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He's a wing down and a man short. Sam knows that all that keeps him hanging with the likes of Mystery Man and Captain America are the wings and without one, he's got to ground himself before he becomes more of a liability than a help. If you'd told him last month that he'd be staging an air assault against S.H.I.E.L.D and their souped up helicarriers, he'd have told you that you were insane and given some recommendations for good psychiatric care at the VA but Sam isn't laughing now and he's thinking that he's the one in need of good psychiatric care.

But damn, it feels good to be fighting the good fight again and it feels even better to know that Captain America himself is depending on him. It feels better than flying sky high with nothing but a set of metal wings strapped to his back and Sam had been pretty sure there was nothing that compared to the exhilaration of that.

Except this.

He takes a landing that isn't so much graceful as functional through one of the blown-out windows of the Triskelion and starts pulling at doors, trying to find the best escape route. Since most of the good guys are technically Hydra's guys at this point, Sam's not sure who to trust. He wrenches open a utility door that looks promising; maybe it heads down an old, unused maintenance hallway and he can find a way out without tripping all the guards from here to Arlington.

The decor doesn't seem to match the door. Instead of the utilitarian metal and concrete that's the hallmark of most government buildings, this one leads to plush carpeting and warm, cheery decor. It looks like a damn vacation compared to where he just came from and Sam cranes his neck to see around the corner as best he can, hoping he doesn't get shot while he's pulling his worst Roadrunner impersonation. That would be a damn mess. Rogers would probably try to spin it during his funeral that he died a hero but he thinks at least Romanoff would be snickering in the background. Can't get anything past her. He doesn't get shot (this time) and decides that maybe it's worth the risk. The halls seem empty of personnel, friendly or not, and maybe it's a chance to get the hell out and get somewhere that he can coordinate back with his team.

He likes the sound of that, being part of a team again, and grins to himself as he carefully works his way down the hall, trying to look as nondescript as possible. That's a little hampered by the twisted, broken wing attached to his back but maybe anyone he runs into will be so damn shocked that they won't notice he's only half a bird right now. Maybe.

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Steve paused to crane his head up and over to take a look at what was on Sam's back as he came to a stop in front of him. The wings, huh.

He could no imagine no more clear a marker of when Sam had come through from than the damaged wings on Sam's back, although he hadn't seen what they had looked like in the aftermath of Bucky's attempt to tear them off like a mean little kid with a fly. His calculation was immediately reinforced by Sam's question, and for all that there was a whole tangle to do with timelines and a fear of bringing down Ragnarok (in Thor's words) for intervening in them, Steve was glad to see his friend all the same. No matter where in the battle he had just come from.

"Actually yeah, kind of," he replied, grinning as he stood easy and loose. "Stop me if I'm wrong, but I'm betting you just walked out of one door - maybe in the Triskelion or maybe on one of the helicarrier - and into one here. Am I right? Tell me I'm right."

"Triskelion, yeah. Is this some Hydra shit?" Sam isn't fully aware of all the tech that Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D have between them and he's learning that it takes a genius to keep up. He's not a genius, he's just fool enough to follow someone out of loyalty.

"What do you mean here? Isn't this some basement in the Triskelion anyway? Some place where shadowy governments get together and drink brandy and try to figure out how to off you and me?"

Steve denied that immediately with a shake of his head and a lift of one hand, "No, no. This is- something else." Where he had been blind to how Hydra had worked its way into S.H.I.E.L.D. and pulled the strings for too long, he had gone over every inch of the place and looked at every person he had met there for any sign that Hydra had some hand in its construction.

While Bucky's presence had been the hotel's greatest drawn in keeping him for weeks again already, it was that belief that had made it easier to sleep.

As easy as Steve ever slept these days.

"You want to-" he pointed over his shoulder toward the Bistro, "Want to go set your wings, uh, wing, somewhere and go get something to eat? This might take awhile."

"Yeah, I'm thinking I need a full stomach to process this," Sam agrees. He knows strange tends to follow Steve and the rest of the Avengers so he guesses this is just par for the course for them - typical Tuesday.

"Is there somewhere I can drop my gear that you know offhand?"

New as their friendship was, Steve was relieved but unsurprised when Sam reacted with little fanfare to what was (and what was going to continue to be) one hell of a left turn in his day. "Yeah." He pointed down the hallway in the direction he had been headed before he had caught sight of the other man, "My room's not far from here, we can drop it there for now."

His friend's earlier words echoed back to him for a second as he lead the way toward his room, "There is actually a place around here that serves brandy, but I'm about fifty percent sure that if anyone there is drinking and plotting our grisly ends, it'd be more the rogue agent or bad guy from outer space type." He tipped his head with something of a smile, "You know how it is."

Only the uncertainty of whether or not he could trust the door back to their world not to lock him out had kept him from searching out Sam in D.C. right after he'd arrived back and run immediately into Natasha. The fact that time didn't seem to pass on the other side no matter how much he spent in the hotel had kept that option open, but...well, he'd gotten sidetracked.

"Well, if they wanna plot our ends, I want a drink first before I go," Sam says, chuckling a little. "Even a bad guy's gotta let us have a drink. It's in the rules or something."

Sam thinks he could go his whole life without running into another bad seed but he also thinks his friendship with Steve Rogers means he's going to get tangled up in that mess sooner rather than later. He's made his choice and he's going to stick with it.

Whether or not Steve could drink in celebration or defeat and get anything out of it other than the taste, he couldn’t deny that he understood the urge to do so some days. Sam’s words then had his smile widening. “Yeah,” he said, tipping his head, brows furrowing in mock seriousness. “Sure, I remember seeing something like that in the Geneva Convention. Article 35, right?”

“I’ll point you to the bar later, if you want, but I’ve got to say food first,” he patted the flat expanse of his stomach as they reached the door to his room, “The buffet’s better than decent and if they might stare when you go back for plate number five, they never cut you off.”

Even had he not had a metabolism like a freight train and a caloric requirement that would make a SEAL in training blush, Steve would still be impressed by the idea of All-You-Can-Eat buffets. There were few places he could try one without drawing undue attention to himself, but there in the Nexus it didn’t seem to matter.

He unlocked the door, opening it to wave a hand toward the interior, “Just drop your gear anywhere.”

Sam drops his gear and thinks that Steve's probably got a point about the buffet. "Yeah, saving the world seems to make your stomach into a bottomless pit. It's no wonder the Avengers can put away so much food."

It's teasing but he imagines that it's got to be true. They've got Hulk and Thor, after all, and both of those guys look like they could eat.

Two years or twenty two, Steve did not think he would ever forget that meal they had shared in that half-destroyed restaurant in the immediate aftermath of New York and the Chitauri. They had all been exhausted, both mentally and physically, hardly able to speak for the desire to eat, and then to go their separate ways long enough to shower and sleep before Loki had had to be dealt with. And still he remembered how Natasha and Clint had leaned into each other, slung across each other's chairs in a comfort of each other's physical space. As he remembered Bruce's approval of the meal, and the dazed look Tony had not been able to fully shake off as Steve himself had leant into one elbow in clear defiance of the table manners he had once been taught.

How many shwarmas they had plowed through before finally being sated, he had had no idea, but he thought he had seen Thor eat at least five or six by himself.

"You don't want to see my grocery bill," he told the other man with something of a full bodied shrug and a grimace, the action loose and rife with his own amusement, for all that he meant every bit of dread at seeing the total. "There's a reason I try to stick to the buffet here. They never charge you for it."

"Guessing that flashing your S.H.I.E.L.D credentials around here doesn't count for much, then." Probably doesn't count for much back home, either, but Sam is pretty sure that Captain America would never have to pay for a meal in the entire United States unless he just wanted to. He also knows that Steve's modest and probably wouldn't take advantage of it.

"Well, buffet it is. All you can eat, which means you're going to win this one too."

"No," he replied, grinning as he shook his head. "No one really knows who I am here. Not unless they knew me already, but even those I can count on one hand and come up with a couple extra fingers." He pointed in the direction of the bistro and set his steps that way, keeping himself abreast of his friend as they went. In the weeks he had spent at the Nexus, strung between two trips several years apart, he had come to rely on the anonymity he found within its walls and the fact that he could stroll through the gardens or look at the paintings in the gallery without someone knowing exactly who and what he had been seventy years before.

Or, at least, thinking they knew exactly who and what he'd been.

"Thor's somewhere around here," he remarked, "Along with Sif and a couple other Asgardians. I haven't tried out-eating them yet, but I'm pretty sure they could make decent competition."

Sam snorts a little, amused. "So is half the Avengers team just holed up here and waiting for orders? Seems like a place Fury might build just to keep everyone out of sight for an attack."

Sam has the utmost respect for Nick Fury even if the man's mind is twelve steps ahead of anyone else.

Steve shook his head at that, leading the way through the doors of the bistro and making a beeline toward the buffet of food. "No, nothing like that." There he had to pause and consider, not for the wide array of food laid out before him but for the thought of what Fury might or might not know about the Nexus occurred to him with a delay that was almost overwhelming all on his own. Why hadn't he thought about whether Fury would know about the hotel? "A year ago I might've said that not even Fury knows where this place is, but I wouldn't take that bet now."

The strange combination of extreme isolation from the world and the collection of people and worlds to which they belonged offered a strange sort of mentality Steve hadn't thought too much about. Matters like who back in his (their) world might have visited it, whether or not they had said so aloud had been made all the murkier when he had discovered how Natasha and he had once been at the hotel at the same time and not even known it.

"Well, if Fury does know about this place, why isn't he holed up here too? Seems like a safe bet for him," Sam points out. "So maybe he doesn't know about it. Or maybe he doesn't think it's a viable option for him right now so he hasn't shown up with Hill and company."

Sam doesn't want to make a career of guessing what Fury will and will not do.

"It's hard to tell," he told Sam as he began filling up his plate with whatever caught his eye first. "How this place works - you never know where anyone is or who might be here unless you've gone looking for them yourself." That required the addendum born of Bucky's evasions over the past weeks and the frustration Steve had not been entirely able to shake off at feeling as if he were continually a step behind the other man. "And that's only when they want to be found."

Never mind the years between, Steve still filled his plate with an efficiency born of c-rations and the uncertainty that came with being out in the field more often than he had managed to be on a base or a city. "Natasha and I were here before. Two years ago, not long after New York." His eyes lifted to meet his friend's as he said, "In two months I never saw her once. I'd had no idea she was here."

"This place is that big?" Sam thinks that might be good, since he and Steve may or may not be fugitives from the government but the idea of getting lost in a building for months without seeing the people he knew is a little crazy.

"Seems a little crazy but, then again, isn't everything about our lives crazy?"

"Well..." Steve tipped his head as he finished his plate with a sandwich balanced on top of the already full serving, knowing he would be up and down enough as it was to go for refills in an attempt to keep up with the seemingly bottomless pit of his stomach. "It is and it isn't. Let's grab a seat and I'll give you the lay of the land."

That he could not deny, and grinned at his friend. "You're not wrong."

"My life has gotten exponentially more weird since you walked into it," Sam admits but it's good-natured. He thinks Steve is a fine commander and a loyal friend and he'd walk through the fire for him. Spending some time in a hotel that's bigger on the inside than it seems is not going to be a hardship.

"What's the deal with this place, then?"

Steve's lips quirk at that, his hands busy setting a napkin across his lap and reaching for a fork as he prepared to tuck into what was sure to be the first plate of many.

"It's complicated," he began, feeling as if he were repeating himself, but needing to preface what he was about to say with that to make sure the man who had backed him up and offered a safe place for Natasha and himself to stay as they made their gameplan wasn't flying blind. No pun intended, of course. As he stabbed a bite of scrambled eggs, he expanded up that comment, "The easiest way I have to explain it is that it's a sort of...place between worlds. I think I remember someone describing it as 'transdimensional hub.'"

"Transdimensional? Like what happened in New York two years ago?" Sam hadn't been running with them then but he knows what went down in New York, as much as the news outlets released. Even S.H.I.E.L.D couldn't cover up something that big.

Given how out of his depth Steve is on the subject, his understanding taken piecemeal from the conversations that had been bandied mostly above his head on the Helicarrier and supplemented only later by conversations there in the Nexus, it really was no wonder that his brows were drawn together as he sought the best way to explain what he had come to understand. "Yes," and then a beat, "And no."

Despite what some might have said about him, the problem only really seeming to have come up after he had been transformed bodily into the man he was at that moment, he was by no means slow on the uptake. His adaptability and ability to think outside the box had served him well over the years, and when put along with his penchant for reading any and all information he could get his hands on in order to further his understanding, made him no informidable force, but he understood that his grasp of astrophysics and magic was nowhere near that of others he had met. In old habit, he spoke around moments of eating and chewing, taking care not to speak with his mouth full or rush through either his words or his bites, the rhythm one he had perfected on the battlefield so long ago.

"It's a hotel, but set somewhere between dimensions or worlds. A kind of meeting place between them all." He tipped his head a degree, tapping the tines of his fork against his plate. "There are doors to worlds I've never heard of, people from places you or I would never have seen otherwise. All in a weird time lock, with people pulled sometimes from the same world at different points in time or different versions of the same world."

"I would say that was make believe," Sam says cautiously. "But then I've been hanging out with you and Romanoff long enough to know that superheroes are real, so I'm not going to just disregard it out of hand as a crazy person talking. So we're in some inter-dimensional hotel lobby with people from all over...you have any idea who's running this thing? Good, bad, something in between?"

Sam isn't sure that he should trust something that he doesn't see the brain behind. HYDRA taught him that much.

Only the mouth full of food Steve had then kept the man from laughing aloud at the implication that as one of those superheroes it all should sound a little less crazy to him. It was crazy, plain and simple. All of it. Incomplete serums that turned men into monsters, alien armies from across the galaxy, hotels with doors to other worlds, all of it. Having met a man who had been turned by Gamma Radiation into a green Hulk when his anger took hold and himself being a man who had survived being frozen for seventy years made none of it the least bit less ridiculous.

After chewing and swallowing, he tipped his head in the mental review of all he had yet seen of the Nexus and its universe. "No idea, really." Where he stole a pause for a long gulp of water, it was not without space enough to consider the pieces of the puzzle he had seen thus far. Or, rather, what he hadn't seen. "As far as I can tell it's not playing one direction or another. The people inside it seem to be what's at play here, good and bad."

"Is it relatively calm?" That's all Sam can ask for at this point. Asking for normal is out of the question with the given trajectory of his life now but he can deal with things being on the calm end of weird.

"No war or gang violence or anything that's going to get me shot, as far as you know? I don't want to be dodging bullets for the rest of my life even if I do want to be a superhero. Everyone needs a little down time."

"The hotel itself?" He asked, his actions slowing to a stop as he considered how best to answer. The reminder of all he had dragged Sam into when he had shown up with Natasha on the man's doorstep sent a kick of guilt through him, for all that Sam had told him time and time again that it was his decision to come along. Only the fact that it had been his choice and the fact that he did need the newest of his friends at his back kept him from saying so aloud. Well, that and he knew the other man would only chide him for it again. "I'd say the hotel's calm, yeah."

Steve took the time to drink half of his orange juice in one go before he swallowed, wiped his mouth and admitted with a tip of his head, "There are dinosaurs and zombies beyond the doors, though." A piece of bacon and he remembered, "Oh yeah, and...well, there's a door somewhere around here that'd have you turning in your skivvies for lacy lingerie." Remembering something of what he had learned of the new world, he added, "Not that it's any of my business what you like to wear. Or that I'd judge you for doing...whatever works."