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Sam’s small house didn’t have a basement but it did have a small storage area large enough to store things or possibly use for cellar type pantry. So after he moved in 8 years ago when he’d finished his last tour he’d taken a lot of the boxes from his mother’s garage and stored them there thinking he’d unpack them as he got settled.
But it was 8 years later and all the boxes were still there. The only time he thought about them was when he went down to drag the Christmas decorations out.
The last few years he’d barely decorated since he spent most of his time away first tracking down Bucky with Steve, then helping Steve and the other Avengers and last year he’d spent with his sister Sarah whom he hadn’t seen in a while. But this year, he was determined to decorate and make it a good one. For himself and for Steve and Bucky. He’d bribed them to help him decorate with the promise of homemade hot chocolate as a reward. I make better hot cocoa than ANY of those coffee chains could even dream of. A little cocoa, some sugar, some cream warmed on the stove, a touch of mint. And a touch of my nana’s secret ingredient.Who could resist such an offer?
Steve is moving the furniture around to make room for the tree they’d all went to pick out as Bucky follows Sam down to the storage room. For some reason Sam had never figured out, there was only one light with a pull chain and it was at the bottom of the stairs.
Bucky slides a hand onto Sam’s shoulder as a noisy stair creaks below his feet. “Creepy much?”
“Hey, just be glad there’s no cannibalistic children living down here.”
“What?” Bucky pauses on the stair, his hand falling away from Sam’s shoulder as he steps further down.
“Nevermind,” Sam says clicking the light on and turning back to reach for Bucky’s hand. Bucky takes the last couple stairs grasping Sam’s outstretched hand and Sam takes the opportunity to pull him close. “Bad horror movie.” he offers, but is now far too distracted by Bucky’s mouth as he leans in to steal a kiss.
“You guys have weird horror stories now.” Bucky mumbles clearly not caring anymore as he snakes his left hand under the hem of Sam’s shirt.
Sam sucks in a sharp breath at the cold metal contact to his skin making Bucky chuckle. “s’not funny” he protests, though Bucky’s warm mouth on his neck was starting to make up for it.
"It is a little."
Bucky’s lips whisper lightly against his earlobe sending nearly all the blood in his body south. “Fuck.” Sam tips his head back against the cool cement wall to catch his breath. “We can’t do this right now,” he says lifting his head to meet Bucky’s eyes.
Buck sighs a little and leans his forehead against Sam’s to catch his own breath a soft whine escapes before he places a soft kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth and steps back.
"To be continued," Sam teases pushing himself off the wall.
There’s a quiet stretch as Sam shuffles some boxes around and Bucky huffs a laugh to himself. “Whatever happened to H.P. Lovecraft or H.G. Wells?”
“Eh, they’re still around, pretty popular in certain circles. Can’t say I’m much of a big fan of the original works myself, but their work inspired a lot of modern psychological horror and science fiction. I think you’d maybe like Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. That’s some freaky shit,” Sam says handing Bucky a box marked X-MAS LIGHTS in black sharpie.
“I’ve actually already seen a few episodes on Netflix” Bucky says giving him a smug satisfied look.
“Aw you’re growing up so quick,” he grins and piles another box with lawn decoration on top of the one he’s already holding.
“It was a little surreal,” Buck pauses for a moment, “and at times a little too real.”
Sam feels a knot form in his stomach at the admission. Bucky’s progress the last few years had been nothing short of a miracle and he hates that there are things in this world that sometimes set him back a few steps or makes him uncomfortable. “I’m sorry babe,” Sam says placing a kiss to Bucky’s temple.
Bucky hums his appreciation, “It’s ok, it was last year. Maybe it was too soon for that kind of thing.”
Sam wants to wrap his arms around Bucky and keep him safe from harm forever, but he knows that’s not an option, so he rubs a comforting stroke over Bucky’s shoulder blades. “Why don’t you take those up to Steve while I dig around some more.”
Bucky nods and heads upstairs.
Sam scoots a few more boxes around but can’t find the one with ornaments in it. He grabs the emergency flashlight off the wall and checks under the stairs. Bingo! There they are 2 boxes full of ornaments. He puts the flashlight back on the wall and then grabs both boxes since they’re fairly light and heads back upstairs. As he reaches the top he can hear Steve bursting out in laughter from the kitchen.
"Oh my god, you have to tell Sam," Steve says holding back another laugh.
"Tell me what?" he asks rounding the doorway plopping the 2 boxes onto the table.
Steve takes them from him and makes his way to the living room with a smile still plastered to his face.
“When I was asking you about H.G. Wells I remembered how Steve and I listened to Orson Welles read that Halloween broadcast of War of the Worlds.”
“Oh man, what?” Sam laughs surprise and realization hitting him, “That’s… wow, that had to have been a trip!”
"Understatement." Steve shouts from the living room.
"I was only 15 at the time," Bucky starts and motions for Sam to follow him into the living room. "I had just moved in with Steve only months before and we were barely scraping by trying to stay in school."
“Right?” Steve chimes in, “Remember how we couldn’t afford a radio so we built ours out of scrap pieces of broken radios we hauled out of junk yards?”
Bucky nods. “You should’ve seen it Sam, I was so proud of that thing. It was the fanciest thing in our entire apartment.”
Sam sees his whole face light up at that and he’s glad the tension from earlier has melted away. “Anyway,” Bucky continues, “that night, we were listening and one minute I’m sitting there on the floor, still trying to process what is really going on, and the next Steve is yanking me to my feet and shoving shit into my hands. The few forks, knives and cup saucers we owned, he basically was grabbing anything and everything that could be used as a weapon in our apartment. So then he goes to grab a bag and stuffs everything into it and drags me by the arm out the door.” Bucky laughs and pauses like he’s reliving the moment in his head.
Steve continues, “Remember how we walked up and down the neighborhood grabbing spare pieces of wood and checking on all the families? And that one lady, I think her name as Mrs. Santiago, she gave us a mixing bowl and a colander to wear as helmets on our heads?”
"Oh yeah!" Bucky laughs. "Jesus, we looked ridiculous, and they wouldn’t have protected us from a good punch let alone possible alien attacks." Bucky turns to Sam rolling his eyes and pointing at Steve. "Steve here kicked my shin hard as ever when I started to decline her offer and insisted we accept the things from the kind lady like I was being the rudest person on the planet.”
Sam laughs and can’t help grinning at the two of them trading off while they tell the story. He tries to image what a young mostly carefree Bucky might have looked like but he can’t really picture him. He only knows what he’s seen in the history books, newsreels, exhibits and now. He wonders absently if Steve has any sketches of him from their childhood but figures it’s none of his business.
They finish telling him that they’d eventually found out the whole thing was a broadcast from play and not an actual news bulletin, but from that day forward many of the families in the neighborhood, Mrs. Santiago especially, saw them as heroes and helped look after them. It also, in a cruel twist of irony, was the main event that lead Bucky to become fascinated with reading horror and science fiction.
—-
Sam makes them his nana’s famous hot cocoa to much praise and adoration and they are putting the last of the ornaments onto the tree as Sam packs the tissue paper and extra lights back into the empty boxes. He grabs two to take them back downstairs and shortly after he hears Bucky’s footsteps come down as well.
Bucky sets the remaining boxes next to the ones Sam has already put down and looks at him with a soft smile. Sam reaches out pulling Bucky into a warm hug and smiles inhaling deeply.
"Today’s been great," Bucky whispers closing his eyes and pressing his forehead into Sam’s. "Love you so much."
Sam is suddenly overwhelmed at how comfortable this all is now and he can feel a lump in his throat so he presses a kiss to the top of Bucky’s nose and smiles, “Love you too.”
They stand there a few more moments just enjoying each other’s company but finally Sam pulls back and clears his throat willing the lump away. “Should probably get back upstairs before Steve gets bored and starts getting ideas for ways to improve the decorations.”
Bucky huffs, nods and turns back to the staircase, but pauses as he reaches it. “What is the rest of this stuff?”
"Just old junk my mom packed up when I went to college and then off to the military."
At that Bucky’s face lights up and he knows he’s in trouble, it wasn’t Steve’s ideas he needed to worry about.
"We should go through some of this, could be fun!"
Sam waves his hand around, “Nah, most of it is probably just old clothes, shoes and things.”
"What about this one? Sam’s childhood?" Bucky grins.
"Um, I don’t know…" Sam knows what’s probably in that box and he can feel the embarrassment building already.
"Pleeeeease! Just one box!" Bucky grins at him wide eyed and then changes to a smirk. "I will make it so worth while later," he licks his lips and rakes his eyes over his entire body.
Sam feels a shiver and he knows he’s done for. “Ok, just one. And no laughing,” he demands.
Bucky instantly laughs as he grabs the box and says, “No way, I can’t promise that.”
Bucky bounces up the stars and Sam sighs rubbing a hand over his face. Here goes nothing.
As Bucky pulls out items he finds himself reliving his own childhood. A case of green army men, and a couple Power Rangers action figures are pulled out first.
When Bucky asks what they are he tries to explain the premise of the show to them but then just shakes his head and says they’re like a mix of teen ninjas meets the kaiju from Pacific Rim. All four Ninja Turtle action figures and Bucky can’t figure out why anyone would watch anything with a creepy talking rat. There’s some baseball cards, a few old nintendo games, some cassette tapes and a finally a stack of captain america and howling commandos comic books, memorabilia and trading cards. Steve and Bucky tease him mercilessly about his Captain America items that outnumber the rest of the Commandos by a very large margin and Sam takes it all in stride just to see the smile on Bucky’s face.
"Well you two, " Steve says as Sam’s putting the items back into the box, "afraid I have to head out to catch a flight."
"Hot date?" Bucky smiles.
"If the Rockettes are hot, then yeah I suppose."
"Wait, you what?? Rockettes? Explain yourself." Sam demands.
Steve chuckles as he grabs his coat from the rack behind the door. “I have an appearance as Cap tomorrow with them. You know, publicity and all that,” he shrugs like it’s no big deal.
"You and your chorus girls, I swear." Bucky teases.
"Hey, don’t be jealous. Those USO girls were amazing. How do you think I got so good at putting tights on so quick?"
Bucky snorts and shakes his head as Sam laughs outright.
Steve says his goodbyes giving them both a hugs and thanks Sam quietly at the door for making this an exceptional day for them all. After Steve’s car pulls away Sam shuts the door and he finds Bucky leaning in the kitchen door frame with a smirk. His eyes flick up and Sam notices the mistletoe not so subtlety tacked up.
He grins and strides quickly over to Bucky planting a solid kiss on his mouth. The taste of mint and chocolate still lingers and Sam can’t help but hum in complete satisfaction. These kind of days make any bad ones completely worth it.