Written to: Life in Technicolor ii - Coldplay, crosspost from AO3

Accismus: Feigning disinterest in something while actually desiring it.

"Will your friends be coming?" Loki wants to know, sitting on the nursery and playing peek-a-boo with Modi, who was lying on the soft nursery carpet and waving his little hands about in the air, squealing with laughter whenever Loki would take his hands away from his face.

"I would like them to, if that would be acceptable with you," Thor says from his perch in the armchair, where he sat perusing some Midgardian wedding catalogues that the Lady Pepper had given him, brochures she had already looked through for her upcoming wedding with Anthony. "I know you have had...some disagreements with them in the past."

Loki laughs, and Modi echoes him a moment later, giggling brightly. "Some disagreements? That is quite an understatement."

Jörmungandr slithers over from the block of ice he was teething at to look at his mother and the fat pink thing playing. Clearly the baby was not discriminating about entertainment; Jory had seen it staring with unabashed delight at the little mobile of multicoloured butterflies hanging above its cradle. The baby serpent really couldn't understand it, and had even tried to give the baby one of its stuffed rat plushies so that they could play hunters together, but the fat pink thing had looked at it with distaste and gone back to staring at the butterflies. Also, the baby couldn't move, so Jory supposed it was all for the better, the game might have been quite boring.

Thor flips through a few glossy pages of the magazine, looking at the happy couples smiling and holding hands, wreathed in white flowers. He didn't suppose Loki would want to wear a Midgardian wedding dress (those things looked rather constricting, and, if Thor was being honest, rather itchy), and he wondered if he would consent to wearing the dove grey linen robes that were customary for Asgardian wedding ceremonies. Grey didn't suit Loki's skin tone very well, as his brother had insisted many times, it made him look sallow and pale and malnourished and he was clearly none of those things.

"What about the invitations?" Thor asks, looking at the cream-coloured envelopes with silvery vines trailing across the thick paper. "According to this book, they ought to be themed somehow."

"I don't mind," Loki says cheerfully, lying down on the floor next to Modi and blowing little raspberries onto his stomach. Modi was squealing with laughter and flailing around. Thor smiles down at them briefly before going back to the book. He had told the other Avengers that the wedding was to be held in a few months' time, and so far, he and Loki had absolutely nothing planned for it.

Thor makes a note in the book by the invitation section to inquire whether golden invitations with crimson inlay would be too extravagant or not extravagant enough.

"What should the wedding flowers be?" Thor asks Loki, who doesn't appear to be listening. "Roses? Lilies?"

"You decide," Loki tells him, trying to disentangle the firm grip Modi has on his hair. "I am neither here nor there on the matter."

Thor furrows his brow, looks down at the glossy pages of the catalogue, and pencils in copious notes here and there amongst the fine print.

Later that night, when Thor is deep in dreams, his arms wrapped tightly around Loki's waist, Loki summons the wedding catalogues to his side of the bed and opens them quietly, flipping through the sleek pages and looking at the notes Thor had made.

He wrinkles his nose in distaste at some of the comments ("Red and gold invitations?" he mutters under his breath, "how gaudy." Thor mutters something in his sleep beside him and rubs his beard against Loki's shoulder blade.) and smiles at others (By the cake section, Thor has written "More than one cake, Loki loves cake. Laufey too, unfortunately").

Loki flips back to the beginning of the catalogue, a big grin on his face, takes up a pencil and begins to make edits with delight.