this came about from my friend commenting on how super soldiers would TOTALLY get over stimulated from being able to hear SO MUCH. So I built Steve a sensory deprivation room

Title of both this and the series comes from songs by Florence and the Machine. Although this title is a purposefully bastardized version

XxX

It turns out that super soldier lungs can hold a lot of air. Sam finds that out at 2 in the morning when every breath of it exits Steve's lungs in one short burst of sound. It's not quite a shout, not quite a cry. Sam definitely heard a B sound in there. He's still lying in bed trying to figure out if it would be better to try and talk about it right now or after Steve's had the night to pull himself together when Steve sighs and taps on the wall between their rooms.

"I know you're awake. I could hear your breathing change"

Sam's a soldier. Was a soldier. Is a soldier again now, he supposes. Anyway. The point is, soldiers wake up quiet and quick. You don't alert the enemy to your presence by flailing awake from your nightmares. The tiniest change in breathing, in a different room, while your own shout is still ringing through the air and you're only half awake anyway?

"So how much of that serum went to your ears anyway?" Sam says. He carefully avoids the squeaky floorboard as he swings his legs out of bed.

Steve's low laughs makes the hair on the back of Sam's prickle danger.

"They enhanced everything. All my senses. All my brain functions. I -" he stops. Sam lays a hand over the wall, about where he hazards Steve's voice is coming from. He doesn't have super senses. He doesn't know if Steve touches the wall between them. He likes to think Steve is. Steve starts again. "My memory is perfect too. I don't forget. Anything."

Sam thinks about that. Really thinks about it. All the things that Steve must have seen, growing up in the Great Depression and going to war and losing his best friend and waking up in a strange new world and finding and losing that same best friend all over again. Sam can think of too many moments that might make Steve wake up screaming. Every soldier has those moments. But for Steve, time won't let those wounds scar into numbness.

"I heard him hit the water."

Steve doesn't clarify who him is. He doesn't clarify which time Bucky hit the water. Sam hadn't really stopped to think that Bucky falling off of a bridge meant that the train must have been going over water. That Steve went diving in right behind him, a few days later and saving a thousand more people, because he never could let Bucky go anywhere without him.

They are quiet for a while. Except, Sam reflects, it's never really quiet for Steve anymore is it? As if answer, Steve says "I miss the quiet." It's soft, a confessional whispered in the dark, not asking for anyone to absolve him of his sin of resenting the gifts he fought to take but hoping for a penance instead.

Sam takes a slow breath in and out through his nose. "The kitchen could use a scrub down, if you're awake." It doesn't really, although a deep clean of where he keeps the food is always appreciated. But he knows that Steve likes doing things. He can stand stock still in the rain till the cows come home and then die of old age surrounded by their little grandcows but he'll always prefer being active. Almost immediately, Sam hears Steve leave the room,his footsteps echoing through the house towards the kitchen in a way that must be thunderous to him. It's quick enough that Sam knows Steve was only waiting for his permission before bolting.

Sam gets back in bed. He knows how loud people are, even when they're trying not to be. All that blood and bile rushing around. And the house won't be quiet exactly, but keeping a few walls between them might help. He's not sure if this is the right thing to do, fingers twitching with the desire to fling open his door and run to Steve to try to talk some more. But Steve knows where he is. He forces himself to fall asleep.

When he wakes up, Steve's gone but the kitchen is gleaming. There's a note on the table

Got a meeting. Be back for dinner. Sincerely - Steve

(as if someone else might have broken in and made coffee)

He reads it while he drinks the coffee Steve left warming on the oven in a pot. It's thick and bitter because Steve drinks milk like he's forgotten he doesn't need the extra height anymore, but Sam drinks the peace offering anyway.

(Besides. Captain America made him coffee after staying the night. Like hell is he going to do anything else but savor every drop)

After his coffee and a quick glance through Time on his iPad (Identity and the Modern Hero: The Men and Women Behind the Masks) he stands up and cracks his neck. Guess he's got a new project.

At first Sam just plans to staple velvet to the walls. But then before he can finish unpacking the rolls of velvet from the store, Natasha shows up with a strange guy dressed all in purple ("it's the world's best color, duh") and a small mountain of soundproof mats and panels. The guy, "called me Clint", uses a friggin arrow with a revolving arrowhead for a drill to install the mats while Natasha systematically moves all of his bookshelves to go on the outside of the walls. Yet another layer of soundproofing.

"Do you know what that much hearing does to people?" she asks without looking up from where she's reorganizing his books so From Russia With Love is right next to The Time-Traveller's Wife (not many books came in care packages okay?) .

Clint pumps one hand in the air, fingers flying. "Deaf life, best life" he adds when Sam just blinks. "I get to just take my ears off whenever Stark starts talking. It's awesome."

"That does sound nice," Sam says, thinking of all the generals that would be great for.

Clint wants to put a ball pit in there and Sam wants to put pillows and Natasha vetoes them both in favor of a tempur-pedic beanbag chair. Sam didn't even know they made tempur-pedic beanbag chairs.

"They don't."

"What, then what are these?"

"Tempur-pedic beanbag chairs."

"Didn't you just say they didn't make those?"

"Yes."

"You know you just spilled literal state secrets all over the web right? And you're keeping your tempur-pedic connections secret?"

"Regimes come and go. Comfort is forever"

Then she batman's out there while Sam is eyeing those beanbag chairs and wondering if Steve or Bucky would care if he borrowed one for his office. His ass is always numb by the end of the day. Clint just shrugs when Sam raises an eyebrow.

"She does that. It's her way of ending conversations without actually having to end them while looking cool."

"I'm the coolest" Natasha breathes in Sam's ear. He automatically throws an elbow back but she avoids it without even looking like she noticed. Professionals always make what they do look easy. After all, you're never off duty. Not in their line of work.

She dumps a couple blankets on the floor. "These go in too." They're purple and padded and have little unicorns galloping around the edges. They're also all lined with weights, which Sam doesn't realize at first and nearly throws his back out trying to lift the deceptively fluffy looking pile. She deftly folds them into perfect little squares and hides them in the corner while Clint rubs Sam's back and Sam moans pitifully. Laid low not by HYDRA but by purple unicorns. What a way to go.

It's past dinner time by the time they finish. Sam cracks his neck. "Guess we should tell them about this."

"I'll go look for them at the Smithsonian" Natasha says immediately.

"Dude," Clint rolls his eyes, "That horse is so dead you could make him into dog food by now with how often you make that joke."

"If he's not there I'll check the Natural History Museum" She flips Clint off but otherwise keeps going. Sam doesn't even know whether to laugh, she's got such a straight face. "Clint you check out the Hudson in case Steve fell in the water again." She looks Sam straight in the eyes, "Such a klutz that kid."

"I'll check the Wollman Ice Rink" Sam tells her. She throws her head back and laughs. Then pulls out her phone, brings up a note called Good Ones and begins typing away. Sam can see a lot of emojis on that list.

After a lot of time and trouble and not a few old ladies who don't want to give Steve up from where they've cornered him in the park with pictures of their granddaughters, they get Steve and show him the room. Steve shakes all of their hands with both of his giant ones cradling theirs as though they were something unspeakably precious as he looks them right in the eye as he thanks them. Sam gets a little gooey and ends up making Steve promise to come use it all the time. Really. No trouble. Any time. Sam will make pancakes.

(Sam is definitely not trying to lure Captain America to his house with pancakes and soundproofing)

Natasha doesn't say when you find Bucky, he'll need that room but there is a set of blankets carefully folded in one corner of the room that everyone knows isn't for Steve.

"Do you wanna try it out?" Clint asks, fiddling with his ears in a way that belatedly lets Sam know that he hadn't had his hearing aids on the entire time they were outside looking for Steve.

"Oh no," Steve says a little too quickly, "I can't just leave when you guys did this for -"

"Cap, we built it so you could use it." Clint says while Natasha makes little shoo-ing motions towards the door behind him.

Natasha opens the door for him, "when you come out you can tell us about hat barista."

"Wait how did you -"

She raises an eyebrow.

Steve's smile is small but even small it looks brighter than than the one he'd flashed at Sam in the VA. When he pretended to think about what made him happy before saying I don't know because he was at that point where he was functioning enough to know that saying nothing really was more hassle than it was worth. Sam remembers that point.

Steve goes in.

Sam suddenly realizes he still doesn't have any milk. The pancakes.

"Hey," Sam suddenly remembers in the middle of an emergency grocery store run for more milk. "What the heck happened to all that velvet I bought?"

Natasha looks pointedly at Clint. Clint pretends he didn't hear Sam.

"I can see your hearing aids blinking green, hawkguy," Sam says. "What did you do with my velvet?"

Clint kicks a stone. It ricochets off two walls and a street light before landing perfectly on top of a fence post. "It was purple," he says, as if this explain everything. It kind of does.

"Oh my god. Tell me you didn't steal an entire bolt of velvet so you could make a new costume out of it." Clint doesn't say anything, just looks quietly murderous. "Dude, I thought we all agreed that after that mask you were not allowed to making costuming choices."

Clint mutter something about he didn't agree.

"Is that why you stopped answering your phone while we were looking for Steve? You were turning my velvet into a new costume?" Clint juggles the carton of eggs Sam just bought and he sure as heck better not be planning to try to turn those into a new costume too.

Sam looks at Natasha.

"There was a mini skirt involved. It's taken care of. The whole bolt had to be sacrificed. No survivors."

Sam nods. "Their sacrifice was a noble one."

"I hate you guys," Clint says. "When Cap comes out of the Quiet Room I'm going to kidnap him and we're going to have a mask appreciation party and you two won't be invited."

"I don't know how I'll survive the loss," Natasha says. But she twines her fingers with Clint and Sam's anyway. "I could break your fingers if you say anything else," she warns with a smile.

"But you won't." Clint and Sam say in tandem. She will if she has to. But she doesn't have to right now. Right now, they can just buy pancake mix and appreciate a nice day. Later. they'll go back to the house and Sam will make pancakes. Clint will smother his in whipped cream and Natasha'll coat her in enough blueberry jam that Samwon't even be able see the pancake underneath the sea of blue. Their real superpower is how they don't have a mouthful of damn cavities at this point. Steve will come out, and they'll figure out how to keep going together.

Together. The wounded watch out for their own.