Burning Ice
Fandom: Marvel: Loki (TVA era specifically)
Summary: Loki is feeling a little overworked and under the weather... and then he really takes a nose dive. Not to fear, the TVA's best agent is on the case!
CW: s2 spoiler mentioned in passing but not discussed in depth
mess (spray), handkerchief, fever, whump, negative self-talk, Jotun Loki, crying (I feel like I'm missing tags, let me know if I can do better!)
Word Count: 2223 words
MINORS DNI
Author Note: Blue Loki makes an appearance... This is very much a fever fic with snz IMO so... do with that what you will.
Translation: "Streð mik" means "fuck me" in Old Norse, according to my 5 minutes of internet searching.
Standing before the beverage machine, Loki rubbed scathingly at his temples, which quickly turned into a rub of tired eyes. With work at the TVA piling up, Loki began to feel significantly less and less God-like. He sniffed and turned the dial on the blasted machine for a cup of tea for something to soothe his aching throat. It had been like this since he woke up this morning.
Dry, aching, scratchy. He turned his head to suppress a slight cough into his shoulder as the drink machine sputtered out the last of his black tea. It was nothing like the luxurious herbal remedies of home, but it would have to do. He pushed back his long, dark hair from his face and turned to head back to his cubical with the cup in hand.
Loki eased back down into the desk chair with a little sigh through his mouth, not currently trusting his nose. It had been rather congested since this morning as well. He sipped at the tea, grimacing when it tasted like half-flavored leaf water and moved a few files to set down the cup.
The steam still coming off the cup had gotten his nose running, however, and with the runes blocking his magic now broken… He summoned a handkerchief in a small flash of green and instantly felt like he’d run a mile. A little gasp was punched out of him, and he slumped in his chair, clinging tight to that handkerchief he’d conjured. Delicate with green and gold embroidery.
“You doing magic over there? Thought we agreed that was for emergencies only?” said Mobius suddenly.
For a split second, Loki gathered the soft cloth into a tight fist to hide it from view as he glanced up only to find Mobius hadn’t bothered to poke his head over. He must have only noticed the flash of green from his magic. Perceptive, Loki would indeed give him that.
“Just a small charm, I assure you. Nothing nefarious. I just-” Loki abruptly cut his sentence short as he felt a burning tingle in his sinuses. No. This was absolutely not the time for this. It didn’t seem like his body cared much for his whims at the moment, however, as he sucked in a sudden and sharp hitch of breath. “J-huh-! H’TSHue!”
In an instant, the handkerchief flew to his face to try and catch the spray. “Pardon me,” He mumbled, giving a little sniff and wiping as he spotted Mobius now pop up like Rattatosk the squirrel.
As he balled up the handkerchief once more in his hand, Loki sniffled and reached for the still-steaming cup of tea. All the while, he could feel Mobius’ eyes on him, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “I believe the phrase is take a picture; it’ll last longer.” He scoffs over the top of his cup before having another sip of the disappointing liquid.
“You’re sick,” Mobius says, blinking a few times at Loki, who stubbornly meets the agent’s gaze only to find… concern.
“I’m fine,” Loki assured him quickly and set down his cup to resume his lengthy dig into all the paperwork he had left to finish.
While Loki may not have been directly watching Mobius, he was privy to every movement of his coworker from the corner of his eye. The silver-haired man had moved out of his cubical to stand at the edge of Loki’s. “Like the time you were time slipping kind of fine?”
Now Mobius was leaning on his desk, invading Loki’s personal space in a sense, and the god reared his head back like a snake.
“It’s fine, Mobius.”
“’Cause you don’t look fine.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you’ve been hit by a bus. No offense.”
An exhausted little sigh slipped out of Loki, who pinched the bridge of his nose. This time, Loki’s voice came out softer, with less defensive venom. “I’m alright, just tired, and want to finish this paperwork.”
Mobius was crossing his arms across his chest and frowning at him. “Alright,” He pats Loki’s shoulder, giving it a little squeeze before turning to leave. “I’ll let you work on that.” As Mobius was about to round the corner out of sight, he called over his shoulder, “Be back in a little while!”
Loki blinked sluggishly at his coworker’s odd behavior, frankly too tired to think too hard about it. He sniffled again and grimaced at the sound of it now, rather glad to be alone after the wet snuffle.
The realization he was alone now was a somber one. Still, he was grateful in a way. Mobius didn’t have to be around to witness his misery.
His misery seemed only doomed to increase as the tickle in his nose reignited after a quick swipe with the handkerchief. “Hh’etchhue! Huh… hhh-! Ugh… Streð mik.” Loki swears under his breath, bringing the cloth to his quickly reddening nose. Even with the soft handkerchief he’d conjured, the steady sheen of mess around the rim of his nostrils demanded constant attention.
So much so he could barely work. And when he wasn’t working, he was sneezing or coughing into his handkerchief. It went on like that for a good hour or so.
Just as he could feel that tickle starting to swell in the depths of his nasal passages again, making his lungs stutter in their rhythm for a moment, he heard footsteps. Panic flares in Loki’s chest. He hadn’t realized how much time had passed, how little he’d gotten done, how poor the quality of his craft would Odin…
“Hey… Woah,” Mobius had a hand on his shoulder and was turning him in his seat. Mobius. Not Odin, like his mind had been screaming in fear.
Loki rattled out a hefty sigh of relief and sagged a little. “It’s just you…”
Mobius looked perplexed for a few seconds, a steaming travel cup in one hand and a bag tucked under his arm. “Yeah, just me, pal. You sure you’re feeling alright?” One of the agent's hands came up to feel Loki’s forehead. “That’s some fever. When were you gonna tell me you weren’t feeling great?”
A thick, almost gurgling snuffle comes from Loki, and he grimaces at himself before lifting the soft cloth to scrub at his itchy nose some more. “I wasd’t- oh for…” He gives his nose a quick, productive blow into the handkerchief and groans a little afterward. “I wasn’t planning on telling you… I thought I’d finish up here and ride this out somewhere quiet alone.”
The expression on Mobius’ face looked pained to Loki, though he struggled to piece together why at the moment. Different theories danced around in his mind until he realized Mobius was speaking to him. “- take you somewhere to eat this and lay down. How’s that sound?”
Loki gives a slight hum of acknowledgment to agree to whatever Mobius is saying. Trusting that whatever Mobius has in store for him is good news, Loki gets to his feet only to sway slightly. “Woah- I’m alright.” He says quickly, assuring Mobius, who had shot out a hand to rest on his lower back. “What did you say we were doing?”
They were already walking down hallways and making too many turns for Loki’s fevered brain to even begin to try and comprehend.
“Somewhere comfortable for you to rest a while,” Mobius answered him and patted his back a little. “And somewhere you can drink this tea and eat this nice soup I went and got you.” Soon enough, they entered into a comfortable enough-looking room that had a bed. It was similar enough to a plain bedroom with 70’s era-looking TVA technology.
Right away, Mobius went to set down the cup and bag of food before checking the room’s thermostat. “You Norse Gods like it warm, I guess? Or do you have like… an eternal summer?”
The innocent ignorance made Loki smile a little to himself as he moved further into the room, taking it all in curiously. “We have seasons on Asgard, but no… I like it a little colder.” He admits, nostrils suddenly twitching as that tickle rears its head again while his chest swells. “Hh-! Oh, come on, now? R-Realleh’Tshh! Ng’XtSHue! EgH’Tshiew! Huh…”
Loki had been sluggish, and his reaction too slow to cover entirely, misting the air in front of him with his sneezes. “I’m terribly sorry, Mobius.”
“Bless you, nothing to be sorry for. You’re sick.” Mobius waved a hand at him after having set the temperature for the room to be a bit cooler than average. “There. Maybe that’ll help that fever, too. Try the tea. Heard you coughing from down the hall.”
By now, Loki was easing onto the bed to sit and hesitantly reached out to peek into the travel cup. “Trusting you not to poison me.” He jested, raising the cup to Mobius before taking a sip and letting out a delighted groan when the tea tasted divine. Even with his nose practically stopped up, he could taste it. “Mobius, this is fantastic. Where did you get this?”
The agent rocked on his heels with his hands in his pockets, smiling slightly. “Secret little café I know of. The soup is from a place nearby. I’ve been trying to figure out your taste profile. You’re not necessarily a fancy guy, but you’re a quality guy, I think.” The smile on Mobius’ face is almost playful, and if Loki had the energy, he’d make it into a verbal sparring match.
“Perhaps I am. Thank you, Mobius. For all of this.” Loki murmurs quietly and sips at the tea some more, letting the delightfully herbal wave wash over and soothe his sore throat.
Mobius took his hands out of his pockets and sat on the edge of the bed beside Loki. “Y’know, for some reason, it never occurred to me that you could get sick… I just- I guess I just figured you couldn’t.” And the look on Mobius’ face could only be described as… remorseful.
Still, Loki struggled to understand why.
“I got sick rather a lot as a child, actually,” Loki says quietly, not even sure why he’s saying it. Something is making his tongue feel loose, and for a moment, he does wonder if Mobius poisoned him. “Strength is heavily prized where I come from. Strength, health, and physicality… in Asgard and Jotunheim. I was abandoned for being-” The tears welling in his eyes were against his will, and Loki could feel the tightness in his throat as he struggled to breathe through the emotions threatening to overwhelm him.
A warm hand reaches out to rest on his thigh and squeezes gently. “For being sick…” Mobius finished quietly as he put the pieces together. It was only then Loki realized Mobius was probably one of the few who had ever bothered to look for Odin, gathering him up as a child on the Sacred Timeline.
“Is that why you didn’t tell me?” The agent asked him quietly, to which Loki gave a slow nod, sniffling against the renewed congestion that had only gotten worse with the tears now streaming down his cheeks.
A bitter little laugh escaped Loki, who tried to wipe away the tears from his cheeks, eyes red from crying, but perhaps also just a shade redder than that. “I’m quite the Jotun runt. So small I fit in with the average-sized Aesir or Midgardian. I mean I’m…” The tears began to redouble as Loki felt woozy, practically hysterical.
Then, all at once, he let the façade drop.
Pale skin drained of any color it had left to a blue hue, and the ridged and raised lines of Jotun markings appeared. Loki fixed a red-eyed gaze upon Mobius, who stared back with those increasingly painfully kind eyes. Part of Loki wanted nothing more than to lash out. To demand to know why he wasn’t recoiling.
“I’m pathetic…” he finished softly.
Mobius scooted closer to him on the bed and wrapped an arm around him, Loki finding himself sinking into that warmth with shocking ease. “If even Gods get sick, then I think we all deserve sick days, huh? How about it?” A warm hand rubbed slowly at his back, and Loki leaned further into Mobius. “I’m not going anywhere, Loki. Just rest. I’ve got you.”
Already, Mobius was gently extracting the travel cup from his limp blue fingers, and Loki was fading against his friend’s shoulder, feeling utterly exhausted and fevered. “Wake me if we get a case…” He mumbles softly. “I’ll be… fine.”
“Okay, Loki,” Mobius said soothingly, gently helping ease him back into the bed to lie underneath the blankets.
Still, a blue hand shot out to grip Mobius’ wrist tightly. “Don’t go?” He pleaded desperately, afraid he’d be left alone now that he was tucked in and settled.
“Hey, hey, I’m not going. I’m right here. Look.” Mobius kicked off his work shoes much like he’d slid off Loki’s and slid right into bed next to him. “See? Right here. By your side.” Their hands clasped together on top of Loki’s slowly rising and falling chest while the God of Mischief sniffled thickly.
“Thank you, Mobius.” And just like that, Loki’s eyes fluttered closed, and he was out like a snuffed torch.
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Support Systems
After time slipping again, and again...and again Loki finally fixes the loom and his body shows how much it appreciates everything he's put it through. Thank goodness for friends.
There was a lot of talking in the control room, but no more alarms flashing, and no yelling that everyone was going to die so Loki sat near the steps to the gangway just listening and it was nice. He glanced over to where Mobius was passing around hot cocoa as OB, Casey, and Victor were signing every book they had on each other.
Loki sipped his own drink and it felt good on his throat. It was no doubt sore from the endless times coaching Victor down that gangway, but now they’d done it. Changed the equation and lived to tell about it. Draining the last of the cup he looked out at the tree green and gold, at its trunk, casting shimmering rainbows over the windows. It was beautiful. He smiled, but slumped slightly, drawing his knees up for support, as everything seemed to catch up with him and suddenly he just felt heavy.
“Hey, you okay?” Sylvie asked.
“Just happy it’s over…for now anyway,” he answered, as she sat down next to him.
“Love the new outfit.”
Loki chuckled. “Thank you.”
“You know the offer is still open to conjure me a new one.”
“I’m not sure your manager would want you out of uniform.”
She looked at him confused and he frowned in confusion as well.
“The branches are safe, Sylvie. You can go home.”
“Do you really think so little of me?”
“Since we’ve agreed on nothing since this started I was certain it was you who think little of me-ehh…”
He curled a fist under his nose as his breath hitched sharply.
“Heh’INNGTChh!”
“Bless you.”
“Should we even say that to you?” Mobius asked, joining them on Loki’s other side.
Loki waved them off. “It’s fine.”
The latent itch in the back of his nose told him they would likely be doing it again anyway.
“You're right hope is hard, but maybe we can...replace it with something better…why do I know that?”
“I don’t even remember which cycle that was.”
Now everyone was starting to look at him with curious expressions.
“The loom was meant as a failsafe by He Who Remains to reset everything back to one timeline. I learned to control the time slipping and be able to find a solution to his plan. So it’s possible you can learn it too, Sylvie. Maybe that’s why you remember something I didn’t technically say.”
Mobius eye’s widened in understanding. “That’s why you knew everything you’ve done this before.”
“Just h-how many times have I gone out there?” Victor asked.
Loki just stared out the window and said nothing.
“How many times, Loki?” Mobius asked.
He leaned back closed his eyes with a sigh.
“Countless and I don’t even want to think about the rounds and rounds I did at the citadel.”
“See you soon he said…he always knew what he was doing,” Sylvie concluded.
Loki nodded in agreement before covering his nose as the itch grew once more.
“Huh…huhh hh’ITSCSHhuh!”
The sneeze scraped his throat and he let out a cough, rubbing at his eyes against the pressure that was beginning to build behind them.
“All right come on you know where OB keeps that bed he doesn’t use.”
Loki glanced over to OB and Casey.
“The readings are stable?”
OB nodded. “Yeah, we’re good.”
“Okay.”
Mobius got Loki up, then keeping a firm hand on his shoulder began steering him out of the room and down the hall. Sylvie went with them.
“Do I want to know why you know that or why OB doesn’t need it?” she asked.
“The version of me you saw coming out of the elevator that was when the time slipping first began happening. It’s why I knew what to do in pruning myself. Why I knew you were at the TVA.”
“And he collapsed that last time after we had to rip him out of timelines all at once to fix it and after all that he was still only worried about you.”
“Really?”
“I said I just wanted you to be okay. I wanted to make sure you were and you are.”
They arrived at the tiny room and Loki ducked his head into his elbow.
“Huh-ISSSHHh! IESSHUuh! Ehhh…ESSHHuh!”
“You aren’t though.”
Loki shrugged and sniffled. “Small price to pay.”
Sylvie rolled her eyes and conjured a green blanket over his shoulders as he sat down on the bed.
“Yeah well consider Peter and Paul paid in full and relax,” Mobius said, putting his hand back on Loki’s shoulder and squeezing firmly. “We got this.”
“Thank you.”
Mobius smiled and Sylvie did as well and they both left the room.
Loki sighed and slumped forward, clutching the edge of the cot tightly just to make sure it was staying firm and the room wasn’t disintegrating. Everything remained as it should and so he stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes, and at last let himself rest, trusting in them, all of them.
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A Cold for Three
Fluffy fic for Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie with some 12 days of Sickmas prompts thrown in for good measure.
A Cold for Three
Sylvie slipped behind the Roxxcart and through a time door into the soft warmth on the other side. She could have gone to a store that wasn’t in the middle of a hurricane, but nostalgia got the better of her, and she blamed Mobius for letting her go soft. Still she took out the medicine she’d bought, in flavours she knew they liked just in case, along with at least four boxes of tissues; spreading everything out on the living room table.
“Sylvie, you’re home early,” Loki said, coming out of the kitchen.
“Yeah, Jack let me go early I…ihh’ISSHhiew!”
“Bless you, and you’re wet.”
There was a flash of green as he dried her clothes.
“I stopped off for some supplies and-ahh-and-ahh’AHISShew!”
“You too hmm?”
She looked at him property then, taking in his watery eyes and red nose and sighed. She had really hoped she’d be the only one.
“You said we were gods, Loki, why do we still have to deal with this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t make the rules of the universe I just keep them running.”
He rubbed at his nose, smiling at the glowing green branches growing in pots and spreading out around the room.
She rolled her eyes and headed to their bedroom. “I’m getting changed.”
Loki went back to the kitchen and checked the pot he had simmering on the stove. Deeming it ready he ladled the soup into three bowls and set them out on the table as well. The steam set his nose running though and he quickly opened one of the boxes of tissues and pressed them to his nostrils as they had begun to flare.
“huhh’ESHHHh! IESHUHhh! Ehh..hehh’HEASSUHuhh!”
As he blew his nose Sylvie returned in her pajamas and smiled at the soup.
“Thanks for doing this, but I still can’t believe you took up cooking, Loki.”
“I have to keep my skills sharp,” he answered, spinning a small blade in his palm before vanishing his daggers once more.
“And make terrible puns.”
“A bad influence of the folksy dope I’m afraid.”
“I heard that.”
They turned as Mobius came in and the familiar orange door faded behind him.
“Uhh’URSSHhuh! MMPSHHShuh!”
Mobius stumbled with the force of the sneezes, barely catching them against his sleeve. Loki held him by the elbow and Sylvie took the tray he had been carrying.
“Ugh, who do we get to blame for this?” he asked, his voice thick with congestion.
“I’m blaming Brad.” Sylvie declared.
“Works for me,” Mobius said, as Sylvie set down the tray of take-out cups among the other items. “I brought tea for you two too.”
“Thank you.”
With all the necessary comforts accounted for the three of them settled in on the couch under a soft green blanket. Sylvie began flipping through channels, everything was available after all. Meanwhile Mobius began talking about his day and a file to check later for a possible Kang variant.
Loki sniffled, letting the moment wash over him. He put an arm around each of them and held them close and knew that even ill as they were he could want for nothing more.
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