YOU GUYS! You all absolutely showered me with so many wonderful and amazing comments last chapter and I practically squealed in happiness when I saw them all. I can't thank you enough, you make writing this fic so much easier.

I hope you all enjoy this chapter!


Hydrangeas Say Our Family Will Flourish

Chapter Six: The Name Game

Baby names.

It was about time Loki and Amelia were supposed to start thinking of what to call their upcoming children. After all, in a few short weeks, Amelia would be approaching the halfway point in her pregnancy, which left Loki more than a little alarmed, to say the least. Time was flowing quickly. The babies would be born before they knew it, and Loki wanted to be prepared.

The books he had purchased to elucidate what to expect throughout the remaining months of Amelia's pregnancy now cluttered most surfaces in their bedroom, as Loki wasn't content in buying just a couple of informative texts on the matter, and at one point he had read the line 'at this point, you should probably start thinking about baby names if you haven't already,' and promptly spaced out for the next few minutes as he pondered it.

"Amelia," Loki finally spoke when he found his wife in the communal living quarters of the Tower sitting with a few of the other Avengers, "What are we going to name our children?"

The question came with a hint of alarm, as Loki had mulled over it only briefly in his mind and had managed to come up with absolutely nothing, plus, they only had roughly five months left to figure it out. If Loki couldn't come up with anything, then surely Amelia might have a few ideas swimming around in her head.

Amelia had blinked up at him, slightly surprised, and given the others in the room a transient glance, before announcing, "Um… I don't know."

So, the thought of names hadn't crossed her mind either.

"Oh." Loki murmured, somewhat thrown off by Amelia's response - he had hoped she would have something to suggest, "Do you think we should perhaps… figure out some names?"

Amelia smiled, "If you wanna talk baby names, we can," she shuffled in her seat and leaned over, grabbing a notepad and pen off the coffee table, then patted the vacant couch space beside her, "come sit, Loki, this might require some serious thinking." She appeared oddly excited to explore the potential names of their children.

"Ooh, count me in! I'm great at coming up with names," Stark announced, also looking rather giddy all of a sudden.

Loki pinned him with a glare as he found his place beside his wife, "You do not get to name our children."

"Pft! I can suggest names!" Stark shot back, lifting his mug of coffee to his lips, "Since you're both pretty clueless on what names to pick, you need all the help you can get. I've heard naming your children can be quite a difficult process."

"He's right," Barton pointed out from across the room, halfway through devouring a sandwich, "I have three, and it is damn hard to agree on what to name them. You'll probably hate each other by the end of this."

Amelia licked her lips, ignoring Barton's jest, drawing a vertical line down the page and labelling each column with boy and girl respectively, "Oh, I'm sure we can come up with something! We don't know the genders of the babies yet so we'll have to come up with two girl names and two boy names to cover all bases."

"Alright…" Loki murmured, looking down at the bare page of the notebook and squinting to try and focus. Nothing came immediately to mind. "What… what kind of names should we try to think of?"

Amelia looked up at him in surprise, "Well, any name that you like, I guess!" She laughed, shrugging her shoulders, "If we both agree on it, I'll write it down, and at the end we can choose our favourites, how does that sound?"

Loki looked at her blankly and shrugged his shoulders in agreement. He sighed and hummed and tapped his fingers against his legs as he strove to think of something - one name at least - for Amelia to judge worthy or not, but something kept him from suggesting a single name.

He didn't really know many Midgardian names, and less so the meanings of all the many names on Earth. He didn't want to suggest something only for Amelia to laugh and dismiss it, doubled with the fact that the only names he could think of were names of humans he actually knew - and by the Gods, there was no way he was naming his children after any of the Avengers, that was for sure.

"Wow, you guys really are bad at this," Stark observed after Loki and Amelia were silent and pondering for a good five minutes, "Okay, boy names. Robert, Chris, Mark, Jeremy, Tom - any of those sound good?"

Loki frowned, shaking his head, "No, they sound awful."

"Ooh, I actually like the name Chris!" Amelia pointed out, then pouted up at her husband, "You don't like it?"

Loki's mouth fell open and then closed again. He didn't really have anything against the names Stark suggested, he just wanted to drill in the fact that he didn't want anyone else's input in naming his children. The thought just rubbed him the wrong way. They were his and Amelia's kids, it was up to them to pick out the perfect names.

"I just…" Loki exhaled through his nose, "well, what about… Aaron?"

Amelia tilted her head as a look of uncertainty flickered over her face, "Uhh… after my brother?" She made a face like she was not on board with the idea, "I don't know. I'm not super into the idea of naming our kids after dead relatives…"

Loki's mouth snapped shut, his cheeks growing ever so slightly pink. He felt silly for suggesting it now.

"I mean, unless you were really wanting to name one of them after your mother?" Amelia backpedaled, a nervous falter in her voice, to which Loki shook his head enthusiastically.

"Ah, no. No, I agree… it would just feel strange." Actually giving it a moment of thought led to the mental image of him chasing after a really rowdy little two year old while yelling 'Frigga! Come back right now! Behave, Frigga!' and it just did not seem like the right way to pay homage to his departed mother.

"Okay," Amelia smiled an awkward smile, "Clint, what do you think? Got any suggestions?"

Barton made a noise of consideration, "What about John?"

"Too common," Amelia rejected it before Loki could decline any suggestion from the man.

"How about Ryan?" Bruce proposed, looking up from his tablet and speaking for the first time since Loki had entered the room.

"Definitely not." Amelia practically snapped, and then flushed from the embarrassment of her outburst.

Loki raised a curious eyebrow, "Why?" He was indifferent to the name, but Amelia seemed to have a deep resentment for it.

Amelia cleared her throat, "I dated a Ryan in highschool for two weeks. He was a dick. That name is ruined for me."

The revelation made Loki snort with amusement, but the problem still remained that they so far had zero ideas for what to name their children.

"Why don't we try thinking of girl names instead?" Amelia advised, flipping the pen in her hand, "I like the name Rose." She looked up at Loki for approval, to which Loki's eyebrows raised.

"Rose is an okay name," Loki began, and Amelia excitedly scribbling the name down in her notepad, until he playfully continued, "we can name our children after flowers if you really so desire." Amelia paused before she'd written the final letter and looked up at Loki with a rather adorable glare, lips pulled into a pout.

"Oh, so you don't like the name Rose then?"

"No, I do, I was just-" Before he could admit he was only kidding around, Amelia had already scribbled the name out. "Really, Amelia?" She had clearly overreacted.

"Well if you're not going to take this seriously then we can talk about it later instead!" Amelia grumbled, throwing the notepad down on the coffee table and rising up from the couch to stomp out of the room, not even trying to disguise the fact that she was somewhat angry.

"Where did that come from?" Loki questioned aloud once Amelia was out of earshot.

"The pregnancy hormones were probably making her feel moody." Bruce illuminated.

"I told you," Barton pointed out, "this is just the beginning. Discussing baby names is disastrous."

Over the next couple of days, Loki found himself coming up with random baby names to try and appease his wife and add to their very tiny list, at least to show he was serious about it, and wanted for them to think ahead so that when they day came, their children weren't stuck in a nameless state for very long.

He'd read a few accounts from Midgardian women in some of the books he had found, which outlined how their children had gone for weeks or even months without a name because they just had too much trouble deciding on something. They'd ended up having to refer to their child as 'the baby' until they settled on something to call them. The entire scenario just seemed outrageous. There was no way he would allow either of his children to be nameless for so long.

Loki had taken to searching the internet for name recommendations.

"What about Charles?" The name seemed dignified enough, it was just a matter of whether Amelia liked it or not.

"Why Charles?" Had been her response as she attempted to brush her locks into something presentable - with no luck, it was always a disarray in the mornings.

Loki had no answer for her. He merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Then no." She said, and Loki flopped over on their bed grumpily.

"How about Arya?" He mumbled partway through brushing his teeth some time later.

"I like that name, but no. People will judge us for naming our baby after a fictional character."

Loki spat toothpaste into the sink, "Guess that means Daenerys is out of the question too?"

"Loki." There was an edge of warning to Amelia's tone which had him grunting in annoyance. Barton really hadn't been joking with his warning. "If I didn't cave on Arya, I'm definitely not caving on Daenerys."

Loki finished cleaning his teeth and returned to the bedroom, collapsing rather dramatically onto the couch as he watched Amelia pick her outfit for the day. She had started needing to wear pants with a stretchy, not so suffocating waistband, and despite her occasional mumbles about how the trousers were unflattering or ugly, she still managed to look ravishing in them.

He sighed, peering up at the ceiling with a despairing look. Something told him they would not settle on agreeable names for quite a while, but it was something he just wanted to be over with. The name Leif had briefly flitted through his mind, but that name brought only the memories of the horrible mind torture he had endured at Thanos's hands. The name was out of the question.

"You haven't suggested many names," Loki pointed out.

"Yeah, well, I tried to and you made a joke out of it," Amelia rejoined in a voice that was far from enthusiastic.

"Ugh, I was only joking. I think Rose is a nice name."

"A nice name? Not a great name?"

Loki rolled his eyes, rubbing his hands over his face, "Okay, now you're just nitpicking my choice of words. I like the name. Do you want to add it to the list?"

Amelia peered over at him, straightening out the top she had just put on, and then moved to grab the notepad and pen from the nightstand. She pressed the pen to the paper and then hesitated, her gaze unfocusing as she looked past it, and then sighed, throwing the pad back down with the pen without scribbling anything down.

"No…" She murmured, sitting down on the edge of the bed facing Loki, "It feels weird, doesn't it? Having to put a name to a face you haven't even seen yet?"

Loki sat up and leant forward, lips curling into a smile, "Yes. Exactly that." In just a few words, Amelia summed up everything that was bothering him. It was beyond difficult to produce names out of thin air for his children, whom he had not yet met - names they would have to go by for the rest of their lives - and knowing that Amelia felt the same eased his frustrations just a little bit.

"Well… maybe we should just… wait till the day they're born?" Amelia tentatively put forward, "Maybe once we see their faces, their names will just pop into our heads?"

Perhaps there was no need to rush, there was no need to dwell on the possibility that they would not come up with names before the babies were born. Maybe Amelia was right, and he had nothing to be concerned about - he just needed the names to come naturally, instead of trying to force something to work.

"Alright," Loki agreed, "I don't think fighting over names five months in advance is very productive anyway."

Amelia laughed, "You got that right," she was quiet for a moment as her gaze rolled over Loki like soft silk, "there's something else I wanted to say… I couldn't help but notice you didn't suggest any Asgardian names…"

Loki straightened up, "I just thought perhaps you would want to pick human names?"

Amelia faintly shook her head, "I want you to know that when our children are born and we see their faces for the first time, if an Asgardian name happens to come to your mind, I want to hear it, okay?"

Loki couldn't help but think that Amelia was particularly skilled in knowing exactly what to say in order to bring a smile to his face; with each day, he became more and more thankful that she was a part of his life.

He stood, picking Amelia up despite her squeal and dropping her gently on the centre of the bed, before crawling over and resting his cheek against the swell of her stomach. He caressed her belly with his fingertips, "Only five months left."

"Mmm," Amelia hummed, grinning at her husband's light touches, "are you excited?"

"Yes."

"Are you nervous?"

"Also yes."

Amelia giggled. "So am I," she admitted, "I keep finding myself worrying about little things that I probably shouldn't even be worrying about yet. Like how am I going to change a diaper without gagging? Or what if I'm not good at figuring out what they need when they cry? Or worst of all, what if I drop them? You know how clumsy I can be!" Her eyebrows furrowed as she pondered the horrific possibility, but Loki simply shook his head.

"You're not going to drop them. I'm sure these are all skills we'll pick up as we go," Loki smirked, "It's normal for first-time parents to worry about those kinds of things. I read it in a book. If we make mistakes, we can learn from them. We're not expected to know everything from the very beginning."

Amelia relaxed a little at his reassurance, her hand moving down to stroke his hair.

"Why don't you ask your friend Dawn about it? She has a baby."

"Mmm." Amelia hummed in acknowledgement, before her eyes suddenly went wide and she pushed herself onto her elbows, "Oh god."

Loki blinked, vaguely alarmed, "What?"

"Fuck. I haven't spoken to Dawn yet about… everything… the wedding, the pregnancy. Shit… I need to tell her. Shit. How am I gonna tell her?" Amelia's gaze seemed to turn into a thousand-yard stare, "How do I tell her about you without causing her to freak the fuck out?"


At this point, I've settled on one of the baby names, but I'm stuck between two names for the other baby ;) I don't wanna give anything away though, I doubt it'll be revealed until the chapter of their birth! Of which I am so excited to write :')

As always, I am open to ideas. Please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts on this chapter!

Next chapter, Amelia will be paying her good friend Dawn another visit ;)