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It had been Mobius who had come to Loki with the idea, with a grin on his face that was equal parts sly and affectionate. The god of mischief—and stories, he had to keep reminding himself—hadn’t really been listening as Mobius had talked, too preoccupied with admiring the glint in his partner’s eyes and the familiar curve of his quirked lips. All he’d really paid attention to were the words “bath” and “massage,” and that had been enough to get Loki to agree enthusiastically. He’d tried to ignore the way his heart painfully skipped a beat as Mobius’s grin grew softer and more indulgent, but it was impossible; Mobius had a hold over him like no one ever had before, not in Asgard, nor Midgard, nor any of the timelines he’d held in his blistering hands (though that was a story for another day). Mobius looked at Loki as if he were the one responsible for hanging the moon and the stars and every celestial body in the night sky, with all that creation and wonder and reverence reflecting back at Loki through his mortal eyes. It was utterly overwhelming. And yet, Loki knew he looked at Mobius exactly the same. Though their words could be sharp and their jabs, even sharper, they were just one way of expressing the infinite, mutual feelings between the two of them.
So Loki hadn’t really complained when Mobius practically bodily dragged him into the bathroom, as he was too busy admiring the cut of his lover’s jaw and the charmingly crooked profile of his nose. Mobius was perfectly imperfect, like he’d been sculpted by some other Asgardian god to be the subject of Loki’s worship and affection alone. He probably looked like a love-struck idiot, just standing there as Mobius made quick work of Loki’s clothes, manhandling him out of the fabric as if Loki had no control over his own body. (Which he didn’t, really, not when the simple act of admiring Mobius seemed to take up all his brain power and then some.)
Too soon, he found himself in the claw-foot tub that was somehow already full of pleasantly warm water; not icily cold, as Loki would usually prefer, but not hot enough to pique his annoyance either. He turned around, ready to draw Mobius into the bath with him, only to find himself faced with an abdomen. A clothed abdomen.
Loki let his eyes drag up the length of Mobius’s—still fully clothed?—torso, not bothering to hide his confusion. He hooked his arms over the curved lip of the bath as he stared up at Mobius, not quite understanding why his lover was looking at him with an expression akin to fond exasperation when he expected Mobius to look… horny? Hungry? Anything would be better, Loki thought, than the quirked eyebrow and unimpressed smirk that Mobius was sporting.
“…hello?” Loki tried, going to grab at Mobius’s tie to pull him forwards, but Mobius stepped backwards before Loki’s wet hands could grasp the fabric. “Are you not getting in? I thought…” he trailed off, vaguely gesturing to his own crotch.
Mobius rolled his eyes as he shrugged his jacket off, getting Loki momentarily excited again, but then he started rolling up his shirt sleeves rather than taking the rest of his clothes off, and Loki was confused again. “You weren’t listening, were you?” Mobius practically drawled, sending Loki a knowing look.
Loki scowled in return, haughtily pushing his hair behind his ear. He ignored the way that Mobius’s eyes carefully tracked the movement. “Half the drivel you spout is nonsense to begin with,” he tried, but the words fell flat—where they would usually be laced with spite or disgust, not even Loki’s body could attempt to aim either negative emotion at Mobius.
Mobius scoffed good-naturedly. “Please,” he said, folding his arms across his chest as he leaned against the vanity behind him. Loki tried not to ogle the way his forearms flexed. “Don’t get me started on the made-up words that come out of your mouth.”
Loki glared at Mobius in faux outrage and opened his mouth to retort, but Mobius beat him to it. “Oh, quit it with the kicked puppy act and turn around. You know I didn’t mean it.”
Loki huffed dramatically but did as Mobius asked, and turned around so that his back was to Mobius. If it was anyone else at his naked back, Loki would be highly guarded with his seiðr at the ready, sparking and fizzing out of his very veins—that was, if anyone could get close in the first place. But Loki was entirely at ease around Mobius, and his seiðr instead flickered fondly at the base of his spine, sending pleasant tingles up the length of it. Even his magic was in love with Mobius. Though the pair of them bickered and teased, it was all in good fun, and neither of them meant anything by it; it was just how they worked, and Loki wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Okay, I wasn’t listening. Not really,” Loki admitted, his shoulders up to his ears. “I thought we were just going to fuck.”
Mobius moved somewhere behind him, and Loki could practically hear the way he rolled his eyes once more. “Jumped to conclusions, did we?” his lover chuckled, and Loki pointedly ignored the way his own face burned. “I thought that might be the case.”
“We still could?” Loki said hopefully, far too quickly for his own liking. “I mean, there is plenty of room,” he purred, going to turn around again, but Mobius easily caught his shoulders and pushed him back into position.
“Easy, tiger. Maybe later. It wasn’t exactly what I had planned for right now, so just hold fire for the moment,” Mobius said, forcing Loki’s shoulders down into more of a neutral position. Loki felt his body give way, and he fought to contain a shiver at the weight and feeling of Mobius’s dry, calloused hands against his own damp skin.
“If you wanted me to bathe, you just had to tell me, you didn’t have to trick me into it,” Loki goaded, feeling a sick spark of self-satisfaction at the laugh that Mobius huffed out in response.
“I doubt I could trick you into anything. Who’s the god of mischief between us, here?” Mobius asked, letting go of his shoulders. Loki missed his touch immediately.
“Well, it’s certainly not you, old man,” Loki grinned.
“The gall to call me old,” Mobius snorted. It was (ironically) an age-old argument between the two of them, one that neither of them would win nor concede to the other. Loki was about to jeer back, when the plastic clicking of a bottle lid caught his attention instead.
“What—” he started, only to cut off soundlessly as two dry sets of fingers wound themselves in his hair, scratching at the base of his scalp. His eyelids fluttered against his will at the firm pressure pushing into all the right places, and he felt the tension he didn’t know he was holding begin to leech from his body, leaving his muscles soft and pliant.
“What?” Mobius repeated softly, no hint of teasing in his voice. His fingertips worked their way over Loki’s from back to front, and with every motion, Loki felt himself melting further. He didn’t even react as one hand left his head to gently wet his hair, trickling water over Loki’s scalp but so careful to not get it in his eyes nor on his face. It was only when both hands paused and withdrew, and the plastic clicking sounded again from somewhere near the base of the bath, that Loki felt some sort of awareness return to his body. Mobius’s hands returned, slippery and wet with a thick, sweet-smelling liquid, and it was too much.
“I—ha, Mobius, I really don’t think this is necessary—”
“Do you literally ever shut up?” Mobius asked, and Loki snapped his mouth closed almost audibly as Mobius’s fingers tightened in his hair, slick with shampoo suds. “Just relax. It might not be ‘necessary,’ but I want to do it. I want to take care of you. So just let me.”
Loki swallowed dryly. No one had ever washed his hair before for him, except his mother. No one has ever wanted to; the only people who had even touched his hair were the myriads of past lovers who’d gripped and tugged at it, too harsh and demeaning for it to ever actually mean anything to Loki save for a vague sense of annoyance. He maintained his hair himself, simply snapping his fingers and letting his seiðr do the work of styling and cutting it, if it could even be called that. Loki wouldn’t be the first nor last to admit that he was somewhat of a vain creature, though that didn’t often extend to his hair—or at least, the wellbeing of it. Sure, he’d slap copius amounts of oil in it to tame it down, making sure not a strand was out of place, but taking the time to actually care for it? He’d always had far more important things to do.
But for Mobius to not only offer, but insist to take care of it, to take care of him—it made Loki’s heart flip in all sorts of worrisome ways, and he felt his shoulders raising skyward once more despite himself.
The hands in his hair stopped, and Loki felt all his attention snap to Mobius immediately. “You’re thinking too much,” Mobius said, trailing one sud-sodden hand down through Loki’s scalp right to the nape of his neck, gently scratching his nails all the way down. Those damn fingers then gently gripped the back of his neck, applying only the barest hint of pressure, just enough to ground Loki; to give him something to focus on, to give him something to remind him that it was Mobius who was anchoring him right then and there in space and time. To remind him that Mobius was real, and so was Loki, and that the moment they were sharing was real too.
Mobius could always tell when Loki started to spiral; it didn’t take much to set him off, not when he’d spent millennia ensuring that infinite millennia would be able to occur.
“Sorry.” The word came out strangled, and Loki felt a vague sense of hatred at how his voice sounded: weak. “I’m sorry.”
Loki heard and then felt a sigh across the wet skin of his shoulders, Mobius’s soft exhale causing something as Midgardian as goosebumps to erupt. “Don’t apologise,” Mobius whispered, and then came the soft press of lips to the top of his spine, so gentle and yet unexpected that Loki couldn’t even attempt to control the airy gasp that escaped him. He felt Mobius’s lips curl upwards against his skin before he pulled away, and as he did so, both of his hands moved southward from their respective positions as well to draw soapy swirls across the back of his raised shoulders. “Is it too much? I can st—”
“No!” Loki gasped once more, genuinely panicking. “Please don’t stop, Mobius, I— please, please don’t leave me.” The words came out all in a rush, tripping over each other as they flew out and landed haphazardly everywhere. Loki didn’t even realise that one of his hands had also flown out of where it was resting in the water to grip one of Mobius’s wrists. He felt the thin bones under his fingertips, the calm rhythm of his pulse, the fragile skin that was seconds away from blooming with bruises.
And yet, Mobius didn’t move, he didn’t gasp, he didn’t do anything. He just stayed entirely still, seemingly content to let Loki clutch his wrist for dear life, and nothing else.
They stayed like that for an undeterminable amount of time. All Loki could feel was the water growing steadily cooler, and the reliable heartbeat pulsing against his own. The bathroom has begun spinning at one point, and he’d thought he’d started to see those damned timelines sneaking into the corners of his vision again, so Loki had closed his eyes and instead just listened. Mobius’s breathing was almost inhumanely even, and between those soft sounds and the consistent thrumming of his pulse, Loki eventually managed to peel his eyes open once more.
Loki didn’t know how he’d done it, but Mobius must have shifted at some point—perhaps his knees had started to ache, Loki thought to himself, feeling equal parts snarky and guilty—so that he could see the profile of Loki’s face. His head rested against the outside of the tub, though his wrist was still held fast just above Loki’s own shoulder. Loki turned to look at him, blinking heavily, before lifting the captured wrist to his lips to kiss the fragile skin softly. As he withdrew both his lips and fingers, the mottled blue-purple of fresh Midgardian bruising assaulted his eyes, and he surveyed the damage in unveiled horror. Loki felt the weight of Mobius’s gaze on him, and even as his seiðr surged out of his fingertips to heal the damage, Loki still felt the tears prickling in his eyes.
“I’m truly sorry,” Loki said, turning his body just so to face Mobius but not daring to meet his eyes. “You were trying to do something so—just, so incredibly nice for me and I panicked. And then I hurt you,” he grimaced, watching the hand that Mobius had drawn back to himself. “I can’t seem to stop hurting you.”
There were a few beats of loaded silence, and with every one that passed, the urge to try (and fail) to drown himself in the now-cold water of the bathtub grew stronger. “You did hurt me, just now,” Mobius admitted, and Loki felt his heart drop to the furthest parts of his body. He clenched his eyes shut once more. “But,” Mobius continued, “you healed me immediately. You’ve hurt me before, but you’ve always healed me. You’ve made me—ah, shit,” Mobius swore wetly, and Loki opened his eyes worriedly to see the faint outline of tears gathering in Mobius’s own. “This was just supposed to be a nice bath, you know? Not a soppy and soggy heart-to-heart,” he laughed.
Loki tried to go for a smirk in return, but it came out all twisted. Half-baked; underdone. “What did I make you do?”
Mobius breathed deeply. “You made me whole. But more than that, you made me realise that I’d never been. That there was a Loki-sized part of me that only a certain, special Loki could fill,” he said, entirely genuine despite the clichéd words, and it stung.
“You’ve always been whole, even if you didn’t know it,” Loki said. “You never needed me. No one ever does.”
“Then how come it feels like my life only properly started when you landed ass-first in it?” Mobius asked, almost incredulous. “I’ve spent so long without you, Loki. The time before you is hardly worth remembering. And the time when you were gone hurts too much to even fathom. The time I have with you, right here, right now, in this god-forsaken tiled bathroom with these fucking freezing cold soapy hands—this is one of the best moments of my life, because of you. Because you’re in it. And because you’re with me,” Mobius said, and Loki stared at the tiny tear that ran down the bridge of that crooked nose. “I need you, Loki. I want you. And I want to do this for you. If you’ll let me.”
Loki couldn’t muster the words to reply, so he felt his heart lodge itself in his throat as he leaned forward and captured Mobius’s lips with his own. They were slightly chapped, and a little dry, but entirely perfect nonetheless.
“This is pathetic,” Loki mumbled as they parted ever so, his lips brushing against Mobius’s as he spoke. “Crying over a bath.”
“I think it’s romantic,” Mobius hummed, grinning. “At least, on my part, anyway. I’m not the one wallowing in ice-cold water with shampoo still stuck in his hair.”
Loki snorted, and Mobius’s eyes crinkled upwards in delight. “Right, you win,” he conceded, going in for one last fleeting peck before leaning back. “Can you help me get this shit out?”
“Uh uh,” Mobius tutted, pushing a damp strand of dark hair out of Loki’s face and pushing it behind his ear for him. “What happened to good old-fashioned manners?”
Loki huffed, but it was good-natured. “Would you please help me get this shit out of my hair?” He asked, syrupy sweet, nearly batting his eyelashes.
“Good enough for me,” Mobius shrugged, re-arranging himself right behind Loki. The porcelain of the bathtub separated them, but Loki could practically feel the shape of Mobius’s body against his own; he had every contour memorised, every way they fit together, and every way they didn’t.
And then Mobius’s hands were in his hair again, pressing the pads of his thumbs deep into Loki’s scalp. Each swirl of his thumbs and movement of his fingertips was glorious, working over his head with care, and Loki felt himself sink deeper into the tub, until the icy water went up past his shoulders and lapped at his neck. Everything was so quiet, except for the soft crunch and squish of the shampoo in his hair, and Mobius’s fingers working their (nearly literal) magic.
So he let his head fall backwards ever so, baring his throat to the entirely ordinary bathroom, and the entirely extraordinary man behind him.