stardustly | general open post

Frustration pricked at Steve as he scribbled notes and experiences down within the file folder. The evasion he expected but he never anticipated so much destruction along the way. Did Bucky really believe he could take down and make a dent in hydra by doing all of this? If only the man allowed for them to help with the mission and not just make them chase him all over the place. He had to know Steve never gave up on anything, especially not with the ones he cared about so deeply. A short list of people, honestly, but he would burn the world down for any of them.

Speaking of, his eyes looked up as a smile stretched out across his face. "Hey Sammy," he responded but the smile dimmed at the words. Nothing good ever came from such words being said. Had Sam finally reached his breaking point and wanted to go back home? Steve couldn't join him, couldn't give up on his last strand of family.

"Sure," he added, setting the file aside, "What's wrong?" Did Sam plan on ending things with him? Had he finally reached the limit of too much? He always worried about that limit being hit.

"Nothing's wrong," Sam said quickly. Not technically, anyway. "Don't think I'm leaving you or anything." It would take more than a prolonged wild goose chase across Europe to drive Sam away, even if fighting HYDRA was involved. As long as Steve hunted for Bucky, Sam would be right there by his side. Someone needed to be responsible, after all.

"I just gotta tell you something," he continued, "and it's gonna be kind of hard to believe. But just know that I don't have any reason to lie to you or make things up." And if he was going to lie to Steve, he would have at least picked something he'd believe.

"You know werewolves?" he said slowly. There really wasn't any way to beat around the bush and lead into it. "I mean, I'm sure you've seen movies about them and such. Thing is, they aren't quite as imaginary as you'd think. I-I'm like a werewolf, except I change into a panther." Sam watched Steve carefully to gauge his reaction.

"I'm relieved," Steve announced, tension seeping away once Sam reassured him about not leaving. Without a doubt, he couldn't handle not having Sam by his side and helping him to figure it all out. They needed to find Bucky officially and bring him in before hydra could latch on again. They would do so much worse to him and Steve refused to allow for it.

He fell silent as Sam continued, not making any sense even with the supposed grand reveal. Really? A werewolf. No, werepanther, apparently as if such a thing really existed. But it had to, right? Just as Sam said, he wouldn't lie to him, especially over something so unbelievable.

It had to be true then.

Eyes widening, he tried to school his shocked features into something more neutral. "How - how did it happen?" he asked after he found his voice again. "What - what happens with it?"

"I was born this way. Some people have the genes, some people don't. It's not, like, my whole family or anything, though - it's real rare, only crops up once every few generations." But his dad had still known about it, thankfully, and had known to take him to his great-great-aunt, who'd taught him everything he'd needed to know.

"But people can be changed by biting them, too," he added. "It's not like in the movies, nobody does it without permission from the person they're changing first. But it's not bad or anything - I mean, you get stronger and faster, you have enhanced senses, accelerated healing. A longer lifespan, too." His lips twisted into something almost like a smile. "If you don't believe me, I can change for you."

Werewolves being real and outside of sci fi novels kind of blew Steve's mind and he couldn't say yet his actual emotions on the matter. How could any of it be real? Better yet, how could Sam be one? Born into it, apparently. How? Nodding his head to show he understood, kind of, he still managed to reach out and grasp onto Sam's arm. He accepted him always and loved him no matter what even if he needed time to fully process the information.

"You mean -change into a wolf?" he asked, eyes widening just a tad at the implication. He couldn't predict how he might react to seeing Sam change and shift into a wolf. "Wait. How strong are you?" he asked suddenly, a little put out with how much Sam hid from him over the years. He understood, though. Really, he did.

"A panther, actually." Sam put his hand over Steve's, the physical reassurance making him feel better. "Prettier than a wolf." In his opinion, anyway. "But I'm always me inside - I don't act like a wild animal or anything." There were feline instincts to deal with, but he was always the one in control.

Sam had to laugh at Steve's question. Of course his pride was a little wounded by the fact that Sam had been holding back. "Not as strong as you," he reassured him. "Or as fast. You can still beat me, it'd just be closer if I wasn't holding back."

A panther. How different but he still nodded his head, reassurances flooding through him with the touch. They were still the same couple they always were, with or without the whole panther thing. Supernatural? He needed to look into a few things because how many more were there? Were they all different types?

"We should see what you can really do when you're not holding back," Steve responded, giving a nod of his head. "I want to see what you got." A challenge and maybe a little bit of a taunt, Steve unable to help himself there.

Sam just laughed at the challenge. "Don't worry, man, you'll still be able to kick my ass. And lap me, too." He was faster, but he still couldn't match Steve, even if he tried. "We can spar the next time we find somewhere private that's big enough." He brushed a kiss against Steve's cheek, thinking about the opportunity to fight. Going a few rounds with Steve always got him worked up for more physical activities later.

"The thing is..." Sam hesitated, growing more serious. "I could live a few hundred more years, Steve. And we don't know what effect the serum will have on you."

The idea of sparring excited him and he gave an eager nod of his head because yes, he very much wanted to go one on one and see how the new revelation played into what they could do. "Are you enhanced in human form and panther form or just the latter?" Steve asked, trying to come to terms with the information in his mind.

The time issue, though, he really couldn't easily reassure. No one knew the limitations of the serum or the full capabilities either. He tended to go in blind with it all. "I've lived this long already," Steve responded, reaching out to squeeze Sam's hand. "Don't think you're getting rid of me anytime soon." He leaned in to give Sam a kiss. "I wish I had more details on the serum or could test it somehow."

"Both. It really helps with flying, let me tell you." And it had definitely given him an edge in the agility training he'd had when he had first been selected for the program - he just had to keep everything down to peak human levels, rather than slightly superhuman.

Sam hesitated for a moment. "The other thing is that...I could bite you. If you wanted, of course." The only way he would have considered biting someone without their express permission would have been if their life was at stake. "Then you'd be, well, like me." He studied Steve's face to gauge his reaction to the suggestion.

Having enhanced abilities helped in a lot of ways, especially in their lifestyle when they needed to go up against those with varying attributes. Some far worse than others but they always managed; the possibilities even more endless now with the new reveal. How many knew or suspected about Sam, though? There were dangers with being different, of course. But thoughts and worries for another time.

Sam had other things to discuss and Steve needed to focus. On being bitten, apparently. Words were settled on the tip of his tongue but when he opened his mouth nothing came out. Okay. What. Clearing his throat, he tried again, "You want to make me a shifter like you." He needed to hear himself say the words to have it begin to sink in. "I'm not sure what it might do with the serum. It....." Might be fatal but he decided against saying such things. "There are vulnerabilities for you, right?"

"Not a whole lot. My healing might actually be faster than yours," he admitted frankly. "Silver's the biggest one, but other than that, dismemberment or fire or...similar things are just about the only things that can take me out."

Sam wasn't sure how it would react with the serum, either - it could kill Steve, but he imagined that the more likely worst case scenario would be that the serum would just boost his immune system to reject the lycanthropy. However that worked; he didn't really know a damn thing about magic, or if this even was magic, or just really advanced science. Maybe he should've let Stark do some analysis before making the offer.

The offer hung in the air between them and Steve tried his best to wrap his mind around it and decide which way he wanted to sway his opinion - for it or against it. Logically, he should have almost automatically selected the latter but Steve very rarely went with the easy choice.

"Do you - have to do it at a certain time?" Steve asked, still attempting to gather as much information as he could before he made up his mind. "I wonder if - Tony could figure anything about about it." He never wanted anyone to study his serum so he understood if Sam refrained from the same.

"Not as far as I know." Sam shrugged. "I can change at any time, so it stands to reason that I should be able to bite someone at any time. I mean, it's not a decision you have to make right away or anything - it could be years. I just...I figured I'd kept it a secret from you long enough."

And he probably wouldn't have been able to keep it secret much longer, anyway. Trying to hide his disappearance at the full moon was always difficult.

He breathed in slowly, then exhaled. "If we could keep it a secret, then I'm willing to let Tony study whatever he can. If you agree, I don't want something going wrong that we could have prevented, you know? I just don't know how much science is gonna be able to figure out."

"Films always lead me to believe it could only happen at a full moon," Steve explained with a wry grin, trying to lessen a bit of the tension from curling around them. The shock hadn't really faded yet and he knew it would be some time before it did. He had a werewolf boyfriend, okay, he needed time to have it sink in. He also had a werewolf boyfriend that wanted to change him to be the same. Okay, maybe one aspect of it seemed like the films he watched.

"Tony can keep a secret and he could try and study your cells and mine and see if - it would -" He gestured a hand out, not really wanting to finish the sentence of if it would - kill me. The serum might just destroy the change or it could malfunction in some way. There were so many unknown things about the serum.

"Do you know....anyone else like you?"

"You know, I'm just going to hope that means you haven't been watching Twilight," Sam joked. There were plenty of shitty sci-fi movies involving shifters, and virtually none of them were accurate. "It's an involuntary change during the full moon, but I can choose to do it at any other time."

Sam had his own opinions on Stark's ability to keep a secret - the guy had, after all, called a press conference to announce that he was a goddamn superhero - but kept them to himself. There was no reason to make Steve worry. "I mean, he's not a biologist, but there's probably something he can do." Banner would probably have been a better option, and even he did...well, Sam wasn't sure what kind of science Banner did.

"Met one or two. Cats are pretty solitary, though - kinda goes with the whole cat thing. Not that there aren't other kinds of shifters out there, but obviously, no one really goes out of the way to say hello."

Werecat? Rather than werewolf? The title probably didn't exactly matter in the long run but his mind needed to grasp onto something to make sense of all the information. "I haven't seen Twilight but have heard of it," Steve responded, shaking his head a few times. It interested him very little, especially with it being geared to the youth and obsessive romance. Plus, he never had very much interest in vampires, preferring aliens, which probably really made his life ironic. If the younger him only knew what he would discover later in life.

"We could still see. Maybe some of the SHIELD databases might have some information too." Steve already had plenty of thoughts on where to go from there. "They might know of more like you."

"I mean, we could, try if you wanted. I'm just not sure what it is going to do." The serum could be incredibly fickle and there were too many unknowns with it.

"Like I said, I'm willing to go along with whatever tests Stark wants to run." Sam held up his hands defensively. He didn't want to hurt Steve, after all, and he knew that it was possible that the two different kinds of accelerated healing might react badly when combined.

He glanced at Steve, and his expression softened for a moment, taking on a certain shyness. "Do you want to see me change?"

Nodding his head, he made a note to himself to talk to Stark later and Banner. SHIELD might have known more as well but he decided to not involve them in any way, knowing the end result without having to attempt it. As for the change, he paused a little longer, trying to decide if he could handle seeing it or not but in the end he decided he had to. They always shared everything with one another.

"I want to see," he remarked, laying his hands on his legs, trying to not appear as nervous as he felt.

"All right." Sam felt a little apprehensive, but he told himself there was nothing to worry about. Standing up, he started to strip his clothes off. "I'll, uh, ruin my clothes if I leave them on," he explained awkwardly with his t-shirt up around his head. Not that Steve hadn't seen him naked before - not that Sam was really bothered by nudity in general - but this felt different, somehow.

The change wasn't too disturbing to view from the outside, though if you listened hard enough, you could hear bones snapping and reforming, and the odd grunt of pain from Sam. He was used to it by now. The whole thing took a couple of minutes, and at the end, a large black panther stood in front of Steve, the tip of his tail twitching.

Of course, shifting would rip clothing, wouldn't it? What had his life become that it made perfect sense to him? Then again a lot of things had changed for him since waking up from the ice into an era not his own. Sam tended to make the horror of the loss a little easier to cope with. It prompted him to want to be there for him in any way he could.

His eyes widened to a near comical level as he watched until a panther stood before him. "Damn," he swore under his breath, reaching out a tentative hand to stroke along Sam's fur. What an odd thought.

"Can you - still understand me even when you're like this? Just - uh - nod if you can?"

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