Chapter Text
“Come on. I’m terrible with this.”
Mobius waves the dagger around wildly as if to prove his point.
“That’s why you need to practice.” Loki steps forward, ducking under the swinging arc of the dagger, to adjust Mobius’s grip on the hilt. “Stop holding it like a toddler.”
“You give knives to toddlers!?”
“It’s a dagger, and I got my first one when I was two and a half.”
“Yeah, and your upbringing is the standard by which all should be measured.”
Loki rolls his eyes. Normally, a comment like that might sting but Mobius says it like it’s an inside joke between friends and not the millstone that Loki has had around his neck since he was born.
“Hold it up higher.” With a flash of green, Loki nudges Mobius’s arm up a bit more. There’s not a whole lot his magic can do about the state of Mobius’s elbow, though. “It’s not going to bite you. Relax.”
“Are you kidding?” Mobius lifts his arms wide, shrugging in disbelief before his hands drop back to his side. “Its exact purpose is to bite people, Loki.”
“Despite the fact that you’re wielding it like a marionette controlled by a baboon, it would take a level of stupidity that you simply do not possess to stab yourself with your own dagger.” Loki waves his hand airily and watches as the green lights of his magic reposition Mobius’s arm again. “Now, hold it here.”
Mobius does, sighing loudly and giving Loki a look that very obviously says, Are you happy now? Loki gives him a look right back that says, Clearly not. Because Loki won’t actually be happy until Mobius stops holding dangerous things at arm’s length. But he’s also self-aware enough to know that that desire extends to more than just weaponry, and is better left unexamined.
“Why are we doing this again?”
“Why?” Loki asks, slightly bewildered that Mobius doesn’t just know why Loki would drag him out here for self-defense training. “Why? Because Renslayer divested you of your Time Stick and then you proceeded to fall on your ass.”
“Hey! I told you that in confidence,” Mobius protests, but he doesn’t drop his arm and that’s an improvement. “And she’s tougher than she looks.”
“Indeed.” Loki moves behind Mobius and kicks his legs a smidge wider. The man’s stance is abysmal. “Well. Now, perhaps, we can make you tougher than you look.”
“I look plenty tough.”
Loki walks around to Mobius’s front again, peering at him critically.
“You have key lime pie on your shirt.”
Mobius glances down and Loki uses the momentary distraction to lunge forward and snatch the dagger from his unsuspecting grip. The look Mobius sends Loki’s way as he steps back and flourishes the blade with a quick spin of his wrist is a mixture of exasperation and fondness that makes Loki’s throat go tight.
“You’re a liar.”
“No,” Loki corrects, voice slightly hoarse, “I’m the God of Mischief.”
“It’s cute that you think that’s a refutation and not a proof.”
Cute.
No one has ever used that word in conjunction with Loki before. Or, if they have, it was all venom and anger. But with Mobius it’s teasing.
He clears his throat and flips the dagger until the blade is clasped loosely in his hand and the hilt is pointed toward Mobius. They really did come here for self-defense training, not whatever strange and unwieldy emotions this sartorial disaster of a Time Agent pulls out of Loki.
“Again.”
“Again?” Mobius asks, his tone almost a whine. “I’m just standing here holding it. No offense, God of Mischief, but in the actual field being able to stand still with a knife in your hand isn’t exactly useful.”
“It’s a dagger,” Loki corrects, exasperation leaking into his voice. “Again.”
Mobius rolls his eyes but reaches out and curls his fingers gently around the hilt of the blade, carefully lifting it off Loki’s palm so the sharp edges don’t drag across his flesh. Loki hadn’t even realized that he’d opened himself up to an injury like that and his heart thuds heavily in his chest.
Perhaps poor self-protective instincts and heart attacks are a side effect of time travel, even for demigods.
“Ta da,” Mobius shouts sarcastically, taking a stance that has the loosest resemblance to the one Loki’s been trying to magic him into.
“Absolutely atrocious,” Loki says, trying his hardest to squash the smile that’s tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Well, then, teach me, teacher.”
Mobius doesn’t squash his smile at all, just gives it to Loki, wide and bright and free. It crinkles up the edges of Mobius’s eyes and Loki’s heart stutters this time. He should really, truly get that looked at.
“Daggers aren’t really defensive weapons,” Loki says as he circles around Mobius again, watching the line of his body.
Mobius holds himself like a man that will dive headlong into danger without any concern for the personal risks, a fact that makes Loki second-guess the dagger. Better if Mobius were to have a shield or a suit of armor, and was stationed as far away from combat as Loki can conceivably get him.
“If you wait for your opponent to come to you, you’ve already lost.”
“That can’t be right,” Mobius argues, glancing at Loki over his shoulder as Loki steps closer, grips his elbow, and shifts it up half a millimeter. “I’ve seen you fight with daggers a hundred times and you win even when you’re on your back foot.”
Just like with every other time Mobius casually mentions his extensive knowledge of Loki’s life, a tingling flush spreads from Loki’s stomach up to his throat. The mortifying ordeal of being perceived and the hungry desire to actually be seen. To be known. To have someone look past the ego and allure, and find something of value in Loki’s life. In Loki.
Gods, this is getting ridiculous.
He clears his throat, a bit more awkwardly than he would like and responds with, “Well, I am—“
“The God of Mischief,” Mobius interrupts with another small smile, his voice rich with a meaning that Loki is certain he’s imagining. “I know.”
Loki has circled all the way back around to stand in front of Mobius and realizes that he’s going about this the wrong way. He learned to fight by doing, whether it was getting pinned to the dirt by Thor or scrambling away from the spear tip of one of his father’s — Odin’s — many warriors.
“If you’ve watched so many of my battles, perhaps you’re the expert here, Mobius.”
Mobius laughs softly. “There’s a difference between knowing and doing.”
“And in battle,” Loki flexes his hand and bends his knees slightly, taking the stance that he wants Mobius to learn, “you only have the luxury of one.”
This time, when he launches himself at Mobius, he moves at half-speed. Loki wants Mobius to see him coming. He wants Mobius to react on instinct. He wants to see what parts of his own fighting style made the biggest impact on Mobius over his years and years of watching. He wants indelible proof that he’s marked this Time Agent irrevocably.
Loki isn’t surprised when Mobius uses one of Loki’s favorite counters, moving toward the attack and hooking an arm through Loki’s elbow. Mobius steps in a circle, cutting an angle that brings Loki’s arm behind him, tight against the small of his back. The momentum pulls them together, Loki’s shoulders against Mobius’s chest and, just like Loki would do, Mobius lifts the dagger and lays it across the exposed length of Loki’s neck.
Despite being on a branched timeline where things like clocks and aging exist, for just a moment, everything around Loki seems to stand still.
The cold, sharp edge of the dagger presses into the soft spot under his jaw and the feeling makes a shiver work down his spine. He’s felt this before, of course. More than he cares to admit. But every time he’s found himself on the cutting edge of a weapon before, he’s been fighting for his life.
This… Oh, this is different.
Very different.
Because right now, all of Loki’s attention is on sensation, instead of survival. The press of Mobius’s chest against his back. The weight of Mobius’s arm threaded through his own. The warmth of Mobius’s breath ghosting past his temple. The silken slide of the metal across his flesh.
Loki’s breath catches in his throat and his unwell heart jumps and twists behind his ribs. He’s not scared. He’s not angry. He’s… wanting. Because he trusts this. Something that he’s barely let himself feel in the last several years. Or ever really. His body strains to give against the sharp edge of the dagger, to relax into Mobius’s hold, to pull out the pieces of himself that he keeps hidden and lay them at someone’s frugally loafered feet.
Mobius’s feet.
He’s achingly aware of how far removed this is from anything he’s ever done or even considered before, but suddenly it’s all he wants. There isn’t even a definition for him of what it is, just that this is woven through it the way his own thread is woven through the tapestry of the Norns. He’s vulnerable here and he’s letting himself be that way. He and Mobius both know that Loki could twist out of this position with ease, or even magic his way to the other side of the field. But he doesn’t want to. Loki wants to exist in this moment indefinitely, a moment where someone else will shore him up, someone else will watch his back. Someone else will hold power over him but not use it, except to make Loki feel good.
His cock grows heavy in his trousers and he tries to hide how his breath wants to pant out of him. How he wants to rub against Mobius like a cat. How he wants.
Of course Loki knows that now is not the time to let his more hedonistic tendencies, even those that are newly unearthed, slip their threadbare leash. But gods has it been a long time since he’s had the luxury to stretch this ache inside of him. It’s been a long time since he felt like he could play.
But he thinks he could play with Mobius.
Or that the Time Agent could play with him.
The realization makes his heart flutter and drop. And he has to concede that maybe this isn’t a heart attack after all.
“Whoa. No.” Mobius gives Loki the exact reaction he was expecting, the one that means the seedling of Loki’s trust has finally been planted in rich enough soil to grow. He goes rigid behind Loki just before dropping the dagger from Loki’s throat and stumbling back a few, unsteady steps. “I didn’t sign up for this. I don’t want to hurt you, Loki. I’m sorry I—“
Loki catches the dagger as it falls past his waist, the hilt settling perfectly into his palm despite the fact that his head feels like it’s swimming and his heart rattles the cage of his chest. He turns slowly to face Mobius, green eyes meeting blue, as he flips the dagger around in his hand and then magics it away with a wash of sparkling green light.
Loki opens his mouth, not quite sure what will come out and panicking at how unlike himself that is, not to weigh and measure every word and what he can get out of them. Not to know the next five steps of this dance that he and Mobius have been locked into since the beginning. But, before he can say anything at all, damning or otherwise, a Time Door opens to his left and B-15 steps through.
“You’ve been gone too long,” she says simply, telling them everything they need to know with her economy of words.
They need to get back before they’re missed.
They need to stick to the story for why they’re here.
They need to forget that any of the last three minutes happened at all.
Although, maybe that last part is just for Loki.