Loki (fiorvalr) wrote in noexits, @ 2022-09-23 21:59:00 |
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She'd always been good at playing the girl next door, or the responsible one. Even when she'd gone to Madripoor she'd still been largely responsible. Ruthless at times, maybe, but responsible. She didn't tend towards just screaming when shit hit the fan as it inevitably did, instead she dug in and kept things going, as her Aunt Peggy liked to say 'no, you move'. In one way or another she'd done that when she'd arrived at Derleth, and then she'd met Mobius and she hadn't intended for anything to be otherwise. She had assumed that they would be a good working partnership, but that was it. Mobius wasn't her type. She wouldn't be his. And it had taken one of his variants to point out that actually, they both were.
And Loki certainly wasn't her type. Maybe the furthest thing from her type. Although maybe she just needed to question what her type was. Because if she were being honest, there had been moments where the tension had felt - like something. But she didn't know where she and Loki were, or weren't. The question of where they might have ended up if Mobius stayed felt like something looming on the horizon but never quite reachable. She didn't know how to bridge the gap between. Mobius had been their gap between.
And now Mobius was back, but he wasn't. And the fact that he had been just as kind and good natured and reasonable as she remembered him being the first time that she'd spoken to him wasn't doing anything to help soothe the frustrated edge. She didn't want to admit that she was bothered by it. Or that there was a part of her that knew that Mobius was here and Loki would have him again - if he wanted him. Because Mobius had loved Loki. (And maybe she worried that she wouldn't be needed by Loki anymore - maybe part of her wondered if she ever had been. They'd circled, and maybe Loki just kept her near because of Mobius. Although every time she asked this question too intensely she reminded herself of sneaking through a Wal-mart with a basket of canned green beans in her hand, which was a ridiculous thing to think, because she'd partnered up with people to do such things dozens of times over her months at Derleth and there was nothing special about that trip, but it was there, still.)
Nothing about the current situation would do anything for her nerves but magnesium salts might. And she didn't think they'd hurt Loki's nerves either. And maybe she wouldn't be needed anymore. Honestly, he had enough people to watch out for him. But nobody else had suggested this, that she knew of. Sharon pulled her hair up off her neck, and after twisting it, she slid a couple of hairpins in to hold it in what was most certainly a more messy bun than was typical for the time.
"I know I promised you a dress, but that would rather defeat the purpose of a bath," she shrugged the bathrobe down over her shoulders, and let it drop onto the wooden floor of the room, before she could think twice about whether or not she wanted to disrobe in front of Loki. She stuck a toe into the bath, and then carefully sank down into it, allowing the warmth of the water to wrap around her skin. "And I thought a bit of relaxing might… do us both good."
Maybe it'd been foolish. It felt a little foolish at the moment. People expected Loki to go off half-cocked and do something crazy. Nobody expected her to do it. This didn't even really qualify as that crazy. It was just a little outside of the norm. Sharon sighed.
Loki, for his part, was just as lost and confused concerning the situation with Mobius—and between them—as Sharon was. Loki couldn’t begin to explain the sheer rage inside of him. It boiled beneath his skin. He could feel it flipping and flopping around in his belly trying to surge to the surface. He hadn’t been joking about the need to get something out of his system. He had. He stood on the edge of a deep ravine and screamed into the darkness. He yelled until his throat was sore and his echo was the only thing that could be heard for miles. Then he passed out in the dirt under the stars and tried to forget. Tried to forget everything.
Of course, that didn’t work. It never did.
He stood in the room, still fully dressed in his dusty clothes. Sharon was right. (She very often was.) He did need this. A moment to relax. He was human this week and he’d continuously forgotten that he couldn’t put persistent strain on his body without the consequences of pain and discomfort. His muscles ached. Not just from riding and shooting and saving people from a posse of policemen, but from the gunshot that had grazed his bicep on the train. It was bandaged up and thankfully it hadn’t hit anything important, but it hurt like no other. And Loki hated it. He hated not being himself. He hated being weak. Especially when he needed his illusions to protect himself. To hide how he was crumbling apart at the seams.
“The only thing I like better than a nice dress is no dress,” Loki said. He offered a smile, an attempt to add levity to his words, but it was a little halfhearted. And the cadence of his tone was slightly off. Like he was almost sad about it.
He undid the bandanna around his neck while Sharon dropped the robe and made for the tub. He watched her in a way he probably shouldn’t have. It wasn’t entirely a lustful gaze, although with Loki there was always something provocative in his eyes. There was also a hint of sobriety to the way he watched her. Maybe even regret for something they didn’t get to have. Something they might never have now that their Mobius was gone.
He dropped his coat onto a chair and undid the buttons on his shirt. He was careful slipping out his bandaged arm from the sleeve. Then he kicked off his boots, removed his socks, and dropped his slacks. Everything he wore was covered in an inch of dirt and blood. Underneath he was better off, but this entire world seemed to have a layer of grime to it. Himself included.
Not a god, but still godly in appearance, despite the dark bruises on his ribs.
Loki didn’t have the same modesty as Sharon. Or if he did he was better at hiding it. He drew his fingers along the top of the bath, warning his body of the change in temperature before he climbed into the tub beside her. He displaced the water, spilling a fair bit of it over the brim. He winced too, the salts biting at a few cuts on his arms and back that he’d sustained during the incident with the dynamite. Then he sighed and rested his head back.
“It was a good idea, Sharon. Thank you.” His fingers clenched along the edge of the metal tub. He had to bend his knees to fit if he didn’t sit upright. But while it was a tad uncomfortable, he didn’t care. He tilted his head to the side and looked at her. It wasn’t hard to see why Mobius found her attractive. “He’s an arse. The new Mobius. I thought about shoving him off a cliff. Very nearly did.”
Sharon's lips turned up at the quip, even if it felt half-hearted, and where she might have normally quipped something in return. But she didn't feel like she needed to do this with Loki, or maybe she just had lost the energy to try to pretend something finally. Maybe she'd finally hit that point where playing any sort of role felt incomprehensible. Or maybe she just needed a long soak and bed.
Her gaze turned towards Loki, and for a beat she nearly turned back away as he undressed. And then she just didn't. It wasn't screaming off the cliff or even close, but she let herself watch. There was a reason Mobius had been attracted to him. And of course, it wasn't just physical. That was something Sharon had slowly concluded over multiple interactions, quips back and forth, friendly competition maybe a little jealousy with a dash of sexual tension, and Sharon could easily say that she could see what Mobius saw in Loki. But just then, watching muscles across his hips, and back, catching the full picture of the man? Well, of course Mobius had been attracted to him.
She wasn't as tall as he was, and could stretch out a little more easily, although she couldn't quite stretch out her legs to their fullest, and so she left one knee bent, and lifted the other leg up, resting the ankle on the edge of the tub, calf complaining with sudden goosebumps about the chill of the air in the room. The appreciation seeped in to soothe something in her soul. Or maybe it was the salts. But no, it was no guarantee of any particular future in their relationship, but it was nice that her instincts hadn't been entirely off.
And at his description of Mobius she laughed despite herself.
"Funny, I thought he was as aggravatingly nice as I expected him to be," she turned her gaze away from Loki's shoulders and chest and up to his actual face. Eyes up here, Sharon. "It did not impact my desire to want to push him off a cliff." She sighed and shook her head. "Or my need to make certain he actually made it back to campus in one piece without any additional problems." There was that responsibility, pushing in and demanding she make certain things happen as they should. It was harder to push away than she would have preferred. She traced a finger on the edge of the tub, running some of the salts that hadn't quite made it down into the water so they could dissolve. "I guess we're back where we were. Before I mean. I never intended to tell him how I felt. I'm good at not telling people that." Her tone twisted, and she shafted her legs back both into the water, knees just bobbing above the surface of the water. It was clear that 'good' was a relative term and she might not consider it good at all.
“That makes you a better person than me.” Loki had brought Mobius to Sweetwater and then left him there with little more than a by-your-leave. Perhaps Loki didn’t give himself enough credit. He could have left Mobius on the train. Could have left him in the hands of those peculiar US Marshals who intended to take him to who-knows-where. He didn’t have to rescue him. Didn’t even have to lead him through the desert. He could have abandoned him in a canyon. Mobius could barely sit on a horse let alone steer one or figure out which direction he was going in. Loki had probably saved the man’s life five times over since the day he arrived. But then he just dumped him in the hands of whoever was willing to really look after him.
Sharon, it seemed.
Loki did feel guilty about it. Just as he felt guilty about his short temper and his aggravated snips and snaps every time Mobius posted something on the network. It wasn’t fair to Mobius. He didn’t know better. Hel, he didn’t know anything. He was innocent in all of this. Loki should have given him a fair shot at starting fresh.
But Loki didn’t want to start fresh. He wanted what he had or he wanted nothing at all.
He dipped his head under the water, fully soaking his hair and all of the dirt and sweat that was probably in it. Then he sat up and swept the wet strands behind his ears. “What do you mean you never intended to tell him what you felt?”
Loki furrowed his forehead and looked across the arm length distance between their tubs to her face. He was trying to read her expression. But Sharon was like Natasha. Notoriously difficult to interpret. “You mean you never told Mobius—the last Mobius—you never told him how you felt about him? It was left unsaid?”
That had always been Loki’s plan. He hadn’t wanted to tell Mobius his feelings. He never wanted to expose himself that way. And then one day, he did. Completely unplanned. Completely unanticipated. Did he regret it now? A little. Loki always felt that words ought to be unnecessary. And once said they couldn’t be taken back. A person should just know. Should just trust. But most humans weren’t that way. Mobius certainly hadn’t been.
“You can tell me if you think it’ll help.” A weird suggestion, to be sure. But this was Loki. Anything normal would have been abnormal. “You can tell me what you never told him, that is.”
Since there was no way in hel they’d get the opportunity to tell this Mobius. Not when they both wanted to shove him off a ravine.
Sharon scoffed at the notion of being a better person than Loki. Maybe she should have agreed, and after all she’d even been frustrated at Loki earlier, and on some larger scale she’d never set aliens on Midtown but right now the notion of holding that kind of weight just felt exhausting.
She slid down, letting more of her knees out so that her shoulders could be covered in water although she didn’t dunk her hair under. “People just expect me to be,” she said flatly. “People expect you to go off half-cocked and damage something. They expect me to stay steady so I do. But it’s not better than you.” She felt so frayed and there didn’t seem to be a good reason for it. Or maybe that was stupid: There were plenty of good reasons for it. Either way, she realized that she’d definitely come to believe what she’d just said. She wasn’t better than Loki. She did things as expected. She looked out for herself. Sometimes that meant brokering things that had definitely caused damage. And nobody here knew that, except for Mobius. Mobius had, because: timelines. Maybe new Mobius also did. She didn’t want to think about that. She sighed. “Mobius knew that about us. And he was right.”
Sharon pushed herself up again, her shoulders protesting the sudden cool with a smattering of goosebumps and she leaned forward to pull her knees to her chest. It probably left the edges of her breasts exposed out of the water. But at this point she didn’t care. She was too exhausted.
“I just mean that he had you and he clearly cared for you so much. When I realized I might care about him I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t want to mess that up for him or for you.” She leaned her chin to her knees and considered. “I didn’t tell him how I felt, exactly. I guess I thought we’d have more time.”
She turned her head then, so she could look at him. Dark hair in wet ringlets down his neck, and she almost smiled despite the situation, or the feeling that she should have said more. She didn’t have regrets exactly. It wasn’t that she felt she should have said something that she didn’t. She hadn’t been ready and Mobius had never pushed. Eventually, she would have been ready. Her stomach clenched up with the anger of not being given the time to get there. At her own reluctance with emotional anything or allowing people close. It always felt like a good way to lose them. And on some absurd level she wondered if she should tell Loki anything because she didn’t want to send him off, back to death. Even if she reminded herself that this wasn’t how this worked.
This whole situation was so unlikely. She felt as if she’d been circling Loki for ages. First because of New York, then because of Mobius, and then because he was the very clear love of her lover’s life, and then because of her own attraction, which she’d left unstated too. Apparently she was just really good at leaving things unstated. Loki’s eyes could change instantaneously, but right now, they were doing nothing to discourage her from talking. And maybe if she regretted anything it was not being a little bolder with Mobius. Or even with Loki.
“You know, you’re the only person who checks in on me regularly.” She said quietly. “With Mobius gone I mean. Natasha has occasionally, but mostly everyone assumes that I’m fine.”
Unstated, because she was the queen of that: everyone except you, and I’m not fine.
“To a certain extent I feel like I did the same thing with you. We had a balance, you and Mobius and I and I didn’t want to mess that up. But part of me… I -” she breathed out, because she had done the same thing and she was bordering on doing it again. She shook her head, shifted back into the water. “I don’t want to mess this up either. I need someone who checks in on me.” Just one person, even if they were the god of mischief and chaos or whatever, apparently.
“People aren’t always wrong. I do often go off half-cocked and damage things. Especially when I’m upset. Even more so when I’m grieving.” It was a part of himself that Loki was slowly beginning to accept. That he sometimes was exactly what he appeared to be. That he sometimes followed his own cliche on purpose. That he was predictably unpredictable. “But I don’t expect anything of you. And I don’t think Mobius cared more for me than he did for you.”
It may have looked that way because Loki demanded so much attention. It seemed he was incapable of having a relationship that wasn’t commanding. That didn’t take over everything. Loki was an intense personality. He was impossible to ignore. Especially when he was trying not to be ignored. And after the trauma with Fandral and the awkward situation with Natasha, Loki dove head first into ‘look at me! look at me!’ territory. And Mobius was the one who tried to keep him in check. That didn’t mean Mobius loved Loki more than Sharon. It just meant that his care and attention were more obvious. More public.
Loki suspected Mobius appreciated those quieter moments with Sharon more than he let on. And Loki was fine with that. He was never jealous of Sharon. He wanted Mobius to be happy. And sometimes happiness couldn’t be found in one single person.
“It’s foolish to assume anyone in Derleth is fine. Everyone is decompensating in one way or another. If it’s not from losing someone it’s from leaving something behind. We’re all here because we’re broken. And we’re all becoming more broken with each passing day.” Loki ran his finger along the edge of the tub, picking up drops of water and watching as they smeared along the brim. “I check in on you because I care about you. Because you’re my friend. Because I worry about you. People who go silent when they’re grieving need more attention than those who go on reckless benders. People should be worrying more about you than they are about me.”
Loki frowned. “People just don’t know they need to worry about you.”
But Loki knew. Because a long time ago Loki used to be just like that. He used to be the quiet boy who hid his pain behind his boisterous older brother. Then he grew up and started being loud too. Because being loud and chaotic gained him the attention he always felt like he was losing to Thor.
As for Natasha, well, it was clear she paid better attention than most. She was looking out for everyone.
“I never felt like you were going to mess anything up with me and Mobius. If anything I was certain I would be the one to mess it up. That’s what I do, after all. I mess everything up. I’m quite good at it. Ask Sylvie. Ask the other Lokis. Ask Julia. Ask Natasha. I’ve messed up every relationship I’ve made from the moment I got here. Loki, King of Messing Up.” This time the smile was more real. Because it was true. This was how Loki saw himself. As someone incapable of doing the right thing even when he tried his best. Even when all of his intentions were right. “But I will always check in on you. As long as you want me to.”
Sharon didn't really think Mobius had cared for Loki more - differently, but not more. And the relationship they'd built hadn't been something where they'd known each other before. And that made it stranger, she thought, to think about Mobius being back but not remembering any of that. A different Mobius. Although she supposed in a way Loki was the same - because he wasn't the Loki that Mobius had known. Derleth really did like to fuck with them.
She didn't think she'd ever been jealous of Loki either, at first maybe because she hadn't gotten it, but later maybe because she had begun to see. At first the lack of jealousy had simply been that she and Loki were so completely different, for all the subtle similarities - the quick wit, and the broken pieces because Loki was right. Or at least it certainly felt that way. Everyone here had been broken in some way - larger or smaller. And there maybe weren't as many differences between her and Loki there. She hadn't burned down New York, but she'd definitely given up on heroics, and some things had burned down - if figuratively rather than literally. But later, it had been because she'd begun to see Loki as Mobius saw him. Maybe that had been inevitable, under the circumstances, but it had shifted from the possibility of jealousy, exactly, to something else entirely.
She turned her head in his direction, watching him, and a smile played at her lips although it didn't reach her eyes. She was too tired, or too sad. Tomorrow she might feel like she'd said too much, been too vulnerable, but for the moment it was just a relief to have said it. "I shouldn't complain. I work very hard to make certain people don't worry about me. It doesn't work well in my line of work for people to be paying attention to me. But Mobius saw. You do too. But I think Mobius' gift was seeing." She paused. "Is seeing, possibly." Because how much was a variant different from another? She didn't intend on telling this Mobius anything, but she hadn't intended on telling the other one anything either, and it was entirely possible he'd pick it out. He was observant and he was an analyst, and it was what had brought them together initially. If he figured out that she'd had a relationship with a variant of his, then so be it. And it occurred to her that they'd had a variation of that conversation before. Why Mobius? Well, it had been obvious. Maybe something else had been obvious then as well, but she'd not wanted to admit it.
She splashed a bit of water up, over her knees. "Loki." There was a beat as the thoughts felt like shivering sands under her feet, and she didn't quite know which direction to go. "Do you remember the night we danced? Thor's party?"
“The toga party?” Loki remembered most people looking ridiculous with their bedsheets wrapped around them. Not Loki, of course. He’d used magic to preserve a spectacular image of himself. He refused to wear anything that wasn’t form fitting. And while fitted sheets might cling to a mattress, they did very little for a torso.
But did he remember dancing with Sharon? He remembered that she allowed him to lead and she’d battled his quips without breaking a sweat. She also managed to sneak in a few queries and refused to join him in a dark corner. Then again, Loki was probably just taunting her about that last part. He was notoriously difficult to take seriously when he was in one of his teasing moods. And notoriously impossible to read. Had he been serious or had it merely been a joke? What if she’d said yes? Would he have followed through or spurned her on the side of the dance floor?
Difficult to say.
“I remember you were a better dancer than you let on.” Loki lifted his left leg out of the water and hung it over the edge of the tub. The hairs on his calf stood slightly on end in response to the sudden temperature change. “I also remember you leaving me to try out other dance partners. Rude but well timed.”
He also recalled dancing with Doctor Strange which was always a battle of wits and rhetoric. Strange had mentioned seeing Loki dance with Sharon and Loki couldn’t help but sense a certain twinge of jealousy in the sorcerer’s voice. It had made Loki feel quite smug at the time. Technically, it still did. Any opportunity to make the Sorcerer Supreme feel like a small, neglected child on the bench of a sports match gave Loki a warm and fuzzy sensation. Probably because it was so much fun watching Strange become even more huffy and insufferable. Loki loved breaking down his ego.
Loki grinned at the thought. Then he turned his attention back to Sharon. “Why do you ask?”
This got a smirk out of Sharon, because she did enjoy surprising people, and she particularly had enjoyed surprising Loki. She was pretty certain she'd taken him off guard several times that evening - or at least challenged him. And it had been the same when she'd showed up and told him that he needed blue to go with his gold as he was decorating the room that had been hers and his and Mobius', and for the first time since she'd settled into the tub, her mood lifted.
Because she'd enjoyed that night. And she'd enjoyed that time she and Loki had decorated the room. Banter, and challenges, and always so close to the flirting line, that she didn't know if it had been or not.
Or maybe she knew. At least part way.
She shifted in the tub. It wasn't big enough to really allow her to easily lean on the edge, but she managed to make it happen anyway, settling down so she was still mostly covered by water and her elbows were on the edge facing Loki, and she leaned forward.
"I remember that you were deeply offended that I doubted your dancing abilities," her eyes brightened, smirking. It wasn't exactly what he'd said. He hadn't exactly been deeply offended, more Dramatic™ but that was a side fact. "And that you kept trying to drag me off to a dark corner. And that I thought about it." Sharon suspected he knew this, and dropped the fact accordingly; and if Loki hadn't suspected, then it was all the better to drop it as if it had been settled fact. Because it had been a while Sharon had even attempted to surprise Loki, maybe even since before Mobius had disappeared. But at the moment all she had was energy she didn't know what to do with, and she was tired of being quiet. "And I remember wondering what Mobius thought when he saw us dancing, and whether it was half as dirty as what I thought about later."
Loki blinked. And when he caught Sharon’s gaze he wasn’t entirely certain where this conversation was going anymore. Or, perhaps, he didn’t know where this evening was going. He was the one who always crossed the line first with the tantalizing dialogue. That was the role he played. The role he played with everyone, really. But with Sharon it had always been very carefully managed. Very cautiously navigated. Because Loki had already made half a dozen mess-ups with people in Derleth. And she wasn’t one of them. And, like his relationship with Natasha, Loki didn’t want to ruin something by, well, being Loki.
He raised a brow. “Are you saying you had a sexual fantasy about me in a toga?”
Loki gave a momentary pause before breaking out into an amused laugh. Because it was a joke, right? Clearly she wouldn’t be so serious. Their jokes weren’t serious. They teetered on the edge of something serious, but they were never actual propositions.
Unless, of course, Sharon had just decided to change the rules of the game.
Bloody spies were impossible to keep up with. Loki loved it. But it also aggravated him to no end.
“Well, I do hope I was good in this fantasy of yours. I hope I impressed. Must have been good if you thought the real thing couldn’t compare.” Loki dropped his leg back into the tub and then copied her posture, resting his forearms on the edge of the tub and leaning his face forward. Cue that serpentine smirk. “Please tell me you were thinking of me when you were with Mobius. At least once. Tell me you imagined what it might have been like to have both of us there giving you our full and undivided attention.”
Sharon matched his laughter with a grin, and caught her Lower lip with her teeth, as if to clamp down on her own laughter. And then came the smirk, and she met his look without looking away.
Had she changed the rules? Maybe. She and Loki had danced up to an invisible line, toeing it, while never crossing it, but the thing she’d never quite known for certain was whether the line was real or imagined. Or if, Perhaps, the line had always been Mobius, and had, in fact, never really been a line at all. She suspected this sometimes. She could never be entirely certain. And what were the rules of the game without Mobius? She didn’t know, and that should have maybe made her cautious, but she’d been quiet and safe and maybe she didn’t want to blast something, but she needed to feel alive.
“You are not and never have been wearing a toga in any of my fantasies,” she stated, not backing away from the question or the implications, even if she was entirely too sober to do this, there was no blaming it on anything but sheer recklessness - something she apparently hadn’t had enough of recently.
She moved her hand to wave away a fly on her shoulder, before matching Loki’s gaze. “It was my fantasy, so naturally I got the starring role. Although I admit I wondered whether you’d let me be the center of attention or if you’d want to be in between. And I didn’t hate that idea either. I liked the idea of watching Mobius watch you.”
“Watching Mobius watch me? So I have to be by myself in this fantasy? Performing center stage for an audience of two? Well, that doesn’t seem fair. I mean … I would. Of course. If voyeurism is on the wishlist then I’m not going to say no. But I think I would prefer a more collaborative experience.” Loki’s lips remained parted after that last word, mouth just slightly open as though he might say something else. But he didn’t. Instead his tongue licked out over his lower lip. And his gaze, which had been so intently set on Sharon’s eyes, slowly fell to her mouth. Then to her neck. Then to the rim of the bathtub which blocked the rest of his view.
He didn’t think that he had to admit to his own fantasies. It was clear that Loki had already had them. Probably with everyone at some point.
He cleared his throat with a cough. “You know it was my idea. I proposed it early on. As soon as Mobius told me about you, in fact. I said I would be amenable. Well, I might have been a little more enthusiastic than that. I said I would love the opportunity to have you both. Fairly certain I even offered to not be in the middle. Which, take that as you will. I thrive on being the center of attention. But I savor a very explicit pleasure in making someone else feel like a god.”
Loki tilted his head to the side. Then he winked. “Or a goddess.”
The fly landed on his shoulder, but Loki didn’t notice it. He didn’t even flinch as it crawled along the bony curve of his clavicle. It was as though it wasn’t even there. “And I’m not wearing a toga now.”
Sharon laughed, because it wasn't exactly what she'd meant, but she also didn't bother correcting it, because Loki startled her when he said he'd suggested it to Mobius. Her lips parted, and she stared across the distance at him.
Maybe it shouldn't have surprised her, but it did. She wasn't certain what his reasoning had been, and certainly early on she wouldn't have wanted it, but the last week or two that Mobius had been there, the thought that had crossed her mind simply out of curiosity had become more of an actual question that she hadn't been certain she should say anything about. It made her wonder again if Mobius would have been interested. If she had asked the question. The picture Loki just painted wasn't so unlike some she had sketched out. And she believed him. Originally it might have felt like a line, but Sharon knew him well enough now to know that he did like to please people he cared about. She'd watched it in action. Her pulse fluttered.
Sharon straightened, still technically covered by the water, but the water was cooler than it had been, her muscles less achey, and her interest in the bath was waning. "Momentary, individual fantasies aside, I'd prefer equal worship opportunities in the bedroom. And no togas," she added with a bemused smirk. She took a breath, and she stood up, taking a step outside of the metal tub. Maybe the water had warmed her so much that she was still radiating heat, or maybe it was the way Loki was looking at her just then but the room didn't feel as cool as it had, even if her body still reacted to the change in temperature.
She ought to be more cautious. To be more worried maybe about what happened if they bashed through the lines that they'd set up. She'd have regrets if it changed things for the worse, or soured the relationship that she had. She didn't want that. But she'd spent four weeks, no, nearly five, being more or less good, and she was done with that.
Loki wasn’t exactly surprised when she stood up, but he was wary. There were two voices in his head speaking at once. The first told him to wait. To think. To be cautious. This was his seldom heard voice of reason. The one that warned him that this was exactly how he ended up in difficult situations. That he needed to think clearly. What was this exactly? It wasn’t love, per se. He didn’t know Sharon well enough to be in love with her. She was his friend. He counted her as one of the few people in Derleth that he might give his life for. But love? They still had a cavern called New York between them. Love, or something like it, might be on a future mountain top. But at the moment they were still on a plateau. Was this merely grief seeking an outlet? Was this because of the arrival of the new Mobius? Was this because he’d failed to follow through with Natasha yet again? Was this an opportunity to try and squeeze out one last ounce of passion from his time with Mobius? By using her as a conduit to something he’d lost?
And then there was the other voice. The one that said: Do it. Why not? What does it matter? She doesn’t love you. Nobody loves you. You’re only good for one thing. Why not indulge in that? It doesn’t have to mean anything. She likes you well enough. She’s just using you to get back something of what she lost. She just wants a release. That’s what you want too. To pretend like Mobius is still here. If you had your powers she might even ask you to look like him. And why not do that too if you can? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters here. You’ll reset in a day anyway. You’ll be back in your room silently weeping over your own death and aching for something you never really had to begin with. Why not have something for yourself just once? Because it’ll only be once. She’ll leave you like everyone else does eventually. It’s just a fling. It never bothered you before.
He watched as the water dripped down her body. His eyes fell from her face to her chest. To the slender curves of her figure and the smooth lines of her hips. It wasn’t strange looking at the physique of someone who’d been with his lover. He’d imagined what she must have looked like before this moment. Just as Loki had imagined many people in Derleth. And Loki was usually a good judge of what was underneath the illusion presented by daily attire. But there was something almost sentimental in his mind as he thought about her being with Mobius.
In retrospect, where appearance was concerned, Loki thought she was a better fit for Mobius than he’d been. Although he couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the hair. Maybe it was because she was human. But he was human this week, too.
She’s waiting.
“Hm.” Loki pushed himself up from the rim of the tub and came to a stand. He stepped out, one long leg at a time, and stood in front of her. They each formed a puddle of water on the wooden floor. Within seconds they’d melded into one.
There wasn’t much space between them, but he stepped closer. As close as he could get without physically touching her. Close enough to break the chill in the room and feel the heat radiating off her body. “And what exactly does this worship mean in the long run, Miss Carter? Because I’m not Mobius. And I’m no longer of a mind to make promises where my heart is concerned.”
Loki paused. “If I even still have a heart.”
The fly buzzed around the back of his head, but Loki paid it no heed. Instead he reached forward and pulled the hairpins out of her messy bun, allowing her hair to fall to her shoulders.
Sharon had maybe spent too much time recently overthinking everything. Dwelling possibly even. Did she know exactly what she wanted? No, which meant she probably should have been being more careful, but she wasn’t feeling that.
“I don’t want you to be Mobius,” she looked up at him. This much was true. Mobius had been Mobius. This new Mobius was Mobius, but without the memories that tied him to her. She didn’t expect Loki to be Mobius anymore than she expected this Mobius to know those things. She knew she wasn’t here because she wanted him to be Mobius. Rather because he was the person who checked in on her. He had taken her wit and turned it back equally. Given any particular moment, it was unclear to her which one might win a round. Maybe it wasn’t love exactly, but affection certainly. Friendship undeniably, and attraction well, it was definitely that. And love didn’t feel off the table, considering there were a handful of people she would check in on, would miss dreadfully if they were gone, and Loki was strangely at the top of that list. And maybe she didn’t know if she could expect love from Loki, if she were being truthful. Or, maybe better put, she couldn’t expect traditional love from Loki. But then she wasn’t sure he could have expected it from her. They might both need to be less broken than they were to truly love another fully. And she certainly wasn’t and she knew he wasn’t.
“True love is a fairy tale. I don’t need promises from your heart.” It felt cynical when she said it out loud, but it was true. In some ways it had been a relief that Mobius had been with Loki. Sharon had never needed to be everything. She didn’t know that she could be for anyone. “I just want… sometimes I want to be with you. Not necessarily always sans togas,” her lips twitched into a bemused smirk. “But sometimes, maybe.”
Her breath caught as he reached to undo her hair and it fell down across her shoulders. She looked up and for a moment caution whispered that this might change everything badly. But equally fair, was the notion that it might not. They cared about each other. Sharon placed a hand on his chest and stepped in, lifting her lips towards him, another hand creeping up, a wave at the fly to chase it away, before she settled her hand against his neck.
“I just want you to keep checking in on me,” she said softly, for the first time since she stepped out of the tub actually feeling a rush of nerves. It ought not feel that vulnerable to say something that was that basic to friendship. “And I’ll check in on you.”
Derleth had forced Loki to see a side of himself that he hadn’t known existed. This second chance at life made him confront everything he’d ignored or denied himself in his life before the Statesman. Loki had never believed himself capable of loving someone in the way he’d loved Mobius. And, despite his mother’s beliefs to the contrary, he’d always thought it impossible for someone else to love him in return. But that aside, love had never been important. It had never been a priority. Until it was too late.
Now Loki found himself on the other side of love and affection. On the side of loss. Mobius was gone and, while he still had very strong feelings towards some other people in Derleth, he didn’t know if he could go through that kind of loss again. There were things he wanted. Relationships he craved. But he feared what he would become if he took those risks and lost again.
Who would he be now if Natasha disappeared? If Strange returned home? If Julia was sent back? If Sharon was gone? And it wasn’t just about the romantic love or the passion. What about Thor? The other Lokis? Sylvie? Hugh? Fen? What about all of the people that Loki considered friends. No. Not just friends. Family.
How could he live if he lost them?
She placed a hand to his chest and Loki could feel his human heart increase its speed. His pulse was racing in anticipation. He didn’t have his illusions to protect him. No glamour to hide the vulnerable look in his face. The uncertainty. The fear. The desire.
“Sometimes I wish it were a fairy tale. Then it wouldn’t be so hard to know if the choices we make are the right ones. Because they’d always end happily ever after.” Loki drew his fingers through her hair. “Nothing would stop me from checking in on you, Sharon. I have to in case he comes back.”
It was one of those unspoken promises he’d made to Mobius. That he would look out for Sharon should anything happen.
He moved his hand to the side of her face, watching the slight movements in her expression. He didn’t even notice that he wasn’t blinking. Nor did he notice the fly which suddenly perched itself on his eyeball and began rubbing its front legs together.
Completely unaware, Loki leaned in for a kiss.
Sharon could relate to that statement. Perhaps a little too strongly if she were honest. She could say it wasn't, she could say she didn't expect it (and she didn't) but that didn't mean part of her didn't yearn for something a little bit more simple, a little more obvious - you were meant to be with that person.
Her breath caught at the touch, and for a moment, the only thing she was thinking about was the way his fingers felt against her cheek, and the way her heart was picking up, and an increasing longing to press lips to his, and an awareness somehow peripheral and central at the same time that they were both standing close together, with no clothing, and that closing the distance to press against him would take only one motion.
One motion, that she fully intended to make.
Until.
The fly had been impossible to get rid of. They'd been impossible all week long. And even tonight it felt as if she'd been brushing them away every five minutes or so - damn the Old West, she guessed. But she was now staring up at Loki, with a fly on his eye - his open eye - and her own eyes widened and she took an involuntary step back.
"Loki, there's -" The words caught, not because it was disgusting (it was) but because it felt so impossible and improbable. How was there a fly sitting on his eyeball and he didn't seem to notice at all. "A fly…" she finally managed to push this out, and then when she did it gave her the momentum to say the whole thing. "There's a fly, on your eye, can't you feel it? Or see it?"
The interruption jostled Loki out of his thoughts. He’d been in a particular headspace. In a place of physical attraction and perplexed emotion. But the moment she spoke he snapped out of it. Like someone had clapped their hands beside his ear while he was in the middle of a deep and dreamless slumber. And the expression on his face was sheer bewilderment. Before he said anything, his answer to her question was clear.
He had no idea what she was talking about.
He also didn’t blink. Hadn’t blinked in at least thirty seconds. Maybe even a minute. And if ever there was a sign that something wasn’t right—that something was very wrong—then that was it.
Loki cracked a grin and scoffed. “You’re joking, right? There aren’t any flies in here.”
And as if to prove his point he glanced around the room. But still the fly remained stuck to the white of his eye. And when he turned his attention back to Sharon, it crawled across his pupil and then onto the side of his nose. Still no reaction. Then he finally blinked, almost two minutes later.
“Is this a trick? Are you…” Loki furrowed his expression into a suspicion frown. Was she messing with him? Was this some kind of cruel exercise in guilt or shame? He didn’t anticipate that from Sharon. She’d honestly had him convinced that she liked him. That she wanted to be with him in that way. It didn’t make sense that she would try to humiliate him. Perhaps she was ill. “Are you all right? Are you feeling well?”
Loki dropped his hold of her face to place the back of his hand against her forehead. “You don’t feel warm. Maybe you’re hallucinating.”
The fly crawled over his top lip.
The question made Sharon laugh, and it very likely sounded a little manic, because no she was not okay, but more importantly, she was pretty certain that Loki was not okay. There was a fly crawling across his eyeball and he didn't seem to notice. And now that she was thinking about it, there had been all that conversation about the flies on the network earlier, and how some people maybe couldn't see them, and she didn't know what that meant. Was Loki even himself? Or was she? (There was an existential trip).
"No, I'm -" it occurred to her that maybe it wasn't a great idea for her to tell him that he was the problem. Because if there was something about the flies that was a warning sign, well, she didn't really want to be discovered by anyone naked in a bath-house because Loki had knocked her out and while she trusted Loki not to do that to her, she didn't really trust Derleth at all. And this felt like a Derleth thing. A frustrating, annoying, completely improbable Derleth thing, messing up her evening.
"I think I'm a bit over-heated, I could have sworn…" She frowned, and shook her head, still looking at his face. And there was the blink, finally, but it felt as if he'd just been staring at her for so long. She didn't even know why it had been so long. Either he was going crazy (or had), or she was going crazy. Either way, she'd lost whatever momentum that she had.
"I might be," she agreed finally, recovering about as quickly as she could recover considering there was a fly now on his nose. "I might be hallucinating. Maybe we should. Rain check."
Her cheeks flushed. "I'm sorry Loki."
Maybe it was stupid to apologize, but she genuinely was actually. He was gorgeous - she supposed it was a god's physique, so naturally - but something was wrong and it wasn't about him. It was about Derleth. It was always about Derleth. But somehow that didn't make her feel less worried (for Loki) or less mad (for them both).