Chapter Text
Mobius M. Mobius prodded the miniature jet ski replica on his desk and watched it bounce on its spring, giving the illusion of riding waves. He’d purchased the replica in a rare fit of euphoria, right around the time a significant bonus hit his bank account last Christmas.
Mobius had deliberately picked a two-seater to grace his desk, a green Yamaha VX cruiser that Jet Ski Today claimed had high marks in agile handling performance and acceleration. The self-draining footwells set his imagination on fire, as well as the comfort the seat design offered him and whoever would be riding with him on the choppy waters.
“Me, on the water?” Mobius let out a harsh laugh and flicked the jet ski with his finger. “In what century?”
Forget his apartment; he practically lived in his office at Miss Minutes Group, Inc., number #1 watch designer and manufacturer in America (if not the world, if the annoying little orange watch mascot had anything to say about it). He made his peace with Miss Minutes years ago and begrudgingly wore his own MM watch with her on the face. As the work day crawled by, so did Miss Minutes’ gloved hands track the hours, minutes, and seconds of his life. If he pressed the button on the side of the watch, Miss Minutes said a rousing “Hey y’all” in her smooth drawl.
Mobius never pressed that button.
His office was on the fortieth floor of the building Miss Minutes Group, Inc. rented in the heart of New York City. His job wasn’t as glamorous as working in design, production development, or in the merchant teams. He didn’t sell the watches. He didn’t even know how they worked. Whenever he saw a fresh new MM watch, he simply trusted it to work. Looking inside held no interest to him. He preferred people—they were, he assumed, so much more complex.
Mobius M. Mobius held the title of Talent Acquisition Director. His duties included monitoring recruitment procedures and making sure his underlings effectively sniffed out talent for the company. He spent more time behind his desk than he used to, and his chair had begun to mold around the shape of his butt to prove it. His days of digging around inside people’s heads, peppering them with questions and determining their potential value to the company, were mostly over. And yet, he still found very little time for himself.
“Knock knock,” Ravonna said, standing in the doorway with a curt smile. “Isn’t it almost five o’clock?”
“Now why would that matter?” Mobius answered, resting his hands on his desk calendar. Each little square was filled to bursting with meetings and appointments.
“You haven’t seen the sunset in, oh, I don’t know, at least eight months? Do I really work you so very hard?” Ravonna said.
“I think it’s a matter of what direction this building faces. And where my office is. You want me to see the sunset? Move me to the west side.”
“My point is that you’ve been working late on the regular. When was the last time you took a vacation?”
Mobius shrugged. He was usually pretty good at taking his days off, but rather than block out entire weeks at a time, he used them like crumbs—a Monday here, a Friday there.
Ravonna Renslayer (no one had the nerve to make fun of her last name, mainly because she had a sword mounted on her office wall) was the Chief Talent Officer. She talked directly to the “Time Keepers,” a popular nickname for the revolving door of CEOs whose faces showed up on their company-wide emails but who hardly mattered to the pencil-pushers of Miss Minutes Group, Inc. Do your job, get paid, keep your job. And if you create watches, yes, you can be a little creative while you’re at it.
Ravonna pretended to admire his office as she stepped further inside, her heels sinking into the beige carpet. “All I’m saying is that it’s March already and summer will be right around the corner. I implore you to take a vacation this summer, Mobius. Book a hotel on the beach. Rent one of those jet skis you love so much.”
Implore, huh? Using the big words to scare him. “I’ll think about it,” he said, grabbing a pen from his mug of pens and scribbling a note in tomorrow’s square.
Ravonna rolled her eyes. “What are you still doing here?”
Mobius pulled up his schedule on his computer. The screen took a solid minute to unfreeze when he moved his mouse. “There’s a meeting in fifteen with—”
“It’s canceled,” Ravonna said, skirting his desk to look for herself. She swatted his hand away from the mouse. “Put on your coat and your scarf and get out of here.”
“Pushy,” Mobius mumbled. But she wouldn’t budge. “You’re making me feel like you don’t like me.”
“It’s called tough love,” Ravonna said, raking her eyes over his face. “You look like death. You’ll scare away the recruiters if you talk to them with those bags under your eyes.”
“Ouch,” Mobius said. Who was he to argue? If she wanted to kick him out for the night so he wouldn’t embarrass her, he’d leave.
“Goodnight, Mr. Mobius,” Ramona said, following him out. She made sure he locked his office door before heading to her own office.
Mobius wrapped his lambswool scarf around his neck and took the elevator down to the ground floor, where March engulfed him in chilly winds and sludgy snow. He saw the sunset while he waited to buy a hot pretzel and a soda on the street corner outside the company building. Not a real dinner, but he hadn’t had one of those in quite some time.
He chewed on his pretzel as he walked the few blocks to his evening haunt. Even though they’d been friends and co-workers for years, Mobius never divulged to Ravenna where he’d got his daily hit of caffeine. There was something sacred about coffee, and with so many coffee shops around the city, you could pick one for yourself and nurture it like a secret.
A light drizzle came down as he approached the line spilling outside of Odinson’s coffee shop. He blinked the rain out of his eyes as he stood waiting. A few people left the line to seek cover, but Mobius didn’t feel bad for them at all. He’d stand in the rain all night if he had to. What waited inside was worth wet socks and plastered hair.
Within ten minutes, he made it to the door and sighed when the heat washed over his damp skin.
Odinson’s was family-run, a rowdy but friendly shop with weekly speciality drinks scrawled on the massive chalkboard covering one wall. The interior was always dimly lit with masculine, overhead lamps and brickwork that gave the illusion of the shop being buried underground. It felt like a bar. A group of students claimed the coffee-stained couches in the corner, textbooks out. The television in the corner broadcasted a European football game that had the patrons shouting red-faced at a missed goal.
The scattered tables were all occupied as Mobius moved up in line. He wasn’t worried, though. A table usually opened up.
“Welcome to Odinson’s,” said Hela, the oldest of Odin’s offspring and downright intimidating with her long hair dyed some kind of bottle black and eyeshadow that made her look like raccoon. Her long fringe fell into her eyes as she looked down at the cash register, her mauve mouth in a permanent scowl. “How can I help you?”
Mobius had been coming to Odinson’s for two years now and Hela still didn’t recognize him. “What’s the Loki special?” He asked, leaning conspiratorially toward her.
Hela’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Huh. That was new. Mobius looked beyond her, expecting to see his favorite barista at work filling the near endless orders. But Loki wasn’t there. His brother, Thor Odinson, manned the espresso machine, his ridiculously large muscles rippling as he pulled down on the lever that created steam.
After he finished with the expresso, Thor noticed the gap in the line of orders and glanced at Hela. His eyes brightened when he saw Mobius. “Hey, Moby,” Thor said, beaming as he nudged Hela out of the way.
“This,” Hela snarled, “person is asking for something we don’t offer anymore.”
Thor’s friendly smile dampened like the rain outside. “Oh, you wanted one of our speciality drinks? Sorry, Moby. They’ve all been scratched from our menu. Hela and I need to come up with new ones.”
“What do you mean?” Mobius said. His gut twisted. He kept looking in the back, expecting the third Odinson to appear.
“Loki was behind the speciality drinks,” Thor said, rubbing his scruffy beard. “I mean, you already seem to know that. Well, he decided to—“
“One of Father’s mistakes came by the other day,” Hela said, crushing a receipt in her hand.
“A long-lost sister,” Thor said, forcing a smile on his face.
“Our ‘sister’ thinks she can compete with us. She claims she has enough of Father’s blood running through her veins to steal Odinson’s position as best coffee shop in the city. The nerve,” Hela said.
“Well, she does have a chance now,” Thor said quietly. “She convinced Loki to join her.”
Mobius followed the family drama as best he could, but Thor’s last statement was the heart of it. His pulse throbbed in his ears. He swallowed thickly, shifted his weight. “You mean Loki doesn’t work here anymore?”
“Not since last night,” Hela said, “and good riddance. The troublemaker!”
Thor took her place at the register after she stormed off, kicking the back door open with her heel. “Please excuse Hela, she’s just upset—“
“Maybe,” Hela added, popping her head back in the room, “we should change the name to Odinson’s and Daughters now? Considering the boys no longer outnumber the girls? Just a thought, brother dear.”
Thor shook his head. “Can I take your order? Anything else you’d like?”
Mobius swallowed thickly and read the menu. Nothing looked appealing all of a sudden, but he didn’t want to be rude. He went with a macchiato and a double chocolate chip muffin.
Thor whipped up his order within minutes and Mobius found a small table against the window. He watched the rain drip down the glass. Headlights from the cars flashed in his eyes but he didn’t care. He stared numbly out the window and broke the muffin apart with his fingers.
The macchiato was fine. Anyone else would have called it perfection. The espresso rolled like an electric pulse through his veins. The foam was just the right amount not to catch in his mustache. But it lacked an element of surprise. If he had ordered the same drink with Loki as barista, the clever man would have slipped another flavor in, something complimentary like clove or cinnamon.
Mobius leaned back in his seat. He loved people-watching at Odinson’s. But mostly, he had loved Loki-watching.
Loki worked the machines as if they were all under his spell, his fingers swift and precise. His movements elegant, almost princely. He was nothing like his older brother Thor, who had a scruffy charm and infectious energy, nor like his sister Hela, a woman far too old to still be dressing like the drowned wife in a gothic novel. In fact, if Mobius understood correctly, Loki might not have been related to them by blood at all. When Loki competed in the city on behalf of Odinson’s, he registered himself as Loki Laufeyson, not Odinson.
Mobius glumly shoved a piece of muffin into his mouth. New York had an annual barista competition called the Barista NYC Championship in May. The competition was a kind of a big deal; Mobius had started following it after his first time stepping inside Odinson’s and having his coffee made by Loki.
But it wasn’t as if he’s spoken more than a few words to Loki in two years of coming daily to the establishment. Odinson’s was incredibly busy. No time for chatting with the patrons. Drinks needed to be served. Tables needed to be cleaned. Thor was an exception, aggressively getting in everyone’s business despite the demands on his time, but Loki was always out of reach. Mobius might have brushed hands with Loki a few times, feeling a tingle when their skin touched, but that was it. And it was all Mobius would ever expect.
He knew what he was: a stuffed shirt. Loki was an Artist. They would never mix. Miss Minutes had prematurely leeched the blonde from his hair. He was silver-haired, with a small but tidy mustache, and he felt more at home in suits than t-shirts. When he wasn’t thinking of jet skis, he thought of Loki, but now that… that was all gone.
“Hey,” Thor said, materializing at his table. “You don’t look so hot.”
“Funny,” Mobius said, his head rolling toward Thor. “My boss said the same thing to me today.”
Thor looked nervous. He bit his lip and slapped a card down on the table. “Don’t tell Hela,” he hissed, “but this where Loki’s gone to. If you want his coffee.”
“Thank you?” Mobius said, blinking.
“You seem like a fan,” Thor said with an easy shrug. “Sometimes my brother forgets he has them.”
Mobius scooped up the business card, making sure Hela wasn’t around. Then he took a peek. The coffee shop on the card was called Kablooie. It was even closer to his office than Odinson’s was.
His heart fluttered in his chest. He tampered it down. Maybe it was time to change coffee shops.