came from? And the antidote to dragon's blood?"

Stephen let out a low, guttural moan and buried his face in his hands. This was not happening.

"Hence Doctor, my question. You may answer if you so choose." For all his outward appearance of reticence, Loki was very talkative tonight. "Why did I need to hear it from Wong, and not you?"

Hang on a minute - "But I only came back last night, so you were poisoned first!"

"Oh, is this a competition now?"

"And what about Stian, how could you not tell me about him?"

"You were deep in battle, I was not going to distract you – "

"He is my son too!"

"Yes, who would have lost his father had I not kept a cool enough head to stop myself from Mindspeaking you to pieces of meat in my hysterics!" Loki snarled. "In your absence I am his protector – I protect myself and I protect him, and I did!"

"Yrsa took the hit. Not you." Acid burned the tip of his tongue.

Loki recoiled in his seat, aghast.

He shifted Stian in his arm slightly and slowly reached for his robe, prising it apart.

Spanning the entire length of his chest was the burnt remnant of a hastily carved rune in a language Stephen could not recognise, the ugly blisters in varying degrees of healing, some already dried, some still weeping an angry, inflamed red. Blood magic, nasty thing it was, quick to kill, slow to heal.

"From my sickbed I could feel it coming and I crawled to where our sweet boy slept," Loki spat. "I was so weak I could not even conjure my dagger so I dug into my skin with my fingernail."

Loki's face was as white as a ghost. "It worked but I was incapacitated. Yrsa threw herself over me so the backlash from the counter-spell would not burn me any more than it already had."

Stephen did not know how or when, perhaps his feet had developed a mind of their own, or perhaps it was the Cloak who pushed him, but he suddenly found himself standing in front of Loki.

He dropped to his knees and buried his face in Loki's lap. "Why, Loki?"

One hand reached out to rest on Stian's head, the other to touch the still-raw blemish on Loki's ivory chest.

Stephen felt tears sting his eyes, and he was grateful for the heavy woollen throw covering Loki's legs. "Why do you keep me out?"

"I have no claim over you," Loki whispered. He did not trust his voice not to shake had he chosen to speak aloud.

"You have every claim over me."

Loki smiled gratefully at him for the lie.

"You are the Sorcerer Supreme, Protector of the Earth," Loki said gently. "In the grand scheme of the seven billion lives on earth, I am nobody."

Stephen felt the back of his neck bristle in indignation. "After all that has happened between us, you still doubt me?"

"For all that I claim to know, Strange…" Loki leaned his head back, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard against the despair in his chest. "You do give me too much credit for thinking I know a damn worth of anything at all."

He finally opened his eyes but they stared at the ceiling, blank and unseeing. "What are we? Lovers? Friends with benefits? Co-parents?"

"I don't know anything anymore. I thought I did, but…" Loki's head dropped to his chest, his long hair obscuring at last the only part of his face Stephen could see until then. "I know nothing."

"I know I love you," Stephen felt the words tumble out of his mouth spontaneously without hesitation. How could the words come so easily to him and yet Loki still could not see -?

"Perhaps our love – " Loki choked back tears. "Perhaps our love is just…a physical tête-a tête." He buried his face in Stian's hair. "Just like our baby. An accident."

Stephen was stunned.

"Perhaps in the end, it is I who loves you, more than you love me." Loki sighed, willing the wetness in his eyes to recede. There was to be no spilling of tears tonight. His heart, his very soul was splayed open as it was. His next words were but a mere whisper, "Just like everyone else before you."

"But no matter. I am used to being the less beloved."

Stephen stared at him until his eyes watered from not blinking.

"For someone so old you are the biggest idiot in the world."

"If not believing in fairy tales and happily-ever-afters makes me an idiot, then I accept," Loki said coolly. "You cannot give up your calling, just as I cannot give up Asgard."

"Does the throne mean that much to you?"

"Strange. Just when I thought you were beginning to understand me a little better." Loki's eyes were as bitter as the bite in his voice. "I have never wanted the throne."

"Then why can't you just come with me?" Frustration came over Stephen in waves, like it had so many times in the past twenty-four hours. "Why can't we be a real family, just the three of us?"

"I swore an oath to Thor to never leave his side, and –" Loki halted in mid-sentence, his breath fluttering in his chest as he caught himself.

"And?" Stephen's heart pounded, unsure if he was really prepared to hear what was coming.

"And I swore to him that if we were to die, we would die together." Loki gazed at him serenely. "Not one before the other. Not anymore."

"Is that the truth?"

"No more lies," Loki's eyes fluttered to a close; he felt so, incredibly tired. "No more secrets."

"Is there still no space for me?" Stephen reached out to touch Loki's breast where he knew his heart lay – "Here?"

"You know better than anyone the Sanctity of Vows, Doctor."

Loki shuddered against the almost physical ache in his chest.

"All my cards are on the table, Stephen." Loki released his hold around Stian as if in a gesture of offering, and a lock of glossy hair fell over his son's high forehead, hair as black as midnight against skin as soft and white as falling snow. "What about you?"

Stephen's lips thinned to an angry, white line.

"I've said it once, and I'll say it again, Odinson," he said fiercely. "I'm an all-or-nothing kind of guy, and I am all fucking in."

Loki's face crumbled and the blasted tears began to fall –

"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I am so, so sorry."

"Shh." Stephen smothered him with a kiss, and another, and another, and soon he was plastering kisses all over Loki's face, "I'm sorry, and I love you."

The salt on his tongue was sweet, and it drove Stephen to kiss the tears away until Loki was crying no more.

"And I don't ever want to hear you say stupid shit like me loving you less or some other crazy thing like that again, okay?" He grabbed the back of Loki's neck. "I mean it."

"Okay."

"I love you." Stephen repeated. "You're a bit crazy, but I love you."

"Okay, but that's…going a bit too far."

Stephen laughed. And soon they were both laughing. In the dark. With a sleeping baby in between their chests.

"Looks like we forgot the number one rule in parenting, never wake a sleeping baby," Stephen snickered.

"Do you honestly think we are going to get any sleep tonight?" Loki asked mischievously.

Stephen shook his head in a mixture of relief…and disbelief.

"How did you get the antidote to dragon's blood anyway?"

"Merlin and I had a thing." A watery grin. "Way back when."

"Seriously."

"Seriously."