Christmas In The Sun || Stucky ✔

Chapter One

It's only a week until Christmas, and Steve and Bucky are spending Christmas together away from the rest of the Avengers. This year for their holiday location, they've chosen New Zealand.

They've been down in New Zealand for a about a couple weeks now, and they intend on returning back to America around the end of January, so as well as spending Christmas in New Zealand, they're also spending New Years there as well.

So far on their stay in New Zealand, they've rented a campervan, and have been driving around a few places in the North Island, visiting a lot of different places, especially any areas where the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies were filmed. That was one of Bucky's conditions on coming to New Zealand, that they had to visit as many locations as possible where the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed.

Along with visiting those places, they've been to the Rainbows End amusement park, looked around the large museum in Auckland where they had taken interest in a lot of the Māori art and weaponry, and not really staying too long around the sections on the war - they didn't want to linger in that section for too long for personal reasons, while they were fighting a different side of the war, they were both still apart of the second world war, so it's not easy for them to view a lot of stuff from the war - and they had given the museum quite a generous donation.

They also looked around the Auckland zoo, and Motat, a museum of transport and technology that showcases exhibitions on the history of New Zealand transport, technology, and kiwi ingenuity - basically a science and technology museum - where you can then take a tram ride from the site to an airplane museum. The pair of them found that the most interesting and fun.

They've managed to do a lot more than that too, while staying in different campgrounds throughout the night.

Just yesterday, the two of them took a trip to the Hobbiton film set in Matamata - the one thing that Bucky was most looking forward to. It was one of the reasons he wanted to come down here in the first place.

Now though, the pair of them are on their way to the Matata campgrounds where they plan on spending the next week just relaxing.

Sometime next week though after they've spent a week out at the Matata campgrounds, they intend on going out to both Rainbow Fairy Springs and Paradise Valley Springs in Rotorua. While from what they've read about Rainbow Fairy Springs there's a lot of cool native wildlife - like kiwi birds which Bucky loves after finally seeing them in person at the Auckland zoo - at Paradise Valley Springs, you get to feed lion cubs. As soon as Bucky heard about that, he literally threatened Steve that they have to go feed some lion cubs or he's never talking to him again. Though really, there's no way that he'd be able to never speak to Steve again....

So far on their trip, they've come across some pretty cool and interesting monuments, but the one that they think is possibly both the weirdest and the coolest, is in Paeroa in the way into Waihi, where there's just this massive bottle of L&P - a classic New Zealand soda drink much like lemonade - and of course, they just had to get a photo with it. They had heard of it while searching up what to do online, and they thought it would be interesting to go take a look before they start heading out to the Matata campgrounds.

"This is fucking weird." Bucky laughs, jumping off the platform the large bottle is sitting on after Steve had taken the photo of him with it. "They have a huge statue-type structure of their nation-wide famous soda. It's so cool!"

Steve just laughs as Bucky runs over to him, taking the camera off him to see how the photo came out looking. "Buck, the photo looks fine." He laughs, shaking his head. "Do you want one with both of us with it, or?"

Bucky gives him a look that Steve can only assume means that that was a stupid question. Which causes Steve to sigh as he snaps a few photos of both of them in front of it.

"Alright, where to next?" Bucky asks, as they make their way back inside the campervan they're renting for the duration of their trip.

"Uh, Matata camping grounds." Steve says, looking towards the GPS system once the pair of them take their seats at the front of the campervan. "We've got an almost two hour drive to get there."

Bucky groans at that, leaning his head back on the head rest. "Two hours almost?" He asks. "It's too fucking hot in here to deal with a two hour drive."

"Well, if we went straight to Matata from the Hobbiton set in Matamata we would've had about half an hour less of a drive to take - which by the way I told you before we left, but you were more interested in seeing the giant soda bottle." Steve says. "And anyway, just be glad you're not the one who's having to do all the driving."

At that, Bucky sighs. He's awfully glad that Steve has agreed to do the majority of the driving for their trip. Truthfully, he doesn't quite trust the way some of the roads in this country. Some of them are just too narrow for his liking, and there's quite a few sharp turns. The fact that he had also done a bit of searching and has found that there's been quite a bit of crashes on the roads this time of year has rather put him off doing a lot of the driving. He's also not too sure about driving on the opposite side of the road.

He's quite possibly one of the world's most dangerous ex-assassins, and he's afraid of driving on New Zealand roads....

"Well, since we'll be stuck in here for a couple hours then, can we please go stop off at one of the stores and get some food for the road?" He asks. "Especially an ice cold drink and maybe an ice-cream or something, cause it's fucking hot in here."

Steve laughs a little, shaking his head. "Don't worry, I already intended on stopping at the store to get food." He assures him. "And really? You're still complaining about how hot it is?" He asks, truthfully though, he too finds it very hot right now. "You were so keen on coming here to get away from the cold back home that you wouldn't stop complaining about, and now that we're here and have been here for a couple weeks now, you're complaining about the heat?"

"Stevie." Bucky starts, sitting up a bit to throw his shirt off as it's way too hot to leave it on. "I'll be honest with ya, there's always going to be something for me to complain about. Especially when it comes to the weather." He says, as he fixes up his hair that's beginning to fall loose out of the hair tie he has it in. He's kept his hair tied up almost the entire time they've been here as it's just too hot to keep it down.

Steve just laughs as he drives on out to the nearest store to get some much needed supplies for the long drive ahead of them. And he just hopes that there's not going to be too much complaining on Bucky's end, but it's likely that Bucky will end up falling asleep about halfway through their drive. The heat seems to make him sleep a lot more than usual.

But if they can get through the two hour drive without Bucky complaining about the heat too much - which Steve too agrees that it's fucking hot - then Steve is going to find that a success. Unfortunately though, he knows for sure that there's going to be some amount of complaining....

//\\//\\

Note on Māori placename pronunciation: Please be aware that these may not be entirely accurate. I'm attempting to make it as easy as possible for you though. You can find much better guides online though.

Paeroa = Pie-row-ah

Matamata = Mat-ah-mat-ah

Waihi = Why-hee

Matata = Mat-ah-tah (not Matata like Hakuna Matata)

Rotorua = Row-tor-ru-ah (or alternatively Rotor-ru-ah. Rotor like motor, but with an r)

I'm sure you all can pronounce Auckland, if not, it's Awk-land. It's not even a Māori placename, so it's not difficult.