This was unexpectedly cathartic and lovely, thank you for the ask! Roots, Sam Wilson/Reader, 1036 words, light angst, fluff, established relationship. edit: LMAO you found me a gif with dishes before reading this!?
MCU MASTERLIST | STEVE ROGERS | BUCKY BARNES
ROOTS
Sam’s exhausted. Running for your life on uneven, loose soil is as much hell on a man’s psyche as it is on the knees. His back aches from the uneven weight of his damaged wing apparatus, and the only things going for him right now are the gloves that protect him from the jagged edge of the broken wing he’s carrying and the fact that the enemy hasn’t spotted him yet.
He wonders if they found the helicopter he downed before getting hit.
He knows he’ll be rescued sometime, but that’ll be hours yet. The burning ache in his shin turns sharp in an instant and Sam hunches over, dropping the jagged wing onto his own toes as he hisses in pain. There are sounds now, a bright light, confusion, even fear--
With a ragged breath, Sam wakes up, hand reaching for the very real pain in his leg only to get his fingers bonked by a plastic toy.
“Mom said to wake you up,” AJ says, pushing his glasses up his nose with the action figure in his other hand.
“Great,” Sam groans. “Where’s your brother?” AJ shrugs the shrug of a child doing things a grown man would be verbally slain for, and lifts the first action figure as if to strike Sam’s leg with it again.
Sam snatches it just in time, turning the thing over to see that it’s an army guy, not quite a GI Joe but close. His heart clenches in his chest. To play off the reaction, he gets up and sets the figure on a high shelf, giving his nephew a hard glare followed by a more affectionate nod for the boy to head out of the room.
With a sigh, he rolls his shoulders to get out the kinks from his nap and heads into the kitchen to get some fluids, maybe flush out that nightmare. They’ve been happening more frequently, fed by a bone-deep fear of leaving someone behind, of being left.
“Hey, babe. You knock out some of that jet lag?” Your smile is warm and welcoming, even in his sister’s kitchen, and Sam can already feel the seeds of worry start to drain away.
“Maybe if my own flesh and blood hadn’t betrayed me,” he answers--but you can sense something. “I’m good. Really,” he tells you, and your narrowed look of affectionate suspicion stirs a sheepish grin. “I had another one. I’m handling it.”
You nod soberly, reaching out to set a hand over his heart. “Those roots are tenacious. We’ll get ‘em choked out and grind down the stump.”
“You are the most violent amateur gardene--” he stops when your hand clenches into a claw and you start pulling him toward you, shirt-first. “Arborist. I know,” he corrects quickly.
“Yes, well.” Now that he’s inches away, you brush away the wrinkles in the fabric. “A girl can either bring the violence of her job into her hobby or bring her hobby to her violent job. And I don’t think SHIELD wants me to plant a tree in the Atrium.”
His all-too-vivid dream strikes Sam sideways and he’s once again an adrift fugitive in a war zone, grounded with no easy escape. He squeezes his eyes shut, hating the way his trauma intrudes on these moments with you. When he opens his mouth to say so, your gentle hand sneaks up to his neck, to his cheek.
“Don’t-- or go ahead and say it, if you need to,” you tell him quietly. “Just know this isn’t the same thing, okay? You’re a soldier, and your pain isn’t a hobby. You don’t dwell on it for fun, and I know that. I’m here for you, warts and all.”
You make a little noise at the end of that, and Sam opens his eyes to see your face scrunched up in regret.
“Oh, so I’ve got warts now? I see how it is. Gotta drag your perfect man down from that pedestal somehow,” he teases--but even as he says this, Sam’s pressing a grateful hand against yours at his cheek, sliding your hand up and around, a hint to his next course of action.
As always, you’re perfectly in sync, and you pull his head down for a kiss that singes his insides as much as the first one he’d earned from you months ago. Sam chases that feeling, crowding you against the counter, gripping your hip with a sure hand, his fingertips seeking the gap between your shirt and waistband. Your warm skin is sunlight, and your little pleased gasp melts his blood, sending healing tendrils of pleasure all over his body. He tastes you over and over, emboldened by your own fiery response. On the flat space behind you, something falls over, but all he needs is you, right here, in this moment.
“In my kitchen? Really?” Sarah’s outraged voice strikes the two of you apart like lightning through a solid tree. Sam reaches out and snags your hand before turning toward his sister, eyebrows stretching skyward.
“You’re the one sending your son to wake my ass up. You get what you get!”
Her arms folded at her chest, Sarah hmphs, then nods toward the dishes drying on the rack beside the sink. “Well, if you like the kitchen so much…” she dangles.
Sam twists his lips to the side, but he squeezes your hand before moving to do as he’s asked. He slides some plates into their places in the cupboard before asking, “You want to grab the cups?” --but when he turns around, he sees you following Sarah outside with a bowl of potato salad from the fridge. Sam leans over to watch your ass in those pants he loves so much, and something inside him shifts.
Normalcy. The ground under your feet when you step out onto the back yard is sold, familiar. The slightly-crooked picnic bench is cracked and worn from countless happy gatherings. Years ago he’d scratched his nephews’ birthdates in the thick wood underneath, something Sarah probably doesn’t even know about. The tree branches above sway in the warm summer wind, and somewhere upstairs, his wingsuit is whole and ready for his next mission.
737805388978831360 Yeah same. Frankly anyone who talks ANYTHING about exterminating or getting rid of all peoples in a population, be it Russians, Palestinians, literally ANY population, gets a hard block from me and so do their mutuals and other people who interact with their posts. How ghoulish does someone need to be to spread that kind of talk on a fandom website.
Posting since this is a response to this previous ask.
