Archive of Our Own ^beta

This is inhumane. Unfair. It’s a healthcode violation.

He can’t stand it anymore. Can’t work in these conditions, that’s what it is. B-15 tells him in no uncertain terms that they don’t have time to worry about the, what was it she had said? Ah, the, “…precarious-at-best mental stability of two horny, emotionally stunted Lokis.” Mobius agreed, but he they also need all the functioning man power they can get.

Or maybe he’s just tired of seeing Loki look like a shivering puppy whenever he looks at Sylvie. Either way.

Loki had already tried three times to convince Sylvie to come with them: all edit in miserable failure. Mobius looks over where Loki is hunched over, leaning against the wall, stubborn resolve burning away in his gaze.

Mobius steps over to Sylvie after she’s finished sending Renslayer to who-knows-where, while Loki is busy absolutely not sparing fleeting, woe-is-me glances at her or chewing on his bottom lip. There’s a kind of calm content in her eyes, even if it won’t last...after all, her life’s work is still collapsing in front of her. Punishing Renslayer can’t solve all of it, but he’s proud of her anyway, like an old dog watching a tiny, angry kitten finally climb up one stair.

“He’s a mess without you,” he starts. Sylvie hasn’t turned around yet. “I know it’s been a…month?” He guesses, gesturing at her hair that’s in some sort of strange 70s mullet…thing. But she raises her head and the look she gives him says he’s totally off.

“Longer. And he’s working against everything that I’ve been trying to do. And so have you,” she spits. Mobius shrugs, but he looks over at Loki, who’s doing a splendid job of looking embarrassed, miffed, and eager all at the same time.

Contrary to popular belief, Mobius is not unaware of his folksy charm. Lokis seem especially susceptible to it…it might have something to do with the fact that everyone around them has always made them the loser of everything in their lives and they haven’t seen much unconditional adoration and love.

He tries not to think about that too much.

“Come back. Just for ten minutes, y’know? See B-15, for old time’s sake… I’ll even let you set a fire if you want to.” Things don’t burn easily in the TVA, has to do with the temporal energy interfering with burning oxygen and whatnot, but there’s no reason for Sylvie to know that.

Sylvie looks at him, and there’s really nothing quite like being stared down by a Loki displaced from time. It feels like being opened up and poked and pulled apart, like one of those old dissection kits. No harm is technically done, but it’s a little disconcerting, and makes him wonder what she sees, or what she’s looking for.

He’s half expecting her to make him join Ravonna when she walks right past him, past Loki, and right into the timedoor to the TVA. Loki’s head hangs low, shock and awe playing across his blue eyes, but also a fear that Mobius hasn’t seen in any of the tapes.

Mobius doesn’t speak, but gestures to the timedoor. Loki steps through like a child waiting for punishment.

By the time they’ve followed through the timedoor, Sylvie is already looking around — refamiliarizing herself with the bland, somewhat retro ambiance clashing with people either tensely working in cubicles or B-15, OB, and Casey rushing around, apparently in charge of the operation in Mobius’ absence.

Mobius follows Sylvie’s eyeline: she’s already zeroed in on the main monitor, the sacred timeline and all its branches, some thick and already so long, others thin and fighting to hang onto time, and he wonders if she’s crying. Or maybe she’s ready to leave, that she’s seen all she needs to see, that she thinks they’ve all betrayed her.

Loki attempts to approach her. “Sylvie, I…we’ve…”

Little orange alarm bells start running in Mobius’ head — bad idea! Bad idea! Lokis are horrible at this! — because Sylvie will listen to him for about thirty seconds and then run off, leaving him with another mopey Loki.

“Hey, can you two follow me? B-15, you too,” Mobius calls. B-15 is looking at Loki and Sylvie with a look that’s similar to watching a lizard with a missing leg trying to escape up a wall, but she follows anyway.

Sylvie is fuming behind him, but Mobius guides them through a few hallways, into a very uncomfortable elevator ride (he’s never felt closer to death than standing between those two) and another short walk before Sylvie’s eyes start darting around in suspicion.

“Why are we in a laundromat?”

At the same time, Loki looks from one end to the other. “The TVA has a laundromat?”

It’s not as cluttered and charming as OB’s workspace, but has the same colors and feel of the rest of the TVA. Only three of the washing machines and one of the dryers work, and uniforms are scattered around, some on the floor, some on shelves. Nondescript laundry detergent with Miss Minutes plastered and peeling off the bottles line half of the shelves. Mobius sees Ravonna’s shirt lying on an orange bench and then decides to stop thinking about it.

“Hey, you got a better plan for spilling orange juice on your shirt?” Mobius replies, and Loki shrugs, another small mystery solved. “OB needs some stuff from here, some parts and doodads.”

This is the part of the plan though that might get him stabbed. Loki and Sylvie both look suspicious and prickly at this point, and so does B-15, but he motions for his coworker to help him near the washing machines, and then gestures over to a faded orange door that’s peeling with paint. “Loki, Sylvie, can you guys grab a vacuum from in there?”

Sylvie raises an eyebrow and Mobius is pretty sure now she’s just judging him.

He shrugs. “OB says he needs it.”

B-15 has a scrunched up look. She’s getting a hang of his plan, and if the subtle and panicked head-shaking and cursing is anything to go by, she doesn’t like said plan.

He smiles at her. That’s never stopped him before.

Sylvie grumbles something that’s probably a Norse curse (if he breaks out in boils or can’t breathe through his nose anymore, that’ll be why) but does open the orange peeling door, and Loki follows her, his eyes greedily gathering every bit of visual information he can get, like it makes up for not being able to talk to her.

Loki’s heel barely steps over the threshold when the door slams shut.

Both snap their heads around and look at the metal. Sylvie shoves Loki aside and immediately tries to magic the door off, then hack at it with her machete, and then she hollers, like she can blow the door clear across all of time and space with her voice: “Mobius, what the hell?!”

Mobius winces. He doesn’t even twirl the keys back into his pockets like usual. He can hear Sylvie trying to kick the door down right at the bolt and Loki starting to hyperventilate between yelling at him.

“Mobius, what are you doing?!” Loki hollers, closer to the door now, and then it sounds like Sylvie elbowed him.

“I’m sorry, you two. But it was either this or setting you up with each other anonymously on a dating site, and we just don’t have that kind of time.”

“Mobius!” Loki gives a very manly shriek. “You’re insane! I thought we were friends again! We shared a pie!”

B-15 looks at him with that found-a dying-lizard-look. “You do realize that they’ll both murder you when they get out of there, right?”

Mobius elects not to answer. “I’ll be back in a little bit, lovebirds!”

“MOBIUS!”

______

“I’m going to bloody murder that man. After ripping off his mustache as slowly as possible, and then I’m going to fix that loom by throwing him into it!” Sylvie yells the end of her threat, just in case Mobius is still outside the door. Loki is a little too busy trying to beg the wall to absorb him.

This is not happening.

So not happening.

He had actually thought he was doing a pretty decent job of talking to Sylvie! He had given her space, tried to balance keeping the TVA and all of time still together while also supporting Sylvie’s goals, and yes, it was exhausting, thank you for asking, but he had tried his best! Give it ten, twenty more years at this rate, and she’d start talking to him again! And they were gods, that wasn’t that long.

But now, thanks to Mobius and his wonderful midwestern ‘just talk it out, find a common ground, tell her how you feel’ philosophy, he was locked in a glorified broom closet, approximately three by two feet, with the woman that he cared for liked loved? And she had a machete.

All in all, it probably wouldn’t be his worst experience locked in an enclosed space, but Sylvie kept giving him ‘choose your words carefully before I ram your head through that door’ looks that were, well, he shouldn’t think that was hot, should he?

Is this love, Agent Romanoff?

Loki smiles, lips tight and teeth bared, and the aggression and frustration and Renslyaer and He Who Remains and timeline and loops and wasn’t it just perfect that he went and fell in love in the middle of it all?

“Out of the way, Loki. I’m not about to spend three hours in here.”

He looks at her out of only one eye, for only a split second, but it’s enough.

He clenches his eyes shut. Her hair is longer. It’s beautiful and around her shoulders and that’s a year’s worth of hair growth and has she missed him? Was he just a fling? The word tastes bitter on his mind’s tongue because it’s so temporary. She’s probably had other relationships that lasted longer and were more meaningful, relationships that make him look like a blip, hell, she might even have someone right now. He’s just another meaningless event, someone for others to use for growth. That’s all he is, isn’t he? Character development for other people, and Sylvie’s saying his name and he can’t hear her and -

And that all combines for Loki to ram his bare fist into the unrelenting metal.

He curses and drops his head to the door. He can’t, won’t, look at Sylvie again.

He can hear time tick by in the silence that follows. “I think we had established that that wouldn’t work,” she mumbles, and he could swear he heard something like quiet mystification in her voice, and that just breaks him, because it’s the first normal thing she’s said to him since…since…

“Loki.”

And is this love, Loki?

His knuckles bleed and angry blistering red blossoms wherever he’s not bleeding. It hurts, the kind of ache that persists with movement or with rest, but he doesn’t look at her, he can’t look at her, because if it’s pity, if it’s ‘look, what we had was nice, but that was so long ago’ then he’d rather Mobius leave him in here.

“Loki,” she says more firmly, but he can’t hear her, his breath is too loud in his ears, and it’s richashaying against the cold metal and back into his head and he can’t hear her, can’t feel anything but his ribcage closing around him like he did to Brad, and hurting someone never felt so good and so bad at the same time, but he’d do it all again, he’d do terrible, awful things for her, and is that love? Is love a dagger you’d use against other people?

“Loki!”

When he crumbles to the floor, not looking at her, he realizes he’s crying, and he’s not breathing, and that’s just great.

Except maybe it is, because then, what the hell, her hands are on his face, warm calluses and touch that’s too soft for a Loki, fingers steady against his hair and she’s crouched down in front of him and she’s so close and wisps of green and he wants to touch her but his arms won't obey and -

And he can breath again.

The green, it tastes like lime, he thinks distantly, swirling around his thoughts, and he makes an attempt to reach for her — all that does is send his head lulling to one side. Whatever she did, it felt like she cracked open his chest and butterflies soared out.

“Is this a closed-spaces thing or a…” she swallows thickly, and Loki pauses: he can do that too, that’s good, that helps with the throat not closing up. “…a being near me thing.”

There’s hurt in her eyes, and he’s an awful, horrible man, because if she’s sad about the thought of him not wanting her around, it means maybe she still cares, maybe she still wants, and he quickly catches onto the green soothing presence in his mind.

Loki’s mouth is still dry, but he lets out a puffed breath and says, “Not a closed spaces thing.” It’s not a ‘her’ thing, either, but it kind of is, but there’s no way to explain that without using more words than he can put together.

He nearly cries when she properly sits across from him and nods. “Alright.”

______

They hadn't known each other that long, if you’re going with the most literal sense of time. But she’d seen him cry, beg, sob and plead for her, and those images lingered in nightmares and dreams like for months after.

This might take years to unsee.

He trembled against the door like all the timelines were bursting apart inside of him and tearing him apart. She said his name - and again, and again, and again, and he either didn’t or couldn’t, and isn’t that so much worse, hear her until she touched his shoulder. He sunk down to the ground like a boy yanked from a war zone, but aren’t all Lokis like that?

It’s not enchantment persay, but it seems to stop him from hyperventilating. Because she never wants to see him lost inside his own body like that again.

Sylvie is mad. Sylvie is mad and scared and not entirely sure who she should direct any of that at (though she’s sure that she’s pissed at Mobius, that’s for sure, and that awful clock needs to be thrown against a wall) but her feelings about Loki are much more tangled.

His breathing is calming down, moment by moment. She shifts, just to move over her leg that’s falling asleep, and he jerks. Who hurt you? Who made you so afraid to be left alone?

“Loki,” she tries again, and then those blue eyes, so earnest and hurt and honest, and she knows what honesty is in a set of eyes, turn up to her. She smiles at him and watches a thousand timelines bloom on his face.

It’s…flattering.

Sylvie gives him another minute, contemplates touching his hair, raking her hand through it, scratching his scalp and dragging his skull into her lap, just to see what he’d do, if he’d fight or cry or melt, but decides that’s a bit much to do to a man who’s only now breathing again.

“I’m sorry,” he starts. “That hasn’t happened in a while.”

Sylvie has a long list of people she wants to kill: everyone directly responsible for tearing her form her home and life, every man and woman she saw take advantage of others in an apocalypse, and a very annoying cashier who worked at the McDonald’s for three weeks.

Now, she wants to kill whoever made the man in front of her apologize for panicking.

She wants to say something kind and therapeutic or kind: you shouldn’t be sorry, when was the last time someone held you, I love you, but all that comes out is, “Don’t worry about it,” with a small sniff.

Two minutes, then five, and only when Loki has calmed down enough to start fidgeting nervously, Sylvie says, looking at his belt instead of his face, “Is he trying to get us to talk, make up, or have sex in a broom closet?”

Loki immediately chokes.

______

Mobius presses his ear to the door and gives a thumbs up to a now disinterested B-15. “There’s no more screaming, that’s a good sign!”

“Yeah, or they killed each other.”

“Oh, please, Sylvie would still be alive.”

______

Once he’s cleared his throat for the second time in the last twenty minutes, Loki finally manages to look at Sylvie, who looks greatly amused at his breathing troubles. But he really isn’t at fault, not when Sylvie of all people just casually voiced the idea of him having sex with her, and that meant kissing and holding and is this love?

Or is it the fact that ny time he’s gotten sleep in the last day, all he’s dreamed of his owning a house with her, waking up with his face breathing in her hair, seeing her every day for hundreds of years and walking around Midgard and seeing what seasons make her smile the most and he’s pretty sure that’s love, because it’s certainly new and terrifying and feels like a dagger but in the best way ever.

“At least I know how to shut you up now,” Sylvie offers much too cheerily.

“Wonderful.”

Loki sits up against the door and pulls at his jacket. He’s a prince still, after all, at least he’s pretty sure, and he has a duty to appear dignified. “I’m sure he’ll let us out in an hour, at the most. Don’t worry.”

Sylvie nods. He doesn’t move to stand up, because if he stands, she might move, and this position, with her mere inches from him, and the fabric of her pants brushing against his knee, he wants to stay right here for the rest of eternity.

A minute ticks by. And then he blurts out, “Miss Minutes is creepy, isn’t she?”

A huge breath drops from Sylvie’s mouth. “I hate that bloody clock,” she says with so much grumbled passion, and it feels like they’re sitting at the end of time with a bad blanket, and a grin spreads across his face, because he wants to bottle this moment up and put it on a shelf.

“She’s awful. And from what I could tell, has a crush on He Who Remains? I mean, I’m not one to judge,” he presses his hands to his chest, and Sylvie nods in enthusiastic agreement.

“Of course not, but still…”

“She’s a clock! And she tried to kill us!”

“And she’s annoying.”

“That too.”

______

Sylvie’s eyes can’t move from his chest - well, not his chest, but more so the large, perfectly sculpted hands splayed across his chest in his bid for how tolerant he is. But between thoughts of those hands holding a dagger while pleading with her, clutching a blanket, holding her hand, and what those hands could do under her clothes, she’s properly staring and refuses to stop.

“But,” he interrupts her ogling, “I think Mobius is more hurt by everything with Renslayer than he’s letting on.”

Oh, he’s been talking for a bit apparently. Sylvie swallows and nods like she’s been listening and not thinking about what those hands could do to her. Not that she hadn't already thought plenty about that over the last year, despite her best efforts (best efforts being feeling guilty about it once and then giving up) not to.

“Betrayal hurts.” She looks at his face, and wasn’t that a mistake, because that puppy-eyes look is back, and that face should really be illegal, because how can he look like he can and would ravish her if she gave the word and like he’d break down in tears if she so much as hugged him?

“I know.” He shifts, and his hand falls to the dusty floor, fingers creaked up, but inching towards her hand resting on her thigh. He stops short. He pulls back. “I…I hope you know that I wasn’t trying to betray you.”

“Well it bloody well felt like it,” she mutters around a suspiciously thick feeling in her throat.

He blinks hard. “I only wanted us to think.”

“So you said.”

He pushes past that biting comment. “I really have been where you were. And I don’t fault you, not for a minute. And Sylvie, ultimately, I think you were right. But now the timelines that you set free are collapsing, and Reslayer and that damned clock are trying to bring it all down, and I’m trying to keep everyone alive and the new branches from being blown up, and frankly, until getting locked in a closet, I haven’t had time to tell you that I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Sylvie, and I -”

It’s the only way to shut him up. It’s a sacrifice, but, she reflects, staring at that mouth and those eyes and the hair bouncing as he worries, someone’s gotta do it, and she’s always been selfless that way.

Sylvie only has to lean over a few inches to kiss him from their seats on the floor. It’s much gentler, but deeper, compared to last time, and she gets a much better appreciation for the inside of his mouth, running her tongue along his lips. She has the time now to taste him and all the heat of his mouth.

Sylvie is mad, and she is scared, but kissing Loki feels like a good way to decompress.

______

Kissing Sylvie this time feels like melting chocolate with their mouths. He feels like melted chocolate. A tear trails down his face, and he chokes, because she opens the kiss just enough to envelop the tear into the kiss, running her tongue along the spot, and then his hands are running and fumbling for her, because he loves her, and if he doesn’t touch her immediately he’s probably going to say it out loud.

His hands scramble for purchase on her waist, but she guides one palm down to her hip, the other to the part of her back where he can start to feel her hair, and yes, this is what’s he’s needed is whole life, is to be kissing Sylvie, to be lying down in a dusty broom closet that smells like thousand-year-old mothballs next to a vacuum and wrinkled uniforms and have Sylvie trace patterns against his neck with one finger and kiss him with every part of her mouth.

Loki wonders if Thor had loved Jane to the point that kissing her felt this wonderful.

She only stops when the tears and lack of air become a real impediment to the kiss. Loki’s sure that he must look thoroughly kissed, and he kind of wants to announce to the world how good it feels to be well-kissed by Sylvie, but all he mutters out is something that hopefully sounds like an apology and a ‘wow’ and he hopes that something about how perfect she is makes it in there.

But Sylvie wipes her mouth, then thumbs away some lip gloss from the corner of his mouth. “Why the TVA? Why them?”

His brain has to flip a few switches before he can pull a response together. “I had no choice. I had to keep time from breaking down and stop timeslipping, and had to find you,” he stresses, “…and Sylvie, I didn’t know what else to do. That man told us there would be millions of him, and I was getting pulled through time streams and then there was everything with the loom and Sylvie, I haven’t been able to sit down and thinkfor more than an hour since when we were at the end of the time with that blanket and-“

Sylvie cuts in with one word. “Tablecloth.”

Loki blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“Tablecloth. That wasn’t a blanket, it was a tablecloth. And an ugly one at that.”

He stares at her. The time slipping, the apologies, the panicking, but all she had was an insult to his blanket conjuring abilities.

So he starts to laugh.

“I…I conjured it! And I was nervous!” He manages, because he’s laughing, and then she’s smirking, and then she bites into her bottom lip and he’s definitely going to die.

“Oh, you were nervous?”

“No, no…” he quickly shakes his head and straightens up. “I wasn’t nervous! What would I be nervous about?!”

Sylvie just gives him a half lidded look, drags her gaze up his torso, and then raises an eyebrow. His throat convulses under the heat of her gaze. Did Mobius turn up the thermostat in here too?

She starts giggling, and at that sound, maybe everything in the universe and the multiverse really will be alright.

He looks down then, knowing that this must be what Mobius had meant when he said Loki looked like a man hopelessly, utterly, unbelievably in love. He finds he doesn’t mind that idea so much.

“Timeslipping,” she says, enunciating in that softly clipped way she has, “…that’s what sent you to this supposed future.”

“Yes. It…well, Mobius said it looked like I was being born and dying at the same time. It’s been as long as a few minutes in the past or future and as short as just seconds. I can’t really control it much.”

Sylvie’s eyes rake over him, possessive, like she’s the only one allowed to look at him, and he waits for the inevitable questions about a predetermined future, about how he’s being buddy-buddy with more and more people at the TVA, or for her to not believe him entirely, but she says, quietly, “Did it hurt?”

Loki shrugs and lies through his teeth. “Not really.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not!”

Sylvie rolls forward on her knees to stand and he rushes to catch her hand. “Alright, alright, yes…it hurt. I mean, I’ve had worse, but…it’s not pleasant.” He sighs too loudly in relief to be subtle when she sits back down.

“I didn’t realize it had only been a couple days for you,” she whispers. He can almost see the adjustment in her mind.

“We really haven’t actually gotten to talk about…anything, really.”

“Yeah.”

He nods, a little tilt to his head. “Maybe we could use a little time to talk.”

Oh, he loves that look. That smile.

“Maybe.”
______

“A McDonald’s? Really? You’re a princess!”

“And a princess can’t enjoy french fries? Come on, Loki.”

An hour has passed, and things are…better. Loki conjured a properly warm, fuzzy blanket that barely fits in their closet, especially when you include all the pillows Sylvie requested, and they’re not cuddling, not exactly, but they’re smiling at each other, and talking, and her shoulder keeps brushing his and it lights up a spark in her chest every time.

She told him that she was trying to understand. And she was, because she supposes that it’s really only been a few days, at most, for him for what’s been a year for her. But she tells him that she needs, more than anything, to be heard, to have someone listen to her and support her unconditionally, and she knows he means it when he says that he will, and she means it when she says she’ll try too.

“So,” Loki starts, and she knows by that tone that a ridiculous question is about to follow. “Any postman in the last year?”

“Yes, actually.” Sylvie shifts and her face lights up as she talks. “He’s six feet tall, very handsome, quiet and unassuming-” and then she rudely smacks his shoulder. “No, you bloody idiot! I just snogged the daylights out of you an hour ago, would I have done that if I was with someone else?”

“Ow! Was that necessary?”

“Well, you asked a stupid question!”

“Yes, and that kiss was wonderful by the way, but I just…I wasn’t sure if…I mean, a year, that’s…”

And all Lokis may struggle with emotional intelligence, but even Sylvie can recognize the insecurity on his face, so she reaches over and cups his jaw in her hands. “I didn’t stop thinking about you, you know? I mean, I kept moving, I kept living my life, I started living the life that I wanted. But I didn’t forget you.”

Only when she says that, that she didn’t forget him, does a pound of tension that he’s been holding for the past ninety minutes visibly drop from those fantastic shoulders. She wonders how much more pain is still there.

Sylvie scoots over the last two inches of space between them and murmurs, reverent of the space, “I meant what I had said that day. I don’t know how to do…this.” It feels terribly vulnerable and a little shaming to repeat the weakest words she’s ever said, but then that grin splits his face.

“I still don’t know what we’re doing.”

“That’s why I’m the superior Loki.”

“And Mobius’ favorite,” he adds.

“That too.”

They laugh, they’re laughing together, but Loki isn’t moving any closer, so Sylvie does it for him, pressing her forehead to his shoulder, because that’s all she can do, all she can manage, but it’s just enough; Loki collapses into her and buries his face into her neck and breathes like he’s been born.

Sylvie lets all the air clogging her chest and throat out. He’s just as hurt as she is, she thinks, just in a very different way.

But she’s missed him, a constant aching thrum that nothing would silence. But with him here, an arm snug around her waist like she might disintegrate in front of him, that steady drumming gets quieter and quieter.

“I just want you to be okay. More than anything I’ve ever wanted, Sylvie…my Sylvie…” His lips leave a wet spot on her neck. Sylvie buries one hand deep into his thick, inky black hair and tries to silently will him to stop saying things that break her and pull her back together and instead just kiss her until she can’t see ten inches in front of her.

With all of his weight caressing every part of her body, all the fight drained out of him, Sylvie kisses his temple, then just beside his ear, over his eyes (and he takes a shuddering breath, his whole chest jerking under her touch) before purposefully slotting her lips against his mouth, and it feels like coming home.

“Tell me,” she’s got such power over him, even as his hands take possession of her hips, “…has anyone ever held you like this?”

“No.” He kisses her bottom lip and stays there, face pressed to hers, eyes fluttering shut. “Only you.”

Sylvie hums. That’s not right, because Loki deserves to be held and caressed and loved, but she’s also selfishly grateful that she’s the first and only one to do it for him.

His jacket slips off his broad shoulders easily enough. The tie gives way, and Loki trembles with the effort of keeping his movements slow, determined to follow her pace.

Her coat joins his on the cluttered floor. She peels back his shirt and looks at him, chest bared to her, and stops, air solid in her throat. “Oh, look at you. You’re beautiful.”

Loki jolts against her. A strangled choke comes out. It sounds like she’s just put his soul back into his body for the first time in years.

Her hands fit perfectly around his face, and she kisses him, swallowing weak protests and pleas. “It’s alright,” she soothes the both of them. “We’re okay.”
______

“Loki…” Her hand runs down his bare back. The other digs into his hip.

“Mhm?” He sucks on her pulse point.

“What if Mobius comes back right now?”

Loki’s hands don’t seem very concerned. “We’ll ignore him.”

She smiles. “I bloody love you.”
______

Mobius doesn’t bang on the door very hard, but against metal, everything sounds loud, and Loki jumps when it rattles.

“You two work out your feelings?”

Sylvie rolls her eyes. This may have, admittedly, been a half decent idea on Mobius’ part, but she’s not too keen to admit that to him.

“Yes, yes, we’re fine,” Loki says quickly as he buttons and ties his clothes back together. Sylvie just shrugs her trenchcoat a little tighter and hikes up her pants and pulls her shirt down. Loki takes in her sloppy appearance hungrily, and she smirks.

“And neither of you want to kill me?” Mobius checks.

Sylvie beams as he opens the door and gives a light but sharp little pat to his face. “No more than usual.”

B-15 looks at the closet, then Loki, then Sylvie, back to the closet, and then at Mobius. Her tone gives no room for argument. “We’re burning this whole laundromat.”

Mobius snickers and Loki laughs, throwing his arms to the side as he exclaims to Sylvie, “See? He said you’d get to light a fire!”

Sylvie throws her head back and laughs, and it feels like time is finally on her side.