Summary - Sam is having one of those nights so you take him to your secret happy spot within the compound.
Pairing - Sam Wilson x Reader
Warnings - None that I can think of.
A/N - Short but sweet. written for Samtember for the “Riley” prompt @samwilsonfest
It’s dark. The complicated kind, the kind that can go one of two ways, coax secret smiles and tentative touches or ragged breaths and haunted eyes. Neither are the kind you want, and so you sit idly in the kitchen of the Avengers compound, wishing for the first and avoiding the second. The coffee in your mug is cold, barely touched, sitting abandoned on the table beside your head.
Footsteps, quick but quiet, interrupt your thoughts about nothing and you sit up quick enough to forget about the mug and send it crashing to the floor in a wave, a sad brown sea of forgotten.
Sam halts in front of you, wide eyed and wary, his muscles rigid underneath his shirt pulled tight across his chest. Oh, what a chest. “Shit. You scared me.” He says it like an accusation, and then bends to pick up the pieces of your broken mug as you slide off the table and hope that the ground will give way and let you be swallowed up if only to avoid his eyes.
“Sorry, Sam.” You say automatically, and then add, “In fairness, you scared the shit out of me, too.” You mop up the coffee with your sweater, stripped from you in a less than graceful motion and still, ignore Sam’s eyes.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m sorry, too.” He laughs low, stands with the pieces and throws them in the trash, you watch wistfully and half heartedly wish to be one of those pieces, anything to avoid Sam’s scrutiny in the dead of night, “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up.”
“Oh, you know me. Anything for the last slice of Bruce’s apple pie.” You stand, attempt to scoot past him to wring your sweater in the sink and brush up against that oh so lovely chest of his, feel the weight of your fingertips just aching to touch.
“Any reason why you were lying on the table like an animal?” He asks, amusement evident in his tone and so you look, finally, at his eyes and allow yourself a small smile, a tiny moment of self indulgence to get lost in the decedent walnut depths and find yourself somewhere along the edge of his lips.
“I heard it’s good for posture.” You blink away your stares, pray that none of that want shows on your face, “Why are you up?”
His face crumples, not into a feeling but out of one, it crumples into a blank dust and you wonder if you can catch the particles in your hands, if you can mould it back to that smile he had just for you. “Couldn’t sleep.” Is all he says and you know instantly that he’s having the second kind of darkness, forcibly stopping your arms from reaching for him when you see the sadness that hides in his eyes.
“Riley?” You whisper it, like a knifed secret and he nods, once, the tiniest dip of his chin and you wonder how much it cost him to admit even that. You have no words to offer him, no wisdom or advice as you sit here avoiding your own traumas and so you grasp at something, anything, that might chase away the shadows behind his eyes. Finally, you consider it, your secret and it takes less than a second to know that Sam is worth the reveal of it. “Wanna come somewhere with me?”
“Sure.” Even he seems surprised when he agrees so readily, takes a step toward you, almost eager and you fight the urge to do the same, to finally find out what it would be like to have that marble-solid body pressed against yours. You mentally scold yourself for the constant turn of your thoughts, that even when he’s a little lost, you still find the time to admire.
You take his hand, a bold move your heart mutters, and lead him to the stairs, up and up and up you both go in the quiet echo, surrounded only by the memories and the glaring fluorescent lights. He lets you lead him without question, even when you pass the communal floors, still says nothing when the last floor dies away and the stairs continue and the cool air begins to spill in beside you. You thrust against the final door, using all your bodyweight to nudge it open and let the breeze dance along your skin.
Sam follows you out onto the empty rooftop, looks around in confusion, “I had no idea this was here.”
“Yeah, nobody does, for some reason.” You walk to your spot, affectionately named but marked only by the memories in your eyes, “I come here to get away. Never seen anyone else up here.”
You wonder if he’ll hear what you say without saying, how you’ve never, not once brought anyone here and yet here he is, brought on the basis of bad dreams. He looks at you and you think he just might.
You sit down on the hard concrete and pat the spot beside you, slip your shoes off and wait until he sits with you, until his body heat bleeds into yours and then lay back. In an instant, the worries disappear, you feel weightless, the sky above you carries it all off and lets you float in the air in between the stars. It’s always like this for you, the sky and the stars, and sight of them here so unhindered by city lights and tall buildings, a solar dusted blanket that wraps around you each night.
“Oh, wow. That’s a view, right there.” He sounds how you feel, and you try not to notice his arm pressed along yours, or the way he smells like hopefulness.
“You see that one there,” You point, try to adjust your angle for him, “That’s Polaris. The North Star.”
“I see it.” He keeps his voice low like he feels the weight of the stars like you do.
“And that there, if you follow it, is the Little Dipper. And there is Cassiopia.” You whisper into the night, watch the breeze carry away your words and the night swallow up your ghosts.
“I didn’t know you knew so much about stars.” He turns to look at you, his now russet eyes that look a little less sad than before, reflecting all that quiet endurance. You grin before you can stop it, the relief at having helped even just a little is simply too large and it overwhelms the rest. There’s just something about the sky up here, with all those stars and worlds and lifetimes in view that makes you a little calmer. Clearly, it was doing the same for Sam.
“I dabble.” You blink at him, refusing to be the one to look away from that stare, “There’s something a little humbling about the sky, dontcha think?”
He looks away and up to the sky, the stars reflect in his eyes like the night sky itself and you know then that you’ll never only see the sky again. Forever it’ll be, the sky and Sam. You hate how much you love it.
He makes a noise of agreement and then, softly, he lets his fingers tangle with yours in that narrow space between you. Your heart leaps straight from your chest and dances among the stars. The breeze picks up, perhaps in response to your heart rate, and you shiver, a little from his touch and a little from the cool air, belatedly remember that your sweater was now a soggy heap in the sink and sigh.
“Your cold.” His fingertips disappear and you ache at the loss and wonder if the moment is over now, if he’ll make you go inside but he simply slips his arm around you, and pulls you tight to him, letting your head rest in the crook of his shoulder, “Here, let me help.”
If there’s a heaven, you think, it’s pretty damn close to this. Or perhaps, it’s less heaven and more purgatory since you both love it, and want more. Ache to be closer than even this.
It’s hours, or minutes, later when the sky is a little less dark and a little more wakeful that he speaks, “Can I ask you something?”
“Hmm? Yeah, of course.” You say, distractedly, caught between the stars and his heartbeat and never wanting to return.
“Why did you take off your shoes?” The question startles a laugh out of you, the unexpected pop to a dazed bubble.
“Oh Sam,” You smile, tilt your head to look at him better, “How else will the stars get in?”
He looks at you in buttery confusion, and then suddenly, like he’s never seen you before, or is seeing you anew. There’s stardust in his eyes and it’s spilling into yours, his moon-washed smile lights up the sky with his resilience and promise.
“Sam…” You begin, and find the word itself swallowed by his lips, gentle against yours with the stars inbetween. He kisses you, all the weight of the sky wrapped up in it and you kiss him back just the same. All the months and weeks of restraint come loose in a tidal wave of want, and need, and love. It lasts a lifetime in a minute, so many unsaids and maybes passed between your lips and his.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a while.” He sighs, forehead pressed against yours like he can’t bare to be apart now that he’s been this close. You know the feeling, fingers gripping his shirt so that the moon can’t carry you away when it leaves.
Still, the admission surprises you, having spent so long hiding your own feelings for fear of rejection, “You have?”
“You are hilariously oblivious, you know that?” He kisses away the protest, kisses you and shows you how much he’s been wanting it, you, and you feel every word of it written on your lips. Even the stars don’t compare. “Ever since I walked in on you trying to sneak that goat into Stark Tower.”
“Sam…” You laugh, both at the memory and of when, “That’s the day we met.”
He smiles, wisps of red and orange from the rising sun dance along his skin, his eyes alight with the fire from within, “Oh, I know.”
Your heart lifts with the sun, a painted star on your soul that begins the new day, your new day. When you kiss him again, in answer to a question that was never asked, you feel the glow on your face and within your chest together, and are reminded, tenderly, that the sun is also a star.
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