InsaneJournal

There were really two things Sam's close encounter with the cosmic cube had given him: psychic bird powers, and a really good grasp on the state of his own sanity. The latter was hard won, built up over time through experience and a fifteen year fight against an alter ego that floated frustratingly between real and imagined so that for years at a time he'd be absolutely certain that he was gone only for something to happen that completely fucked up the balance of things and suddenly, woah, hey, wouldn't it be a good idea to shoot a Naval admiral in the middle of a newsroom in front of a bunch of military cops, rob a drug cartel, blackmail a senator, hold a guy hostage in his own home, break two people out of jail (one from Gitmo), and hook up with a SHIELD agent in the middle of a high stakes mission?

That had been one hell of a week.

The point was, Sam had a little bit of experience with losing it. And right now? Look, he wasn't going to pretend like he was completely okay here. That would be a straight up lie. But this wasn't Snap, this was just blowing off steam because all his friends were wrapped up in dealing with their own problems and if he didn't find a way to distract himself he was pretty sure he was going to end up resenting them for having other priorities. That was just selfish, and unfair - Natasha had died, for fuck's sake, and Steve hadn't again which was almost worse - and even if they never even found out that he felt like that he was damn well going to do what he could to avoid it being an issue in the first place, especially if all he had to do was take a bit of a break from being responsible all the time. No one needed him to be Cap here. There was never gonna be a better time to just let go and have a bit of fun without having to worry about the consequences.

Obviously he was gonna put the breaks on if Harley's 'crime and violence' tolerance turned out to be too much higher than his, and he'd dismissed the idea of asking Bucky or Natasha if he could borrow a knife or gun before even really considering it, but Sam Wilson was fully capable of tearing it up when he wanted to. He was also an extrovert who'd never met a stranger in his life, so when he found himself arriving at the rendezvous spot first he was relaxed enough to practice some casual parkour while he waited, jumping from standing up onto a nearby fence and balancing on top of it as Redwing found himself a perch safely out of the way.