1935
Bucky grabbed his lunchbox from his locker and tossed his books in, giving some of the fellas from the track team a wave and a grin as they went by on their way to the lunch room.
Turning the opposite direction, he made his way to the exit on the west side of the school where he and Steve made a habit of meeting up for lunch.
Since they didn’t have any classes together, Steve being a year behind him, they always ate together, except for the days when Steve wasn’t well enough for school.
On those days, Bucky usually went to Steve’s to see how he was doing, and take him the books he’d need for whatever school work his teachers had assigned that morning. Kept him from getting too goddamn bored while laid up in bed and too far behind.
Then he’d do the same thing after school with the work from the afternoon, carting all the books back to school the next day if Steve was feeling better, leaving them if he was going to have to stay home again.
When there were second days, third days, or more, he just had to take him the assignments, all the books being there already, and he helped, if there was something Steve was stuck on from not actually being in class. That way, they kept him up to speed when he had bad spells.
Well, for the most part. Sometimes Steve’d get too sick to do the work, and they had to put in extra hours to catch him up again when he was better. Thankfully, It’d been quite a while since he’d taken a real bad turn--most of the last year, and all summer!
‘Course, when Steve was doing good, he had the tendency to stand up for folks just for the damn principle of it, and get his fool head bashed in. Goddamn punk.
Bucky rolled up the sleeves of his best white shirt, the kind you wore for the first day of school. It had a little rip in it, but that had been mended so skillfully by his mom that it didn’t hardly show at all.
Putting his lunch box down beside him, he leaned back with his elbows on the top step, his legs stretched out in front of him, and waited for Steve.
@cpt-spangles