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Loki pressed a kiss to Mobius's knuckles, and took a step back.
Mobius leaned forward and squeezed his brow tight with concern and Loki squeezed his eyes tight with panic. Because Loki was there. Loki was molded into every inch of Mobius like clay, and it was going to make letting him go all the harder.
That was the press of his thumb in the dimple on his cheek, the sweep of his fingers carved into Mobius's brow. The steady slide of his fingerprints smoothing his forehead.
Loki pressed a kiss there, too.
His hands cradled Mobius's face with a guilty rush forward, fingers braced along the curve where his neck and head met. "I want to do this for you," he whispered, lips brushing over the worry lines that swam like lacework over Mobius's forehead.
"Do what?" the man whispered back. His hands ghosted over Loki's, as if unsure even now if that was a boundary he was allowed to cross. He craned his neck to see him and Loki shut his eyes and turned away. He couldn't speak- he knew he wouldn't speak- if Mobius was looking at him as he so often did. As if he could peel the edges of him back like a deer peels bark from a tree in winter to make way for the beautiful flowering plenty of spring.
Loki wasn't spring, and it wasn't fair for Mobius to see what lay under the bark.
But then, most things in Loki's life weren't fair.
"Let you live," Loki finally breathed, his throat trying to close around every word before it slipped out. They left his lungs in a pained whisper, a desperate plead for Mobius to take them and box them up and keep them safe before Loki could cram them back in his mouth.
Then Mobius's hands landed solidly on top of Loki's, cupping his own cheeks through the cold of Loki's fingers.
"Loki," Mobius said.
Loki opened his eyes, and his gaze drew to Mobius's. The look in his eyes was earnest, open, a look he hadn't seen in a while that usually came before Mobius told him something he didn't already know. Rare.
"I am living," he said, with such gumption and sureness.
Loki laughed.
"Living?" He wheezed. "Mobius, you will be living for all of the next three and a half minutes. Then your insides are going to unspool."
"And?"
Do not play dumb, old man.
Loki dug his fingers deeper beneath Mobius's cheekbones. "What do you mean and?"
Mobius chuckled (because the man could not snicker or laugh) as he waved a hand over the mint green staff kitchenette that Loki had dragged him into. "You think I don't know what this is?"
This loop was in the middle stages. Mobius was not dumb, but his wildest guesses did not capture what was about to occur. Loki knew because he had asked him. Many times.
"Loki. Sweetheart."
Loki perked and the edge of Mobius's moustache quirked up with his lips. "Wake word", Mobius mouthed, his eyes wide with mirth.
Ass.
The only sort of condescension that wasn't offensive, that laughing because I-know-I-got-you. It hurt with the same pain of slapping backs and playing cards on the last day of school. Loki bit back his smile and removed his hands from Mobius's face. This iteration had only roughly 20 minutes to spaghettification and Loki had dragged him in here because he was desperate and cornered and because now he needed to know if what he thought was occurring was occurring. He'd never taken the time to check because he was an asshole. Loki wrapped his arms tightly around each other. "Get on with it," he instructed.
Mobius winked. "Death by time is a risk I've known all my life," he said with a what-are-you-gonna-do shrug. "This is every safety seminar I've ever had rolled into one. I actually can't wait to see the end of the world." he whispered conspiratorially. "Its like if a Christian got to meet Jesus. Or one of your people experiencing Ragnarök."
"I fear I've lived through too many Ragnaröks for this to carry the same weight."
Mobius sucked his teeth. "Yeah, I forgot that already happened. Old handler habits die hard." He nodded. "Fine. I get to be there for it. You're just overseeing it at this point." He paused, and Loki watched as it dawned on him, as it had so many times before. "That's why we're in here chatting," he said slowly, "and not rushing saving the world. You've done this all before."
"Yes."
Mobius's eyes fell shut. He leaned back. He didn't reopen them until he was facing the ceiling. "So you truly are a god."
Loki swallowed the death that set itself off in his stomach. "Not yet."
Mobius snorted a laugh. It skirted the panes of his face, blew the silver wisps of his hair back waves. "What are you waiting for?"
Loki huffed his own singular scoffing breath. "You assume I know."
"I know you know," Mobius said, finally looking at Loki and setting his hands on his hips. This man and his hips. "We wouldn't be having this conversation in this break room if you didn't know because you'd still be rushing around, figuring it out, doing the thing if you didn't know. But we're not. So what are you waiting for?"
Loki wanted to scream. But he was a god. Gods did not scream. They delegate, or they kill. "You were not always so--direct."
Mobius gave a conceding nod. "We've both affected each other."
Loki gestured between them. The linoleum floor reflected the motion back and mocked his efforts. "You see me as different as a result of this partnership?"
Mobius shook his head. "Don't change the subject."
Delegation failed. Fine.
Kill it is.
Loki inhaled sharply and exhaled the ragged stuttered truth he'd been sitting with for months, the truth of why he was here, not there, mortal, not god, present, not stepped out into the future and the world after all of this mess. "You are the reason," Loki said.
Mobius had the nerve to look confused.
Loki shook his head and held out his hands wide. "This--thing that I feel is bigger than happiness. It's bigger than pride. You've memorized me, you know I crave both in abundance. You have backed me into a corner, Mobius. I do not know what to do."
Mobius titled his head, that soft look in his eyes. "What do you want to do?"
This was all it took for Loki to explode.
"I want you to go off and kiss someone else," Loki shrieked. Sylvie and Doug might come running but he didn't care. "Someone who doesn't have this gaping cavern in their chest. Someone who can love you the way you deserve. because it's certainly not me," he shivered, cackled. "I know where you're meant to be and it's not here. I've seen it. It's a lovely house Mobius, you wear puffer vests. You have-" he choked- "kids. You love them. You deserve them."
Loki's hands flew up and he gestured between them. "This life that the two of us have been playing is an interlude, a fiction invented to let us pretend who we are out there doesn't matter--the sheer bizarre nature we have met doesn't matter and yet here you are," Loki swallowed, swallowed the knot between Mobius's brows and the red invading his waterline, "looking at me like I've hurt you."
It is good that is he is hurt. It will make it easier for him to go.
And yet.
There were nails in Loki's mouth, prodding up between his gums and ripping holes into his skull.
"You," Loki spat. "You have destroyed part of me because I always assumed this-" he clutched at himself and mimed like he was ripping out a heart, meeting Mobius's progressively widening eyes- "that everything love entails was just the nature of the relationship, you know someone enough so you let them in your hair and your hands and take them with you when you travel but you," he exhaled with a laugh, "you are not that."
Mobius's mouth moved in a smile but the rest of his face remained still. He shifted on his feet. "Sounds a bit like a the mini product bottles you take on vacation."
There was no time for that.
"Do I have your attention, Mobius?" Loki said. It was the most broken and honest his voice had ever sounded. The man held for a moment before he looked up, meeting Loki's eyes again. He looked terrified.
"I have loved you," Loki exhaled, and it was like breathing, it was like dying, it was like begging. "I have loved you in ways I didn't know it was possible to love another being. I always assumed love was some extension of familiarity, but with you, I understand why Thor did everything with Jane. I understand why my mother was constantly chasing Odin. It was never because of the name of the thing, a title does not make a prince nor a king and love does not equate to what I feel when I see you. You are a constant surprise. You hold me and I don't feel safe because I know your arms but because I know you. And I will continue knowing you, long after I die, the way charred wood knows fire."
The room around them thrummed and Loki flinched. They were running out of time.
"If I had never seen a single romance, I would love you. If I knew nothing of what this was supposed to be like, I would still want it, with you. If the entirety of time was re-written and told me it was wrong to want to be with anyone besides myself, I would still come find you."
Loki's breathing was coming out haggard. Not since sparring with Thor as a boy had he lost his breath like this.
And yet, even through Mobius's silence, and Loki's punctuated inhales, the ticking of the clock, the shockwaves of the timeline fracturing a room and a half over, was impossibly loud.
When Loki gathered himself enough to raise his head, Mobius was already looking at him.
"Loki," the man said, his voice a soft confession. "You know I love you too."
Loki did his best to crack a smile. "I know."
Mobius blinked and dropped his chin to the floor. "Of course you do. How many times have I told you that? Don't answer that."
Loki opened his mouth but Mobius shook his head and held up a hand. "Look Loki, interrupt me if you've heard this before. But on the off chance you haven't, let me tell you what I need to. The goodbye speech or whatever," he said, waving his hands.
They had not had this conversation. They had not had many conversations.
"I know you're cooler than me," Mobius said.
Loki blinked.
"Or prettier, or whatever," Mobius continued, as if this was a confusion he could explain away. "Sometimes I'm appalled you even choose to be with me. I mean you're so, clearly, ridiculously out of my league."
It was like conversing with a blind man.
It was standing in the rain as it washes the tears off your face, cools you off, more comforting than you ever thought rain could be, and yet you can't grab onto the clouds long enough to thank them. Loki exhaled and scanned the ground, Mobius's dress shoes, his own hanging hands in search of a way to sufficiently explain why there was no such thing as 'out of his league' and even if there was Mobius certainly wouldn't be out of his. Even with all the time in the world Loki would likely never get this conversation again and he needed to do it right at least once.
At his wit's end Loki grasped for metaphor. He pulled his tongue from the roof of his mouth and looked up. "Have you ever hear-"
"Loki," Mobius interrupted. He had on that soft look again. Like everything was going to be said with a sort of sigh, like the words were too valuable to be spent in fleeting and feeble air but someone had to say them, so the speaker needed to be gentle so they would survive. Loki hated it. It made him feel vulnerable.
"I am so glad I am here. Or was," Mobius said, squinting bushy eyebrows together. "I don't fully understand how this relativity thing works."
Mobius was trying to kill him.
"The suitcase effect," Loki sputtered. "Have you heard of the suitcase effect? No you haven't, of course not it was um- it's a bit of phycological theory I heard once that I've," he gestured to himself and his chest caved in around the fist punched there as his mind sought to get closer to Mobius', "kept with me since."
Mobius set his hands on his hips and his face in his I'm-listening-to-my-boyfriend-explain-model-trains-to-me mode.
Loki took in a small breath and exhaled. They had time. It might not feel like it, but they had time. "The basis of it is that many beings use a word or a phrase to describe how they're feeling, when really they're never felt that feeling at all." He paused and clicked his tongue, smiling up at Mobius between the waves of black hair rapidly eclipsing his vision. "But what do these phrases really mean? My father was one of these types. He knew none of our people, really, besides those on the battlefield or in the palace and because of this he had no idea how to govern them, no idea at all because if he had," Loki said, gesturing to himself, "I wouldn't be here."
Loki dug his hands in his pockets in an effort to keep them from aimlessly fluttering. "I am Asgardian through and through but if being Asgardian means being Odin than I most certainly am not. To me, my people were people. All my father said to them, he consistently did not mean. Because he did not know them. Not as I did. He made his claims of understanding and compassion and love in front of the court and walked off, holding the handle of his suitcase, no idea that the true meaning of what he said was left steps behind on the pavement."
Mobius shifted and moved his hands from his hips to crossed at his chest. His voice lilted up. "Is there a point to this?"
"Yes. Be quiet, I'm not done."
Mobius rocked on his heels. "You can't tell me what to do, you're not a god yet."
"What?"
Mobius winked, a damn sparkle in his eye. "Not in the way you're about to be," he whispered conspiratorially.
Loki blinked, eyes stumbling to understand that Mobius was making jokes right now, but the man took the split second of silence as opportunity.
"I get it, I get it," Mobius sighed, waving his arms as if to clear the air. "'Out of your league' is a suitcase term, sure. I get it because like it or not, I know you. Loki." Mobius poked him in the center of the chest. He smiled. " But I'm coming to understand that we don't have much time. So will you stop talking and listen to me?"
Mobius continued before Loki got the chance to say yes.
"You're not perfect." Mobius snorted. "You're not perfect to me. But I know you. I know you and I haven't decided to leave," Mobius whispered slowly, his eyes drilling into Loki's, as if delivering the punchline to some sort of cosmic joke.
He stepped back, and it was Loki's turn to follow. Only it wasn't just one step. One step was all Loki meant it to be, but then he was crashing into Mobius and tugging his arms around him in a fierce hug, burying his face into Mobius's shoulder.
Mobius's arms raised and held firm against Loki's back.
"And as long as you choose to be known and know me back," the man said softly. "I believe in our power to stay, and to use the suitcase term love."
"Love is the ultimate suitcase term," Loki murmured.
Mobius tucked the weight of his head over Loki's. "It is, isn't it?" he mumbled. "Love's a sham."
Loki's face was wet. He had to go now. He had to go, and his face was wet.
Loki wrapped his arms tighter, as if he could absorb Mobius into him, pull him with him on the next step. "But you and I are not."
Mobius held Loki for a long moment. As long as they could afford. The dregs of their lost time.
Then he let go, pried Loki off, and held him at a length. He ducked a finger beneath Loki's chin and pulled it up so that he met his eyes. "But you and I are not," Mobius stated.
And he said it with such solid, soft truth, that Loki believed him.
Mobius kissed his cheek, then, and when he pulled away his lips were wet with tears. Loki held his hand, dropped an arm over his shoulder, hugged him as they went back to a frantic Sylvie and A.D. Doug. The world was already spiraling into ribbons by the time Loki raised his palm to Mobius's one last time.
Then the door closed, and horns raised with his each footfall forward.
Only when he reached the end, shrouded in green and bound to the strands of time and the mantle he was bestowing upon himself, did Loki look back.
The man in the window (a thousand miles away and shrinking by the second) waved. A stupid soft smile crested beneath the white dash of his moustache, and despite himself, Loki's first act as Lord of Time was smiling back.
Loki was losing Mobius. But his love wasn't getting lost.
it was right there, buried with Mobius's dress shirts and rough hands.
And there it would stay, deep in the roots of Yggdrasil, twined with his heart and the life he had lived before he became god.