Eyes of Fire | Bucky Barnes

36

It's the first time in nearly 100 years that Bucky wakes somewhat well-rested. He'd definitely had a nightmare, if you could call it that, but this time at least he'd been able to fall back asleep afterwards.

Bucky woke up warm, almost too warm, and moved to kick off his blankets as soon as he registered what it was covering his lower half.

Ok, he would admit it, he was... comfortable. Not mentally, of course, because there was this overwhelming sense of unfamiliarity and confusion he met with upon regaining consciousness. But physically. He'd gotten used to waking up with sore limbs — as sore of a limb that he could feel, anyhow — and an awkward tense in his back.

But despite the pleasant warmth in his body — it'd died down a bit from when he first woke up — he was slammed with, for lack of better wording, guilt.

He'd slept beside Uxolo, had let her rest beside him all night long, knowing how his nightmares usually sent him into a violent frenzy. How had he let this happen? He could've hurt her, could've killed her, and woken up to his hands wrapped around her throat instead of tucked under his pillow.

"James, are you awake in there?" He heard her voice call from the front room.

Waking up comfortable, for the first time in forever, was one thing. But waking up to her honey-silk voice, calling out to him? Was this truly what it could be like? What it would be like, if everything went better than perfectly? Impossibly?

He was being dramatic, there was no other option.

"Uh—!" He called back to her, using his vibranium hand to balance himself and slide further up the bed, rubbing incessantly at his eye with his other hand, "Yeah, 'm up."

"Come out!" She responded immediately. He could hear the smile in her voice, could probably even deduce the kind of smile (Uxolo had different types of smiles for different moments, and he had yet to decide which made  his stomach flutter hardest) from the sound alone. "I'm hungry."

Bucky rushed to get himself at least somewhat presentable, tossing back on the t-shirt that had somehow escaped him during the night (he knew exactly how; he had super-soldier serum rushing through his veins and heightening his body temperature to uncomfortable levels for literally anyone else), double checking his breath and pits, and tossing the blankets back over his mattress. He decided to bring the living room chair back into the front room, while he was at it, mostly because he needed something to do with his hands as dream-like images of a domestic life with Uxolo rushed through his mind.

He would never deserve such a life, such unconditional generosity. She'd find someone else, someone better, she had to. The alternative was destructive for him to even think about.

Bucky found her rummaging through his perpetually empty refrigerator, humming that familiar song he recognized from some of their evening walks. He tried to send her a smile when she twisted to greet him — the feeling strange, as if the muscles to do so had atrophied and he was trying to shift bones — the gesture turning more into a wince than anything.

Still, Uxolo smiled back at him.

She pointed at the chair, mentally cataloging how uncomfortable it'd been and dedicating herself to getting him a new one. "Why do you not use the ingalo yentsimbi?"

Bucky didn't understand how, but somehow she looked as if she hadn't just woken up in a disgusting, cold, shack of a house. Her skin was as bright as ever, looking smooth to the touch, her hair tied up neatly in those buns she always did. She looked lovely, or maybe that was Bucky's obsessed brain.

"The what?" Bucky asked, realizing he hasn't responded. Meanwhile, he set the chair back where it belonged in front of the television.

This was the first time Uxolo looked even a bit put off or embarrassed by a language mistake; she constantly had to translate and shift between two extremely different languages, and Bucky was surprised she hadn't made more mistakes. Or maybe is was because she knew how difficult it was that she hadn't seemed embarrassed about it prior. He wondered what changed.