Written to: Skinny Love - Bon Iver, crosspost from AO3. It's my birthday tomorrow.
Verklempt: Completely overcome with emotion.
Modi is grateful for the day that Loki and Thor come to fetch him back from the Avengers tower, looking gloriously tanned with necklaces of bright red and white flowers draped around their necks. Yes, Steve - that was what the big blonde man called himself, but Modi thought it was a very odd sounding name - was an adequate substitute for his papa, except he couldn't fly and didn't have a big hammer to take Modi flying around the city. And Modi missed his mama something fierce, and was more than delighted to see Loki walking through the door.
So excited is he the minute he sees Loki's face appear over the couch, that he pushes himself away from Steve and the bowl of mashed potatoes he is waving enticingly in front of Modi's mouth. Loki grins, bends down and opens his arms for Modi to crawl into them.
Much to Loki's surprise, Modi pushes himself up onto his feet, wobbles towards him unsteadily, trips over a corner of the rug and topples over in a little heap on the carpet. Loki holds his breath, waiting for the wails to begin, but Modi just looks at the ground with a determined look on his face, chews on his lip, and pushes himself back up.
"Oh, nine skies," Loki breathes, holding out a hand for Modi to latch on to, tears building up behind his eyes and choking in his throat. "When did you learn how to do this, sweetling?"
Modi takes the final few steps towards Loki at a tilting, wobbly run, giggling as he burrows his face into the hollow of Loki's neck.
Thor comes into the tower living room, juggling duffel bags and souvenirs from hand to hand, comes upon Loki crying silently into their son's shoulder. At first, Thor can't recognise the tiny blonde child Loki is cradling in his arms (Steve had taken it upon himself to give Modi a haircut, and Modi's short blonde curls corkscrewed out at weird angles and lengths. Steve was a superhero, not a super hairdresser, not by any means).
Once Thor recognises the child as Modi, he wonders if Loki is crying because Modi's hair contained some magical powers like in that one movie with that blonde girl with the ridiculously long hair Loki had forced him to watch. And then Thor looks - really looks - and sees that for the first time Modi is standing. Really, truly standing, his two little feet planted firmly on the ground.
Thor gives a great roar of delight, sweeps Loki and Modi up into his arms, and dives out the nearest window. Steve just stares after the Asgardians, mouth agape, mashed potatoes slowly falling over the edge of the spoon onto the carpet. They couldn't fly, could they? Steve wondered. Not without Mjolnir -
Just as Steve thinks that, he turns and ducks just in time as Mjolnir joyfully goes whizzing over his head to follow Thor. She missed the window the first time - and the second, and the third, and just for good measure smashed the rest of the bulletproof windows on that floor before plummeting after Thor.