Logs:More Sensible

More Sensible
Dramatis Personae Sam, Steve
In Absentia	2021-07-19 "Hope this means you'll look first, leap second, next time, though."
Location <PRV> Sam and Steve's Apartment - Harlem
This is a third-story walkup in an aging historic building which, while not entirely crumbling, has a certain worn and shabby look, its plumbing and fixtures often in need of repair. The apartment has two small bedrooms, but makes up for it with capacious common areas. A single long space serves as living room and dining room combined, is semi-open to the kitchen, and has a surprisingly large bathroom with an antique claw-footed tub. Tall, drafty windows let out onto the fire escape from the living room and both bedrooms, and let in excellent light from the southern exposure. The sleek art deco motif that runs through the living room furniture, while not strictly matching, has clearly been worked to coordinate. The dining set, coffee and end tables have been crafted with complementary geometric patterning, ebony accents providing a dark contrast to the warmer swirls of maple burl that feature most prominently. The sofa, love seat, and chair fill out the rest of the living room, a matching set upholstered in plush burgundy. The numerous lamps do not all match, some of them clearly temporary supplement for the inadequate overhead lighting. It's been a long, muggy day, but with evening coming on it has grown tolerably cool at last. In here it's pleasant enough now, the record player piping Frank Sinatra's "Moon River". Steve is sitting by the open window, a cold beer in one hand and Daniel Immerwahr's How to Hide an Empire in the other. Despite the failing light, he hasn't bothered to switch on the lamp, only keeps rotating the angle at which he holds the page towards the slanting sun. He's wearing a red t-shirt with bold black text that reads, "Never Fear" in flowing script and "Brooklyn's Here!" in blackletter, and comfortable faded blue jeans. Sam's door has been closed most of the day, not quite shutting out the various voices that come with one video call after another, but it opens now. He's in a burgundy camp collar shirt, cream-colored linen trousers, and has been heading for the kitchen but stops to peer, eyebrows raised, at Steve's book gymnastics. His mouth twitches, head shaking in bemusement as he continues on his way, turning on the kitchen light, at least, as he fetches himself a beer. "You having a feud with the lamps?" Steve looks up when Sam emerges, and seems about ready to go back to reading when the question brings him up short. His brows furrow. "Feud?" He glances to the articulated reading lamp very helpfully situated beside the armchair he's sitting in. Then down at this book, the page in shadow now that he isn't angling it toward the light. "Oh, no, I just. Was absorbed." He does not turn the lamp on. "Should take a break for supper, anyway. Say, you want Chinese?" He sets the book aside as he gets up, though the beer comes with him when he drifts to lean on the kitchen counter. "Though really, I'm not picky. My treat." "Nah, I think today's a pizza kinda day." Sam cracks the beer open, leaning back against the counter. "Been hankering after that --" His fingers snap together. "Shit, what's that place puts the za'atar on it. Didn't think it'd work but that stuff's fantastic." "Oh, wait, I know the place -- gives all their pies the most nonsense nicknames." Steve squints, his eyes focusing on something just past the counter he's staring at. "Slice of Life?" He's digging his phone from a pocket to confirm this before sliding passing the menu to Sam. "You know I ah, don't think I actually thanked you. For dragging my ass out of the fire last week." He pauses, hesitant, though not for long. "Feels real inadequate, but thank you." Sam is looking down at the menu already, thumbing through it assessingly. He glances up briefly at Steve, back down at the phone. Takes another sip of beer. "Thank you's a start." His shrug is small as he passes the phone back. "What was I gonna do, leave you sitting in some tinpot dictator's -- swank-ass dungeon?" Steve adds not one, not two, but three pies to their order. "Didn't think you'd be happy with that situation. Just also didn't think..." He frowns, setting his phone down. "Didn't think you'd sprout wings and swoop to the rescue, but then. I never asked, did I? What exactly you did, when you were in." Sam leans down against the counter, folding both his hands around his bottle. His brows hike up, his eyes leveling on Steve. "Lotta things you never ask," he allows, mild. His finger taps against the side of the beer bottle. "Guess it just means I'm still full of surprises." "Yeah. Kinda realizing that." Steve sips his beer and stares out the window at the sky ablaze with sunset. "Was that -- were you with Air Force R&D? Can't imagine Stark just chucked some super-advanced personal flight device at you and said 'figure it out'." His brows furrow, deep. "Ok, I can imagine he'd do that, but you seemed like you knew what you were doing." "Done it a thousand times." Sam's mouth twitches to one side. "Though where Stark got the pull to drag that thing out of wherever they mothballed it, Ion know." His head shakes, bottle rotating slowly between his hands. "Riley and I, they had us testing out the EXO-7s. Then after a while, was just our standard kit. Think 'tween the cost of the suit and the hours in training the program wasn't going nowhere but no denying it's useful." His smile is quick, small. "If you know what you're doing." "Stark has more money than God," Steve declares, confident and blasé. "That's its own kind of superpower." He glances aside at Sam, eyebrows slightly lifted. "Loose end of an expensive experimental program? Sounds familiar. You don't have a flashy costume to go with it, do you?" Perhaps he had meant the question in just, but now the quirk of his brow is uncertain. "So -- don't need a runway or even flat ground, fly as low as you need, and quiet to boot, no radar profile to speak of. Guessing they didn't just have you running disaster relief." "Yeah, sure, star-spangled too and all. Can't you just picture Uncle Sam leapin' to make a black kid from Harlem into their next icon?" Sam's smile here is broader, bright with amusement. It fades with Steve's speculation. "We were in pararescue --" He takes a longer swig from his bottle, his eyes drifting to the window. "-- and wherever else we were needed." His thumb flicks at a bead of condensation on the side of the bottle. "Your team, y'all went for quick and quiet too, yeah?" Steve nods soberly. "Guardian angels. Slightly more literal than average." He gaze dips to the floor. "Yeah. Less sweeping to the rescue than yours, I imagine. Most of what we did was sabotage, cutting off supply lines, pin-point strikes. We'd be in enemy territory for days on end, weeks sometimes." He looks back out at the blazing sky. "There was a bit of the 'wherever else needed'. Gosh, the kinds of nonsense risks we took..." His head shakes, and he glances aside at Sam. "Warfare is different now, or so I keep hearing, but I'm less and less sure of that all the time. I think what it does to folks is the same." Sam's brows lift at the mention of nonsense risks, but he holds his tongue. Takes a sip of beer, maybe to aid in holding his tongue. "Dunno how robust y'all's counseling even was then but I 'spect if I swapped notes with a chaplain, those days, we'd be hearing a lot of the same stories. Some things don't change. Wish they did." "Didn't have any counselors. No chaplain of our own, either." Steve tips his bottle at Sam. "Could've used a fella like you in the air and in the bunker, though I suppose you might've been too sensible to join us. Or maybe we'd've been more sensible." His shrug is very small and a little tight. "Was it hard? Putting on the wings again. I don't mean technically, though I'm sure it's not quite like riding a bike. Just..." His free hand turns palm up. "I don't know why you got out, but I'm not so oblivious I can't tell you came away hurt, one way or another. Doesn't mean you haven't got it in you, but I doubt you were planning or expecting...that. Ever, probably." "Hard," Sam echoes, slow and careful. Sitting with the word a while, though by the time it settles in all it's gotten out of him is a heavy exhalation. "What would have been harder is seeing another friend die. Knowing I might could've done something about it, this time. That's hard. Getting back into the suit's, that's just painful. Pain is easy." Steve does not respond immediately, though his silence is more thoughtful than anything else. "This time," he echoes softly, eyes far away for a moment. "I think about that a lot. Guess it's the height of ego I didn't consider how other folks might, too. You're probably not the only one who would have swept to my rescue, given the choice." He breathes out, slow. Takes another swig of his beer. "I'm sorry I put you in that position. To have to choose pain." His expression does something complicated. "Even if it was an easy choice. You got out, shouldn't have to get back in -- however weird and sideways -- on account of your friend being a thoughtless knucklehead." "Please. I ain't back in. Putting those wings on to do the right thing is a whole different feeling than putting them on to be at the USAF's beck and call." Sam tips the neck of his bottle toward Steve, and though there's a note of amusement in his tone his expression is serious. "Hope this means you'll look first, leap second, next time, though." "That's kind of how I felt about all this to begin with. A chance to fight for what's right, the way I know best, without being a part of the war machine. Got a lot of re-thinking to do, that's for sure." Steve looks down at the floor as though abashed. "Appreciate the vote of confidence about there being a next time. I'll look first --" A small, rueful smile tugs at the corner of his mouth when he glances aside at Sam. "-- and look for backup from someone more sensible than me."