Author's Note: This fic will have several parts, stretching mostly over Steve Roger's life, so i will be putting it into the Captain America section, although the latter part will be mostly Avenger's related.

this is a much lighter fic than the last one, or the doozy i'm working on now. expect fluffles and cuteness and friendship, BUCKY!, Slight Steve/Peggy cuteness, and lots of Christmas Cheer!

if anything seems wacky, blame the muse. she's on a sugar high right now.

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Chapter 1:

December 1st, 1944

The freezing camp of the Allies was as abnormally quiet and still. The Howling Commandos' were huddled around a warm campfire, tugging their collars up to their ears and attempting to eat their thin stew before it cooled and congealed into something completely unappetizing. Peggy was there, going over the morrow's plans with Steve and Bucky as they tried to catch any holes in tomorrow's mission plans. Aside from their calm voices and the slurp of emptying bowls amongst the others, nothing was in any way out of the ordinary- until the air was split by a sudden shout that made every man leap for his nearest weapon, which for Dugan happened to be Gabe's bowl of thin soup.

"Look lively, boys!" a sudden voice rose up outside the circle of fire light.

"No, don't worry. Its only Stark." Peggy assured them, looking over her shoulder brow.

"'Only Stark'? Pegs, where is the fanfare? Evening, Gentlemen. Hopefully you'll give me a warmer welcome than Ice Queen over here." Stark complained, stumbling into view, wrapped up in a coat that was half fur and hauling what looked like an overstuffed duffel on his back. Dugan and Morita each shifted over one space, giving him a spot at the brazier. Stark carefully set down the duffel and grinned, clapping his hands together and huffing into them.

"Hmm. Way too cold. Remind me to build whole army thermoshelters. Small enough to carry in a back-pack, easy to take down in a hurry, capable of keeping out everything and anything Mother Nature throws at you."

"Good idea. Maybe you should get to work on that. Make yourself useful for once." Bucky joked. A guffaw circled its way around the fire, Stark as loud as anyone else.

"Barnes, remind me to make you my personal secretary after the war. You're amusing."

"What brings you out here, Stark?" Steve asked, shrugging his coat off and quietly passing it to Peggy, who was shivering. She shook her head quietly, but Dugan took the coat and flung it across her shoulders with a no-nonsense pat. She accepted it then, biting her lip with good-natured annoyance.

"The brass up top want updates on their weapon drops, I had some more volatile things to deliver myself, Phillips wants to grump in my ear like an ol' mama bear, and it's Christmas!"

With that final pronouncement, he reached back and hauled forth the duffel bag, grinning in prideful state.

"Oh, you didn't.' Gabe said wildly in sudden disbelief.

"Oh yes, I did." Howard drawled, his hands deep in his pockets, looking for all the world as though he was going to burst with self-conscious delight. "Go on, Dugan, do the honors for us will you?"

"Howard, Christmas isn't for two weeks." Peggy objected, as Dugan moved forward and started digging into the heavy canvas bag.

Stark shrugged good-naturedly. "They move you guys around so much that I have no clue where you all actually will be in two weeks, so I figured, better now than later!"

Dugan started hauling out lumpy packages wrapped in brown paper and squinted at them. "Good golly, Stark, is this what you call handwriting?"

"Hey, I'm an inventor, not a calligrapher." Stark huffed. "Don't drop that! It's fragile. For my pal Jacques over there."

"Ce que le diable avez-vous moi que Dugan de piétinement sur?" Dernier asked, his voice pitched high.

"He said-"Gabe began, before Stark cut him off with a wave of the hand. "I know, I know. I can speak French."

It turned out to be a package of eclairs. Denier's sudden whoop of delight, followed by a strange type of country dance in the snow (which Morita was dragged into as a shocked and indignant partner) indicated his hitherto-unknown fondness for the dish. After that the packages flowed swift and sure. Gabe ended up with a new quilt, which he promptly shrugged around himself. Falsworth found himself holding gambling tickets, with money bet on all the most likely winners at the next Derbyshire races. Dugan received two large bottles of fine U.S. Bourbon, which excited him so much that he abandoned his post at the duffel to join Dernier in prancing about the snow, whooping that all the Krauts west of Berlin could come take their turns boxing him know, he'd take them on any terms. Stark took over duffel duty and handed the frazzled Morita two first-class K-BARS, knives which he had long wanted with a quiet persistence. Morita's thanks were quiet but heartfelt.

Steve watched as the wrapping fell from the sniper's scope in Bucky's hands, and Bucky's subsequent gasp of wonder. Stark folded his arms and smirked.

"That's personally designed to fit your sniper rifle and match your line of sight. It is state of the art, about 30% ahead of the leading scopes of our time."

"No kidding." Bucky said, awed, lifting it to peer through at various far-off targets which no one else could see. "Heck, I could shoot the badge off Schmidt's cap with this!"

"Well, if you get the chance you better shoot lower than that, else I'll consider my work misused." Stark said as he dug around in the bottom of the duffel. "Here, sweetheart.' He finished, passing a package to Peggy, who was so caught up in enjoying the others delight that she almost dropped it.

"Stark, what on earth did you get me?" she demanded, holding it out carefully.

"Something I figured would suit a lady at war." Stark said, taking the precaution of stepping to the other side of the entranced Bucky.

Peggy's eyebrows crept to her hairline in a distinctly English expression of wary surprise. "Allow me to assure you that if there is anything in here of the slightest embarrassment to me I will personally use your plane engines for target practice."

"That's why I'm standing over here. Now, go ahead and open it."

Steve fiddled with an edge of the paper on his own package as Peggy, eyebrows still crooked with caution, removed the paper and uncovered a sturdy plain metal container with a strong clasp, which she opened with as much care as though it were the casing to an unexploded bomb. She blinked, then her eyes softened. "I take it all back."

"What is it, Peggy?" Steve asked.

Peggy set the box down and lifted out a comb and a brush, each carved of dark walnut wood, smooth and sturdy, but just the slightest amount of ornamental carving to be beautiful.

"Embarrassed?" Stark called out from the safety of Bucky's back.

"Not really. Quite touched actually."

"That's good, cause know I can show you what's going to make you love me." he said, coming out of his improvised cover. "Here, let me see the comb. See this notch on the handle here? Well, squeeze that, aaaand-"he did so, and the toothed section came off, revealing four inches of slim, double edged blade. "Voila! Hygiene and protection. Could sneak it past any security you please. The brush is the same way. Screw off the pad with the bristles, and you get a solid bar, four inches of heavy iron, with a built in grip. You could knock out teeth with that. The best part, you can actually use the brush and comb for your hair if you need to."

Peggy's face underwent a transformation from polite gratitude to wonder and total delight. "It's wonderful Howard." She said, examining the concealed weapons closely. "Thank you."

"Hey, my pleasure." He said, bundling up the duffel bag up, before shooting Steve a sudden look. "Well, how about it, Cap?"

"Oh, sorry!" Steve said, awkwardly trying to get the wrapping off and ripping half of the paper in the process. He looked back up at Stark with an expression of surprise and touched pleasure.

"You old son of a gun." He grinned. Stark shrugged, hands in his pockets, smile splitting his face.

Bucky looked over his shoulder and chuckled. "Guess someone heard you broke your last pencil two weeks ago. You should have seen him Stark, standing there trying to make two inches of stub work on those doodles of his."

Steve kicked a clump of snow in Buck's direction (accidentally hitting Dugan in the shin) and turned back to his gifts. A leather bound notebook held blank pieces of good drawing paper, while the clump of small sticks in his hands turned out to be a dozen high quality drawing pencils, half of them in color.

"Better than that, I have this for you." Stark said, pulling a wad of cloth out of his pocket and tossing it over. "It's completely waterproof and fireproof, so you won't have any more ruined drawings from weather and other army-related-craziness. Don't expect it to stop bullets, but it should keep that all clean."

"Thank you, Stark." Steve said, sliding the book and pencils into the pouch and securing it closed.

"Now, somewhere back in the main tents the rest of the army is enjoying my Christmas gift of 200 baked hams, so let's get over there and have some." Stark said, spinning on his heel and marching back towards the main camp. The Howling Commandos, stomachs certainly setting up a howl of hunger, followed him eagerly.

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Bucky pushed through the tent flap, took two steps, and promptly collapsed on his cot with a long groan.

Steve looked up and laughed. "Let me guess, you won the bet."

"By the narrowest margin heard of in the last 2 decades. Oh, golly." Bucky groaned at the ceiling. "Don't let me eat for again for weeks. I can't move."

Steve leaned forward. "So, what exactly were the parameters?"

. "Eat a slice of ham, race from the mess hall to the farthest point of the camp and back, down a shot of bourbon, eat ham, run, drink, repeat, repeat, repeat, and see who lasted longest."

"And the stakes?" Steve asked, his chin quirking up.

"Winner buys the drinks next time we're in London. If I had lost, Dugan would have drunk me out of a year's wages."

Steve whistled. "Good thing you won."

"Yeah, thanks be. One more time and I would have thrown the ham in his face. I'm never eating ham again. Ugh..."

Steve grinned and leaned back, staring at the ceiling of the tent. Bucky craned his neck to look at him and dropped his head down with a thunk.

"So, you haven't uttered much more than two words together since before dinner. What is it that's got Captain America so quiet?"

Steve smiled in the semi-dark. "Well, it's Christmas."

"Obviously. And?"

Steve shrugged the blanket up further around his shoulders and turned over. "I don't know…just trying to figure something out."

The groan that Bucky uttered was so long and so frustrated that Steve inwardly winced. "Oh, I knew bunking with you was the worst choice of my entire military career. What is it? And don't try getting around it, 'cause I can still tell when you lie. So, spit it out."

Steve was almost under the blanket at this point. "I was just…well…Buck, maybe you can answer this question: What do girls like for Christmas? Books? Jewelry? Clothes?"

There was a sudden clatter, a crash, a crazy jerking of flailing limbs in the dark and a blue stream of bellowed profanity in several different languages –including English- that made Steve scramble for the lamp as fast as super-soldier reflexes could take him. The sight that met his worried eyes was Bucky sitting on the ground, his cot tipped over behind him, his blanket and equipment scattered across his legs, and his furious eyes glaring up at Steve through the messiest head of hair one could imagine.

"Steven. Grant. Rogers. Do not, under any circumstances, for the rest of your life, ever entertain the very thought of shopping for women's clothes, do you understand me?"

"Buck, what the devil do you mean?"

"Oh, someone in heaven is having an incredible laugh at my expense. How'd I get stuck with this job? Your mother should have explained this. Steve. You are a man. Men should never presume to know what style of clothes a woman likes, what colors supposedly "match", what they feel would be appropriate, or what they think fits them best. You do realize that you could put a woman in front of one hundred outfits, and out of those one hundred perfectly respectable articles of clothing, she might find only one that she actually likes? And your chance of blindly guessing what that one out of a hundred is exactly that: one in a hundred."

Steve scrunched his face and groaned. "Girls are so confusing."

"Yes, they are." Bucky set to work putting his things back into order. "Especially since messing it up means that they will probably do one or all of three things: shout at you, cry, or kill you."

"Then, what am I supposed to do?" Steve asked helplessly. Bucky pointed a wadded up pair of dirty socks at him.

"You give her something you know she would like, not what you thinks she likes or what other girls like. What she herself as a person likes! And in order to know that, you have to think about what you know about her. If you don't know what you're doing, you're gonna sink yourself in deep, boiling water. With snakes. Venomous ones."

Steve nodded to himself. "That makes sense. I can do that."

"I know you can, once you actually think about it. You might not even die." Bucky said, flinging his blankets back on the bed distractedly and plopping after them.

"Could you help me?" Steve asked hopefully. Bucky dropped his head into the makeshift pillow and groaned.

"And there is the certification of that fact that I will die." His voice was muffled "Of course I will."

"Thanks' Buck." Steve called.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Shut off the light!" he rumbled, rolling over and hauling his blankets over his head while grumbling something about "fool idiots who know nothing about girls dragging innocent friends into death traps". Steve chuckled and reached for the light. Darkness enveloped the small tent.

"Bucky, she's English. Do you think she'd like tea?"

"Go to SLEEP, Steve!"

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Translation: "what the devil did you get me that Dugan is pawing over?

ahhhh...poor Steve. so clueless about girls. at least Bucky's there to keep him from getting into too many scrapes, as per usual.

internet here is...interesting, so i might not get the second section up for a few days. however, when it does come up, expect more H.C.'s on the scene taking a personal interest in Steve's quest.