Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Three superheroes, a dozen Shield agents, a deacon, and a self-proclaimed witch all leave the conference room while Steve stays in his chair, stewing. 

If they all go find a bar together, it’ll be the setup to a perfect joke. Steve’s not in the mood for jokes. And he's sure Tony already said something like that three hours ago, before that mess of a meeting ever began.

Steve forces his body up and out of the chair after the last person leaves. He doesn’t want to do anything rash, doesn’t want to be convinced to do anything rash, but sitting idle in an empty conference room won’t do anything for his mood either. 

Three damn hours and no one could agree on what the threat even was, or if it even existed, let alone how to deal with it or who had jurisdiction. It’s the endless, terminally slow grind of bureaucracy that ticks him off most. Steve can’t believe he would ever miss being in the army.

The plan, for now, is to meet again after everyone cools down, but his position is going to stay the same. They need to do  something. Investigate, interrogate, figure out a plan and stick to it. This is the third time they’ve met to discuss facts and nothing has changed. They’re still unprepared and under-informed.

It’s starting to get to him.

Naturally, the metaphorical dark cloud above his head spawns a literal one. Dark grey smoke gathers in the corner of Steve’s eye, announcing the arrival of his worst instincts and thoughts personified. 

“Another meeting to schedule a later meeting, huh?” Bucky croons from Steve’s shoulder, directly into his ear. “How do you put up with this shit?”

At some time during their... relationship, they both accepted that he was never going to learn to pronounce the Latin of Bucky's real name. Now Steve can’t even remember where the nickname came from. 

Steve sighs and continues marching down the hall to the elevators.

“They already look up to you, right? What’s the point of having that power if you don’t use it?”

“I didn’t call on you,” Steve says evenly. “I'm not even having a real problem with this. People need space to process everything that’s happened. I’m giving them space to process everything that’s happened. I don’t need your... help.”

“Stevie,” Bucky says his name in that unearthly purr that still makes him shudder. “You’re making it sound like I'm not always gonna be right here to help you. Like I’ve always been.”

Steve rolls his shoulder, out of habit. When Bucky is like this, small and delighting in being a nuisance in a red suit and cartoonish horns, he’s not corporeal enough for the gesture to actually dislodge him. 

“And I never asked for that,” Steve replies. He sighs, but the weight on his back doesn’t lighten, not even as he distracts himself in his barren apartment.

Bucky tsks, and the projected miniature of his body floats into full view. He pins Steve with an unimpressed stare.

“You never ask when you need help. But that’s why we work so well together.”

“I can ask for help,” Steve retorts. 

Bucky’s answering smile is pure mockery, goading and insulting all wrapped up in the threatening lean of his smile. It’s hard for Steve to be afraid of him, after all this time. And lately, it’s been almost impossible for him to take him seriously at all.

“It’s something I’ve been working on, actually,” he says.

Bucky flattens his lips into a thin line, and Steve barely stops himself from smirking.

“I could do it right now,” he says pointedly, letting his eyes close and his palms touch.

“Hey, come on,” Bucky says, his voice slightly panicked.

Steve lets his smirk form this time. 

“Don’t call on him.”

Steve takes a breath, fills his entire body with it before exhaling, slow and deliberate. He reaches out with the entirety of his soul, lets everything around him fall away, and prays, “Samuel.”

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice is hard now, more real. Steve doesn’t have to open his eyes to know Bucky’s solidified in the room. His nose fills with the smell of real smoke, thick and acrid. 

“If you’re not busy, I’d love some of your help,” Steve says quietly, ignoring the way his nose itches. “It’s nothing urgent, or important, but –”

He’s cut off by Samuel’s answer. A bright flash of light behind his eyes, a sweet breeze effortlessly wiping out the dense smoke and shoving Bucky back against a nearby wall.

When he opens his eyes, Steve smiles, soft and automatic. His quarters are the same, of course, but brightened just so. Fresh and neat and reliable. He remembers how lucky he is to have a place of his own. Somewhere safe where he wants for nothing, it’s an easy thing to forget.

Once, when he was small, just a kid, his mom found some time and some money somewhere and took him to Coney Island. She told him he was in charge of where they went, what they got to eat, and which games they got to play. By the end of it, Steve had been so happy, so unburdened by the realities of life, that he’d sworn he could float all the way back home. His mom had looked at him, while the setting sun turned the clouds pastel peach, and told him that she felt it too, that it was a perfect day because she got to spend it with him, her favorite person in the entire world.

Steve turns to smile at Sam, the white-hot affection still burning in his chest, stinging at his eyes. Sam smiles back at him, soft and protective. Knowing.

“Hi,” Steve greets, a little breathless. “You didn’t have to come so fast. Hope I didn’t rush you.”

His angel approaches and runs a reverent hand over his head. Steve’s eyes close, leaning into the touch as Samuel’s hand circles around and caresses his cheek.

“It’s not a bother,” he replies. His voice is a whisper and a song, in Steve’s head and in the room at the same time. Always just shy of too much for Steve’s senses.

Steve snorts and opens his eyes again to face the warm golden brown ones looking back at him. 

“I said it wasn’t serious.”

Samuel tilts his head and cradles the entirety of Steve in his gaze. 

“In all honesty, that’s what made me most concerned.”

A low, humorless chuckle from the opposite side of the room is a sudden reminder of why Steve asked for Samuel to come.

Samuel looks over his shoulder, turning to see over his impressive white wings. Bucky stays on the ground, pressed against the wall, arms at his sides and legs spread like a ragdoll.

Samuel makes a little considering noise under his breath and turns fully to step closer to him. Bucky stays where he is, only tilting his head back to meet Samuel’s eyes with a hooded gaze.

“I guess my alarm was not without merit,” Samuel says.

“Hey angel,” Bucky says, his voice back to that syrupy drone. “Was hopin’ you’d be too busy to show up.”

“I thought demons were supposed to be good at lying.”

Bucky bends one knee and rolls his hips, splaying his thighs wider against the stretch of his red trousers. 

“You just make it so hard,” he rasps.

Samuel huffs. A laugh or something derisive, it isn’t clear.

He turns back to Steve, and Bucky’s eyes roam his body with a hunger that can only be called blasphemous.

“Is this the problem you needed help solving?” Sam asks.

“He is technically why I called, yes.”

Steve has never once been afraid of him, not even when he first showed up during the war. It hasn’t stopped Bucky from trying. 

“You’re disloyal, punk.” He glares, eyes black and murderous. It’s a pretty solid effort. 

Samuel smiles brightly at Steve. The contrast between them always makes him more than a little dizzy. 

When Samuel crouches down in front of Bucky, they hold each other’s stare for a heavy moment. The air between them shudders, buckling under the weight of the two of them being in the same room.

Samuel outstretches a hand. Bucky lifts his chin. The moment his palm touches Bucky’s cheek, the burning starts. Bucky only exhales shakily. 

The space Samuel occupies starts to glow an otherworldly white gold, too bright for Steve to look at directly. He narrows his eyes against the light, and all he hears is the sound of Bucky’s skin sizzling. Sam’s hand caress up the side of his face until his palm lands on Bucky’s forehead.

Bucky shudders out a broken noise. Sam leans forward to close the space between them, but before Steve can see what else he’s doing, Bucky is gone.

A slowly dispersing puff of smoke is the only evidence that he was ever there.

Samuel rises in a smooth motion, looking strangely human when he finds a seat at Steve’s kitchen table. 

“Call me any time he tries to tempt you.”

“He looked like he was going to kill me just for thinking about it,” Steve says.

Sam wrinkles his nose in amusement. “I’d like to see him try.”

Chapter Text

Natasha hesitates before stepping out from the tree line. She’s crossed an ocean, two continents, checked and rechecked her plan. There are no guaranteed successes in pursuits of revenge, but what she has in mind is damn close. And still, she pauses before the point of no return.

Bucky’s seen this more times than he can count. Free will amounting to nothing more than indecision. She only needs an extra push.

“Natalia,” Bucky coos into her ear, “you’ve come so far already. I know you want to see this through.”

She never has anything to say to Yasha, doesn’t think anything good would come from acknowledging him one way or the other. Naming him after her father – even just in her head – was bad enough.

“There are selfish, hateful people on this planet, and those same people gave you the skills to end them. That’s poetic, in my book. Fitting. You’re inevitable.”

Natasha keeps her eyes on the brick compound, but can’t find it in herself to wave him away. 

The hurt and rage only metastasize, of course. Bucky lets himself smile, appearing slowly in her plane to lean against a nearby tree and soak it in.

“You know what they’re capable of, what it really means to be unmade. It should be stopped. It must be stopped, and you alone are equipped to do it. The people in there made their choices. Took yours from you.

“What’re you going to do with all that anger, Red? All of that agony? You’ll hurt someone that doesn’t deserve it, if you don’t give it an outlet.”

Wordlessly, Natasha rolls her shoulders and crosses the property line, using the shadows to approach the main building without being seen.

Before Bucky can follow, before he can even begin to taste the miserable defeat and cowardice, Samuel apparates in front of him. The angel’s effect on Bucky is not precisely divine, but the sight of him – plush white wings, warm brown skin draped in his tunic and adorned in gold – stills Bucky inside and out. 

He lets his gaze linger heavily on every inch of skin, every sordid fantasy he can imagine playing out in his head when he reaches Samuel’s eyes.

Bucky is ready to be smited, or at the very least lectured. The expression looking back at him doesn’t even look mad. It doesn’t look – anything. 

Samuel’s face is terrifyingly devoid of any emotion at all. The most terrible thing in life itself might actually be that expressive face gone dead. Even if he were in a rush to get to his work, the look on Samuel’s face keeps Bucky completely still now, unable to proceed.

Something like worry begins to brew at the core of him, but that – he doesn’t…

As if he could read his thoughts, Samuel pinches his eyes in a vague confusion. 

“What are you doing?” He asks, “why are you here?”

“Up to no good,” Bucky says, wetting his bottom lip on reflex. He doesn’t expect a smile, but he’s received just enough reluctant eye rolls to keep him trying. “What’s a pretty thing like you doin’ out here by yourself?”

“I –” Sam pauses to blink those soft brown eyes in growing bewilderment. “I’m not sure.”

Bucky steps closer, a moth to the flame each and every time they’re in the same place. He’s come to enjoy the burn of being close.

“Is everything right with you, angel?”

An explosion goes off in the west wing of the mansion behind them. A loud, bright alarm comes soon after. Samuel suddenly looks shaken, but Bucky doesn’t think it has much to do with the carnage.

“I’m fine,” Samuel answers lowly. He’s holding himself strangely, and to Bucky’s horror, the image of him wavers. “I’ll handle it.”

Before Bucky can respond, Samuel straightens his posture and spreads his wings. Perfect and sparkling, unnaturally beautiful. He looks at Bucky like he’s just caught sight of him, holds him in his gaze though they both know he shouldn’t.

If Bucky didn’t know better, he’d think he was being compelled. Or possessed. The way Samuel makes him feel is distinctly beyond his control, unlike anything he’s experienced in his overly long life. 

But Bucky does know better — in some ways, at least. Samuel doesn’t have that kind of power, and he wouldn’t use it if he did. And still, he is the only thing in all of creation Bucky wants to obey.

So when he says, commands, asks Bucky to keep Natalia safe, there isn’t anything else to do but nod his head. 

Samuel smiles, tiny and heavy enough with gratitude to splinter something in Bucky’s core.

Chapter Text

“What am I doing?” Joaquín asks as he lights candles. His own voice is a grounding, necessary sound in the abandoned workshop. “Fuck, this doesn’t make any sense.”

He prays for this to work, begs the vast unknown and recently very known for this last ditch plan to work. The symbols — a name technically, scribbled in his own blood with shaking fingers — started to smoke the moment he finished them, but nothing showed up.

He’d been told that saying the words wouldn’t be enough. He’d need to reach out with everything, be ready to give anything, to summon help.

They’d all hoped it would never come to this.

Joaquín closes his eyes, brings his palms together and taps into a long forgotten part of himself, one that believed long before he ever started seeing, and focuses his desperation into a focused pleading. The syllables get easier each time he repeats them, running together into one long murmured recitation. 

The room gets colder, and on his next inhale Joaquín’s nose fills will the smell of acrid burning. He snaps his eyes open.

The thing standing in his circle is… just a guy. Pale and stony-faced in a tight leather jacket, mostly unassuming as he looks down curiously at the salt and bloody symbols around him.

He’s too late. 

Joaquín’s wasted too much time on this hail mary. His teams outside have lost, the hateful agencies that built this place figured out he was here and decided to send a single man to eliminate him.

When Joaquín pushes himself to stand, the guy looks up and smiles. It’s derisive, chastising, and his eyes slowly appraise Joaquín in a way that makes him instinctively step back.

The smell catches up to Joaquín again, and when he finally speaks, it shifts the air around them in an impossible sort of way. “You rang?” 

Joaquín laughs, a nervous, hysterical sound that only makes the thing he’s summoned smile wider.

It worked. The mission is still on.

He nods and roll his shoulders back, looks up into the smoldering grey eyes. He’s gotta be imagining the fond look passes its face.

The words of the nuns and witches flood his mind again, advice and warnings and rules that sometimes contradict.

“I need you to open that door, go in that room,” Joaquín says before he starts to waver. “I can’t — I don’t know why I can’t cross the threshold.”

“Alright,” the thing smiles, almost cheerful enough to hide the malice. “A favor for a favor?”

“I — ” Joaquín shudders, glances at the door. “But, Steve said you wouldn’t — ”

“Steve?”

The thing turns to look over his shoulder, and immediately Joaquín knows it can sense why they’re here. The whole building had been hidden from all of their scans, and the room had only been described once as a hollowing, an unnatural void. All behind a door no one could open.

The thing turns back to look at Joaquín, eyes and posture less human now as anger flashes. “What’s in there?”

“I don’t know, I can’t get in there!” Joaquín throws his hands up, past the breaking point. “I think it might be Samuel? I haven’t seen — he hasn’t shown us anything in weeks and we’ve been calling on him for — ”

The second the angel’s name leaves his lips, the demon is in motion. The salt scatters, the candle flames blow out, and Joaquín worries that he’s made a grave mistake.

It crosses the room and throws open the door with such force that it comes off the hinges and splinters apart.

The room is as decrepit and forgotten as the rest of the warehouse, but every inch of the walls and low ceiling are blanketed in runes and wards. Some painted in old, flaking red, others made of delicately shaped copper and gold, nailed to the wall. 

The facade of the smirking, smoldering man burns away as it moves across the threshold and into the room. By choice or by necessity, Joaquín can’t be sure, but what’s left and moving towards their angel now is undoubtedly demonic. It’s broad, impossible body smolders from horns to tail.

It stalks to the center of the room, where Samuel is collapsed and chained to an ornate wooden chair. Joaquín suppresses a wild, destructive urge to follow, to put himself between the two of them.

Sitting dull and glassy in his ashen face, Samuel’s eyes lift slowly from where they stare unseeing at the floor. His wings are tattered and dirty where they lay limply behind him.

The sound of its voice is so broken, so worried, so like everything Joaquín is feeling, despite that being impossible. “Samuel.”

Steve left out some details, or Joaquín forgot something. Whatever he thought he’d summon, this wasn’t it.

Samuel breaks the silence with a groan, low and broken with pain.

The demon kneels in front him and removes the restraints from his ankles, his wrists, his neck, and his wings with frenzied, half-restrained anger that Joaquín can feel in the set of his own jaw.

It gathers Samuel’s limp form in his arms, and turns back towards him to leave the room. Joaquín watches it pause, something like conflict on its features. In some distant, inaccessible part of his brain, it makes sense. The sight of the two of them like this — the vulnerable angel cradled gently in the arms of something so grotesque and destructive — it isn’t right.

Joaquín is told to close his eyes. He’s not sure he hears the command in anyway he’s ever heard anything else, but his body listens, shuts his eyes tight and braces.

He hears the splitting of wood, the crumble of concrete, and feels the drop of vertigo in his chest and stomach while his feet never leave the floor.

Joaquín opens his eyes, and they’re outside of the building, the opposite side from where his team breached hours ago.

The voice comes again, in his head and in his ear, “go.”

Joaquín does, moves as fast as he can away from the warehouse as it catches fire and crumbles apart behind him.

Chapter Text

It’s been a few days too many, but outside their Halloween decorations still adorn the front yard. Buck had taken such care to carve their pumpkins, assemble lights, Sam doesn’t have it in him to throw them away just yet. 

They will come down soon, though. Despite them both still poking at the boundaries of expectation and convention in their new lives, Sam worries about bringing unwanted attention. He tries not to let the fear get in the way, to let it occupy all his thoughts, or let it affect Buck, but he’s desperate not to be found.

This little life they’ve carved out for themselves in Brooklyn is too precious to let go. Buck is too precious for Sam to let anything happen to him.

The holiday is long over, but Buck’s taken to wearing the little plastic halo from his costume around the house. Sam can’t tell if he favors it because Sam got it – to tease him and to make a point – or because it reminds him of a life long passed. Or some other third thing. Buck’s motivations can be as unknowable as God’s, at times.

Sam can’t take the Halloween decorations down, what if that’s the end of the halo, too?

He wants to hold onto it, all of it, as long as he possibly can.

Halloween was special to them before the change, too. Though Sam hadn’t allowed himself to think about it like that at the time. They reported their movements as temptation, interference, coincidence. But after he was taken, and saved, Sam and Buck were free to tell the truth. It’d all been by choice.

That had been the beginning, the tacit way they’d orbit each other, chasing curiosity and base desire.

Sam had always been different, he knows, but now he feels remade. There’s warmth in his chest that spreads up to his cheeks and down to the tips of his toes, and he might not ever know whether that is some quirk of being this close to human, or if it is just for having Buck close. 

And the two of them are always close these days. It makes things like getting up from the couch impossible. Even when there’s a knock at the front door.

Buck claims he understands, that he’s always felt that flush of heat whenever he so much as thought of Sam.

But how can that be true when he’s the one to untangle himself from where they’re cuddling? He does it with an obvious reluctance, but it still makes Sam frown. 

“I’ll be right back, angel,” Buck says with fond exasperation.

“That’s blasphemy, you know,” he replies seriously. “I’m nobody’s angel anymore.”

“You’re always gonna be my angel,” Buck says, then kisses Sam before he can protest. 

Buck still doesn’t like humanity. It’s a deeply instinctive distaste he says he’ll ever shake, it makes him the point person for answering the door and making phone calls. Sam can’t always push past the lingering feelings of love and responsibility, nor the guilt that comes with the inability to help their suffering. 

So, Sam lets him go, but Buck turns mid-step. He kisses Sam again, with more intention, and somehow it’s still a surprise – how distracted Sam can get.

He halfheartedly pushes Buck away, giving into the laugh bubbling up from his chest. “You have to get the door, Buck.”

“Do I?” Buck asks, hand still warm on Sam’s cheek. “What if we’re indisposed? That’s believable. We’re supposed to be married, that fits the story.”

“What if it’s something important?” Sam counters. “If someone needs help?”

Buck sighs, “filthy do gooder,” but when he pushes himself up to stand, he’s smiling.

He goes for the door, about to take his touch and solidity with him, and Sam reaches out without deciding to, snags Buck’s wrist in two fingers. He turns and comes back to Sam, always. 

This need to touch him is not new. Where it was a constant itching at the back of his mind before, dampened and quieted by guilt and confusion and disbelief, the urge has spread from to the tips of his fingertips now. It sometimes feels as though Sam’s whole body is fueled by the craving. 

Buck crowds his space again, one knee pressed into the space next Sam’s hip. He takes Sam’s face into his palm, strokes a thumb along Sam’s cheekbone. An inch of contact sparkling bright and warm and settling something deep in Sam’s chest. 

Eventually, Sam remembers he has to breathe, and sucks a shaky breath into his uncooperative lungs. Their mouths come together in a soft kiss, unnecessary and sweeter for it.

Sam wants him like he’s never wanted anything, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever learn to to put a lid on it.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Buck says, laughing when they part.

Sam’s hand finds his chest, his fingers dig into the fabric of his shirt. “Promise me?”

“You have my word, Samuel.” When Buck’s hand comes up over Sam’s hand, their skin ignites with heat. “Doesn’t matter what’s at that door, I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

Buck kisses his forehead and Sam lets himself smile.

The knocking comes again, hesitant at first, but insistent. Sam’s resolved to let Buck go this time, even if he has to tuck his hands back under their blanket to keep his hands to himself.

Sam keeps his eyes on him, though, watching as Buck pulls the door open and stops still. Sam sits up a little taller, listening closely for any clues for who might be at the door.

Buck doesn’t speak, and whoever or whatever is there doesn’t make a sound.

It could be anything.

They’re not exactly popular with either of their former factions, and sometimes Sam wonders if it would just be easier or smarter to go back. But there’s a non-zero chance that destroying their life would mean destroying Buck, and more than anything Sam cannot allow any harm to come to him.

This is what makes him get up, despite the trepidation, and take his place next to Buck. Sam drapes his arm on Buck’s shoulder, draping their blanket on his back to face whatever’s come to their doorstep.

“Steve,” he says stupidly. 

Samuel hadn’t forgotten about him. Far from it, in fact. He’d thought about, and fretted over, and worried for Steve, and Joaquin, and Natasha every second since the warehouse. He survived, yes, but he feared this - one of them finding him to remind him of his betrayal, asking him to explain the abandonment, forcing him to admit his selfishness, his change.

It wouldn’t be enough to explain that he was no longer powerful, that he couldn’t help, that returning to them would have meant danger for all of them. Sam was built to save them, to guide them away from treachery and evil, not to hide away and protect his selfish heart.

Of course it’s Steve here now to reprimand him. Steve in all his conscientious fury, he would have fit so well amongst heaven’s army.

Sam stands straighter, and Buck’s arm winds around his waist to pull him close. A united front now and always.

“Hi,” he says eventually. His smile is pleased despite his obvious confusion. “I can’t believe I found you.”

“How…” Buck trails off as he surveys the quiet street behind Steve.

“How did you find us?” Sam asks, putting as much steel as he can into the words. They’ve spent so much time running. Sam knows these identities, this house, their cozy little existence is as temporary as it is lovely, but he’d hoped they’d be around for the first snow, at least.

“Torres,” Steve answers breathlessly, before clearing his throat and straightening. “Uh, Romanoff, too. They’re both kind of the experts now.”

“She defected?” Buck asks quietly.

“Yeah, she’s…” Steve rubs at the back of his neck, the corners of his mouth lifting in pride and affection. “I think she’s happy.”

Buck nods, holds Sam a little tighter, the grip just tight enough to be grounding.

“What about you, Steve?” Sam asks, can’t help himself. “Are you happy? Or, staying out of trouble, at least?”

“Yeah,” Steve nods eagerly. “I retired after… After everything.”

When Buck presses a kiss to his temple, Sam can feel his grin. “Isn’t it wild how humans can just…”

“Choose?” Sam guesses, turning to look him in the eye. Buck nods, his eyes crinkling in the corners.

Sam doubts he’ll ever figure out how to handle feeling like this. To have something – someone – so close and still want them closer. He misses the smell of cinder and ash, but the soap they share smells like clean earth and citrus, so he can’t find it in himself to complain.

It’s nothing, and it’s everything, to lean in and kiss him again. 

Buck pushes it, as he’s want to do. Give the guy an inch, and he runs with it every time. Sam forces space between them before they can really get distracted, but only barely.

“Oh.” 

Steve’s voice brings Sam back to the room. He turns to watch Steve’s face, waits for the judgment, the disapproval. He was an angel once, so righteous and sure, and now he is – the two of them are  – something else.

“So, you two…”

Sam allows himself a contented little hum, thinks yes, us two. 

Whatever comes for them now, it’s coming for the both of them. For better or for worse, they’re inseparable now.

A matching pair, a complete set. Magnets drawn together and impossible to pull apart.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Buck says, a hint of threat lacing the words, “that we’re – that you found us.”

“I won’t,” Steve says, almost breathless with the need to be believed. “I wouldn’t. I promise.”

“Better not,” Buck says, voice hard and low, a dangerous almost-growl that gives Sam just the slightest thrill.

Sam gives his shoulder a squeeze. “He won’t,” he says softly, definitively.

“So,” Buck says, some of the edge in his voice replaced with apprehension, “why’re you here, punk?”

“Well,” Steve’s smile wavers, but when turns his gaze to Sam again, it still holds that misplaced reverence. “I had to know you were okay.”

“And –?” Sam prompts gently.

“And…” Steve trails off, looking at the absence of space between him and Buck before his posture crumbles. “I’m sorry.”

Sam tilts his head, still not used to the not knowing. Humans have always been impulsive, confounding, baffling. Steve’s behavior has always been especially maddening.

“What are you sorry for?” 

Something in his chest hardens as Bucky echoes, “what did you do?”

“We did our best, but we didn’t...” Steve shakes his head. “We stopped what was going on here, on Earth, but we couldn’t stop – it’s still happening. We won the battle, but the war is still happening. Feels like we lost.”

“Oh,” Sam laughs, suddenly overwhelmed by relief. “Steve, you can’t stop it.”

“Heaven and Hell aren’t gonna quit any time soon,” Buck says with a hint of pity. “The war is kind of their reason for being.”

“Don’t apologize,” Sam tells Steve. He looks up at Buck again, really looks at him and sees everything he is and all the things he never was. Buck smiles, like they’re maybe thinking the same thing. “It doesn’t feel like we lost anything, does it?”

“Everyday we’re together feels like a win to me, angel.”