Spoilers for all of Season 1 of Loki (TV), as well as any MCU Loki plot. Comments are wholeheartedly appreciated.
This is probably the last fic from me for a while. Also posted on AO3 under my user r_n_g_are_dead. Thanks for reading!
Trigger warnings:
There is blink and you'll miss it mention of an abusive relationship in chapters 3 (emotional abuse) and 10 (emotional abuse and one instance of arm grabbing).
A character has a panic attack in Chapter 4.
(TWs will be repeated at top of necessary chapters.)
"This is absurd," Loki muttered as he glared at the mug of green tea as it was placed in front of him.
He saw the barista take water—that was boiled in a microwave—and pour it over a brandless tea bag. For someplace that had so many different frappewhatnots, their lack of tea options was appalling. Since he was going to be forced to meet with Mobius again after this, it would have to be somewhere else. There were over 3,500 coffee shops in NYC.
Though, Loki thought, that probably just meant there were over 3,500 chances to have as bad or worse cups of tea.
"Sorry, your highness," Mobius said with a sideways grin as he slid into the chair across from the dour son of his buddy from college. "I'll tell you what—next time you pick, okay?"
Loki scowled. He couldn't believe there had to be a next time, let alone a this time or any time.
The "your highness" quip wasn't technically accurate, but being one of two heirs to the owner of the most successful clean energy company in the world made him nearly untouchable. It rubbed Loki the wrong way that his family had profited so much from something that was helping combat the disastrous effects of climate change. But what bothered him even more was that it wasn't even his family. Not by blood, anyway.
Loki wasn't mad that he was adopted. In fact, it explained his black hair and pale skin which always stuck out in family reunion photos full of generations of blond hair and tanned faces. What he was mad at was only just being told about it. It was his 34th birthday and he was still trying to find his place in the company when it came out in a tabloid that Odin's eldest would be inheriting a large sum of money when he soon turned 35 and would be named as the future sole owner of the company. Thor, Loki's older brother, joked at Loki's birthday dinner that the tabloid was obviously wrong because he and his brother were going to share responsibilities for the company when their father eventually stepped down, but when Odin and his wife Frigga shared a tense look, Loki knew something was up.
"Will someone please explain to me what the hell is going on?" Loki asked, throwing his napkin on the table.
The abridged version his parents told their sons that night was that Odin had originally been Loki's godfather. And when his biological parents were among the passengers who died in a plane crash just months after Loki was born, Odin and Frigga took the baby in as their own and raised him alongside their own one-year-old. Thor was just as surprised as Loki because this was all new information to him as well. In his eyes, it didn't change anything, though. Loki was his brother and they were going to take on the world together just like they always had planned.
But in Loki's eyes, it changed everything. His biological parents, Laufey and Farbauti, were Odin and Frigga's best friends. Laufey and Odin had worked together on the idea that would eventually become the basis of Odin's fortune, but Laufey and his wife never lived to see its success. Loki would have been an equal heir to the company anyway, had Laufey lived, but Odin's name was the only one attached to everything after Laufey's passing and it seemed that Thor was Odin's only true son. Loki's mood shifted to something darker and his relationship with Odin and Frigga started to become more strained than it ever had been.
Which was why Loki was sitting across from Mobius, a friend of his father's who he had met a few times over the years at social gatherings Loki was forced to attend in his youth. Desperate to keep his family together in the long run, Odin threatened to draw up an amendment to Loki's inheritance and future company co-ownership papers if Loki wouldn't get some help. To keep things quiet in the press, Loki would meet up with Mobius for a few months in order to talk out some of the problems that had arisen since finding out the truth about his past.
Mobius was a bit shocked when Odin first approached him about it. He wasn't a therapist or anything, just an analyst. But once he found out a little more about Loki's situation, he agreed to talk to him. He remembered him being a stubborn kid. And stubborn kids usually begat stubborn adults. Lecturing the guy about how he needed to get his head out of his ass wasn't going to accomplish anything, but Mobius thought he might be able to offer some perspective. He was more of a "lead by example" person anyway.
Like Loki, Mobius had been adopted when he was a baby into a family that had a young son. Unlike Loki, though, Mobius was told about it when he was old enough to understand that sometimes biological parents aren't able to take care of their babies so other parents get to raise those babies as their own.
"If I truly got to pick, there would be no next time," Loki said with a sigh.
"How about we make a deal?" Mobius said, taking a generous sip of his iced caramel latte and then wiping his mouth and graying mustache off on the cuff of his brown suit jacket. "If we can get through this, right now, civilly, I'll bring a surprise to the next one. Okay?"
"Are you trying to bribe me?" Loki was both offended and surprised. "You really think that's going to work? I'm not a child, Mobius."
"And I'm not a parent." Mobius shrugged. "Look, we're all adults here, Loki. And I do want to help you. But I also know that nothing I say to you will change anything."
Loki's dark eyebrows raised in surprise, mildly impressed. He thought he was going to have to bullshit his way through these mandatory meetings, but Mobius seemed to already have his number. "So we're at an impasse?"
With a chuckle, Mobius said, "Oddly enough, no. But I can see how you jumped to that conclusion." He took another lengthy sip of his drink while Loki stared at him with an expectant look on his face. "I'm really looking forward to our next little session."
"We've only barely started this one," Loki pointed out. "And, I don't know about you, but this all feels like a waste of time." He picked up his mug of tea and took a small sip, blanching at the taste.
"That bad, huh?"
"I imagine lawn clippings steeped in week-old pasta water tastes better than this."
Mobius smiled, thoroughly enjoying his overly sugary coffee drink. "Do you ever enjoy anything? I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but you seem kinda uptight."
Loki went to answer something snarky, but shut his mouth as soon as he opened it. He wasn't sure exactly what the deal was between Odin and Mobius, but didn't want Mobius reporting back that Loki wasn't taking this whole thing seriously.
(And he wasn't uptight. At least he didn't think so.)
"I enjoy things," Loki replied. "Order. Logic. A good book. Drinkable tea."
"Noted," Mobius said. He looked down at his watch. They had only been there maybe 15 minutes, including the time he was waiting in line for their drinks, but he knew better than to try and drag this out. "Hey, look at the time. I gotta head out for a thing." He stood up and tucked his chair in before Loki could say anything. "But I'll see you same time in a couple weeks, okay? Just text me where the night before. Your pick, remember. Have a good one, okay?"
Loki furrowed his brow as he watched the other man leave the coffee shop. They hadn't talked about anything and he wondered how he would explain that to Odin if asked.
Mobius tossed his keys into a misshapen ceramic bowl his niece made him when she was in kindergarten on the table just inside the door to his modest two bedroom apartment. It wasn't much, but it was home. And quite homey.
He stopped at the hallway off the living room and looked at his watch. It was nearing noon, but there seemed to be no sign of life in the apartment from its other occupant. "Syl? You up?" He listened, but there was no response. "SYL?"
The door to the guest room flung open, though no one exited. "I got up to pee, but I'm going back to bed."
Mobius nodded, knowing his niece couldn't see him. "You wanna do dinner tonight? We can get those crab rangoon things again?"
"Sure," Sylvie said quietly. "See you later."
"See you later," Mobius said with a sigh as she shut the door.
If there was one person he wished he could just snap his fingers for and solve all their problems, it was Sylvie. She called him crying on her 34th birthday, asking if she could come crash at his place for a little while. He immediately said of course and welcomed his one and only niece into his home, no questions asked. They had gotten closer ever since she moved from London to NYC a few years back and he liked helping her out when he could.
This was more than just fixing a leaky faucet or watering her plants while she was on vacation, though. Somehow, Sylvie lost her job and found out that the boyfriend she had been with for three years (and living with for two years) had been cheating on her for over a year and a half—all in a matter of 24 hours. She didn't have anywhere to go on such short notice, so she reached out to the only family she had in the States who luckily also lived in the same city and was also one of the best people she had ever known.
Mobius had hugged his niece and told her that she had somewhere to stay as long as she needed one. They hadn't talked much about what happened and Sylvie spent a lot of her time sleeping or curled up in a blanket on the couch binge watching The Great British Baking Show. He knew those weren't longterm solutions to what had happened, but was trying to give her space to see if she would come out of her funk on her own first.
When this went on for another two weeks, he had an idea. It wasn't necessarily a good idea, but at least it would get Sylvie out of the apartment for the first time since she got there.
