Who: Time breaking Norse fam What: A adorable, time breaking, Norse fam reunion! When: v. shortly after the intro post Where: New Asgard Warnings: Miss Minutes cameo, but no Croki :(
It was a little weird knocking on the door of the house Ymir had grown up in, instead of just teleporting in, but okay! Sure! Why not! And it was a little weird being dumped into the past, with a lot of his friends, thankfully, but also...some people who were definitely not the age they were supposed to be. Ymir never shied away from experiences, instead embracing things like the pack of trolls he had dinner with last week--it was a really questionable stew that if he thought too closely about, rolled his stomach.
Temporarily displaced was just another bit of weirdness in his life. He could deal with this. And, really, he needed to be the level-headed one, because introducing himself as an adult to his parents, in a time where he didn’t exist yet, was. Going to be an experience.
...He had thought about stopping at the store and grabbing a bundle of ‘It’s a Boy’ balloons. He wouldn’t, but. Maybe if he was still here in a few days and they’d had time to process it and could appreciate the joke.
In the span between the knock and the door opening, Ymir glanced around. There were differences, of course, some larger than others. Which made sense, this was however long in the past. The differences were suddenly too large, too vertigo inducing. So Ymir wouldn’t look at those. He’d find one similarity, and focus on that, and then regain his sense of rightness once more.
The door opened.
“Hi. Okay, first of all, breathe, in,” Ymir demonstrated, his hands folded on his stomach as he drew in an over exaggerated breath. “And out,” the exhale was long and sounded like the summer breeze against palm trees on an empty beach. How relaxing! “Wow, I don’t know about you but I feel just so ready to deliver some life-altering news, I bet you feel ready to receive some.”
There were a lot of words going on here and, for once, Mobius just - was so far away from even beginning to comprehend much of anything. Usually he was sharp as vinegar, he even prided himself on that - but after all of this (a deluge of kids being catapulted into the past from some point in the future, varying points in the future - it was enough to make the head spin like a top), he was feeling a little bit lost.
Even opening the windows wasn’t helpful - usually the sea breeze here by New Asgard was soul-cleansing; but gulping mouthfuls of it in order to try to quell the fire in his lungs didn’t stop the feeling that breathing was now like inhaling an arctic gale. Everything felt cold, and seeing a kid (his kid?) on the other side of the door made Mobius feel as if he was walking straight into the freezer.
He shivered. He was panicking. He didn’t understand how the kid looked just like Loki, except without the darker hair. But the color of his eyes and the ice about his features, a dagger’s edge and the angles sharp as a mountain’s peak (idly he wondered if there had ever been a pudgy stage), all of that was familiar and it was real weird. Shocking.
“Okay, right - breathing. This is me breathing,” Mobius replied, inhaling and then exhaling in a whoosh as he pictured himself sitting atop a jetski with the ocean spray in his face. Maybe there were dolphins involved somehow in this scenario. The sun’s rays too. “Can we just - sit for this, maybe? You can come in, of course,” he waved Ymir inside and shut the door behind him. Whenever Loki joined them this was going to be a hell of a thing to go over - Mobius came and went pretty frequently from his cottage but today was the first ‘surprise, this is our kid’ adventure to date. “Because I’ll be honest, I’m still not really sure how you even exist. Or if this is real.”
Mass hallucination, maybe? It wouldn’t be the oddest thing Vallo had done to them.
Ymir followed behind, deciding that the best course of action was not to dart ahead and starfish on the couch. It seemed rude, in this house that wasn’t his but was his and really, he was more concerned with making sure Mobius didn’t pass out. His dad that was and wasn’t his dad, yet. And because the couch he was familiar with wasn’t there, whoops. Right.
He sat on the new couch, long legs pretzeled under him and nodded along. “So let’s bypass a biology lesson for a sec and talk about hallucinations which I bet,” Ymir squinted his eyes in thought, turning them into electric blue slits. “Is what you think this is. Not unfairly, weird things have happened here before. Five types of hallucinations, one for each of the five senses, right? And I am ticking all of those boxes--most of them, please don’t lick me, we can just agree to bypass that one.”
Ymir reached out a hand for a handshake, explaining. “To cover the tactile bit. You should interrogate me. Because if you’re hallucinating, your brain will provide either entirely logical answers that you can predict, or I’ll just start answering in howler monkey screeches. Completely irrational. So. Interrogate me.” Not exactly how he thought he’d approach this (the balloons were seeming more and more like a better idea, or something like a cookie cake??) but Ymir thought it was fitting. “Rapid fire, lay it all out.”
Wow, okay.
Mobius blinked cottony blue eyes, surprised - so obviously Ymir knew him. Which - that shouldn’t come as a surprise, if this was actually happening, but still. The kid (teenager? How old was he? When was he born?) seemed to actually be calm, used to shenanigans of the timeline variety, and even more - he said the magic word. Interrogate.
Still slightly shell shocked, Mobius managed to shake his hand regardless of that. He may have squeezed a little bit too, wanting to cling just a wee tad, but figured there’d be time to break down and hold his child (his child - his child? What?) later. “Right,” he agreed, beginning to pace - to let all cylinders fire. He knew how to go about this - he knew what to do.
He knew what to do. He just had to keep telling himself that.
Rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt, he got down to business. “You’re my biological child - yes or no? When were you born, what year? Do you - know magic?” Did I teach you how to ride a jetski was what he wanted to ask next, but he’d get there.
Admittedly, straightforward interrogations were never quite Ymir’s favorite thing. They made him squirm because he couldn’t spin a lovely tale or use an impressive bit of tangoing around the truth--but this was different than accounting for why, exactly, he had slightly missed curfew. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands.
“Yes, 2024, yes,” he responded, immediately after each question. He waited until he had Mobius’s attention, and when he did, Ymir winked. He maintained his pose, but the person he was shifted, roulette wheel style of one figure after the other in quick succession, a whirl of colors, heights, expressions, species even, until slowing down so that Mobius was staring at Mobius, whose face then morphed into Ymir’s, one feature at a time narrowing, sharpening, adjusting, like a time lapse. The last was his mouth, it pulled into a whip strike smirk because he absolutely could not help himself sometimes.
WIth a flick of his fingers he summoned a chair to bump right up against the back of Mobius’s chair, just in case the shock hit then. “Wild, right? Keep breathing, put your head between your knees if you have to. Paper bag, maybe?”
Oh. Oh. By the Timekeepers, that had actually happened. Mobius was still trying to wrap his head about Ymir being his and Loki’s biological child when the kid went ahead and demonstrated that he was truly a trickster, a chip off the ol’ block, and there was nary a doubt about it.
Mobius let out a gasp - it was as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a bull, that kind of shock and surprise, and he didn’t even really say words. Just made this huuuuuh kind of sound that turned into a cough. The chair was definitely necessary though - he felt it hit the back of his knees and he stumbled into it, sitting, hands pressed to the armrests. And he tried to think of what to say - there were so many questions. So many - observations? Things he wanted to talk about, once he figured out how to eradicate the bone dryness from his throat.
“You look just like Loki,” he finally managed to reply. There was no way Ymir was an ‘oops’ baby. Usually, Loki presented as male - well, admittedly it was a fair mix, Mobius supposed - so to shift into a female form and make the decision to carry a baby to full term? How had they gotten to that point? If 2024 was the birth year though, clearly it had taken awhile. “I bet we really, really...love you.”
They did, right? They had to. Ymir seemed pleased to be here - he didn’t hate his parents? They hadn’t completely fucked that up? “Did you have a good childhood?” he asked then, since Mobius really hoped so. Better than anything he or Loki had.
“It’s the,” Ymir gestured to his jawline and cheekbone, a precise and pointed sideways V against his profile that could cut glass. He had once worked and tried to test a theory that this form wasn't what he naturally looked like, that subconsciously his magic had tweaked his physical appearance to be what Ymir saw around him, but at the end of the day it turned out that some genes were just too strong.
At Mobius's question, Ymir rolled his eyes, groaning, “Yes, I had a good childhood.” But it was all so very obviously laced with exasperated fondness, the teenager sort that followed questions Mobius had asked in the past like ‘Did you do your homework?’ ‘Did you eat your vegetables?’ and ‘Did you tell the giants up in the mountains thank you for hosting you?’. “I have a good life, I promise." No mischief reflected in those baby blues, only sincerity. He’d pull Mobius’s leg about many, many other things, but not that. "You're a good dad, always have been. You think I would have come here immediately if you weren't?"
He handed over a TemPad--the TemPad, in fact, although this one had a face-lift, the back covered in stickers and printed selfies of Ymir and a few friends from the group that arrived. Possibly filtered, judging by the dog ears, though with his shapeshifting? Possibly not. The interface itself stayed the same, oddly, with the addition of a few icons of games and social media. “Pull her up. Maybe don’t use yours at the same time though, I’m pretty sure that’ll break time.” He tossed his head as if considering. “I mean, technically, I'm already doing that so I guess there's some merit in rolling the dice, but, nah, probably don't."
It really was the face, those familiar features - Mobius had to chuckle a little. He pretty much contributed nothing in terms of dominant genes when it came to looks; he was just here to participate with the required number of chromosomes in his swimmers. Although he could picture himself feeling the slightest bit of satisfaction at the “why is this child still blonde?” inquiries that no doubt came from his godly partner.
He knew Loki pretty well, what could he say.
“Good. I mean - good that you have a good life and...that’s what I would have wanted for you,” he stammered, trying to quell the shakiness in his hands enough to take the TemPad. The TemPad, yes - it caused something in his eyes to light up. Recognition, excitement, relief, all of the above?
Although he had to study it a little before pressing the Miss Minutes button. He didn’t do that quite yet, he simply remained flabbergasted over the...accoutrements. “You play Animal Crossing on the TemPad?”
“Totally retro, I love it,” Ymir confirmed, sitting up so he could peer over at the TemPad. “I’ll show you some of the upgrades I made, there are forever limitations, but I don’t care.” He was eager to show Mobius what he’d done, eager to talk about his life and ask questions and discover things about this time and eager to...just sit with his dad and call out crossword puzzle answers. He really wanted to do that.
He would, eventually. And time was relative, anyway. Ymir moved off the couch to crouch by Mobius. He couldn’t resist squeezing his arm once before pushing the Miss Minutes icon. “Still not a hallucination,” he said, smiling a bit.
“Hey y’all!” Miss Minutes, in all of her neon orange and perky glory, propped up gloved hands on her--well, on her 4 and 8. The temperature in the room dropped approximately 20 degrees when she realized who was in front of her. “Oh, Mobius. Well, would you look at that, it’s time for me to go back to work.”
Ymir cleared his throat and waved. And there was no other word for it, Miss Minutes glowed to near radioactive levels, zipping over to sit herself on his shoulder.
“Ymir! My baby doll sugar pie! I swear you get cuter every time I see this face! Are you hungry?” She turned to Mobius, gesturing frantically. “Did you get him something to eat yet? No, of course you didn’t. Bless your heart, Mobius, bless it over and over again. I’ll order something and have it here in two shakes of a cow’s tail, don’t you even worry ”
“Nah, not right now, but thanks! Mostly I just wanted you to say hi to my dad.”
“Ugh.” The disdain was near palpable, but she looked over at Ymir’s expectant face (in spite of the earnestness he displayed he was 2 nanoseconds away from laughing, the entire thing never failed to be anything less than hilarious to him) and then back to Mobius. “...Hello, Mobius.”
Mobius’s reaction was very similar, to be fair - the whole ugh aspect, because he did not want that animated cartoon clock facist propaganda pusher being around his kid. But apparently she was somehow charmed by the offspring of two TVA traitors, one of whom had been there when Sylvie murdered her creator - and it made Mobius sus, as the saying went; he narrowed clear blue eyes but thought that he could try to play nice since he didn’t know what the future was like.
Maybe Ymir’s birth had given them all some kind of common ground - as much common ground as one could have with sentient AI, who had been downgraded to an Alexa or Siri in this world. No sense in asking her for classified TVA files right now, if she could even pull them up.
“Hello,” he replied gruffly - this was all starting to sink in, and he had so many other questions. Things he wanted to know. Hugs he wanted to give. “I - sorry, Ymir, I guess she’s right. Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat? It was probably a long trip from...the future.”
“We’ll hang soon,” Ymir promised, before pushing the icon again and sending Miss Minutes back to the wide world of...wherever it was she came from. Mostly her fanaticism had been confined to his Animal Crossing island and the residents there, which suited him just fine.
He took his TemPad back from Mobius and sat back on his heels. “A little hungry, I guess. But I’m 18 and my metabolism is insane, less because of time travel. Do you need something? A break? Five seconds to scream into the void--lowercase v, not uppercase, obviously?” And it would be okay if Mobius did need that time, and perfectly understandable. It wasn’t every day a teenager came by and shook up his sense of reality. Judging by Mobius’s questions, Ymir knew he wasn’t even a glimmer of an idea just yet, so it was probably all the more surprising.
But he knew his dad. Mobius would gather the data, synthesize the information, and come to a conclusion based on the evidence and some good old fashioned intuition.
This was definitely all a lot, but Mobius was at least sure of one thing. “No, I don’t need a minute to scream into the lowercase void,” he grinned a bit at the distinction. “I’m not sure how long I’ll get with you, so - I’d like it if you stayed here. With us.” He hadn’t officially moved into Loki’s cottage yet, but all signs pointed to him actually doing that in the not-too-distant future - it’d be something to talk about later, but for right now, he wanted them all to be together.
He stood up, tapping Ymir on the shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze - after literally a millennia of going without touch, he was still catching up in that regard. As it turned out, he was actually a pretty tactile person - he found comfort in human contact, depending on who it was with. His own son ranked pretty up there on the huggable scale. “If you’re hungry, I’ll make you something? How do you feel about grilled cheese sandwiches?”
Loki probably had the stuff here to make that, even if he wasn’t always great about bothering with mundane Midgardian crap like grocery shopping.
“We make pretty good use of time,” Ymir quipped. It was such a lame joke, but if you couldn’t tease your timeline shattered father about time, well, who could you tease about it? Except for his other parent who also shattered time, obviously. Mobius received a light and playful rat-a-tat punch on his arm, accompanied by a crooked smirk that had Ymir forever looking like he was either keeping a secret (and he wanted you to know it), or ever so pleased with something. “Thanks. For the room, and also not leaping into the upper-case v Void.” Not that he actually thought Mobius would! But, again, a lot.
He followed behind, keen eyes once more taking in everything. For every one thing he found different than he knew it, he had to find two that he knew were the same, to make up for it. Eventually he’d run out of similarities, but by then, Ymir would be as adjusted as he could hope for. He was adjusted now, really, but staring at a space that was your home and knowing that it wasn’t your home was--Ymir didn’t have a word for it. Weird? Weird. “Grilled cheese sounds great. That’ll give me enough time to finish my ‘so you got a time displaced son’ presentation, I needed to add in a graph or two to really jazz it up.”
Receiving an alarming text from Mobius certainly wasn’t an every day kind of situation and with how chaotic Vallo had been in recent weeks, Loki tended to find himself reacting a little more defensively than he would have done originally. They were the only ones left in New Asgard for the most part now and he wasn’t sure if Sleipnir and the alligator Loki really counted as a line of defense in front of the relatively squishy human being that also lived there. He had been in the middle of perusing a rather intriguing selection of pies when his phone buzzed with a text and with just a glance of it, Loki was gone in a flash of green light, reappearing outside of their cottage, daggers materialising in his hands as he stood by the door and listened.
He heard talking, but nothing that sounded dangerous. Yet, anyway - the door burst open with an explosion of magic as Loki stepped in with all of his dramatic flair and what could only be described as protective anger, his eyes narrowing as he flipped one of his daggers in his hand and pointed it in the direction of the man in their room, glancing once at Mobius. He didn’t look alarmed, but if anybody knew about tricksters and the fact that they could come in all shapes and sizes, it was Loki.
His glare turned back to Ymir and he stared, something familiar prodding at the back of his mind. His magic, his seidr - it was painfully familiar. It was strangely like being back in the palace of Asgard with Frigga and her magic as she taught Loki how to braid protective beads into his hair for battles and how to do the same for Thor so that her sons would both come home safe. “Who are you?” he hissed, taking a step forward with his dagger still poised.
Honestly, Mobius should have known that Loki was perusing pies rather than checking the network - he should have added a 'CHECK THE NETWORK' with that frantic text, so really, he guessed that was on him. But also in his defense, he wasn't exactly thinking straight.
"Wait, stop - " Mobius abandoned the grilled cheese station - the scene was downright domestic, him pulling butter and cheese from the fridge and toasting bread, wanting to make the very best in sandwiches. He wanted to ask Ymir how school was going, if he enjoyed the beach or not, and if he'd attended something like a prom or one of those staples of youth that Mobius couldn't quite recall for himself, but that he'd always been curious about. Things that itched at the back of his long-buried memories.
He stepped in between Ymir and an advancing Loki (with a dagger, naturally), Mobius's face flaming a cherry-red shade as he prepared to explain...this. "He's your son. He's our son."
“Is the knife necessary?” Ymir wondered out loud, hypothetically. Neither of his parents knew that tone in his voice just yet, the one he used when he had an argument prepared and ready to be laid out at the feet of his waiting audience. Yes, Ymir had a world of magic at his fingertips, but if given the choice? He’d absolutely choose to use his words. “It says you think that is the incentive to talk because you didn’t use magic to blast me away, meaning you want to hear what I have to say. But, if you stab me, and I bleed out, you won’t find out what you want to know, and in about two seconds--” he ticked off the seconds on his fingers. “You’re going to want to hear this.”
Sure enough, Mobius appeared, right on time. (Ymir made a mental note to tell him that, later, another stupid time joke!)
He turned to Loki, turned that winter sky blue gaze on him, and tilted his chin up to face him head on. “See, that’s why stabbing would have been very awkward for both of us, although a good story.” He paused, and the ice of him softened just a bit, because he was looking at his other parent who was looking at him like a stranger. Doing it once was hard enough, doing it twice didn’t make it any easier. Ymir swallowed. Should have gotten the cookie cake after all, maybe. “Hi. Ymir.”
Loki was sure he had misheard Mobius for a moment, there. His hearing was impeccable and there was no reason for it to be impaired at that moment, but what else was he to think when faced with the words ‘He’s our son?’. He had enough trust in Mobius that he lowered the dagger, although rather than dismiss it he simply sheathed it into a holster that manifested around his waist, a shimmer of green as he inclined his head and looked down at Ymir.
Suspicious. He was always suspicious. He had never imagined getting to a point where he could truly settle down and allow himself to make a home somewhere in this way, especially when Vallo was so liable to take as often as it gave. He and Mobius- well. He was lucky enough that he could control his glamour to the point where they couldn’t see the deep flush of his cheeks as he stared at Ymir, taking a moment to look at him.
“Ymir,” he repeated, exhaling a slight sigh of relief. He hadn’t changed so much in the future that he’d opted to name his child Thor, at least - or Those Above forbid, Odin. Ymir was a respectable name. “You’re blonde,” he accused, taking a hesitant step closer to him.
Oh Em Gee, as the kids said - Mobius just knew that Loki was going to bring up the hair color. “The one thing I contributed,” he said, holding Ymir’s face, fingers looped under his chin - it sort of turned into an embarrassing parental cheek pinch a moment later, because Mobius couldn’t take his eyes off him. “This kid looks just like you.”
Ymir really was a good name though - and considering Mobius didn’t know much about names (not like his was actually Mobius) he just assumed he’d been more than fine with Loki getting to choose especially since he was the shapeshifting parent who did all the work in this scenario. The ‘birth of a child’’ work. And speaking of that, maybe he should elaborate.
“He’s, uh - our biological son,” Mobius said. “Eighteen. From the future. He’s great - I want him to stay with us.” Then he turned back toward Ymir and rested his hands on the whippersnapper’s shoulders, pulling him in for that long-awaited hug and just - Mobius really wanted a hug. “You still want to stay with us, right? Until you have to go back? How long are you here for?”
Ymir’s face split into a grin as he went into the embrace. For all that Mobius might have been out of practice with physical affection now, with the ease that Ymir hugged him back it was clear that at some point in time he gained the practice. And to Ymir, the hug felt the same from his dad now as it did as his dad back home. No matter all of the differences that were surrounding him, this one similarity would keep him grounded. He could stop looking. “If that’s okay? Or if you guys need time to regroup, I can find somewhere to go, it’s not a big deal.”
“I don’t really know how long?” His brow furrowed, like the answer was too hard to see right now, some sort of distant picture he couldn’t make clear. “It’s not forever, I can tell that. Can’t be. Imagine the timeline paperwork.” He kept his arm resting on Mobius’s shoulder, as reassurance in the meanwhile that it wasn’t going to be in the next minute or two, or even day or two.
Now, to parent number two. Loki didn’t have to look too far down--Ymir was tall, with long limbs and a long neck. He was slender, but nothing close to alarming, more like the lean strength of a dancer. He was comfortable in his skin and confident in himself. And he saw everything, missed nothing, when he took in something, he examined it from all angles.
“I could tell you things I know about you, ” Ymir started. “Like the time you turned into a snake because you knew Thor loved snakes and he couldn’t resist snakes and when he picked you up you turned back into you and you stabbed him, by the way you guys were eight, at the time. Or I could tell you things in the future--I don’t go to Gelaria because you insisted on teaching me my magic, because Frigga did that for you. But, you’re a trickster god, and you know I could have researched things from the past, and the things from the future, you have no way of confirming. And the looks can be explained away too, I’m a shapeshifter. I can look like anyone, same as you.”
To demonstrate Ymir’s features shifted into Loki’s, both his mom’s and his dad’s...but he kept the pale blonde hair. Sue him, he trolled! He was back to himself in no time at all, acting as if nothing had happened. “If I was lying, I’d withhold all of those points, instead of being upfront about them. And you know that makes sense, because keeping a card in your back pocket is exactly what you would typically do, right? So either I’m lying and have come up with a story that is both believable and unbelievable at the same time, or,” Ymir shrugged, a defense attorney laying down the final line to the judge and jury of his closing argument. “I’m telling the truth.”
Ymir made many good points, primarily the things Loki was already thinking of as he spoke - some of that information wouldn’t be difficult to find out, especially with the resources Vallo held. Even in his world, his entire life had been recorded like a sick movie of his ‘best hits’. That being said, Loki both trusted his own instincts and he trusted that Mobius wasn’t a fool, especially when it came to tricksters. He had to trust that he wouldn’t just immediately believe the first person who said he was their son. Looking at him more closely, though, and the shape of his magic as he shifted his features - yes, he was… at least halfway convinced.
“You seem to have your speech well-practiced,” he raised an eyebrow as he picked at a strand of the blonde hair. He wasn’t even related to Thor - not by blood, at least. Was Mobius a natural blonde? Definitely a question and a thought for later, when there wasn’t a child who had the potential of being his. “It wouldn’t be difficult to look into your memories,” although, if he was their son, that would somehow feel like an egregious violation of his privacy. It was one thing to risk having his hand cut off by doing it to Valkyrie when he didn’t know her and needed to get more information but Loki would have probably attempted to kill Odin far sooner if he’d done that to him.
“You can look like anyone, yes,” he raised an eyebrow, hesitantly reaching out with a cool hand to touch his cheek. “Is- what exactly does a human,” presumably human, at least, “and a Frost Giant create?” he wouldn’t put a glamour on his own son, would he?
Mobius just knew - he knew that Ymir was theirs. It was plain as day to him - maybe he had a natural parenting instinct, maybe his regular instincts were just as precise as the blade of a surgeon. But he didn’t want to let go of the kid (who was taller than him, yes, but so was Loki - the height difference between them was a little funny sometimes), so he had his arm across Ymir’s waist, resisting the urge to squish his face again.
No, he just let Loki touch his face instead - watching with this expression of soft fondness and pride and oh, what. The idea of rooting through a teenager’s memories had his eyes widening. That’d be rude as hell.
But Mobius supposed that the Frost Giant aspect was kind of important to go over too. He wanted to believe that, as time went on, Loki had sort of come to accept what he was - moving away from the idea that he had to hate what he was, despite being taught to do so. Mobius loved him anyway (which - he probably needed to say that at some point soon), no matter what he looked like - and already loved their kid too. “How much of the Frost Giant part do you have?” he asked Ymir. Maybe he glamoured his own self, but Mobius hoped that he wouldn’t feel like he needed to.
Oh boy, okay, one thing at a time, for as much as Ymir’s brain went off firing in every sort of direction, and split himself into two to tackle the questions. Or, maybe three, two to tackle the questions, one to eat the promised grilled cheese. “Debate team,” he replied, as an answer to the accusation of his word smithery coming across pre-planned. Immediately after, pulled a face, lip curling in distaste. “You can’t go through my memories! That’s gross.” Said with the same tone as if Loki had asked to look through his diary or his phone or something else. Privacy, parents, geeze!
“You guys, you know how genetics work, it’s half--oh,” Ymir blinked, realization dawning clear on his face. “You mean like, why am I not blue and a giant? Or am I blue and just hiding it?” His eyes were blue, at least, a pretty brilliant shade if he did say so himself! “No, this is just me. I can look like a Jotunn--I do it when I talk to the giants up north, it makes them feel more comfortable and I don’t mind. I could do it now, but,” he glanced up at the ceiling, estimating the height. “Probably not right here.” The story of a toddler Ymir throwing a temper tantrum over one thing or another and growing into a Jotunn and charging away would be saved for later, he thought.
He glanced between Loki and Mobius, back and forth, once again taking in the entire measure of the situation and evaluating it in a matter of seconds.“Do you two need a moment to talk this out? Dad already said no to screaming into the void, but I can give you guys that, getting a son in a matter of minutes is a lot to adjust to. I’ll go find my third parent.” A beat, where Ymir looked expectant for them to fill in the gap, before he grinned, just ever so pleased with himself. “Croki, obviously.”
“Blue and hiding it was my initial concern, yes,” he definitely felt a sense of relief that he hadn’t seen it fit to put a glamour on his child, at least. He hadn’t been able to sense anything there but that didn’t mean much, as much as he hated to admit it to himself - he had missed his own glamour for the vast majority of his life, after all.
“Your third- oh. The alligator is still there in the future, then? Wonderful,” he deadpanned, quirking an eyebrow. ‘Croki’, he had called him - even more odd, in a somewhat amusing way. “You don’t have to go anywhere,” not for him, at least. He glanced in Mobius’ direction but he seemed overall enamoured with their… child. Loki was still struggling to grasp this as reality and not some strange dream Vallo was putting him through, feeling a sense of utter disbelief that things had somehow gone well for him. Mobius hadn’t vanished and neither had he and they had both lasted long enough as a couple to not only choose to have a child, but to raise him and have him be a somewhat competent being in his own right, too.
He had a thousand questions that were hardly appropriate to throw at a teenager. Was he a good father? Did he suffer from the same issues that Odin had? What had he told him about Thor, Odin, Frigga? Fandral? “...You seem happy,” he settled on eventually, a statement rather than the loaded question that it could have been. “Even with a cat-eating alligator as an- uncle?”
No doubt Mobius would think toddler Ymir throwing a tantrum and sprouting up into a giant was adorable. Clearly he was going to be the soft parent in this scenario. Oh, well.
“We’ll have plenty of time to talk it out,” he assured - so no, Ymir didn’t have to go anywhere unless he wanted to. Mobius would also try not to cling too hard - Ymir probably had friends here, things he wanted to do in the past, places he wanted to visit. But for someone who knew time intimately well, he knew how precious it was. So he wouldn’t waste it - not when he wasn’t even sure how long they’d have together (though Ymir seemed to think it would be a decent amount of time regardless).
Then he shifted his gaze toward Loki, who had more or less asked the same question Mobius did - and it made him smile a little. “And we seem to have done an okay job?” he mused. “I don’t think we need to know all the specifics - “ Because it would break time and space or something, “...but I’m pretty glad I got to have the best kid with the person I love.”
Oop, oop, he said it - but that couldn’t be helped. He was about to overflow with emotion and feelings and everything was just so gigantic and utterly cosmic - no, he wouldn’t squish Ymir’s face again. Probably.
“Croki is a valued part of this family, and I would really appreciate it if you treated him as such,” Ymir huffed, dramatically, just so offended!! on Croki’s behalf. The day he’d actually learned that alligator Loki was, in fact, a variant of his parent, the wheels in Ymir’s head had started so quickly they were practically visible. None of his machinations had actually worked, unfortunately, but oh how he had tried.
He smiled at both of them, sincere and genuine. “Dads. I promise you, I’m happy. We’re happy. We have traditions that we do that I can’t even really explain why, just that we started them and now they’re a thing, and you know my girlfriend, and we have family dinners together, and I go to school, and weird things happen in Vallo because weird things are always happening in Vallo, and you know who my friends are, and you saw me when I was the best cow ever in the second grade play and--” he looped an arm across Loki’s shoulder, honestly, come in for the real thing, Dad, he didn’t care how suspicious you were of him. “We have a really, really good life. You can freak out about a lot of things, but that? Isn’t one of them.”
With the person he loved. Loki couldn’t remember them actually saying that out loud before now and thus it registered as a shock that he would have to attend to later after sorting through his own feelings on that. It certainly wasn’t that he didn’t return it - the proof of their future was apparently standing right in front of them cracking jokes about ‘Croki’, looping an arm around him and overall being happy, vibrant and well-adjusted. Loki could only assume the majority of that came from Mobius and his easy ability to find his place in a community and apparently worm his way into Loki’s heart, for all intents and purposes.
“I’m not freaking out about anything other than you apparently being in the wrong part of the timeline,” which was rich coming from a man who’d quite happily broken many timelines and would do so again, but. That was beyond the point. He turned to look at Ymir again properly, still in disbelief that he even existed in any world. Perhaps this was some kind of sign to force him to let go of the thoughts that Mobius might one day change his mind and leave. “Wait. You have a girlfriend? Is she- here, or?”
Yeah, Mobius was about to call you out on that, Loki. "You were in the middle of Pompeii before the volcano swallowed everything yelling about no consequences - this is nothing when it comes to timelines," he reminded his beloved, chuckling in a good-natured sort of way.
They would talk about that later. And about the kid. Later. Definitely later - there was a lot to go over. But Mobius was certain that things were going to be okay - this was all a good thing; having a child was a big life change and a big step and likely Ymir's appearance in the world was a result of a lot of building up to it and discussion but Mobius must have really wanted this (or he probably planted the seed, anyway) and if Loki didn't love him too, he wouldn't have agreed. That much Mobius knew.
"We really want to meet your girlfriend," he added excitedly. That was just so wholesome. "You can ask her if she wants to come over?" Assuming she had popped up from the future too. "If she's here. And we'll be here. And - well, it'll be nice."
To his credit, Ymir did not choke with laughter--please, Dad, you were not fooling him with the concern over the timeline, of all things. Fortunately, Mobidad did the work for him and he jerked a thumb towards him in support.
And then they were parents and it made Ymir smile a bit, even as he rolled his eyes and groaned. “Oh my gods and goddesses,” he said, being inclusive was important. “You both skipped right over my debate team mention, my second grade cow part and just honed in on that one piece? Great. Awesome. Yes, I have a girlfriend, yes, she’s here, she’s with her family now, I will ask if she has time to come by soon.” Gracie would, of course, it wasn’t like meeting the parents was any new thing. And, because he knew Gracie, he’d tell her a time three hours earlier than when she should actually show up. Hedging his bets.
“So…” Ymir glanced between his two dads. Nerves were not his thing, certainly not displaying them. He was confident, cool, and collected, at all times. “Are we...okay? No one’s going to stab me, and we can have grilled cheese now?”
“Well, we have all the time in the future to be actively proud of your- debate team and cow part,” Loki wasn’t entirely sure what a debate team was, but it didn’t surprise him that his child would be a part of something that sounded centered on arguing with others, “but that could be something that we could see now, unless you happen to have footage of the play to hand,” he took a moment to inhale and exhale at the mention of grilled cheese, giving a slight nod as he contemplated how rude it would be to turn into a snake and hide in Mobius’ pocket for an hour or so while he processed all of the information that had just been thrown at him.
He instead started to get plates out of the cupboard rather than using his magic like he normally would. “I have a lot of questions.” He would have taken him to Frigga’s gardens, almost definitely - if they were still there. He hadn’t taken Mobius there yet but that had been a mere issue of asking permission from Torunn, despite her saying he was welcome to bring who he wanted - it was still polite. “I’m assuming we’ll have time for those later, but I’m not particularly hungry. You two go ahead.”
Mobius scooted up to Loki and slipped an arm across his waist, reassuringly nudging his neck with that crooked nose - absolutely shift into a reptile and get into his pocket, honey, it was fine. He didn’t mind at all and all of this truly was a lot to process. “We’ll catch up with you later,” he agreed. “I’ll make sure the kid eats.”
No doubt Ymir had a steady diet of grilled cheese and scrambled eggs and - goats roasting over a spit, maybe? Mobius didn’t really know how to cook a lot of things but maybe this was going to be an incentive to learn.