The sound of that laugh - great and golden and larger than life - boomed, echoing off the shape of the space around them as if they stood in a theatre or at the top of a canyon. It was a laugh that could have belonged to no one in the world but Thor, Steve was sure of it. It did not matter that they had spent relatively little time in each other’s company when they had not been actively fighting, or worse bickering amongst themselves like misbehaving children (he saw that now, and was ashamed for his part in it). He had had the man at his back in the middle of battle, a distinction that branded him in Steve’s mind as being an ally. Strangers though they still mostly were, his trust in the Asgardian was absolute.

“Thor!” He called back, abandoning his book and pencil to the seat beside him and getting immediately to his feet.

The people Steve had called friends had faded into the history books by the time he had woken from the ice, but there was potential enough in the Avengers and its members for him to be able to see Thor as the potential for a great friend. He was thrown momentarily off-step by the reference to a long time passed, as it had been a few weeks only between their separating in New York, but even with that he was glad enough to see a familiar face that it let the matter slide.

He reached out to shake the other man’s hand, a part of him needing that physical contact as proof that it was not merely another twist in what he wasn’t entirely sure was not a dream. “No idea how I ended up here, actually. One minute I was in Kansas, the next-” he gestured with his other hand. “How long have you been here?”