Notes: Merry Little Christmas, darling @barnes-babydoll 😍 down at the @stantastic-association, we've decided to celebrate this time of year by doing a sweet Secret Santa fic exchange... and this is my gift to Aly 🥰 I hope you enjoy Congressman Barnes as Santa 😌
Prompt: When you joined Congressman Barnes' team as his Campaign Advisor, you were unaware that the Capitol Hill has a very peculiar Christmas Tradition: the oldest member of Congress is the Capitol Santa. And your boss just turns out to be a 110 year old politician.
Pairing: Congressman Barnes x Campaign Advisor F!Reader
Word count: 4,8k
Tags/warnings: mutual pining; fluff & smut (we all cheered!) ; soft!Bucky; office sex; semi-public sex (technically); oral sex (f receiving); p in v; unprotected sex; creampie; use of baby and darling as pet names; no use of Y/N
The air in the Cannon Caucus Room is thick, a mix of warm scents like cinnamon and mulled wine and the faint (but always present) weight of political ambition. You are used to the funny workings of the Capitol, to the way politics never really stop even if it means discussing bills and budgets during a Christmas gathering; but it doesn’t make it any less strange to navigate a sea of tailored suits and silk scarves, listening to conversations about the current state of the healthcare system while a piano version of Jingle Bells plays in the background.
With a champagne flute held steady in one hand, your eyes are constantly tracking the center of the room. Or rather, your center.
Congressman James Buchanan Barnes, affectionately known to you simply as Bucky, is currently holding court near a towering, slightly lopsided Christmas tree. He’s talking policy with a senior member from an opposing political party—a sure sign the evening is winding down, as Bucky only allows himself friendly cross-party chat when he knows his opponents are relatively more open and less antagonizing.
You’ve been Bucky’s campaign advisor for over a year now, steering him through the first grueling months of his first term with an exhausting focus. He’s likable among the voters because he’s a vet who served in World War II, because people sympathize with the story of a man who has been through hell and managed to come back and rebuild himself. It was hard. Long hours spent behind a desk writing speeches, preparing presentations on how Bucky should talk and act. Still, you had to admit, this time of year made the endless meetings a little more bearable.
You’ve always liked the Winter. Sitting on the couch hearing the rain outside, or seeing the snow fall through the window of your office. Putting the Summer clothes back in the closet and bringing out the wools, the sweaters, the warm scarves, the tights and long boots. It makes you feel cozy and fuzzy, like the world becomes a little bit softer, even amidst political agendas and cutthroat members of the parliament.
However, this year, there was an extra layer of amusement layered over your usual holiday cheer: the infamous Capitol Hill Christmas tradition.
It was a silly, non-partisan ritual that you had never really heard of until Congressman James Barnes one day showed up with a red, fluffy Christmas hat folded over his flesh arm, and a very concerned look on his face. Apparently, every year, the oldest member of the U.S. Congress is nominated as “Congress Santa.” Their one serious task? To deliver small gifts to staff members and colleagues throughout the month of December, culminating at the annual get-together at the Capitol Christmas party.
This year, of course, no one can compete with the hundred and ten year old Congressman.
“I swear, this should be illegal,” Bucky complained one morning, dramatically tossing a small velvet sack onto your desk. “They only picked me because of my… technical age. I don’t even look forty yet.”
You could barely contain the laugh that bubbled up. “I think it’s charming, Bucky. I’m sure you look great in red velvet.
“Of course you would say that,” he grumbled like it was an incredible offense.
And so, for the past three weeks, Bucky has been faithfully, even if grudgingly, slipping small tokens into various mail slots and onto desks across the Hill: a personalized coffee mug for the perpetually tired Appropriations staffer, a genuinely impressive bottle of bourbon for a difficult committee chair, a hand-knitted sweater for a colleague’s new puppy.
Every time a staff member showed up with a new gift, you gave them a warm smile, a small cheer, keeping the perfectly natural façade that you were happy to see Congressman Barnes making the rounds. Because you were, truthfully. It was sweet to see people receiving small reminders that they’re important. And everyone on his own staff had received something incredibly unique.
Well.
Everyone except you.
It wasn’t that you particularly cared about the gift itself. The campaign budget has been tight; Capitol Hill isn’t exactly known for being generous, and Bucky often worked longer hours than any of his staff just to avoid keeping people for extra hours during the holidays. But every morning, you walked into your shared office space, and a new, perfectly wrapped little square would be sitting on June’s desk (his Press Secretary), or a bag of gourmet coffee beans would appear on Finn’s (his Chief of Staff) while your mahogany desk remained embarrassingly empty.
You had tried to rationalize it. Maybe his gift to you was different, maybe it got lost in the mail—or maybe (the option that really stung the most) he had simply forgotten. And honestly, you’ve become good at pretending it doesn’t upset you way more than it should.
In the time you’ve worked for Bucky, you’ve meticulously cataloged every detail about him: the way his vibranium arm glinted subtly under the Capitol lighting, how he runs his thumb across the cuff of his shirt when he’s thinking hard, the fine lines that appear at the corners of his blue eyes when he offers you a genuine smile.
And until tonight, you thought you had cataloged attraction. A professional liability, simmering beneath layers of committee meetings, donor calls and debate prep. It felt present in a shared glance over a midnight briefing packet, in the accidental brush of hands as he reached for a coffee cup you were holding, the quickening of your pulse when he’d lean in to catch a whispered instruction. You always felt there, between the two of you - but now it feels stupid. Like wishful thinking. Because, surely, if he was in any way interested, he wouldn’t forget about your gift.
In the ballroom, the piano shifts from Jingle Bells to a warmer Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. The room seems to exhale, more people laughing, with cheeks flushed from champagne. The towering tree’s lights flicker like they’re winking at private jokes that’ll never leave this room.
You catch Bucky’s eyes across the room, and offer a subtle, practiced nod—the nonverbal signal that says wrap up the conversation and move on to the next Congress member that needs to be smooched. From where you’re standing, he looks impeccable and frustratingly handsome in a charcoal suit that is perfectly tailored to him, except by this time of night he’s already ditched his suit jacket, showing the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled to the elbow, and the red velvet Santa hand he swore he’d burn before wearing is, in fact, perched crookedly on his head.
You’re still holding the same half-empty flute you’ve been nursing for an hour when you see him moving toward you. He stands just outside your personal space, a safe distance to keep the interaction professional and comfortable. That’s when you notice the that his metal hand is holding a small box wrapped in plain kraft paper and tied with red twine. No ribbon, no tag. Just the box and a pair of ridiculous blue eyes watching you like he’s waiting for something to happen.
“Nice hat, Congressman. Velvet becomes you.” Bucky makes a face of disbelief at that but laughs anyway. “You know, everyone on the team has been raving about their ‘Congress Santa’ gifts. They all said yours were the best ones they’ve ever gotten.”
“You think I forgot, don’t you?” His voice is low enough that only you can hear it over the music in the room. “About your gift.”
You lift an eyebrow, going for casual even though your pulse has decided to throw its own private parade. You had not expected him to read you immediately like that. “I considered the possibility that Congress Santa had gone rogue and started discriminating against younger staff.”
A huff of laughter escapes him. “June threatened to leak photos of me in this damn hat if I didn’t deliver her gift early. Finn said he’d resign. I had to prioritize.”
“And now here we are.”
“Here we are,” he repeats, glancing around once out of old habit before holding the box out to you. “Maybe Santa thought someone special deserved their special delivery to be face-to-face during a fancy party.”
Your fingers brush his when you take the gift from him. It’s lighter than you expected.
You look up. “You didn’t have to—”
“I did,” he says with a shrug. He’s not entirely wrong. That was the point of the Capitol Santa - he had to give everyone a gift. “But I also really wanted to. I bought the gift before I even knew I had been elected this year’s Santa.”
Your fingers work deftly on the wrapping, opening it to reveal an antique brass pocket compass. The glass is scratched, the markings worn soft at the edges, the kind of thing that looks like it’s been carried through too many wars.
Bucky clears his throat. “Guy in Georgetown owed me a favor. Said it came off a destroyer in ‘44. Thought it might come in handy for someone who’s spent the last year keeping me from getting completely lost.”
And that makes your throat go stupidly tight all of a sudden.
”Bucky…”
”There’s an inscription in the back,” he says, quieter.
You tilt the compass toward the tree lights. Etched inside the lid, in handwriting you’d recognize anywhere because you’ve seen it on a hundred different speech drafts:
So you can always find your way back. - B
When you look up again, he’s closer. Not yet touching, but close enough that you can almost count the lines in his eyes when he smiles down at you.
“I didn’t forget,” he says. “I was just waiting for a special moment. Like tonight. Under Christmas lights and with you looking dashing.”
The piano hits the final note of the song. Someone starts clapping, someone else laughs a little too loud. In your small bubble around you and Bucky, none of it feels like it matters.
You slip the compass into your palm and close your fingers around it like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Merry Christmas, Congressman Barnes.”
The corner of his mouth curves—the real smile, the one he saves for his favorite people.
“Would you maybe like to thank me back in my office?”
Your breath catches, just for a second, because Bucky Barnes has never been this direct before. Not in all the late nights hunched over polling data, not in the stolen moments when his hand lingered on the small of your back guiding you through a crowded fundraiser. Not even when you caught him watching you across a congress meeting like he was trying to memorize the way light highlighted your hair.
He’s always been deliberate. Choosing his words like he’s walking through a minefield, careful, never biting off more than he can chew.
And now he’s looking at you with that stupid smile, red velvet hat still crooked on his head, asking, suggesting, a get-together that is the furthest thing away from a meeting about constituent services.
You arch a brow, letting the silence stretch just long enough for him to feel it. Feel that there isn’t quite a hesitation, but a question.
What are you doing?
“Your office,” you repeat, slow and deliberate, like you’re tasting the words. Bucky doesn’t flinch when you say them. “Are you asking me to turn down the Christmas wonder for the night to find myself in a closed room with terrible fluorescent lighting?”
His grin widens, so boyish he looks about ten years younger and unfairly charming.
”I’m told the lighting’s better if you turn the desk lamp on and kill the overheads. It’s more atmospheric,” he says, voice low.
Your laughter bubbles up before you can stop it. “Atmospheric. Is that what we’re calling it now, Congressman?”
He steps in, just an inch, and his metal hand brushes the sleeve of your dress, close enough that you feel the cool whisper of vibranium through silk.
”I’m calling it whatever gets you to say yes,” he murmurs. The bluntness remains, now wrapped in that voice he uses when he’s trying to talk a nervous intern off a ledge: calm, honeyed.
You tilt your head, letting your gaze drop to his mouth for half a heartbeat before dragging it back up to those ocean blue eyes that always get you.
“I thought your work for today ended with the last gift delivery.”
His thumb traces the edge of your wrist now, feather-light, like he’s testing whether you’ll pull away. You don’t.
“I’m full of surprises tonight,” he says. “And this isn’t work. It’s me figuring out after a hundred and ten years that the best gifts sometimes aren’t the ones you put under a tree.”
A quick glance around tells you that nobody’s watching—or, if they are, they’re pretending not to. Capitol Hill has seen far worse than a congressman flirting with his advisor under twinkling lights. And finally, you give in.
“Lead the way, Santa,” you whisper.
Bucky offers you his arm, and when you take it, he weaves you through the crowd, pulling you into the quieter, darker corridors.
The corridors are almost empty now, just the occasional echo of laughter from the ballroom and the soft squeak of your heels on the marble. Bucky walks half a step ahead, your arm still wrapped around his. The red velvet hat is gone (somewhere between the rotunda and the elevators he must have palmed it off to a passing page), and without it he looks less like a reluctant Santa and more like the man who joined Congress to change the world.
His office door is already cracked open; someone on night staff left the hallway lights on low. He pushes it wider with his shoulder, then steps aside so you can enter first.
You’ve been in this room a thousand times (red-eyed at 3 a.m. rewriting a floor speech, arguing over a single word in a press release), but tonight it feels different. Smaller. Warmer. The Christmas tree in the corner is still lit, a tiny thing he insisted on even though the ornaments are mostly campaign buttons and one slightly worse-for-wear Captain America shield bauble Sam sent as a joke.
Bucky flicks off the overhead fluorescents. The room drops into near-darkness, just the glow from the Christmas tree and the soft amber of the desk lamp he switches on with his metal hand.
He was right. The single pool of light is atmospheric. It turns the edges of everything gold and forgiving.
He closes the door behind him. The click of the latch is louder than it has any right to be.
For a moment neither of you moves. You’re standing between the armchair and his desk, compass still closed in your fist like a secret weapon. Bucky leans back against the door, arms loosely folded, watching you with that unreadable look he gets when he’s deciding whether to go all-in on a risky vote.
“You’re allowed to tell me this is insane,” he says quietly. “I’ll walk you back to the party right now. No questions. No awkward aftermath.”
The offer is real, you can tell. But his voice is steady, but his shoulders are tight, like he’s bracing for a polite let-down he’s convinced himself he deserves.
You take one step toward him. Then another. The carpet muffles your heels, so the only sounds are the low hum of the Capitol’s heating system and both of you breathing like you’ve just run up four flights of stairs.
“I’m not telling you this is insane,” you say.
He pushes off the door and meets you halfway. Slowly, like he’s still giving you every chance to step back. When you don’t, his hands come up, one warm, one cool, and settle at your waist, thumbs brushing the silk just above your hips, and you lean into it like you’ve been waiting for the moment you would get to feel them.
“Been thinking about this for longer than I should admit,” he murmurs. His forehead rests against yours, eyes half-lidded. “Every time you leaned over my desk to fix a line in a speech, every time you handed me coffee and your fingers brushed mine… I kept thinking one day I’d run out of reasons to keep my hands to myself.”
You tilt your face up. Your noses brush. “You’re out of reasons now?”
“Completely out,” he agrees.
And that’s when your mouths meet halfway, too. The kiss starts careful, almost chaste, just his lips against yours, testing. Then you make the smallest sound in the back of your throat, something close to a small whine, and whatever restraint Bucky was attempting to maintain now snaps. His flesh hand slides up your spine, pulling you flush against him, and the vibranium one cups your jaw with impossible gentleness, thumb stroking along your cheekbone like he’s memorizing the shape of you.
He tastes like champagne and a faint trace of peppermint from a candy cane you definitely saw him eating earlier. When your tongue touches his, he groans and backs you up until your hips meet the edge of his desk. Papers rustle and slide to the floor, forgotten.
You break apart only far enough to breathe, and you meet his eyes, already dark, staring down at you.
“Still not ready to tell me this is insane?” He says against your mouth.
You answer by pulling him back in by the tie, followed by your fingers threading through his hair. Bucky makes a broken sound when you tug his tie, and it shoots straight through you, pooling heat low in your stomach.
You’re already halfway on the desk, a coffee mug teetering dangerously near the edge, when Bucky’s hands slide under your thighs and lift. The way he sets you fully on the mahogany like you weigh nothing is effortless, stepping between your knees and crowding in until there’s no space left for pretense.
“Tell me to stop,” he breathes against your mouth, even as his fingers are working your dress higher, bunching silk at your hips. “Tell me and I will.”
You answer by wrapping your legs around his waist and dragging him closer. The vibranium hand braces beside your hip, metal cool against the wood, while the flesh one slips under the hem of your dress, tracing the lace edge of your tights with something close to reverence.
“I’ll quit if you stop now,” you whisper, only half serious.
Bucky actually laughs before he yanks his shirt open, buttons pinging across the room. You’re not much gentler with the zipper of your dress, shoving it down your shoulders so he can mouth along your collarbone, your throat, the soft spot just beneath your ear that makes your breath hitch.
When you reach down to palm him through his slacks, he drops his forehead to your shoulder with a ragged curse that sounds a lot like your name.
“Been wanting this,” he rasps, voice wrecked. “Wanting you. Every committee hearing, every time you wore that blue skirt—”
You can barely manage a breathless chuckle as you pop the button on his waistband. “Good moment to admit I kinda wore it on purpose?”
Bucky growls and hauls you to the edge of the desk so he can grind against you. The friction is just perfect, stoking your fire and making it burn stronger at the same time.
Your tights are in the way, and he solves that by hooking his metal fingers in the waistband and tearing. The sound of ripping nylon is loud in the quiet room; the rush of cool air on your skin is immediately soothed by the heat of his flesh palm sliding up your thigh.
“Jesus, Bucky—”
“I’ll buy you new ones,” he promises, already dropping to his knees like a man in prayer. The desk lamp paints gold across the sharp lines of his face as he presses open-mouthed kisses to the inside of your knee, higher, higher, until you’re gripping his hair with both hands and trying not to cry out loud enough for any passersby to hear.
When his fingers push your panties to the side and his tongue finally finds you, you have to bite down on your bottom lip to stay quiet.
Bucky doesn’t tease you; there’s already been too much teasing already, months of it, of barely contained lust. So when his mouth finally closes over you, it’s with the single-minded focus of a man who’s been starving.
The first slow lick is devastating. Your head falls back, a shaky exhale punching out of you as the heat of his tongue drags up your folds. He groans into you like the taste alone is enough to get him off, and his metal fingers spread you open wider, always gentle, holding you exactly where he wants you while his flesh hand slides under your thigh, hitching your leg higher over his shoulder.
“Bucky…”
It’s meant to be a warning, but it comes out a plea, one he’s more than happy to oblige.
His tongue circles your clit once, twice, before he seals his lips around it and sucks, steady. Your fingers tighten in his hair, and he takes the hint and does it again, harder, flicking the tip of his tongue in quick, ruthless pulses that have your thighs trembling against his ears.
Your back arches off the desk, papers crumbling under your shoulder blades, and you have to slap a hand over your mouth to muffle the broken sound that rips out of you.
Bucky doesn’t let up. If anything, he gets greedier, licking and sucking like he’s trying to wring every drop of pleasure from you before you can even catch your breath.
“Fuck, Bucky, please—”
It’s barely a whisper, but he hears it like you shouted. He lifts his head just enough to look at you, mouth glistening with your slick, eyes blown.
“Need to be inside you,” he rasps, and he’s already surging up, crashing his mouth to yours so you taste yourself on his tongue while his hands shove his pants and briefs down in one impatient motion. His cock springs free, flushed and heavy and rock hard, the tip already slick with pre-cum. You wrap your fingers around him, and he shudders, hips jerking into your grip with a choked curse.
“I don’t have a condom here,” he manages, the last functioning part of his brain trying to be responsible. “But I’m clean, I swear and I can pull out—”
“I’m on the pill,” you cut in, your hand guiding him through your folds, rubbing the tip of his cock against you until it’s coated in your wetness. “And I’m clean too. It’s okay. I wanna feel you.”
Bucky really doesn’t need to be told twice.
He pushes in with a slow thrust, no barrier between the two of you. The stretch feels on the edge of almost too much, and you both freeze, foreheads pressed together, breathing hard through the heat of the moment. He pulses inside you, and you can feel every ridge, every throb as your body takes its time to adjust.
“Fuck,” he groans, voice cracking. “You’re so tight. So perfect.”
He pulls back an inch and slides home again, deeper this time, and the drag is like nothing you’ve ever felt before. The initial shock of being inside you for the first time, of feeling what he’s only dared dream of until tonight, gives way to an ache that builds slow and surely. Bucky sets a slow rhythm, pulling out until just the tip stays inside before sinking back in, each stroke a little harder, deeper than the last. His metal hand grips the edge of the desk hard enough to dent the wood, and the flesh one slides under your thigh, hitching your leg higher so he can find the perfect angle to make you see stars. You cry out, and he swallows the sound with a messy, desperate kiss. His blue eyes are fixed on your face, watching out for every reaction, every expression of your pleasure.
“We feel good together, don’t we?”
All you can do is moan in response, hands scrambling for purchase on his shoulders, digging into the hard muscle there. The pace quickens, and the deep thrusts become shorter and sharper, his angle shifting slightly.
“Bucky, oh, right there,” you pant, and he zeroes in on that spot, hitting it again and again with unnerving accuracy. The coil in your belly tightens, winding impossibly tight. Bucky seems to be everywhere: surrounding you, his scent in your lungs, his body pinning yours to the desk, his cock driving into you like he’s trying to fuse himself to you. Bucky feels impossibly good, hot and bare and hitting places that make your toes curl in your heels. The desk creaks ominously beneath you; a stack of briefing binders finally gives up and crashes to the floor. He lowers his head, his mouth finding a nipple and sucking hard before biting down just enough to send a jolt of pleasure-pain straight through you. You cry out, your walls clamping down around Bucky.
“Baby, fuck - do that again,” he groans into your breasts. “Squeeze me.”
You do, and his rhythm falters, hips stuttering as he fights to not come immediately. A metal thumb finds your clit, rubbing tight, perfect circles while he fucks into you like he’s been waiting a lifetime for this. Your back arches, thighs clamping around his hips, and you feel the coil tightening fast, faster—
“Look at me,” he growls.
You hadn’t even realized your eyes had closed with the intensity of it all. You force your eyes open again, long enough to see him smiling down at you before you break. The pleasure shatters through you, blinding, all-consuming. Your orgasm crashes over you, your body convulsing, your pussy clamping down on him like a vise as wave after wave of ecstasy wracks your frame.
Bucky fucks you through it, his thrusts becoming erratic as your spasming muscles milk him toward his own release. You feel him tremble as he spills with a broken, reverent “fuck, baby—” against your neck, flooding you with his release. Immediately, his arms band around you, holding you so tight you can barely breathe, riding it out together until the only sound is both of you gasping for air.
He doesn’t pull out right away.
He stays buried deep, hips flush to yours, chest heaving against you like he’s trying to anchor himself to the planet.
You feel the aftershocks ripple through him: tiny, involuntary pulses of his cock still inside you, each one drawing a helpless sound from his throat. When he finally shifts, it’s only to press his forehead harder against yours, eyes squeezed shut like he’s afraid if he opens them this will turn out to be another dream he has to wake up from.
“Christ,” he whispers, voice raw. “You’re… I can’t…” He swallows, tries again. “I can still feel you clenching around me.”
You clench deliberately, just to watch his breath hitch and his hips jerk forward in reflex. A wrecked laugh escapes him.
“That’s evil,” he accuses, but he’s smiling, utterly unguarded, as he finally opens his eyes.
They’re glassy, brilliant blue even in the low light, and fixed on you like you’re the only real thing he’s seen in decades. His thumb traces your lower lip, still swollen from his kisses, then drifts down your jaw, your throat, lingering over the faint marks his mouth left along your collarbone.
“I meant it,” he says quietly. “About the compass. So you can always find your way back.” A pause, almost shy. “Back here. To me.”
Your heart does something complicated in your chest. You cup his face with both hands, feeling the stubble, the warmth of his skin, the tiny tremor in the muscle of his jaw that only ever appears when he’s overwhelmed.
“I always will, Bucky,” you tell him.
Something in his expression cracks wide open. He turns his head to press a kiss to the center of your palm, then the inside of your wrist, then lowers his mouth to yours again, deep and achingly tender, like maybe if he kisses you long enough he can taste a year of hidden feelings on your tongue.
Outside, the snow has thickened, big lazy flakes drifting past the window in silence. Inside, your world and his have just turned upside down.
You rest your forehead against his, fingers idly tracing the seam where metal meets skin at his left shoulder. “Merry Christmas, Bucky.”
He smiles against your mouth, and it’s the real smile, the one that reaches his eyes and makes them crinkle at the corners.
Bucky study from Civil War
I've been on a bit of a Marvel high since Thunderbolts (which I absolutely loved) so I've been rewatching some of my favourite MCU movies.
(Sidenote: Sebastian Stan's likeness is really hard to get right for some reason wtf)
Sebastian Stan attends The Academy Museum Hosts Oscars Season: Makeup & Hairstyling activation and panel at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on March 01, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images)
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