"Hi, Harper. It's uh… it's James," Bucky spoke into the intercom beside the locked door of the apartment building.

"Come on up!" Harper's voice answered back a moment later. "Third floor, back left corner."

There was whirring and then a loud, metallic clank which signaled the door had been temporarily unlocked. Bucky let himself in, eyes sweeping around to take in the state of the building. It was as dilapidated on the inside as it was on the outside. He found his way to the stairs and began the climb to the third floor. Once on the correct landing, he began working his way down the hall. As he went, he thought he could smell cocaine and he was positive he heard the distinct sounds of working girls making their living. His heart sank; Harper shouldn't have to live in a place like this.

Finding himself in front of apartment 317, he raised a hand and knocked on the door. From inside, there was a shuffling sound, and an exasperated "C'mon, get your furry ass outta the way!" before the door swung open. Harper stood there in a pair of dark wash skinny jeans and a black long sleeve cold shoulder top. Silver chandelier earrings were just visible beneath her dark hair and Bucky had to smile at the dark blue, cat patterned socks on her feet.

"Merry Christmas!" she greeted cheerfully. "Come on in! You remember Aslan?"

Bucky nodded, looking down at the rather large orange and white cat with some trepidation. The cat approached him curiously, sniffing at his feet and shins. Bucky began to toe off his work boots, sending the cat running behind Harper's legs. Not that he was small enough to find sufficient cover there.

"Oh, Aslan, come on," the young woman scolded without any real harshness in her voice. She bent down and scooped him up, allowing him to rest draped over her shoulder. She explained, "He likes baby burping position best, and is a bit wary of human men. But I'm sure he'll warm up to you quickly!"

"I gotta ask," he said, still eying the cat. "What kind of cat gets that big?"

"He's a Maine Coon," Harper supplied. "A solid 22 pounder. I jokingly call him my guard cat, since he's bigger than some dogs. Not an ounce of bravery in him, though."

"And you… enjoy having such a big cat?"

"Well, he eats a lot, which sucks financially. But yeah, other than that I love having a big fluffy boy here with me. Maine Coons are super affectionate, so he's sort of like a fish-loving, cuddly teddy bear. You can touch him, as long as you let him smell your hand first," she said, turning so that the cat and Bucky were now facing each other. Bucky reached out with his ungloved hand, cautiously offering his fingers to the creature's nose. He sniffed for several moments before looking up at him with huge green eyes. Bucky took this as acceptance of him and slowly reached out to scratch its head. Immediately he understood what Harper meant. This cat was incredibly soft.

"How old is he?"

"He's an old man," Harper answered, looking at the cat fondly. "Nearly 16. That's just about 80 in cat years."

"Wow, so you've been together a long time," Bucky inferred.

Harper shook her head. "Only two years, actually. I adopted him a few months after I moved here."

"You adopted such an old cat?" he asked, surprised. "I imagine people usually go for the kittens; less wrong with them at that point."

"There's nothing wrong with Aslan," Harper defended immediately. Her fingers began running through the fur on his back. "He's lived a long, difficult life. Everyone deserves happiness during our limited time to live, and I'm grateful to have been able to give that to him."

Bucky just stared at her, surprised by the sentiment. Harper set the cat on the floor, and he began weaving figure 8's between her legs. The young social worker continued, "He's been in and out of shelters his whole life. Nobody's wanted him for very long. He's so sweet and loyal, and I can't imagine why anyone would willingly give him up. But they did, over and over, and now he has some pretty righteous attachment issues, but I can't blame him. That's just who he is now, and I love him anyway."

Bucky's chest tightened, touched that the young woman in front of him could feel that way. Most people wouldn't share her view of the situation. If she hadn't come along, the cat dutifully rubbing against her legs might have met a premature death, euthanized by a shelter that was too crowded to leave space for an old cat with emotional issues.

"Anyway, enough about my craziness for Aslan. I doubt you want to spend Christmas talking about that. Are you thirsty? I have wine and beer in the fridge, or water if that's more your thing."

"Beer is fine," Bucky answered absently, still marveling over what Harper had said. "That's really kind, the way you feel about your cat."

Harper strode over to the kitchen, Bucky at her heels, as she said, "Hey, I figured most all of us are a little fucked up. Age has no bearing on that. Our past shouldn't bar us from happiness and comfort."

"Even if someone did some really horrendous stuff?" Bucky couldn't help himself but ask.

"What, like rape or murder?" Harper asked, handing him a cold bottle of beer. "Even people like that have a right to be comfortable and happy, with the understanding that the definition of happiness changes depending on where one is in life. So, say for someone in jail for life for murdering his wife, happiness might be getting to spend an hour outside, or laundry privileges so he can freely roam around with the laundry cart. For Aslan, happiness is eating salmon from a can and having a warm body to sleep next to at night."

"So you really think that someone who has… that a murderer still has the right to be relatively happy and comfortable?" Bucky asked again, dark brows reaching for his hairline.

Harper looked at him uncomfortably, turning to reach into an upper cabinet to extract a wine glass. "Oh boy, you think I'm naïve or something. Hear me out. We're all just flawed humans muddling our way through existence. Such imperfect creatures shouldn't be given the power and authority to make another miserable. Life is so incredibly valuable; so long as someone is living it, nobody else should be able to infringe on that. I don't think that we can place a value on each individual life, that any life could be so valueless that someone shouldn't have their basic human needs met. Make sense?"

Bucky was silent for a long moment. Harper waited patiently, twisting a corkscrew into the top of a bottle of white wine. Finally, he asked, "Are you a pacifist?"

Harper laughed, caught off guard by his question. "Yeah, I am. Sorry, Mr. Soldier."

"I've definitely traversed much closer to the pacifist end of the spectrum over the years." The dark haired man offered his hand to her, but Harper waved him off, continuing to tug at the corkscrew. He continued, "I don't think you're naïve. I think it makes sense given what I know about you."

"Oh?" Harper raised a brow and flashed him a playful smirk. With a pop, she finally worked the cork from the neck of the bottle. "And what do you know about me, James?"

"I meant that it's clear how much you care about people. Your job as social worker, the fact that every book you've lent me has revolved around the recovery of hurt people, for starters."

"Sure, sure," Harper chuckled. She leaned her hip against the counter, took a sip of wine, and then gave him a conspiratorial look from over the rim of the glass. "But here's the secret: I really don't like people at all. I just feel for ones that hurt. But as a species, humans are kinda shit. Selfish, destructive, arrogant."

"But still deserving of happiness?"

"'Deserve' is an interesting word," she mused, taking a long sip from her glass. There was something in the way she was suddenly looking at him that had Bucky panicking. Harper may have been considerably more insightful than he gave her credit for. Perhaps she sensed his discomfort because she broke the tension with a light laugh. "But this isn't Christmas talk, and I didn't invite you over to talk about the dark side of life. Is the beer okay? I wasn't sure what you drank."

"Yeah, it's good," he nodded, thankful for the change in topic. "Local brew?"

"That's what I was told," Harper shrugged. "I don't know jack about beer, but figured supporting local is always good."

As it turned out, Harper's talents extended to the kitchen. Bucky was surprised at the spread before him. A roasted chicken, sautéed green beans with onions and bacon, roasted Brussel sprouts with garlic and parmesan cheese, mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, and what looked a whole lot like homemade cranberry sauce.

"Wow," he muttered, mouth already watering at the array of food in front of him. His last good, home-cooked meal was before he was deployed in 1942. Seventy-six years was a long time to go without food like this. "You didn't have to do all this, Harper."

"I enjoy hosting, and since I moved here, I haven't really been able to exercise my hostess gene."

"Still, this is a lot of food," he muttered apologetically. Something felt lousy, knowing that the overworked, underpaid young woman had put the time, effort, and money into having him over for the holiday.

Harper shrugged it off easily, saying, "I wanted to be sure there would be enough. You are a big dude after all." The playfulness in her voice only took the edge off his guilt. "And anyway, I'd have done a lot more to ensure I didn't have to spend Christmas alone, thinking about all of the fun my family is having together back home."

"You miss them," he stated the obvious.

The brunette hummed her affirmation. She began slicing away at the chicken, loading his plate up with juicy looking breast meat plus a leg. "I miss them a lot. A one year plan has become a who-knows-how-long-plan. I never intended to be this far away from home for so long." She plopped a sizeable scoop of potatoes on his plate next. "Anyone back in the States that you miss?"

Avoiding the incredibly complex question, Bucky said, "I don't really have any family. My… ties with other people have been pretty well severed."

Harper nodded, and asked, "Have you built any ties here, then?"

"I came here to reconnect with myself," he answered, relieved that he could be more truthful. He'd told enough lies to last him a few lifetimes. "Connections with other people didn't really seem to fit into that."

With vegetables and cranberry sauce rounding out the plate, Harper set the meal in front of him. She passed him the gravy boat, then went about filling her own plate. With a frown, she confessed, "I've found it difficult to make friends here."

"Really?"

"Well, I'm friendly with some of the women at work, but I've been here almost two years and you're my first dinner guest. I feel like I can't get past being that American woman who still can't speak fluent Romanian. I mean, I'm proficient enough to get by and to do my job, but when my coworkers start talking about more complex things, like the real, nitty-gritty conversations about life and the world and politics and society, I have to put in a lot of effort just to keep up, let alone express myself. It's hard to forge real friendships when you struggle to have real conversations."

"That's true," he nodded, spearing some chicken on his fork. He thanked his plethora of will power that he could refrain from loading the utensil to capacity. Delivering the food to his mouth, it was all he could do not to moan with pleasure. "This is really fucking good."

Harper laughed, and Bucky flushed immediately. Quickly, he amended, "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that in front of a lady. I meant-"

"What have I told you about cutting the chivalry bullshit?" Harper asked, grinning widely. "I ain't no fucking lady. That's an archaic concept, my friend."

"Either way, it's delicious," Bucky said, face still warm with embarrassment.

"I'm glad," she said.

Suddenly, there was a loud meow and two big paws were clinging to his thigh. He looked down, noting that the large cat had hopped up into prime begging position.

"Aslan!" Harper scolded exasperatedly. To Bucky, she said, "I'm sorry. You can push him down if he's bothering you. Otherwise, he does love chicken if you feel so inclined to share. No pressure, though."

Tentatively, he plucked a small piece of chicken from his plate and offered it to the large mammal. With a slight start, he dropped the piece as a set of sharp feline teeth shot out for the piece of meat. Harper laughed again, and Bucky couldn't even blame her. He'd have laughed too if a big former soldier was afraid of a damned cat if that big former soldier wasn't him.

"Not a cat person?" she guessed.

"I've always been fonder of dogs," he replied, eyeing the cat whose huge eyes were watching his every move in the hopes of getting more chicken.

"Me too," she said. "But I can't afford a dog, and I didn't want to have to go outside on walks several times a day every day in this neighborhood. I was lonely, though, and I found this poor guy in the shelter."

"It's good you adopted him," Bucky commented, now moving on to the potatoes.

"Thanks," she said. "He's been in and out of shelters several times over the course of his life. He needed a forever home, and I'm really grateful to be able to give him that."

"Why was he given up so many times?"

"I really don't know," Harper sighed sadly. "His most recent former owner became too ill to care for him, but other than that, there isn't much that's known about him. The only indicators of just how many times he's been sheltered is that he is absolutely petrified of confined spaces, probably from being kenneled at shelters, and he has pretty stellar attachment issues. It took months for him to get used to me leaving for work. Like crying as soon as I started putting on my shoes. He's better now, and doesn't cry anymore, but he still isn't much of a believer in my personal space."

Bucky looked down at the old cat with more sympathy than he really wanted to feel for it. Harper reached down over to his side of the small table, hand pressing against the cat's fluffy chest and gently pushing him off Bucky's knee. The cat walked away without a fuss, settling at her feet instead.

"I see what you mean," he said, offering her a small smile. He speared several green beans on his fork and asked, "Why an old cat? Because of his story?"

"No, I actually went to the shelter specifically for an older cat. Nobody wants older animals, and a lot end up euthanized for that reason. It makes my skin crawl. He's so incredibly sweet; he didn't deserve to be put down just because he's older. He's seen a lot of life, but he still has life he should be able to live."

"Are you an idealist?" Bucky found himself asking, moving on to the cranberry sauce.

Harper laughed. "No, definitely not. I see too much of the shitty side of life to be an idealist. But because of what I do, and other personal experiences, I've also developed a pretty strong value for life."

"It must be difficult working with people who are at the end of their lives."

"It's definitely different when most of your caseload could die at any time. And it is difficult losing clients to death rather than to noncompliance with their program, or moving away, or something."

Bucky took a long sip from his beer before moving on to the Brussel sprouts. He was pleasantly surprised to find that they weren't at all bitter. "I've never had Brussel sprouts that I liked before, but these are great."

"Thank you," Harper replied earnestly. "I had no idea what you might like, so I hope dinner is okay."

"Everything is amazing," he complimented, gesturing at his nearly empty plate.

"Please help yourself to more if you'd like," she grinned, obviously pleased with his praise. Seeing the hesitance on his face, she scooped some potatoes onto the serving spoon, and offered it to him. He reluctantly nodded, not for not wanting to eat more, but because he suddenly felt awkward again. "James, I really don't mind. Trust me; I'm having more green beans, so this is a judgement free zone."

"Alright," he chuckled, accepting the potatoes and reaching for the chicken.

"Did you enjoy Christmas growing up?" Harper asked.

"Yeah," Bucky replied easily. His memories from childhood he felt pretty certain about, and definitely more comfortable with than the majority of his adult memories. "I had three younger siblings, and watching them get excited about Santa was a lot of fun. We never had much, but our parents tried their best to make Christmas morning exciting. My mom cooked the best food, too, and baked gingerbread cookies. My sisters liked to decorate them, but my brother and I were always better at the eating part."

"Did you have a real Christmas tree, or a fake one?"

"Real," he answered. "What about you? What were your Christmases like?"

"Real when we were kids, but then my parents got a fake one. It was terribly disappointing," she laughed. "Christmas is, and has always been, my favorite time of year. I have two younger sisters, so I totally get what you mean about watching their excitement. My mom loved the decorating part of the holiday, so our house always became a winter wonderland. I have far too many boxes of my own Christmas décor in storage back home in the States."

Bucky glanced around the apartment for the first time, noticing only a few seasonal touches here and there. "It must be difficult not to have that this year."

"It is," she nodded, pushing the last of her cranberry sauce around on her plate. "It's not the materialism, either, by the way. The decorations genuinely make me happy from the perspective that they signify the time of year. Lining a mantle with nutcrackers in July makes you look like a crazy person, but putting them out at Christmas time while I listen to the music from The Nutcracker Ballet is fun and reminds me of my late grandfather who used to collect them. They bring back memories of really happy times."

"I get it," he nodded. "It's not about amassing stuff, but about surrounding yourself with visual representations of good memories."

"Exactly."

Now that he could understand. He wished he had any sort of access to things that would trigger his more pleasant memories. All he had were his journals. He cleared his throat and finished off his beer. The former soldier found himself struggling not to begin ruminating on his past. Harper, thankfully, seemed oblivious. She stood and retrieved her bottle of wine and another bottle of beer. She placed the bottle in front of him, simultaneously filling her glass up.

"D'you like wine at all?" she asked.

"I've never really…" he shrugged, twisting the top off the bottle, "Dabbled? I don't know."

"Want a glass?"

"Maybe next time?" he asked, enjoying the beer and not quite feeling brave enough to deviate.

"So there will be a next time?" she asked, smirking mischievously over the top of her glass.

His cheeks warmed again, and said, "Well, I didn't mean to assume or invite myself over again or anything."

"Well, I hope there will be a next time."

Bucky found himself honestly responding, "Me, too."

A/N: Many thanks for the reviews, favorites, and follows, as well as for the support of reading further into this story. The feedback is greatly appreciated. This story is complete and fully edited, so I think I may be able to continue with these consistent uploads. Fingers crossed!