15. Throw
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They were forming something like a human jenga tower in the middle of the lab roof. Erik stood holding three small pieces of quinary alloy in place over the enormous, dense metal nozzle that Luke had to crouch slightly to hover over the electromagnetic vacuum chamber to which Jane was trying to attach it using extremely unsafe welding practises. She was also trying to talk with a spare filler rod in her mouth.
"The quantum of energy should be released instantaneously when the-" she babbled, probably incomprehensibly.
"Do you know what this stuff weighs?" Erik ground out between his teeth, sweat beading on his brow.
"Please be cautious with that torch, Jane." Luke's voice sounded a hell of a lot more bored than concerned. "I'm sure everyone would prefer this venture ended with all limbs and digits intact."
Jane could see only his legs and waist from this angle, but she could hear his sardonic expression in his tone, could sense how unruffled he was by all the goings on and the supporting of very heavy materials in awkward, delicate positions. Bastard.
"I'd watch it, if I were you, sunshine," she commented cheerfully, knowing that if he looked down he'd see the reflection of the blue flame playing across a particularly personal area of his trousers.
"I don't find that insinuation amusing."
"It wasn't meant to be."
Erik's grunt was high-pitched with strain. "Both of you stop talking or I'm going to drop this on your heads."
Jane reapplied herself to welding, trying to use her nose to adjust her goggles by repeatedly scrunching up her face.
Absorbed in practicalities, she had almost lost sight of what she was really doing; the engine she was building and the pure energy it would spew into the sky on her command. They had not yet devised a method for controlling the energy after release or making it do what they wanted, but the very fact that they were building something which could plausibly end up a functional wormhole-maker was messing with her mind. She was elated, terrified, and half-convinced she was dreaming.
She tried to focus, but her mind ran back over their last night with Darcy in the city, still dwelling on less potent catastrophes than imminent intra-dimensional travel.
"Do you losers even realise you're in Vegas right now? Like, did you know this isn't just Darcy's college town, this is the Mecca of bad decisions?" Darcy sprawled in the hotel chair, her posture exaggeratedly bored. She started winding a lock of her hair around her fingers, frowning at the ceiling.
Jane massaged her temples and tried to come up with a few excuses before the inevitable pressure to join in on some ill-advised escapade started in earnest. "I was aware."
"Don't you want to take Africa-boy out on the Strip?" Darcy asked, as if she were concerned for his experiences as a visitor to the country, a naïve pastoral type missing out on the wonders of civilisation. It was the most ridiculous attempt at a guilt trip Jane had ever seen.
"He's not sheltered, he's been all over the world." She glared meaningfully at her friend. Anticipating an objection, she added, "It's just regular-old middle class America that he isn't used to."
"What's more American than Vegas?"
"Apple pie," Jane said, folding clothes into her suitcase. "You know I hate casinos, they're so skeevy, and I don't really get the point. Unless you're actually serious about gambling, it's just a fast and boring way to get rid of all your spending money."
"You only played slots, it's your fault you were bored."
"I get enough thrills in my life without losing money I don't have at a craps table. And I'm not just saying this, but I really don't think he'd be into it." Actually, Jane thought, the tricky thing was that he might be. She had a terrible foreboding feeling that he would enjoy poker way, way too much and that he would probably cheat at everything else. She doubted he would understand why counting cards wasn't fair strategy, for much the same reason he didn't understand why it was a big deal that he'd picked up a near-doctoral fluency in physics over a few weeks.
Darcy looked sceptical, but didn't argue. She turned back to looking out the hotel room window, enjoying Jane's choice view of the parking lot. "Did you guys tell SHIELD you were coming up for a while?"
Jane jumped up and raced to the window, looking for black vans and swarms of men in suits. "No, are they stalking us?"
"Nice paranoia, boss." Darcy sounded genuinely proud. "I don't know, but this dude in the sunglasses has been sitting there in the parking lot every time I've looked. This is what, the fourth day you're here? Was he there the first day?"
She hadn't noticed. She hadn't even thought about it.
"What do you think they make of Luke?" Darcy wondered.
Jane shuddered to think. She knew they had to be curious and probably full of suspicion, but since no one had forced the issue, she had sort of forgotten about it. There were so many more pressing things on her mind.
"You don't think they'd, like, lock him up and try to study him if they find out he's an alien or a transgenic or whatever he is, do you?"
"Thor said they seemed prepared to torture him. I mean, he definitely felt like they were threatening it the way he told me the story, but he didn't seem to think it was a big deal. I kind of dismissed it because he was so blasé, I thought maybe he was posturing a bit." Jane toyed with her cuffs and tried not to board a train of thought that wouldn't take her anywhere good. The train of thought which went down the track that it was unlikely someone as sure of himself as Thor was would exaggerate to impress her, that his culture seemed to be some kind of knights and swords throwback thing and he really wouldn't think it was a big deal.
"Thor did break into their super-secret base."
Luke goes around casually bending the laws of physics, she didn't say. "That guy could be anyone, let's not go looking for a conspiracy until we have to."
Darcy gave her an inscrutable look and then shrugged. Jane had a feeling that her intern knew better than to believe that Jane was really putting this out of her mind.
"Can we at least go get a drink, then?"
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
Darcy led the charge down the sidewalk, excited to show them around a favourite hang-out of hers called The High Horse, Erik morosely tailing her muttering about how they were all becoming alcoholics, and Jane bringing up the rear with Luke at her side. He walked more slowly than usual, allowing her shorter legs to keep pace even in the high-heeled boots which Darcy had insisted she borrow. Jane didn't mind heels, but she didn't have a lot of occasion to wear them and these were one or two sizes too big, so walking in them wasn't exactly effortless. She was, in point of fact, bleakly certain that she'd end up eating pavement at least once before the evening was out.
She teetered even as she thought it, and Luke took her arm. He pretended not to notice when she looked up at him in surprise. She swallowed any comment and went with her tried and true conversation starter.
"So when we get back and get this little antimatter reactor of ours put together," provided it works and doesn't kill us all she added in her head, curving her hand around his wrist reflexively, "What's the next step?"
"You must open the path of uncertainty," he managed to say it as though it didn't sound like ridiculous pseudo-mystical bullshit.
"A wormhole, you mean. With exotic matter."
Luke shot her an annoyed look, a wrinkle of exasperation appearing in his forehead at her dogged emphasis on terminology. "Yes, if you insist."
Erik, who had been glancing back periodically as though he suspected them of plotting against him, threw in, "And exotic matter comes from where, again?"
"It's everywhere," Luke snapped, like this should be obvious. "It's really not a question of where it comes from."
He'd said as much on a few occasions, but had never been much inclined to try to explain what he meant. Jane found herself thinking very abstractly indeed as she tried again to work it out, unconsciously drawing circles on the back of his hand with her index finger and slowing their walk until the gap between them and their companions had widened considerably. She looked up at him again, curious about his mood. He seemed tired today, or maybe impatient.
"How do you feel now that we're getting close?" she finally asked, remembering that he'd avoided the question of whether he wanted to try to use the bridge when it was built.
His arm stiffened nearly imperceptibly, but he gave no other sign of discomfort. "I feel anticipation, among other things. Why?"
"I don't know what's going to happen if it works. The possibility is very real that I could cross it into a whole other world." She avoided voicing her fears about what kind of place Asgard would turn out to be and her doubts about the safety of Earth in the face of a patently superior power. She was barely even aware of her simmering existential terror about what her role and legacy would end up being in the fields of science and philosophy if she managed to walk across the stars and come back. He probably knew all of it from one look at her face, he was insufferable like that.
Luke leaned down towards her, linking their arms at the elbow now so he could pull her close and speak very softly, "Jane, when... Your 'traveller', what was... that is to say, how did you find him?"
Surprised, she met his eyes and saw a sort of pained reluctance there. He had been so uncharacteristically disinterested in the details about Thor, even though she had said very little of substance when she told him about it, and this sudden change kicked up her storm of unanswered questions all over again. She pushed it all aside for the time being, wanting to know where he was going with this. "You know, it's very weird, he could have been anyone... Well, not anyone: he kind of looked like a wrestler, like really big and fit. But he seemed completely human."
There was a twitch in his cheek, his face otherwise impassive. He seemed to be struggling with how to phrase his next question, eager and hesitant at the same time. She clearly hadn't told him what he wanted to know.
Trying to spare him, she went on unprompted, "He was disoriented when we first found him, you know, babbling and yelling, but he spoke perfect English and he was lucid. I mean, in retrospect I realise he was totally lucid; at the time we thought he was loony tunes."
"He was not injured?"
"No." She didn't mention that he had remained apparently uninjured even though she'd run him over, and Darcy had put a couple thousand volts through him.
He made a low noise in his throat and frowned at the sidewalk. "But how did you... how did you find him?"
"What do you mean?"
"Are you guys coming or what?" Darcy's voice broke through their bubble of distraction right as Luke opened his mouth to explain. Or maybe not to explain, knowing him. He closed it again and smiled grimly at her, shaking his head.
Not taking her eyes off him, she called back, "Yeah, yeah."
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
It hadn't taken long, after the first round of cocktails, for Darcy to get bored and head to the dance floor. She'd tried to drag Jane with her ("No. Did you ever see that episode of Seinfeld about Elaine's 'full-body dry heave'? Yeah. No."), then Luke ("I think not, Miss Lewis."), and finally Erik ("I'd look like Methuselah out there.") before giving up on them all. Erik secured another round and crossed his arms, measuring them with his eyes.
"We're going to have half a prototype when we get back, what do you think of that?"
Jane shook her head, Luke said, "I think it would seem we are progressing nicely."
"How closely do you suppose SHIELD is monitoring that expense account?" Jane changed the subject, more troubled than she wanted to be by Darcy's reminder that she wasn't exactly working for the most transparent of government agencies. It wasn't like she didn't know, but they had been so good about leaving her alone so far that she had allowed herself to become complacent.
Erik tapped the table thoughtfully. "Very, I'm sure."
"Did they quiz you about Luke that first week when you went in for the meeting?" Jane glanced over at the man himself, but he was closed off in his own little world. Worrying his thumbnail. "I assumed they would at the time, but they never contacted me about security concerns or anything."
There was a moment of silence.
"How closely are they watching us?"
Erik shook his head, his mouth set in a thin line. "I don't know, Jane, they have a good faith agreement with an alien power not to harass you, but how far that will go when there's no sign of further contact..."
It had occurred to her more than once that they might be bugging her lab, but she kept such a level of electronic noise going that she always figured they wouldn't be able to hear anything no matter how good they thought their equipment was. She sipped her drink and counted to ten. "Did they quiz you?"
"I didn't know anything about him and they eventually lost interest when I said he was just a gawker. Sorry, Luke."
Luke smiled, somewhat wistfully. "A title a man earns, he cannot call unjust."
"Doesn't it bother you, knowing they'll try to dig through your whole life?" Jane would have expected some bigger reaction from him given how intensely guarded he always was. His life was not exactly an open book.
He shook his head. "There is nothing nefarious for them to find. They are only wasting their time." He grinned, perhaps pleased with the thought.
Jane wondered.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
The time came to leave and Jane sent both Erik and Luke outside to wait while she headed into the fray to grab Darcy, who had been bouncing back and forth into and out of their discussions at the table with the suddenness and violence of a ping pong ball. Which was also an apt metaphor for her performance on the dance floor.
"Come on," Jane shouted into her friend's ear, "we're going!"
Darcy pouted only for a second before laughing at Jane's hard-done-by expression. "Fine! Gotta hit the ladies' first!"
The washroom was one of those borderline-spa affairs that nice lounges sometimes have. There were little couches and sugar rubs and fine soaps. Jane was washing her hands when Darcy sidled up beside her to reapply her lipstick.
"Have any fun at all?"
She sighed dramatically, shooting her intern a small pre-emptive glare in the mirror. "A bit. Don't say I told you so, it's annoying."
Darcy rolled her eyes. "Because I've ever cared about coming off annoying. Also, I told you so."
"I like going out, I just prefer a nice dinner and a glass of wine to a dance club and college boys trying to bump and grind with me." She smoothed her hair and smiled at her reflection, a habit she'd developed way back in high school. She couldn't remember if it had been some self-esteem technique or just a way to check her teeth for spinach.
"Probably do you good if you let them."
"Shut up." She flicked water and Darcy dodged, laughing.
Darcy was still giggling as they were leaving the lounge. She threw herself against the street door, leaning on the handle to hold it open as she turned back to say something, but Jane held up a hand to shush her as she passed through and caught a glimpse of what was unfolding further down the sidewalk. Luke and Erik, who had been waiting for them at the corner, were being accosted by some drunks. Three of them, and all of them intent on something. Judging by their clothes, they were maybe businessmen on the way back to their hotel after a well-lubricated dinner meeting. They'd formed an aggressive pyramid with the biggest guy at point, flanked by the others on either side, their postures hostile.
"I asked you what the fuck you said to me!" the point man, who had a build like a sack of bricks, drew himself up to shout in Luke's face. His voice carried, and Jane grabbed nervously at Darcy's arm as she walked slowly closer. If someone called the police, this could all get extremely ugly. She'd probably spend the rest of her life in some SHIELD bunker.
Looking down his nose at all three of them with a distant contempt, Luke put his hands in his pockets in an air of total unconcern. "I said a man of honour would beg pardon. Only a coward and an oaf attacks an elder for his own clumsiness."
Erik- standing just behind Luke- shifted his weight nervously, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. Jane figured Luke must be talking about him, he being the only person present who could reasonably be called 'an elder'. The drunk must have bumped into Erik, tripped over him or near him, and gotten belligerent about whose fault it was.
"Who's a coward? Who are you calling coward, pretty boy?" Sack of Bricks slurring got worse the more pissed off he got, spittle flying everywhere as he yelled louder and louder.
Luke leaned forward to pin the man with an icy stare. "You, you drunken buffoon."
Jane started running towards them to intervene before she had a clue what she could possibly do when she got there, but she had taken only a few steps when the drunk reeled back to strike out with a very vicious-looking right hook, throwing his whole body into it. She froze, covering her mouth in horror and anticipating the sickening sound of the blow landing- but it didn't come. Luke reached up and caught the man's fist against his palm halfway through its arc towards his face. The drunk's punch stopped dead, as suddenly as if he'd hit a concrete wall. He made a strange, strangled noise of shock or pain as his arm quivered from the impact.
"I wouldn't try that again," Luke said conversationally. His grip on the man's fist tightened until Sack of Bricks' knees buckled slightly and his eyes started watering. "Now, apologise to your elder."
Bricks blinked away the tears from his eyes and turned to find Erik with his unfocused gaze. "Sorry, guy."
"Oh, clearly you are a man of breeding," Luke's caustic mutter betrayed a new height of irritation. "Assuming you aren't actually capable of better, which I am forced to do based on the testimony of our entire brief acquaintance, I suppose that will have to suffice."
"It's no prob... we don't-" Erik tried to diffuse the situation, obviously a little shell shocked by the turn of events. He'd probably expected a brawl.
Luke silenced him with a look. "We have concluded our business, Dr. Selvig, not to worry. I shan't keep the gentlemen any longer. I'm sure their engagement must be quite pressing." He dropped Bricks' hand, and the drunk sagged so badly that Jane was sure he was going to collapse on the pavement. He managed to gather himself up at the last minute and staggered away clutching his fist. His companions followed him, wide-eyed and blinking stupidly.
She ran the rest of the way over and drew up short in front of Luke, who turned to meet her gaze placidly.
"I hope you didn't break his hand," she said abruptly.
Luke shrugged. "I attempted to avoid it, but precision isn't always possible in such things."
Jane realised she was still clutching at her assistant only when Darcy pulled free of her grasp.
"Are you okay, Erik?" Darcy put her hand on his arm.
"Fine, fine. He just knocked the wind out of me. He was walking with one eye closed, if you know what I mean. The booze told him I was picking a fight. Can't claim I've never been on the other side of that conversation." He rubbed his side and winced. "Solid guy, though, our friend."
"Yeah, I saw," Darcy said, looking speculatively at Luke.
"Is that enough fun for the evening?" Luke asked the world in general, making the word 'fun' incredibly ironic. "Shall we adjourn to the hotel?"
Erik ignored the grousing and clapped him heartily on the back, startling him. "Sure we'll adjourn. Thanks a lot, kid. I don't think I would have been able to talk myself out of that."
Luke, apparently slightly frazzled by the gesture, busied himself smoothing his lapels and cleared his throat. "You seemed prepared to try."
"Well, my boxing days are a ways behind me." Erik's mouth tugged up on one side in a wry grin. "Had to try something."
Jane chewed her lip, a sense of unease settling in her stomach. She couldn't put her finger on what was bothering her, but it was more than just the scene. "Can we all stay out of trouble on the walk back or should I call a cab?"
"Growing timid, Dr. Foster?" Luke said silkily, the rich timbre of his voice making capitulation sound very appealing.
"You know me better than that," she deflected airily, taking his arm again with greater insouciance than she felt and starting to lead the way back towards the hotel.
"I suppose so," he murmured.
Darcy clattered up beside them on her impractical shoes. "Jane, if I stay in your room tonight, do I have to get up when you check out?"