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“Please,” Steve said. “There’s gotta be something.”
“Dude, I’m really sorry,” the girl sitting behind the desk said. “Like, I’d definitely give you a room if we had it, but we don’t. There’s literally nothing left. I even just had a group of strangers all just agree to go in together on the honeymoon suite, that’s how desperate people are.”
Steve signed and rubbed a hand over his face. “What are your feelings on us just camping out in the lobby?”
“Uh,” she said. “Pretty negative, actually.”
“Yeah, that’s fair.”
He opened the car door and slumped back into the driver’s side, pulling it shut behind him.
“From the look on your face, I’m guessing it was a no,” Bucky said. He was sitting in the passenger’s seat, wearing his ski jacket, a down vest, a giant fleece sweater, a wool shirt, and sweatpants. He also had two blankets piled on top of him, so that Steve could only see his eyes peeking out from under his hat.
“It’s a no,” Steve said. He was already shivering, even from the short walk from the hotel lobby to the car. “They’re completely full, and for some reason are opposed to us sleeping in the lobby.”
Bucky groaned and sunk lower into his blanket burrito. “That was the last one! We’ve tried every fucking hotel.”
“What about motels?”
“Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn – “
“I swear to god, if you sing that one more time – “
“Alright, alright,” Bucky said. “I was including motels under the hotel umbrella, we’ve tried all those too.”
“What about a Bed and Breakfast, or something like that?” Steve said. “Are there any hostels here?”
“No hostels,” Bucky said slowly. He had one hand poking out of his blankets and was using it to scroll through his phone. “There’s a B&B, called Janice’s Lovely Kitchen.”
“Well, that sounds like a place where people go to get murdered,” Steve commented. “But at least we’d be warm when we die.”
“There are five rooms, she’ll make dinner – oh, wait. What the fuck? She only accepts guests over the age of 35.”
“We could probably pass for 35,” Steve tried.
“We definitely can’t,” Bucky said, “especially if they check out driver’s licenses. Besides, it's probably full anyway.”
“The girl at the desk said there’s a campground.”
“Okay, first problem,” Bucky started. “It’s snowing. It’s snowing and it’s fucking cold. Also, we don’t have a tent. Or any camping gear.”
Steve groaned. “Okay. Let’s just do another loop of the town, see if we can see anything. Keep your eyes open.”
Bucky glared at him as Steve started the car. “What did I say, like three hours ago? I’ll tell you what I said. I said, ‘Steve, I think we should keep going and try and make it home tonight, otherwise we’ll get stuck in that storm.’ And what did you say? ‘I think we should try and stay the night, Buck, what if we get stranded?’ And here we are, Steve! We’re stranded.”
“That’s a little dramatic, I think,” Steve said. “Look, there’s a Starbucks right there. Stranded people don’t have access to Starbucks.”
Bucky scowled. “Fine. But if we end up sleeping in the car, you’re doing the dishes for a week.”
“So I guess I’m doing the dishes for a week.”
“You sure fucking are,” Bucky muttered, struggling to get the back of his seat to lie flat. “We can’t even cuddle for warmth, there’s a fucking centre console between us.”
“We should get a minivan,” Steve mused as he tried to put his feet up on the dashboard. “We wouldn’t have this problem in a minivan.”
“We are not getting a minivan.”
“It's a more practical option.”
“It's a more embarrassing option, that’s what it is,” Bucky said. He was wiggling around under his blankets, trying to get comfortable in his reclined seat. “Ow.”
“You’re shaking the car,” Steve said, now fairly warm and comfortable under his own blankets.
“I just need to get my legs stretched out – “
“OW,” Steve shouted. “Fuck, you just kicked me in the dick!”
Bucky was alternating between laughing and trying to apologize. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry – “
“You are not forgiven,” Steve wheezed. “Jesus christ – “
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! Here – “
“Stop moving!” Steve shouted, and Bucky laughed even harder.
Someone tapped on their car window, and both of them yelped.
Steve rolled over to see a police officer staring down at him with a frown.
“Oh, shit,” Bucky said.
Steve scrambled over to open the door. Both of them winced as the cold air rushed in.
“Evening, boys,” the officer said. “I was just driving by when I noticed your car sitting here. Considering this restaurant closed hours ago, I doubt you’re a patron of theirs. Then I noticed how much your car was rocking.”
“Oh my god,” Bucky said, and Steve shot him a look.
“Sorry, officer, we were just trying to get comfortable,” Steve said hastily. “I know we’re not supposed to be sleeping here, but we didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could find a hotel.”
“We tried,” Bucky said. “We tried all of them, everywhere’s booked.”
The officer sighed. “Yeah, that’s probably true. Look, I can’t let you sleep here.”
“We live four hours from here,” Bucky said. “We were gonna try and drive through, but the storm got worse and we were too tired. We thought it would be safer to stop.”
“Alright,” the officer said. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ve got a spare bedroom that you can use for the night, as long as you’re gone by nine tomorrow morning. My end of the bargain is that I get to sleep without worrying about the two of you freezing to death out here. Deal?”
“Uh,” Steve said, ignoring the look Bucky was giving him. “Okay?”
“Great. Follow me, I’ll let you boys in and then I have to go back out and finish my shift.”
The officer made his way back to his car, and Steve turned to see Bucky glaring at him.
“Steve!” Bucky hissed. “This is so fucking weird! We’re sleeping in a stranger’s house!”
“At least we’ll be warm,” Steve said as he stared the car again. “I’ve forgotten what that feels like. All I know is cold.”
“You are so fucking dramatic.”
“Yeah, but soon I’ll be warm and dramatic, at least.”
The officer, whose name turned out to be Dan, had a surprisingly nice house in the centre of town. He set Steve and Bucky up in the little spare bedroom with its two twin beds, and then headed out again.
“This is weird, but alright,” Steve said, sitting down on one of the beds and looking around. “We’ve even got our own bathroom."
Bucky didn’t say anything, and Steve looked over to see Bucky already asleep face down on one of the beds.
Steve laughed to himself and got up. “Buck, at least get under the blankets.”
“Nah,” Bucky said, and drooled a little into his pillow. He didn’t even open his eyes.
Steve tugged at the blankets until he got them most of the way down, and Bucky finally kicked his feet back under the blankets and let Steve pull them up.
“You’re driving first tomorrow,” Steve warned as he started changing into sweatpants.
Bucky didn’t say anything, he was so deeply asleep.
They ended up leaving promptly at nine the next morning. Dan was already gone by the time they got up, but he’d left a note under the door telling them to help themselves to breakfast. They each had a bowl of cereal, with Bucky whispering about how weird it was.
They made record time packing up again and jumping back into the car.
“Well, that was weird,” Bucky said as they pulled back onto the highway. “That was a really weird night.”
“Well, we didn’t get ax-murdered, so it could have been worse.”
“True. That’s true.”