Work Text:
* * *
Loki set Mochi Baby down on the counter, then turned to fiddle with his camera setup. He secured it on the tripod, shifting it so that the full prep and cooking area would be visible to his audience. The baby made a few attempts at meows, which came out more like “meep meep”, as he worked.
“Cute! Very cute. Definitely do it once we’re live, my followers will love it,” He said to the baby, giving them a quick scritch on the ears, and they reached for his finger and purred.
His setup squared away–various ingredients and equipment stashed close at hand for a smooth process, a green apron donned to protect his clothes–he fired up the YouTube live stream and petted the baby as he waited for his viewers to turn up. Loki had known Sylvie would be gone the full day, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to schedule a live cooking event for his millions of faithful social media followers. Who knew that the surefire way to gain legions of eager devotees was to post cooking with your Mochi Baby content online?
Midgardians were a strange lot, but he wasn’t going to look the fame and adoring attention gift horse in the mouth. He smiled as the viewer counter ticked up, up, up, into the hundreds of thousands, and decided it was time to start.
“Hello my loyal supplicants! Welcome to another episode of Mochi Baby Cooking with Loki!” He gave the baby’s cheek a pinch that showed off their stretchy Mochi-ness and the heart emojis rolled in. “Today we’ll be making mochi milkshakes. I’ll show you how to make matcha ice cream from scratch, and then we’ll mix in the little Mochi to make it that much more special.”
Loki gave the camera a dazzling smile, black tail flicking behind him in pleasure at the attention, and got to work. He pulled over a set of matching clear bowls from off camera and talked his viewers through prepping an ice cream base: dissolving the sugar and salt into cream, heating it just shy of a boil, and slowly whisking it into the egg yolks. Then he returned it to the stove and whisked in the matcha powder before explaining how to watch for the custard base to thicken just enough before pulling it from the heat.
He stopped here and there to answer viewer questions–the hot cream has to be added to the yolks slowly to keep them from cooking into scrambled eggs, etc–then swapped the hot, freshly cooked ice cream base for a pre-chilled one he’d made yesterday, because cooking showmanship was all about streamlining. Loki handed the baby the custard coated spoon to lick while he set up the ice cream maker, and his followers really lost it with the heart eyes and statements that they would die for Mochi Baby. A bunch of suckers, the lot of them!
Once the ice cream was poured into the machine and churning, he was left with an unavoidable gap in the process to fill, so he took questions from his followers.
Were he and Sylvie really versions of the same soul from different universes?
Yes.
Was he actually a shapeshifter like people said?
He turned himself into a snake momentary, which made the baby cry. Whoops.
What about that time he invaded New York City?
No comment.
Did Thor like Sylvie?
Thor was a masochist who thought the more Lokis, the better, even if they sometimes stabbed him, because love is a dagger.
The ice cream maker dinged its ready chime, and Loki carefully transferred the smooth green mixture into a bowl and put it in the freezer while everyone watched. Then he was back to answering questions while it firmed up a bit. The rest were fairly banal until he got to:
How did you make the Mochi Baby?
Loki swiped a hand over his left ear, smoothing the fur, and thought how best to answer this. “We tried the…human way…plenty of times and that didn’t work. Then one day Sylvie and I were fighting, and she bit a chunk off of me, which she is prone to do I might add, but this time I bit a chunk off her back. We didn’t think much of it, but her chunk managed to land on top of mine, and next thing we knew they had fused, and there was our Mochi Baby, crying their head off.”
The chat thread went quiet, the live stream equivalent of an awkward pause.
“Anyways, I think it’s time to pull the ice cream and finally make our Mochi Baby milkshakes!”
“Mrrpp!” Replied the baby, banging the spoon against the countertop.
Loki talked through the ideal milk to ice cream ratio for a milkshake, dropping it into his big blender pitcher for all to see. Next he picked up Mochi Baby, gave them a solid pat on the rump, and set them down into the mixture. The baby scrunched their face up as the cold mixture soaked them, on the verge of tears, but then seemed to realize they were sitting in a pool of sweetened cream. They dunked their paws in it and licked at them with their scratchy tongue.
“Time to mix it up!” Loki said, carefully setting the lid on over Mochi Baby, and turning the blender on low.
For a second it seemed like it would be fine, the baby turned around slowly inside as the ice cream and milk combined to make semi-firm slurry, but when Loki turned the speed up, it all went to Hel.
Rather than breaking up into mochi bits and mixing nicely with the ice cream as Loki had hoped, the baby stretched into a sticky rope that wrapped around the blade and axle, momentarily jamming it. Loki jumped to turn the blender off, but he wasn’t quick enough. The blade sprang back to life only to jettison the entire contents of the pitcher across his perfect, sparkling, modern kitchen for all to see–bright green matcha milkshake and long strings of Mochi Baby, shredded and flung around the room.
And in front of millions of live stream viewers. What an embarrassment.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!” Sylvie’s voice boomed from off to his right. Just when Loki had thought it couldn’t get any worse, it seemed she had arrived home early and caught him in the act.
He turned to apologize, only to be met with her tawny head flying at his face. She tackled him into the mess, snarling, hissing, and raking him with her claws, her tail poofed out madly.
“Ah! Sylvie! My love! Stop! I’m sorry!” Loki mewled, putting his arms in front of his face to absorb the worst of her clawed rage.
“You know Mochi Baby is too sticky to blend, you…you CLOWN!”
Sylvie pulled back from him with a final growl that made him flinch, and began to gather up the now puddled bits of their baby to form back together. They fused themselves into a screaming, red faced Mochi Baby, tie-dyed green from the matcha powder he’d used to flavor the ice cream.
Sylvie wiped at the baby’s squishy cheek with a finger, trying to smudge out the color to no avail. “Ugghhh! You are such a fool. Who knows how long it will take to get this staining out. I leave for one day–ONE DAY–and this is what I get back to??”
She shot him a glare over her shoulder and stalked off camera and out of the room, pouting baby in her arms. Loki sat behind the counter for a moment, coated in green muck and stewing in embarrassment over how much of that, exactly, his viewers had caught. Putting it off wouldn’t help. He climbed back to his feet, smoothing down his wavy black hair and hoping it didn’t have too much ice cream in it. Or worse, a missed bit of the baby.
Loki gave his camera the most charming smile he could muster, considering the circumstances. “Well, my Midgardian admirers, that was Sylvie of course. Thanks for joining me, and return for the next installment of Mochi Baby Cooking with Loki!”
* * *
