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They were sitting in bed beside each other; Steve was reading a novel on his Kindle and Sam was browsing the news on his phone, when it vibrated, showing a text from his sister Sarah with a reminder.
“Hey,” Sam said, to get his boyfriend’s attention, “It’s Sarah and Karl’s fifteenth anniversary in two weeks. I told them that we would watch Nicky and Rachel for the weekend, if that’s okay with you.”
“Of course,” Steve answered, a big smile on his face. Sam knew that Steve loved his nieces, but he had still wanted to make it clear that this was their house now and that Steve had a choice in the matter.
Smiling back, Sam leaned in and gave his boyfriend a gentle kiss before turning back to his phone and sending a message to his sister in response. He figured they would all have a good time and there was nothing to worry about.
He was very, very wrong.
The next morning, Steve was bustling around the kitchen making omelets and coffee for breakfast. Sam was getting dressed to go lead a support group at the V.A. While it was hard to commit to a regular schedule now that he was officially an Avenger, he did make a point to come whenever he could. His fellow vets needed all the support they could get.
Sam had walked into the room, finishing the buttons on his dress shirt, while Steve poured cups of coffee when the first question came.
“Hey, what do your nieces like to eat for breakfast?” Steve asked calmly, adding sugar to Sam’s cup.
“We always make pancakes together,” Sam answered automatically, taking a seat, before the question gave him pause. “Why do you ask?”
Steve shrugged, bringing their cups over to the table. “Just wondering what groceries we should have for when they’re here.”
Reaching out for his cup, Sam smiled his thanks at his boyfriend. “Nothing too fancy. Mac and cheese, that kinda stuff. We can go grocery shopping a couple days before they come.”
“Okay,” Steve replied, handing over Sam’s breakfast plate and then they were both digging into their omelets and the discussion was abandoned.
“What do Nicky and Rachel do for fun?” Steve asked two days later, as they jogged slowly together. A lot of times they went separately, so Steve could race along at his own superhuman speed but they had decided to go together and Steve had slowed down to keep pace with Sam.
Sam narrowed his eyes. “You’ve met them before…” he said, not really understanding the question.
Steve shrugged. “Yeah, but mostly during family gatherings. What do you do when they come for the weekend?”
Sam took a moment to think about it. “All sorts of things. Sometimes we go out to a museum, or to get ice cream, things like that. Sometimes we stay in, watch a movie and eat popcorn. They like to ask me to paint their fingernails,” he finished with a smile.
“I don’t know how to paint fingernails,” Steve said, looking entirely too serious for such an inane statement. Sam was about to ask him more about that when his phone rings. It’s a call he can’t ignore and the moment was forgotten.
When Steve had gone to the store for “just a couple things” the next day, Sam was not prepared for the bag of groceries to not only contain the orange juice and paper towels they needed, but a couple bottles of brightly colored nail polish as well.
As Steve set it on the counter, Sam’s eyes narrowed in confusion before the previous day’s conversation came back to him.
“For Nicky and Rachel?” he asked. Steve nodded sheepishly.
“That’s sweet of you,” Sam continued, pressing a kiss to his boyfriend’s cheek. “I think the ones I keep in the spare bathroom are almost empty. They’ll love these.”
Sam stepped back, observing that the sheepish look still hadn’t left Steve’s face.
“What?”
“I don’t know how to paint nails,” Steve blushed.
“It’s not that hard…” Sam started, but realized that probably wasn’t helpful. “Do you want me to teach you?”
Steve’s face lit up.
Sam’s left hand was resting on the table, fingers spread wide as Steve leaned forward in upmost concentration, spreading careful brushstrokes of pastel pink polish over Sam’s nails. He resisted the urge to take a picture.
“You seem awfully worried,” Sam said, “About Nicole and Rachel coming to visit. Is something bothering you?”
Steve shrugged, his eyes still steadfast on Sam’s fingernails. “I just want your family to like me.”
“They do like you,” Sam replied honestly. “You’ve met them lots of times. Sarah approves of you and approval from my sister isn’t easy to get. Besides, we’re babysitting for free so she can enjoy her anniversary. She is not going to have any complaints about that.”
“I’ve just…never really had to watch kids before,” Steve said, stopping his work to look into Sam’s eyes. “I was an only child and never had to babysit for anyone. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
There was tightness in Sam’s chest at the look of fear in his boyfriend’s eyes. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, rubbing Steve’s arm gently with his right hand. “I’ll be right here with you the whole time. They’re sweet girls and there’s never any problem.”
Steve nodded, but Sam could see that he hadn’t relaxed.
“Would you prefer not to? I can call Sarah and cancel if it’s really going to upset you…” Sam said, as soothingly as he could, when Steve interrupted him.
“No! You can’t do that!”
“Why not?” Sam frowned.
“You said yourself that this is important to her, that it’s her fifteenth anniversary. We can’t just cancel on her like that. She’d really hate me.” Now Steve just looked guilty.
“I wouldn’t tell her why,” Sam reassured him. “I just don’t want you to feel pressured into something that makes you feel uncomfortable.”
“I can do this,” Steve said, as if trying to convince both of them. “I’ve survived tougher things that a weekend of babysitting.”
“That’s right,” Sam replied with a smirk, “Can’t have Captain America run screaming at the thought of a couple of children.”
“Right,” Steve replied, smiling back. “Now. Back to mastering nail polish.”
They’re watching a nature documentary on Saturday night. Sam is curled up against Steve’s side and only half paying attention to the migration patterns of the majestic elk and instead contemplating taking Steve to bed and riding him when-
“What kinds of movies do you watch with Rachel and Nicky?”
Ah. They were back to that. Sam rubbed Steve’s thigh reassuringly. “Usually we just find something on Netflix.”
Steve made a small grunt that made it sound like Sam’s answer wasn’t reassuring enough.
“They always seem to find something they like,” Sam continued.
Silence.
“Or we could go to the store and pick out a DVD for them,” Sam tried again. “They like princess movies.”
Steve smiled.
Sam was trying his best to reassure his nervous boyfriend, he really was, but honestly this was getting out of control. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up a supportive and understanding attitude.
He had come out of the bathroom to find Steve on his laptop, browsing a wiki-how article on changing diapers.
“….”
Steve flushed.
“Nicole and Rachel are eight and TEN.”
“I just realized this was something I had never learned how to do!”
And now it was late Tuesday night and Sam was being shaken awake.
“Sam, Sam, I just had a bad dream,” Steve said, his voice sleepy and on-edge.
Confused, Sam blinked his eyes and tried to wake up to understand what was going on.
“I had a dream there was an emergency with the girls and…wait, do you know CPR Sam?”
Sam took a deep breath. Along with a litany of expletives, Sam’s brain filled with a very long-winded rant that included, ‘Does the word pararescue mean nothing to you?’ and ‘Do you know how many years of training I had to do?’ The time he and Riley had performed chest compressions while mid-flight, hundreds of feet the air, flashed into his mind.
“Yes Steve,” he said, his voice the very picture of calm. “I know CPR.”
“Oh. Good,” Steve said groggily, lying himself back down to sleep.
Sam resisted the urge to throttle him.
Rhodey’s voice came in over the comms.
“Romanoff and Vision are handling civilian evacuation. I’m coming in from the north. Falcon, come in from the west. Rogers, you take the east and we’ll cut it off before it reaches main street.”
“Copy that,” Sam said, following the orders, waiting for their target to come into his sight.
“Sam,” Steve’s voice came through his channel, but it was a soft one he used at home, not the commanding voice that usually came out when he put on his uniform.
“Steve?” he asked, worried if his boyfriend was hurt or in trouble.
“What if they don’t like me?”
“What if….”
It took Sam a minute to catch on to his meeting, considering his focus had solely been on the situation they were facing.
“STEVEN GRANT ROGERS,” he yelled, when he finally realized Steve was once again referring to his nieces.
The target came into his sights and he aimed himself toward it, pushing all his frustration into delivering a flying kick toward its side.
“We are on COMMS WITH OUR TEAMMATES,” he continued, “We are fighting a GIANT ROBOT,” he added, swooping around to attack it again. “Now is NOT THE TIME.”
“Uh oh, trouble in paradise?” he could hear Natasha’s smirk from her tone alone.
Since Steve hadn’t reached the target yet and Sam couldn’t yell at him in person, he replied, firing a few rounds into the robot while doing so.
“Paradise?? Not lately! I have had it up to…”
Something made impact with the robot, making a sizeable dent in its back, and Sam saw it was the shield as it rebounded into Steve’s hand. Sam glared down at him.
“That bad, huh?” Steve said sheepishly, sans communicator.
Sam frowned at him, but also didn’t continue giving their teammates an earful of their personal problems.
“We’re talking about this later,” he said. Steve nodded.
“Well that was awkward,” Rhodey said, appearing beside them,. “How about we finish this thing off?”
That evening, when the world was down one evil destructive robot, Sam and Steve sat in their living room and talked. Sam was supportive, but he also gave Steve a piece of his mind. It seemed to work, because afterward at the store, when they were buying pancake mix, popcorn and a copy of Moana, Steve looped his arm around Sam’s shoulders and smiled genuinely the whole time.
Surprising, the weekend went by without a hitch. Steve added chocolate chips to their pancakes in the morning, much to the girls delight, and they just smiled and told him their nail polish looked great, even when some of it had gotten on their fingers too. The four of them spent hours in the natural history Smithsonian and sang along together to How Far I’ll Go in front of the TV and ate popcorn that night. In what felt like no time at all, it was Sunday evening and Sarah and Karl were picking the girls up. As everyone was hugging and kissing goodbye, Nicky and Rachel were both asking when they could come back. Steve was beaming.
“That was great,” Steve said, after they had gone back inside and began cleaning up, stripping the sheets in the guest room and vacuuming under the sofa, in case of any stray popcorn kernels. Sam was wrapping up the cord of the vacuum to put it away, when Steve came up behind him, wrapping his arms around him.
“I love you,” Steve said genuinely. Sam stood up and turned around, enjoying the comfort of his boyfriend’s embrace.
“Have you ever thought of having kids?” Steve asked, sounding contemplative.
“You want kids now?” Sam said, backing up to look Steve in the eyes. Steve looked guilty.
“First let me say, would you be a great dad? Yes. If you’re thinking we should raise kids together? Hell no.”
Steve’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
“You panicked for TWO WEEKS at the thought of watching kids for TWO DAYS. Can you imagine how much you’d panic at having one of our own? HELL. NO.”
Steve pouted.
(Three years later, Sam eventually changes his mind.)