Soldier and Flower

Meeting

"Knock, Knock" That was the first thing I heard when my life changed completely. But let me start at the begin.

I heard my dad's voice say: "Who is that crazy and knocks on the door in the middle of the night?!" I slowly opened my eyes. I hear steps going down the old wooden stairs, they were my dad's. My eyes glimpsed over to the ticking watch on the wall, next to my closet. It was 3:45 am in the morning. I set up in my bed and tried to wake up a little bit. Then my dad called for me: "y/n come down the stairs please." I searched for my dressing gown. I quickly put it on and went down. I asked my dad what is going on when I realised a solider was standing in the door.

"Darling this is Sargent Barnes." my dad said.

"Hi I'm James Barnes."

He was American.

"Hi I'm y/n y/l/n."

"Sargent Barnes is searching for a place to sleep. Would you let him sleep in your room? You have two beds and our sofa is not very comfortable"

"I can sleep on the sofa. It's fine with me." 

"No, it's fine you can sleep in my room I have two beds."

I showed him my room and where the bathroom was. Then my dad gave him some clothes for seeping. After he took a shower and brushed his teeth. He reached in his pocket and pulled two pictures and a pocket watch out of it. He laid them down on the small nightstand between the two beds.

Both of them showed him. I asked myself why someone would keep two pictures of themselves. But I didn't ask because maybe he was so in love with himself that asking would insult him.

"What happened to you Mr. Barnes?"

"Please call me Bucky. Ahhm we were driving down this road and suddenly our wheels gave up. We had to walk until we found this village. And the bar just had a few rooms. A friend and me we had to ask your neighbours but they only had one bed left. This is how I got here."

"Bucky? That's an interesting story but why the name Bucky?"

"It's short for Buchanan, my middle name."

"Lost love or why do you keep two pictures of you with you or too much self-love?"

That was a bit too straight forward but I just wanted to know.

He giggled a bit.

"The first one. Connie, pretty but not very smart. And the other picture is me with my friend Steve."

He looked down a bit and took a deep breath.

"Is everything alright?" I asked.

"Yes, it's just he always wanted to go to the army and now he is in the army and I'm concerned about him. He is not really the guy you see in the movies the army shows the public."

"What about you? What's your story?"

"I was born in London and lived there until my fifth birthday. Then we moved here, because my mom passed away in a car accident."

"... I'm sorry." He said with a sad voice.

"My dad sent me to a school in Austria. I learned German in that time."

"... German?..."

"Does it alarm you?"

"No, it doesn't I just want to know a bit about German, can you teach me some phrases?"

"Are you sure? I mean it's a pretty difficult language."

"Please I want to know how you sound while speaking German."

"Okay, Okay. I need to think. What do you want to know?"

"Maybe. "How are you?" In German."

"Okay it means "Wie geht es dir?" but it also depends to whom you are talking. If you are talking to a person, you don't know so well you would say:" Wie geht es Ihnen?""

"That's already complicated. I just can't imagine how difficult a normal conversation is."

We talked almost until sunrise. We saw the sun rising and felt asleep. We slept for about 3 hours. As I woke up my dad was knocking on our door. We both woke up, when bucky saw the clock, he stood up so fast. He got dressed and by that I also mean undressed. I first was surprised, before I realised his upper body was undressed and what do I have to say, he had a pretty good body. Then I turned my back pretending to still sleep or being sleepy. Bucky grabbed his dog tag but he left his pictures and the pocket watch. He ran down the stairs, said thank you to my dad and then left.

My dad looked at me with surprise. We both busted into laugh. Then my dad made breakfast for us two. He asked me a few questions

"What were you and Sargent Barnes talking about so long?"

"He just told me a bit about how they got here and I told him a bit about myself."

My dad looked at me with a suspicious look in his eyes.

When I went back to my room, I decided to keep the pictures and the watch. I grabbed a small box from my shelf and put the pictures with the watch inside. Luckily it was Sunday so I wouldn't go to work. In the afternoon I went for a walk. I set down on the bench at the cemetery. I look at the green grass underneath my feet and suddenly I decided to draw Bucky. I walked back home and started drawing. It took me a long time to draw in the end I captured him pretty well.