Falling in love with Steve could be easy, like falling into bed after a long day or falling out of the plane knowing your wings will catch you. But Sam won’t do it. Won’t let himself fall.
Because – for bad ideas – loving Steve is right up there with throwing himself onto an IKEA bed meant for a toddler or flying without a parachute.
Steve is just one setback away from running away to Canada, growing a beard, and whittling weird little stick figures to pass the years of his life away –away from the ugliness of a world that didn’t get better just because he laid down his life for it.
And Sam knows better than to get involved romantically with a guy like that, a guy who’s standing on a tightrope and on the other side is some kind of peace, but below—ahh, below.
Sam knows because he was that guy once. And you couldn’t hurry across the tightrope, couldn’t look down at the abyss, but most importantly, you couldn’t be distracted. And right now, romantic love would be a distraction.
And Sam’s not so keen on being a safety net for Steve, even if every sinew and muscle in his body is humming for it, bending and stretching like a flower toward the sun, so that sometimes he’s holding Steve in his arms as Steve stares blankly or shudders away from a nightmare.
But Sam is doing all of that as a friend and he’s given Steve more therapists’ cards than he can remember. And he’s gone to bars alone and flirted with some people because he can’t wait for Steve to be better, then swoop in with his declarations. He’s gotta live his own life, a life that had been plenty fine – hell, pretty good – before Steve came along.
His coworker and friend, Lynn Oh has noticed that he doesn’t smile so often.
She tucks the black silk of her hair behind her ear as she leans into his office.
“What’s the story, morning glory?” she says with a touch of irony, because this is what their other coworker Phyllis says and Lynn doesn’t really like Phyllis. Not since Phyllis blushed the color of an old peach when she found out Lynn was a lesbian. “Well, it takes all sorts,” she had babbled, shifting away, and Lynn and Sam’s eyes had met and they’d come to a sort of understanding. And so when Lynn says, “What’s the story, morning glory?” she is reaching out a hand because she thinks Sam needs it.
He shakes his head. “No story. Or – the same story.”
Lynn comes fully into the room, sits on the edge of his desk. “I’ve actually been thinking about your problem.” She smells like something floral, maybe her shampoo. Her hair is waist-length and glossy like a magazine ad. “I think your guy is probably not the only – ” here she pauses to roll her eyes, because she doesn’t like the next words she’s about to use, has explained to Sam how ridiculous this delineation is – “superhero, I don’t think he’s the only superhero dealing with a fucked up head.”
Sam studies his fingers, which surround a coffee cup gone cold. “Probably not,” he says and his voice is heavy, ponderous, full of self-pity because he’s not allowed to pity Steve and the pity’s gotta go somewhere.
“You guys see a lot of shit that even we regular vets don’t see,” she continues.
Sam shakes his head. “I’ve told you, I’m not a superhero.”
Lynn glares at him – maybe for interrupting her, maybe because she thinks he’s being self-deprecating instead of merely honest.
“I think we should try to make some sort of VA for heroes,” she says.
Sam raises his eyebrows. “What?”
Lynn leans forward and her hair swings across her back, throwing that floral scent at Sam again. It’s almost spring. The sky has shrugged off its gray mantle – looks positively blue these days with the sun growing stronger every day. Some overeager daffodils have sprung up. It’s that cheesy time of year for hope.
“You know,” Lynn says, “like a mental health thing for heroes. You can’t tell me some of these people don’t need some serious interventions. That’s not even including Bucky and Steve. I’m talking about your relative normals like that Spiderman. Who thinks that outfit is the work of a sane man?”
Sam smiles. “That’s not a bad idea, Lynn.”
She looks smug. “’Course it isn’t. It was my idea. I think funding will be a piece of cake – federal and private. The only real issue is finding enough really topnotch therapists to deal with the levels of sheer insanity you guys see. I mean, who’s qualified to talk to Steve about the whole dead-PYSCH!-not-dead-and-neither-is-your-buddy-who’s-been-brainwashed-for-murder thing?”
Sam shakes his head. “Not me, that’s for sure.”
“’Course not,” Lynn says. “Major conflict of interest aside. I was thinking you could be my guy. You know, The Oh and Wilson Institute for Heroes.”
Sam wrinkles his nose and Lynn harrumphs. “You can’t tell me you want your name to go first. It was my idea.”
Now Sam’s smiling, teasing her. “But we know who’s going to be filing all the right paperwork and charming the investors.”
Lynn tucks her hair behind her ears again. “You always were the charmer of the two of us.”
“And you’re the bruiser. You’ll knock heads together if we need to.”
Lynn grins. “Always did like getting my hands dirty.”
Sam can tell this is meant to be lewd, but he’s a little shaky on if she’s lobbing it to him or just the world at large. He’d had the tiniest of crushes on her before he met Steve and it had felt safe because she wasn’t into guys. But she could flirt with anyone and sometimes Sam gives it right back to her and sometimes he thinks maybe he shouldn’t. This was one of those maybe-I-shouldn’t moments, so he just smiles at her.
“Do you know,” Lynn says, “Fucking Phyllis asked if I do jujitsu?”
Sam shakes his head.
“And I’m all like: I’m Korean! And she says, Karate?”
Sam covers his grin with his hand.
“I swear!” Lynn says. “Is she straight outta Kansas or something? Fucking Phyllis.”
Sam cracks up, repeats, “Fucking Phyllis.”
Lynn’s cheered him up. She’s good at it and his cheeks are sore from smiling as she rants about all the little microaggressions she gets from being a very attractive, Korean lesbian. After a while, Sam throws a couple back at her: the vet who told him someone had thrown up in the waiting room because he thought Sam was a janitor. The time Fucking Phyllis told him he was a real credit to “his people.”
“In all seriousness,” Lynn says after they’ve run out of stories. “Let’s make that Institute thing happen. We should do dinner tonight, talk it over. You can invite Steve. I’ll bring Erica. She knows law.”
Erica Diaz is Lynn’s girlfriend, a divorce attorney. Sam doesn’t point out that establishing a nonprofit mental health agency is probably not in Erica’s wheelhouse. He does say, “This sounds like a double date,” to which Lynn responds with a cryptic smile.
She tosses her hair. “I’ve got work to do. Call Steve and see if he’s free.”
Steve is free, sounds less angsty than sometimes. Probably the sunshine is doing him some good, too. Sam and Steve went running this morning and when Steve lapped Sam, he’d grabbed him up and – through some mystery of super serum strength and agility – threw Sam on his back and piggy-backed him around the Mall. Even as the wind had whipped tears into his eyes, Sam had wondered why it couldn’t always be like this.
And now when he thinks about what Lynn has suggested, it doesn’t seem like such an impossibility. Maybe Steve won’t be “fixed” because who the hell can go back to the way they were before the trauma? But maybe someone could help him adjust. And then nine days out of ten could be whooping around the National Mall. Hell, Sam would take eight, maybe even six.
Because falling could be so easy if he wasn’t so scared Steve was falling into something else.
********************
In some ways, it’s exactly like a double date. Lynn is wearing a wine-colored dress with lacy, translucent bits and a long chain necklace. Her hair falls in loose curls that will not last the night. Erica is wearing a black pantsuit, but the white blouse underneath is silky and expensive. Given the restaurant, Sam had warned Steve that they should probably put in a little effort, so they’re both in suits – Sam’s is charcoal gray with a dark green tie; Steve’s jacket is navy blue with matching blue tie. They look like a picture in a magazine.
But Lynn has a yellow notepad and she’s interrogating Steve like one of those reporter women from the comic books. Asking him what he thinks would be useful for traumatized heroes, what would be a turn off, how to best get these heroes to come in to talk. Sam is impressed at the way she never makes it sound like Steve is one of the heroes who needs help. Like the sign is going to say Oh, Wilson, and Rogers. A few times, Steve glances at Sam, who’s trying to look attentive, but not too attentive – has even started up a conversation with Erica about the earrings she’s wearing, which are emerald and glint in the candlelight. He made a joke that they look like the couple – his tie, her earrings – which Erica accepts with a close-lipped smile. Lynn has warned Sam that she didn’t fall for Erica for her sense of humor. But it’s hard not to listen when Steve says that mental health debriefing after SHIELD missions should be protocol. That it should be normalized.
“What about heroes outside of SHIELD. How do we bring them in?” Lynn says. She has completely forgotten her medium rare filet mignon, which glistens beautifully.
Sam is a multi-tasker, is enjoying his rack of ribs and listening, taking some of his own mental notes.
When the waiter brings the dessert menus, Erica places a hand on Lynn’s shoulder and says, “Give Steve a break. I think he wants a sip of water.”
Steve smiles, does reach for his cup. And Sam is in the middle of setting his wine glass back on the tablecloth. Their fingers touch and – it’s juvenile as hell – but Sam feels a spark. He glances at Steve and Steve’s flushed and it’s not all from the glow of the candles. The four of them split a Death by Chocolate dessert, which reminds Erica of a case she had a few years ago, when her client and the soon-to-be ex-husband refused to agree on who should get the fondue fountain. For some reason, the husband’s lawyer thought a good way to come to an agreement was to have dinner at the house with the fondue fountain in attendance. Long story short, the couple ended up resolving all of their difference, blubbering over their strawberries and melted chocolate. Erica ends her story with a small tilt of her head, “People can still surprise you.”
Lynn lifts her glass. “To surprises.”
“To surprises,” they all echo.
It is a lovely dinner. At the end of which, Lynn shoves her notes at Sam and tells him to type up a proposal. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, laughing.
Lynn pretends to shiver. “Ooooh, Sam, I like it when you follow orders.”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Get out of here. Go make sure your girlfriend doesn’t hate me.”
Steve appears at Sam’s elbow and asks, “Who could hate you, Sam?”
Lynn wiggles her eyebrows with all the subtlety of a hippo pirouetting through an office building. “Bye, boys. See you tomorrow, Sam.”
She struts away, skinny as a coat rack, but beautiful just the same.
“She’s intense,” Steve says, brushing lint off the shoulder of Sam’s suit jacket.
“She means well.”
“I know.” Steve smiles. “You sure know how to pick ‘em.”
Sam knows what Steve isn’t saying. He knocks their shoulders together. “Aw, man, I think you picked me.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, “but then you were at the hospital, so you picked me, too.”
Sam doesn’t want to go too far down this road – falling is too damn easy – so he changes the subject. “Do you think me and Lynn are on the right track?” he asks.
“I think you’re brilliant,” Steve says, sincerity coming off him like cologne.
Sam fiddles with his phone, pretends to be looking at when the Uber car is going to arrive. “Do you think you would … go … to our … to the Oh and Wilson Institute?”
Steve’s smile is sad right down to the bone for a second – barely a second, even – before he nods. “I think Lynn made some pretty good arguments for it. Couldn’t really summon any against.”
Sam watches the little car icon inch closer.
“I went to a few of the therapists you suggested,” Steve confides, which is news to Sam. “Didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to be disappointed if it didn’t work out.”
Sam nods, reserves judgement.
“Then winter came and it’s been so dreary and it just kind of infected me.”
“SAD,” Sam murmurs.
“Hmm?”
“Seasonal affective disorder. Winter blues. I get them, too.”
“Yeah?”
Sam nods. “That, compounded with your other … ” He gestures vaguely at all of Steve.
Steve nods. “I’ll go back,” he promises. “To Dr. Bhandari. I liked him.”
Sam finally stops fiddling with his phone and looks at Steve. He doesn’t manage to say good for you or that’s great, which are the generic phrases on the tip of his tongue, because Steve is suddenly in his personal space. “Steve,” he says, but he’s got no follow-up.
“You’re the best thing that’s happened to me,” Steve says, his voice quiet and true. “And I don’t think you have any idea.”
The expressway between Sam’s brain and mouth is backed up with a lot of collisions and multi-thought pile ups. All he manages is an “ungh” sound.
“I know I’ve been mopey about Bucky and SHIELD and America and literally everything a guy can mope about, but even in the midst of all my – ” here he gestures at himself in an echo of Sam’s earlier hand wave, “all my stuff, it’s been pretty clear to me that you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
And now Sam can see how long Steve’s eyelashes are and how his eyes look gray here in the streetlight and Sam promised himself he wouldn’t fall, but Steve’s lips are on his, and maybe he’s not Steve’s safety net; maybe they’re a two-person act. Those acrobats who catch each other by the arms and swing across the abyss together, trusting each other’s strength. And that's how they’ll both make it to the other side of this.
And Sam has promised that he won't fall for Steve, but fighting gravity’s about the stupidest thing a guy could do.