After a pause, the source of the lack of noise emerged from the darkness of the adjacent hallway that spilled out into the dining room. Samantha slipped into the light with the casual air of someone who hadn't just been trying to sneak up on her friend, even though they both knew that's exactly what she'd been doing. A game that had started long before either of them had become who they were now, but had admittedly gotten a little more interesting with the introduction of their inherited gifts.
"Why is it that I can never seem to sneak up on you anymore?" She posed the rhetorical question in such a way that you would think she was put off by it, but they both knew she wasn't. Sam was the only person on Earth that Samantha could never seem to get genuinely angry at, but lucky for her, he was too nice to ever really make her regret that.
Seeing him in the kitchen like this was hardly a surprise. Samantha knew better then anybody that Sam liked to make the kitchen his home wherever he happened to be staying. He'd been this way as long as Samantha had known him, but especially since starting the Avengers and setting up camp in the compound, he'd more or less commandeered the area for his personal use. He cooked for everyone even when no one was here, on the off chance that another member of the team might show up. Some people expressed their love for the people in their life through fancy gifts and ridiculous grand gestures, but Sam? He expressed it through food.
As much as she resented the reminder of something so human as hunger, her stomach audibly growled the second she entered the compound that evening and smelled Sam's cooking. A small comfort that she allowed herself in her new life that still had reminders of the old sprinkled throughout. Samantha didn't know who was in charge of all this reincarnation business, but making her best friend the reincarnate of Steve Rogers begged the question if someone was actually doing this all on purpose. In this one solitary case, Samantha couldn't bring herself to mind.
Crossing over to the refrigerator, Samantha opened it up and grabbed the bottle of chardonnay that had been chilling all day, moving to search out the corkscrew in a nearby drawer and pulling a wine glass down from the cupboard above her head. She was still dressed in what Sam would undoubtedly recognize as her stakeout clothes; all black, and usually some combination of leggings and an oversized t-shirt under a leather jacket. The knit hat she often wore was already tucked away in a pocket. She'd been doing this ever since the early days, if she was going to be stuck in one spot for hours then she'd at least be comfortable.
"I'm surprised Peyton isn't here sniffing out the homemade cooking," Samantha added with a wry smirk while she poured wine into her glass. Peyton wasn't exactly new to the group anymore, but other then Troy, she was the newest addition to the team in awhile. Honestly, Samantha was just glad to have another girl around to cancel out all of the raging testosterone in the place, though she did have a tendency to clear out the fridge almost as much as Sam. Maybe it was a captains thing. "Doesn't seem like anyone else is home, so who are you trying to impress here?"