Disclaimer: Thor (2011) and Marvel's T he Avengers (2012) and its characters do not belong, in any way to the writer of this fanfiction. This fiction is written for non-profit reasons.

Also posted on tumblr: pineapplebread. tumblr dotcom /tagged /bifrost%20au%20fic (close the spaces and replace "dotcom")

Thor's world ends on a Tuesday.

Thor is an optimist and a romantic but he's also pragmatic… somewhat. He doesn't actually believe in the concept of love at first sight and he certainly does not expect to actually fall in love during his daily coffee run.

Sludge is bustling with the early morning crowd. There is a long line leading to the counter, mainly consisting of suits and hipsters waiting for their first caffeine injection to start the day. The tables spread sporadically throughout the small space are already filled with bleary eyed customers face-planting into croissants and bagels.

Thor's gaze travels in a cursory sweep around the store and his world screeches to an abrupt stop when it lands on the window seat three tables to the left of the door. The sun is streaming through the window, falling in some sort of ridiculous ethereal glow on the man sitting at the table.

The light halos dark hair and throws stunningly high cheekbones into sharp relief. The man's eyes are green and they shine pale and ghostly in the sun. His skin is pale, pale, pale, and his mouth is quirking at whatever it is that he is reading, and is that a dimple,and Thor can't bring himself to look away. Long fingers spider across the table, gently flipping through the pages of a leather-bound book and Thor is entranced by the way the elegant digits flit across the paper. Thor suddenly very much hates himself for the romance-novel metaphors but nothing else comes to mind and he feels like a thirteen year old girl with a crush. He can't very well help himself because this stranger is fucking beautiful and enigmatic and Thor is entranced.

The man also looks strangely familiar but Thor can't really put his finger on why. The man looks like someone he knows, maybe, but no one comes to mind. He makes Thor feel slightly nostalgic and he is struck with the immense urge to walk over to that table and introduce himself, maybe ask the stranger why the hell do you look so familiar, do we know each other, hi you're beautiful, and where have you been all my life. At the last moment, he restrains himself, thinking maybe all of that might come on too strong because life is not a rom-com and Thor is not Jennifer Aniston.

He doesn't even notice that he is now at the front of the line and the man directly behind him is clearing his throat impatiently. Thor finally snaps back to reality and orders his usual: extra cream and extra sugar, hold the coffee for himself and a sausage biscuit for Mjölnir.

After he picks up his order, Thor immediately turns back to the window table but the man is already gone. Thor feels a strange sense of loss that is not entirely unfamiliar and he frowns slightly. It's not enough to feel like déjà vu but it's close enough and he tries to banish the thought from his mind before it sets in enough to ruin his day.

He exits the coffee shop and leans down to pat Mjölnir and unties his leash from the bike rack by the front door. He buries his hand in Mjölnir's thick golden mane and kisses him on the top of his furry head before he leads them to the park. He unclips the leash at the dog park and sits at a bench to watch Mjölnir frolic with the other dogs, the enormous golden retriever dwarfing all of the other dogs in the pen.

He sips at his coffee and tries very hard to stop thinking of the stranger from Sludge and fails spectacularly. The familiar stranger tugs at his mind incessantly and Thor curses himself for not walking off the line to introduce himself before it was too late. He feels bereft somehow even though he hasn't even met the fucking guy and Thor is clearly regressing in age and testosterone levels. He briefly contemplates checking his pants to see if he is growing a vagina. He laughs at himself, because seriously? He needs to get a grip.

He and Mjölnir take the long way home afterwards, and much to the dog's delight, Thor breaks out in a brisk jog. Mjölnir is always full of pent up energy from long days of being cramped in Thor's small apartment.

They jog through the park and take the scenic route along the river that wends its way through the small town they live in. Thor still marvels at how in small towns, everyone knows everyone. He waves hello to no less than fourteen neighbors who pass them along the way.

He's still trying to get used to how his next door neighbor, the kindly old Mrs. Schmittendorf likes to knock on his door randomly with offers of fresh baked goods and motherly questions like, "Oh dearie, have you found yourself a nice girl yet?" "How's that book of yours going? What's it called again? Was it Harry Potter?" and "You are looking thin this week. Would you like some more erbsensuppe?"

Thor and Mjölnir are jogging past the waterfront street at the edge of town when Thor notices that the store that has been unoccupied for nearly two years is finally open again. It is now a bookstore, apparently, and Thor is intrigued. He loves bookstores and he loves to spend entire days in them, losing himself in the pages of bound worlds and universes awaiting his discovery. He curses mentally remembering that he is supposed to call his agent for a meeting this afternoon. He postpones a visit to the store with no small sense of disappointment, and they jog home instead.

He is briefly accosted by Mrs. Schmittendorf at his front step. She hands him a warm covered plate and questions him with her usual barrage of questions of girlfriend, book, and would he like more food. Thor thinks maybe she would have been an amazing prisoner interrogator.

He smiles and tells her he's fine, really, and with a suspicious squint, she hobbles back over to her side of the yard and disappears into her home, no doubt to make him more sauerkraut or other some such. She is on a perpetual quest to fatten him up, it seems, but Thor feels grateful to her, for the fact that she simply cares out of the goodness of her heart.

He opens the door and Mjölnir immediately jumps onto the couch. It is a habit Thor has tried very, very hard to train out of him since he was a puppy but nothing has ever deterred Mjölnir when he wants something so Thor gives up.

Thor goes into the kitchen to microwave himself some pop tarts after feeding Mjölnir his sausage biscuit and settles down to work. He checks his Facebook, his Twitter, and updates his blog before he finally decides to suck it up and call his agent. He finally gets an extension on his deadline after much bargaining, yelling, protesting, and pleading that Thor is not very proud of, because, "Goddamnit, Phil, I'm really stumped right now, okay? I need more time to work through this block."

In the end, he gets an extra couple of months and everyone is happy except for his publisher but as far as Thor is concerned, Shield Publishing can go fuck themselves because they still owe him the last quarter of his advance. He promises Phil that yes, he's working hard to try to finish the new novel as soon as possible and yes, he's going back to work right now, bye Phil. Thor spends the rest of the day in his pajamas on Tumblr.

It's really not that Thor is slacking or that he wants to slack but Thor is genuinely stumped. He is in the process of writing a novel at the moment; he is trying to develop something that he hopes will be poignant enough to live up to his previous three books which somehow became New York Times Bestsellers. The first three books came naturally and they were genuine but now the pressure is mounting on the new book because obviously, this one will have to make even more money than the first three.

He has the basic premise of the storyline mapped out but beyond that, he's not even sure how to start. He's working around Norse mythological themes about a pair of brothers, a betrayal, and jealousy that would tear them apart. He is basing the character on his namesake because in Norse mythology, Thor is the God of Thunder and his brother is Loki the God of Mischief. He has always found the myths of Thor and Loki to be fascinating.

Thor is not actually his real name though. It just sounds a lot cooler than Chris when he's writing books, okay? And it just kind of stuck ever since he adopted it in college. It felt like a new beginning at the time: a new name, a new place, a new life. He finally escaped that god-awful orphanage where the food was never quite enough, and the blankets were always a bit too thin in the winter, and the nuns weren't particularly kind. He was so thankful for the full scholarship to Asgard University where he can finally pursue his passion and make a new life for himself.

Thor is proud to say that everything was uphill from there. He managed to survive university with two part time jobs and some help from a couple of very good friends. He had spent more than a few nights on Darcy and Jane's couch.

His first big break came when one of the biggest publishing houses, Shield Publishing picked up his manuscript and the book became a Bestseller that stayed at the top of the list for three months. Thor put a down payment on an apartment and adopted a puppy with his first substantial royalty check.

In the end, Thor's story is a story of success and he cannot be more thankful for the turns in his life that has brought him to this point. This frustrating, exasperating, creatively blocked point in life.

He sighs and shuts off his laptop, feeling a headache forming behind his eyes. He decides to call it a night with a quick dinner of the plate of wiener schnitzel Mrs. Schmittendorf gave him and crawls into bed. Mjölnir flops down next to him and Thor finds himself staring blankly at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

A million thoughts are flying through his head and he can't seem to hold onto any specific one. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to center himself, and concentrates on more mundane thoughts.

He wonders at how Mrs. Schmittendorf keeps asking him about girlfriends. Apparently, Thor did not have much trouble finding bed partners ever since he started putting on muscle. He was promiscuous in college and slept with most of the cheerleaders and sorority girls. He and his good friend Jane Foster also tried once, right before they graduated. She was a science major and works for some top secret science government agency now but they thought they had something at one time.

However, all it took was one fumbling kiss and Jane pulled away with a disappointed, "oh." That was when Thor realized yeah, he doesn't actually like girls, despite the scores of them he'd slept with. He's still a bit fuzzy on why it took trying to kiss Jane to figure that one out. He has never disabused Mrs. Schmittendorf of her assumptions though, and he's not entirely sure why.

Despite his newfound sexuality, Thor has never actually been with a man. Maybe he's too scared, or maybe he hasn't found one he is very attracted to, or something but it has simply never happened. Thor is not sure what to think of that until he remembers the man from Sludge that morning.

There is definitely attraction there because fuck, yeah, Thor is very much attracted to him. His cock twitches at the thought of the wicked curve of the stranger's mouth and yep, very, very attracted. It comes like a bucket of ice water when he realizes that he's probably not likely to see the stranger again, even in a small town like his.

Thor finally falls asleep and dreams of gods of thunder and gods of mischief and wakes up feeling as though he just fell off the interdimensional bridge, Bifröst of lore.