Who's Paying?
"I will accompany the Lady Darcy on her shopping quest"
Thor's anouncement was so enthusiastic and reminiscent of Puente Antiguo that Darcy couldn't help but frown for a second. He had stopped with the ridiculous "Lady" thing a while ago, so why should he start again? She'd probably find out.
After a quick trip through Tesco they had taken a break at a little coffee shop – and wasn't Darcy glad that her favourite form of caffeine preparation had finally reached England – and Thor turned untypically serious.
"L– er, Darcy, I would like to ask you a question and will apologize in advance if I offend."
Darcy raised an eyebrow. She raised a hand. "No problem, big guy, it takes a lot of work to offend me and as long as you don't bring up threesomes we're good."
Thor smiled. "I promise." He turned serious again.
"Darcy, you call Jane your boss, right?"
Darcy nodded.
"Again, I hope not to offend, but should not usually the boss pay her employees? I have noticed that all payments that go out are made in your name. For one I am curious, as this does not seem to be typical and I also want to make sure you are not taken advantage of."
"Ah," said Darcy with a smile. "No, I'm not being scammed. Even if interns aren't really paid in a lot of places. But yeah, me paying is a little unorthodox." Darcy fiddled with her napkin.
"Look, I am a bit rich. Not Stark-type rich, but I have a decent trust fund that pays 10K a month."
Thor frowned for a moment trying to estimate the value of that, so she helped him out. "It's about 5 to 10 times the money most people have in a month, so if I spend wisely, it's not hard to keep Jane going with that. And for me, a) I like Jane, b) I think she's doing interesting and important stuff even if I don't get every detail and c) I'd rather pay for it than be dependent on some spook agency. I mean the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. thing didn't really work out well. To make things short: Yeah, I'm paying for the whole thing because I want to, it's a lot more interesting than the usual rich kid fuck-your-way-through-europe post grad binge and I'm happy because I can do what I want."
Darcy patted Thor's cheek with a smile. "So don't worry, I'm doing exactly what I want and I'm having fun. Now let's get the food back to science central."