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Looking back on it later, Sam wondered how things would've gone if they'd broken into the warehouse a few seconds earlier, or a few seconds later, and not, say, just as the guy in the lab coat put his hand on the switch controlling the not at all scary-looking giant glowy machine.
But Tony blowing a hole in the wall apparently startled the guy enough that he pushed the lever all the way to the top of its slot, which from the look on his face wasn't supposed to happen, and a surge of light raced through the machine.
"Get down!" Tony yelled, and Sam didn't even think twice, just threw himself over Steve as things whited out around them. Which even he knew was stupid: Tony had armor, Steve was virtually indestructible, and Sam ... was a regular guy with wings. A regular idiot with wings, more like it -- wings he didn't even have on him at the moment.
Also, Steve made a dive at the same time to throw himself and the shield over Sam (which would have been a lot more useful, come to think of it) so they collided and went down in a tangle with Tony on top of them, apparently trying to do more or less the same thing.
Which hurt. A lot.
He didn't precisely pass out, but everything got extremely hazy and confused, and mostly he remembered smelling smoke and being so dizzy he couldn't stand up and feeling like hell, until he woke up lying on his stomach on something soft with his face turned to the side.
White all around him. Hospital. A tidal wave of memory tried to rise up and swamp him. Riley. STEVE. He started to lurch upright. Stabbing pain in his back and a wave of dizziness made him go down flat again, and then a hand on his shoulder held him still.
"Don't try to get up yet." He knew the voice, but it took him a moment to place it.
"Bruce," he muttered, twisting his head to the side.
"Hey," Bruce said, crouching down to bring his face into Sam's field of vision. "You're recovering from a mild concussion, and your brain scans look okay but I need to ask you some questions, okay?"
"Steve," Sam said. He felt sick and he didn't think it had anything to do with the concussion.
"Steve's fine," Bruce said, and the breath went out of him, so that he missed the next couple of things Bruce said, until finally coming back down enough to realize that Bruce was asking him a few basic things: the date, his last name. He was able to answer easily enough. He felt pretty shitty overall. His head throbbed and he ached like he had the flu. There was also a really distracting deep, itching pain in his back, localized somewhere around his shoulder blades, which he figured was probably from shrapnel. Or else Tony falling on him had screwed up his back, which would just figure. He could feel his feet and nothing hurt in any new places when he tried to move his legs, though. It felt like he might have a busted scapula or something along those lines.
"Stark's okay too?" he asked, once Bruce was reassured of his mental competence.
"Stark's fine, Steve's fine, everyone's fine. Well," Bruce added, "to the extent that you are," and a slight crease formed between his brows, which Sam knew from his own medical background was probably not a good sign. "Are you experiencing discomfort anywhere?"
"My back hurts like hell." By instinct, he started to raise his head to look, then immediately dropped his head back onto the pillow, because if his back really was messed up, then twisting around was the worst thing he could do. He wasn't immobilized, though, which suggested it couldn't be that bad. "Look, Banner, I'm a pararescue, remember? Don't tiptoe around with me. I know there was an explosion and the warehouse fell down around us --"
"Actually, it didn't," Bruce said. "On the scale of Avengers-related property destruction, this wasn't really that bad. And I know about property destruction, believe me. What hurts, exactly?"
"Head," Sam said. "Middle of my back, shoulder area. And I kinda feel like shit in general. Like I got a building dropped on me. Or an Iron Man dropped on me. My back's fucked up, isn't it?"
"Not like you're thinking," Bruce said. He held out a hand. "I'm gonna help you sit up, okay? If you feel like you're going to pass out or throw up, give me a signal and I'll get you back down."
There was an initial wave of dizziness, but after it passed, Sam actually felt a little better sitting up. At least he could see that his legs were there and his arms were there, and he didn't feel quite so helpless and exposed. He also recognized the Avengers tower infirmary around him -- one of the private rooms. He'd been here before, visiting people, but this was the first time he'd gotten a room of his own. Hooray for little Avengers milestones.
"Okay," Bruce said, "now I'm going to hold a mirror for you. The important thing is to stay calm and remind yourself that it could have been a whole lot worse."
"Banner, speaking as one medical professional to another, your bedside manner sucks," Sam said to cover the incipient panic nibbling at him. His back still hurt and, making it worse, his balance was weirdly off, like he kept feeling on the verge of tipping over backwards. It was probably the concussion. Probably.
Bruce picked up a large hand mirror that had been lying facedown on the equipment stand beside the bed and held it up. Sam started to twist his head around. Stopped.
"It's all right," Bruce said. "There's nothing wrong with your spine."
Sam twisted around. He was wearing a cloth hospital gown, the annoyingly privacy-invading kind that gapes in the back; it was tied at the back of his neck and open below, gaping to reveal ...
.... well, okay, he really had no idea what he was looking at in the mirror. He got a drop in his stomach, the kind that he sometimes got when he dived with the wings, because Bruce was lying, the fucker, and his back was completely messed up, except --
-- except it didn't look right. Where his shoulders and upper back ought to be, there was instead a lumpy, sticky-looking mass, smeared yellowish with iodine. It humped up in weird ways and he just couldn't relate it to anything human. He'd seen guys blown up by IEDs that looked better than that. Then the mass moved -- twitched, rippled -- and he almost threw up.
"It's feathers," Bruce said. "You're growing wings."
"What," Sam managed weakly. But now that Bruce said it, the whole picture tilted, rearranged, and snapped into focus. It wasn't a horrible spinal deformity or exposed organs covered with road dust. He was looking at twin masses of crumpled, damp-looking feathers plastered up against his spine and shoulder blades. Shredded skin was visible around the edges, painted with disinfectant.
"They burst through the skin," he said numbly.
"Yes," Bruce agreed. "The process was already well advanced when you were brought in here, which, by the way, is why we took you here rather than a regular hospital. It didn't bleed nearly as much as I would have expected. As far as I can tell your body's rerouting the blood vessels in the area to feed the wings." He shook his head. "I can't believe I just said that."
"That machine," Sam said, still staring.
"Probably," Bruce said. "We're examining it right now. It'll go faster once Tony's able to help."
"Why can't Tony help?" Sam asked, but the logical part of his brain caught up immediately. "He's growing wings too. It's all three of us."
"Not wings," Bruce said, "but yeah, that's the idea. We're keeping all three of you in isolation until we're sure there aren't going to be any more side effects. Except for me, because, well ..." He hesitated, skirting around the obvious.
"Invulnerable," Sam supplied.
"Invulnerable and also, doctor," Bruce said. "A useful combination in this case."
"You did say the others are okay," Sam said. "Right?"
"Right," Bruce reassured him. "The only person with actual injuries was you. How comfortable are you right now? I've given you local anesthetic around the wings, but I wanted to wait 'til you woke up to offer anything stronger."
Sam thought about trying to tough it out, but he'd never been into that macho crap. "Something stronger'd be good, as long as it's not strong enough to mess me up too bad. I feel like shit." Now that he thought about it, the pain around his spinal area was mostly deep. Muscles and bones, he thought, rearranging themselves. Growing. Wonderful.
Bruce brought him a couple of pills and water. "I need to go check on my other patients. If you want to read or something, there's a tablet in here, and I can have food brought up. I think Steve's probably going to want to come see you shortly."
"Food would be great." He hadn't realized it 'til Bruce said something, but he was starving. Growing wings took a lot out of a guy, apparently.
Food was shortly delivered by 'bot, on a covered tray. "Thanks," Sam told the 'bot. He wasn't sure of its name, or if it could understand him, but it did something that looked like a bow and backed out of his room.
He was still eating when Steve came in, and even though Bruce had said Steve was all right, seeing him in person made Sam's stomach do that loop-and-drop thing again. Steve was freshly showered, wearing clean clothes -- jeans, a loose shirt -- and also a highly incongruous pair of heavy leather work gloves. It was visible just from the way he moved that he definitely did not have wings, unless they were small enough to be hidden under his shirt.
"Please just let me put the shield over you next time," Steve said, looking anxiously at Sam's forehead.
Sam reached up reflexively and touched the row of butterfly bandages there. He'd been too busy looking at his back to notice that his face had gotten a little cut up. "Look who's talking, Mr. 'I jump out of airplanes without a parachute,'" he retorted.
Steve grinned. He sat, a bit awkwardly, on the edge of the bed, giving Sam another opportunity to discreetly check out his shoulders -- which were very nice shoulders, wide, difficult not to notice that, but also lacking wings as far as he could tell.
Steve was sneaking glances in the direction of Sam's shoulders too. Sam hoped he'd been more subtle himself but had a bad feeling he probably hadn't. "It's not like I can hide 'em," he said, and turned his body so that his back was fully exposed. Now that the painkillers had kicked in, he didn't hurt much anymore; he just felt tired and a little under the weather. And yeah, his back was a mess right now, but Steve was going to see it sooner or later, so he may as well get it over with.
"Wow," Steve said. "That looks ... really painful, actually."
"Eh, a little codeine took care of it," Sam said. He self-consciously turned around so that his back was, if not hidden, then as close to hidden as it could get. "So, Bruce said you two got whammied too, but he didn't say what, exactly, happened to you. I mean, it's pretty obvious you don't have wings, unless they're bumblebee wings."
"Well," Steve said, grinning mischievously, "Tony has antlers."
"Antlers?" Sam repeated. "Like ... an elk?"
"Pepper says like a caribou."
Which meant it was pretty obvious Steve's gloves were hiding something. "What'd you get?" Sam asked. Steve hesitated. "You don't have to show me if you don't want to. But ..." He waved a hand ruefully behind him. "I've kinda got it all hanging out here, so to speak. You're not alone."
Steve sighed and carefully peeled off the gloves. Sam had been braced for, well, pretty much anything, but the reality was a bit of an anticlimax. Steve had small delicate claws, catlike from the look of them. They were slightly translucent with honey-colored marbling, about the same color as his hair.
"They come out," Steve said, and flexed his hand. Suddenly the claws slid out another couple of inches, producing an effect that was more like a tiger paw than a domestic house cat, then slid back in. "It kinda itches."
"My wings itch like fuck," Sam admitted. "So ... do they have even the slightest clue why that weirdo built a machine to do this? Is he talking?"
"Well, according to Pepper, based on his online manifesto it's some kind of animal rights thing," Steve said. "He thought that giving people animal traits would make them more sympathetic to the plight of actual animals, or something like that."
"Good plan," Sam said. "Grade A supervillainny right there. And is he cooperating in getting this whole thing fixed?"
"Uh." Steve looked uncomfortable. "He's ... not much help."
"Tell me he isn't dead," Sam said. "Tell me, especially, that he isn't dead because it turns out all of this is potentially lethal."
"No, no," Steve reassured him. "He's not dead. He's ... pretty much a dog right now."
Sam wondered, not for the first time, how his life had turned into this. "An actual dog dog. A dog all over."
"Well, not all over," Steve said. "He also has butterfly wings and a squirrel tail. But otherwise a dog. A labrador, actually. Very cute."
Sam stared at him, looking for any sign that Steve was putting him on, but Steve just looked big-eyed and very Steve about it. Sam started laughing. After a minute, Steve joined him. They cracked up in helpless, only slightly hysterical laughter for a few minutes before Steve tried to wipe his eyes and accidentally clawed himself in the nose.
They hung out in Sam's room until Bruce lifted the quarantine, which was only a couple hours later, since none of them had shown any signs of new worrisome symptoms and it didn't seem to be contagious. Also, apparently Tony had gotten tired of waiting, overrode the quarantine protocols, and basically broke out. Sam had a feeling the only reason why Bruce had kept him this long was because of fascination with the wings and how they hooked into his musculoskeletal system.
The wings were still growing -- the feathers were longer and some of them were starting to unfurl, still dark and new, but starting to show hints of vivid colors: red, green, blue. "You're going to have beautiful plumage," Steve said, while Bruce ran yet another scan on him before letting him out.
"Shut up, catboy."
Steve brought down some clothes from Sam's quarters three floors above, and left politely so he could get dressed. Which turned out to be easier said than done. He had to slit the sweatshirt Steve had brought him down the back, and then call Steve back in to help him work the wings through the gap.
"Are you absolutely sure about this?" Steve asked, hovering nervously with his gloved hands not touching Sam's back. Sam had pulled the sweatshirt over his head and it was now resting in a bunched mass around his neck. "I don't want to hurt you."
"You're not going to hurt me." He'd prodded the wings himself a bit, once he got over his initial revulsion -- he couldn't help it -- and they weren't actually that sensitive to touch, being padded by a heavy layer of damp, crumpled feathers. And Bruce had been manipulating them all over the place.
However, come to find out, having them touched by Steve was a whole different experience. Even though he couldn't actually feel much, and Steve was wearing gloves, there was something weirdly intimate about Steve carefully lifting and manipulating his wings, guiding them with exquisite care through the gap in the shirt. Sam wasn't sure whether to be sorry when it was done, or profoundly relieved.
The wings were long enough to come down nearly to his waist now. They seemed to be folded over on themselves at least twice -- tightly folded up accordion-style. He didn't want to try to unfold them while they were still growing. Or maybe you were supposed to? Maybe stretching them out while the bones were still soft was the way to do it. Maybe he'd end up with bent, malformed wings this way.
.... wings which he was NOT KEEPING, he reminded himself. He probably would be too heavy to fly with them anyway. They'd just get in the way and make it impossible to wear normal clothes or sit on chairs.
But still. Wings. Actual wings.
Bruce told him to come back in a few hours to make sure "nothing worrisome" was happening to his vascular system. "Worrisome in what way?" Sam asked, while Steve hovered with a concerned look on his face.
"Like forming a lethal embolism in the process of rerouting blood vessels from your aorta."
"Oh," Sam said. "That kind of worrisome." He punched Steve in the arm to make him stop shooting "please don't die" looks in his direction.
"What's going on with all of your bodies right now is amazing," Bruce said. "I want to do more bloodwork on both of you after another couple of hours to see how the growth hormone levels have changed. I still don't know what that machine did exactly, but whatever it was might actually be a breakthrough in, say, regrowing lost limbs for amputees."
This made Steve stop giving Sam worried puppy eyes and look thoughtful instead. Sam suspected he was thinking about Bucky.
"Are you two going to Tony's lab?" Bruce asked. "Because I need more blood from him too."
In the end they all trooped down to the lab, in Sam and Steve's case to see how Tony's reverse-engineering project was coming along, and Bruce with a bloodwork kit. Sam had to fight the inclination to just hide in his quarters, but it wasn't like he could hide forever. And anyway, he had nothing to be ashamed of. These people were his friends. He reminded himself that Tony, after all, had antlers, and therefore was not in a position to make fun of anyone else for their involuntary physical modifications.
There were pieces of the machine spread out all over the lab, with Tony in the middle of it. Next to one of the workbenches, there was a large wire kennel with a blanket and a water bowl in it. A yellow labrador with oversized paws and -- yes -- neatly folded butterfly wings was lying on the side of the cage farthest from Tony, looking as sullen as a labrador could look. It rested its head on its paws and stubbornly ignored Tony's attempts to interrogate it while he worked.
"Is the blue wire supposed to hook up here? That's a yes or no question, damn it. Bark once for yes, twice for no. Or ignore me for yes, bark twice for 'Tony, that would kill us all.' Yes it is, then. Do you actually have a human brain in there, or is it canine neurons all the way down? Which would explain a lot about the design of the power coupler, come to think of it --"
When Steve had mentioned antlers, Sam had been imagining a huge branching .... well, rack, but the reality was a lot less spectacular. Like Sam's wings, the antlers were still growing. They were about a foot long, blunt-tipped with only one small, stubby prong on each side, and covered in soft-looking brown fuzz. Tony kept reaching up to scratch at the base of them.
"You aren't allowed in here," Tony said as soon as he caught sight of Bruce. "JARVIS, if he comes near me with a needle, I want you to hit him with the knockout gas jets. How many pints have I given you so far? I'm going to pass out from blood loss -- holy shit, are those wings?"
"You aren't even remotely in danger of going into shock until you lose over fifteen percent of your blood volume," Bruce said. "That's not even two pints in a healthy adult. I need your left arm."
"How come I got antlers and he got wings? That's not fair." Tony submitted to Bruce picking up his left arm like a rag doll's and briskly rolling up the sleeve, but continued to work with the other hand without interruption.
"Wings aren't all they're cracked up to be," Sam said, glancing over his shoulder at the mass of slowly drying, colorful feathers curled against his back. "And yes, I realize the irony of that coming from me."
"How's it going down here?" Steve asked.
"Ow! It'd be going faster if someone weren't poking unnecessarily large holes in a very necessary arm I happen to have. And much faster if I could get some cooperation from the rawhide bone contingent down there."
The dog growled at him.
"How's your headache?" Bruce asked. He put a hand lightly on one of the antlers and must have applied pressure, because Tony yelped.
"What are you doing?! My head still hurts, thanks, and it's not going to help if you pull off a piece of my skull."
"I think they actually are anchored to your skull," Bruce said. "That's amazing."
"No, it's fucking annoying. Do you think I want to go through my life not being able to wear hats and having to turn my head sideways to go through doors? Bad dog!" he snapped at the cage, and then grabbed Bruce's arm as Bruce started to put away his samples. "No, wait, don't go yet! I wanted to get you to look over the animal DNA pattern interface with me. I have absolutely no idea what it's doing, and I'd rather not blow anyone up while trying to change them back --"
Sam and Steve left them to it.
Sam spent most of the afternoon in his Tower apartment, which technically he didn't use all that often -- he had his own place -- but taking a cab in this situation ... just ... no. It wasn't that he was ashamed of the wings, or minded anyone seeing them, but he just didn't feel like dealing with people right now. He still felt like shit, all-over achy with a distracting itch between his shoulder blades.
Steve hung out with him for a good part of the afternoon. They watched Top Gear and snacked -- Sam was still starving as his body worked on wing growth. Steve, the lucky sap, seemed to have not only gotten a smaller modification than the rest of them, but his claws had all grown in at once, according to him. Healing factor, probably. He was no longer wearing the gloves, at least around Sam, having gotten the hang of picking things up without accidentally impaling them. While they watched TV, he idly flexed his claws. They made a little pop every time they came out, like cracking knuckles but softer.
"Come on, man," Sam said when he couldn't take it anymore. "You're as bad as Barnes and his knives."
Steve grinned, that soft disarming grin that Sam had no defenses against. "Sorry." He nodded at the wings. "How's that doing?"
"Not too bad." The painkillers had worn off by now, but the residual sensation was more a healing-wound kind of itching than actual pain. His biggest problem had been finding a comfortable position to lounge around in. He couldn't lean back on the couch without crushing his wings. Eventually he ended up lying on his stomach with a pillow under his chest, propping him up. He wasn't even going to be able to use chairs without flipping them around. Stupid mad scientists and their stupid experiments.
It didn't help that the wings were constantly changing right now, so he couldn't get used to their weight and pull because every time he got up, it was different, throwing him off balance and making him knock items off shelves, cups off countertops.
He was all too aware that Steve was watching him as much as the TV, sneaking glimpses at the wings and probably thinking he was being stealthy about it. Steve's expression wasn't disgust, though, or even prurient curiosity. It was a sort of soft wonder.
"Gah," Sam muttered, trying to reach between his shoulder blades to scratch that maddening itch. The wings itched everywhere. He wondered if Bruce had a lotion for it. And he still couldn't get over how fucking weird it was to reach over his shoulder and feel a living, moving mass of crumpled feathers rather than the smooth skin of his back.
Steve sat up on the other couch. "You okay?"
"Just going out of my mind, that's all," Sam muttered, flopping forward again. "And I can't reach."
"I could, uh -- scratch 'em for you. If you want me to?"
Steve looked desperately embarrassed. Sam sighed. "Man, I've had your blood up to my elbows, and you've pulled me out of Hydra prison cells. I don't think we have any secrets from each other by now. Yes, please come over here and scratch my wings before I set them on fire."
Steve knelt beside him, hesitated, then tentatively put a hand on one of the wings. The light touch was startling at first and then just maddening. "If you're gonna scratch it, then scratch it," Sam said.
"I don't want to hurt you."
"If you don't stop pussyfooting around back there and give me some relief from this, I'll hurt you."
Steve dug his fingers into the feathers, and that -- okay, that was good. Sam closed his eyes in bliss. Steve wasn't scratching hard, just running the feathers between his fingers and rubbing the skin underneath with the very tips of his claws and the pads of his fingers, but that was all it needed. Steve seemed to instinctively realize that the tender new skin around the feathers was too sensitive to take much abrasion; it was fresh-grown and not used to being touched. But it wasn't numb in the way of scar tissue. It was more like the skin on the underside of the wrist or inner thigh, where even a light touch was electric. Except there was a lot of it, a whole expanse of new skin underneath the feathers, and all Sam could do was close his eyes and lean into Steve's touch. It was a kind of skin hunger he'd never known before.
He opened his eyes to find that most of him, and his still-furled wings, had sprawled off the couch into Steve's lap -- he hadn't even noticed that it had happened. Sam was too relaxed and content to care.
Steve grinned down at him. "Feel good?"
"Man, there are no words." Maybe this was what a petted cat felt like. He just wanted to stay there forever.
Steve's phone buzzed. Sam could feel the vibration transmitted through Steve's lap. Steve sighed, grimaced ruefully, and shifted enough to dig out the phone; then his face relaxed into a grin. "It's Bucky," he said, and flipped around the phone so Sam could read the text.
I hear you have claws now. It won't help, Wolverine. Gym, 15 minutes.
Sam laughed. "Can't pass up an invitation like that, huh?"
"Mmmm." Steve gently extricated his hands from Sam's feathers and hesitated, then, because he still had a lapful of Sam. "You know, I can ask him for a rain check. If we were ... in the middle of something."
"You might not have the claws later," Sam pointed out. "If Stark comes through. And he usually does."
"That's true." Steve still hesitated, and his fingertips brushed the side of Sam's jaw, just the tiniest prickle of claws. "Were we .... in the middle of something?"
"I think maybe we were," Sam said, and Steve's face dissolved into another of those incredibly soft looks. "Now go kick your best friend's ass. Me and my wings will still be here when you get back."
By evening Sam's wings were fully fledged in richly patterned, bright-colored feathers. He couldn't help staring at them in the full-length mirror set into his bedroom doors. (All the suites in the Avengers tower included full-length mirrors. It was apparently a Tony Stark thing.) If he'd ever guessed what it'd look like if he had actual bird wings -- a thought that would never in a million years have crossed his mind before the last twelve hours -- he would've guessed they'd be hawklike or falconlike in nature: gray and brown bird of prey wings. These were more like bird of paradise wings.
He hadn't tried opening them yet, but as well as itching, they were starting to ache in the manner of an arm or leg that's been folded into the same position for too long. Unfolding them for the first time indoors didn't seem like a good idea, though. He already kept bumping into things every time he tried to move around -- it was like wearing a large backpack indoors.
The balcony might work.
He shed his shirt and, bare-chested, stepped out into the wind. He did a quick obligatory check around to make sure that he was alone. (Bucky in particular had a habit of navigating around the tower by way of windows and balconies.)
The sun was setting over the city, and the buildings were lit up with golden fire. Good flying weather, he couldn't help thinking. Not that he was about to find out whether his brand new wings could hold his weight when he was fifty floors up.
He took a deep breath and thought about opening his wings.
For an instant he wasn't sure if he'd be able to do it -- he was literally using brand-new muscles, and couldn't even begin to imagine what mental buttons to push to make them work. But all it took was relaxing and letting it happen automatically. It was no different from moving an arm or a leg. There was some pain -- aching and pulling in unfamiliar places -- but it also felt good, like stretching after sitting still for too long.
He spread the wings to their fullest extent. His wingspan was enormous. The wings spilled over the edge of the balcony on either sides, drooping towards the street far, far below.
For a few minutes Sam was utterly caught up in staring at them. They were a part of him, and he couldn't quite wrap his mind around it. He lifted first one wing, then the other, stretching out the pinions and drawing it around in front of him so he could look at it. The colors glimmered in the setting sun. He hadn't expected the wings to be so articulated, but of course they would have to be, to fly with. He couldn't move the feathers individually, but he could move them in sections by tightening the skin, the muscles, causing them to ripple into new configurations. It was just like the flaps on an airplane wing, he thought. Exact same idea.
The sun sank below the rim of the world and he shivered in the evening's growing chill. His wings folded closer, instinctively wrapping around his bare torso. Cloaked in feathers, he turned away from the view and stopped, startled.
Steve was standing in the sliding door leading from the balcony to the apartment. Sam hadn't even heard him come in.
"How long have you been standing there?"
"Awhile," Steve said. "I -- was admiring the view, I guess."
Sam stared at him and then laughed. "So they still had terrible pickup lines in the 1940s, huh?"
Steve smiled a little sheepishly, and shrugged. "It's true."
And somehow he made it work. Steve could be a snarky little dick and most people tended to forget that about him, but he also had a bone-deep natural sincerity that meant he could pull off the cheesiest, sappiest lines and mean every word. And it went straight through every wall Sam tried to put up. It always had.
Steve came out to join him on the balcony. He hadn't showered after the workout, and he was lightly sweaty, with a fresh bruise on his cheekbone.
"So how does Bucky like your claws?"
Steve grinned. "He has a few new scratches to go with my new bruises."
It had taken the two of them a long time to get to the point where they could fight each other no-holds-barred without either of them trampling on each other's sore places, and Steve had mellowed noticeably since then. Which was one reason why Sam hadn't wanted to try to stop him tonight, despite the interruption. A Steve who had just come back from a mutual beatdown session with Bucky was usually a happy Steve. (The same seemed to be true of Bucky as well, though Sam didn't spend as much time around him and couldn't read him as easily, so it was a little harder to tell.)
"You cold out here?" Steve asked, glancing at the wings wrapped around Sam's body. "We could go in."
"Nahhh. I've been in there all day. Nice to step out for a minute." And it was lovely: the sunset colors fading from the sky, the city lighting up like a glittering wonderland below them.
"You've got nothing to be ashamed of, you know," Steve said, gently running a thumb down one of Sam's wings.
"I know. It's not that. I think ..." He hesitated; he was so used to being the one who listened to other people talk about their problems that it still felt strange to open up to someone himself. But he'd had some time to think about it while he was lying around on the couch, avoiding the world, so the words were all lined up in his head, ready to go. "I think maybe I'm a little too invested in being able to take off the wings and .... pass, I guess, as much as I hate using a loaded word like that for something as trivial as this. Isn't that stupid? I like being on the team, but I also like being able to leave it behind when I clock out. This ..." He ruffled the wings, a ripple passing through the feathers. "It's a lot to take in. Hard to wrap it up in my self-image. And the wings -- hit a little close to home, you know? I think anything else would've been easier to ..."
Steve buried his fingers in Sam's feathers, slowly and lightly combing his fingers through them. "I get it."
"I guess you do," Sam said. He'd never known little five-foot-nothing Steve Rogers from Brooklyn; he'd only ever known the Captain America version. That must have been an extraordinary transition, to go from being invisible to being somebody that everyone looked at. Even when he was a nobody, Sam had never been invisible. You couldn't be invisible as a black guy in America. This was more like ... a step from one kind of negative visibility to another kind, he supposed, which was a grim sort of comfort, but comfort all the same.
He spread his wings slowly, half-unfurling them in the growing dusk, and let the one on Steve's side arch over Steve's shoulders as well. When he tightened the wings back in, he pulled Steve against him. It was like being cozied up together in a warm feathery tent, except the tent had nerve endings and he could not only feel Steve's big, solid shoulder against him, but Steve's other shoulder pressed against the inner surface of the wing.
They stayed like that for a little while, watching the last colors fade from the sky and the dim light-pollution-attenuated stars come out, and by then it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to turn his head and find Steve's mouth with his own. Actually, he couldn't have said afterward if Steve kissed him, or if he kissed Steve; it was both of them, really, finding each other at the same time. The kiss was long and slow and gentle. Steve brought up his hand to cup the back of Sam's head, clawtips prickling Sam's skin lightly.
When they finally broke apart, they didn't move away, just stayed forehead to forehead, resting under a canopy of wings. After a little while, Steve said, "I think we've been circling around that for a long time now." There was a soft hint of laughter in his voice.
"Kinda makes you wonder why we never tried it before."
"Didn't want to mess up a good thing, I guess." Now Steve pulled back a bit, his eyes gentle and worried. "And it was -- I mean, that didn't mess up anything, did it?"
Sam showed him how messed-up things weren't by pulling him back in and kissing him again.
He didn't know how long they necked quietly on the deck -- Steve's claws lightly tickling Sam's neck, Sam's wings wrapped around both of them -- before JARVIS's voice interrupted. "Excuse me, Captain Rogers, Mr. Wilson."
Sam closed his eyes. "Yes, JARVIS," Steve said, cheek resting against Sam's. "Go ahead."
"Mr. Stark wishes me to inform you that the machine is repaired and ready for use."
Neither of them moved, and after a moment JARVIS said, "Shall I convey your response to Mr. Stark?"
"Tell him we'll be down in a minute," Sam said.
Steve sighed, pressed a kiss to his temple, and pulled back. "Easy come easy go, right?"
"Shame I never got to find out if they worked." Sam stretched the wings to their full extent again.
"You could keep 'em for a while."
It was tempting. He thought about it. Then he thought about not being able to use a chair or drive a car, having to cut up every one of his shirts, never going out in public without drawing a crowd. Every fragile item in his apartment would be dust in a few days.
"Tell you the truth, I'm kind of looking forward to getting back to being plain Sam Wilson."
Steve smiled. "There's nothing plain about you, Sam."
It was another of those ridiculous, sincere statements that only Steve could have pulled off without sounding like an idiot, and it kept him warm all the way down to Tony's lab.
Bruce was in the lab, which wasn't a surprise, but a few other people had drifted in as well, presumably whoever wasn't busy elsewhere and couldn't pass up a front-row seat to the Avengers' latest science-related disaster. Pepper was perched on a worktable, with Rhodes leaning next to her; Jane was elbow-deep in the machine; Darcy was drifting around the edges of things, but stopped to whip out her phone and take a picture of Sam's wings. Sam almost overlooked Bucky, in a corner near a convenient escape window. Natasha was lounging near him.
"Oh good, you're here, we can get started," Tony announced to the room. His antlers, like Sam's wings, had grown noticeably in the last few hours, sprouting several new tines. The weight was clearly starting to give his neck muscles some trouble, based on the way his head kept tilting sideways. "I'd like to point out," he added, "I'm testing it on myself first."
Rhodes muttered something that sounded like, "What a surprise."
"What about him?" Sam asked, pointing to the dog in the cage. The former mad scientist growled at him. "I'd start there."
"We talked it over," Bruce said. "The whole-body transformation is going to be significantly more difficult to reverse than the minor modifications."
"You call this minor," Tony muttered, correcting the tilt of his head again.
"The point," Jane said with her head buried in the machine, "is that it's a completely different process and is going to require a complete recalibration, possibly a total rebuild, which means a lot more lead time, plus he's unlikely to work as a test case anyway -- Aha, got a green light here." She straightened up. "It's ready to go. Tony?"
"Right, yes. Let's rock and roll." Tony waved a hand. "Clear the area, people."
"Are we entirely sure this is safe?" Pepper asked.
Tony folded his arms and put on what Sam recognized as an I-am-scared-but-trying-to-hide-it face. "The alternative is that I'm going to have to learn to sleep standing up, so right now I don't really care. Hit it, Foster."
Everyone took an instinctive step back. Jane flipped something on the machine. There was a bright flash and Tony staggered.
"Tony?" Pepper said, dashing forward to catch him. "How do you feel?"
"Spots. In front of my eyes." Tony wobbled, and let Pepper and Rhodes help him to a chair.
Bruce knelt beside him and pressed his fingers to the inside of Tony's wrist. "Your pulse is up, but not too much. What are you feeling? Does anything hurt?"
"Not really, I just kind of feel like I got some bad uppers or something. Dizzy. Weird."
"Since the modifications took so long to develop, we expect that they're going to --" Bruce stopped, breaking off as it became obvious that there was nothing slow or subtle about the reversion of the new body parts. Tony's antlers were crumbling around the edges, melting, dissolving into black goop.
Everyone in the room stared at him.
"What?" Tony said, staring back at them. "What is everyone -- oh my God." He touched his forehead and his hand came away covered in black gunk and no small amount of blood. Tony stared at it. He looked one step away from a heart attack.
Pepper made a small squeaking sound. Jane stared for another horrified instant and then began to fumble with the machine.
"I don't think it's as bad as it looks," Bruce said. "Tony, lie down." Tony neither argued nor put up a fight, which was more eloquent than anything else could have been regarding his present state of mind. "It's mostly organic matter, not blood -- you're bleeding a little, but it looks like the blood vessels are sealing themselves off. This is really incredible."
"I want a shower," Tony said faintly. He was flat on his back on the lab floor. Pepper had one of his hands, Rhodes the other one. "Actually I want to scrub off my skin. How bad does it look? It's bad, isn't it? Is this going to scar?"
"Tony," Rhodes said, laying a hand on the side of his face, "shut up and calm down."
"Let's see how calm you are when your head is melting off!"
Within a couple of minutes, though, Tony was sitting up again, toweling off his head with Pepper's help, and vigorously complaining. The antlers were entirely gone, nothing remaining but two patches of pink new skin along his hairline.
"Well," Darcy said, "that was .... super traumatic."
"Who wants to go next?" Jane asked brightly, then her expression turned baffled at the looks she got. "What? It works!"
"I'll go," Sam and Steve said in perfect unison, then looked at each other.
"It should be me," Steve said. "Actually, it should have been me first, Tony, because I heal faster than the rest of you."
"While twenty-twenty hindsight suggests I probably ought to agree with you," Tony said from the depths of his towel, "being a highly damage-resistant supersoldier doesn't make you a lab rat." He handed the towel to Pepper, who sighed and took it with a long-suffering expression. "On the other hand, I think it probably should be you next, because your claws aren't going to generate much mess, and I want to put down a drop cloth before we get his wings all over the floor of my lab."
It was a good point; Sam still didn't like it, but he stepped back -- almost bumping into Bucky, who had stealthily drifted forward to hover as close to Steve as he seemed to feel he could get without being too close to everyone else.
For Steve, though, the process was much less spectacular. After the machine's flash, the claws dribbled off his fingertips without fanfare. Sam suppressed a slight quiver of regret, thinking of the prickle of claws on his neck and shoulder. It would have been nice to find out what else they could do.
On the other hand, getting accidentally impaled in a sensitive place would be the exact opposite of fun. Probably for the best.
"Okay," Tony said, back on his feet. The 'bots had dragged a large canvas drop cloth to cover the area in front of the machine. "You're up, Wilson."
"It's most likely going to hit you harder than the others because your wings are pretty big," Bruce told him. "I suggest you preemptively sit down."
No argument here. Sam sat on the drop cloth. The wings sprawled behind him and around him, a sea of rainbow-colored feathers.
As Jane reached for the machine, he thought about asking her to stop. Then he caught Steve's eye, and Steve smiled at him, and he thought being regular Sam Wilson was better after all. Sex with wings was likely to be more of a challenge than he really wanted to attempt. And there was no way the wings were big enough to bear his weight. Probably sprain every muscle in them the first time he jumped off something. He'd be able to keep the fantasy of it, without having reality knock him down.
The world whited out for an instant. Tony hadn't been kidding about the spots in front of the eyes. Then vertigo hit him, so bad he wasn't even sure if he was still sitting up or not. The one thing that he was sure about were a pair of warm, strong hands, one on his shoulder and one on his rib cage, supporting him.
Sharp stinging pain rippled across his shoulder blades, an icy shock of hurt, like a flash burn. He gasped and Steve's grip tightened. It didn't last long, though, and as both pain and dizziness began to fade, he came back to himself to find that he was lying in Steve's lap -- seemed like he was destined to spend a lot of time there today, not that he minded -- with the wreckage of his wings around both of them.
He'd been a little worried the black stuff might stink up close, but it didn't; there was nothing but a soft, clean smell, like rainwater. Still, it was all over his skin and Steve's pants.
"Towel?" Tony asked brightly, handing him one.
"I see what you meant about wanting a shower," Sam muttered. Steve helped him sit up. There was a passing moment of dizziness and then he felt all right except for a bruise-like tenderness across his shoulders. Bruce crouched down to examine his back.
"How's it look back there?" Sam asked. He felt lighter, less inhibited in his movements. He hadn't been aware of the weight of the wings on his shoulders until they were gone.
"Mostly healed already," Bruce said. "I'm definitely taking some of this to study it. If you don't mind?"
Sam waved a hand. "Be my guest." He stood up with Steve's support and a helping hand from Natasha. Steve didn't let go even after Sam was upright, keeping a hand resting against his hip, drawing some interested looks -- particularly from Natasha, who nudged Bucky pointedly. Bucky glared at her and passed over a small wad of crumpled cash.
Jerks.
"Given how that worked out," Bruce said, "I think using the machine on someone who had full-body modifications is a ways off yet."
The dog-shaped scientist had moved all the way to the back of his cage. Clearly he concurred.
"Well, I want him out of my lab one way or another," Tony said. "I don't do walkies for bad guys. This is what SHIELD used to be good for. And I know at least some of you -- I'm looking at you, Natasha -- can still get in touch with what's left of them, so I suggest someone makes a call."
Sam was becoming acutely aware that he was shirtless in a lab full of people. Also, Steve's hand was still resting on his waist, distractingly so. He and Steve glanced at each other, and then quietly, discreetly, slipped out into the hallway.
"So," Sam said.
"So. How do you feel?"
"All right." The body memory of how it had felt to have wings -- the weight on his shoulders, the shift in his center of gravity -- was already fading. He felt a pang, but it faded quickly, chased away by the heat of Steve's body against his. "Were you, uh -- planning to head upstairs?"
"Depends," Steve said. "Which way are you going?"
"My place. I mean, my place here." He laughed, a little embarrassed. "Shower."
Steve leaned a little closer and glanced behind to make sure they weren't being overheard. "Is your shower big enough for two?"
"Man," Sam said, "you have got to knock it off with the cheesy come-on lines."
"It was a serious question," Steve said as they stepped into the elevator. He was blushing lightly, a pink flush riding his cheekbones. It was ridiculously adorable.
"I know. That doesn't make it any less cornball, though."
They were both a little flushed and tousled when they got out of the elevator, and stayed shoulder to shoulder all the way down the hall. That lasted until Sam palmed on the lights in his quarters and found Bucky not two feet in front of him.
"Gah," Sam said, intelligently.
"Hey Buck," Steve said, having had a lot more practice than Sam at getting used to Bucky's comings and goings. Bucky was looking at Sam intently. "So," Steve added, "I'm going to .... kitchen," and he slipped around his friend and retreated far enough to give them an illusion of privacy.
"Do I need to start locking the balcony door?" Sam asked.
"Won't help," Bucky said. He was playing with a knife, a comfort/displacement activity he'd picked up early on in his therapy -- alarming as hell for people who weren't used to it (or, Sam thought privately, even for people who were) but it seemed to settle him down. Tonight, though, he was flipping the knife with more than the usual amount of threat in it. "We need to talk."
"Is this the shotgun speech?" Sam said. "Are you seriously giving me the shotgun speech?"
Bucky paused, his train of thought derailed. "Shotgun speech?"
"Yeah, you know, don't break his heart because you've got a shotgun, a shovel, and a patch of woods already picked out. That shotgun speech."
"Oh," Bucky said. "Oh. Yeah, I guess that's what this is. Except," he flipped the knife and caught it with the other hand, "shotguns aren't really my preferred choice of weapon."
"Good to know," Sam said. "In a terrifying way. Look ... I can't promise this thing will last forever. Nobody can. But I can tell you --" He was acutely aware of Steve listening, and pretending not to listen, from the kitchen. "-- that I'd rather die than see him hurt."
"I know," Bucky said. He raised his voice. "Hey, Steve? Same goes for you, punk. You be good to him or I will end your ass."
"Duly noted and taken with the respect it deserves," Steve said. "By the way, Buck, I might not be up to the apartment tonight." Technically he and Bucky were still rooming together at the Tower, although in actual practice one or both of them was gone more often than not.
"You better not be." Bucky flashed them both a sudden grin, unexpectedly bright and warm. Then, his ability to navigate social situations apparently exhausted for the evening, he ducked out the sliding door to the balcony and jumped off -- to the one below, presumably. Hopefully.
"So," Sam said after a moment, "I can see dealing with the in-laws is going to be interesting."
"He really does like you a lot, you know," Steve said. "You helped him a lot in the early days. Still help him on the bad days. Bucky's not the kind of person who forgets something like that."
"I appreciate loyalty as much as the next guy, as long as it's not pointing a knife at me. And, Steve, I'm not kidding about needing a shower before things go any farther."
In the bathroom, he examined his back in the mirror. The only sign of the day's adventure, besides the butterfly-bandaged cut on his forehead, were a pair of paler patches of healing skin on his back, slanting diagonally down from his spine across his shoulder blades.
"And I wasn't kidding about keeping you company either," Steve said from the doorway. "If you want it."
"I wouldn't mind."
He still couldn't take his eyes off the wing scars, though. He wondered if they were permanent or if they'd fade back to the natural color of his skin as they healed.
Steve approached him cautiously, telegraphing all moves, and wrapped big arms around him. In the mirror, Sam watched over his shoulder as Steve ran his hands up Sam's back, lightly brushing across the scars. The skin was soft and tender, and Sam shivered.
"I liked them," Steve said quietly. "The wings. If you'd kept them, I would have loved them. But they weren't really you."
"Yeah," Sam said. "That's kind of how I feel, too."
Steve dipped his head and kissed lightly across Sam's neck and collarbone, up his cheek to find his lips. And Sam grinned into Steve's mouth, and let go of the final twinges of regret.
He might have lost the wings, but he felt like he was soaring anyway.