The Red Henley

[by ambayeah]

Everybody always goes ON and ON about Bucky's sexy red Henley that he wears in CA:CW, but no one ever wonders where it came from. How did Bucky acquire it? Here's the true story!

The Story of the Red Henley by Bundibird -- Author's Summary: He… likes the colour. Was red his favourite colour, before? He doesn’t know. Maybe it was. My Summary: After escaping from Hydra, Bucky is tired of wearing all black. He finds a used red shirt he likes at a thrift store but doesn't have $2 to pay for it. But he won't steal from a charity because he's trying to live a better life now that he's no longer the Winter Soldier.

Excerpt:

He presses his lips together and puts the (warm, comfortable, not-black) shirt back on the end of the rack, where he first pulled it from, and turns away.

 He’s barely taken two steps before a voice speaks up from behind and to the right of him.

 “Y’alright, son?”

 And Bucky would be startled, if he hadn’t noticed the man before he’d even stepped fully outside, but fortunately for all involved, Bucky had noticed him – noticed him before Bucky even paused to look at the shirt, spotted the old man pottering around inside tidying shelves and dusting and dismissed him as not a threat, even when the old man caught sight of Bucky a few moments later and started covertly watching him.

 Bucky nods once, short and dismissive, eager to be on his way, now that he's decided he's not stealing the shirt.

 “You interested in the Henley?” the old man asks, and Bucky pauses for a moment and then nods again,

 And then he says, “I haven’t got two dollars,” because sure, he could just walk away and ignore the man, but that would be rude, and he’s been trying to remember how to be more like the James Buchanan Barnes he once was, and he has a feeling that James Buchanan Barnes would think about as highly about being needlessly rude to old people as he would think about stealing from charity, so.