Widow Sisters and Friends (Restoring Our Broken Hearts): Book 2

The Christmas of a Lifetime: Part 1

Summary: When Christmastime comes around at the compound along with Secret Santa, Natasha, Yelena, Kate, Carol, and Darcy find themselves in the middle of many holiday festivities with many old friends and even a new one or two.

   "And so if you get someone, you're stuck with them. There's no trading or swapping," Steve declared to the room from where he was currently standing.

"Yeah, yeah, we get it. You're stuck with who you got, and that's the way it is. So happy giving and getting, people," Tony announced to the group, and Steve immediately looked terribly unappreciative of Tony's summarization as he successfully shortened what was going to be a far longer speech.

It was currently the Christmas season and Steve was starting off the beginning of their Christmas season with the start of Secret Santa. It was the first time that they had tried out Secret Santa, and Steve had been ridiculously excited about the entire thing when he had found out about it. Much to many people's chagrin, he thought it would be an excellent team bonding activity.

At the moment, he was standing before Natasha, Yelena, Kate, Carol, Darcy, Peter, Tony, Thor, Bruce, Bucky, and Sam, and they were all gathered around the room relaxing as they listened to his announcement and prepared to get the names of the people that they would be buying gifts for.

However, in the midst of Steve's announcement, Tony had grown tired of listening to him yammer on so he proceeded to interrupt, much to several of the others' amusement. Even Carol found it extremely humorous despite her current relationship with Steve.

For his part, Steve simply pouted just a little in his most manly manner— even though Carol was pretty convinced that it did not look too manly—and he then decided to set off the Secret Santa gift-giving.

"Yeah, like he said, Star-Spangled Speedo. It's bad enough you drag me into a room with Bucko over here, but making me listen to you lecture, too?" Yelena declared, and Bucky just looked over at her unappreciatively, narrowing his eyes. Yelena unashamedly glared back at him in apparent dislike.

"I am literally just sitting here minding my own business," Bucky pointed out, and Yelena rolled her eyes waving him off quite literally as she moved her hand toward him dismissively. Carol raised an eyebrow, having not been fully aware of Yelena's apparent dislike for Bucky but quickly picking up on it.

"What crawled up your rear end about Bucky?" Carol questioned softly as she leaned over to Yelena, and Yelena shrugged as she bristled just a bit.

"It's a long story and it's got a lot of bad blood in it," Yelena shortly informed her, and Carol nodded slowly in reply.

Finally listening to all of the protests, he decided to reach into the hat that Carol had so generously donated to the cause and wiggled his hand around before withdrawing a piece of paper.

He nodded with a smile before tucking the small piece of paper away in his pocket. He then looked at all of them, gesturing to the cap there on the table.

"Go ahead and get your giftee papers, everyone, so we can give our beautiful volunteer back her hat. I'm sure she misses it," Steve pointed out jokingly, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips, and Carol just huffed as she passed by him, bumping her shoulder into his playfully. He chuckled warmly in reply to her, and she raised an eyebrow, winking at him before heading over to the cap.

"You two legitimately make me want to throw up," Yelena complained aloud, sidling up to Carol, and Carol smirked widely, waggling her eyebrows. Natasha followed after her, and Kate as well as Darcy were not too far along behind the two of them.