Their friendship probably didn't make much sense to most people. Some days it didn't even really make sense to her if she thought about it for long enough. It was just... always there. Since the day they met, their friendship had been Samantha's one true constant, through everything. Through the best and all of the worst parts of her life. If that was all that held them together, that was enough, but she didn't think it was, and it wasn't only because of Steve and Natasha either. Their reincarnations were just another part of their friendship that seemed to align in a way that she could never fully make sense of.
It just was. And other than Nick, which was too complicated, and also Sam's brother, Sam was the only person still around who really knew Samantha from before. Maybe that was why, when they were together, she felt a little of her old self still in there somewhere. Instead of rejecting that, she allowed it, entirely because it was Sam.
"Touché," Samantha inclined her head slightly in response, a wry smile playing on her lips and after a moment's pause, she reached over to pick up a white napkin sitting on the counter near them and waved it gently at him in a show of surrender. Typically, Samantha was more likely to dig her heels in than give up so easily, but for one thing, she didn't really have any good reason to do so this time. For another, he was still using his personal nickname for her, the one that no one else was allowed to use, and they both knew it still made her a little soft.
Samantha would resent that more if it was anybody else.
Setting the napkin and her glass down to shrug the jacket off of her shoulders, her matching tattoo became visible just below the line of her sleeve as she pulled her arms out and draped the jacket over the stool next to her. It was the only tattoo she had, the only one she would ever have, as much a symbol of her friendship with Sam as it was another subtle reminder of the girl she used to be. Samantha had always been naturally closed off to most of the world, especially after her mom's death, but there was also a time when she'd been ever so slightly less closed off to the people closest to her. A time before spies and secrets, when she was someone who got tattoos with her best friend to show what they meant to each other, because Samantha had always been better with action than words. She did need that reminder sometimes.
The only other person she'd ever been even close to that open with was Nick, and she wasn't keen on ever letting herself forget that mistake. But that didn't mean she had to push Sam away too.
Sidling closer, Samantha briefly rested her chin on his shoulder, a non-verbal apology that only Sam would ever get, before moving back to the fridge to pull out the block of cheese that she was very slowly cutting away at. Samantha was a champion grazer. "Then I guess we're just stuck with each other." She didn't believe that, of course. Samantha knew Sam would find someone eventually. He wasn't a man out of time like Steve, and he had a lot left to give someone. Sometimes she envied him that.
Even if that wasn't the case and they really were doomed to be a pair of old vigilante spinsters still living in this huge compound together while all the other Avengers eventually paired off, they both knew she was going to tell him anyway. So she finally relented, voice painstakingly casual as she retrieved a small knife and cut off a piece of cheese to chew on around her confession. "We found Clint."