jack cracking open another bottle, hoping he can drink himself into blindness

“It’s just Grandmaster, handsome.” He plucked the drink from the table, not bothering to look at it before taking a sip. It was cloying in a way he didn’t like, but he barely noticed as he let himself drink in the handsome young stud before him asking him possibly one of the most awkward questions he’d heard in a very long time.

What was this guy’s game? He’d heard enough about Fandral to know the guy was a major flirt and liked a challenge, but his brother? The Grandmaster took another sip of his drink, wondering if Loki had put him up to it.

“You don’t really…pursue the Collector. If he is interested, he will just sort of show up and start talking to you.”

HANDSOME. Yes, that, Fandral rather likes, and he lets his smile linger on his features, allows himself to look up at the other man with no small amount of curiosity, and certainly with interest. Gast -  the Grandmaster - is handsome himself.

The brother is better. But Gast is handsome, still. 

                                         “Point noted, Grandmaster - thank you.     Loki has rather delicately implied he and the Collector don’t get on                              - I therefore suspect he must be rather fun. 

He dropped the gameboard, uncaring of the clatter and the groan it made when it hit the floor. All he cared about was the alien on his couch, looking suddenly so small and lost.

“Hey…hey…”

In two steps, he was in front of Loki. In one blink, he was on his knees, his hands touching the other gently by the arms, his fingers slowly trailing down the vambraces down to the cold hands.

“What’s with all this negativity, honey?” Though his words were light, his expression was not the usual teasing and carefree one. No, his eyes were searching, his smile tightened in concern.

“I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

The clatter of the board on the ground makes Loki flinch, but no more than the sudden shadow of the Grandmaster in his presence: Loki had said the words more to himself, a quiet realisation of his situation, a quiet admission to the heat of the universe, but the Grandmaster’s hands are so gentle on his wrists, on his own freezing fingers, and Loki feels his breath hitch in his throat.

He looks so--

Like he cares. Loki’s stomach does an uncomfortable lurch within him,  and he swallows hard. His trembling hands turn, palm up, so that he  can ghost against the Grandmaster’s own hands, but he-- He oughtn’t. 

“You never looked for me.” 

She pulled her hand out of his heart, feeling the slick purple fluid between her pale fingers. Shoving him away from her, she slipped to the floor, legs pulled up to her chest as she held her stained hands toward the Sakaarian sun that shone so hazily past the filth and grime that continued to pour out from the sky. She frowned up at the sight, her ears twitching as she picked up the sounds of a body being reformed and righted. 

Today was just supposed to be a normal day working. Draw out a few faces, make sure she didn’t mismatch any bones, and send in a few reports. That’s it. She was even thinking about going by that new donut shop and treating herself. 

But then there was a little crackle of white noise in her earbuds while she worked. Her gaze barely flickering up before she did a double take. Before she had more time to react, there was a ripple-pop! and a very shiny man was there and she was holding a femur like a weapon. Like her gun wasn’t in her desk drawer. “What the fuck?” 

“Grandmaster..”

The god of mischief’s wheezed exclamation owed part of its timbre to astonishment, the rest to the damage to his larynx courtesy of Thanos. He had woken in a blur of confusion and agony on a hard surface, possibly a gurney, maybe a table. Whatever it was, it was raised off the floor, which did very little in the way of reminding him of how tall he truly was, especially when an even taller man was observing him. A very powerful man indeed whom Loki had strongly disappointed, and to whom he was now apparently indebted.

He had so many questions and many he would have to be careful uttering, back to the dance of not wanting to offend the ancient creature whilst somehow grasping tightly to his sense of self.

...Another face he did not recognize, nor did he have the appropriate information to discern some kind of identity. What was happening lately? He needed to find more networks that went outside of the solitude of those located on Earth.

He made a mental note to do so later on.

“...Nice outfit.”

OKAY that was RUDE and Vision struggled to correct himself almost as soon as he’d said it.