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One.
The Potomac is on fire. The air is choked with ash and debris, and it's all Natasha can do to keep them in the air. So when Sam sees him, a speck of blue and red on the riverbank next to a speck of black, a flash of sunlight off metal, he hollers until he's hoarse. But she can't put them down, not as quick as he wants.
"Shut up and let me handle this!" she yells back to him.
His wings are gone and somewhere on the riverbank below, Steve may be dead.
It's the longest flight Sam Wilson's ever made.
Two.
Sam's not strapped in, so he's the first one out of the chopper. His boots sink in the river mud; he runs like it's a nightmare, slowed down by invisible forces. The black shape is moving off into the distance. Sam calls out to him: "Wait!" But the Winter Soldier doesn't wait.
Sam doesn't try to follow. That's not his priority.
His knees slide in the muck when he gets to Steve. A quick glance behind him, ahead of him, to gauge both assistance and danger. Nat and Fury are nearly there. The Winter Soldier is almost out of sight. Sam catches one last glimpse: a dirt-smeared face staring back at him before moving on, catlike, into the smoke and the trees.
His fingers find Steve's pulse, a thready thing in his neck. Steve's lips are parted, his chest rising and falling in a stilted, wheezy way. He's alive. Adrenaline is still thrumming through him, making his hands shake. He checks Steve's pulse again just to be sure.
Nat tries to pull him away—"I called medivac, it's okay, they'll be here in a few minutes"—but he won't go.
He won't for almost two whole days. His place is here, at Steve's side.
Three.
Steve opens his eyes and Sam can breathe again.
Four.
Steve Rogers succeeds where all the nurses and Natasha could not: he makes Sam go home. "Get some sleep. Take a shower. No offense, but you need it." A slow, slurring grin spreads across his face. They must be giving him the good stuff, if he's smiling. A lot of it. Either that or it's just the sight of Sam that—
Now's not that time for that train of thought.
Sam makes some joke about not being the one who took a dip in that nasty river, but it's automatic. Later, in the taxi, he tries to remember what he said but his brain is blank except for one thought.
The life and death of Steve Rogers had depended on their enemy. That's what Sam can't get over: how easily and quickly it could have all been over. And we'd only just— he thinks, but how do you finish a sentence like that without sounding completely irrational?
We'd only just found each other? As if Steve was some distant continent that Sam knew existed over the horizon but discovered too late. That wasn't how things worked.
Still, when Sam gets back home and things are the way they'd left it—Steve and Nat's dishes in the sink, used towels hung up to dry, clothing tags tossed in the trash can—he can't help but wonder about fate. What would he be doing right now if he hadn't chatted with that lonely guy on the Mall?
Probably stress-eating while watching the news about the disaster, rescheduling his appointments, making some calls to clients who could use the reassurance—
Well, all that had been done easily enough from the hospital. But he couldn't keep juggling like that indefinitely.
Life post-Steve would not be compatible with life pre-Steve.
Shit.
Five.
There's a framed photograph of Riley on the upright piano in the living room. Sam is not the melodramatic type, won't pick up the picture and gaze at it, won't ask it for advice. It's not Riley, it's just an object. Besides, Riley would laugh at him for doing something like that.
"What're you asking me for, Sammy?" he'd say. "You've got your mind made up anyway, you stubborn jerk."
Sam wonders about the Avengers' healthcare plans. He makes a note to ask Nat for Tony Stark's phone number, sends a few pointed e-mails. Gets all his ducks in a row. He was always better at the practical stuff.
Six.
He showers. Eats. Dresses in clean, dry clothes, which now feel like a sinful luxury. He packs a bag with stuff for Steve to wear once he's released.
How did he know, just a few days ago, to buy more than one tee in Steve's size? More than one pair of slacks? How did he know that this person would be staying in his life long enough to change his shirt?
He didn't. Where there's no knowledge, his mom always used to say, there is hope.
Seven.
He sleeps. He dreams of battlefields in Harlem and planes crashing into the Hudson. He dreams of Steve washing ashore in Battery Park, his broken body laid out under the gaze of the Statue of Liberty.
Sam wakes up and decides he's had enough sleep for one night.
Eight.
Nat is keeping watch when he returns to Steve's hospital room. The list of people they can trust right now is pretty short, and Sam isn't certain SHIELD is even a thing anymore, so she was really the only option. Sam's not sure where she got clean civvies or when she found the time to clean up, but she looks put-together and calm as always, just sitting in the visitor's chair, flipping through an old Field & Stream.
"He's out like a light," she reports without looking up from her magazine. "Asked me two things when he woke up last time. Want to know what they were?"
"How is he?" Sam says, ignoring her question.
"First thing: 'Did Sam go home like I told him to?' Second thing: 'Tell him I said thanks for pulling me out.'" She raises her eyebrows at this last one.
"Pulling him—?" Oh. Steve doesn't know about the Winter Soldier. Probably doesn't remember anything after the crash. There are gaps to be filled.
The hospital bed creaks as Steve shifts, his head tossing as he wakes. Sam doesn't remember walking from the doorway to his bedside; he must've flown.
"Hey Cap," he says quietly. The lights are already dim, the curtains are drawn against the street lights outside in the night. Sam looks around, but all the little things that could irritate him are taken care of. "Feeling better?"
"Sure," Steve groans out. "Let's take a lap around this place and I'll show you how good I am."
Well, there's a joke Sam's prepared to live with for pretty much always. He takes a breath, counting it out. In, hold, out.
Nat unfolds herself from the chair and stalks out the door. "I'm getting coffee," she says, but the look she tosses Sam says she's taking a walk for his benefit.
Sam stays on his feet. It's awkward, standing next to a bed without a place to put your hands. Steve solves the problem by lifting his giant paw, tubes and all, and clasping Sam's forearm.
"Didn't get to say thanks before," he whispers. He clears his throat a few times, and Sam reaches with the arm that isn't being held in Steve's. Pitcher of water, a little cup and straw. Steve takes it gratefully.
For a moment, Sam sees down a road where he keeps his mouth shut. It's dark but smooth. Sam does not take it.
"Look," Sam says while Steve's busy drinking his fill, "it wasn't me that fished you out. Barnes did. I saw him."
Steve lowers the cup. "Bucky?" His hand, pale and trembling, tightens on Sam's arm. "Are you sure?"
"Positive."
Steve places the water back on the little side table. His face—already a mess of cuts and bruises—looks hurt in a way it hadn't before. "I thought—" Steve stops. Sam knows the look on his face, having seen it before so often. That torn feeling: wanting him to be alive and safe, and knowing that only one of those things can be true. "So he made it out?"
Sam nods. "He was on his feet, last I saw." He shakes his head. "I let him get away. That's on me."
Steve's fingers curl into his starched bedsheets. His face goes red and blotchy under the injuries, and his eyes fill. "Could you—?" For the first time since Sam's encountered him, Steve looks ancient.
He makes to leave to give Steve a little privacy. He's almost closed the door behind him when Steve croaks out, "Stay, please. Just— Close it?"
The door shuts with Sam on the inside.
How many people throughout history have seen Steve Rogers weep? Sam Wilson would gladly subtract himself from that number if he could, not because he's uncomfortable being a witness, but because he wishes Steve could be spared this pain entirely. He could have lied; he could have ended the story with a neat bow on top. Your friend is gone. I'm sorry. It's over. You don't have to fight anymore.
But the war just keeps going. And Sam Wilson is no liar.
He holds his hand out this time. Steve grabs it and doesn't let go.
Nine.
Sam wakes up exhausted and with a crick in his neck. He's sandwiched on the damn hospital bed between Steve and the plastic barrier-handle thing, face smooshed against Steve's hair.
Did he crawl up beside Steve without any prompting, or did Steve pull him closer? He's running on empty, so it's hard to recall exactly. Maybe a little bit of both.
"Thanks," Steve says from under his chin.
Sam pulls back a little so they're face to face. He hopes the sleep-smell on his breath isn't too awful. "For what?"
Steve moves his eyebrows in a way that says take your pick.
Later that day, the doctors say Steve can go, so he leaves. Sam doesn't even ask "where to?" when they get in the car. Steve's old apartment downtown is a wreck and it's compromised. Sam's place isn't exactly Fort Knox, but it's home. So that's where Sam takes him.
Steve doesn't even offer a token protest.
Ten.
It's unspoken. Windows and latches get checked. Lights get clicked off. The movements through a home at night.
They undress. (Steve's crisp-new clothes, still lined along the packaged folds. Sam's soft checked shirt, his unassuming chinos. It's all placed neatly in a stack on the footlocker by the bedroom door.)
Sam tries not to stare. It is difficult not to stare.
Steve covers a ruby-red bruise on his side with his huge hand, self-conscious for all the wrong reasons. "I heal quick," he promises.
That is not what Sam is worried about.
He lays him down. He covers him up. He touches him, but carefully. Steve kisses him, and Sam kisses him in return. He tells Steve to sleep, and he closes his eyes and follows Sam's advice. His eyelashes are the longest damn things Sam's ever seen in his life. He watches them twitching, his head pillowed on Steve's shoulder.
On the piano, there is a photograph. On the riverbank, there is wreckage. Somewhere else, maybe far away, maybe right outside, there is a man with a silver arm.
Here, there is silence. Sam sleeps curled around Steve and he does not dream.
Eleven.
The graveyard is beautiful if you don't think too hard about what you're standing on.
Lots of things are like that.
Steve's face in profile is a picture to be drawn, his eyes squinting into the horizon.
Sam takes a heavy, warm hand in his. And he leads the way.