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Right there, on Christmas Eve with a bottle of beer sitting on the coffee table and a turkey sandwich on a plate next to it, right there while reruns of so called classic Christmas movies that Steve has never seen before in his life are flickering over the television screen (everyone has a TV at their house these days, in colour, no less), right there while Kevin McAllister realises that family is the most important thing in the world, Steve suddenly feels very, very old. The ninety years are tugging on his shoulders at last, and it’s like every bone in his body has suddenly become fragile, every muscle tired. He slumps back into the sofa, dimly aware of Kevin’s mother returning to their house to meet her son, and he feels like a very grumpy old man because all that he can think is that Christmas used to be different. And then there’s instant guilt because that’s all old people ever do, complain about how when they were young things used to be different and better and children respected their parents and the sun shone a little brighter, but as much as he tries, Steve can’t help thinking it. He’s ninety years old, and things used to be different.
His mother couldn’t afford presents; they were lucky when they got a tree and a turkey for Christmas, and Steve knew that his mother would start saving up money in late summer just to be able to give her son a little joy. Sometimes, if she’d been lucky and come upon some extra money he would get a present, usually a toy or a new set of pencils, but never more than that. And that was fine, times were rough and big trees and piles of presents were for rich people. After she died and he was sent to the orphanage Christmas stayed a humble occasion where the food was a little better and the table was decorated and they practised Christmas carols in school and that too was fine. Usually every kid at the orphanage got a small present on Christmas Day, something useful they would have gotten sooner or later anyway, like a new pair of boots or a new shirt, but it was still fine. And even when he moved in with Bucky their Christmases were anything but grand and sparkling—they usually had a cheap tree that Steve had found somewhere, and they would get a small bird to put in the oven and they’d exchange small presents, but it was all about appreciating the blessings in your life and having people to share the day with. Kevin McAllister’s shocking revelation that family is more important than presents, Steve grew up with that. He’d taken it for granted only to find out that the times, they’d taken away the way Christmas used to be.
The end credits of the film are coming on along with an ad at the bottom of the screen informing Steve that a movie called It’s a Wonderful Life is up next. Steve glances at the clock. Only a few minutes past ten, maybe it’s about time he called it a day. His mood isn’t going to improve soon anyway, and he hates feeling like an old bitter Grinch when really, there are so many people out there who have it distinctively worse than him.
The knock on the door pulls him from his thoughts.
Ten fifteen. He should be alert, alarmed because who on earth decides to drop by that late on Christmas Eve, but he’s so very tired and exhausted and old that he just can’t be bothered to. Probably one of the old ladies from the house next door, Maybe their television’s broken again and they figure because he looks young he knows how to fix it. He pushes himself up from the sofa and trudges to the door, rubbing at his eye. Bed. Soon.
“Who’s there?” he asks, out of habit because right at this moment, he doesn’t care.
There’s a pause, then a muffled yet all too familiar voice answers, “Me.”
Steve opens the door and sure enough, in between shadows and the light coming from the street, there’s Bucky. His face is half hidden in the dark and he’s standing there, his shoulders hunched, but Steve would recognise him anywhere. His feet have left prints in the fresh snow and the outside world is quiet, as if everything has come to a still stand.
“Bucky. What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Steve,” comes the answer, the voice rough. “I was just…I was….” The words trail off and he turns his head away to avert his eyes. He sounds like he’s trying really hard to keep his voice even when he adds, “I’m sorry to bother you. I know it’s Christmas Eve and…I didn’t mean to come but I was nearby and I thought I might check if you were home and your lights were on and…man, again, sorry, I just….”
“Jerk,” Steve says, half wondering what Bucky has gotten himself into this time because he can tell that Bucky is hurt just from the way he’s standing there. “Get inside already; it’s freezing.”
He steps aside so that Bucky can enter. Snowflakes are crowning his windswept hair; his cheeks are red from the cold. His hands are in the pockets of his jacket and he glances up at Steve sheepishly and really, Steve needs to get it into Bucky’s head that he’s always welcome. Always.
“So.” Steve places the hands on his hips. “How many were there?”
“How do you—“
“You were limping just now, not to mention you’re bleeding from a cut above your eye and there are blood stains on your jeans.”
“Oh.” He looks away again, clearing his throat. “Couple of guys tried to rob this woman on the train.” A sigh. “Look, I’m really sorry for just showing up here on Christmas but I didn’t know where else—“
“Will you stop that already?” Steve snaps, almost yells, and Bucky’s head whips around. Steve expects shock or anger, but instead Bucky looks about as tired as Steve feels. The same fatigue, the burden of age and history repeating itself, of death and war and loss….
“Just…I wasn’t sure….” Bucky mutters.
Steve’s this close to rolling his eyes, but the look on Bucky’s face holds him back. There’s something fragile about him, even more than usual since he snapped out of the Winter Soldier persona. He never seemed truly whole after that, like bits and pieces kept being elusive, but it’s different tonight.
“Bucky,” Steve says slowly. “Just stop. You’re here. It’s fine. If you want you can regard my place as your safe house from now on, okay? I’m serious. I’ll show you where I keep the spare key. Now, let me fetch the medicine kit and I’ll try to patch you up as best as I can. Ice is in the fridge.”
When he gets back from the bathroom Bucky’s sitting on the couch, boots kicked off, rubbing at his artificial arm. It looks almost human now since Tony did his magic on it, but still Steve winces inwardly every time he sees it. Bucky lost an arm. Got an iron one put on by the damn KGB. Like they were fixing a tire on a car. He wonders if Bucky even notices the missing arm, the flesh and blood one, or if this thing has become the new normal.
“Is it hurting?” Steve asks.
Bucky looks up, frowns, before he gets the question. “No,” he shakes his head. “Force of habit. Stark’s good, but he’s not that good. Or yet anyway. He promised me he’d work on it but truth be told I’m not even sure I’d want it to be able to feel pain.” There’s something in his eyes that Steve can’t quite put his finger on, but Bucky looks tired, as if he’s about to just keel over and sleep for a month.
“There are other things it could feel besides pain,” Steve points out and seriously, where is this conversation headed? Bucky seems to think the same; he offers a little smile and grabs the medicine kit.
He patches himself up in silence, until he asks Steve to help him bandage up his bruised ribs and it’s funny, because Bucky used to do that for Steve, all the time, back in the late 30s and early 40s when they couldn’t afford a doctor and Steve had it taken upon himself to go up against a whole gang of bullies. From the background the dialogue from the film is sprinkling all over them but Steve’s barely listening—something about an angel called Clarence.
He wraps the bandage around Bucky’s muscled torso and tries to be as nonchalant about it as he can—Bucky always was a soldier, a handsome bastard, he didn’t need a super serum to get that body. He may lack Steve’s strength, but at least Bucky was born this way and if he’s really honest Steve used to be jealous of that. Just a little.
Bucky tenses under Steve’s hands. “Sorry,” Steve mutters but Bucky doesn’t answer. His heart is beating under Steve’s fingers and he almost doesn’t want to pull away, leave them there just a little longer, but he doesn’t.
“Done,” he declares, backing away.
“Thanks,” Bucky mutters. He watches the television for a few seconds, the light from the screen flashes of shadows on his face in the semi-lit room.
“Anyone after you?” Steve asks because that look on Bucky’s face is beginning to worry him.
He shakes his head. “No. No, I’m under everybody’s radar, at least I think I am.”
“Okay,” Steve says; but the wave of relief that washes over him almost knocks him off his feet. He’s lost Bucky twice already, and it’s getting increasingly hard to know he’s out there, relying on his dumb luck until the day he runs out of it. Which, given the situations that Bucky seems to have a talent of getting himself into, can’t be too far away.
“I didn’t think you’d be home,” Bucky says, his voice low. “I figured you’d be at a party at the Tower, or…maybe with a girl, or whatever.”
“Tony did invite me to his annual Christmas party but…big parties, they’re not for me.”
Bucky’s lips curve to a smile. “Are you telling me you’re denying the people there the chance to meet Captain America?” He shakes his head. “The sad thing is, I know the very thought has crossed your mind.” When Steve doesn’t answer, Bucky adds, “You shouldn’t be alone on Christmas Eve, you know.”
“Neither should you.”
Steve is rewarded with a crooked smile, as if Bucky appreciates the gesture and Steve’s kind words but doesn’t really believe either. He slumps into the sofa, tilting his head backwards until it touches the head rest.
“Remember that last Christmas we had together? 1941?”
“The one where you bought a chicken and tried to pass it off to me as a really small turkey?”
“Ah, Steve,” Bucky replies, grinning, his eyes closed now, his face relaxed. “You always loved Christmas; I wanted you to have a turkey.”
“Yeah,” pause. “Who would have thought we’d sit together like this on Christmas Eve again, huh?”
Bucky nods. He looks content now, the lines gone from his face and Steve would bet anything that if Bucky opened his eyes now, the emptiness lingering in them would be gone too. All of a sudden he looks ten years younger, almost as young as when they left the orphanage and Steve told him he’d already found a small apartment, if Bucky needed a place to stay. Bucky had replied something along the lines of that there was no way in Hell he’d let Steve be a bachelor on his own with his own apartment, but Steve had known that really, Bucky had just been worried Steve might suffer another asthma attack and die in spasms on the floor because no one was around to help him. That was Bucky’s way. It probably still is.
“You know,” Bucky’s voice cuts into the stillness, “After Schmidt’s people had captured me. At the Hydra facility…that memory—I clung to that one. Christmas. Through the torture and the needles and serums and everything. I couldn’t let go of it. And even when the Russians…had me, part of me always remembered Christmas. Like, it was a feeling. Something told me that Christmas was important, even if I didn’t know why.”
“Bucky,” Steve says and he sounds about as helpless as he feels because Bucky, Bucky never talks about the war or that time when he got captured, or his years as the Winter Soldier. Never.
He tightens his hand around the arm of the couch as Bucky’s words replay in his head and images of him strapped to a table, broke but not broken, his body light and fragile as he leant against him whirl through Steve’s mind. He swallows an imaginary lump in his throat.
Bucky gives Steve a smile that Steve returns before his gaze trails over to the TV screen. It’s good to see a film in black and white for once. With names and faces he actually remembers.
Maybe the reason Bucky never talks about his time in captivity is because he knows that Steve, Steve can handle monsters and battles and even losing people, but the idea of Bucky being tortured, and experimented on, and brainwashed and reprogrammed like some damn computer terrifies him more than anything else in this world.
If he’d only caught him back then, if Bucky hadn’t fallen….
“You’re making that face,” Bucky says.
Steve snaps back to reality. “What face?”
“Like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. You know you’re just one man, right? Everything isn’t your fault.” And just when Steve thinks that apparently Bucky can read minds, Bucky adds, “The train. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I let you fall,” Steve mutters, averting his eyes. He can’t do that talk now. He catches a glimpse of Bucky’s robotic arm and his stomach flips. He doesn’t have to look at Bucky to know he is rolling his eyes.
“Fine,” Bucky exhales. “Two people can play this game. You know that I used to lie awake at night during the war because I was worried about whatever stupid thing you’d do to get to join the army? And then you went and volunteered as a lab rat. If I’d been there…if I’d found a way to stay, I could have saved you from that. You would never have become Captain America. You’d never have spent seventy years frozen in ice. You could have married a sweet girl and settled down and become an artist and had the life you always wanted. You’d still…you’d still belong to yourself. That is my fault and I’ll never forgive myself for not being there to protect you when it mattered.”
Steve stares. Bucky’s tone is often snarky, but the bitterness that shapes his words now has a quality that Steve has never heard from him before. He sounds genuinely upset, frustrated…angry.
“That was my decision,” Steve finally replies.
Bucky arches an eyebrow. “So was my decision to follow you on that train. You think I was going to let you go in alone? You know, just because you gained a few inches of height doesn’t mean I was going to stop trying to save you from doing something stupid. You were Captain America to everyone else. Someone had to look after Steve Rogers.”
And there, it’s as simple as that. Bucky never followed Captain America, and he never will. He’s there to look out for him like he always was, on the sidelines, never condescending, never after glory, never pushing Steve aside to steal the spotlight, never back then and never today. He’s there because he wants to protect Steve and he doesn’t care that Captain America towers over him now and that he should be able to take care of himself. Bucky will always see him as Steve—not the asthma kid, not the rejected failure, not the super soldier. Just Steve.
He doesn’t know how what happens next happens. He blames it on the beer (the kind that Tony has designed for him and that actually gets him tipsy), on the sentimental film playing on TV. And he blames it on Christmas and the fact that he lost Bucky twice already.
He leans forward and places his lips on Bucky’s. He feels Bucky tense and wants to pull away as he realises with a shock what he’s doing, but there’s Bucky’s hand—the good one—on Steve’s neck, pulling him closer. And then he actually kisses Steve back, gently and not for very long, but he does and his lips are surprisingly soft and tender. When he releases Steve and backs away there’s a cheeky grin on his face and he looks exactly like he did that last Christmas in 1941.
“Well, Rogers,” he says. “That took you long enough.”
He smiles, eyes suddenly lit up, all emptiness gone, as he grabs Steve by the collar and pulls him in for another, longer kiss.