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The thing about Ohio, is that Mobius isn’t limited to one slice of key lime pie per week.
He can drive, in his car, to the store that exists on the edge of town. It’s nothing special, barely big enough to fit the entirety of its stock, but he likes the way there are scuffs on the linoleum floor, how the shopping carts have chips in the handles, and how everyone seems to know each other’s names.
Names, which—he’s still getting used to his.
Don.
It feels weird passing through his own mouth. He’s tested it, over and over, feeling the way it takes shape.
An older lady with clanging jewelry hanging from her bony wrist waves at him from beside the apples, eyes sparkling under the fluorescents. Her graying hair is cropped short, the slightest bit of wave at the ends, and she opens her mouth for him hear it again, his name.
“You okay, Don?”
“Fine, uh,” he stumbles, and although he’s got most of his memories back, although he was usually the best at names, up at the TVA, her name escapes him. He looks all over her face—at the wrinkles, the lines by her eyes, the scar near her eyebrow. All evidence of a life lived. “Fine. And yourself?”
“Can’t complain,” she says, shrugging, and then pats his shoulder like they do this all the time. Talk about mundane things in the middle of a grocery store, all smiles and familiarity. Mobius still doesn’t remember—still doesn’t know if that is something they do, but he smiles back, anyway. “You know, my Ricky was talking about selling one of our new Sea-Doos the other day.”
“Your—why?” he asks, and he’s nearly outraged at the mere idea, and oh, okay, this is Patricia, married to Ricky, regulars at his store for nearly a decade. He fights a smile, because of course he’d only remember after she mentioned a GTI 90. “I thought you’d been enjoying it?”
“Oh, we have been,” she starts. She pushes her cart forward just a little, to move out of the way for a teenager blaring music so loudly in his earphones Mobius can make out almost every word. “But, you know. Ever since my injury, money’s not coming in like it used to.”
And—he does know, but he also doesn’t, not really, because his brain is being pulled in two different directions. He has to close his eyes for just a second, a brief pause that allows for his eyelashes to swoop gently across his cheekbones, in an attempt to quiet the war in his mind.
“Yeah, your, uh,” he says, distracted, but there’s a quick flash near the automatic doors behind Patricia, some taller man with black hair that nearly settles on his shoulders, and for a moment, just a second, Mobius thinks, maybe—
“You okay, dear?”
He blinks, because, no, that man’s hair isn’t the right length at all, actually, and he’s too short, and his shoulders aren’t right. He blinks again, and this time gets an eyeful of concerned features right in front of him, and, Christ, the last time he was in a grocery store…
“Yeah, just, uh,” he says, and he can see it all in his mind, Loki looking right at him, turning away, slow, a little hesitant, but still leaving. “You know how it is at the store. And Sean’s stressed about finals, Kevin’s got this science fair project coming up, wants to do one of those fancy volcanoes that actually explodes when you press a button.”
She laughs, pats his arm again, and pushes forward with her cart, feet dragging slow. “I’ll let you go then, Don. You take good care of yourself.”
“You too, Pat,” he says, the nickname rolling off his tongue, familiar yet foreign.
When she presses forward, she walks and walks until she finds the bread aisle, and Mobius just stands there, catches his bearings for a few long, stretched out moments of time.
And then he walks, refreshes his memory of the layout, and when he passes by the frozen section, completely stills.
That’s how he finds himself back at home, barefoot, alone at his kitchen table, eating directly from a box of key lime pie.
He can still see the carefully designed words if he really thinks about them, printed on so many faded, vintage looking posters, 1 slice per week. Enjoy “1 slice”.
Well, now, he’s a fourth into the thing, and he’s got a whole tub of Cool Whip he’s got set out beside him, too, and it’s so quiet.
It’s quiet.
The boys are at school, and he didn’t bother turning the TV on after he unlocked the front door because of the bags in his hands. The clock is ticking, slow, like it’s taunting him, and faintly, like it’s not even there, is the sound of a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood, a car honking.
His life here, it’s good. Of course it is. The house is nice, and they live comfortably, most of the time, when the store is doing okay. He’s got two beautiful boys that are handfuls, complete menaces, but they’re his, and they look to him for comfort and guidance. The neighborhood is nice, safe, filled with decent people who look out for each other, kids who play outside together and skin their knees.
It’s good.
It’s just—foolishly, in the back of his mind, before it all came to this… he thought that if he were to choose to come back to his place on the timeline, he would be joined by the person who allowed him to hope, in the first place.
Kevin’s volcano is pissing him off.
And, honestly, he should stop referring to it as Kevin’s volcano, because it’s his damn volcano. His blood pressure is rising as he watches these stupid useless tutorials on YouTube, and there’s just no way this works for anyone, it must be movie magic, or whatever it’s called when you type up some phrase and a robot person conjures up fake images.
This doesn’t work.
The dough isn’t the right consistency, it’s not molding into the correct shape, it’s crumbling as he tries to build it up around the cracked red solo cup.
His hands are dry, dough starting to cake beneath his fingernails, and he’s never been so annoyed in his goddamn life.
He exits the entire webpage, smacks the dough with his palm, and looks up, so seriously, like the ceiling can help him if he stares hard enough.
He sighs, thanks the universe that his boys are at school so they can’t witness this colossal failure, and as he’s washing his hands, that’s when the doorbell rings.
He’s been here for—a little over a month, he thinks, getting used to living a life that he was ripped away from, and he’s never once heard the doorbell ring at this time of day.
After school, yes, when Riley or Alex or Jace want to play a game of no rules soccer, but before noon, never.
He wipes his hands on a paper towel he rips a square off of, and he thinks, oh, good, maybe those Girl Scout cookies will finally make an appearance, he remembers them being so delicious.
He unlocks the top, twists the knob, and—
Loki’s face morphs from a careful neutral expression to something soft. Soft lines appearing near his eyes when his lips pull delicately, soft eyes melting, staring directly at him.
He feels like this has happened before. Loki, in Mobius’ timeline, looking strangely at home in front of a backdrop of green trees, green grass, blue skies. He feels like this has happened before, an echo across time, but he’s not sure.
Not sure about anything other than the way Loki is looking at him, like he’s something to be studied, cherished. A reversal of the way it should be, and how it was. Before.
Mobius doesn’t know how he speaks, because everything in him feels frozen, like someone is controlling him with a Time Twister. But he does, and he says, rushed, lungs pushing out all the air in his body, “How did you—how are you here?”
Loki’s smiling, nonchalant, like this is before, and they’re across from each other at a table and Mobius has just finished saying, c’mon, you’re the god of mischief.
He’s smiling, like nothing, and Mobius is torn between wanting to hit him square in the chest and taking him by the face and kissing him and kissing him and kissing him until the sky gets dark.
“Well, I did figure out how to pause time, after all. Surely you knew I’d be coming back to you, as soon as I unraveled that trick.”
Mobius looks over him. He’s wearing an outfit that has splashes of green in the pattern, something he’s obviously conjured up. He looks fine—no cuts, no gashes, no injury after walking through something that should have been impossible with absolutely no protective gear.
He knows he’s staring, he knows his mouth is opening and closing because he can’t settle on anything smart to say. He knows there are tears in his eyes, because Loki’s blurry until he blinks a few times in rapid succession.
Then, he speaks again, several sentences trying to leave his mouth at once.
“You—hold—coming back to me?”
“And those boys of yours,” he says, and his eyes widen just slightly, like maybe he didn’t mean to say it, and Mobius wants to take him by the hands and shake him and tell him to never leave again, and he manages to do the first part, but Loki continues to speak before he’s able to do the rest. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”
“If that’s okay with—” Mobius says, exasperated, and his sentence ends abruptly because his brain is moving at such insane speeds that before he even understands his next move, he’s pulling Loki into him so harshly that he lets out an oof, a sound that’s immediately quieted into nothing by the press of Loki’s lips.
The porch feels like it disappears completely from beneath his feet, and it’s because his knees actually give out.
Before he can do anything stupid like pass out cold and ruin this for himself, Loki gets both of his arms around Mobius’ waist, keeping him upright, and Mobius forgets to breathe, forgets how to do anything except kiss him back, memorize the shape of his lips, the taste of them, the warmth of his mouth when he opens up.
He’s only vaguely aware that they’re doing this in the doorway, out in the open where anyone can see, because most of his brain has been turned offline by the way Loki uses his tongue, how he spreads his hands out across the small of Mobius’ back and holds him tight, keeping him there while he gives him everything he’s got.
Loki groans, right into his mouth, and Mobius pulls back with a shaky gasp, eyes half-lidded, just to say, “Shit.”
For a moment, they just breathe out laughs, quiet enough they get swept up into the subtle gusts of winds around them.
And then,
“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that?” Loki asks, seriously, and—Mobius has never been so close, has never seen every speck of color in his eyes and every blemish on his skin. He can’t wait until he can push him down and take his time, mapping out every mark and freckle.
He’s not responding. He knows he’s not responding, because Mobius can’t quite remember kissing before this. He knows he’s done it before, of course, but the sensation isn’t quite as clear in his memories, and Loki has kissed him so thoroughly that his lips are tingling. He reaches up and touches over them, just to make sure they’re still there.
“Mobius,” Loki says, amused, and leans in again, noses brushing, and Mobius breaks out into goosebumps, when Loki kisses him on his cheek this time. “Talk to me.”
Mobius kisses him on the corner of his mouth, just because he can. “How long?”
Another kiss on the lips.
Mobius could get used to this. He’d do everything all over again, feel everything all over again, if he knew he’d get this at the end of it all.
“Centuries.”
“Who’s that?” Kevin asks.
Mobius’ brain is split in two, but he’s okay with it. He’s okay, because the four of them are all in the living room, and Loki’s in normal clothes (“These are god awful.”) and his sleeves are pushed up. He’s ready to fix this stupid volcano with them, even if he’s probably going to roll his eyes and fix it with magic within three minutes of trying.
“This is Loki,” Mobius says, and he knows he shouldn’t be nervous, because Kevin’s more like Loki than Loki, but he is, and he looks between them with darting eyes and fidgeting hands. “He wants to help with your science fair project.”
“Is he a friend from work?” Sean asks, only here because he’s getting ten bucks for being a helpful brother.
“You could say that, yes,” Loki answers, and, oh, his heart is doing something crazy inside of his chest, at the sight of the three of them. “Your father, here, is stumped by the dough. Do you think we can help him?”
“Woah,” Kevin says, eyes lighting up. “Where are you from?”
Loki looks over at Mobius with a smile so gentle it rocks through him with a shiver. “I’ll tell you all about it while we work. Have you two sorted out the ingredients yet?”
“We’ll go get them!” Sean says, excited, tugging his brother back to the kitchen.
Loki takes the few steps needed to press into Mobius, noses brushing, and presses a quick kiss to his forehead before putting space back between them.
The words leave his mouth before he can really think about them. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For coming back,” Mobius says, quiet, and smiles when Loki reaches out to thread their fingers together.
The boys’ laughter carries out of the kitchen and into the dining room, and the clock doesn’t sound like it’s taunting him anymore. It only sounds like it’s reminding him they’ve got time.
“Always.”