Chapter 13: Thor's Casual Devastation

Thor kept his mead in the common room on the forty-ninth floor, behind a cabinet that had been reinforced at his request after he'd twice put his hand through the original particleboard when reaching for something in a hurry. The reinforcement was six inches of aircraft-grade aluminum. It had held. The cabinet now also contained two bottles of Scotch that belonged to Rhodey, a jar of something from Bruce's desk that nobody had asked about, and, apparently, a leather satchel of provisions that Thor had carried back from Asgard and which he distributed periodically to whoever happened to be nearby in a manner that Natasha had once described to me as aggressively generous.

I found him there at half past ten in the morning, which meant I had slept three hours and changed my shirt and eaten something I could not now remember, in that order. Thor was already seated at the long table by the window, his cape off, his arms bare in the way that made him look simultaneously larger and more approachable, as though the formality of armor was the only thing keeping most people at a comfortable distance. He had two cups in front of him. He had known I was coming.

"Marsh," he said. "Sit."