White Christmas
Setting: Post-Avengers. Pre-Anything Else.
Genre: Drama/Friendship. No pairings, besides a slight hint of Pepperony.
Summary: Steve, Tony, and Bruce plan the team's first Christmas together. Steve gets mugged. Tony blames Bing Crosby.
Chapter 1: Gee! I Wish I was Back in the Army!
Tony Stark had seen better days.
Assembling the Avengers from the far-flung corners of the realm seemed like a pretty good plan. Clint would be flying in from DC next week; Natasha was… somewhere in Eastern Europe where foreigners feared to tread; Thor was coming from another dimension, for crying out loud; Bruce was practically living with him at the moment, so he didn't have far to go; and Steve was coming up from Brooklyn.
Actually, that trip happened on a fairly regular basis. Tony had given Steve a standing invitation for Sunday dinner. And as everyone knows, it's notoriously difficult to refuse an invitation that comes with a chauffeured limo.
More often than not, their dinners degenerated into a drinking competition that Tony always lost – he was testing a working theory that there must be a type of liquor to which Steve's metabolism did not apply. So far, no luck, but the hangover gave him a fantastic excuse for Monday mornings. ("Pepper, you don't get it - I'm hungover for science!")
Today was supposed to be the pre-Christmas party planning party. But the world's wettest blankets quickly dispelled Tony's grand illusion of good times plotting tomfoolery: none other than Steve and Bruce.
The two of them quickly agreed on a quiet, internal affair. Unable to persuade them to consider something more colourful, Tony slunk away from their maddeningly civilized conversation. He wandered through the living room to his ludicrously high-tech entertainment center and began blasting AC/DC to drown out the suggestions of refinement and tradition.
This, of course, prompted Steve to complain about the racket, which, in turn, prompted Tony to mock him for his age.
And that one innocuous comment was the catalyst of all that was to come.
"Steve, be older. What am I supposed to play with a system like this - Bing Crosby?" The scoff halted on its way to Tony's throat as he observed a curious change come over his friend. Steve went sort of rigid, his eyes widening with recognition.
"I know that guy!" Steve exclaimed, looking from Bruce to Tony in delighted astonishment. Decades melted from his demeanor when he was excited about something – which, come to think about it, was not that often.
Bruce mirrored his smile indulgently.
Not possessing the patience of their occasionally explosive companion, Tony rolled his eyes. "Figures. You're about as outdated as Bing is."
Shaking his blond head, Steve continued, "No, Tony. You don't get it. I know him! I met Bing Crosby! He did a gig at a base in Normandy last ye- ah, I mean, back in '43." Some of the animation faded from Steve's expression as he caught himself, troubled.
A gentle pause. "No kidding? Bing Crosby? That's incredible. What was he like, Steve?" Bruce replied evenly as he ushered the Captain into the living room, attempting to prompt their intrepid leader from his self-imposed shell of solitude.
A slow smile crept across Steve's face. So rare, those smiles. So unlike Clint and Tony's sarcastic smirks, or Thor's dazzling mirth. So different from Natasha's dubious leer that made one wonder if one's body parts were in immediate danger, or Bruce's self-deprecating grin. This was... authentic. Honest. Steve was not a man to put on a front and smile if he wasn't actually happy.
Come to think of it, that explained why he smiled so rarely.
"It was a real gas. That cat knew how to jive." Steve said, shaking his head in recollection.
Bruce discreetly shot a look at Tony.
Tony bit his tongue.
Oblivious, Steve settled into a chair, snapping his fingers absently as he sought for words. "He finished the set with this incredible song, this Christmas song. I forget the name of it-"
Bruce and Tony shared another glance before suggesting in unison, "-White Christmas."
"That's it! That's the one! How'd you know?"
"It's one of the most overpl-ugh!" "-The most overly loved Christmas carols out there." Tony began the sentence, but was brought to a halt partway through by a bony elbow to the ribs. Bruce completed the thought with a surprisingly innocent grin.
Folding his arms behind his neck, Steve paused before continuing. "It was the first show, maybe the only real show that me and my commandoes caught together." His piercing blue eyes were lost in the distance, staring into the past. "My pal Bucky, he woulda been with you, Stark. He liked something with a little more rhythm. Jitterbugging and all that. Probably because he could actually dance without trampling a dame."
The name rang a bell with Tony, but he wasn't quite sure where he recognized it. Despite how often he threw it in the chronologically older man's face, Steve didn't bring the war up often. Not the personal parts. Not the important parts.
The Captain's face flickered with lines of pain and Bruce and Tony had the surreal experience of watching him age before their eyes.
Softening, Tony folding his arms across his chest. "Hey, Rogers. How would you like to see Bing one more time?"
That was how they wound up spread across the living room hours later, chuckling and throwing popcorn while Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney crooned across the screen in the titular White Christmas film.
Tony had a habit of keeping a running commentary on every movie for which he was present. This time, he kept his comments to a minimum on pain of Bruce.
It was incredible to see their usually stoic leader light up and laugh – truly laugh. Tony was sure that he had heard Steve laugh before. He just couldn't quite pinpoint a specific time.
The easy warmth of his smile brought his friends a deep, lingering sense of contentment. Steve lived his life in minor key: intense, anguished, and incomplete. At last, here was the missing piece. Here was the resolution: the man at rest with himself.
At that moment, just as Bruce launched an empty Junior Mints container at his nose, Tony resolved to make Steve laugh as hard and as often as he could.
Unaware of the snack-hurling shenanigans, Steve was enraptured by the film. He was usually pretty reserved during most movies he watched with the team, choosing silence in favour of saying something stupid. But this was something he knew and understood. This was proof that he was not an alien in his own country.
And yet, as the plot unfolded and the two ex-GI's made their way through life after World War II, as characters reunited with old army buddies, fell in and out and back in love, Steve became more and more withdrawn.
The movie ended in a tremendous production. No one missed the faint homage to the children the characters would one day undoubtedly have. The battle-scarred veteran was honoured, the world-weary GI inspired by his curly haired beau, the plucky comic relief shown what was truly important in life, and perfect snow drifted down from the Vermont sky.
The war was over. The protagonists survived the peacetime. Stylized text of 'The End' covered the screen as the credits rolled.
The trio sat in silence for a minute.
It was a glistening Hollywood image of what most GIs did after the war. They got jobs, started businesses, got married, had children, and died.
They were not frozen icy coffins and woken to fight other wars seven decades later.
Steve was smiling again, this time with a wounded edge. It looked as though he'd swallowed a caramel with a fishhook buried inside. He stood up, stretched, and thanked Tony for the movie. Then he begged an exit and was on the elevator before either of them could muster an argument.
Tony cleared his throat in the awkward silence that followed. "Well. That could have gone better…"
Yes, Tony Stark had definitely had better days. Days when his extravagant plans resulted in something other than crushing damage to one of the few people he looked up to.
But as many had tried and failed to clarify to the billionaire playboy, not everything was about him.
And certainly not this story.
Happy Canada Day. I figured the time was ripe for Christmas in July. This little tidbit has been niggling in my brain since re-watching Captain America the other day. I have a couple other one-shots in my head, but I figured that this one deserved to stand on its own. I'll probably pound this out pretty quickly, so forgive the roughness. Thanks for stopping by!
Reference: White Christmas (1954).
Don't write the story. Live the story.