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It’s Clint who first suggests that Steve get a dog.
“Get a dog, Cap,” he says, a few weeks after Steve’s moved into his new place. “Seriously. You’d sleep better at night if you did.”
Steve blinks at them, and says, “I was going to do that, actually,” because he still doesn’t really trust security systems, despite how much Tony insists on installing one. And anyway, he needs something to do, something to take care of, to help him adjust to the 21st century and keep his mind off what he's lost. “Just didn’t have the time to.”
“You’ve got some time now,” Clint points out. “Come on, I’ll take you.”
Steve doesn’t argue, and lets the archer drag him off to all the pet stores and animal shelters in his vicinity till he sees a forlorn dog, with brown and black and white fur, asleep in its cage.
“His name’s Riot,” the volunteer tells him, her brown hair tied back in a ponytail. “His previous owner abandoned him when things got rough for them. He’s usually pretty quiet—ironic, huh?—but he’s friendly and he’s always got your back.”
Riot lifts his head up to stare at Steve, then pulls himself to his feet and trots on over to sniff at this strange new intruder, and that’s when Steve knows.
“I’ll take him,” he says.
—
Everything goes pretty swimmingly, really. Steve buys dog food in large quantities and a dog bed, and Pepper coos over Riot whenever she can. Natasha’s more restrained in her interactions, but more than once Steve’s caught a glimpse of her petting the dog with a soft, sad smile that tugs at his heart.
Clint, it seems, has taken it upon himself to teach Riot as many tricks as he can, while Tony’s initial wariness gives way to reluctant affection. Bruce doesn’t drop by and pet the dog as well, mostly because he’s more than a bit allergic to dogs, but he does send Steve as many helpful articles on taking care of them as he can dig up.
Then, three weeks after Steve walks out of the animal shelter with Riot, he’s walking him on the sidewalk when the dog catches sight of a cat, and Steve’s just distracted enough that the leash slips and he’s chasing after Riot, who runs out into the road just as a sleek black car barrels down the street—
—and Steve hears that screech of tires, the thud of a body—
—and he rounds the corner just in time to see Riot’s prone body laid out and bleeding on the asphalt, and a man getting out the door of his car with wide, panicked eyes.
“Oh, god,” the man’s saying as they both rush to the dog’s side, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Get him to an animal hospital,” Steve says, trying to tamp down the fear and worry bubbling up in his chest. “Now.”
—
Serious internal bleeding. At least two leg fractures. God knows what else.
But, and here’s the important thing, there’s a chance he’ll pull through. He just needs to wait, even if it’s agonizingly hard, even if the ticks and tocks of the clock echo in his head and remind him of one more second till he finds out if he loses another one.
The man who hit Riot is sitting beside him, his shirt soaked through with blood. It’s kind of ironic, that he’s probably saved Riot’s life by driving them both at the highest speed he dared go in New York, when he’s the one who put it in danger in the first place.
And yes, Steve’s a bit mad about it. Or at least he was at first, but seeing this man bursting into the place and demanding that they save this animal somehow reminds him of Clint after the Chitauri invasion, trying his hardest to make up for all the things he did while under Loki’s control, and Natasha, doing her best to wipe her ledger clean.
He’s a soldier, he knows guilt and grief when he sees them. And this is a lot more than just a dog—this is something bigger. Deeper.
“I’m sorry,” the man says, not looking up from his hands. “For—for hitting your dog. I wasn’t thinking at the time.”
Steve can’t exactly say it’s fine, though. Not when it’s his dog. So instead, he just places a hand on the man’s back, and says, “I know. I get it.”
—
Riot lives, which is good. What surprises him, though, is how readily the man takes responsibility.
“I hit your dog,” he says, “it’s only fair I try to make it up to you somehow.”
And that, perhaps, is how Steve comes to find himself with a dog-sitter named Sam Smith moving into his house.
—
The first day, he wakes up to the smell of burning bacon, and hurries down to the kitchen to find Sam dumping the remains in the trash, swearing to himself. Riot is digging into his food bowl, pausing every few seconds to look up at his sitter and his owner.
“I didn’t think you could cook,” he remarks.
“I usually don’t,” he laughs. “I just leave it to—to my brother.” And there’s a shadow that passes over Sam’s face, makes him look fifty years older than he is.
“Your brother?”
“He’s gone,” Sam simply says, then moves to the refrigerator, his back on Steve. “Hey, I can cook another one—”
“It’s fine,” Steve says, walking forward. “Go sit down, I’ll cook.”
—
Turns out, Sam is actually pretty good at omelettes. It’s good, because Steve has never really learned how to make those, and they while away the afternoon competing over who can make the best dish a week later.
Riot certainly doesn’t complain about it, not when he’s busy stuffing his little doggy belly with as many delicious treats as he can. And Steve’s not complaining either, if it gets them both laughing and smiling, and his mind off how new everything is.
“No, you crack the egg like this—shit, now we’re going to have to clean the counter all over again.” But despite the disapproving look, Sam lets out a chuckle, and gets the towels.
Steve laughs as well, and starts wiping the yolk off the counter.
Riot limps up to them when they’re eating, and curls up around Sam’s feet and goes to sleep right then and there.
—
There are days, of course, when Sam just…withdraws into himself. And there are days when Steve just feels so overwhelmed by how different everything is that he just wants to go back to the 1940s somehow. Those days are hard, but somehow they manage to work through it.
By now, Steve knows a bit about Sam’s brother—he’d taught him a few things, and listened non-stop to AC/DC and Metallica and Black Sabbath and all those rock bands Steve absolutely refuses to admit to occasionally listening to, because he’d rather not get relentlessly teased, thank you. He’s also pretty sure, from all the hesitant pauses and stutters, that he’s the reason why Sam was distracted enough to hit Riot with his car in the first place.
He doesn’t ask.
Some things you just have to leave alone.
Instead he asks for help with the iPad his friend bought him (he carefully does not mention Tony), and within a few hours is playing Fruit Ninja with Sam while idly petting Riot.
—
Both their secrets come spilling out one fine Tuesday morning, when another alien race tries to do what the Chitauri couldn’t. Steve’s called out to defend the city, but when one of the aliens comes far too close to Steve’s house, Sam comes out of the door and pumps its torso—the only part of its body not protected by its armor—full of silver.
It’s enough to make Steve stop in his tracks, separated from the rest of the team with nothing but radio silence, since he'd thrown off the helmet an hour ago.
“Sam?” he asks, and Sam’s head snaps up to meet his gaze, and shit, he knows the guy’s smart, he can see him connecting all the dots in his head. The briefings, the days-long disappearances—he can see everything falling into place in Sam's head, it's written so clearly in his face.
“Steve?” He’s too shocked to see the alien coming up behind him, till Steve shouts, “Behind you!” and is treated to the sight of Sam whirling around, ducking the sickle hands as he’s drawing a wicked-looking knife, and thrusting it up into the alien’s belly.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were Captain America?” he demands.
“Can we save that talk for later?” he pleads as he throws his shield and knocks out another alien. “And anyway, isn’t using a sawed-off shotgun illegal?”
“It hasn’t stopped me,” Sam admits, and maybe it’s the adrenaline, but he’s managed to disarm another alien and stab them through the armor with their own weapon, the knife now hidden in his jacket.
Then they both see the herd of black-eyed people—yes, seriously, a bunch of people with completely black eyes—charging at them, and Steve’s shield comes back just in time to knock out one of them.
“Great,” Sam groans. “Demons and aliens.”
“What?”
“You do not want to know.” He takes the knife out again, looking like quite the sight with a strange sickle weapon in one hand and a wicked knife in the other. “Guess we both owe each other some explanations, huh?”
Steve nods. “I guess so,” he says, then gets back into the battle.
—
So Sam Winchester is a dead serial killer, a convicted felon, and a Stanford dropout, and now he’s also a demon hunter and a grislier version of a Ghostbuster. Steve should know, Tony and Clint practically forced him to watch those movies after they'd learned he hadn't done so first thing after thawing from the ice.
Sam Smith, however, is just a guy. A dog-sitter who happens to be a broken soldier, who’s been fighting a war that nobody knows about for the past few years, and who just wants to lay his head down and rest. Those, Steve knows about. He's been where Sam is.
So, after cleanup efforts and enough press conferences to make his head spin, it's a bit of a shock when Steve comes home to find Sam packing his bags.
“Going somewhere?” he asks.
Sam shrugs. “Anywhere,” he says. “I mean, you’re probably just going to kick me out.”
“Why would I?” Steve crosses the room, takes the Jack Kerouac book out of Sam’s hands and places it on the nearest table. “You’re still my friend. And I’m a soldier, I know something about wanting to go home.”
“After what happened?”
“Why not?” He smiles. “We’ll make it work.”
And Sam smiles, the rare one that lights his face up, then takes out the trashy romance novel Steve knows he’s been working through over the past few days. “I guess so.”
—
fin