Work Text:
Best Christmas Ever
~*~
Bucky shivered in the pre-dawn chill and pulled the covers up around his neck. His back felt unusually cold, so he scooted backward trying to locate the familiar warmth of Steve’s broad chest. It wasn’t until he’d wiggled himself to the edge of the mattress and nearly onto the floor that he realized Steve’s side of the bed was empty. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the first thin rays of sunlight peeking in between the slats of the blinds. Steve was up early, even for Steve.
Morning was Steve’s favorite time of the day. He’d hop out of bed like a ray of fucking sunshine and try to pry Bucky out of the bed, too. “Rise and shine,” he’d chirp. “Greet the morning with a smile.”
The first few times it happened after moving in together, Bucky grumpily burrowed back down under the blankets and dug in, but he soon learned a better tactic: invite Steve back to bed. He’d yawn lazily and smile and open his arms. “Can we snag just a few more minutes of sleep?” And of course, Steve would give in and slide back under the covers. They’d curl against each other, warm and pliant, and exchange sleepy nuzzles and slow kisses until the tasks of the day ahead would force them out of their cozy tangle. But today Steve wasn’t around to accept his invitation.
“Steeb?” croaked Bucky. He cleared his throat and tried again, this time with less frog. “Steve?”
“Hey, Buck,” came a soft voice from the hallway. Steve padded uniformed and sock footed into the room, boots in hand, and sat on the edge of the bed. “I tried not to wake you.”
Bucky sat up and rubbed his eyes. “I’m conditioned to hear a twig snapping a half a mile away, so good luck with that.”
Steve smiled, but his face looked strained and tired. “Fury called. Situation in Korea. Gotta leave.”
“Again? So close to Christmas?” Not that they even had a tree up yet, but still. It was the principal of the matter. Fuck Fury and his ‘situation’. There’s always a situation. Let him call someone else for a change. They’d had this discussion before, but Steve wouldn’t consider ignoring the call of duty and Bucky grudgingly respected his decision. He didn’t like it, though.
“Who else is he going to call? I’ll be back before Christmas. I promise.” Steve leaned over and tugged on one of his boots.
“Yeah, about Christmas… I mean, I didn’t know if you had any plans or whatever,” Bucky said. “What do you usually do?”
Steve shrugged and shoved his foot into his other boot. “Nothing, really. Try to stay busy. Work if Fury calls. I don’t think I even put a wreath on the door last year.”
“What? But you love Christmas.” Bucky’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. Steve Rogers ignoring Christmas was like a six-year-old ignoring a tray of free candy.
“I did. I still do, I guess,” Steve replied, turning to look Bucky in the eye. He chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully. “It’s so different than it was back in Brooklyn. Bigger, brighter, more festive. Everywhere you look, it’s one big celebration, but it’s not much fun to celebrate alone.”
Bucky nudged Steve with his shoulder. “You’re not alone. See that pair of shoes in the corner? Evidence that someone else lives here.”
Steve’s face softened into a warm smile. “When I get back, we’ll do something to celebrate. Whatever you want. You decide and let me know, okay?”
“I’m on it. This will be the best Christmas ever.”
~*~
“This is will be the worst Christmas ever,” Bucky said to himself. Two days later, he still had no idea what he and Steve would do for Christmas. He’d discovered a scraggly artificial tree and a dusty box of decorations in the attic of their rented cottage, probably left there by the previous tenant, and decided why not? After a half hour struggle with the unwieldy limbs, Bucky propped the tree in the corner of the room and draped it with a worn strand of red and green lights and a couple of mismatched blue and silver ornaments. Even he couldn’t fool himself into thinking it looked good. Clint confirmed that fact the minute he walked in the door. “Charlie Brown called. He wants his tree back.”
Fine. The tree sucked. That didn’t solve the problem about how to spend Christmas. Clint, as usual, was no help.
“Maui,” Clint had suggested after soundly kicking Bucky’s ass in a game of Mario Kart. “Picture it: beach, sun, surfing. You can go to a luau on Christmas day. Wear flipflops and an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt. And Steve could probably use a break.”
“I don’t have a passport,” Bucky replied. Hell, he didn’t even have a photo ID, which was proving to be an issue. Supposedly, if he avoided having a mental breakdown and going on an extended killing spree, the government would work with him to restore his citizenship in exchange for information on Hydra after the new year. But for now, he couldn’t even buy beer at the gas station.
“You don’t need a passport for Hawaii.”
Oh, right. Bucky kept forgetting it was a state now. But still…Hawaii? As nice as it would be to see Steve sunning himself in a tight pair of board shorts, it didn’t seem like a good Christmas destination. Too many opportunities for sand to collect in places it didn’t belong.
“I’ll think about it,” Bucky replied, noncommittal. “What are you and Natasha doing?”
“My brother has a farm in Indiana. We’re heading there for a week to help out and praying we don’t get snowed in. It’s nice to be around family during the holidays, even if you can’t stand them the rest of the year.”
Bucky squinted and tried to imagine Clint and Natasha in cowboy boots. “A real farm? Like with cows in a pasture?”
“No, a fake one with cows parachuting down from above, bitching about eating more chicken.” Clint thumped Bucky’s forehead with his finger and thumb. “Yes, dumbass, a real farm. It’s relaxing. Natasha likes the horses.”
“I never knew you were a farm kinda guy.”
“Yeah, well, I never knew you were colorblind,” Clint replied, eyeing Bucky’s feeble attempts at decorating.
Touché.
~*~
“One word: snow,” said Tony, seated next to Bucky the next morning at the kitchen table. He reached into his toolkit for a small screwdriver and pried open the casing of Bucky’s metal arm, just on the underside of his wrist. Tony called it monthly arm maintenance. Bucky called it insatiable curiosity about Hydra technology. “Christmas should always be cold and snowy. Hawaii is for tourists who wear socks with their sandals and sip drinks out of coconuts. It’s a cliché. Don’t be a cliché. It’s not a good look.”
Bucky rolled his eyes and tried not to flinch while Tony dug in his forearm for buried treasure. “So, what then? Skiing at a resort? I’ve never skied before, and I don’t think Steve has, either.” To Bucky, a ski resort holiday sounded like even more of a cliché than Christmas in Maui, but he decided to keep that to himself as long as Tony was elbow-deep in the innards of his mechanical arm.
“Skiiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, whatever. Doesn’t matter. You’re missing the point.” Tony tunneled around with the screwdriver until he hit something that made Bucky’s fingers clench into a tight fist. “Note to self. Don’t hit that wire again,” he muttered before moving on to another section of Bucky’s wrist. “Anyway, the point is snow. Snow is cold. Cold leads to cuddling back at the lodge. They put fireplaces in all the rooms for a reason. And hot tubs, but leave those alone. I don’t care how good a hot tub’s been scrubbed, it’s an infection waiting to happen.”
Actually, a lodge sounded kind of nice. Snow, a fireplace, a warm Steve snuggled against him. Bucky reached for his cell phone with his unoccupied hand. “So which resort do you recommend? Somewhere in Colorado? I should probably go on and book something.”
Tony looked up from his tinkering. “Oh, you meant this Christmas. Yeah, no. Every place nice is already booked solid. Has been for months.”
Great.
~*~
Since traveling somewhere for Christmas was apparently out of the question, Bucky decided to make the best of things and settled for decorating Steve’s little cottage.
“Man, I don’t know,” Sam said, warily eyeing the giant inflatable snowman. “One good gust of wind and it’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on your front lawn.”
Bucky crossed his arms over his chest in silent agreement. He and Sam had spent the better part of the afternoon wandering the festive Christmas aisles of a supercenter store, finally ending up in the back among the outdoor decorations. The enormous, undulating snowman was the least offensive of the bunch. The Santa looked like something out of a Faustian nightmare.
“I don’t think decorations with moving parts on my lawn at night is a good idea,” said Bucky. “The neighbors would be upset seeing Santa with a bullet through his forehead.”
Sam draped an arm around Bucky’s shoulders and steered him toward the boxed ornaments. “I’m with you on the lawn stuff, but you have got to at least buy some new ornaments because, damn. You do not want Steve to come home to that raggedy tree.”
On a shelf to the right, a motion activated dancing reindeer sprang to life, his red nose flashing like a siren. Bucky immediately dropped into a defensive stance, fists raised, until he realized the reindeer probably wasn’t going to leap off the shelf and drop him like a masked ninja. “Sorry,” he said, casting a sheepish look in Sam’s direction. “Old habits.”
Sam guffawed. “What’d Rudolph ever do to you? I thought you were gonna put him in a choke hold.”
After a few more minutes of looking, Bucky excavated a box of glossy silver and gold balls from the bottom of a 50% off bin. Yes, they were plastic and the package proudly declared they’d been made in China, but they were the closest thing he could find to the shiny glass balls that used to hang on his tree in Brooklyn. The rest of the decorations, though, were foreign to him. An ice princess singing about letting something go, a blond kid shooting his eye out, a green fuzzy monster called a grinch that looked like something a cat would cough up in the hallway. It was overwhelming.
“I can’t do this,” he complained. “I have no idea what of this stuff Steve would like.”
Sam poked Bucky right in the shoulder with his finger. “Steve’s not here. You’re the one who gets to decide. What do you like?”
Bucky spun in a slow circle in the middle of the aisle. Nothing. He hated all of it. “I like these ornaments,” he said at last, holding up the box in his hand.
“What else? When you think of Christmas, what do you see?”
“A live tree,” blurted Bucky. “Not one of the fake ones like they have here or that piece of shit I have at home. A real one that sheds needles everywhere and falls over in the middle of the night.”
Sam grinned at him. “Now we’re talking. There’s a tree lot on the way home. I’ll toss the old one in the dumpster myself. No charge. What else?”
It all came flooding out of him in a tumbled rush of words. “Popcorn garland and hot chocolate and Christmas carols on the radio and big strands of colored lights and…and…fuzzy slippers.”
“I never associated fuzzy slippers with Christmas before, but okay.” Sam looked bemused.
“I like for my feet to be warm,” shrugged Bucky. “And you asked.”
“I did,” chuckled Sam. “Let’s find some slippers.”
~*~
Bucky had just settled on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and a ball of yarn when a key turned in the front door lock. “Hey, Bucky, I’m home,” called Steve.
“I spiffed up the place while you were gone. I hope you don’t mind.” Bucky punched a long sewing needle through a fat kernel of popcorn and pushed it up the string.
“Oh, wow…” breathed Steve. “It’s amazing.” He dropped his bag at the front door and walked over to the fir tree, now adorned with colored twinkle lights and an assortment of silver and gold shimmering balls. Steve buried his nose in one of the dark green branches and inhaled deeply. “Smells like Christmas.”
“You know what else smells like Christmas? Hot chocolate. There’s some simmering on the stove. Pour me a mug while you’re up, won’t ya?”
“I literally just walked in the door and you’re putting me to work,” griped Steve. He gave Bucky’s hair a playful tug as he walked past him. “Anything else I can get for you, your highness?”
“Nope, not unless you find Jean Harlow in the pantry.”
Steve flopped down on the sofa next to Bucky and handed him a steaming mug of cocoa. “You really did a great job with the decorations.”
“Don’t act so surprised. I’m not completely worthless.” Bucky grinned and side-eyed Steve as he took a sip.
“No, not completely,” said Steve. “But something’s missing.”
Bucky’s smile slipped just a wee bit. “What’s missing? I can go get it. The stores are still open.”
“Relax. I have it covered.” Steve reached into his pocket, dug out a tiny green sprig and held it playfully over his head.
Bucky squinted at the green leafy plant in Steve’s hand that in no way resembled mistletoe. “What is that? Kale?” he guessed. “Or maybe that stuff they put on your plate in fancy restaurants…what’s it called…oh, parsley!”
“Come on, Buck, work with me here,” sighed Steve. “Does it really matter?”
Bucky put his mug down on the coffee table, swung a leg across Steve’s lap and straddled his legs with his thighs. “Not even a little bit,” he said as he rested his hands on Steve’s shoulders. “Since when have I needed an excuse to kiss you?”
“Good point.” Steve tossed the green sprig over his shoulder and slid his hands along Bucky’s waist and down to cup his bottom.
Bucky dipped his head and pressed a soft kiss to Steve’s lips. They tasted sweet, like the hot chocolate in his mug, warm and velvety.
Steve tilted up to meet him and deepened the kiss, parting his lips with a breathy sigh and swirling their tongues together in languid dance.
“Remember when you said we could celebrate Christmas however I wanted?” panted Bucky between kisses.
“Mmmhmm,” Steve hummed against Bucky’s lips.
Bucky pulled back, gripped Steve’s chin with his thumb and forefinger, and gave him a look that was hot enough to ignite a glacier.
Steve’s eyes danced mischievously and he gave Bucky’s ass a little squeeze. “This is the best Christmas ever.”