Ooh, Sam/Steve/Nat is just the best ship.
They are three of the best and hottest characters in the MCU.
Every two person combination is also great - samsteve, samnat, and romanogers are all top-tier ships.
They actually spend a lot of time together and care about each other deeply. Donāt get me wrong, I love ships where the two people never speak to each other onscreen as much as the next person (winterhawk my beloved) but thereās just something different about a ship with some actual canon meat on its bones.
Two years as fugitives living out of the quinjet and cramped, sketchy safe houses. Itās like one long āthere was only one bedā scenario.
In fairness to the āwhereās Buckyā commenters on that fan art, I do think āwhy is Bucky here?ā every time I see something about the cap quartet. Though of course Iām not rude enough to say that on the post.
(P.s. thinking about them makes me regret that we never saw much of the adventures of the Avengers between Age of Ultron and Civil War, because the lineup we saw at the end of AoU [Steve, Nat, Sam, Rhodey, Wanda, and Vision] was amazing.)
I love the smell of fresh, immaculate takes in the morning!
I swear, samstevenat is the only poly relationship I can realistically picture, because they all have such a strong connection with the other two characters.
Itās like a rubikās cube, but no matter where you turn it the faces come out perfectly solved. You have SamSteve, who have their meet cute + shared life experience and a deep sense of duty; you have SteveNat, who go from ācoworker I like but donāt fully trustā to āonly person I can trust in this line of work and have shared multiple near death experiences withā; and then you have SamNat who sure, have less interactions, but still a relationship is there. Like Iām ready to bet that convo about Redwing in cacw happened more than once. And oh to see their reunion after Steve breaks team cap out of jail⦠No way Sam didnāt make some kind of remark at Nat betraying them (after all, last time he saw her, she was on the other side, taking away his wings and fighting them).
I canāt think of any other mcu trio that has the same range.
And yes, we do have plenty of evidence that these three are besties, but thereās so much missing time (especially between aou and cacw and cacw and iw) that you basically have free reign over the what the how and the where.
The aou-cacw time skip is perfect for consolidating the relationship/feelings: they live together, they work together, they train together for a whole year!! There is so much that could happen!! Undercover, fake relationship trope! Jumped-in-front-of-a-bullet-for-you-and-now-Iām-not-waking-up trope (Steve, I am looking at you)! Saved from becoming an Avenger pancake by flying Sam trope (for his and his backās sake Iāll picture Nat in that one).
Also maybe itās just me, but the movie nights that fandom love so much sound more likely with the Avengers 2.0 roster? Wanda literally uses TV shows to cope, Vision is just curious by nature and does whatever Wanda does, Steve has a long ass list of movies to catch up on⦠itās almost inevitable that they spent some down time together watching tv shows or a movie. All it would take is Wanda watching something on her tablet while she cooks in the common room and one or two avengers strolling in and boom. Tradition set.
And then of course thereās the post-cacw, pre-iw time skip which is PRIME for things happening. I mean, these three just came from a pretty big rift, they are on the run for TWO ENTIRE YEARS, the living quarters are small and cramped, you canāt tell me they didnāt catch each other in various states of undress (Sam and/or Steve seeing Natās bruises after the events of the black widow movie!!), or that they didnāt have some middle-of-the-night, half-whispered conversations. Maybe Nat even told them about Yelena and her fake family. Maybe Steve told them some things about his life pre-ice.
Also, itās a shame Sam canonically doesnāt know about Madripoor because itās the perfect place for something debauched yet revealing of romantic feelings happening. Then again, this is what fanfic is for.
(Still, doesnāt mean I wouldnāt sell my organs for a 9 episode series of Sam, Steve and Nat eluding international surveillance, saving the world and being total badassesā¦
Plus a post credit scene of t0ny telling friday to delete all footage of the trio while secretly keeping a pic of bearded!cap because apparently heās canonically that deranged about steve)