There is a pot full of red carnations on the stool of his apartment window. Zemo left them there once he got to visit him before.
Bucky doesn’t like the flowers.
They smell like balm and spice and their leaves are greyish green. They are decent. He must admit that the flowers are beautiful, yet every petal carries a sentiment that is unsettling to him.
He let them stand still there for days, never bothers to bestow a drop of water to their waiting, athirst roots. He ignores the way the flowers greet him at the times he wakes up, and disregards the way they throw full-of-pleading glances in his waking hours.
The flowers will die eventually. The crowns are already dried up, shriveling. The stems have turned droopy and the leaves are falling. But he can’t throw the flowers away because Zemo was the one who gave them to him.
He does not understand. Why did Zemo have to give him this kind of flowers?
And then it strikes him that, probably, it didn’t really mean anything, or perhaps it was just a kind of gesture, Zemo’s way to leave a trace so Bucky would keep him in mind.
But this is not the way Bucky wants to remember him.
-
At some point, Zemo takes a time to visit him again. Bucky opens his apartment door, finding the man standing there with a lazy smile.
“Are you familiar with floriography and what red carnations symbolize?” Zemo finally asks after spending a fairly long time staring at the withered, dying flowers while sipping a cup of tea.
Bucky knows no shit about whatevergraphy, but he knows enough about the flowers. "They are funeral flowers, the type of flowers you'd put on a grave. Dare I say it represents grief."
He’d seen it all, the flowers hanging on coffins, thrown on the street in the puddles of bloodshed.
Zemo seems to give it a lot of thought.
“It’s true, in Russia and some parts of the world,” Zemo at last begins. “But in the other parts, including Sokovia, the flowers represent sincere love, affection, and admiration. Those are what I feel for you, James."
Zemo's hand lifts, covering one of Bucky's cheeks.
“And just like how there are two sides of a coin," he continues. “I wish you can see yourself the way I see you: a tough, remarkable man who is also capable of affection; not only the cluttered mess of death you claim yourself to be."
Bucky is silent, staring deep at Zemo through his blue steel orbs. Then he turns his head to the side, finding the flowers.
Wind from outside the window is blowing a couple of their dried-up leaves in; and for the first time, their cries reach him.
Bucky turns his gaze back to Zemo, then wraps the warmth on his cheek, that is Zemo's hand, with his own. He closes his eyes as he leans to the touch, noticing that there is also warmth in his chest.
A few months later, there are two pots of red carnations on the stool of his apartment window.
Birds are chirping as he is watering the soil.