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Sam wakes up because someone is kicking him in the cheek, gently.
Before he can fully drag himself back to consciousness,he kicks in return, and stubs his toe on metal. It’s Barnes, of course, with most of the blankets wrapped around him, and his head at the foot of the bed instead of at the top, where Sam’s head is, the way a normal, reasonable person sleeps in a bed.
Barnes is snoring like the unholy child of a woodpecker and a pissy cat. Sam gives up on going back to sleep.
Where the fuck is Steve, anyway? He knows why Nat isn’t there, and Tony: Pepper assured them they’re fine, although he’s seen no proof of it. Or, for that matter, any explanation of the way that matter and time shifted around him, yanking him from the deep dream he’d shattered into…..he knows it was a long time ago but turns out dying fucks with your sense of time passing. He had stood up in shock just in time to see the end to it, to see the wreckage Thanos had spewed and the people he’d pulverized shuddered back to their original state, as if someone had simply erased the effect of all Thanos’ actions. Like an insult, or a correction, or both, like someone taking cosmic Wite-Out to an egregious typo.
He had not realized till he saw him that he’d missed Barnes when they were dead. For some reason he was not surprised to find Steve alive: the man is like a cockroach. Shiny. Tenacious. He does give a better bear hug than a roach, certainly.
He will reverse engineer the facts from Twitter once he’s had coffee. No one had bothered to brief them after ascertaining they were alive and well, and frankly he’s fine with that.
There is a note on the fridge, in Steve’s obnoxiously beautiful cursive. Grandpa ass bitch.
“Went running, and to get eggs and milk. Steve”
Running. After all that. After piles of unconscious henchmen and an equal amount of bruises. Some people just don’t have any sense, but fortunately Sam is not one of them.
He puts the water on for coffee and digs in the cupboard for pancake mix. Which he cannot make without eggs. There are powdered eggs, but he refuses to do that if he doesn’t have to. The pancake mix is some sort of fancy stuff with hazelnut flour and more grains than he can count. Jesus Christ he’s so hungry.
Sam does not pick up the paper till he has a mug of coffee in his hand.
It’s extremely extra of Natasha to have the local paper delivered to her safe house, but he is not here to tell people how to spend government money.
“ANTMAN COMES FROM BEHIND” marches across the front page of the paper in sturdy black letters,accompanied by a photo of Scott in his suit, covered in some sort of purple goo.
“Scott Lang gets to the bottom of the Thanos situation in short order, via what Prince would call “In Through The Out Door’.
Lang took the dirt road home and expanded inside the massive raisin we’ve been hearing so much about, destroying him speedily. The mess it created was almost as catastrophic as the prune himself.
We will let it go, since it allowed Stephen Strange to reverse the catastrophic events that previously decimated our world. Congratulations to all the Avengers for finding a creative way to get the job done.
Tobasco would like us to advise Mr. Lang that they WILL require reimbursement for the product stolen from their manufacturing plant, and would like to clarify that under no circumstances should anyone use their product as a “lubricant” (Mr. Lang’s words)
Anyone looking for a relative, friend or sworn enemy who was previously “snapped” is advised to contact Stark Industries since they respond to emails faster than the people who are actually allowed to have all that info. Didn’t think about that when you clicked “agree” to that fancy app, did you? Please find their contact info below this article. All’s well that ends well, we guess.”
Sam supposes the usual niceties of journalistic style are allowed to slip if the fabric of space and time has been rent asunder the night before. Before he can turn to page 4 to read the eyewitness accounts, he hears the screen door slam.
He hears Steve’s voice saying “Fellas, I have pancake fixings and you will not goddam believe these headlines.”
At the same time, someone breathes in his ear.
He turns, deeply affronted, to see Bucky standing behind him, shirtless and as usual refusing to tie the string of his fucking sweatpants or pull them up ever at any time. They have neighbors, for the love of god. The asshole probably read the whole article over his shoulder.
Bucky goes over to the coffee maker and pours himself a mug.
He looks back at Sam with a knowing expression.
“Always knew Lang liked butt stuff.”