12. Warm

.

"You did what?" Erik's complexion was a shade of puce which Jane was nervously certain portended some kind of aneurysm. She had assembled her troops (her troops being Erik and a low-res webcam image of Darcy over Skype) and was attempting to hold a briefing. It hadn't been going that smoothly.

"We made antimatter," she repeated patiently, used to the surreal feeling of saying it by now. "There is an entire half-gram of antihydrogen atoms in my lab right now, as we speak. It's stable and contained in some kind of vacuum-magnetic Tupperware on my desk, like it's no big deal. I think Luke may be the übermensch."

Darcy blew some air between her lips. "Well. Nothing much happens when I'm away, huh guys? I can tell it's no big thing because I think Erik is actually dying from how impossible or dangerous or stupid whatever you did is."

Jane thought about pounding him on the back to see if it would help him breathe, but the odds seemed better he wouldn't appreciate it at all. She patted his shoulder gently instead, trying to look solicitous.

A wide-eyed glare of accusation suddenly whirled on her. "How!"

"Um." She sat back away from him as far as the wall-mounted bench-table would allow, uncomfortable with the fact that she could count every blood vessel in his eyes. "I, uh, I built a vacuum chamber and assembled a short beamline, I explained how atom-smashers work to Luke, I helped him with some calculations and the iridium, the hydrogen, all that. He brought in his own components, he said they were several different alloys made with elements unknown to modern science. I showed him how I build stuff, he watched, then he did his own thing. It worked."

"This was all theoretical on Friday. Jane," Erik's voice was a trifle shrill, he was almost laughing, "you built this in a day."

As if she didn't know that. She shrugged helplessly, holding her hands up. They had. They had built it in a day and it had worked.

"Where did the power come from? That kind of energy isn't just-"

"Did you hop over to New York and ask Tony Stark to borrow a cup of arc reactor?" Darcy seemed enthused by the thought. "I always thought you should team up with him. SHIELD could make that happen, you know. Wait for me to come back, though, I want to meet that guy."

Jane's mouth worked silently for a moment, then she just held up a hand towards the camera. "No, Darcy. Absolutely no. I didn't borrow an arc reactor, Luke said there was an external power source but we were having problems communicating- you know how he sort of struggles with technical language- and he said he couldn't explain it to me. I just thought... why not? Why not let him try on the off chance there really is something here I can't understand?"

There was silence in the trailer, apart from the sad whine of her semi-functional mini-fridge.

"And there was, so..." Jane finished lamely.

Erik crossed his arms, his mouth twisted sourly and a deep gouge of disapproval between his eyebrows. "I'm genuinely terrified I'll be burying you one of these days, child. There's incorrigible curiosity and then there's a death wish. If your father were here he'd probably be proud, and if I could have washed my hands of the pair of you I would live a lot longer. I try to talk sense to you- you're my witness, Darcy: I try."

"There was definitely an attempt."

"Erik, I know you feel responsible for me." Jane reached for his hand and held it, his strong, callused fingers comforting and familiar in hers, reminding her of childhood and boosts up to the eyepiece of a telescope. "But this is my life and I take the chances I have to take. Maybe I never imagined my research project would turn out so... unprecedented, but that doesn't mean I'm not ready for it. That doesn't mean I give up and go home. I was willing to risk my career on a real long-shot hypothesis, I was willing to let them finish laughing me out of the field; I don't think risking my life is much different. My career is my life."

He leaned closer to put his free hand on her shoulder, staring her down with every ounce of conviction he could muster. "You were doing better than you think. You had a grant, you had a position with a good school to go back to. Not having the standing you deserve in the community is rough, but it's not worth dying to get some respect. There's no shame in plugging away and knowing they're wrong about you."

"Is it worth only maybe risking death if you can find out something extraordinary? If you can change the way we see the world?"

He sighed, sinking down to lean on his elbows glumly. "I can't protect you from your nature, can I?"

"I would say it's a pretty big exercise in futility, yeah. Though it's very nice of you to try." She stretched across the table to give him a little hug. "I know you'd be right in any not-insane universe, if it makes you feel better. I just happen to live an insane life."

"So you filled a synchrotron with antiprotons yesterday, you whipped up some positrons, and today you made antimatter. Just like that. In the same tiny accelerator." His blue eyes looked watery and his skin seemed grey with resignation. Back to all business after an interlude of feelings, as per usual. Jane thought she came by her priorities in life honestly, really.

She nodded. "Luke made some adjustments and away we went."

"But he still hasn't told you where the energy came from?" Darcy cut in, reminding them she was still listening. "Maybe his new elements can convert molecules from the air or something. You don't know what they are, so who knows how they react, right?"

"I guess, but that would really have to affect the composition of the air. I mean, you'd notice. You don't understand what kind of power we're talking about, Darcy. Although Luke didn't seem to really appreciate the magnitude of it either, so maybe you have a point. Maybe he doesn't realise what he's got because he's so... I don't know, is there a word for being precociously naïve?"

"Marxist?"

"Very funny. Seriously. He doesn't know the limits, he doesn't understand why I'm impressed by a lot of things. He acts like quantum mechanics is kid stuff, but it seems like he's never been exposed to classical physics as a science. He knows it like common sense, but he can't articulate it in math without help. Is it really possible he could come up with this alloy and apply it without- he didn't even know what a particle accelerator was last week! What was he using it for before?"

Erik was rubbing his chin in thought. "You're really sure everything is what it seems with this device?"

"I constructed the observational array myself." Jane ran the build through her mind and confirmed her memory that she had allowed Luke nothing more than menial little tasks like trimming wires. He could not have affected it, accidentally or otherwise; not on the first day, anyway. She had left him alone with it for hours afterwards, but she had long since given up remotely suspecting that he was deliberately trying to con her even if Erik hadn't. Besides, he clearly didn't know how to work her computers. "I'm forced to accept that it's possible, because I know he did it."

No one seemed to know what to say to that. Erik had no answers and no more anger, so he sat in silent bafflement and worry.

Darcy was less sobered. "Where is His Mysterious Hotness, anyway?"

"He's eating a late lunch in the lab. I told him I had to talk to Erik about the experiment." Which was true, and she'd foolishly decided it needed to be in private and as soon as Erik arrived, hence why they and her hottest-running laptop were packed into her tiny trailer, which was crowded and hot even with just Jane in it.

"You've got him eating your food by himself?" Darcy had pinged to a story behind that seemingly innocuous statement.

It had been something of an undertaking, actually.

Making antimatter had been much like making antiprotons, with Jane manning equipment and Luke standing at the device, touching it in two places this time. The hum in her head as the process began quickly increased from one bee to a swarm and the purple-green glow from Luke's handwriting had definitely not been in her imagination. She wasn't at all surprised when it worked. She could barely bring herself to look at her instruments, knowing what she would find, her heart stuttering in her chest and her fingers numb. Luke had looked like some grunge vision of a vengeful angel, the extra fabric of Erik's oversize shirt flowing back from his raised arms like drapery and his hair stirred as if by hot air.

When it was over he stood there blinking, staring at the rig. Jane watched him for a long moment, waiting to see if he would wobble or not when he tried to move. He was so still that he didn't betray himself either way. Finally unable to leave it lie, and pretty sure she knew in her gut he'd be much like he had been the day before, Jane walked over and put a hand on his arm. He turned slowly to look down at her.

"Okay?" she probed, squinting at him in mingled concern and speculation.

"I must eat," he announced quietly, slurring very slightly. Jane registered a confirmation of her hypothesis and gave herself a free pass for being more worried about science than his health.

"Come on, you sit down and I'll make you something." She touched a guiding hand to the small of his back, not knowing if he would be as unsteady as the last time, and nearly flinched from the shock of his superheated skin. Trying to swallow around her heart in her throat, she forced herself to settle her palm flat against him and he now felt like a pretty normal body temperature. Had he ever really been that hot or was she just imagining it?

He leaned into her, very slightly, his big blue eyes practically filling her vision as he tilted his head to look at her from so close. "You will forgive me if I refuse your generous hospitality, but I require decent sustenance. I will go and-"

"No, you won't." She moved her hand so her arm wrapped around his ribs, planting her feet in case she needed to brace against his weight and inadvertently pressing her face into his side. He smelled like ozone: wind and electricity. "You said there was an energy source. An outside source. Twice you make it work, and twice you're all stupid exhausted afterwards. That's a repeatable result. I'm not an idiot, Luke. I may do things I shouldn't, but I'm very observant. The deal is, you take my food and shut up or you explain right now how you used yourself to power a reaction that takes something like two hundred billion joules through the power of positive thinking or whatever. Your call."

He swallowed and licked his lips. "I will concede."

"I thought you might."

"You haven't won anything, you needn't be so smug," he muttered, draping an arm over her shoulders now that he'd surrendered to her attempts at help. Even that much of him was heavy for her, but some of the tension in his back muscles relaxed and it was less like she was hugging a stone statue. She'd take that as a sign she was at least a little efficacious as a crutch.

Jane found herself smiling fondly at him, though her pulse still leapt in her throat. "You said, 'I concede'. Sounds like winning to me."

"Stalemate," he insisted, his head drooping towards hers. A curl of his hair brushed her ear and she ignored the tickle with every fibre of her being.

Feeling a bit more confident now that his eyelids were at half mast, knowing he couldn't be watching her nearly so closely as he usually did, Jane wondered how much she could get out of him while he was apparently compromised. "Did you really think you would get this past me? Twice?"

"I had hoped," his silky baritone sank to a quiet rumble as they shuffled awkwardly towards a chair. "I was better prepared for the undertaking than I was on the first occasion, but it also proved more difficult."

She settled him, her hands slipping away as he slouched against the chair back. "You do seem to be doing a bit better, you're not comatose yet. How was it more difficult?"

"Doctor Foster," he reprimanded in a playful, mock-outraged tone that derailed her train of thought, "that would be telling."

"You're silly when you're tired."

"Mmmm..." He sagged and she sort of caught him with her shoulder, using the length of her torso as a buttress to keep him from falling. She couldn't push him back up without his cooperation and found herself effectively pinned to the floor by his weight. Her plight seemed to amuse him. He dropped his hand onto the top of her head and the size of it made her feel like she'd shrunk into a Polly Pocket. "You were correct about me, Jane. You read me accurately. Have I told you that? Of course you have also seen that it is not a sensation of which I have much experience."

"I think you did tell me that, actually. About what in particular?"

"I am also... curious."

"Nosy, I think I said." She'd said both, but she was enjoying being difficult with him while it was so easy get away with it.

"Curious," he ignored her interruption. "I am... curious about you as you are about me. I did not ask endless trivial questions because I read all I could find written of you before coming here."

"I gathered."

"Yes, you would. But there are numerous queries that are beyond the scope of staff biographies and author blurbs."

"One hopes."

"Why did you follow in your father's footsteps, Jane? Was it really the most pressing of your infinite interests to scour the stars for meaning or did you feel a child's most indigenous longing, to live as their progenitor would have them live? Is it your blood or your spirit which directs your sail, Jane?" His hand slid from her head and landed on her shoulder, his fingers passively tangling into her hair and brushing her neck. "Is it your father's desires or yours which define you?"

Supporting him on one side and trapped by him on the other, she felt consumed by his presence and some prodigious importance he placed on her answer, but she wasn't about to start editing herself now. "I always loved the stars. I don't know when I started or how I started, or whether it was because he loved it so much that I first got interested in the sky, but I never... it was never that important what people expected. He thought I should be a teacher, actually. A real teacher, not like I arguably am, doing however many classes I absolutely have to do to fulfil my academic obligations. I would hope he'd be proud of me, but ultimately I don't make choices to please anyone. I make what I think is the right choice."

He heaved himself upright, pulling her with him slightly, the hand resting near her collar tensing instinctively to encourage her to her meet his eyes. "What about Erik Selvig? Did you not moderate yourself considerably because of his wishes?"

"We're here, aren't we? I listen to good advice, Luke, but that doesn't mean I won't do something I think is worth it because I know Erik won't like it. You noticed that yourself."

"I observed your conflict of loyalties." He slumped back, putting his hands in his lap and worrying his thumb. "His approval does mean a great deal to you."

"Well, of course it does, but it's not the end of the world if we disagree. I try not to lose sight of the fact that the older and wiser are perfectly capable of being wrong. He still cares about me even when he thinks I'm crazy. He'll come and help even if he's saying 'I told you so' the whole time. He'll come and help even if I'm saying 'I told you so' the whole time."

Luke stared into the middle distance, looking very morose. "And your father? Would he not be more pleased if you had chosen as he would choose for you?"

"I don't know, he's not here to tell me that, but I like to think he'd be happier that I'm happy. He used to say that we may learn the same constellations, but we all see our own pictures in the stars."

"How poetic." He blinked rapidly and then turned to her, seeming a little lost. "What of your mother?"

"She's kind of... flighty. She became a sommelier after Dad passed and travels a lot, so I don't see much of her these days, but she's always thrilled with whatever I'm doing when she touches down from her latest adventure. She used to be a chemist, not a physicist, and to be honest, I don't think she understands a word of my theories, but she pretends to be interested for as long as she can manage. I don't ask for more than that." She smiled wryly to herself. "She's never been the dictatorial type of mother. Really, she could never bring herself to be the firmest authority figure. My dad didn't like to be, either, maybe that's part of why I have such poor impulse control."

Luke made a tsking sound with his lips. "I am firmly of the opinion that it is inborn and hopeless."

"Probably." Jane grinned. "It's serving me well so far."

"Has it been very difficult for you, Jane? Your choices and education, your unconventional research? This appears to be a quite solitary life, is that as you would have it be?"

She stood from her crouch at his side, her knees having started to ache in protest, and drifted over to the kitchen to look into the food situation. That line of inquiry was such a can of worms, she couldn't muster her usual uncaring spewing of the unvarnished truth. It still hurt a little. She still wasn't as secure as she would like to be, even with SHIELD's backing- they would drop her the moment they had any better 'in' with wormholes or Asgardians than a desert-dwelling crackpot and she knew it. Jane could be back at Culver any day, begging for another chance and fighting an uphill battle. It was never safe to get too comfortable in her life and sometimes it made her very tired. She answered his last question instead, "I have my work, that's all I really need."

"Does that not 'get lonely'?" he echoed her own words with a strangely wistful expression.

"I suppose that it must," she quoted his answer, smiling a little. "But it's all right for me. Most people don't understand that my research is always going to be monopolising a big part of my brain and that I genuinely have the most fun when I'm working, and that's fine. I'm weird. I have a few awesome people who put up with me and don't let me wallow too much. Sometimes it's a bit quiet around here, but I'm not alone."

He just looked at her, seeming very young and slightly confused. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. He clearly didn't know what to say.

She tried to have a reassuring expression as she went back to rummaging. "Well, I really ought to call Erik and get him over here, tell him a bit about the experiment. I can't exactly keep it from him forever. I'll make some eggs while he's on his way and you can have the lab to yourself while I figure out how to break it to him."

"You do not want me to be present?"

"Probably better if you aren't." And how. She could just imagine. If she could keep a buffer between Erik's initial reaction upon total exposure to Luke's impossible impossibleness and their first group conversation about it, she just might avoid some kind of unpleasant incident.

"As you wish. You will do that now?" he sounded both anxious and like he was trying to hold back on belligerence.

"Um, yeah?"

"I am very hungry, Jane."

"Oh, yes, um, sorry. Right on it."

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

"Did you ever think he could be from Asgard?" Darcy wondered aloud when it became clear Jane was not going to answer her question or elaborate further on the experiment or the experimenter.

Jolted from her musings, Jane stared at Darcy's image until her brain caught up. "He couldn't be, I've been collecting data non-stop since Thor left. I would have seen the bridge open."

"Okay, but what's really more likely: that he's just some backwoods miracle super-genius human with access to knowledge that modern science doesn't have, that he's from some totally unrelated other planet, or that he comes from the same advanced culture we've already made contact with? Let's be real, Jane. It makes the most sense."

She scratched at her hairline. "I've thought of it, Darcy, believe me. The thought has occurred. He's a bit like they were, but he's also really not like they were, and how would he have gotten here without the bridge? Thor said it was the only way to travel between the worlds he knew. Either his bridge or something just as powerful that would open the same kind of portal. SHIELD may be sneaky and secretive, but I think they would tell me if something like that had happened somewhere I can't observe it. It'd be shooting themselves in the foot not to."

"I'm just saying is all."

"You thought he might be an alien and you didn't tell me?" Erik asked in a disturbingly calm voice.

Jane dragged her fidgety fingers through her hair, grimacing at the table in front of her. "He's not a threat to me, Erik. Believe me on this, I've spent practically every waking moment of over a month with him. He's telling me some version of the truth."

"Some version?"

"Yes, and you know what I mean, don't give me that look. Please don't confront him. Please. I think he's starting to trust me."

Darcy was leaning so close to her screen that only the top of her head was visible, the pink streaks she'd put through her dark hair practically filling the camera's eye. "Jane," she said, very seriously. "Jane, you really do like him."

"I know that, Darcy." Breathe in, breathe out.

"This is two aliens in a row, Jane."

Jane counted off on her fingers, "First of all, I didn't say I liked him like that and second of all, we don't know that he's an alien. Third of all, if you start in on me about this I will drive to your dorm and I will do something rash, and you know I am good for it. I'm thinking perfectly clearly. I'm a good judge of character. It's my lab. Everybody leave Luke alone and he will eventually trust us enough to tell us what his deal is, that's the official line. Breaking of the official line will result in banishment from the lab."

"Oh sure, boss," Darcy dutifully acquiesced, giving a salute that was only a little sloppy.

"I'm not going to let him go unchallenged," Erik groused, miserable about this development. "I don't trust him one bit."

"Just don't ask him if he's an alien, okay?"

"For now."

Breathe in, breathe out.

"So what does antimatter do for you, anyway?" Darcy broke the tension again.

"Well, if you take him at his word, it means an annihilation engine and power for the bridge would no longer be an object."

They all glanced up as if Thor would fall on their heads again.

"This is some Star Trek realness, you guys. I think you may have called it too soon when you said we wouldn't be touring other planets next summer."

Jane couldn't help but agree.