"You should try blue."
Loki starts at the voice by his ear.
Anthony Stark has sneaked up on him again. His senses are not so finely-tuned as they once were; one of the many things he lost upon his Fall.
"I beg your pardon?" He attempts to give Stark a disdainful look.
... It may, however, have simply turned out confused.
"Blue. Blue clothes, shirts. Make your eyes more..." Tony gestures vaguely at Loki's face. "Anyway." he mumbles, sitting down across the table. The books are stacked so high on the tabletop that he almost disappears behind them. "Are you gonna read all of these?"
"No."
"Then what-"
"Those are the ones I've already read."
"Today?"
Loki looks up exasperatedly from Pillars of the Earth.
"No, I've been living in the library and I started a collection. Of course today, why would that be so shocking?"
"Nope, never mind." Tony raises his eyebrows and looks away. "Magic Asgardian reading skills, nothing."
"... Not exactly," Loki replies, staring levelly at him.
They sit like that for some time until Loki goes back to his novel.
Tony drums his fingers on the table awkwardly as Loki burns his way through two more paperbacks.
"... Why are you here, Anthony Stark?"
He looks up to see Loki watching him over the stacks of books.
To stalk you.
"To bother you." An adequately self-assured answer, hopefully.
Loki snorts delicately. "And what a fine job you're doing. However, you misunderstand. That is what you are here to do, not why you are here."
Because you're fascinating.
"Because you're easy to annoy. You do realise how tempting a target you make?" It's not really a lie, just... the wrong truth.
Loki can tell that's not exactly right; but it's impossible to see Stark's real answers. Even his eyes refuse to lay bare the truth that's so easy to find in others'. What is it that makes him different?
Tony can practically see Loki pulling him apart piece by piece, dissecting and analysing. He waits with bated breath, as Loki appears to stare into his fucking soul, and the silence steadily grows more and more awkward; and he stares right back.
Observation: Skin no longer merely nobly pale, but unhealthily gaunt. Thinner than before; dejected slump to shoulders once held stiff with pride. Loss of pigment in eyes; irises have gone from pale turquoise to greyish-blue.
Analysis: Unwillingness to eat; possible illness as a result of emotional shock. Lack of physical exertion or social contact. Clinical depression.
The man in front of him is a tear-stained shadow of the ambitious villain from three months ago.
Suggested procedure: Gauge reaction by attempting to elicit emotional response. Stimulate humanity. Establish relations.
The pieces of the old, jealous, cracked Loki Laufeyson have been knocked apart. Tony wants to take them all and fit them back together in a pattern even more beautiful than before.
