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The lodge had been designed to call to mind an old Germanic hall, right down to murals with pictures from the Nibelungenlied, and it made Steve a little uncomfortable; but it was hard to retain that feeling while lying on a rug in front of a dying fire, watching fat flakes of snow falling among the spruce trees on the other side of the tall plate glass windows. Steve took a lazy swig of eggnog and wondered if Thor would feel at home in this ambience.
Bucky certainly did. He lay on the couch, his feet propped up over one of the arms - and Steve could tell he felt really comfortable, because he’d actually taken off his boots. Usually the only place he went barefoot was inside Steve’s apartment. His head rested on a pillow with Nordic embroidery patterns, and he stared dreamily up at the snow falling against the skylights.
He felt Steve looking at him, though, and turned his head to the side. “Did I ever tell you how I got my name?”
“No,” said Steve. “Always wondered why your parents named you after one of the worst presidents ever, but it never seemed polite to ask.” Maybe even the worst president. It was hard to top losing half the states to secession.
“No,” said Bucky, and he sounded a little impatient. “The Winter Soldier.”
“Oh,” said Steve. He took another swig of eggnog. The alcohol wouldn’t have any steadying effect on his nerves, not physiologically, but sometimes it helped anyway. “No,” Steve said.
The eggnog wasn’t helping. They still used the Winter Soldier as Bucky’s code name in the field sometimes, but it was unnerving to hear Bucky call the Winter Soldier my name.
Bucky hesitated. “I don’t have to tell it,” he said, finally. “I just thought of it. Because it’s sort of a holiday story.”
He stopped again, and Steve realized with surprise that Bucky was actually giving Steve the chance to decide if he wanted to hear it or not.
God. It really must be horrible.
“Go ahead,” Steve said. He pulled himself to sit, leaning back against the warm bricks of the fireplace. “Am I gonna want more eggnog for this?”
Bucky flopped his head back against the pillow. “I want more,” he said.
Steve got them both more eggnog, and also slices of gingerbread. Then, after a moment’s thought, he took a whole plate of iced sugar cookies, because why not? Coulson had sprung for a whole holiday buffet for the SHIELD retreat.
(They hadn’t been planning to spend the holidays with SHIELD. They only came to the retreat to give Coulson their report for Bucky’s first mission back from suspension, but once they were there Coulson invited them to stay.
“Yes,” said Bucky, before Steve had time to consider his reply.
“Bucky – ” said Steve, chagrined. Bucky would have jumped off a cliff if Coulson asked him to.
“They have fruitcake,” Bucky said, and fetched them both wedges nearly the size of his fist.
Despite Steve’s misgivings, Bucky seemed happy to be around other people, even if he wasn’t quite sure how to join in. And it was a huge relief for Steve not to be with Bucky all the time. He felt a little guilty about that at first, but getting some time off meant he liked Bucky better when he was with him, so maybe it was for the best.)
Bucky took one of the snowman cookies and bit off the head. Crumbs showered down on his sweater. Or, rather, Steve’s sweater. Coulson had given his whole team Icelandic sweaters, as well as Steve and Bucky. Clearly Coulson had planned this apparently impromptu invitation: he wanted to draw Bucky and Steve closer to SHIELD. Steve wasn’t sure he liked that.
Bucky promptly stole Steve’s sweater. He had worn it almost constantly since.
“So what’s the story about… about your name?” Steve asked, and wished that he hadn’t stumbled over it as he spoke.
Bucky finished the snowman cookie and ate the slice of gingerbread, then lay picking the crumbs off his plate one by one with his finger. Steve almost said something again, to prompt him, but he forced himself to wait, and suddenly Bucky began. “Snegurochka is the Snow Maiden,” he said. “That’s what her name means. Her grandfather is Ded Moroz, Grandfather Frost, and at New Year’s she helps him pass out presents to children. Like Santa Claus.”
He stopped again, jabbing his finger at a recalcitrant crumb. “She brings presents to everyone, but she can’t love anyone in particular. Once she fell in love with a shepherd, and when they kissed, she melted.” He caught the crumb and ate it. “I told Grisha that was unfair. The shepherd should have frozen.”
He stopped again, staring down at the empty plate. His eyes grew unfocused.
Steve said, uneasy, “I’m sorry, I don’t quite…”
“And Frost is also the protector of Russia - General Frost or General Winter, who keeps out invaders. So I said to Grisha that I was General Winter’s helper, like Snegurochka helps Ded Moroz. The Winter Soldier. And so Grisha started calling me that, and it stuck.”
Another pause. Bucky ran a finger around the rim of the plate. “He liked me,” Bucky said.
Steve’s brain seemed to freeze. He was prepared to do a lot of things to please Bucky, but saying yes, clearly Grisha liked you, never mind he wiped your memories and turned you into a super-assassin – no. Just no.
But Bucky was waiting for an answer, so Steve said, “I guess you liked him a lot?”
“Yes,” said Bucky, annoyed. “But that’s not what I said.” He set his gingerbread plate aside and rolled over to frown down at Steve. “I know you don’t like me, but that doesn’t mean no one else can.”
Steve had never, ever expected Bucky to compare him to his Soviet handlers. Unfavorably. “I love you,” Steve protested.
“That’s not the same thing,” Bucky shot back.
“Well, no, but – Jesus Christ, Bucky! He wiped your memories! You don’t do that to someone you like!”
“People do shitty stuff to people they like all the time,” Bucky shot back. “And anyway I’d already lost my memories and my arm when the Soviets found me. So what should they have done? Boxed me up and shipped me back to DC?”
“Yes!” Steve said. “That’s what you do with prisoners of war. When the war is over, you send them home.”
“But they needed me.” Bucky sat up, looking down at Steve where he sat by the fire. “If you could make it so I just stayed frozen on a glacier in Switzerland until 2014,” Bucky said, “you would, wouldn’t you?”
“Bucky – ”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I try not to think about things like that. There’s no way to undo the past – ”
“But you would.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Steve demanded.
Bucky shook his head.
“Because they needed you?” Steve said incredulously.
“Yes,” Bucky said defiantly. “And they liked me.”
Steve was exasperated. “Bucky, they kidnapped and – ”
“This is why I never talk about anything with you! I knew you’d just try to take it away.”
He had thought they were going to put him in cryo. Maybe he thought they had one of those memory-erasing chairs waiting in the wings, too.
“Bucky,” said Steve, once he’d gotten his breath back. “I’m never going to have any of your memories erased. We destroyed all the facilities for memory erasure that we could find, anyway.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Bucky. He had picked up one of the embroidered pillows and plumped it against his lap. “You don’t have to erase anything. You just want to spoil it.”
Steve couldn’t even argue. That was pretty much exactly what he wanted to do.
“You only like me when I’m weak,” said Bucky, and he had wrapped his arm around the embroidered pillow, holding it against his stomach. “When I’m a wreck. That’s when you like me best.”
“Bucky – ”
“And don’t tell me it’s not fucking true. You’re a shitty liar and always were.”
Steve was chagrined. It seemed so unfair, somehow, for Bucky to bring this up now, when Steve was finally starting to like him again –
And of course that was why Bucky was bringing it up now. He was observant: he must have known for a long time that Steve didn’t much like him. He mentioned it now because now it might not be true.
“Bucky,” Steve said. “I do like you.”
Bucky scowled and held the pillow tighter. Steve scooted from the fireplace to lean against the coffee table, right across from where Bucky sat on the couch. He could have touched Bucky’s leg.
“I didn’t for a while,” Steve said. Bucky’s death grip on the pillow relaxed: he thought maybe Steve was telling the truth. “Because you worked damn hard at being unlikable. And you’re right, I liked you best when you were weak then, because that was the only time you were ever nice to me and the only time you ever let me be nice to you.”
Bucky caught his lower lip between his teeth. Steve put his arm around Bucky’s right calf and hugged his leg. Bucky shuddered and straightened, checking around the room, even though all the agents except Coulson and May were still out on their hunt for a Yule log. He hadn’t let Steve touch him at all since they’d been staying at the lodge, not even to comb his hair. Steve had asked, on the first morning, and Bucky said, “What the fuck, Steve?”
Steve let go of Bucky’s leg. Bucky held onto the pillow, leaning his chin against it. “I always let you be nice to me,” he protested, but Steve was pretty sure he was teasing.
“Making me do things for you doesn’t count,” Steve said, and yes, Bucky was definitely teasing, because he smiled and lowered his eyes. A log in the fire popped and fell.
“And Grisha did like me,” Bucky said.
“Bucky – ” Steve began. He caught his breath. “You know what? It’s Christmas. I’m not going to argue with you about this.”
“Really?”
“And you’re not going to pester me about how much he liked you.”
Bucky mulled it over. He set the pillow aside and brushed crumbs off his sweater. “All right.” He got up to get more cookies.
He didn’t come back to the couch afterward, though, but went to the windows. “Come over here,” he called, and Steve went. As he got closer to the windows, he heard carolling. The SHIELD agents had taken flagons of heavily spiked eggnog along on their hunt for a Yule log, and they were singing “Deck the Halls” with drunken gusto as they returned to the lodge. The snow fort that Bucky and Skye built earlier that afternoon had become a blurry ruin under the falling snow.
The snow fell so thickly that Steve didn’t see the agents till they appeared out of the woods, dragging a monstrous Yule log on a sled behind them. One of them - they were so bundled up Steve couldn’t tell which - tossed a snowball at the others, and soon they were all hurling snow at each other, not even bothering to pack it into balls but just tossing fluffy handfuls.
Bucky leaned so close to the window his breath fogged the glass. He rubbed the glass clear with the cuff of his sweater. “I bet they’d be happy if we went out to join them,” Steve said.
Bucky pulled his arms tight around himself, watching the snowballs fly. He shook his head. “We’d get cold.” He watched a little while longer, the wistfulness in his eyes almost painful. Then he turned away from the window abruptly. He said, “I bet they’re cold. Let’s make them cocoa.”
Steve smiled. “I’m sure they’d like that.”