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Bucky woke with a start, a cold sheen of sweat covering his body. He lay in the darkness for a moment, shaking beneath the covers of the large bed he shared with Sam. It had been in his dreams again; the Red Room, the operating table, the brainwashing, the kills, the blood on his hands, the never ending winter in the USSR, all of it. He felt that chill from the cold frozen wasteland where he had been trained to be a Soviet spy, long removed, deep in his bones, rattling inside his chest, stealing his breath and sealing him off from the heat radiating from his sleeping partner in the bed next to him. His stomach lurched painfully at the thought of rolling over and waking up Sam, but Bucky decided against it. Let the man sleep; he’d had a long day at SHIELD headquarters and was sound asleep with a soft snore issuing from where he had faceplanted in his pillow.
Quietly rolling over, Bucky got out of bed, his bare feet tingling against the heated floor. Not bothering to pull on a shirt, he wandered down to the kitchen in Stark Tower in his sweats. He contemplated making a cup of tea to soothe his nerves before trying to sleep again but his stomach growled for actual food instead. Oddly enough, he was craving pancakes.
It wasn’t that surprising actually. Pancakes were his comfort food, always had been. Back in the forties, his dad would make them for him when he had a bad day and Bucky eventually taught Steve to make them, passing on his love for the floppy and syrup-covered breakfast food. It had nearly broken his heart to learn that when Steve had come out of the ice, the first thing he had done in his little apartment was to make pancakes in an attempt to have some sort of connection to Bucky (still presumed dead at that point) and to their past. Now, the two of them made pancakes every Sunday morning for the rest of Stark Tower. Blueberry pancakes, strawberry, peach, chocolate chip, any kind of pancake recipe was fair game for the two superheroes.
Now though, Bucky rummaged around for the ingredients to make plain pancakes, which he fully intended to drown in syrup. With one eye open, the other blearily shut, he mixed the batter and began pouring them into a skillet. He asked Jarvis to turn on reruns of Emeril Lagasse as he flipped the first pancake out of the skillet and onto a plate. He reached up on his toes to grab the syrup from the cabinet above the stove and with one eye still closed, he drowned the piping hot first pancake in syrup before shoveling it into his mouth.
Something tasted a little different about the syrup and Bucky opened both eyes now to look at the bottle. He nearly choked on the pancake as he realized he’d doused it in twenty-five year old malt scotch that Tony had obviously hidden amongst the pancake syrup to keep Clint out of it. Bucky swallowed the pancake and licked his lips.
“Not too bad, if I do say so myself,” he murmured as he eyed the full bottle.
He flipped the second pancake out of the skillet and grabbed the bottle once more.
“Bam!” he said, imitating Emeril and covering the second pancake in scotch.
Thirty minutes later, Sam woke up to Jarvis saying, “Sir, there seems to be a bit of a situation in the kitchen. I thought it best to wake you.”
Sam rolled over to find Bucky’s side of the bed cold and empty. He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, before pulling on a robe.
“What’s he doing, Jarvis? Is he okay?”
“He seems to be intoxicated, sir. And he’s making pancakes.”
Sam groaned. “Oh God. It must have been one hell of a nightmare to have him making pancakes in the middle of the night.”
He walked down to the kitchen, stopping by Steve and Tony’s suite to grab Steve. If Bucky were really intoxicated, Sam was going to need Steve’s help to drag his drunk ass back to bed. They walked into the kitchen to see pancake mix everywhere, a mostly empty bottle of scotch on the counter, Emeril on the television, and Bucky, drunk as a skunk, making pancakes.
Bucky turned when Steve and Sam walked in and grinned lopsidedly.
“Hey guys! Look what I can do!”
He tried to flip a pancake, but he used too much force and instead of flipping midair and landing in the skillet again, the pancake made a very wet splat against the ceiling and stuck there. Bucky studied it for a moment, hands on his hips, and then shrugged before pouring more batter in the skillet.
Steve groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Bucky, what the hell are you wearing?”
“I think that’s Tony’s very manly and not at all ridiculous apron,” Sam replied, biting his lip to keep from laughing at the sight of his partner in an apron with the neon pink words “Kiss Me I Cook Naked” emblazoned on the front of the white material.
Bucky scooped a fresh pancake out of the skillet and stared it down with the intensity of the gaze that Tony very frequently gave Dum-E.
“I know what this needs. It needs to be kicked up a notch,” he mumbled, grabbing the bottle of alcohol. “Add a little scotch and…BAM!”
“Bucky,” Steve said, chuckling. “That wasn’t a little bit of scotch. That was at least three shots’ worth.”
“Pfffft,” Bucky said, with a smile and a shrug before tasting the pancake. “Hmm, it’s strong but not strong enough. Soviet Sous Chef Bucky to the rescue! Add a little more of this and – wait, fuck, that was a little more than a lot,” he said as he grabbed the bottle again and doused the already soggy pancake with more scotch. “Oh well, add a little more and BAM!”
“Sir,” Jarvis interjected as Bucky laughed and started to eat the pancake while tending to another one on the stove with one hand. “You are intoxicated. I suggest you go back to bed and sleep off the alcohol.”
Sam snorted and whispered to Steve, “Did Jarvis basically just tell Bucky ‘you’re drunk; go home’?”
Steve couldn’t help but crack a small smile over that. “I think he did.” He straightened and walked forward, gently prying Bucky away from the stove and the alcohol. “God, Buck, Tony is going to kill you for getting pancakes on his ceiling and drinking his favorite scotch.”
Sam started to shovel all the dishes Bucky had used in the dishwasher. “No, he won’t. We’ll clean everything up and blame the missing alcohol on Clint. Tony won’t suspect a thing.”
Steve rolled his eyes but stopped and watched as Sam curiously sampled the soggy pancake Bucky hadn’t finished. He raised one eyebrow out of curiosity when Sam’s eyes went wide.
“Oh, God, Steve, this is fantastic. Our boy may have just hit gold with this recipe. Scotch pancakes; we have to make these when he’s sober!”
Steve sighed and held out his hand for the fork, trying them for himself and then swore softly, laughing.
“Bucky, I gotta hand it to you, when you’re drunk, you turn into a freaking Iron Cook.”
“Chef. Iron Chef,” Sam corrected, grinning, fighting Steve’s fork to finish off the rest of the pancake.
“Whatever,” Steve said as he grinned and shoved a tall glass of water into Bucky’s hand. “Drink,” he ordered to his best friend, who was wobbling slightly on his feet.
Sam finished cleaning up the kitchen while Steve took care of the pancake on the ceiling before turning off the television. They each pulled one of Bucky’s arms over their shoulders and walked back to Sam and Bucky’s suite. Steve helped get Bucky to the bed, where Bucky promptly flopped backward while saying, “Bam!” one last time as he hit the mattress. Within seconds, he was snoring.
Steve looked to Sam. “You going to be okay for the rest of the night?”
Sam nodded, shrugging out of his robe. “I’ll keep an eye on him and make sure he hydrates in the morning. I imagine that’s going to be one helluva hangover after going through a whole bottle of twenty-five year old malt scotch.”
“He dreamt of his time in the USSR again, didn’t he?” Steve asked softly, his eyes on his best friend.
Sam nodded. “They haven’t been this bad in a while. I’ve got him though. Don’t worry, Steve; I’ll look after our boy.”
Steve gave him a quick hug before returning to the suite he shared with Tony. Sam crawled into the large bed and pulled the covers up around Bucky. Sensing movement and heat, Bucky shifted with his eyes closed across the bed until he found Sam’s warm body. He tossed an arm and a leg across Sam’s body and nosed into Sam’s neck, sighing.
“Don’ wanna sleep,” he mumbled, eyes closed, his breath ripe with the smell of malt scotch.
Sam ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair soothingly. “Shh, babe, it’s okay to sleep. I’ve got you; I’ll hold you all night long. I’ll protect you from the dreams.”
“Sorry I didn’ wake you. Didn’ wanna make you lose sleep.”
“It’s okay,” Sam said, tangling his fingers with Bucky’s over his chest, placing Bucky’s palm over his steady heart. “If the dreams come back tonight, wake me up. I’ll be here for you. I love you.”
“Love you too,” Bucky sighed happily, finding Sam’s lips and kissing them.
Sam leaned into the kiss, chuckling softly over the taste of pancakes and scotch on Bucky’s lips, savoring the way Bucky’s lips melted for him. Before he could deepen the kiss though, Bucky went limp against his lips and started snoring. Sam just laughed and repositioned Bucky so that his head was on Sam’s shoulder.
“Good night, my little Soviet Sous Chef. I love you.”