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Yvonne had always liked Don and Ellie Cooper. They were good people, always had a cup of sugar or a friendly wave to give. Their sons were a little too… rambunctious on occasion, but she had to admit that it was kind of nice seeing them playing outside sometimes. (Setting things on fire was not the same as ‘playing outside’, mind).
But then when Ellie left Don for a man with a vacation home in Majorca, Don started… slipping. He started needing help. Which Yvonne wasn’t about to chastise him for, and was always willing to watch the boys for a few minutes if he needed to run to the store. Even, occasionally, watch them for a few hours when Don’s usual sitter fell through just before he needed to head to work at that powersports store he worked at.
Yvonne worried about Don. He never seemed ready to ‘get back out there’ so to speak. But he so badly needed a support system, and as much as Yvonne was willing to help out on occasion, she knew that she was simply ill-equipped to support Don.
And then, one day, while Kevin and Sean were at school, and Don was supposedly at work, Yvonne saw him.
Don was wearing a brown suit, unlike anything she’d ever seen him wear before (not that it looked bad, Yvonne thought mildly), standing outside his house, staring at it like he’d never seen it in his life.
He looked rough.
So Yvonne slipped on some house slippers and opened her door.
“Don?” She called out across the street.
He gave no indication that he’d heard her, so she sighed, and trudged over to him, avoiding stepping on a scorched action figure one of the kids had left in her yard when she’d watched them a few days back.
“Don?” She asked again, putting a hand lightly on his shoulder.
Don flinched, spinning around to face her.
He looked worse up close. Expression guarded, eyes haunted, and an air about him, like he hadn’t slept in about a week.
“You okay?” Yvonne asked stupidly.
“Yeah,” Don lied, “Thanks.”
“Do you need me to watch the boys when they get off school, so you can get some rest? You… look like you need it.” She told him gently.
“No.” Don said, voice a little strangled, “I want to see them.”
“Okay…” Yvonne said, “Just gimme a ring if you need anything.”
Don nodded, looking back to his house.
“And Don?” She said, “You can always take me up on meeting my friend from school. She’s nice. If you’re ready to… y’know, move on.”
This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say, because Don’s eyes snapped to hers, and they were wide and wet, and full of pain.
Yvonne sighed, “It’s been nearly two years, Don. She left you for a rich idiot. Get over her.” She said, as gentle as she could manage.
She could only be patient and understanding for so long. Ellie had broken Don’s heart and left his life in pieces when she’d walked out on him.
She wanted Don to be able to live again.
For a moment, though, Don looked confused, as though he hadn’t been thinking of Ellie. But then he gave her a watery smile, a forced laugh.
“Yeah… yeah, of course. Sorry. Just, um… it’s been a rough day. Thanks.” He gave her a nod, and headed up the sidewalk to his door, fumbling a moment with his keys, like he could barely remember which one was for his door.
Yvonne shook her head before she headed back inside her own house.
He hadn’t seemed drunk, and he didn’t seem like the type to get drunk just a couple hours before their sons came home from school, but Yvonne knew better than to assume that sort of thing.
The next few days and weeks were different. Yvonne would occasionally get home from her late shift at the hotel to see Don sitting on a lawn chair, staring up into the sky, totally lost in thought.
She’d tried to ask what he was doing once, but he’d just laughed, waved her off, and said that he was trying to get into astronomy.
She hadn’t believed a word of it, but it was odd. Don didn’t usually lie like that.
She and Kathy from down the street had talked about it over lunch one day, and neither could quite put their finger on why Don seemed so broken again these days. He had been getting better. He’d been better.
But Yvonne was sitting in her kitchen nook, reading a new romance book that her friend Bev from school had recommended when she heard an odd noise from the street.
She looked up to see an odd sort of man, wearing some sort of green finery that was wrapped around him, and wearing a crown with horns, sat askance on his head.
He was looking up and down the street frantically, as if looking for something.
Yvonne stood, about to head out to ask him if he needed help finding downtown Cleveland (had the news mentioned some sort of nerd convention that was going on?), when the front door of Don’s house was flung open, and Don came running down the driveway, not even bothering to close the door behind him.
The pair launched at each other, clinging to each other desperately.
From the looks of it, Don was sobbing into the man’s shoulder, and, despite the somewhat regal appearance of the strange man, he appeared to be doing the same.
Yvonne had never been one for snooping, for gossip. That had always been Kathy.
But she couldn’t help but crack her window in an attempt to hear the pair’s conversation as they took a half step back.
They still clutched at the others arms, Don looked like he was gripping the man’s forearms hard enough to bruise. Like he was afraid that he would vanish into thin air.
Poor dear, Yvonne figured, Ellie must have given him abandonment issues.
And finally, their conversation started to float through her open window.
“—like duplication casting, but more… physical. It took me a while to get the hang of it.” The man was saying, and Yvonne certainly hadn’t ever heard an accent like that outside of the guilty pleasure dramas she watched on the television on occasion.
“So you’re a… duplicate?” Don was asking, “You’re still there, at the End?”
Something about the way he said it had put the capitalization there.
The man laughed, but he didn’t look amused. He looked a little broken. “No. That one… that one’s the duplicate. I had to… I had to see you.”
Don let out a sob. “Loki…”
“I’m here. I’m here.” The man, apparently named Loki (and was that a common sort of name in England?)
A car honked as it whizzed by them, going altogether way too fast for the suburbs. The pair jumped, as if surprised by the fact that they were still standing in the middle of the street.
Don pulled Loki backwards, up to his driveway.
He looked apprehensive as he spoke again, “And how… how long can you keep up the duplication?”
Loki gave a half shrug, “I’ll have to go back to check on it in a few hours or so, since it’s a new thing.”
Don’s face crumpled slightly, before he appeared to try to piece it back together before Loki could notice.
Loki grabbed at Don’s arms again, “But that doesn’t mean I’m not coming back. Gods, Mobius, I’m never leaving you again. Not like that.”
(Mobius was an odd nickname. Yvonne wondered where it came from.)
“I will come back, even if it means fighting my way through the End of Time once every few hours just to see you again.” Loki said, an intensity to him that Yvonne had never seen from anyone she’d ever met.
“Shit…” Don said, mouth quirking up into a wrecked sort of smile, “You almost sound like you missed me.”
Loki laughed, sounding just as wrecked, “Not even a bit.” He said, clearly lying through his teeth.
“I missed you.” Don told him, a confession, “I missed you so much. I didn’t think… I didn’t think it could be worse than it was at the TVA after… after everything. But I’m so lost here, Loki. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how I’m gonna—” Don was spiraling, rambling, but Loki cut him off.
The way they kissed was like watching two men, desperate for air, breathing for the first time in their lives.
It was nothing obscene, but Yvonne couldn’t help but flushing a bright red.
It was intimate. It was personal. She shouldn't be watching it.
She closed her window quietly, shut the curtains, and resolved to go out in an hour or so to offer to watch the boys that afternoon.
They looked like they needed the time.