Winter (A Bucky Barnes recovery story)

2. Streets

Bucky reaches into his pocket while the man behind the desk stares at him impatiently.

"I don't have enough I'm short a dollar." Bucky says giving up the search for the spare dollar.

"Well then I'm sorry, if you can't pay the fee to stay here then you have to leave. You have till noon before you have to leave." The man replies shrugging, Bucky sighs in defeat and then goes back to his room.

He grabs his jacket and his knife then leaves. He wanders the streets aimlessly not sure where he should stay next. As night falls, he still hasn't found somewhere that would take the meager amount of money he had in his pocket so he sighs and curls up on a park bench.

The autumn breeze is cold and Bucky shivers in an attempt to stay warm. He curls up tighter trying to maintain body heat. He spends the whole night shivering. He barely manages to fall asleep only to be awoken nearly less than ten minutes later by the harsh bright light if the sun.

He squeezes his eyes tighter then hesitantly opens them, his eyes being attacked by the lights again. He closes them once more then finally opens them again. He stands and stretches, then stifles a yawn.

A runner passes by and runs into Bucky both of them distracted. They both fall down and the runner stands up apologizing.

"It's fine." Bucky grumbles. The runner offers Bucky a hand.

"Again I'm sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going" he continues, Bucky ignores his ham and pushes himself off the ground. He dusts himself off,

"Bucky?" The man says staring at him.

He looks up to see Steve staring at him, "Steve?" Bucky replies, unsure of how to proceed.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, Bucky shrugs.

"Walking"

"Oh. How have you been?" Steve asks, as if none of what had happened recently with Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. Falling, had happened.

"Fine." Bucky replies, Steve looks at him concerned, there's a roughness in his voice, dark shadows under his eyes, he's quite thin and the shadow of stubble showed on his face.

"You sure buck?" He asks, Bucky almost glares at him but then sighs and responds.

"Yeah, fine." He starts to turn away, but is stopped as Steve asks him another question.

"Where've you been staying?" Steve notices the hesitation before he replies, almost as if he was trying to hide something.

"Small motel." Bucky replies after hesitating not sure exactly what to tell Steve, the answer he settled on was somewhat the truth. He shrugs and goes to leave again.

"What's the rush Buck? How bout you come by my place we can chat some." Steve says, trying to stall Bucky for just a little longer. He wasn't all to sure he believed that Bucky was staying in a motel, and by the looks of him he hadn't showered it eaten in a while.

"We can have lunch." He continues, Bucky sighs and stops again his stomach growling at the thought of food.

"Okay, I guess."

"Thanks, come on." Steve says sighing in relief. Bucky nods silently and follows Steve to the curb where they hail a taxi.