B-15 presents a plan within minutes of cutting the stupid tomatoes. She has it all drawn out on her clipboard, her pen circling points on her list that she deems most important as she explains them, while Loki pretends to actually care. But something about her plan catches on, because he starts legitimately respecting her, beginning to occasionally go along with her ideas and not question them first.
"So, day one," B-15 reiterates to him, "you give him a salad. Knowing you, it'll be a train wreck. Just let it happen. Roll with the stupid punches, you know? Take it like a god. I mean, you're a whiny god, but take it like a normal one."
Loki sighs. "Day two."
"Day two," B-15 replies, "and this doesn't have to be the day right after, by the way. You can wait for a bit until you think you're ready enough to move on."
"Right," Loki replies, "but what am I doing?"
"You give him another one when your skills have improved. Make it better than the first to really show your effort." The officer circles this part on her list, underlining the word 'effort' and moving on. "I have a few strings to pull with one of our receptionists, but I'll have the rest of the plan sorted out soon enough. I'll meet you when it's ready. If you have any ideas, write them down and leave them on my desk. Don't sign your name in case someone finds them. I'll know it's you; your penmanship is a special kind of illegible."
"My penmanship is impeccable," Loki argues. "You just can't read it because it's cursive."
"I can't read it because it's terrible," B-15 snorts. "I know cursive. C'mon, asshole. I have a basic knowledge of formal education."
Loki crosses his arms. "Dick."
"Whiny bitch," B-15 responds rather affectionately, leaving Loki to disengage entirely and prepare himself in his head for the diabolical plot of giving Mobius an almost-decent replacement for what has been lost.
He presents Mobius with a new salad in a matter of days. They both stare down at it as it seems to melt into itself.
Mobius does not attempt to be impressed. "Are you doing this because you feel bad?"
"Why would I feel remorse, Mobius? Me?" Loki reasons, feeling remorse. "Here's a fork."
"Perhaps you're not so evil after all," Mobius compliments, but he revokes this immediately as he takes a bite. "Oh, wow. How old is that tomato?"
Loki hesitates. "It's pre-sliced."
A pause. "From when?"
Loki looks him blankly in the eye. Mobius crosses his arms—his interrogation stance.
"From when, Loki?"
Loki clears his throat and eyes the floor to confess. "From when you taught me how to slice them."
Mobius tosses his head back to sigh exasperatedly at the ceiling. "Two days ago?" he whines at him. "And they've just been sitting out?"
Loki motions a stiff arm to the salad. "It's natural!"
"So is food poisoning!" Mobius argues. "Do you know nothing about fruits?"
"Oh, shut up," says Loki, somehow expecting this to be honored.
"Do you dislike not knowing about things?" Mobius asks with a short, thoughtful laugh. "You always get so heated up when I correct you. Why? Because I'm right?"
Loki closes his eyes, raises his brows, sighs. "I'm sorry about the salad."
"This one?" Mobius asks, clearly still hung up on the last one. And then, with a double-take, he narrows his eyes. "Sorry?"
"Well, no. This one's funny, actually," Loki reassures him. "I meant the first one, which. I. ruined... on purpose."
"Ohhhh..." Mobius murmurs, the corners of his mouth turning up just slightly. "Oh, I see. So you do feel bad about the salad. See, I knew it. I knew it all along. How did it taste, by the way?"
"Are you going to forgive me for the salad?" Loki demands. Mobius allows this.
"I forgive you for the salad. How did it taste?"
Loki opens his mouth to speak, thinking over this for a moment. "Um. Carbonated."
Mobius nods in consideration. "Do you think all apocalypses are so fizzy?"
Loki rolls his eyes. "Well, I wouldn't know," he complains, "because you haven't brought me to one yet."
"Hm. You want to visit an apocalypse only to taste it? That's your reason?" Mobius questions, seeming to piss him off with the light banter.
"You think I'll go around licking lava and radioactive meteors?" Loki demands.
"Yes," says Mobius. "Yes, I do."
Loki sets his jaw. "Why on Earth would I do that?"
"You ate tomato skins. Come on," Mobius points out, which is a damn fair point and not worth arguing over. So it is argued over anyway.
"Many things are free to enter my mouth," Loki insists, "and molten rock is not one of them."
"Okay," Mobius accepts. "So where do you draw the line?"
Loki shrugs. "Anything not dangerous can be eaten."
Mobius nods in false realization. "Oh, you're talking about eating. Got it." He points a pen at him. Lord knows when that showed up.
Loki glares at the pen tip. "What else would I be talking about?"
"Well—I don't know—you said enter your mouth, as if the thing would just be..." Mobius grasps at the air for euphemisms. "...visiting."
Loki opens his mouth in offense. "What kind of interrogation process is this?"
"I'm not currently interrogating you," Mobius claims, raising his hands to show his harmlessness. He grips the pen between his first finger and thumb. "I'm just intrigued at your choice of wording."
Loki is rightfully not convinced. "You're backing me into a corner."
"How?" Mobius asks, although he knows exactly how.
Loki mocks his stance, repeating his essential message. "'Where do you draw the line for what can make a jolly visit into your mouth?' Are you serious?"
Mobius shrugs. "You just seem like you're willing to eat anything."
Loki is still deeply offended. Mobius finds it very satisfying as the god scrambles to protect his image. "That's not what you meant when you asked."
Mobius takes a step away. "Now look who's backing who into a corner," he says, which is meant both figuratively and literally, as Loki has legitimately herded him nearer and nearer to the apex of the walls.
"What? Want to switch corners?" Loki challenges. "What's been in your mouth, Mobius?"
Mobius only laughs and regards the bowl again. "Not much of your salad, thank God."
"Where do you draw the line, hm?" Loki demands, although he's barely interested in the answer and only asking out of spite. "Not like I'm wondering, or like I want to know. I do not, and I hold absolutely no interest whatsoever, on the contrary."
"Yeah, sounds like it. Do... you think there is a line?" Mobius asks dubiously, raising his brow.
Loki glares at him like a child, and the darkness of the room becomes inherent. They become enveloped within the shadows cast from the edges of the ceiling lights. He moves forward, making an attempt at a threat.
"I'd take you right here, Mobius," he breathes, which he realizes the implication of only after it's said.
Mobius looks smugly back, having caught him in his trap.
Loki sighs. "In a fight."
"Ohh-hoh-okay," Mobius laughs, faking relief. "Alright. Wow. That... Yeah, that changes things."
"Why do you subconsciously choose to interpret my words like that?" Loki questions, as if it's Mobius' fault.
"Why do you subconsciously choose to say them in that way?" comes the reply, and Loki comes to the conclusion that nothing he can possibly say could ever make a good point against that one. So, awkwardly caught in the figurative corner while Mobius is backed into the literal one, he grabs a piece of old tomato and takes a bite, hit quickly by the taste of rotting fruit and spitting it out on the floor. He tosses the rest of the tomato slice next to it, both of them staring down at the pile.
"Now that," Loki says breathlessly, pointing with aggression to the rotting pulp, "is where I draw the line."
"Good to know," Mobius replies, clicking open his pen and scrawling this aimlessly on his clipboard. "Noted."
"Oh, can I borrow that pen?" Loki asks, grabbing it before Mobius can agree to the transaction. He rips a sheet off of the poor man's clipboard, scrawling something illegibly across it before tossing the pen back to him and folding up the paper. He later drops it on B-15's desk as inconspicuously as he can manage, although there truly are a lot of giveaways involved as he has to ask around to find out where her desk actually is. If Mobius doesn't find out about this all before it happens, Loki bets to throw away his life and devote it to him instead. That's how little faith he holds in this whole operation, and that's a bet he finds rather safe.