Bucky Barnes

Part 2

You drink from your straw noisily, sitting at the small bar in Stark Tower, on the fifth floor. You can't very well stay in your own home, considering the entire front wall of your living room is out in the street.

Stark had been oh so gracious to offer you one of the apartments in his building, free of charge, and you'd oh so gladly accepted. Of course, it's not the same, and though it's spacious, you miss your own place. You've tried cleaning up the mess a little, shoveling the debris out onto the sidewalk for someone else to deal with. Construction teams are already over the city, which had been declared to be in "natural disaster mode."

Nothing that happened had been natural.

Now.

"Do you have to drink that so obnoxiously?" you hear someone grouch, and you half turn on your stool, seeing Tony Stark himself entering the lounge. He's dressed in a suit, a bruise under his eye you hadn't noticed until then. His dark hair is messy, like he's run his hands through it a hundred times. He must be stressing out, probably over the fact his girlfriend wants a break from him; you hear things.

You merely suck harder on the straw, creating more noise.

He sighs, and ignores you as he walks across the room to where Natasha and Rogers sit at the tables near the window. You suppose the area is more for dining, with the bar and the lounge chairs, the dining tables and the low lighting. Stark has a chef on call at all hours of the day, so anything anyone wanted from the kitchen was available.

The baker sucks, however. His cupcakes are too dry, and they crumble to pieces when you touch them. You've never been so disgusted of a pastry in your life.

"Natasha, have you seen Clint?" you hear Stark ask. "He was supposed to be here an hour ago for the meeting tonight."

"I haven't seen him. Have you called his wife?"

"She won't answer."

"Then he's probably avoiding you," the Russian spy shrugs her shoulders, looking uninterested. "You're pushy and annoying sometimes, Stark. He's probably already on his way here."

"This meeting is important, he can't just ignore my calls!"

"I think that's exactly what he's doing."

You lean onto the bar, your straw in your mouth as you chew on it. You're looking at your phone, trying to estimate how much the damages are going to cost you. You've a pen and paper in front of you, numbers scribbled all over them. The problem is, the numbers are adding up to be much more then what's in your bank account, and you're a thrifty spender as it is.

You're not sure what you're going to do.

Your insurance definitely isn't going to be able to pay, not considering the rest of the city is in shambles. You know you're not going to be able to bother relying on them, that it's basically going to be your own cash doing all the work.

Yikes.

You're not a construction worker, you have absolutely no idea how to do any of it yourself or you would. It peeves you that, even though you can easily lift heavy beams or anything else you need, you don't have the experience to do it correctly.

You can just see yourself getting electrocuted now, your life ending in a flash of light; you've fought aliens, yet you get killed by a toaster.

That would be your luck.

You sigh, scribbling some more notes onto the paper, trying to section everything out. New display cases, new cash register, new blackboard, new sets of tables and chairs, new industrial oven since yours has a steel rod through it, new ---- everything, really.