(August Catch-All) The Things We Do

[unclesam]

CHARACTERS: Sam Wilson & You (Open + Closed Starters)
LOCATION: Various aboard the station
DATE: Immediately post mission + the days after.
CONTENT: Catch-all prompts for post mission feelings
WARNINGS: Will be added to Top Levels

[ Top Levels in comments:
Infirmary: angsty hurt people after returning from the mission
Mess Hall: the evening post mission, after the food delivery, alcohol is on the table
Simulation Room: the day after the mission, sam disappears and can be found zoned out in the simulation room
Training Room: hot dude working up a sweat while training, various days post mission
Lab and Tech Storage: redwing is the best boi, fight me (and Sam)
TBA: maybe closed starters for Bucky/Natasha?

If you'd like a closed starter or have a different kind of thread idea for which none of these setups work, feel free to hit me at inkcharm, Discord inkcharm#4573 or send me a PM. ]

Comments

[nothinglasts]

[ Holding the cold pack to Sam's burn helps her feel a little more useful. In the five years after the snap, she'd gotten so frayed, edges coming apart and threads shedding all over. She knows Steve had been the same. They'd lost too much and they'd been left with no ideas other than keeping what they knew together.

Natasha can't go back to the person she was before. She's strong, but there are bits of her now that can't take the hit. She'll tear like paper if she gets pulled wrong and she hates that. It leaves her feeling so weak in ways that cuts and broken bones and bullet holes never have, because she can take whatever the world throws at her, but she's just not sure how much more she can survive having things taken away.

She leans in more when she feels his arm around her, careful not to jostle the ice pack. ]

I learned from the best.

[ Sam is safe to Natasha the same way Steve is. Nothing could change that, because she has full faith in him that he will always, always do what he thinks is right. They won't always agree, but Natasha's faith in who Sam is is unwavering. He's not a man who stabs anyone in the back. He's too good. ]

[unclesam]

[ Sam makes a soft sound, just shakes his head. He knows his worth, but it ain't that. He's just one man, riddled with trauma and grief that sits deep and goes unadressed by his own choosing. Rising to the occasion because failure is not an option.

And he wishes nothing more than to be able to say that it wasn't worth losing her for any of this, but the truth is that he knows he'd have done the same as she did. Made the same play, forced whoever was on that planet with him to make it out alive, same as she did.

They got trillions of people back thanks to her, and it would be horrible to even consider that not worth it. But right now, holding her close, Sam thinks it anyway. He knows it's because Yuryeong has pushed his buttons hard, has made him think only in terms of personal losses, fresh trenches dug into his heart with every burnt and mangled corpse his friends and team mates turned into.

Bucky's the only one Sam's not seen that way by virtue of blindfolding Sam for a few blissful hours of reprieve from the onslaught on his senses. Sam knows his nights will be filled with his friends falling, burning, dying. ]

Complimenting yourself, I see.

[ A joke, if a soft one. To him, Natasha's been the best of the bunch in many ways. Steve has been that, too, in other ways. He'd not have survived two years on the run without them. Still isn't sure how he's surviving without them now. ]

[nothinglasts]

[ Five years. It had been too long without Sam. Natasha isn't the sort of person who takes a lot for granted in her life. She can't. She's had to change too much and so often to let herself really get comfortable with much.

Somewhere along the way, though, she'd started to have a family. It's messy and complicated, but she knows that's what family is. She never had a sister the way Sam had or a Bucky like Steve. She'd only had her fake little family from a single mission and so for her, all of the Avengers had slipped into these spots in her heart that she hadn't even realized she'd had anymore.

There's a special place for Sam and Steve and their time on the run, especially. Natasha had used every contact she could to get them set up and keep them going, but without them she would have just been surviving. Standing here now with Sam, it reminds her of what actually living is. It's not about a cushy apartment or fancy new technology. It's about the people she's with. ]

"That others may live."

[ The quote just slips out as she smiles a little and pulls back just enough to look Sam in the eyes, her face turning a little more serious and searching. ]

You're too humble as usual, Cap, but I've got your number.

[unclesam]

[ Sam ducks his head, and Natasha will be familiar with that expression on him. With the way he glances down and slightly to the side, smiling with a bright flash of teeth, shy and bashful in those ways he so rarely is. It's the expression he gets when someone compliments him in a way that hits just right, in those small ways that he'd never admit to needing to hear. Other times, it's the expression he gets when someone flirts with him. Natasha is observant and little slips past her. Sam gets like this when men flirt with him a little more often than women, perhaps for the novelty of it, perhaps for a mild preference. But either way, it's a little harder to catch him off guard with flirting than with the sort of genuine praise or compliments he's so prone to brushing off. Harder to see this.

Cap from people whose opinion on the title matters?

Yeah. That'll get him, apparently. ]

You always did.

[ A brief tightening of his arm before he drops his forehead on her shoulder. His cheeks are flushed warm. Heat's crept up the back of his neck, too. ]

Cap, huh?

[ One thing for her to know it's the title he claims months past her point in time, another for her to acknowledge it like this, to affirm it this easily. Sam's not prone to imposter syndrome - that was never what his issues with the shield were about. In the face of more people who have every reason to think 'Steve Rogers' when they think 'Cap', though, this hits different.

So, quietly: ]

Thank you.

[nothinglasts]

[ Sam and Steve aren't the same person. Natasha knows this well enough, but the things they have in common? Those are the qualities Natasha would take a million bullets for.

No. Bullets are easy for all of them to jump in front of. She'd take a million uncomfortable emotional moments of vulnerability for Sam. All of them, because he's probably one of the strongest people she knows. He's kept his heart safe in the face of so many things that could have hardened it. That is worth protecting, she thinks.

So she leans in, returning the lingering embrace and resting her head against his. ]

You earned it. You've earned more than I could ever have given you.

[ She turns her head to kiss his temple and then whispers: ]

But I think you'd have looked better in a black catsuit.

[unclesam]

[ She's wrong on part of it, but Sam knows there's little use telling her, because he doesn't think he's heard anything that she wouldn't have given him, too, and then some. Natasha is good in ways she doesn't always see, and she, too, deserves so much more than what she got.

Has Sam only earned the title, but not the right to keep his loved ones close? Is he doomed to lose them all, one after another, and always remain behind, bleeding from the deep trenches in his heart faster than he can fill them back up with love?

He huffs a chuckle against her neck at the final statement though and pretends not to tremble slightly at the kiss to his temple. This, Sam thinks, is something he would like to give her more of - the opportunity to just exist softly, close and comfortable, hold and held. His voice is soft with emotion, but the humor doesn't fade. They can do this - walk the tightrope between emotion and levity, not pushing too hard in either direction. Be each other's safety net. ]

I would rock a black catsuit. Don't think the world could have taken all three of us in dark, sexy outfits, though.

[ Meaning her, Bucky and himself. Because she said she'd come back - and Sam trusts and believes those words. ]