Charley went to sleep that night without saying a single word to Bucky. They had driven home in silence, eaten in silence, somehow chosen a movie to watch in silence, and mouthed a goodnight to each other in silence.

She was utterly mortified. In bed, every time she remembered the events of their almost kiss she would have to spin over, laying over her front so she could shove her face in her pillow to internally scream into. She couldn't believe she had royally screwed up a perfectly good growing friendship.

Somehow her thoughts turned to how it would have played out if she hadn't off pulled away. Half wondering if Bucky had wanted to continue?

Had he? She thought curiously, he hadn't been pulling away. Although it was probably out of shock.

She finally felt herself slipping on and out of consciousness dreaming about what could have happened.

*~It Started With Pizza~*

Charley suddenly sat up. Her ears pricking up at the sound of smashing from the other room. A groan, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass erupted from her living room.

It was dark and Charley flung her legs over the side of the bed, stepping on her phone that was on the floor charging. She must have some how turned her phone on as light exploded in her face, causing Mabel to hiss at the end of the bed, her head poking up from underneath the covers.

"Shhh, go back to sleep." Charley lent over and stroked her cat. She nuzzled into her touch falling straight back to sleep.

"Bucky?" Charley called out when Mabel had settled down again. "Are you alright out there?"

Tiredly she carried her legs to her bedroom door, her phone clutched in her hand as she tapped the flashlight option. Before opening the door she leant her ear against it, analysing any sound she could to see if she could guess how many there were behind the door. Her heart thumping for fear that Hydra had found them.

There were no footsteps, only groans of agony.

Panicking, Charley pulled the door open slightly, peering round the edge of her door to get a glimpse of what was happening. She could barely see anything so she brought her phone up.

On her couch was a silhouette. Bucky was withering around in his sleep, his head leant back as his teeth jittered together, echoing out a scream. Charley stared motionless, un-expecting to see such a horrific sight of Bucky in pain.

"Bucky?" With her eyes wide she ran towards him, her arms out wide, the blood draining from her face. "Shit," she let out, abruptly stopping metres away from him, remembering her promise to Bucky about not going near him when he had a nightmare.

From the glint of her flashlight she could see his metal arm. It was tense, curled up in a fist and was thrashing robotically about along with his body.

"BUCKY WAKE UP!" she cried desperately, wanting to look away. It was worse than she could ever have imagined. Bucky began hitting his head back and forth connecting with the arm of the couch. He wouldn't stop. "PLEASE WAKE UP! SHIT. BUCKY!"

She ran back into her room and snatched her pillows from the bed. Standing two metres away she began chucking them at him with as much force as she could muster. Bucky's arm swung hitting the pillow with a powerful strike. It flung across the room, hitting a lamp which fell straight from the cabinet and smashed to the floor.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" Charley said, her voice cracking under the pressure. She was scared; scared for him and the pain he was seemingly in.

She looked around for something else to throw and found a few magazines and chucked them. Her aim was off and they landed, scattered four feet away from where Bucky's manic form was.

An idea sprung to mind as she ran into her bedroom and grabbed the water guns that she had stashed away at the bottom of her wardrobe. They hadn't come out since the first day she had moved to America. She finally found them hiding at the bottom of a box on top of mountains of clothes and took one, running to the kitchen to fill it up with water. Bucky was still screaming as she readied herself to aim the gun at Bucky's face, her hands shaking as Bucky's nightmare was seeming to get worse. He began choking on his own scream, struggling for air. If this didn't work Charley would have to wake him up herself.

She clicked the trigger and water squirted everywhere, all over Bucky's face. He spluttered for a second but his arms lowered and his body became slack, relaxing.

"Bucky?" Charley stepped forward, cautiously. "Are you alright?"

"Charley?" Bucky sat up quickly analysing his surroundings. The coffee table was over turned with the glass in the middle of it scattered everywhere. The contents on the table were either ripped in pieces or thrown about the room somewhere. "Did I... Did I do this?"

Biting her lip, Charley instantly went to defend him. "You had a nightmare, it wasn't your fault. Next time I'll be sure to keep the water gun by my side so I can wake you up quick-"

"Charley." Bucky shakily stopped her talking. He was breathing heavily, having to clutch onto the air of the chair as he tried to get his breath back. She raised her hand to give herself more light. It was only then she saw the sweat trickling down his forehead and the bottom half of his t-shirt completely ripped in half. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put you at risk like that." He leaned over the chair to grab his shoes that were laid carelessly about. "I shouldn't have stayed here."

Charley dropped the water gun and ran over to Bucky, her hands going to snatch his shoes away from him but Bucky had a death grip on them and no matter how hard she could have pulled there was no way she was getting them away from him.

She decided she would argue her case instead. It was what she was good at.

"You are not leaving me now." She pouted, sitting down next to him, careful to not step on any broken glass as she had bare feet. "Don't even think about it."

"I'm just getting in the way and I'm dangerous," Bucky said, not looking at her, his eyes closing as if imagining something. "I don't know what I would have done if you had come near me, I could have killed you."

"Hey, you said you would stay here as long as I never went near you if you had a nightmare," Charley explained, referring to the promise she made on Bucky's first night living with her. "And I didn't go near you. If you leave you'll be breaking that promise!"

"It's not that simple."

"It is if you make it that simple." Charley crossed her arms stubbornly. "Anyway, you broke my lamp. You owe me." She pouted dramatically getting up and heading to the kitchen.

"I'm sorry for that and for your coffee table."

Charley waved her hand in the air as if brushing it aside. "Pfft, I hated that stupid coffee table anyway. It was always in the way, I kept banging my knee into it every time I stood up." A hand went to her leg as if there was a particular sore spot still there. "I'm kind of relieved if I'm honest."

From the kitchen, Charley could hear Bucky scrapping up the glass with his metal hand into a pile and then moving the wreck of her coffee table to the side. Charley appeared a second later with two tubs of ice cream in her hand and spoons. She had put slippers on her feet for fear of cutting herself on some broken glass.

"Okay so I don't even like ice cream but it's good comfort food so I keep a stash of it for situations like these." She handed a tub and spoon to Bucky who took it, confused. "Although I always imagined I would use it for a break-up or something, but that's not going to happen anytime soon so why waste it."

"You don't have to do this."

"Do what?" Charley raised an eyebrow, opening up her ice cream. She put her spoon down on her lap, excited to see they had the little brown wooden sticks inside instead.

"I've already ruined your life as it is."

"You didn't ruin my life." Charley frowned, trying to find the right words to explain to him just how much he meant to her. Even if it had only been a few short weeks since they had met. It was probably the best five weeks of her life. "You made it bearable if anything."

"You're just saying that because you feel sorry for me."

"Yeah I guess I do feel sorry for you but that's not the reason I'm saying that," Charley argued. "I'm telling you that because it's the truth. Now stop arguing with me and eat your ice cream. It's disgusting."

Bucky let out a breath of air, relaxing back down into his seat. "You don't like Ice cream?"

"I'm fussy." Charley shrugged, taking a bite of her ice cream anyway (the smallest bit she could manage onto her small wooden spoon) and chewing on it with a scowl written on her face. "I might gag," she warned, mimicking throwing up but going for another bite anyway as Bucky watched on amused.

"I like it," Bucky added as he opened his up own tub and put his whole spoon in, fishing out the largest bit he could.

"I guess they don't-"

"Call me the Winter Soldier for nothing?" Bucky finished, raising an eyebrow. His voice gurgling as he tried to swallow a mouthful off ice cream in one.

"Hey, how'd you know I was going to say that?"

"You're predicable." He laughed at Charley, who huffed like a child. "Ow…" Bucky groaned, suddenly raising a hand to his head. "Ow. Brain freeze. I forgot ice cream does that to you."

Charley choked on the small bit of ice cream in her mouth and had to clutch onto her sides to stop herself from laughing too hard. She couldn't help it. The scary Winter Soldier that was all over the news was suffering from brain freeze. She laughed so hard that she almost fell of the couch onto the pile of glass, had Bucky not been quick enough to bring his metal arm up and catch her, his arm firmly held onto her waist as she still could not contain her laughter.

"Told you ice cream sucks."

"It's worth it though." Bucky laughed, letting go off her waist and going for another large chunk, even though he was still wincing at his headache. Charley instantly missed the feel of his hands around her waist and wished he would put them back.

Her thoughts drifted to the day before and once again her cheeks flamed up red and she felt the temperature in the room rise. She half wanted to go pick up her pillow that was now laying by the broken lamp and scream into it again.

"Listen, about yesterday at the park…"

Bucky put his ice cream down on the side table (now that they had no coffee table for Charley to chuck her rubbish on). He nodded looking her in the eye. "If you want to forget it happened, it's fine."

"Do you want to forget it happened?"

Bucky's lips tilted upwards as he shrugged. "I've spent most of my life forgetting things. I don't want to forget again."

"Well when you put it like that…" Charley smiled at the idea of Bucky not wanting to forget her. Even something as embarrassing as last night. She forced another spoonful of ice cream down thinking about how the tension between them had disappeared and Charley wondered if Bucky had even felt the previous awkward air at all.

"How do you manage to make me feel so normal?" Bucky asked suddenly, readjusting his position on the couch, so he was completely facing Charley who had her legs tucked up to her chest, resting against the chair's arm. "Even if the situation is completely crazy."

"I'm mundane like that. I make the most crazy of situations feel boring," Charley said lightly.

"I didn't mean it like that you know." Bucky furrowed his eyebrows, frowning.

"I know." Charley smiled. "And you are normal. You've just had crazy stuff happen to you. I get nightmares too sometimes." She leant in with a serious expression, as if about to tell a big secret. "When I was about nine or ten I had a dream once that I turned into a gingerbread man and the only way for me to go back human is if someone ate me." She pulled away laughing. "It was terrifying."

Bucky smiled. "You were a gingerbread man?"

"Well gingerbread woman if you want to get technical," Charley shrugged licking her spoon. "Do you think there was a secret message behind that dream?"

"Maybe… don't eat gingerbread men?" he suggested uncertainly.

"Nah I was most terrified when people were trying to eat me. I think it was telling me to stay away from cannibals," Charley deadpanned, before laughing along with Bucky as he started to throw his head back letting out a large chuckle. "So…" she said slowly, her smile falling from her face. "What was your dream about? I don't know if it can beat my gingerbread one," she added sarcastically.

Bucky stopped laughing instantly and looked up, hesitant to answer, a cautious look in his eye. Despite this he said, "Hydra. What else?"

"Was it about something they did to you?"

"The problem is, with them wiping my memory I forget the good stuff and the bad stuff, and sometimes the bad stuff is remembered as well as the good," Bucky admitted sadly. He had finished his ice cream and with a glum expression put the empty tub on the side. "Some things are better left forgotten."

Charley raised an eyebrow, passing her unfinished ice cream to him, which he accepted happily, a puppy like smile glowing onto his face. "I thought you said you didn't want to forget anymore."

"I was talking about you," Bucky grinned. "Not about the bad stuff."

Charley scoffed but a soft warm feeling in her chest erupted at the idea of Bucky categorising her as the 'good stuff'. "Is that your way of saying that the incident yesterday wasn't the most embarrassing, awkward, cringe-worthy situation of your life? For which I am so so sorry for."

"I don't think I'd remember even if there was a more embarrassing moment," Bucky laughed. "And it was kind of cute how you reacted." Bucky opened his mouth to say something more but promptly shut it.

"If you say so," Charley raised her eyebrow, kind of regretting mentioning it again. What happened to forgetting it ever happened? "So, are you going to tell me what happened in this nightmare of yours?"

Bucky winced and he put the ice cream tub down, suddenly not looking interested in the vanilla ice cream. "A mission. I remember them at odd periods."

"What mission was it?" She tried to draw out of him, wanting to help him. She didn't care how bad it was, as far as she was concerned, Bucky and the Winter Soldier were two separate people.

"I think it was 1988." Bucky narrowed his eyes trying to think off the date before he became fazed, as if lost in the bitter memory. "I was assigned to kill ten S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. They were all hiding undercover and I found them and strangled them all. They didn't have time to call for back-up…"

"It wasn't you, Bucky," Charley reminded him, placing her hand on his. "It was Hydra, they had control over you."

"I still killed them." Bucky licked his lips avoiding eye contact with Charley. His eyes caught the pile of glass that he had made and reached down to finish cleaning it up. Charley went into the kitchen, picking up the dustpan and brush that was hidden under a pile of left out dishes.

She came back and scooped up the glass Bucky had collected together.

"Careful," Bucky said taking the dustpan from her. "There might still be glass on the floor."

Tiredly Charley wiped her eyes. "I'll clean it up tomorrow." She yawned. "Let's just relax for now, let's talk about the good stuff you remember."

Charley heard Bucky sigh has he put the broken glass into the bin.

"Go back to bed, Charley, I'm keeping you awake." Bucky appeared in the kitchen doorway, rubbing his metal arm through his thick, long hair. "I'll finish cleaning this up." He gestured to the mess of a room. In fairness, it was already a mess before Bucky had smashed the place up.

Charley rolled her eyes. "If I go back to bed will you sleep?" She knew he wouldn't and the blank stare Bucky gave her answered that. "Then I won't sleep knowing you're not sleeping. So we'd both be awake and then what's the point in that. Now, what can you remember that's good?"

Bucky fell down beside Charley on the couch, his metal arm exposed as it brushed up against Charley's, the cool metal sending tingles up her back at their touch. She ignored it and waited for Bucky to answer.

"I remembered someone else yesterday," Bucky said and Charley nodded, encouraging him on. "It's a girl… she looked just like my Mom. Rebecca, everyone called her, but I just called her Becki." He looked away down at the floor a distant smile on his face.

"She was your sister?" Charley asked, putting two and two together.

"I think so." Bucky narrowed his eyes, remembering. "Me, her and Steve used to go dancing. Steve would always hide in the corner, never speaking to any girls, completely awkward and most of my night was spent chasing creeps away from Beck, and she would always get angry at me saying she could do it herself." The happiness in his eyes faded. "She's probably dead now. It's probably for the best; she doesn't have to see what I've become."

Charley brought her hand up to catch his. "Hey, don't think like that. For all you know she lived a great life." She looked over at her laptop that was still on the table. "Do you want to find out? See what did happen to her?"

"No. I don't want to know," Bucky said quickly. "If she didn't live a happy life then I don't want to know otherwise."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Bucky smiled glumly then finally looked up. "Let's talk about your family."

"Not much to say," Charley shrugged, sad at the change of topic. She liked listening to the stories Bucky remembered but understood why he had wanted to change topics abruptly. "I've got a brother and a sister, a mum and dad, aunts and uncles. We're just your average family. They're all in England, I don't really talk to them much if I'm honest."

"Why not?"

She scrunched her nose up, thinking about how to phrase it. "I think they think I'm actually doing something with my life in America, I know they'll be disappointed to find out I'm living on minimum wage and not really doing any better than I would if I hadn't moved away." She shrugged. "Every time I talk to them they always ask what I've been up too. I just don't want to disappoint them."

"I can't imagine you ever disappointing anyone, Charley," Bucky said softly.

Charley shrugged, wanting to change subject, feeling sensitive on it. She felt bad for not calling her family. It had been months since she had had a proper conversation with her mother. The last time they had talked had been over Facebook private messenger and it had been a quick 'how are you' and 'I'm fine' and that had been weeks ago, before the helicarrier crash.

"Do you want to watch a film?" Charley asked quickly before Bucky asked anymore questions about her life. "I was thinking the Wizard of Oz."

It would be a film Bucky at least recognized, or it might jog some memories.

"It's up to you," Bucky shrugged, leaning back. Charley nodded and got up to set up the DVD player and slot in her copy of wizard of Oz which she had already out, preparing herself to watch it with Bucky.

When it began to play Bucky's screwed up his face in confusion.

"Have I watched this before?"

"Probably." Charley watched him carefully, happy to see a glint of recognition enter his eyes at the sight of the film. He said nothing more about recognizing it. She relaxed into the film. She was tired and wanted to go to sleep but knowing Bucky needed her now prevented her. She rested her head on his metal arm humming along to the movie's songs (well it became humming after she had been singing allowed and Bucky had started laughing).

She was glad the awkward tension from their almost kiss was pretty much gone now. Although she couldn't be sure if the situation would occur again. Bucky would say things sometimes that melted Charley's heart.

He's your friend. Charley reminded herself. They were friends. Good friends, somehow. She wouldn't ruin that friendship.

A/N Just to let everyone know I will be writing the events of Civil War into this story (obviously not yet, the events of civil war don't take place until two years in this storyline so it'll be awhile) I watched the film three times and it's amazing, don't worry no spoilers but it's just a.m.a..z.i.n.g

Lara Barnes: thanks so much for the review. I know Charley has a habit of making things embarrassing

Guest: thanks so much for the rewiew :D

finish-her: i'm glad you're liking the story so far, you don't know how happy this review made me. I feel Bucky needs a normal girl in his life, and the comical moments are definitly needed in his life. Thanks so much for taking your time to read this, means so much :D