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Mobius doesn’t mean to say it, first time round. Well, he does mean to say it, because he’s been thinking of nothing else for weeks, and there was going to be a whole speech alongside it and everything. But in the end it just falls out of him.
They’re lying in bed on a Sunday morning, post-coital, and all is peace and light – or as much as it can be in the Mobius household, which is that outside he can hear Shaun hitting something metal with a baseball bat nearby and the frightened shrieks of a small creature caught in one of Kevin’s traps. But all is peaceful in the bedroom at least. They are tangled up in the covers and Mobius is lying with his head on Loki’s chest while Loki hums some Asgardian song and strokes his fingers through Mobius’s short hair and Mobius is so, so happy he could cry.
So out it comes. “Loki,” he says. “I love you.”
Loki freezes. Not literally – because he could, with the whole being a Frost Giant and all – but he goes very still. His fingers stop stroking Mobius’s hair.
Oh dear, thinks Mobius.
He raises his head off Loki’s chest. Loki is staring up at the ceiling, eyes very wide. He has gone even paler than usual.
“Er,” says Mobius. “I hope that’s okay.”
Loki makes a noise in the back of his throat.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to say it back,” says Mobius quickly. “I didn’t mean – I didn’t say it just for you to say it back. I just wanted to say it. Is that okay?”
“Erk,” says Loki. And then, “Mmhmm.” But he doesn’t stop staring up at the ceiling.
“Oh boy,” says Mobius and takes his hand, and just at that point both their TemPads start bleeping. Loki jumps like he’s been shot. “Ah shit,” says Mobius, letting go of Loki’s hand and taking the TemPad. “Talk about timing.” He clicks on the TVA’s fancy new communicator. “Hey O.B, do you want us in?”
“Yes please!” says O.B. “Tout suite!” B-15 has been teaching him French. It’s been hard going. For someone who is a genius at physics, O.B. cannot figure out idioms to save his life. But he’s getting there.
“All righty.” Mobius clicks off his communicator and turns back to Loki. “Do you want the shower first or shall we go together?”
“Um,” says Loki. He still has not moved a muscle.
“Okay, shower together,” says Mobius and yanks Loki out of bed and into the shower. Loki goes willingly, in a sort of discombobulated haze, and after the shower he seems a little more like himself if very quiet. They get dressed, pack the boys off to Mobius’s harassed neighbour, then fire up the TemPad and go to work.
The TVA is a hive of activity when they arrive. They’ve been tracking down He Who Remains variants and recruiting any of them who aren’t super evil, so it’s been all go, but Mobius is enjoying it. He’s enjoying living on his timeline with his boys but coming into the TVA when called. He’s enjoying chasing down variants with Loki by his side and then coming home and burning fish fingers and chips for dinner. He’s enjoying re-recruiting all the old TVA members with a new offer – have a life on the timeline and help us. We literally work in time after all, you don’t have to miss a day of your life. (Some people have stayed at the TVA permanently. Casey, O.B. They like it like that and Mobius isn’t going to argue with it. Loki jumps between staying with Mobius, hanging out on Sylvie’s timeline and living at the TVA. Mobius doesn’t argue with that either.)
They even managed to bring some money in after Loki found some Jotunheim treasure in one of Casey’s drawers, said “Leave it to me” in his usual enigmatic way, went through a timedoor to Jotunheim and came back with several billion dollars’ worth of Jotunheim currency. So now everyone has salaries and O.B. can buy as much equipment as he likes. He’s been inventing non-stop. They’ve got communicators, upgraded timedoors, proper coffee machines, the Loom has never been shinier. Mobius is starting to think they might actually have a chance against He Who Remains when he finally descends on them.
Of course, not every day is a chasing-the-bad-guy day. A lot of days are just research. For each day that is a catch-that-guy day, there must be at least ten days of research. Loki has taken to this with his usual poor attitude, but he does try, bless him.
Today he isn’t trying. Because Mobius has broken him.
He sits in his chair opposite Mobius for five minutes maximum before he’s leaping out again. Loki prowling around the offices is par for the course these days and everyone is used to it, but this is different. He’s not prowling, he’s just sort of drifting around, bumping into tables and staring fixedly at printers. This makes everyone nervous.
Mobius leaves it for a bit. Loki just has to decompress, that’s all. He puts his head down and only re-emerges two hours later when Loki still hasn’t returned to his chair. Mobius leaves the paperwork and hunts him down.
Loki is leaning on the edge of Casey’s desk, repeatedly clicking a pen in his hand very slowly and intensely with a fiercely concentrated look on his face. Casey looks absolutely terrified, like a mountain lion has just come and sat next to him.
“Hey,” says Mobius. “You okay?”
“Yup,” says Loki, and clicks the pen menacingly. Casey gulps and mouths he’s not okay to Mobius. Mobius gives him a little nod.
“You want to come back to the research?”
“Sure,” says Loki, and puts down the pen, following Mobius back to his chair.
He’s there about ten minutes before he’s up again, wandering off, and this time Mobius gives up. There’s only so much trouble Loki can cause in the TVA anyway, and he doesn’t seem to be in the ‘trouble causing’ mood. More in the ‘might stare at a wall for days’ mood.
B-15 turns up an hour later and says, “Loki just walked into a door and apologised to it. What’s going on with him?”
Mobius sighs and gives up on the paperwork. He wasn’t really concentrating on it anyway. “I think I said something he wasn’t ready to hear.”
“Oh,” says B-15 and gives him a long look. “What was that?”
“That I love him,” Mobius said, and B-15 sucked air through her teeth.
“Damn,” she says.
“Yeah,” says Mobius.
“Well, you should probably do something before Loki just strolls straight into the Loom,” says B-15, and Mobius decides it’s time for lunch.
He locates Loki poking a nearby snake plant with a ruler, in a kind of distracted way. “Okay, lunchtime,” says Mobius, and steers Loki to the canteen.
They get salads. Loki looks at his like he has never seen a salad before.
“Okay,” Mobius says. “About what I said earlier.”
This weird look of relief flickers across Loki’s face, and his shoulders slump. “It’s fine if you didn’t mean it,” he says.
“What? No of course I meant it,” says Mobius, and Loki’s shoulders go right back up again. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”
“But,” says Loki, and stops. Mobius waits patiently. Loki stares at his salad for a while. “But I’m me,” he points out at last.
“Yeah,” Mobius says. “I am aware.”
“No,” Loki says. “But. You said that. To me.”
“Yep,” says Mobius.
Loki turns his stare from his salad to Mobius. Then he says very quietly, “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
There’s suddenly a lump in Mobius’s throat. “Look. Maybe, we. Maybe we can just forget I said anything at all?”
“I don’t want that,” Loki says instantly.
“Okay,” says Mobius. “Only you look like you’re about to jump off something high.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” Loki says, which must be one of his worst lies to date. “I’m good, I’m fine, I just need to…think about it. For a bit.”
“Yeah,” says Mobius. “Okay. That’s okay.”
“Okay,” echoes Loki, and takes a bite of his salad.
By the end of lunch, Loki is back to his old bouncy self, and Mobius can’t help but be relieved. Between them, they even get the paperwork done by dinnertime, and Mobius goes home to cook a really bad chilli while Loki goes off to get epically drunk with Sylvie.
They don’t talk about it. Mobius doesn’t bring it up for weeks and neither does Loki. They catch one terrible He Who Remains variant and one friendly one, and they recruit the friendly one and imprison the terrible one. And the whole time Mobius wonders if perhaps he should say something again, because Loki might just be pretending the whole thing never happened. And they shouldn’t be doing that, because Mobius still loves Loki even if Loki will never be able to say it back.
He remembers watching a TV show once where people were put into a room full of whatever they feared the most to see if it would help them. It was called exposure therapy, Mobius remembers. He remembers a woman with a button phobia was actually able to touch some of the buttons afterwards. Maybe he can apply the same thing here.
So he starts saying it again. Mostly in casual situations but always when he means it. Not just to get a reaction out of Loki, although to be fair his reactions are hilarious. Loki makes him a coffee one morning and Mobius says “Thanks, I love you,” and Loki misses his chair and sits on the ground. Loki gives Kevin a Loki-style telling off when Kevin is found carrying a knife at school (i.e. makes dark threats and then shows Kevin how to hide the knife properly) and Mobius says that night “Thanks for helping me today, I love you,” and Loki chokes on his own saliva. Loki adjusts Mobius’s tie after a tussle with a weirdly tall He Who Remains and Mobius looks at him and says, “I love you very much,” and Loki goes purple.
The only time Mobius doesn’t say it is when they’re having sex, because Loki’s defences are down enough as it is and he doesn’t want Loki to accidentally say it back and then completely implode. So Mobius never says it then, even though he really, really wants to. And he’s not sure he’s really getting anywhere, but he keeps saying it because honestly, it’s nice to say.
And then it gets weird, because other people get involved.
It starts with O.B getting the wrong end of the stick. Loki is helping him fix one of the communicators (with a lot of checking the newly updated TVA guidebook) and Mobius is playing around with some of the junk in the background, and then O.B says, “You’re a great friend, Loki. I love you.”
Mobius stares. Loki goes bright red and says, “Hnnngnn.”
“Hey Loki,” Mobius says. “Can you get me some hot chocolate from the machine?”
Loki looks at Mobius a bit wild-eyed but obeys, walking out of O.B’s lab like he is Dorothy who just landed in a patch of munchkins. Mobius turns to O.B.
“What was that about?”
“What?” O.B says. “Saying ‘I love you’? I just thought we just did that now. You say it to Loki all the time.”
“I mean,” Mobius says. “Yeah, but. I mean it.”
“Well, so do I,” O.B says, a bit defensive. “Loki is a great friend and I do love him. You’re not the only one who cares about him, you know. We all do.”
“Huh,” says Mobius, and thinks about it. Can’t be bad for the exposure therapy, right? And maybe having more people join in will make Loki realise he is actually deserving of love. Because right now it’s just Mobius saying it, and Loki probably thinks Mobius is just a lunatic whose head has been turned by Loki’s pretty face. “You know what?” he says. “Keep saying it, O.B. And tell the others they can too. Only if they mean it, though.”
“Sure thing!” O.B says brightly, which is when Loki comes in with hot chocolate for Mobius and coffee for himself, which he downs in one go, and then they get back to work on the communicator like nothing happened.
Next week, Loki gives B-15 a newly upgraded time stick and B-15 says, “Oooh, Loki, I love you,” and squeezes his face with both hands while Loki flails magnificently.
The week after that, Casey tells Mobius and Loki that he loves them both after they rescue him from a He Who Remains variant who breaks out of his prison and goes on a rampage. Mobius says, “Aw, thanks man, I love you too,” and Loki says “Grrkyk,” and gives the collapsed He Who Remains variant an extra kick in the side.
A month later, Sylvie comes for a rare visit to the TVA. She always treats these visits like she is an external regulator inspecting the premises for anything that is not up to code, and always seems massively disappointed when she finds nothing. Mobius loves it. If Sylvie can find nothing to complain about, then it’s a sign they’re doing an excellent job.
Halfway through the visit/inspection, Loki helps O.B drag in a pile of equipment to the office from downstairs and O.B says afterwards, “That was a great help, Loki, love you!” and Loki says “Nnnnnmmm,” and sits down heavily on the side of a desk.
Sylvie frowns at Mobius as she flicks through his paperwork. “What was that?”
“Oh yeah,” Mobius says. “We keep telling Loki we love him. To get him used to the idea.”
“Ah,” Sylvie says, getting it in one. “Exposure therapy.”
“See, you get it.” Mobius always likes chatting to Sylvie, she’s a smart one. “We only say it when we mean it though, I promise. Not just because it’s funny.” He leans forward conspiratorially. “But it is quite funny.”
Sylvie gives him a knife-sharp grin. “Now that I can get on board with,” she says.
And then later, when Sylvie is explaining something to B-15 and can’t come up with the right word and Loki jumps in instantly with the word (because their minds are scary similar sometimes), Sylvie says, “Love you lots,” and gives Loki a kiss on the cheek and Loki almost collapses. Sylvie flashes Mobius the sort of smile that Mobius sees on Loki’s face sometimes – the smile of mischief well done – and Mobius gives her a thumbs up.
Of course he can’t let Sylvie get away that easy, so when she finally declares that the TVA has not yet fallen into the expected ruin and destruction and gets ready to leave, Mobius waits until she’s almost stepped through the timedoor and then shouts, “Thanks for your help today Sylvie, we love you!”
Sylvie’s expression as she steps through the timedoor is priceless. Loki cackles for hours afterwards.
And then, several months into this exposure therapy, Mobius and Loki are sat on Mobius’s couch watching some terrible horror movie. Loki has his head on Mobius’s shoulder and is fiddling with some toy of Kevin’s, and Mobius has one of those moments when he realises he is cuddling with an actual God on his couch and his mind twists at the impossibility of his life.
“Hey,” he says, not really thinking about it anymore, “I love you.”
“I – ” Loki says, and then stops. There is a very, very delicate moment. Then Loki says, “Nnmmggnnn,” and wriggles into Mobius’s side, and says nothing more.
But it’s a start, Mobius thinks with some triumph. It’s a start.
The next week, O.B says, “Loki, I love you,” and Loki takes a very deep breath and says, “Yeah.”
As soon as Loki is out the door, O.B turns to Mobius, his face lit up. “He said ‘yeah’!” he whispers, in tones of complete delight.
The week after, B-15 says, “Love you lots,” to Loki, and Loki says, “Yeah that,” and doesn’t even falter. B-15 gives Mobius a wink.
Of course, when it happens Mobius isn’t even prepared for it. This is par for the course with Loki so you’d think he’d be forewarned, but apparently not. They’ve got conflicting timelines, a new phenomenon that O.B has found where one timeline smushes into another timelines, so sometimes there are the same people in one world doing completely different things. This conflicting timeline has two He Who Remains variants, ostensibly somewhat gentle versions but with the capacity to rile each other up into more dangerous versions, so they open two different timedoors and split the team – Mobius going to one variant and Loki to the other.
And Loki – damn him, bless him – turns around to Mobius literally just before walking through the timedoor and says, as if it is the easiest thing in the world, “I love you.”
“What?” Mobius yells but Loki is already stepping through the timedoor and now Mobius has to go through his timedoor, straight into a mission, with that rolling around in his brain.
Loki, Loki, Loki. It’s never simple with him.
Mobius gets his variant, perhaps more impatiently than usual, and hauls him through his timedoor, round about the time Loki brings his through as well.
“Oh thank God,” Loki’s He Who Remains variant says when he is dragged into the room. “Other people! This guy has been going on about love non-stop since I met him, it’s driving me mad.”
Loki grins at Mobius. “Can’t seem to stop now I’ve got started,” he says. He drops the variant into B-15’s arms. “B-15, I love you,” he says.
“Aww,” says B-15, cuddling the He Who Remains variant. “And you even brought me a present.”
Loki turns to O.B and Casey. “O.B. Casey. I love you two.”
“Thanks Loki!” says Casey and O.B sniffles something incomprehensively into a tissue, wiping his eyes.
“I love Sylvie,” says Loki to the room at large, since there’s no Sylvie around. “Even though she gets me so drunk I forget my own name.”
He turns to Mobius. They lock eyes. “And I love you, Mobius,” Loki says softly. “More than anyone.”
And then, quite suddenly, it’s Mobius’s turn to freeze. He stares at Loki for a long moment, and then launches forward, takes Loki’s face in his hands and gives him the best kiss it is in his capacity to give.
Everyone cheers around them, even the He Who Remains variants.
And Mobius is so, so happy he could cry.