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Bucky isn’t sure what awoke him, the tones of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer blasting from the stereo again, or the surprised yelp coming from the kitchen. Either way, he’s suddenly awake, only to find that he’s managed to wrap himself up into a blanket burrito during the night, and it takes him a moment of struggling to free himself from his soft prison.
While he’s struggling, a second voice comes from the kitchen, this one laughing, and Bucky has no trouble recognizing that it’s Sam.
“Absolutely iconic,” he hears the man’s voice say as he pulls a shirt over his head while heading towards the kitchen. “This is going up on Instagram.”
“What’d I miss?” The scent of pancakes hits Bucky’s face as he steps into the kitchen, and it immediately becomes clear that everyone else is in the middle of breakfast. Natasha and Sam are sitting at the wooden kitchen table, each of them with a plate full of pancakes and fruit in front of them, and Steve’s standing by the stove, picking something out of his hair. Bucky has a creeping suspicion of what it is.
“Mister Super Soldier here just threw a pancake on his head,” Sam chuckles between bites. “Don’t worry, I got a picture of it.”
“I was trying to flip it in the air,” Steve says indignantly.
“Really Steve,” Natasha says, and Bucky watches as she impales a strawberry slice on her fork, “you can survive a jump from hundreds of feet up in the air, but you can’t flip a damn pancake.”
“I usually make waffles,” Steve defends himself while turning a pancake over with the spatula. “It’s mostly Bucky who makes pancakes!”
“And Bucky could have made them if you’d woken him up,” says Bucky, a little smirk forming as he walks up to Steve and pulls a piece of pancake out of his hair. “Forgot a bit,” he says, holding it up to show before putting it in his mouth.
“Ew man, that’s just gross,” says Sam, and his facial expression is that of someone who’s just realized that they’ve stepped in dog shit. Barefoot.
“I was hungry.” Bucky shrugs and makes his way to the table to join the others for breakfast, and just two pancakes later, Steve joins them too, loading up his place with pancakes and strawberries.
It’s nice, Bucky realizes, to be sitting here in the little kitchen with his partner and his friends. The world outside the kitchen window is covered by a layer of white and cold, but in here, it’s warm and cozy and so very wooden that Bucky is sure that if something caught fire, the whole cabin would be turned into a cinder in less than five minutes. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t have a fireplace.
The cabin in question is something that Sam got to borrow over the winter holidays from a friend’s uncle, and Bucky is pretty sure that the only reason he got to come along on the trip is that Steve convinced Sam to let him bring him along. Not that he’s complaining. He’s always wanted to see Alaska, which is where the hut happens to be located.
“So Sam.” Natasha pushes her plate away and places her arms on the table to rest her head upon them as she gazes across the table at the man she’s addressing. “Got any fun plans for us today?”
“I do, actually,” Sam grins and Bucky can’t help but groan.
“Not skiing again. We spent all of yesterday doing that.”
“Dude, if you don’t like skiing, why did you even want to come on a winter holiday?” Sam sounds annoyed, but Bucky’s known him for long enough by now to know that he’s mostly joking.
“Because I didn’t think we’d spend the whole first day going up and down a hill!”
“The Winter Soldier doesn’t like winter sports?” Sam’s grinning and Bucky tries to hold back his own grin as he reaches across the table to playfully slap the man on the arm.
“The Winter Soldier prefers summer sports,” Bucky says while Sam let’s out an exaggerated “Ow!”, and Natasha rolls her eyes.
“So what are the plans?” she asks, and Sam’s attention drifts back to her.
“Oh,” he says, still grinning. “Right. There’s this company that offers moose safaris.”
“Which you of course didn’t book, because you knew none of us would be interested in it,” Natasha states, her eyebrows raised in what Bucky can only assume is disbelief.
Sam only smiles, and Natasha buries her head in her arms with a groan.
“If it gets too boring, we’ll just catch a moose and ride it back home,” Steve suggests, and Bucky can’t help but lean over to place a kiss on the cheek.
“Always the optimist.”
“Well, someone has to be,” Steve shrugs.
Two hours later, they’re standing around in snow that reaches halfway up to Natasha’s knees, listening to Charles – the resident moose expert – go on about the antlered menace that seems to be his life’s passion. They haven’t actually seen a single one yet, but Bucky doesn’t mind. Sam’s shivering, and it’s more than a little fun watching him regret his decision to take them on a moose safari.
“Are you cold, Sam?” Natasha whispers, but Bucky’s pretty sure she could just ask out loud without Charles noticing. He seems to wrapped up in moose to really notice the world around him anyway.
“Listen lady, we didn’t all grow up in Siberia like you,” Sam mutters, and Steve bursts out into a chuckle.
“Now you know how I had it,” he jokes, and Sam rolls his eyes.
“You were asleep!”
“Nothing’s preventing you from taking a nap too,” Natasha suggests, but her grin quickly fades and turns into a look of oh shit. “Oh no you don’t!” she shouts, her arms going up to cover her face as Sam straightens up from where he’s bent down, a tiny mountain of snow gathered up in his arms.
Natasha shrieks as Sam throws it all on her, and Steve’s chuckling gets transformed into laughter that’s almost as loud as Natasha’s shrieking, which is soon followed by running footsteps and Sam yelping in protest as the Black Widow charges at him, ready for revenge.
“You’re scaring the moose away!” Charles yells in desperation as she tackles Sam, and Steve has to lean against Bucky, who’s laughing pretty hard himself by now, to remain standing.
“My mouth still tastes like hot dog,” Steve murmurs, and Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up as he looks down at him.
“Was that a euphemism?”
“Mm. No.”
It’s later that afternoon, and Steve’s curled up against him on the couch, eyes closed and voice sounding just tired enough for Bucky to wonder if he’s actually awake or talking in his sleep. Natasha’s retired to her room after the failed moose safari to do “secret spy business” (Bucky’s pretty sure she means napping) and Sam’s moved into the bathtub, possibly permanently, to try to regain sensation in all his limbs again.
“It’s a shame we didn’t see any moose,” Bucky muses, ruffling Steve’s hair. It looks too soft for Bucky not to mess with it a little.
“I dunno…” Steve yawns and tightens his grip around Bucky’s chest. “The hot dogs tasted pretty weird. Maybe that’s where the moose went.”
“You think Charles would eat his friends?”
“How else do you explain that we didn’t see any of them?”
“You’re right.” Bucky feigns a shiver. “Maybe Charles snapped.”
“I would eat you if I got hungry enough…” Steve states, sounding completely serious.
“Well thank you, that’s reassuring,” Bucky grins as Steve starts nibbling on his shoulder.
“You’re very ta—” Steve starts, but doesn’t get to finish his sentence before a terrified shriek echoes through the cabin from the bathroom, followed by an “Oh fuck no!” and what Bucky can only describe as an evil cackle.
It seems that whatever secret spy business Natasha got up to, it didn’t actually involve napping.