Chapter Text
It’s still dark when Bucky wakes on Christmas morning; the clock says it’s 5:37, which means there are approximately twenty-three minutes until Adrienne wakes up. Their bedroom is chilly, and he snuggles up against Steve’s side, sticking his cold toes under Steve’s warm thigh.
Steve gasps hard through his teeth, and Bucky opens his eyes to see Steve already awake. “I’m so glad Ada doesn’t believe in Santa,” Steve says, gathering Bucky up into his arms. “Makes everything—” he kisses at Bucky’s face—“so much easier.”
Bucky hums and wraps himself around Steve as much as he can, tipping his head into the kisses. The specter of Adrienne waking up and coming in to drag them to presents means they can’t do much more than this, but Bucky still lets himself enjoy it, the slow rhythm of Steve’s body against his, their mouths slick against each other’s.
Finally they break apart. “Merry Christmas,” Bucky mumbles. Steve grins, responds in kind, and gropes him, making Bucky yelp, and then disentangles himself and sits up.
He yawns. “Coffee?” he asks. “I was thinking of making Adrienne a hot chocolate, too. Do you think she’d like that?”
Bucky curls up around Steve’s back and gives him a squeeze. “You’re the best mommy in the whole world.” Then he lets Steve go, watching as he slips from the bed and out of the room.
Only when Steve is gone does he sigh and let himself mope a little. Steve is the best mom in the whole world. Ada says so, and Bucky firmly believes her. If Bucky had his way, he’d be the best mom in the whole world to more than just Adrienne. Bucky just…doesn’t know how to broach the subject.
Eventually Bucky gets out of bed too; this isn’t the day for maudlin thoughts like this. He scrubs both hands over his face and then collects himself, pulling on one of Steve’s hoodies and shuffling out toward the kitchen through the living room.
The Christmas tree—only the second Bucky’s ever had in his house—is lit, glowing warm amber and sparkly silver. It’s so, so pretty, and Bucky doesn’t stop looking at it until he’s through the door into the kitchen.
The only light is what’s spilling in from the living room, and Steve’s mostly in shadow as he moves along the counter. There’s a little pot on the stove, probably full of milk; the espresso pod machine is humming.
Bucky watches for a long moment as Steve prepares all of their warm drinks—the coffee into regular mugs, the hot chocolate into a travel mug with a metal crazy straw stuck through the lid’s drinking hole, so Adrienne doesn’t spill it. His hair is sticking up in odd places where he’s slept on it; he’s shirtless, because he runs like a furnace. Bucky doesn’t, and looking at him is making him cold, so he heads over to the thermostat and cranks it up until the heat kicks on. Then he walks over to Steve and wraps himself around him.
“Hey,” Steve murmurs, reaching back to rub a hand in Bucky’s hair. He lays his other hand over Bucky’s forearm around his waist and pulls him along as he crosses the kitchen to the pantry, where he pulls out the tin of stroopwaffels that Nat had brought back from her last business trip to Amsterdam. They walk in tandem back to the counter, where Steve balances several on the two open mugs to warm up.
Releasing him, Bucky takes one of the mugs. “Thanks, honey love,” he says, picking up Adrienne’s travel mug in his other hand and taking both with him into the living room.
Steve follows, leaving his mug on the coffee table and muttering something about finding a shirt; as he vanishes into the bedroom again Bucky takes the bottommost stroopwaffel from atop his coffee mug and bites into it. He turns on the gas fireplace and watches as it spouts to life, the flames going from blue to orange as they heat. When Steve returns they curl up on the sofa together, drinking their coffee, replacing the cookies in stacks on top of the mugs between sips.
Neither of them speak much. It’s nice just to sit here, in the dim, the sun rising behind them, and wait for Adrienne to wake up.
But Bucky’s imagination is running wild, picturing them here, just like this, with one crucial difference: the heat of a baby asleep against his chest, Steve curled around the both of them. He chugs his coffee so he doesn’t blurt it out. They need to have this conversation, obviously—but right now, with the possibility of Ada interrupting it, seems like a bad time.
It isn’t much longer before she appears, rubbing her eyes, her buffalo plaid onesie pajamas twisted a little around her legs. “Hey, starshine,” Steve says, sitting up and reaching for her, “Merry Christmas.”
She clambers into his lap and watches as he fixes the ankle cuffs of her pajamas. Bucky watches, too, aching a little somewhere in the vicinity of his lungs. “Merry Christmas,” she says, and takes the travel mug when Steve passes it to her.
Bucky gives her the warmest of his stroopwaffels, and the three of them sit in silence for a few minutes until Steve finally passes Ada into Bucky’s arms and gets up. Going over to the stereo, he plugs his phone into it and fiddles for a minute, turning the volume down with his free hand so that the strains of Frank Sinatra singing “Jingle Bells” isn’t too loud.
“You ready to open some presents, starshine?” he asks, crouching beside the tree to read tags. He collects three gifts and brings them back to the couch, tucking one up against Bucky’s leg, nudging one onto Ada’s lap, and sitting down with the third.
Taking the travel mug and putting it back on the coffee table, Bucky takes a moment to rub Steve’s knee while Ada reads out the tag: “To Ada, love, Tateh and Mommy.”
Carefully, she tears into the nutcracker paper, slowly but surely revealing the new Lego set they’d selected for her a few weeks ago. For a very long moment she just looks down at it; then, contrary to what Bucky, at least, is expecting, she sniffles.
Steve gives him a panicked look; Bucky shrugs, as baffled as he must be. “Malkeleh?” he asks, tipping around so he can see her face. She’s crying, though as he watches she firms her mouth as if to stop herself. “Sweet, what’s wrong?”
She sniffs again, big, so big her back straightens, and wipes at her face with her sleeve.
“Ada?” Steve asks, slipping off the couch to kneel next to them, put an arm around her. “Adrienne?”
“I—” she hiccups—“I thought—you—were—gonna—give me—a brother.” She drags out the last word on a cry, wrapping both arms over her face so even Bucky can’t see her, and curls down over the Lego box, wailing.
Over her head, Bucky’s eyes meet Steve’s, but he can’t hold them for long, instead turning back to their daughter and rubbing his hand over her back, above where Steve’s arm is around her, avoiding touching him. “Malkeleh,” he tries, not even sure she can hear him over how loud she’s crying, “malkeleh, it doesn’t work like that, sweet. We can’t just—get a baby, okay? And even if we could, we wouldn’t be able to put him under the tree all wrapped up like that. I…” What is he supposed to say?
Steve shuffles even closer, so close he’s practically sitting on Bucky’s feet. “Why didn’t you tell us that was what you wanted, starshine?” he asks, and as he tucks his face up against Adrienne’s little neck Bucky can’t help but look at him, really look at him. But he can’t see Steve’s face, just the little furrow on his forehead, which could just be his skin smushed up against Ada’s.
Adrienne doesn’t answer. The three of them sit there like that for a long time, rocking a little, until she calms enough that their promise to think about it placates rather than upsets her.
But the spell of the morning has broken. None of them is particularly enthusiastic about the rest of the gifts, and once they’re done Adrienne announces that she wants to watch a movie.
Steve queues up The Princess and the Frog, and then disappears into the bedroom.
For a while Bucky sits with Ada, though she’s curled up on the far side of the sofa from him, clutching her stuffed rabbit Kite to her chest, one foot tucked under the other. But after a bit he can’t stand it anymore, and stands as well, leaving his coffee—now cold—on the coffee table. He grabs the blanket slung over the back of the couch and covers her with it. “I’ll be back in a minute, okay, sugar?” he tells her. She shrugs a shoulder, not looking away from the screen, and he heads for the bedroom.
The door is shut, but when he knocks, Steve says, “yeah,” so Bucky opens it, slips through, pushes it most of the way closed again.
Steve’s sitting on the end of the bed, staring down at his hands. Despite not knowing exactly what he’s thinking, where he stands on this baby situation, something in Bucky rings at the same exact frequency as Steve.
“Yeah, same,” he says, and sinks down next to him on the mattress.
For a long second, the only sound is the muffled Disney music from the other room. Finally, Steve inhales, sharp, and waves a hand vaguely. “I don’t want her to think she’s not—enough. Or you.”
“What do you mean?” Bucky asks.
Steve hugs himself, then, propping his heels on the bedframe. When he speaks next his voice is hoarse. “I don’t want either of you to think that I’m not—happy. With just the two of you.” He shakes his head. “I don’t—need—anything more than this.”
Glancing at the door to make sure Ada’s not going to hear him, Bucky nudges Steve’s knee with his own. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He watches a muscle work in Steve’s jaw. “I—don’t want either of you to think that I—that I want another kid because—” he huffs—“I don’t know, because Ada isn’t…isn’t mine enough. I’m. I don’t want her to think that I don’t think of her as my daughter.”
“Well.” Bucky hesitates. Licks his lips. He just—needs to be sure. “You…you do, don’t you?”
The glare that Steve whips around to give him is enough of an answer, but Steve says it anyway. “Yes, of course I do. See?” He gets up, paces to the closet and back. “See, I knew you’d think that. That’s why I—why I haven’t—” he scrubs both hands through his hair, standing just a few feet in front of Bucky. “God.”
Bucky gets up too, at a loss for what else to do. Taking Steve’s wrists, he pries his hands away from his face and steps in close so he can nudge their noses together. “I believe you,” he whispers. “I promise I believe you.” Steve takes a shuddering breath in, and Bucky rubs his thumbs over the insides of his wrists, pulling until the backs of Steve’s hands are against his chest. “So, can I ask you? Do you want to have more kids?”
Finally Steve meets his eyes, so close Bucky can see the little gold flecks in his irises. His knuckles press against Bucky’s collarbones. “Desperately,” Steve admits. “Bucky, desperately.”
“Okay.”
“But,” Steve rushes on, “but not because—not because I’m not happy with how things are. I am, Bucky. You and Ada have to know that.”
Bucky rocks forward, because he can’t help how badly he wants to kiss Steve right now. “Judging by how she reacted to not having a brother under the tree,” he says, “I think she knows it.”
Steve curls his hands down until his fingertips brush against the backs of Bucky’s. Obligingly, Bucky shifts his grip up until they’re holding hands. “What about you?” Steve asks.
“Given how badly I’ve been nesting ever since the day I goddamn met you,” Bucky says, “I think I want Ada to have a brother, too.” Steve gives him a small, watery smile, which Bucky returns. “Or a sister. I’d be okay with that too. Or both, even.”
Laughing wetly, Steve leans his weight into him, sticking his face into Bucky’s neck. “I want lots,” Steve says, low into his ear. “Enough to—to make a soccer team.”
Bucky laughs, because he can’t help himself, because they’re going to have kids—because he is going to get to watch the love of his life raise a whole series of children to grow into good, fair, righteous human beings, just like him. “Maybe we can negotiate that number,” he says.
Steve twists his hands out of Bucky’s, but only so he can wrap them around Bucky’s body. Bucky grabs for him too, places a kiss on the side of his head.
“I guess,” Steve says, and gives a big sniff, just like Adrienne had done, right in Bucky’s ear. “I guess we can start with one and see how far we get.”