Chapter Text
One day Sean and Kevin’s dad came back different.
Neither of them noticed immediately. Kevin had dug a large hole in the backyard, then dropped in two rats he found in the basement, and Sean was officiating the boxing match. Safe to say they were busy. Then dad came home from work early dressed in a brown suit instead of his usual khakis, and the boys were distracted by the unexpected challenge of hastily scooping two rats they weren’t supposed to have out of a hole that wasn’t supposed to be there.
But dad didn’t seem to notice or care. There was a shake in his hands as he tugged them into a tight embrace, the sensitive-yet-clutching kind, the kind usually reserved for Christmas pickup after they’d spent the holidays with their mother and he’d had time to miss them.
Also distracting was the strange man standing in the driveway. He wore a brown suit too, except he also had a big overcoat and a face like a rat dragged unwillingly out of a basement. Or like Anna after the dipshit prince said “if only someone loved you”. Or like a dad at divorce court.
Their dad loosened his grip on them and sat back on his heels, holding them by their shoulders as he sized up their bare feet and dirty t-shirts. ‘Look at you little terrors,’ he said fondly. That, beyond the suit and the overly emotional greeting, was the major difference. He didn’t even seem to care that Kevin had a rat in one hand and another scrambling out of his shorts pocket.
‘Who’s that?’ Sean asked, pointing to the man in the driveway. The man in the driveway startled to life. Dad let go of them with an affectionate pat and approached the stranger to introduce him formally.
‘This,’ he said, placing a hand on the stranger’s back, ‘is Loki. I have a feeling you guys’ll get along.’
Ah. That must be it. Sean and Kevin shared a look. This was exactly how their mother had introduced her boring new husband.
‘Do you want to see our rat thunderdome?’ Kevin asked. Sean peered between “Loki” and their dad, evaluating. They boys agreed, following their mother’s ill-advised new marriage, that any new stepmom (or additional stepdad, whatever, they could pivot) was getting the acid test.
Loki, interestingly, passed. He even helped Kevin to square up the sides of the hole with a garden spade to make it harder for the rats to climb out.
He wasn’t what they had expected. For starters, their dad’s post-mom dating history up ‘til now included two people: a frumpy teacher with bangs and a peanut allergy, and the lady mechanic who had nothing in common with their dad except a borderline obsession with jet skis. This guy was interesting. He had an ominous aura and carried himself like a mafia don, except instead of Italian he sounded English, and when they asked about his name their dad said it was Nordic. Despite having no idea where Nord was, and being pretty sure the guy was a gangster, Kevin and Sean decided to give him a chance. What did their dad call it when they got a new babysitter? A trial period. They would put him on trial. If he was fun, he could stay. And if he was a gangster but he was still fun, he might have to go to jail anyway, but they’d still accept him.
Their dad persuaded Loki to stick around for the evening and the boys pretended to clean up the toys carpeting the living room as the grownups gradually relocated from the entryway of the living room to the kitchen. Then, Sean and Kevin took turns, one making cleaning noises in the living room while the other hid near the kitchen to listen in.
Strangely, nothing they overheard answered any of their questions, and only intensified their curiosity about their dad’s sudden change in personality. They’d been willing to put that down to love, since TV taught them personality changes were a common symptom of falling in love, like pregnancy and being stupid. But as Loki and their dad talked in the kitchen, leaning into each other across the kitchen island, every time their hushed tone increased in volume to a level audible from just outside the door, it would be something like …
‘I can’t ask you to do that.’
‘You’re not asking, I’m offering. You said you’ve got nowhere except the TVA -’
‘I didn’t say that to solicit pity.’
A scoff. ‘If you think I pity you, then you’ve misinterpreted this in a big way.’
Silence. Sean took the chance to creep away to the living room to signal a change of watch the Kevin, who had spent the past five minutes dragging a toy car from one end of the carpet to the other. In the kitchen, the conversation resumed, unheard.
‘I don’t think you’re incapable of making your own home, at the TVA or elsewhere. I’m saying … Look, I’ve got a lot going on in here since Sylvie dug up my old memories.’
Mobius waved his hand in a broad gesture around the kitchen, and noted the way Loki’s eyes did not stray from his face. ‘Bits and pieces are floating around disconnected. It’s hard to know what information I need or how to recall it, it’s like all those neural pathways atrophied. I’m lost right now. I haven’t been their dad for hundreds of years. I think they go to a public school, but I can’t remember the name or how to drive there, let alone whether either of the boys are currently suspended, which they might be.’
Loki averted his gaze and took a thoughtful sip of the craft beer Mobius had found in the fridge in a plastic box with a battered-looking child safety lock.
‘I’m not saying I regret coming back,’ Mobius continued softly, stiltedly. ‘I knew it would be hard to re-adjust. And look, maybe I’ll end up coming back to the TVA anyway.’
Loki looked sharply up at this.
‘To be honest, most of the memories I’ve got of running the store are stressful. Not to mention trying to raise two kids at the same time. I know what I’m doing at the TVA in a way I never knew what I was doing here. And combined with the time travel factor I could be there for my boys in a way I never could when I was trying to run a business.’
As he spoke, Mobius crept his hand across the linoleum until it grazed the thick woollen sleeve of Loki’s overcoat. He looked down, as if he hadn’t realised the extent to which he had been physically reaching, and sucked his lower lip between his teeth.
Then he exhaled and took Loki’s hand. Loki froze.
‘So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, having you around would only be a bonus to me. Cards on the table. You have a place here, if you want it. And I hope, all said and done, that you’ve got space for me too …’
A massive crash in the living room sent Mobius jumping nearly out of his skin, withdrawing his hand and hurrying to respond to the sound of two children arguing loudly over whose turn it was to pretend to clean up. Hundreds of years’ worth of habit, training, and muscle memory crammed into a fifty year old body had Mobius standing in the living room assessing the damage, and eleven newly reacquired years of parenthood had him managing the children responsible, and by the time he packed off his surly sons to brush their teeth and start getting ready for bed, Loki had vanished.
Mobius stood deflated, facing the kitchen island and its two abandoned beer bottles. The silence was answer enough.
He hadn’t expected the crushing pain in his chest. He’d known it was a risk. But he’d hoped, all the same. He’d really, really hoped.
Mobius tiredly packed away the bottles, along with miscellaneous items laying around the kitchen that were meant to be in the sink, and took the wooden chopping board out of the sink that wasn’t supposed to be in there because leaving it wet caused the wood to warp. Not that his kids necessarily knew that. Or maybe they did. Maybe he’d talked to them about not leaving wooden chopping boards in the sink. He tried to recall, but he couldn’t. His memories were all fog. And his chest hurt.
It was halfway through the dishes that Loki returned with a sound like a pigeon landing on a rooftop. Mobius twisted at the waist, bare hands in the sink with his sleeves rolled up because he couldn’t find the rubber gloves. He felt his cheeks redden. Maybe he shouldn’t have finished off his beer. And Loki’s.
‘Wasn’t sure you were coming back,’ he said. Loki was dressed the same, his hair only slightly more dishevelled, his back straight. Which is to say, Mobius could not tell how long Loki had been gone, except for the faint impression that more time had passed for him than it had for Mobius.
‘Neither was I, at first,’ Loki replied. He approached slowly, offside, as if Mobius was a frightened animal he was trying not to corner. Mobius felt an odd combination of warmth and exasperation. He unplugged the sink and grabbed the tea towel hanging from the open cutlery drawer to dry his hands, and before Loki could say more, Mobius took a deep breath. Whatever reassuring platonic speech Loki had composed in an effort to save their friendship, Mobius didn’t think he could bear it.
‘That was a lot to dump on you at once. I’m sorry,’ Mobius said. ‘It’s been a long … we’ve both just been through a series of massive world-altering events. And even without my feelings, you’ve got a lot to work through, we both do, so I shouldn’t have saddled you with …’
‘With what?’
Mobius’s eyes shifted from dancing across the surfaces around Loki to Loki himself, who suddenly looked less wooden and more like his animated self, eyebrows raised to accentuate his expressive sea-blue eyes, and again the question,
‘Saddled me with what?’
Loki’s feet barely made a sound when he walked. Mobius had never really noticed that before. He sidled, no, “sidled” was too casual a word. He slithered. Like a snake through the muffling detritus of dead leaves on the forest floor. Like a boa draped elegantly over a branch.
‘A welcome? Opening your home to me?’
Before Mobius was ready, there were fewer than ten inches of distance between them. He wished he had time to pop a breath mint or something. Loki was too tall and deep-voiced and beautiful to just do that to people without warning. Did he know? Of course he knew, he’s Loki, he did it on purpose.
He was doing it on purpose. He was pressing his hand to Mobius’s hand, palm warm against his knuckles, sliding up his wrist and gently teasing his skin with his fingernails in a way that felt somehow both completely intentional and completely unintentional. On purpose.
‘Are you sorry for offering me this?’
Confusion and hope. He wished he knew how long Loki had taken to collect himself before coming back with the charm turned on full blast, as if Mobius hadn’t tried his best to be respectful and set things at a manageable pace. Though, Loki didn’t do things at a manageable pace, did he? He was a god of extremes.
‘You don’t have to seduce me,’ Mobius said, satisfying the vexed little voice in his head that was still a bit cross at Loki for handling this like a bomb and not a relationship. Potential relationship? What with the way Loki’s gaze flicked in a triangle between his eyes and his lips, it was feeling pretty damn potential. ‘I’m already there.’
‘I’m sorry for leaving without a word,’ Loki murmured. Their foreheads were almost touching.
‘It’s okay,’ Mobius said. It was okay now. ‘I gave you a lot to think about. Did you? Think about it?’
Loki hesitated. He stayed close, holding Mobius’s arms in his hands. Like holding a glass statue.
‘I want it to work,’ he said finally. ‘I want you to be happy. I’m not sure I’m your best choice to that end, but if I am your choice, know that I … I want it to work. I want us to work.’
‘I want that too,’ Mobius said quickly. He felt like he would grab this moment and hold it crushed into his ribcage for all eternity if he could. ‘Long as you’re happy to settle for me and the two little pests hiding outside the door, I’ll give you all I got.’
The smile he got was so joyfully heartfelt that it overrode any qualms Mobius had about squicking his kids, along with any lingering masculine pride that might have prevented him from standing on tiptoe to plant a firm kiss in that smile.
Loki pressed down into him, hesitation abandoned or at least greatly diminished under the much stronger hunger that bled from every point of contact like a prickle on the tongue. Mobius felt dizzy. Was he meant to feel dizzy? Maybe it had just been a long time. A really long time. Or maybe this was what swooning felt like.
From the doorway came a loud ‘blerch’, followed by a ‘eeyyuuughhhhh.’