Bucky was standing watch outside the door, exactly where he said he'd be. He turned as I opened the door and a smile instantly lit up his face as he saw me standing there, good as new—or close to it. He offered me his hand, "let's get out of here." I gave a nod of ascent and took his hand, letting him lead me out of the lab and into the city's open air. I didn't know just how strong my wings were yet, so we silently decided to walk back to the cabana. It was quiet, peaceful even. "I'm sorry." He abruptly blurted.
"For what?" I was confused, what could he possibly have to apologize to me for?
"For putting you in that position. I should've—"
"Should've what? Jumped in front of me? Bucky, I'm the one that's bulletproof—when they aren't made of vibranium anyway. You have nothing to be sorry for."
He still didn't look convinced. "If I'm being honest, it scared me. I don't know what I'd do without you."
I stopped walking, causing us both to pause in the middle of the field, and he cupped my face gently. Looking directly into his eyes so he knew I was serious, I whispered, "it scared me too, James, but that doesn't mean that I'm gonna stop protecting people. I have a lot of blood to make up for."
"So do I." He muttered quietly, a lost look in his eyes that he only got when he was thinking back on his days in Hydra.
"Then we'll do that together too." It was a promise that I wasn't willing to break.
Even though we had been on our way to the cabana, we made no effort to resume our walk, content as we were in the field, with each other as company, under a blanket of stars. We found a hill to lay back on and watched the clouds move across the sky by the full moon that seemed to wash the little meadow we found ourselves in with a soft light. I could make out every feature of his face even if I hadn't known it by memory, but even with the moon, it was hard to make out the color of his eyes. Sometimes they seemed so blue, other times so black, but here in the soft light, they were somewhere in between.
I wrapped my wings loosely around us to keep some heat in, but found myself enjoying as Bucky ran his hand through my feathers, finding all the gaps where I had pulled them out so new ones could grow. His touch, however slight, made me shiver, and suddenly I found myself with the urge to touch back. My wings were sensitive, so he shouldn't have been surprised when I initiated a long slow kiss, the kind that was sensual but showed just how much I loved him. His soft hair had started to regrow in the time since we had arrived in Wakanda and was now to the length that I could thread my fingers through it and get tangled in the most delicious ways.
Breathless, I pulled away and leaned heavily into his side. The faint smell of gunpowder still clung to his clothes and I breathed in the smell as I settled myself more comfortably against him. I glanced up into Bucky's face and found an odd expression, one I hadn't seen before. "Hey," I dragged a finger down his jaw, "what're you thinkin?"
He turned to meet my eyes and paused as he collected his thoughts. Finally, he asked in a quiet voice, "is this enough for you?"
"What do you mean, Buck?" I asked, confused.
He gestured between the two us, "Me and you? Here, in Wakanda?"
"Why would I want to be anywhere else?" I stated without hesitation. "You're mine, and I'm yours, Wakanda's nice, but it doesn't matter where we are as long as we're together."
He hesitated again, "what if we were married?" That was a thought I'd never had before and it took me a little by surprise. I had never thought of Bucky as the marrying kind, but then again we both were children of the 40s, so it made sense. I had a feeling it was less about us—we were both secure in our relationship to each other—and more about the perception of others.
"Are you being serious, James? Because I swear to God, if you're not—" I threatened. I didn't want to fool around here, if he wanted me, I was all in.
He held up his metal hand to interrupt me. "This is me . . . asking you to marry me." Looking into his eyes, he looked as if he were searching my soul for the answer, he looked nervous, I couldn't imagine why.
It didn't take me even a moment to respond, I was already saying yes. With my voice, my lips, the nod of my head, even my wings thrummed with the energy. Bucky chuckled around my kiss, "you know we'll have to reset your threat clock, right?"
I flicked his shoulder, "Just shut up and kiss me."
I flicked him again when he started smirking into my lips. "Yes, ma'am."
Bucky moved as if to flip us but I stopped him with a hand to the shoulder, "whoa there tiger, I don't know about you, but I'm tired after today."
"You're right, next time." He smirked with a winked, before settling back down next to me. I watched him fall asleep with a smile on his face. Such a rare sight, I savored it as I drifted off.
***
We woke the next morning with W'Kabi and T'Challa standing over us. "You should not do that again, it makes it very difficult to locate you." T'Challa reprimanded in Xhosa.
"Why would you need to find us?" Bucky blinked awake, responding in kind, while I covered my eyes with my wings to block out the little sunlight that was peaking over the horizon. I was not a morning person.
"We have news from the outside world." T'Challa explained. I grunted and buried my face in Bucky's side, murmuring something about making him go away. "The Avengers released a press conference," he said in English, knowing we didn't have the vocabulary in Xhosa to understand that quite yet.
I lifted my wing slightly and grumbled, "after last night, I could sleep for a week, and you woke me up at the crack of dawn to tell me . . . what exactly?"
"Your days of needing to hide from the world are over."