It felt like barely a minute between the time that Bucky had closed his eyes and relaxed against the headrest of his chamber, tuning out the chill and the sound of the frost on the glass and giving himself over to the peace of cryosleep, and the moment that the chamber suddenly decompressed, leaving him in the care of half a dozen Wakandan doctors who fussed about as he thawed and the worried, pale face of Steve Rogers in the far corner of the room. Bucky would soon come to find out that it had actually been sixteen months since he’d been frozen, and that in that time Clint and Wanda had come up with a plan to rid Bucky of HYDRA’s hold on his mind once and for all, while the king of Wakanda had been so kind as to have commissioned his finest engineers to build him a new, stronger arm, should he chose to accept it.
Bucky knew that he would be a fool to turn either offer down, and so accepted both - while the procedures that followed had been nerve-wracking at best, all had turned out to be successful, leaving him with the option to join the rest of the Secret Avengers in the first taste of real freedom that he’d had in more than seventy years.
In the end, the choice had been an easy one: there were only so many places on Earth where Bucky could feel remotely safe, given the fact that he was still wanted by most governments in the world for his actions under HYDRA’s command and those that had been falsely pinned on him after. The apartment building where the team was living in Zurich was owned by the Wakandan government, and so was as discreet and well-fortified as any other living space one could find. Plus, staying with other enhanced beings gave him the extra comfort of knowing that he could be taken down in the event of his programming still being active. While he trusted the Scarlet Witch’s abilities, especially considering they had tested his trigger words multiple times without successful activation, Bucky knew better than to let his guard down completely.
The added bonus of his living situation came as he got to know the members of the group better: Barton had a dark, dry sense of humor not unlike Bucky’s and a killer eye that made both firing ranges and billiards a challenge any time they faced off against one another, along with a history of having done terrible things while under mind control in his own past. Wanda, for as uncomfortable as she’d made him at the outset, reminded Bucky remarkably of what he could remember of his baby sister Becca, while Sam continued to give him hell at every available moment; a fact that Bucky secretly appreciated more than he could say, especially given the way the others would walk on eggshells around him.
The only real problem that Bucky had with the group of misfits that he was quickly coming to think of as family was his relationship with Steve. Steve, who tended to be distant and sad whenever Bucky was around, who withdrew more often than he reached out, leading Bucky to feel that it was better to avoid him as much as possible. Whether it was because of discoveries made while Bucky had been in cryo, the events that had happened in Siberia, or the pain of everything that had come before, Bucky wasn’t particularly sure… but he also didn’t want to rock the boat by asking. Instead, he resigned himself to the fact that he’d likely never get his best friend back, at least not in the capacity which he remembered their relationship being before.
After all, after everything Bucky had done, it was exactly as if he deserved to be particularly close to Steve Rogers, anyway.
They remained friendly enough, at least, and still texted one another regularly, which was why the perfunctory Happy Christmas Eve text from Steve hadn’t exactly been unexpected on the afternoon that Bucky had received it. What had been surprising, however, had been the text that followed a few moments later, requesting that Bucky come to Steve’s apartment down the hall to help him with something.
The rest of the team was out at the time - Barton and Lang had both made special arrangements to meet with their families at undisclosed safe houses for the holiday, while Sam had been so bold as to have gone back to his mother’s house in Harlem: apparently Mama Wilson had nothing on Interpol or the CIA, and so the Falcon was willing to risk being caught by the latter to avoid incurring the wrath of the former. That left only Bucky for Steve to reach out to; although the idea of him facing down a problem that required asking for help in the first place was disconcerting enough that Bucky barely spared enough time to throw on a clean pair of jeans and shirt before jogging down the hall to hastily knock on his friend’s door.
A second later said door swung open, leaving Bucky blinking in surprise when he failed to see Steve on the other side of the threshold. He pointed his gaze down a foot or so, before feeling his eyes widen in shock as he processed the image in front of him: the man still standing in the doorway was doubtlessly Steve: no one would be able to miss his familiar cornflower eyes and wild blond hair. But instead of his usual proportions, Steve couldn’t have stood more than five foot two, and Bucky would have guessed he might have weighed one hundred pounds, if you let him keep his clothes and shoes on and threw him in the Hudson before you put him on the scale.
“Hey Buck,” Steve greeted him with a bashful smile, looking so much like the young man that Bucky remembered that it physically hurt for a moment. “Thanks for comin’ by, I didn’t even think to change the delivery plans, and no one else is really around.”
“It’s fine,” Bucky responded shortly, closing the door behind him as he followed Steve into the apartment. “Er… everything alright?”
“Oh, this?” Steve laughed, gesturing to his scrawny chest as they made their way into the living room. “This was just a spell gone bonkers; Wanda figures I’ll be back to normal in the next day or two, no harm done.”
Bucky knew a lie when he heard one, particularly one from Steve considering he had always been shit at fooling people. At the same time, though, it was obvious that whatever had happened had Steve feeling a little flustered, and he really didn’t look any worse for wear; Bucky decided to let the question go, at least for now. “What was it ya needed help with, then?” He prompted instead, trying his best to change the topic.
“Oh yeah,” Steve nodded, turning away and leading them through the apartment, and thankfully away from the awkward silence that had temporarily settled between them. “I hate to do this but there isn’t anyone else around, and I had already ordered the tree before… this happened, and there’s not really anywhere I can go to get a ladder…”
Steve’s rambling started making sense once Bucky stepped into his small living room and noticed the large pine tree resting against the wall in the corner of the room - a tree large enough that Steve in his current state had no hope of getting to stand upright on its holder, much less decorate to the topmost boughs. “I know it’s kinda overkill,” he admitted bashfully, rubbing the back of his neck, “but this was the first year I had the money and the time to do a proper tree, and I thought it might be fun to have some friends over to do the holiday up right.”
“I can help, no problem,” Bucky responded immediately, already moving so that he could lift the tree into its spot. Despite its size Bucky had no problem moving the thing into its rightful position; by the time he stepped back to make sure that the tree wasn’t crooked, Steve had put music on his laptop and brought an enormous bowl of popcorn and red berries in from the kitchen.
“Thanks, Buck,” he said softly, smiling as he picked up a piece of string and needle from the coffee table top. “Er - you’re welcome to stay and help to decorate, if you want.”
“I,” Bucky started, trying to formulate a way to best talk his way out of the offer, before the construction paper next to the popcorn bowl caught his eye, suddenly transporting him back to an old Brownstone in Brooklyn where he and his sisters and Steve had spent hours making paper chains and snowflake cut-outs to decorate their tree years ago. Part of the problem with Wanda having restored his mind was that it meant that all of Bucky’s memories had come back to him as well, for better or for worse. Sorting through them could still be a bitch, so that he still had issues with recalling specific events from time to time, but with the right stimulus all of the details were there as if he was living them again. This one, at least, seemed to be a conglomerate of happy memories.
“Sure, sounds great,” he finally continued as he tried to shake off the vision, “scoot over and hand me the scissors.”
The smile that he got for his troubles was so bright that they could have shut the lights off in the apartment and illuminated the street with it. They spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Christmas songs (none of which were familiar enough to have been from their childhood, but most of them had a good enough tune that Bucky had to admit he enjoyed listening to them), while constructing a veritable mountain of Christmas decorations. Once they finally agreed that they’d made enough, Bucky took care of the top of the tree, forcibly holding back laughter at the absurdity of it all as Steve ducked around and under him, taking care of the lower branches.
It was all so familiar that it almost hurt.
“You remember the year that we kept runnin’ short on popcorn, and no one could figure it out until Ellie got sick in the middle of trimming the tree?” He asked out of the blue, surprising himself as he cut off Nat King Cole’s opening line.
Steve turned from where he’d been putting up his last snowflake so quickly that Bucky was half-afraid he’d trip over his own feet and fall into the tree. “Course I do, Buck,” he laughed shortly, after taking a few moments to compose himself, “and Becca was so nerved up about it all that she almost got sick too, and your ma got so lit up about it…”
“... cuz she thought I should’ve been doin’ a better job of watching the girls, instead of trying to shake out the presents under the tree,” Bucky finished, cutting him off as the memory overwhelmed him.
Steve shook his head and laughed wetly, looking anywhere but Bucky’s face as he composed himself. “In fairness, we both probably could’ve done a better job of that.”
“We weren’t even fifteen yet, and a six-year-old shoulda known when to stop eating popcorn, anyway.” Bucky defended matter-of-factly, and with far more confidence than he ever would have considered using to argue with Winnie Barnes.
“You don’t gotta convince me, Buck,” Steve chuckled quietly, shaking his head and turning his attention back to the tree. “It all still turned out good, anyway - and this looks great.”
Bucky couldn’t have agreed with Steve more: the tree was beautiful, considerably more lush and thick than any other tree they’d ever had growing up, even in Indiana when he’d been able to toddle out after his father and help him cut down their own. And while the decorations were every bit as cheap and old-fashioned as those that they had used in the past, something about them complimented the simple, modern furniture that Steve had used to furnish his apartment with.
“It does look real nice,” Bucky agreed awkwardly, wiping his palms on his jeans and trying his best not to regret too much that it was finished. It wasn’t as if he could expect Steve to want him to hang around his apartment for too long, but the evening had been so great that Bucky didn’t want to see it come to an end. “Anyway,” he continued, backing away from the tree and trailing off, leaving Steve the perfect opening to politely kick him out.
“Ah - if you wanna hang around for dinner, you’re welcome to,” Steve blurted instead, his cheeks pinking up as he finished saying it. “It’s nothin’ fancy; I’ve got a roast for tomorrow that I was gonna say you could come around for but tonight I was just gonna do potted meat sandwiches and thumbprint cookies. For old time’s sake.”
Bucky frowned as the memory of soggy brown bread came to mind. “Like your ma used to make, right?”
“Yeah,” Steve answered brightly, “yeah - every Christmas Eve. You always used to…”
“Come over before our candlelight service so we could swap presents,” Buck finished for him. “I remember.”
Steve swallowed thickly, before nodding and making his way into the kitchen without another word. Bucky gave him a moment to compose himself before following after, plating the cookies and slicing the bread when asked and largely just enjoying the familiar company of his old best friend.
They ended up eating in front of the tree, chuckling over the uneven way that the bread was cut and how salty and slimy the meat was - meaning that the meal was exactly as they’d remembered it, making it perfect (if relatively unappetizing).
“My ma used to be the one who baked these, right?” Bucky asked once his sandwich was gone, twirling one of the cookies around between metal fingers.
“She did,” Steve answered after chewing one of his own. “I got these from a bakery around the block, before you ask. But she always managed to accidentally bake a batch or two extra, and insist on me takin’ them home right before Christmas. Meant the world to my ma, given how expensive butter and sugar could get this time of year and how much she was usually working over the holidays.”
“Sounds like her, alright,” Bucky responded thickly, biting into the cookie and relishing the taste, how it reminded him of his mother.
“Winnie Barnes was a great person,” Steve agreed, “probably where her son gets it from.”
Bucky didn’t have the heart to go into his usual argument about his own goodness - he didn’t want to fight with Steve, not now, and even moreso didn’t want to ruin the moment by torturing himself with what his mother would have said had she ever found out about his horrible past. Instead of responding, he busied himself with eating another cookie and staring at the decorations on the tree.
It worked well enough to distract him that Bucky didn’t notice Steve moving around the room until he was handing a small, wrapped rectangle Bucky’s way with a shy smile. “I, uh, I got you something. If you wanted to open it tonight.”
“Steve, I can’t,” Bucky started, trying to back away from Steve’s insistent motions.
“It’s nothin’ really,” Steve assured him, “but I wanted you to have something…”
Bucky knew well-enough that Steve wouldn’t end up taking no for an answer, and so finally accepted the present from him, tearing the paper off efficiently then stared down at what he found inside in shock. Six painfully familiar faces looked back at him, smiling happily on the steps of their brownstone, dressed in their Holiday best. The sketch was framed, and so detailed that it could have been a photograph of the Barnes family from the winter before Bucky had gone off to war and everything had gone to hell - had they ever owned a camera in the first place.
“I just,” Steve continued quietly, “I thought you should have somethin’ to remember them by. I mean, remember better.”
Bucky nodded dumbly, too overcome with emotion to come up with a response to Steve’s rambling. The gesture was incredible, and the subject matter of course weighed heavily on Bucky’s heart, but the fact that Steve had drawn it for him - Steve, who Bucky couldn’t recall so much as sketching since they’d been at the height of fighting Nazis.
Steve, who Bucky loved so much that it made his chest ache, even after all these years.
“I, uh - I don’t know if I can take this, though,” Bucky finally was able to say gruffly. “I mean, it’s perfect, but I didn’t get you anything…”
“It’s fine,” Steve started, attempting to cut him off.
“I might be able to order something in if you don’t mind waiting until after the holiday. Just - with everything else you’ve done for me, I feel like a total heel,” Bucky continued, slowly becoming more distraught about the entire situation.
“Seriously Buck,” Steve continued stubbornly, “you bein’ here, that’s gift enough. There’s nothing anyone coulda got me that would’ve beaten tonight.”
And that… that was something Bucky didn’t have a prayer of arguing against.
A few hours later, after more music and spiked hot cocoa and a long, lazy talk about other Christmas memories the both of them shared, Bucky finally begged off and made his way back to his apartment, having turned down Steve’s insistent offer of staying the night on his couch cushions. As great as the day had been, and as nice of a nightcap as a sleep-over might have turned out to be, Bucky still didn’t entirely trust himself in his sleep. Attacking Captain America during a nightmare would have been bad enough, but there was no way that Steve would have withstood an attack. So Bucky had made his way to his own bed, with the promise that he’d return in the morning for breakfast; to make sure that neither of them had to spend Christmas day alone, either.
The door to Steve’s apartment was unlocked the next morning, so Bucky made his way in, warily looking around as he advanced through the rooms looking for any sign of foul-play. Instead, he found Steve seated safely at the kitchen counter, morosely watching the pot on the stovetop begin to boil for what Bucky would have bet money would wind up being their morning pot of coffee.
The gloomy look on his face wasn’t the only unfortunate surprise of the morning: at some point during the night he had apparently returned to his usual size, something that Bucky had expected would be cause for celebration, rather than the defeated dejection that met him.
It made no sense, especially given Steve’s insistence the day prior that the shrinking had been the result of a spell gone awry. “How did yesterday play out, then?” Bucky asked, cutting Steve off before he could deflect the question when he saw the familiar stubborn frown start on his face. “Really - and don’t tell me it was an accident, not when you’re moping around like that.”
Steve deflated as quickly as he’d puffed up in the first place, with his shoulders rounding as he heaved an enormous sigh. “Alright,” he finally muttered a second later, “alright - fine. Wanda did it… I asked her if there was any way she could make a glamor for me, so I’d look more like I did. Before.”
“Before,” Bucky parroted blankly, trying to piece together what Steve was failing to say. He’d be lying to himself if he’d said that having Steve, his Steve, the way he most liked to remember him - small enough to tuck under his arm but still feisty and thoughtful and Bucky’s best friend in the world - had been a wonderful Christmas Eve surprise.
“I know, I just figured - I dunno,” he gnawed on his lip viciously as he glared down at the kitchen countertop. “It’s been hard, Buck, not knowing which memories you got back and where we stand because of ‘em. And I just,” another heavy sigh, “I wanted to make sure you had a Happy Christmas, for a change.”
“We could’ve done that without you getting shrunk, Steve,” Bucky responded incredulously.
“I figured,” Steve conceded, even as a flush creeped up the back of his neck and turned his ears a spectacular shade of red. “But I wanted a real happy Christmas. And,” he swallowed thickly, picking at a spot on the counter and completely avoiding Bucky’s eyes, “and I figured you like him better like that, anyway. So,” a self-deprecating little laugh punctuated his thoughts, “Merry Christmas. Sorry it didn’t last a little longer, Wanda said she thought I’d get two days out of it.”
Bucky gaped at Steve for a solid twenty seconds, dumbfounded by his confession, especially considering how painfully wrong it was. “It didn’t - you didn’t need to be small for me to want to hang around with you, Stevie. Believe me, I like you every bit as much like this as I liked you yesterday. It ain’t about the size; it’s about you.”
“Really?” Steve asked with a heavy, suspicious frown.
“Really,” Bucky swore. “I mean, yeah, that little punk was the guy that I guess I fell in love with in the first place, but I meant what I said after Azzano.” The surprised, happy little tick of Steve’s mouth was completely worth the admission, but Bucky couldn’t help but finish his thought anyway. “Him bein’ in a different packaging doesn’t make a damned bit of difference - you’re still you, Stevie, and I don’t think there’s a force on Earth that’s gonna be able to make me stop lovin’ you at this point.”
There was a long, weighted beat of silence, before Steve managed to squeak out, “You love me?”
“Course I do,” Bucky insisted, sounding far braver than he felt. “Always did, now more than ever. I think.” He added the last bit with a saucy wink, doing his damndest to lighten the mood.
The addition made Steve laugh, at least, although he still looked like someone had hit him upside the head with something as he shook his head and stared. “You’re a damned sap, Buck,” he finally muttered, grinning like an idiot all the while.
“Say the idiot who risked life and limb to shrink himself as a hair-brained Christmas present,” Buck retorted slyly.
“I dunno, I’d say the results made it worth it,” Steve said airily, moving around the kitchen island and holding his arms open, telegraphing his desire without actually asking for a hug outloud.
It had been decades since they’d actually embraced, but Bucky was all too happy to comply with his friend’s request - he stepped up into Steve’s massive chest, and immediately felt himself relax even though the tree-trunk arms attached to it felt entirely different than what his body seemed to be expecting.
Bucky felt about a ton lighter when the finally parted, and exhaled heavily as he felt a good chunk of the guilt and fear that had been smothering him since he’d first come-to on the bank of the Potomac years prior. He knew better than to have assumed that everything between him and Steve would be perfect going forward, but somehow he felt that the huge chasm between the two of them had at least been bridged for the time being, providing an opportunity to finally start building and moving forward with… whatever it was that they were about to become. He glanced above them, getting the sudden premonition that the environment around them had changed, only to get a glimpse of an unfamiliar sprig of green above them.
“Really, Steve? Mistletoe?”
“Wha?” Steve asked stupidly, blinking as he followed Bucky’s line of vision and gaping in surprise. “That… I didn’t put that there. Honest, Buck.”
“Don’t look at me, pal,” Bucky responded lightly. It was a little disconcerting, especially considering he knew it hadn’t been there the night before, but it wasn’t exactly as if someone could have snuck into the apartment without them knowing - and their friends were pretty weird.
“You don’t think -” Steve started, giving the tiny green sprig another distrustful glance. “I mean, I guess Wanda could do it, if she wanted.”
“I can’t think of anyone else who could that knows we’re here. Or that has a reason to.” Bucky conceded.
“Huh,” Steve hummed, nodding along as he did. “Well,” he added a moment later, “wouldn’t want to risk makin’ her angry by breaking the rules now, would we?” He ended the question with a hopeful little grin, one that knocked the breath out of Bucky when it was pointed his way; he couldn’t remember seeing that look on Steve’s face since their last mission of The War together, and it was every bit as beautiful as he’d dreamed and remembered it being.
“I mean,” Steve added a few seconds later, shaking Bucky out of his revere as scratched the back of his head nervously, “if you want to, of course. You don’t gotta do anything you don’t wanna, I’m sure she’d understa…”
Bucky had grabbed the front of his t-shirt before he could finish the sentence, pulling him close for a brief, light kiss. While he knew that they’d never been like this before (no matter how much Bucky’s traitorous heart might have wished for it), something in that simple press of lips felt so right, so natural, that Bucky might as well have been coming home for the first time. Cliche as it was, he felt a shiver down his spine, as if his entire body was celebrating the fact that he was finally touching Steve like this.
“Wow,” Steve whispered when they finally parted, sounding every bit as dumbstruck as Bucky felt.
“Yeah,” Bucky agreed with a laugh, licking his lips before continuing. “If I’d’a known it was gonna be like that I would’ve tried to get some sugar from you decades ago.”
“Maybe it’s better that we waited,” Steve chuckled, as the apples of his cheeks turned so red that Bucky could practically feel the heat radiating off of them, “made it that much better, if you ask me. Merry Christmas, Buck.”
“Uh-huh,” Bucky replied, clearing his throat when he heard how hoarse he sounded. “Yeah, thanks. Merry Christmas, punk. Here’s to a whole bunch more.”