Chapter Text
December 25th, 1933
It was early on Christmas morning, and every roof, street and ally of Brooklyn was covered under a thick white blanket. Soft flakes swirled from heaven into the hair of the children who were already in the streets, their faces red and gloves soaked from the snowballs flying all around. Laughs and shrieks echoed against the brick buildings where parents watched in amusement from their windows.
Wreaths of evergreens decorated the doors of small, shabby apartments and through thin windows everywhere floated the smells of roasted chestnuts and cake and cinnamon.
Few cars dared brave the icy streets, but a chubby white pony pulled a large sled decorated with little jingling bells.
Families dressed in their Christmas best on their way to church or friends or family greeted each other with genuine smiles and well-wishes, regardless of whether or not they actually liked each other the rest of the year.
Church bells rang out triumphantly over the city, and those who made their way there where met by the voices of the choir:
Oh come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant
Come ye, oh come ye to Bethlehem.
This particular small church was packed and the very air was cheerful and warm, as people sung and celebrated together. A smiling bald man told a story of a group of herders, societies outcasts, where called by angles to visit a newborn in a manger. He talked about hope in dark times and love for those the world had branded unworthy. And then the choir sung full of enthusiasm of gloria in excelsis deo.
Among the choir boys stood one thin, slickly looking blonde boy, so small anyone would have guessed him much younger than his fifteen years. He had to sit out one song halfway through because his weak lungs couldn’t take any more, but he determinedly returned to the next one, his voice much lower and carrying much stronger than anyone would expect from such a skinny kid.
After the service, the boy quickly made his way to his Ma, a thin smiling woman with a clean, threadbare dress and warm eyes. She hugged her son tight. ‘Well done Steve.’
As people streamed out of the building, Steve and his mom gathered outside with a few other church members. They had set out tables and gathered cups from their homes and brought large pans from which arose the delicious sweet smell of hot chocolate.
In the past weeks everyone who could had chipped in for this project. Steve himself had helped by drawing beautiful Christmas cards to sell, and from the money the church had bought milk and sugar and cacao, and even some cookies and fruit cakes for 50 cents a pound. As they stalled out all this deliciousness on the tables, a line was already forming.
In the last few years too many people had lost their jobs, and many also their homes. Aid projects had sprung up all around the city. Steve regularly tried to help out at local soup kitchens, and just as often he and Ma where the ones eating there. He recalled last year, the countless people along with whom Ma had stood in a long line before the New York municipal lodging house, which had offered free Christmas dinners. He himself had been ill in bed that year, but the dinner had been the best he’d had in a long time, and had helped him recover some strength.
Their church couldn’t quite afford something that big, but Ma and several of the other church ladies had set up this project instead. And so Steve spend the morning bundled up in warm shawls and gloves giving out chocolate milk to children and adults from all the neighbourhood.
Steve made sure to smile at everyone, and greeted as many people as he could by name, which was many. A surpricing face was a guy who’d beaten Steve up in an ally fight just last week. He looked awkward when Steve handed him the chocolate and a smile, but made a point of genuinly returning Steve's 'merry Christmas'. Steve’s toes where getting ice-cold though the newspapers in his shoes, but he sipped his own hot chocolate and greeted the little kid next in line and felt warm.
‘Oh Sarah, you are an angel. How sweet of you to help, with your poor son in his condition.’
Steve groaned out loud he moment he heard who was talking to his mom. Mrs O’Connor was an grey, sturdy woman filled with a lot of good intentions but not a lot of tact, and not for the first time, she started talking loudly to Ma about they should especially enjoy this Christmas, for ‘You never know when it could be his last, that poor sweet boy…’.
Since Steve suffered from asthma and about a hundred other problems, and spend most of his winters trying to survive some illness or other, Mrs. O’Connor seemed to have taken the task upon herself to remind Sarah, (and her son too, because he was standing right there and at least his left ear worked just fine, thank you very much) of how entirely unexpected it was that Steve was even still alive.
Sure, Mrs. O’Connor meant well, and was kinder about Steve’s health issues than plenty of others were, but still it sucked.
Luckily Mrs. Nolan, the librarian’s wive, heard the conversation and swooped to their rescue, pulling Mrs. O’Connor away with some very important questions about how she felt about the Christmas decorations.
Sorry! She mouthed over her shoulder.
Thank you! Steve and Sarah mouthed back.
They left shortly after, saying goodbye to the others who just cheerfully wished them both a merry Christmas.
It was a nice church, where Steve and his ma went. Much better than where they used to go to when Steve was little, the one full of judgy stares where everyone seemed convinced that his bad health was the result of either his mothers sins or not enough prayer. Bullshit, of course. It had gotten so bad that Ma had slapped someone, cursed out a priest and dragged Steve away, telling him in no uncertain terms that God was love and therefore a loveless church was a waste of a perfectly good Sunday. They’d never returned, eventually finding a less shitty church where the most annoying person they could meet was Mrs. O’Connor
On their way home they greeted neighbours, smelled roasted chestnuts from a stall, dodged some loose snowballs and where passed by a group of out-of-tune carollers driving by in a trolley, singing deck the halls with boughs od holly.
It was still snowing, and their breath made little clouds in he air. Steve rubbed his hands together against the cold painfully seeping into his bones, his thin gloves weren’t of much use.
‘You okay?’ Ma asked.
‘Nah.’ Steve grinned. ‘I’m clearly on the brink o’ death. The only thing that could save poor sweet me would be a really large piece of Christmas pie. Maybe even the whole pie!’
Ma rolled her eyes. ‘If you’re that ill, maybe we should put you in bed and call off the guests.’
‘Hey, what’s this? I suddenly feel better! It’s a Christmas miracle!’
…
The Rogers’ home was a tiny, very sparsely furnished apartment on the third floor of a shabby brick tenement building. There was only one room, never enough hot water and the walls only did so much against the December cold. But it was theirs.
The peeling paint of walls was hidden by the most beautiful charcoal drawings Steve had made: The Brooklyn streets, neighbours going about their day, construction workers on their way to build skyscrapers, birds on the windowsill, Ma, and a man with a mischievous smile that Steve only knew from stories and one old picture: his father Joseph.
There was no Christmas tree, but the home was decorated with popcorn strings and stars that Steve had made himself from old newspapers. On the table burned four small advent candles.
Ma finished up her sugar cream pie. She'd saved up for weeks to get all the right ingredients. The delicious smell filled the room, and although Ma was the best cook in the world, Steve new for sure that nothing in their home had ever smelled as brilliant as this.
Footsteps approached in the hall, and Steve’s good ear picket up on excited chatter right before there was knocking on the door. He opened it to his six most favourite faces in the world.
‘Merry Christmas punk!’ Bucky shouted, and tackled Steve in a tight hug.
‘Merry Christmas jerk!’
The rest of the Barnes family entered, with matching wide grins, rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes. Snow was melting in their brown hair and they were all dressed in their Christmas best, which was just a little bit fancier than Steve and Sara’s.
The only exception to that last part was little Lizzy, who absolutely couldn’t stand uncomfortable clothes and was wearing her usual school dress with her favourite jumper. ‘Because,’ Winifred, Ma Barnes, said wisely, ‘festive clothes aren’t festive if you feel bad in them.’
Steve got a hug from Winifred and a crushing slap on the shoulder from George, Bucky’s dad.
He was barely recovered from that before he was embraced by Becca, Bucky’s twin sister. Quick, funny, never willing to put up with anyone’s shit, and after Bucky Steve’s best friend. Even if she refused to shut up about the fact that she was taller.
Next was of course ten year old Lizzy, a pretty, quiet girl who often had a hard time with touching and eye contact, but was as smart as anything and would talk a mile a minute with sparkling eyes once she was comfortable. Which she was with few people, but Steve was privileged to be one of them.
Lizzy had to quickly step away however, before Steve was tackled around the waist by a tiny ball of very excited human.
‘Hanna!’ Ma Barnes called. ‘Be gentle!’
‘Stevie! Up!’ the almost 5 year old little girl shouted, her grinning mouth revealing a missing tooth,
Steve picked her up and swung her around the best he could, grateful to God that he was healthy enough today to do so. Bucky grinned. ‘As if I haven’t already carried ‘r the hole way ‘ere. At this rate I aint sure she’s ever learned to walk.’
Steve laughed. ‘Ey Hannah, who’s your favourite brother?’
‘Stevie!’ Hanna said.
Bucky gasped and put his hand on his heart. ‘The betrayal! The heartbreak! My own baby sister, throwing me away for the one I called my best friend. Shame on you! Shame on both of you!’
‘Now that I think about it, Steve’s my favourite too actually.’ Becca said casually.
Lizzy grinned and nodded. ‘And mine.’
Bucky threw his arms in the air. ‘My whole family, abandoning me! But I will not go down without a fight!’
He plucked Hannah out of Steve’s tired arms and rose her high above his head, upside down. She screeched with laughter. ‘Think that little punk can do this? Who’s your favourite now huh?’
‘Buckyyyy!’ Hannah screamed.
‘That’s what I thought.’
Steve shook his head ruefully. ‘No loyalty. None.’
They all got to devour a piece of Sarah’s delicious pie. When the adults got to talking about boring stuff, the kids and teens wanted to go outside, but Sarah didn’t just let them run of.
‘Come on mama! I’m doing great!’ Steve complained while Ma tucked an extra scarf tightly around his neck.
‘And we are keeping it that way.’ She said sternly. ‘I’ll not have you fall sick on me tomorrow. So you keep warm and no overexerting yourself, you hear me? Bucky, Becca, keep an eye on him will you?’
‘Yes Ma’am.’
Well, they started out keeping that promise. On the small square between the flats the kids worked together on a group Snowmen, and Lizzy came up with an elaborate backstory for the whole Frosty family. When Hannah and Lizzy felt too cold after and went inside, Steve, Bucky and Becca walked to the larger streets, which would not a all have been an irresponsible thing to do, except that this particular area was a warzone.
Children and adults alike ducked behind their white bunkers and fired frozen balls of snow that exploded in shards of icy shrapnel when they hit the chests of their friends and neighbours who would miraculously recover from impact and gather more ammunition of their own. The sounds of this war were shrieks of laughter and shouting in several languages, English and Italian and Dutch and some others, and the soft thuds snowballs hitting their target.
Bucky groaned at the fanatic light that twinkled in Steves eyes. ‘Stevie, just this once-‘
Steve was already running towards the crowd, but Bucky grabbed him by his shawls. ‘Don’t just jump in there dumbass. You’ll literally die.’ Bucky said. ‘Think for a damn second!’
‘Yep, that would be dumb.’ Becca. ‘We need a strategy for this.’
Steve grinned.
Using the garbage bin lids as shields was Steve’s idea. He focused on covering himself and Bucky, who had climbed on top of heap of snow to have the high ground while he masterfully aimed each snowball, receiving constant new ammunition from Becca. It was the most fun Steve had had in ages.
They did great until Steve noticed Billy and Jim, two school-bullies, targeting Tommy baker, a kid from two grades below them. Tommy was yelling at them to stop, but they just kept targeting him. Before giving it a thought, Steve was over there. In his defence, he actually did manage to hit Jim in the face with a snowball and give Tommy a chance to run of before a snowball hit his chest, hard, and another his face. His vision blurred. He slipped in the snow and gasped for breath. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breath-
Bucky and Becca pulled him away from the fight, and Bucky rubbed his back and calmly instructed him to breathe until he had his lungs back under control.
‘Jeez Steve, just freaking tell us when you’re gonna run of to fight someone.’ Bucky complained, once he had established that his friend was breathing somewhat normally again.
‘That’s kinda the point of the whole teamwork thing you know.’ Becca added.
Steve tried to scrabble up. ‘Sorry ‘bout that, I’m good. We can keep going.’
‘Not today pal.’ Bucky said, with one look at Steve’s shivering body and running nose. ‘I’d like your ma not to kill me thank you very much.’
‘You’re an idiot.’ Becca added. ‘And your gloves are soaked.’
Bucky pulled Steve’s thin gloves from his hand and gave him his own, ignoring Steve’s protests. They helped him up the stairs, despite Steve’s insistence that he was fine, stumbled through the door.
‘Steven Grant Rogers!’ Ma exclaimed. ‘You go get dry right now! Lord you’re freezing!’
‘Becca your dress!’
‘You kids look like you’ve had fun!’
‘George don’t encourage them!’
‘Why does everyone act surprised that this happened?’
‘Thanks for the input Lizzy.’
‘Am I wrong?’
Once the three teens were dry and Steve was wrapped in every blanked Ma could find in the house, and they’d all had a sufficient dressing down about responsibility. Sarah handed them each cups from which rose the smell that was almost as rare and Fantastic as the Christmas cake in the Roger’s home. Steve’s eyes lighted up. Chocolate!
And indeed a few moments later they all got a steaming cup of hot chocolate, as delicious as the ones Steve and Sarah had handed out that morning. The rest of the afternoon was spend playing board-games, and Steve thought Hannah and Lizzy how to make a Christmas star from a newspaper.
Before dinner, George took out his old violin, and soon Jingle bells and Frosty the snowman and other carols flowed from the strings. Bucky picked up little Hannah and twirled her around the room, then he danced with Becca and Lizzy and his mom and Sarah.
‘Now it’s just you left Stevie!’ He said. Steve turned red and muttered that he was just fine on the couch since he couldn’t dance for the life of him, but Becca had already pulled him up and they danced, if that was what you could call Steve’s stumbling. When Becca tapped out because she’d like to keep her toes, Bucky insisted on dancing with Steve as well because. “You gotta practice if you want to pick up any girls in the next year”. And Steve didn’t think he learned much but he giggled until his chest hurt.
They all sat around the table for dinner, and though some would consider it simple, compared to the last few years they were about to have a feast. George had managed to get a job a few months ago, and Bucky was working as well, just like Steve whenever he could. Besides, Steve had managed to get through autumn without catching anything deadly, saving them on doctors visits. Ma had her job as a nurse, and since the families had taken up the tradition of piling their finances together for the holidays, they’d come up with a lovely feast of casserole and mashed potatoes and fresh bread from the bakery where George now worked, and the rest of the sugar cream pie for dessert.
No boiled kale in sight this year, and no need for Ma and George to wait in line endlessly in the cold. Honestly though, Steve had warm memories of last Christmas, of them all sitting in the Barnes’s home, him laid on the couch, coughing his lungs out but at least being able to enjoy the music of Georges violin and the whole family around him. That night had been like lighted candle within the dark of a very awful winter.
Today however, he felt wonderful, and ate for once till he was full. Steve, Bucky and Becca bickered happily, George made dad-jokes that caused Winnifred to roll her eyes, Lizzy talked in great detail about her new favourite book and Hannah about the doll she had gotten from Santa Claus, the one Steve knew Ma Barnes had been working on for a while, and Ma told funny stories about Christmases spend with Steve’s dad, and the cooking of Ma rogers and Ma Barnes was praised into the heavens.
When they were all wonderfully full and warm inside, Steve and Bucky went out onto the frozen fire escape for “a bit of fresh air.” They’d both kept back some crumbs from the casserole, and were already awaited by the grumpy black stray cat they were trying to keep a secret. Bucky had named her willow, and she jumped into his arms the moment she saw him, completely ignoring Steve’s existence.
‘That cat plays favourites.’ Steve complained.
‘She knows who loves her most.’ Bucky countered, scratching her ears.
‘You mean who feeds her most?’
Bucky shrugged. ‘The love of a cat goes to trough the stomach.’ He reached inside his pocket. ‘By the way, merry Christmas.’
It was a pencil, brand new and beautiful. ‘Jeez, Buck. Thanks!’
Steve held it reverently, his fingers already tingling for some paper, but instead he reached into his own pocket and gave Bucky the Whiz bar he’d saved up for. Bucky’s smile outshone the stars.
When Willow left and they went back inside, Steve pulled from under his bed the Christmas present he’d been working on for the past week, and somewhat bashfully handed it to Winnifred.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ Winnifred exclaimed with suspiciously misty eyes at the sight of the Barnes family portrait. Then she gifted him and ma both a beautiful self-made shawl.
Then, after some bugging from Hannah, they all squeezed together on the worn couch and Bucky pulled out the book he’d brought with him, a library copy of a Christmas carol, by Charles Dickens.
‘You brought a book to a Christmas party?’ Becca asked. ‘Nerd.’
Bucky rolled his eyes, but the whole family settled comfortably around him and he started reading.
‘Marly was dead, to begin with.”
His exaggerated posh British accent and funny voices for each character, especially anytime he shouted out “Ba Humbug!” in an angry Scrooch voice, made Hannah laugh as much as the goshts in the story made her shiver in fear and delight and crawl safely into her mother’s lap.
Everyone got swept into the tale, and Bucky’s lively voice, and Steve felt as though he wanted to hold on to that moment on that couch with his family forever. It wasn’t long though, before the little girl’s eyes started drooping, and Bucky closed his book and ma Barnes gathered Hanah in her arms and it was time for them all to head back home trough the snow.
Steve gave Lizzy a paper star to take home, and he hugged Becca and Hannah and then Bucky a bit longer than was probably necessary.
‘See ya tomorrow, yerk.’ He muttered.
‘G’night, punk.’
That night the snow clouds cleared and bright stars shone over the lights of Brooklyn. Steve took out his new pencil and started sketching. Seven smiling people around a room, a man with a violin, a boy with a book in his hand, three dancing girls, paper stars in the window.
The drawing absorbed all his attention, and he was far from done when Ma gave him a kiss on his head and send him to bed. She took a glance at the paper and added. ‘It’s beautiful, don’t forget to add that cat you don’t want me to know about.’
And because denial was futile, Steve did just that.