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Clint wished he'd headed south.
He'd left the hospital too early, but he was well aware that the ID he had wasn't gonna hold up for long, and they'd started to ask him searching questions about his insurance. He'd had enough money to last him a little while at least, and a heavy leather jacket that had once been Barney's; he'd figured he knew what winter was like, and he'd figured that he could survive it. Bought a coach ticket and spent hours and hours willing himself not to fall asleep.
It turned out everything in New York was a lot more than he'd expected, though. Colder, and bigger, and brighter, and colder - so goddamn bad you had to say it twice. It stabbed into the holes in his shoulders like claws.
And everything was sure as hell a lot more expensive, and Clint found in no time at all that hunger was starting to bite.
At least he knew enough not to sleep at night. He tucked himself in the corner of a library during the day time, sleeping soundly with a huge book propped up in front of him; he spent the nights walking around in an effort to keep himself warm.
It was on one of those nights that he came across the place. Barney hadn't been of use for much, but he'd taught Clint how to spot the signs that a place had been left alone for a little too long; not truly abandoned but definitely neglected, the kind of place where no one would notice anything missing until you were long gone.
He took his time making sure of it, visiting three nights in a row, but no one entered or left the place, and there was never a light shining through the lopsided blind. On the fourth night he was desperate enough - cold enough - that he chanced his luck. Climbed up the fire escape and levered open the sash window as quiet as he could make it, waiting with bated breath for any sign of an alarm. After five minutes of silence that crawled past on cat feet, Clint climbed inside and closed the window behind him, listening as best as he possibly could for any sound of movement.
Even just being out of the wind was something. It was freezing in the apartment, but not nearly so cold as the outside; a little heat was coming up through the floor from the apartment below it. Clint crossed to the ancient radiator and turned the knob, listening to the gentle clanking as it slowly started to warm with what was probably an idiot grin.
He didn't dare turn on the light but from what he could see he was in a bedroom, weirdly featureless, just a chest of drawers and a bed. He eased the door open and went out into the rest of the apartment, finding a bare living room - just two wooden chairs, one with fraying lengths of rope threaded through the backrest, and a wobbly table - a sparse kitchen and a bathroom. The kitchen cupboards, though, were a treasure trove.
They were stacked with boxes of non-perishables. Soups and canned chilli, packets of rice and noodles, and even a whole box of Twinkies, which Clint broke into right away. He emptied a can of soup into a plastic bowl and shoved it into the microwave, his cheeks bulging with yellow cake and something that claimed to be cream. The hum of the microwave was pitched just right to fill the world filtered through his aids; when he turned to find the man standing behind him he hadn't heard a goddamn thing.
He was shorter than Clint but looked like he could kill him without a thought. That was his first impression, at least - his second glance took in a whole lot more. Like the way the guy was barely standing upright, leaning against the island that separated the kitchen from the living room with a significant portion of his weight. Like the way one of his leg of his pants was stained darker and shining in the bare light from the microwave. Like how his long dark hair just emphasised how goddamn pale he was, almost like he was halfway to already dead.
Clint had never exactly been one for thinking. He darted forward before he could talk himself out of it, hauling one of the guy's arms around his shoulders to help him balance a little better; he didn't even notice the arm was metal until the cold sank into the back of his neck.
"Don't kill me," he said, a little pathetic in the darkness, "I made soup!"
He wound up dragging the guy through to the bathroom, that night, the bright white light showing up what the almost-dark of the living room had hidden. The guy was bruised practically head to toe, and alongside the stab wound in his thigh that Clint eventually managed to stop from bleeding, he also had a bullet to dig out of his back. Still, Clint had been looking after Barney for longer than he cared to remember - his shoulders throbbed a little at that thought, as if in protest - and he knew enough about bandaging to do a decent job. He fed the guy and toppled him onto the bed, taking a couple of blankets for himself which he formed into a better bed than he'd had in weeks, at least. Clint curled up by the radiator and slept sounder than he could fathom, waking up to sunlight and an empty apartment, blood crusted under his nails.
He woke up to something else, too. A messenger bag sitting on the chair with the frayed ropes, which he managed to last all of thirty seconds before he looked inside. There was a gun in there - which Clint put away carefully in the box where the Twinkies had been - and a roll of bank notes that would look after him for a long time to come.
Had a lot of dreams about the stranger he'd saved, as he grew older, and grew settled in the city, and grew an unfortunate case of heroism like some kinda fungus. Dreamed about his strong hands, and the line of his back, and how he'd looked scared as hell somewhere deep in his eyes. Dreamed about how he'd worn a smile like he didn't know what to do with it, just for a second, and how that second had been enough for Clint to accidentally shape his heart around.
Almost didn't recognise him, when he met him again years later. Almost didn't recognise dark hair when it was pulled back in a knot behind his head, strong shoulders when they were relaxed and level, but there was no way he was forgetting that arm.
"What?" he said, confused as hell.
"This is Bucky," Steve said, proud, and Bucky ducked his head a little and pulled on a grin that he knew precisely how to use.
"Don't kill me," he said. "I made soup."