Work Text:
The sun hadn’t even peaked over the horizon in New South Wales Australia as Sam and Bucky pulled into the beach parking lot. It was 4am on Christmas morning and there would no doubt be the regulars getting their first light swims in very soon before the Christmas Day crowds arrived. Their five-year-old daughter was sound asleep in the back of the car, Christmas was bring your family day if you were on shift at the beach and the whole extended Life Guarding Family would be present for the busiest day of the year. The weather was set to be a scorcher and within hours the beach would be swarming with tens of thousands of local and tourist families to celebrate.
Bucky lifted Robyn out of the car while Sam got their work bags and locked up. The light was already on in the tower, and they could see Steve putting up the shutters and uncovering the windows. Bucky disappeared inside the tower to settle Robyn with their bags and Sam went to open up the storage and start getting out the rescue equipment. Sam backed the two Rhinos out of the way and onto the sand before going back in for the boards. Bucky joined him, backed him against the cool brick wall and kissed him as Sam laughed and relaxed into it. Even after seven years of being married and four of dating before that, Bucky never wasted an opportunity to recreate their first kiss.
“Break it up you two,” Steve said with a joking roll of his eyes, “there’s boards and flags to set up.”
Bucky kissed Sam for a few seconds longer, just because he could, and Sam was willing before breaking the kiss off. He and Steve went to plant flags and set up some boards along the shoreline while Sam finished getting out the bulk of the equipment.
Dawn had broken by the time they returned, and the beach was a beautiful gold that not many people got to see. There were a few surfers waxing their boards down the south end of the beach including a couple of their own, Natasha and her younger sister Yelena who would be on shift with them later on when things picked up. Steve took a rhino down there to keep an eye on things but it mainly a precaution, the experienced surfers rarely needed help in the water. Bucky went to the north end of the beach where early morning swimmers were arriving and Sam stayed at the tower with Robyn asleep on a make-shift bed and keeping an eye through the binoculars, or binos.
Robyn woke a little after six and crawled into his lap for a morning cuddle. The beach was still empty but the sun was out and warm. He checked the horizon and radioed to Steve and Bucky that he was taking his eyes off to get Robyn her breakfast out of the bag waiting to hear back before doing so. Robyn sat at the bench beside him eating her breakfast and looking through her own pair of binos between bites. Robyn had decided she wanted to be just like her daddies when she grew up so had asked for her own binos for her last birthday.
“Uncle Steve’s getting wet,” Robyn said as Sam watched the sea in front of the tower for any swimmers. He turned his attention just as the radio call came in from Steve informing him Steve was going in. Sam watched the rescue through his binos, Steve cut through the swells like they were nothing to where a surfer had a guy holding onto his board. Natasha and Yelena paddled in to help Steve after he had retrieved the patient. The rescue was a guy who had been walking on the rocks with his family and gotten too close to the edge and fell in. He was lucky in a lot of ways, lucky the water was deep enough he didn’t hit the lower rocks, lucky Steve was down there, especially lucky the surfer was there since the couldn’t swim a stroke and very lucky that he didn’t need any first aid. Lucky guy indeed.
Steve radioed that the man had refused the offer of being medically checked out and let him go on his way, though not without a firm recommendation to get checked over if he started having concerning symptoms. Natasha and Yelena returned to the water to catch a few final waves before their shifts started and Steve refocused on the water in front of him.
The rest of the team arrived within the next couple of hours as the beach started to fill up with tourists. Christmas Day was the busiest every year so everyone was on duty but the team still managed to make it good for those with families. Their families would join them on the beach and they would have a split lunch so everyone got a longer break then usual. Sam’s sister and her family would be joining them as well as Bucky’s mom, sister and niece and nephew. Between them they all cooked a feast to share. Being a Life Guard on the team was like having a huge extended family and for some it was the only family they had.
Sam was joined in the tower first by Clint and his wife Laura, who had retired after having their third child but still kept her training up to date for busier season days as extra back-up, and their kids who took Robyn to get some air and to play by the side of the tower. While Sam adored that his daughter wanted to be a Life Guard like him and Bucky so badly she had asked for binos for her birthday, she was still 5 and there were some radio calls she shouldn’t be privy to when rescues turned serious. Tony and his family arrived, his wife Pepper and their daughter Morgan, soon after the Barton’s bringing with them two of their trainees for the season, Harley and Wanda. The remaining trainees, Peter and MJ, were starting a little later since they had been on close-up the night before and it had been a late one with an afterhours rescue.
Sam remembered his first Christmas on the service like it was yesterday. He pulled more people from the water that day than most whole weeks. If the crowds hit the projected levels it was going to be quite the day for all of them.
Thor and his partner Bruce, their resident wild-life expert from the near by research facility arrived at 10 to finish off those on the morning start. Thor still loved to tell the story of the day they met when Bruce had been called down to receive an ill looking sea snake to look after and then release. Thor had offered to walk Bruce back to his car and as they talked he suggested that they would be seeing each other again Bruce had tripped over his own feet. Thor saved both Bruce and the snake before clarifying for work, which Bruce stumbled through an agreement to. After several more visits Thor asked Bruce out for a drink and the two hadn’t looked back. Sometimes Bruce still wasn’t sure what Thor saw in him but he loved Thor and as long as he wanted to be with Bruce, Bruce wasn’t about to give him up.
A little before 11 a surfer came to the tower to say the shower down at the south end was leaking and spraying water everywhere. While that sounded perfect on the scorcher of a day they were having a lot of people were concerned about wasting water. Clint radioed for Tony and Sam went to fill in for him at the flags in front of the tower. As he reached the station there Tony was coming out of the water with a patient and Harley was telling him he had been radioed for. Both Harley and Tony were soaked having been going in almost non-stop for the past hour after tourists who had swam a little too deep.
Even after all his years there it still amazed Sam how people who had never swam in the ocean or knew they couldn’t swim just walked out into the ocean and expected everything to go just fine. He and Harley continued to trade off going in until Tony returned. After he was freed up he got asked to go trade off with Bucky so he could have his morning break. Sam got in a Rhino and pulled around in front of where their families were sitting. He called Robyn over and asked if she wanted to come down to see her dad and for a ride. She climbed excitedly into the passenger seat and Sam set off to the North end of the beach.
When they pulled up Bucky was on the megaphone attached to the top bar of the Rhino he and Yelena were sitting in. He was informing people that they were swimming in a strong rip with strong currents and they should swim between the red and yellow flags where it was safer. As usual, the tourists were ignoring him and swimming there anyway. Yelena spotted someone in trouble and went in after them as Sam and Robyn arrived. Bucky radioed it in and they watched, Bucky and Sam ready to back her up and follow her in if needed. Robyn stood on the back of the Rhino, watching over the bars at the top.
Yelena pulled a German tourist from the water who seemed to speak limited English but after a few minutes of trying to explain he seemed to understand he shouldn’t have been swimming there and nodded at her. This was one of the most frustrating parts of their job, there were signs in multiple languages explaining that there were dangerous currents in that part of the beach that Bucky had planted earlier with Steve. Yet all of them went ignored. As Yelena returned to the Rhino Bucky turned to where Robyn was standing and watching.
“Wanna take a turn?” Robyn nodded. “You remember what I taught you to say?” He asked her, holding up the mic for the megaphone. The two of them had been teaching Robyn sea safety since before she could walk. She nodded that she remembered and took the mic. Strictly speaking there was no rule against letting other people talk on the mic. Robyn took the mic and brought it to her mouth.
“You are swimming in a dangerous area called a rip. A rip current is very strong and can pull you out to sea in seconds. Please swim between the red and yellow flags where it’s safer.” Bucky let her repeat the message a couple of times before giving her a thumbs up and telling her she did a good job. A few people had seemed to get the message and brought their children from the water and were moving further down the beach.
Bucky returned to the tower with Robyn for his break and Sam stayed with Yelena on duty until they were relieved for lunch a couple of hours later by MJ and Thor. When Sam and Yelena made it back to central Sam’s sister and her family had arrived. Sam hugged his sister, brother-in-law and his nephews Cass and AJ, wishing them a merry Christmas before checking if any help was needed preparing the food.
Peter, the final trainee was ushering his aunt out of the tower as he went up the stairs. “Honestly aunt May, we’re good on food, you just enjoy your day at the beach. You never get days off to spend at the beach,” he sounded like he was desperate to keep her out of the kitchen.
“Hey Spidey,” Sam greeted squeezing past.
“Hey Falcon- I mean Mr Wilson. Um, this is my aunt May.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Sam, or Falcon.”
“Nice to meet you. All these nicknames, I don’t know how he remembers them all. He still won’t tell me how he got his nickname,” May looked at her nephew accusingly. Peter smiled nervously as she went down the stairs and shook his head at Sam, imploring him not to tell her he got his nickname for scaling rocks to get to a patient earning him a cut on his own leg for his troubles. He already had a lecture from Tony, the senior life guard on duty that day, he didn’t want one from his aunt too.
All of the life guards had nicknames, with the exception of the other trainees who just hadn’t been given one yet. Sam’s nickname was Falcon because of his keen eyesight and how he moved through the water on a rescue. Clint was Hawkeye because he could often spot people in trouble from the tower without the aid of his binos. Bucky had come to the service with a nickname, his real name being James but the only people who used it were Sam and his mother.
From inside the tower Sam could see Bucky and Robyn splashing around in the shallows with her cousins between the flags. It had been so long since he had really seen his family he barely recognised his oldest nephew. “Cass got really tall this past year,” he said, out loud but mostly to himself.
“Right, he’s almost as tall as Coop now,” Clint said as he scanned the shore. Cooper was Clint’s oldest son and the oldest of all the life guard kids on their beach. He was 14 and a Clubbie, who were like Jr Life Guards. Clubbies were more likely to get traineeships because they trained and did qualifications that Life Guards needed. Clint raised his binos and radio at the same time, “hey Cap, you got a couple heads out the back behind the swells, looks like they’re waving but the waves are too big to see ‘em.” He called to Steve who was still at the South end of the beach. Sam turned his gaze that way to see Nat climbing on the back of the Rhino to get a better look and confirming it to Steve. There were three of them so both stripped their gear and headed in. Laura who was on patrol down there made her way over to the Rhino to provide back-up if needed. They turned out to be three kids who had been jumping in from the rocks and landed a little out of their depth. None of them were hurt, thankfully, and they were returned to their families quickly.
Bucky and the kids were coming back up the sand, so Sam went to greet his family under the tower. His brother-in-law Aron was helping Peter carry the huge grill out from the back of the storage to start it cooking the meat and fish for their dinner and his sister was talking to Peter’s aunt. Peter took a Rhino with Wanda to go relieve Steve and Nat, reminding Bucky to let his aunt help cook at his own risk. The team had seen the loving lunches May had packed Peter back when he had first started, and nobody needed reminding to encourage her to relax and enjoy her day off. Bucky and Aron manned the grill and Sam made sure to top up Robyn’s sunblock and got her to play in the shade for a while to cool off while he caught up with Sarah, Pepper and got to know May.
“He tells me about everyone but he uses names and nicknames interchangeably so I have no idea what he’s saying half the time,” May said and Pepper said she knew exactly how May felt.
“I’m the same with Tony, always was. Morgan knows everyone’s nicknames better than me. He tells her bedtime stories about everyone’s heroic rescues.”
“Oh, Tony, I know that one, Iron something- man, Ironman. Because,” May wracked her brain, “he won a lot of them in a row. And I know Steve is Cap? And Clint is some kind of bird?”
“I thought you were a bird,” Sarah asked Sam.
“We both are. Clint is Hawkeye because of his good eye for spotting people in trouble. I’m Falcon. Tony is Ironman because he won it over 10 years in a row. Steve is Cap. Thor is Thunda, on account of his name and booming voice, his partner is our wildlife expert and called Bruce so Brucey after the shark in Finding Nemo. He was almost Hulk, after he went off on some European backpackers who were tormenting an animal stuck in the pool down the South end, rightly so by the way, but he really didn’t like it and Thor asked us to go back to Brucey.” Sam rattled off the ones he could think of based on who he could see.
“There’s one more bird one, Peter mentioned him a few times.”
“Oh, Torres, Baby Bird, Torres is a part timer who also flies the rescue chopper. He was going to Top Gun, but we heard his girlfriend call him Baby Bird and we figured it was just as good a fit. His girlfriend is Yelena, or Lena. Natasha is Nat, though she had been known to be called Black Widow in her martial arts club because she’s undefeated. And Laura is Laur-o,” Sam always had to focus on his accent when he said any of the nicknames that ended in ‘o’, they just didn’t sound right in his old American accent. He’d come to Australia with his sister and her husband after their parents had passed away. He had been 13. Even though it had been more years than that since he had arrived, sometimes his accent would slip back into his old Louisiana one.
Torres turned up to help in the arvo and relieved Tony so he could enjoy his lunch with his family. Throughout the dinner barbecue everyone took turns manning the tower and listening out for the radio calls before switching out so the rest of the team could come get their food and take their break.
“Did Robyn see her big present yet?” Sarah asked Sam after the older kids had taken the younger ones in search of the ice-cream truck.
“Nah, not yet, she thinks Santa visits our house while we’re here, so she doesn’t ask to open anything before we leave in a morning,” Sam explained. “She’s gonna be so excited though, I can’t wait for her to see it.” An alarm sounded on Sam’s phone. “Break over. Are you guys heading off?”
“Yeah, as soon as the boys get back. Are you still coming tomorrow night?”
“Boxing day dinner? Wouldn’t miss it.”
Sam’s final few hours were spent in front of a particularly rough rip near the surfers at the South end, where he spent most of his arvo switching out getting wet with Peter and MJ who had joined them due to the rising crowd level. It was the height of Summer and Life Guards would be on duty until at least 9pm.
Sam and Bucky however were able to clock off at half past six, later than intended but they wouldn’t say no to the overtime. Robyn said goodbye to Morgan and Nate and walked back to the car swinging between her dads from their hands.
“Excited to see what Santa left while we were out?” Bucky asked as she bounced in her car seat.
“So excited. More excited to see what you and Papa got me,” she told them. Sam and Bucky knew they lived in an area of mixed income families and had told Robyn that while some of her toys were from Santa, her main present was from them. Bucky smiled at her in the rear-view mirror. He and Sam had been up late the night before setting up her gift just right with a couple of props.
By the time they were unlocking the door she was hopping up and down like a bunny rabbit. Sam paused just to tease her before opening the door for her. She ran by him and straight to the living room where she began squealing with joy, jumping and pointing. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” She yelled, running back up to them as they grinned. She hugged the two of them tightly before running back towards her gift. Sam and Bucky left their bags by the door and went to join her.
Propped on a fake wave of couch cushions was her very own surfboard with a mannequin wearing a wetsuit. Her wetsuit was covered in swirling patterns in various shades of blue. Until now Robyn had just ridden with her dads so she knew the basics of surfing, but now she was old enough to take the lessons offered at the beach and join the nippers program, which was the younger step before clubbies. They weren’t sure how they would be knowing she was in the water without them, so they had arranged – for the first few at least – to always have one of them off shift.
“Can we take it tomorrow? Please? Please? Please?” She begged; her hands clasped together under her chin as though she were praying. Sam and Bucky were both scheduled in the morning and Robyn would be with Pepper and Morgan on the beach.
“We have a few hours after work and before we’re going to Ti-ti Sarah’s for dinner,” Bucky reasoned.
“So long as the swell isn’t too high,” Sam agreed. “If it’s too big for you on your own we’ll take you out,” he compromised as her face threatened to fall.
Robyn cheered and hugged them both again before asking if she could try on her new wetsuit to open the rest of her gifts in. Once she was changed Bucky lifted her onto the board, keeping it steady while she did surf poses while Sam took pictures to send to their families. After the photoshoot she sat down to open her other gifts which included some new hair accessories she had asked for, a surf board care kit and some toys.
Morgan and Nathaniel also received their first surf boards for Christmas and their parents brought them to the beach together the next day. After their parents shifts they waxed their boards and rode the smaller waves a little way off from the main pack of surfers so they didn’t get in the way before their parents took them out on their boards a little later on.
“So, what’s the verdict, good Christmas this year?” Sam asked her as they carried his board up the sand to go to Sarah’s. Bucky had gone ahead with his and Robyn’s while Sam took her for a couple of last runs.
Beside him Robyn made a thinking face before breaking into a hugged grin and declaring it the “best Christmas ever!”