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Sam spent Christmas Eve with his family and got home late, pleasantly tipsy from his father's hot buttered rum and sleepy with a full stomach and the smell of the old church, and walked in with piles of Tupperware for Steve and Bucky and some presents for them too. "Just little things," his mother had explained guilelessly. "Those poor boys."
"Momma, Steve knows Tony Stark," Sam had objected from behind his piles of Tupperware and two giant bags with penguins and snowmen on them, because Sam had learned everything he knew about being a shit from his dear mother. "Believe me, they'll get presents."
His momma sniffed in a way that suggested her opinion of Tony Stark and his ability to do anything but throw money at a shopper from a high-end department store. Which, Sam had to admit, was totally valid. "You just bring those poor boys that and if they're too proud to take them you tell them Jodi sent them," she said.
"Momma, you're evil," said Sam, respectfully.
Bucky would have probably prefered to have Jodi instead of presents from Jodi, but Sam had taken about fifteen million pictures of her in her tiny red and white velvet dress with the red and white headband clinging grimly to what little hair she had, so that would have to do.
He expected to find Steve and Bucky drinking cocoa and decorating the tree. The tree was a sore point. Sam's family put theirs up the day after Thanksgiving and took it down New Year's Day. The Poor Little Matchboys had put their tree up on Christmas Eve and taken it down January 6th, and Sam had heard about the way he'd taken up with a pair of Catholic white boys until he could recite the lecture in his sleep.
Upon further inquiry, it had turned out that Bucky's family generally put theirs up a few days before Christmas, but Steve and his mom thought it was a good year if they got a straight up Charlie Brown Christmas tree when when she dragged herself home from work Christmas Eve. And of course after Bucky had bulled his way into Steve's life after Sarah Rogers had died, Steve was too proud to let him get the tree early even when they had the money for it, so Bucky had made a virtue of necessity and pretended he liked putting the tree up on Christmas Eve, anyway.
Sam loved those stupid bastards.
When he took the pile of Tupperware into the kitchen, he almost stumbled over Barton's dog, who was lying in the middle of the kitchen with the expression of a martyr and the fart-aura of a minor nuclear weapon. He looked up at Sam and rolled over to expose his half-bald, stinky stomach, and Sam said, "What the hell."
He put the Tupperware in the fridge before he went to investigate. He had his priorities, and one of them was the preservation of his mother's chocolate pie from Clint Barton's dog.
In the living room, Steve was patiently putting individual pieces of tinsel on the tree in a pattern only known to his fussy artistic brain. As Sam watched, he took a step back and squinted at the total effect, and then moved one strand of tinsel to a needle about three millimeters away from it's first location, and then nodded to himself, satisfied.
Bucky was curled up in the squashy armchair he usually made Steve take, burritoed into a lump of wet hair and grumpy eyebrows. There was a snowflake crown on his head. He flicked his eyes toward Sam and then turned his head resolutely toward Steve again. Steve, come to look at him, was wearing a red and silver bow stuck to his head.
"Momma … sent you presents?" Sam ventured.
"Oh good," said Hawkeye the Male. "I love Momma presents."
Hawkeye the Female made a disagreeable noise and curled more tightly into the side of the couch. Hawkeye the Male had a giant bruise blossoming on his face, of course, and Hawkeye the Female's hair was sticking up in spikes. Some of it looked frizzled. Sam decided not to ask Steve, who was an evil troll at all the most inconvenient times, and who was clearly determined to ignore everything but his picture perfect Christmas tree.
"What," he said helplessly.
"Someone," said Hawkeye the Female, "not mentioning any names but someone with a stinky fart dog forgot to get his work wife a Christmas present."
Sam said, "Okay."
"It wasn't my fault," said Hawkeye the Male sulkily. "I forgot she was celebrating American Christmas and then I tried to go to Macy's to get her a new jacket."
"I am not drunk enough for this story," decided Sam, and put the presents under the tree. Steve made an irritated sound and moved them two feet away. He knelt down and put two more strands of tinsel on the bottom branches of the tree. Sam left him to it, and went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a medium stiff whiskey.
"And then," said Hawkeye the Female ruthlessly, "he ended up stuck to the top of the tree in the women's lingerie section and had to call me for help."
Sam 5,000,000% did not want to know how that happened. "Okay," he said, slowly. "I'm going to regret this, but …. why are you here? Why is JB --"
"Barnes and I were practicing darts," said Hawkeye the Female, as if the idea of James Barnes in a pub dart contest was not a thought to strike fear and terror into the strongest of hearts. "So he went along with me."
"Actually," said Sam, "never mind, please don't tell me the rest of this story."
"The lady at the Yorkie rescue place was very nice," said Steve, not looking up from his fussy placement of every single gift under the tree.
"It didn't have a sweater," said Bucky. "It's too cold for a little dog not to have a sweater."
Sam took the rest of the whiskey at a shot. "Did you get Natasha's jacket, at least?"
"Yes," said Hawkeye the Female, "except then Barnes had to take the Yorkie to the rescue place and then the fountain happened and Clint had to pay a courier twice the cost of the jacket."
"Highway robbery," murmured Steve, pulling the tissue paper of a gift bag carefully straight.
"Okay," said Sam, finally, "I guess my real question is, why are you here?"
"Tasha's going undercover with the Brazilian mafia," said Hawkeye the Male.
"My father bought me a MacBook Pro and told me he was getting divorced again," said Hawkeye the Female.
"They want us to suffer with them," concluded Bucky.
The dog wandered into the room and let out an audible fart, redolent of rotten cheese and leftovers.
"I'm going to bed," said Sam. "Wake me up when Santa comes."