Thor watched as his brother rose and crossed to the medicine cabinet, before turning to pin him with… that look. Relaxed facial muscles, inquisitively widened eyes—the same look that had probably extracted hundreds of government secrets from unwary Capitol officials, if not from Thor himself. While it was turned on him now, it was not, thankfully, being used to its full effect. Had it been so, Thor doubted he would have even realized he was passionately spilling his every inner thought before it was too late. Such was the gently extracting nature of his brother.
He was surprised instead to find Loki distracted in the wake of his own questioning. Thor's eyebrow shot up in a similar fashion; they might have almost been biologically related. Perhaps one had learned it from the other a long time ago.
"Charming?" Thor repeated, and the sudden broad smile that colored his tone made the word positively sparkle. "Clever? That is high praise indeed. Tell me, how is it that clever people flirt? I imagine it to be quite wearying."
They continued to dance around the true subject of the conversation, which was: does she know? Of course the Maximoff twin had to be clever to survive the Games, but did she know just whose Games she had been playing?
Thor gazed at the figure of his brother, although the swelling of his eye made it more difficult than even the darkness of the living room. He had rarely known Loki to be admiring—in earnest—of anyone, much less a woman. Still, even with a swollen eye, he could see that their communication was doomed from the start. Could his brother not perceive it yet? He, who saw everything so keenly, who was never one to overlook minor details or meaningless minutiae?
No. Loki must know what Wanda Maximoff would think of him. And if he did not—if he could not imagine, as Thor could all too vividly, the rage of a sibling rendered adrift in the world—he at least had a sibling who was present and aware enough (seventy-five percent of the time) to keep watch for signs of the latent ugliness that was sure to surface sooner or later.
"Loki…" He did not wish to derail the lightness of their conversation, but one question loomed, ever-present, and he thought he could now exact an honest answer. "What do you know of the Maximoff Twins?"