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Thor has spent 1500 years in greyscale, arguably longer than any human needed or deserved to live at all, let alone with no colour in their life.
At this point, he was almost willing to give up on ever finding his soulmate, almost convinced that he'd live through eternity in the body of a just-vaguely-bitter (well, optimism was hard when you'd lived for fifteen hundred years) 21 year old. He had to admit it couldn't help that he still dressed (and talked) like he was about to attend a Renaissance Fair - what could he say, it had been his favourite time period.
He'd watched hundreds of friends come and go, finding their soulmates with ease and slowly disappearing from his life, leaving him alone in his miserable, colourless existence.
Comforting himself was somewhat of a job, sometimes. He liked to marvel at the developing technology, remembering the times before any of it, gaze in wonder at the newfound discoveries.
One of his friends had stuck around for a while now, since the Second World War - Thor hadn't known him that well, then, but he could have sworn that he had a soulmate, which didn't explain why he was seemingly remaining ageless. When Thor confronted Steve about it, he'd laughed.
"You know that when you're far from your soulmate for long enough you stop aging again, right?" he'd smiled, without a trace of maliciousness or patronization, but Thor had still felt stupid. Steve's soulmate, Bucky, had been kidnapped for a while, he knew that. And it made sense - how else had Steve remained so perfectly youthful for seventy-odd years?
In any case, he'd resigned himself to losing these newer friends before long, given that they all seemed to have their matches found. Stark had barely left the Strange doctor's side since he met him, and they'd even adopted a son, a fifteen-year-old kid called maybe Peter? who had been lucky enough to find his soulmate before the aging process had even stopped, his best friend, some kid named Ned or something similar. He would live a normal life, unencumbered by soulmate bullshit, and Thor had to say he was jealous.
The one constant in his life was his little brother, Loki. He was in the same boat, albeit a touch younger, and both had wondered whether they'd ever find Their One.
"I think my favourite colour is green," Loki had once announced, at some point in the eighteenth century. Thor remembered narrowing his eyes at him suspiciously.
"How would you know? You've never seen it."
Loki shrugged. "Mother always used to say it was her favourite. It must have been pretty."
"You cannot just announce that without knowing what it looks like."
Loki hadn't cared, and had proceeded to spend a couple hundred years saying green was his favourite colour. Thor had to admire his determination - he went through life with a modicum of anger mixed with boundless cheer that made for some weird interactions.
The first time he met Bruce, he'd been lounging at Stark's tower, reading a magazine showcasing the newest in Earth tech and marvelling at the stuff people came up with for problems you just had to suck it up and deal with back when he was a kid.
"Hey, Thor?" Tony had called, sauntering in the room with someone trailing behind him who looked... nervous couldn't quite cut it.
"Yes, friend Stark?" Thor replied, not quite glancing up.
"This is Bruce. Banner. He's helping me out with a project."
Thor glanced up then, looked over the man appraisingly and shot him a smile. He had to admit, the guy was adorably hot. "Good to meet you, Banner."
That had been the end of their first interaction, Bruce disappearing into the lab with Tony almost immediately, and it was a long while before Thor met him again.
Thor often wondered what his favourite colour would be, when he finally - if ever - had the fateful moment where he brushed against his soulmate for the first time and quit seeing everything in shadowy tones.
It was impossible to imagine colour, and he had no idea how Loki did it, was so resolute about his favourite colour being green.
But he'd heard that they were all beautiful, so eventually he settled on the fact that he'd accept any colour, because it would mean he'd found his love.
The second time he met Bruce, he was sat in the lab, fiddling with one of Tony's scientific things and ignoring the quiet complaints that he was going to break something, when Bruce wandered in.
"Hey Tony," he said quietly, nodding at Stark, who hopped up from where he'd been working on something. When he glanced over, Thor was almost ashamed to admit there was a gentle stirring in his heart, his pulse quickening just a little bit.
"You remember Thor, right?" Tony asked, gesturing pointlessly to Thor in the corner. "Speaking of, could you put that down? You're gonna smash something, I can feel it in my bones."
"How could I forget?" Bruce remarked with a tiny smile, and Thor could hardly break his eyes away from that face. His hands shook as he made to place the fragile object back on the counter, and he ended up missing, the thing crashing to the ground and smashing across the floor. Tony groaned.
"What did I just say?"
"My apologies, Stark," Thor said, even as he jumped up and located a dustpan and brush. "Was it important?"
Tony waved his hand dismissively. "I can replace it, but come on."
Bruce snorted slightly, before making his way towards a desk against a wall and starting to work on something. Thor almost nudged another expensive glass science thing off a table while he was sweeping, he was so focused on the back of Bruce's head, and the way his hair curled perfectly against the nape of his neck. It was unlike him to get so worked up, particularly about a stranger.
Thor saw Bruce again fairly often after that, and every time he interacted with him just a little more, and he could feel the unknown attraction building a little more.
"I'm not big on touching," Bruce had told him apologetically, maybe the fourth time they'd met, when Thor had made to offer him a hug and promptly dropped his arms. He could understand that. He would be big on it, but it broke his heart every time he brushed against someone new and absolutely nothing changed.
That didn't stop him enjoying time with the nervous scientist. They liked to hang out in the lab, as he was always fascinated by the way Bruce worked, so focused and intelligent, but that didn't stop them just lounging together. But never touching. Bruce was fairly insistent on that. It made Thor wonder whether he hadn't found his soulmate yet either, and even if they weren't meant to be he was fairly pleased that he wasn't alone in his loneliness - well, besides Loki.
Speaking of Loki, he hadn't been particularly happy about Thor spending most of his time with Bruce. When you'd been alive for as long as they had, it was hard to find people who really got you, but both of them had that in one another. And Loki was not at all happy to be losing it to some random stranger Thor had developed a crush on, as he put it.
But Thor couldn't help himself. There was something enticing about Bruce, the way his mouth curved upwards just in the corner when he was pleased, or the way his fists clenched when a lab result annoyed him. He had the world's thickest glasses and he refused to be touched and Thor was at the very least a little infatuated.
On the most important day of Thor's long life, he was sat in the corner of the lab once again, sipping on a cup of coffee, when there was a bang and an exclaimed shit! from Bruce's desk. Thor jumped up immediately, arriving at Bruce's desk almost immediately, where the scientist was stood muttering curses, something darker than his skin tone exploded across his skin (still grey, of course. Why would it be any different?) and staining his desk.
"Thor, can you grab me a towel?" Bruce asked, sighing and rubbing at some of the grey stuff on him. "Experiment went wrong, before you ask."
"Of course!" Grabbing a towel from Tony's side of the lab in an instant, Thor handed it to Bruce with a proud smile, and their fingers just so happened to brush.
Thor stared.
There was green smeared on Bruce's knuckle.
And he raised his head, almost scared to look at Bruce's face, and almost teared up at the sight of brown eyes staring back at him, and green exploded over light skin. Neither of them spoke for a second.
"How long has it been for you?" Bruce asked softly, grabbing at Thor's hand as though scared he would lose the newfound colour, seemingly losing his aversion to touch.
"Fifteen hundred years," Thor replied in a whisper, a tear spilling over and trailing down his cheek, before being quickly wiped away by Bruce his soulmate.
"Oh, honey. I'm so sorry you had to wait so long."
"It was... worth it. I'm so glad its you. I'm so glad... I can't believe you were here the whole time."
They can't help but start laughing after that, at the sheer ridiculousness of being so close to one another for so long, and never knowing. And laughter turns into kisses, and when they pull away Bruce snorts, because Thor has the green of the failed experiment smeared across his lips and chin, and its so right.
But Thor agreed with Loki.
Green was the best colour.