Steve can’t help but think of his ma this time of year, when the shop windows are decked out in tinsel and every ad on TV tells him to cherish his time with the family. He’s got a new family now, one that’s as dysfunctional and loving as it is big, but he can’t let go of the feeling that Christmas without Sarah Rogers by his side is lacking. Almost a century of holidays later, and he’s still here without her.
He doesn’t have any photos of his mother, only the memories of her gentle hands cradling him through his fever shakes and bouts of pneumonia. He knows it’s not unique; there are probably about a million other people in New York longing to spend the holidays with parents and siblings and children they won’t ever see again for one reason or another, but Steve still can’t make that ache deep in his heart go away.
He spends the week leading up to Christmas every year with charcoal smudged all over his hands and cheek, interpreting his memories of his mother as best as he can with flowing, loose lines. He can’t do much to get her back, he knows this. The insurmountable grief he felt in the wake of her passing was dwarfed by how conflicted he felt after the serum, the war, and then his last moments without Bucky. But it never went away, not before the freezing nor after. It never will. There’s always going to be a little piece of him devoted to missing his dear ma and wondering what could have been had she never succumbed to tuberculosis in ‘36.
This time of year he especially misses her seed cake, how she’d bake one for the holidays if they could get ahold of the ingredients needed. Steve’s tried to recreate the same flavor profile aided by his memory and a few Google searches, but he has accepted that he’ll never get it just right. But even that is better than his first Christmas out of the ice; he spent that one alone in his SHIELD-approved apartment, poking at a microwave meal surrounded by beer bottles he wished could get him drunk.
Although Steve is Irish-American and grew up knowing two cultures, he’s endlessly impressed by how Bucky is merging his two cultures, knowing that his friend doesn’t have any other connection to the Russian culture and language apart from the horror and tragedy that forced it upon him. He sometimes wants to grab his friend by the collar, scream you’re just as much of a New Yorker as I am, I don’t want you to ever think of that part of your life ever again when he has to cradle Bucky on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and tears after another nightmare.
But then he’ll come into the kitchen on a Sunday morning, greeted by Buck making his best priyaniki, or he’ll return after sparring practice to the fruity smell of vzvarheating on the stove. Steve can’t stand being upset at a country’s cooking, damn it, so he’ll admit that seeing Bucky making the best of the situation isn’t actually the worst thing. Plus, it’s really good, too.
They’ve quickly fallen into a routine, him and Bucky, where they show each other recipes that either remind them of something specific, or just things they want to try out for fun. It’s a much needed break from their duties and lives as public figures every single time, and they cherish these moments. Steve likes to fuck with Bucky by just straight up boiling things and claiming that you used to love this back in the day, pal! It was all the rage!, to which he’ll get it fucking wasn’t and you know it damn well and a potato peeler chucked at his head. He also likes to butcher Russian names on purpose just to make Bucky laugh after a rough day. Turning pirozhki into Prague for him to swat Steve’s arm and gasp is something he does at least once a week, and he’s working on more ways to intentionally mess up words. It’s a lot of work to pretend to not know the real names, he’s realized, because he needs to actually learn the names of the dishes and pastries and cakes for that to work.
Sometimes it’s not enough for Buck to spend time in the kitchen. What’s on the stove gets burned, the dough is all wrong, and he still wakes up screaming the following night, haunted by what Hydra made him do and what they did to him. Steve misses his ma every minute of every day, of course, but he wishes he could turn to her and ask for advice when Bucky has flashbacks so bad he can’t even breathe. He wishes he’d thought to ask her how to handle delicate situations, wishes he’d had her write it down somewhere he could find years later. She always knew how to soothe him when he was little and sick, and she probably passed on a trick or two for Bucky to use when he was the only one Steve had left.
Steve carries around a lot of grief. Grief for his mother. Grief for Bucky and the life he’s been forced to endure, the pain it still causes him. But he also grieves for himself. He’s never felt like he fits in; the sickling, the circus monkey, the symbol of American values. He’s been many things, but never once has he been human. Here in their shared apartment, next to Bucky, he can rest and try to build a reality where he doesn’t have to parade around for others. He’ll cook and bake and coax Buck from nightmares as best as he can, and he’ll paint landscapes on big canvases in the sunlit corner of their living room when there’s time. A game consol sits underneath the flat screen TV, for lazy nights spent by pushing each other off the rainbow road, not thinking about trauma.
Bucky doesn’t have a season-specific trigger, but for Steve it’s always worse around Christmas. He can handle fireworks on the fourth of July, shoot outs, and hostage situations, no problem, but seeing the neighboring family decorating their tree together through the kitchen window triggers him so much he has to retch over the sink, because he knows there’s no time to make it to the bathroom.
He supposes that Buck’s added absolutely no traditional Western Christmas food to the list of things that set Steve off at some point, because there hasn’t been a single Christmas with him this century where he’s shown any interest in turkey, mashed potatoes or gravy, even though he was well off as a kid and had all those things back then. If they ever discuss what to eat on the 25th, it always starts with Bucky saying I found this recipe I want to try out, I think I’ve eaten this before actually, could you give me a hand?, with him checking the pantry for missing ingredients to put on the shopping list.
Steve doesn’t have his ma around baking soda bread for him anymore, but he does have Buck picking every single recipe and ingredient with care, making sure to always provide Steve with the best he can offer. And for that he is eternally grateful.