Maybe Loki privately thought he had misspoke, but not Thor. Tonight, strangely, had put into Thor's head, maybe for the first time since his own Games, that there was an adversary. Alcohol had only misdirected the feeling, inviting in the first figure of vague contempt to walk his way; having an arc reactor embedded in one's chest certainly hadn't helped matters. Tony Stark had never been subtle in manners or presentation.
But the ill feeling he had… it didn't begin and end with what he had done to himself that evening. It began in the Capitol. It began with the cleaving of a twin. Looking at Loki's drawn face, he feared where it might end.
So he put it from his mind. A relatively easy thing to do when his head was pounding as incessantly as a hammer in a forge.
The subject of suitors inevitably arose. Thor might have stilled subtly, if he wasn't already making every attempt to hold his aching body perfectly motionless. It was a change he was certain his brother would have noticed under different circumstances.
But Stark had given him the misdirection he needed. Thor wondered perversely if he might owe the other a debt as he pulled the ice pack away, revealing a mottled black eye, one that only continued to expand and darken like a gathering storm. No mirror necessary; he would wait to read the damage in Loki's reaction.
"What woman would have me looking like this?" Loki knew better than most that the Capitol thought any disfigurement unpalatable. "No, I will wait until it is healed. Then they may fuss over me as if they had been there all along." It was not a turn of phrase: Thor would wait. He would rebuff any offer of concealer or medicine and let his face stay rearranged for all the world to see. Maybe it would be enough to keep his clients at bay for a few weeks.
"You saw how I was occupied," Thor pointed out, his smile twisting suddenly like a wheel of lime garnishing a glass. "I am much more interested in how you spent your evening, brother. Or rather, who you chose to spend it with… present company excluded."