Chapter Text
On reflection, thought Thor looking back on the evening of the party, the most embarrassing part had been that he was the only one drunk. Though he understood that Tony Stark had been much given to carousing and celebration in his youth, and indeed still played up to the role expected of him, he no longer imbibed. Jane's companions Sayed and Sylvie abjured alcohol as was required of them by the code of their faith, and Jane herself drank little and infrequently as she claimed alcohol did not agree with her constitution. Thor suspected that this was because she was small in stature even for the folk of Midgard, but would not have dreamed of sharing this theory with her after her response to the first instance when he had remarked upon her size.
It was commonly supposed that Thor could not get drunk. This was not entirely correct; in truth while it required such large quantities of mead it was rarely worth the effort, he was capable of becoming intoxicated if he chose to. However his powers allowed him to shake off the effects whenever he wished, and rare indeed was the occasion on which he was willing to allow his reactions to be dulled. Tonight was one such occasion - happy in the company of his friends and the anticipation of his impending marriage to the incomparable Jane, he felt comfortable celebrating.
Thor settled himself behind Jane's desk to observe his beloved and her friends. He had swiped a flagon of mead ere he exited the common room, and this vantage point allowed him to conceal it behind a bank of monitors - although he had frequently explained that nothing in the laboratory could harm him Jane still forbade food or drink within on safety grounds. He was confident that he would be able to drink unobserved once her attention was absorbed though, a liberty he could never take in the presence of the good Doctor Banner who concerned himself even more with such matters.
Tony busied himself pawing through the equipment strewn upon the desk, exclaiming over anything that caught his attention. "How did you align the capacitors? Is this thing held together with tape? You should have said, I could build you a housing for it, red and gold, no problem, or would you prefer pink to match your shirt? What about this one? You know this board is obsolete right? You just need to ask Jane, it'd be no trouble to build you a better one! Jane? Jane! You've crosswired the terminals here! Oh no you haven't, wait, I see what you did, but that would be easier if you just..." Jane followed him, attempted to bat him away.
Thor cringed to recall that he had himself behaved in such a manner when first he came to Midgard, unaware of the importance of the items he had examined so thoughtlessly. "A little care please my friend." he pleaded. "A moment's clumsiness or inattention could do great damage."
"Brave words from a man with egg salad in his hair." said Tony, poking a probe into a clot of wiring and getting and getting an electric shock for his trouble. Jane's expression had turned murderous.
"Do you think that you should return perhaps to the party? To reassure Pepper that you are in fact not letting in people who are drunk to the lab?" asked Sylvie. Tony's eyed widened.
"Good point. You, now, you're my favorite." he called as he bolted, to Thor's relief. It would have been discourteous to pick the man up and remove him bodily from the lab, though he had been sorely tempted to do so. Turning to Jane he asked gravely "My love, do I really have egg salad in my hair?"
"Bend down so I can see...oh you do." Jane giggled. "Go and sort it out in the mirror at the eyewash station."
As he went to do as she bade him he heard Jane's guest exclaiming excitedly at the cleverness of the machinery in her laboratory. This pleased him. The Lady Sylvie and the Lord Sayed were not only his beloved's bosom companions from her years in Midgard's halls of learning, but were themselves skilled practitioners of Midgard's esoteric arts of time and space. That they should recognize Jane's preeminence in the field was entirely proper.
"And this is the BiFoster itself?" he heard Sayed gasp reverently.
"Yeah, the protptype, I mean it can't stay open for very long and I haven't got the detail of the targeting system quite right yet I can really only open it to somewhere else on Earth so far but..."
"But that's such a minor thing! Now you've cracked the intersection algorithm for n-dimensional sub-iridis space you could open it to anywhere! You could go to another planet!"
"It's hardly minor guys, sure there's nothing physically stopping me from opening it on another planet but until I have a proper targeting matrix I could open it in the middle of a volcano or something. Or even miss the planet entirely and just open it in deep space somewhere!"
"I was just hoping we could maybe see another planet tonight." sighed Sayem.
"It remains a remarkable feat!" roared Thor. "What she has achieved in these short years has taken the scholars of other civilizations aeons to discover! I have no doubt that given a few years more she shall surpass the wisdom of the sages of Asgard!"
"Hush dear." said Jane, blushing but unable to entirely suppress her pride.
"We know, we have read her Nature paper." said Sylvie, smiling.
"Thor read it too! And it was in a foreign language for him!" Jane pointed out. Sylvie, whose first language was French, said nothing.
"I have no doubt that you understood a great deal more than I." said Thor in absolute sincerity.
"It's such a shame though that such a small thing as the targeting system is holding you back." said Sayed ruefully. Thor was growing annoyed with the man. Could it really be that only the sight of another realm would impress upon him the magnitude of Jane's achievements?
"There is always the Lady Sif's gift?" Thor ventured, gesturing to it. Everyone turned to look at the bench, on which rested a small, intricately carved box of honey-colored wood. The rune Vegvísir adorned the lid, inlaid in a silvery metal across which flickery reflections shimmered, seeming not to correspond to movements in the room.
"The Soul Compass? Lady Sif got it for me, as a betrothal gift. It works...well it works by magic really but I'm getting a handle on translating that into our terms." explained Jane. "It was very sweet of her but I didn't want to use it because, well, it would kind if be cheating you know? This isn't the Asgardian BiFrost, this is Earth technology built with Earth science and I'll have an Earth navigation system sorted out soon too I know it!"
Sayed sighed sadly. "I suppose it's fine for you, you can just visit another planet any time you want can't you?"
Jane looked uncomfortable. "Look maybe we can just do it once with the Asgardian spell if it matters so much. But it's not just the targeting, we'd have to beef up the containment field so if it did open in space we wouldn't be sucked into the vacuum. And the lab's reactor doesn't have the power for that, we'd have to hook it up to the tower's main arc reactor and that would take hours!"
"Perhaps I might be able to help?" offered Thor, and something in his face, his eagerness to help and to see her impress her friends, melted her resistance.
"Well maybe we could just this one time..."
"How much power will be required? I could fetch Bill to assist us..."
"No, no! You'll be fine on your own! We just was to charge the machine, not fry the planet."
"A moment please, to fetch Mjolnir!" called Thor as he bounded out of the door. Sylvie shot Jane a puzzled look.
"He seems very enthusiastic no? He is drunk? That can happen?"
"Quite possibly." Jane smiled indulgently. "He's been drinking his mead hiding behind that computer where he thinks I can't see him."