Flickers | Bucky Barnes

Holiday

December 2014

Bucky lingered in the back doorway of his apartment as he watched Karina make a little snowman on the ledge of his balcony. "Do you need to stand so close to the ledge?"

Karina turned to look at him with her rosy cheeks and nose that was rivaling Rudolph's. She was wearing a black winter coat with a gray beanie - knit cap in his head - and a scarf that wasn't doing that great of a job shielding her from the cold. Her eyes flashed with amusement as she stepped away from the ledge abandoning her task, "Well now I don't want you to blow a fuse."

Bucky rolled his eyes, "I was coming to tell you that your hot chocolate was done."

Karina abandoned her task and trudged into his kitchen where the hot chocolate was waiting on the counter. He closed his door keeping the cold air out. It was a few days before Christmas and since Karina had picked up the holiday shifts, she insisted that they celebrate early. So his apartment was filled with secondhand decorations and various paper crafts that included a small Paper Mache tree.

He leaned against the counter as he watched her take a tentative sip of her beverage and he tried not to laugh as her face scrunched up from her burning her tongue. "Hot?"

He chuckled at the glare she sent his way before he stood next to her and grabbed his own mug that wasn't filled with hot chocolate.

"That's not coffee."

Bucky looked at Karina who had lowered her mug back onto the counter to let it cool. He extended the mug on the pretense to let her have a sip, but she only sniffed it before her green eyes looked back up to him. "You can't even get drunk."

He shrugged his shoulders, "Doesn't mean I don't mind the taste." He extended the cup to her offering her a sip. "Try some."

"What is it?"

"Whiskey," he told her as she accepted the mug, "the good kind," he added on.

"You mean the good kind you can afford." She joked as she sniffed the cup before taking a tentative sip.

One thing Bucky did not expect was for Karina to be a light weight. He was surprised how fast the alcohol hit her system. He thought since she worked at a bar and he saw her accept the occasional drink she would have had a better resistance. His calculations were totally wrong. The alcohol made her very chatty as she completely abandoned speaking in Romanian and English. She was now speaking heavily in Russian. He noticed that she seemed to barely speak Russian around him. He didn't necessarily mind it if she did. He tried not to think she had an ulterior motive for it, but he knew why she didn't. Yet he liked to think hearing Russian wouldn't cause him to go on a homicidal rage. Even if it was the language of his imprisoners, it was still a language. He only needed to be wary of a certain sequence of words. He was fairly certain that if she spoke to him in her native tongue those words would never consecutively fall from her lips. He felt a small pang in his chest knowing how much she looked out for him.

Nevertheless, he didn't mind hearing the language from her lips. It was nice to hear Russian that wasn't coming from angry, harsh, brutal lips. This Russian was friendly, happy, and to a point it was comforting as he was seeing a side of her that she kept away from him.

But he listened highly amused as she ranted about whatever popped into her head as she was stuffed quite snuggly in her winter gear courtesy of him. As the last thing she needed was a cold.

She went on to detail all the technical features of his arm and how she would have performed the procedure. He thought he would feel uncomfortable as he knew that her method and anyone else's humane method wouldn't have a person awake during the procedure. This topic would have brought unwanted ghost souring the jovial mood. Instead, he was incredibly impressed how smart she was. He already knew she was extremely intelligent, but to hear her talk so passionately about her work, he ignored the occasional slur of her Russian words, he felt proud for her. However it was tainted with a splash of guilt as she would never get the recognition for it. She would never probably get her degree and be able to help other people like she wanted too.