A/N: I wasn't going to do any prompt fills for a while, but then my dear friend Luna-Orlha had to go and give me this idea.

Bucky surveyed the scene before him.

The worst of the damage to Jane's lab was focused around the back left corner. The melted remains of her prototype bifrost smoldered there in a shapeless black husk. It gave off a thick, smoky odor strong enough to carry fifty feet and smack him in the face the second he walked in. After a short coughing fit, Bucky continued to assess the area. Jane had cleared all but two of her computer modules as still functioning, but without working electrical outlets, that didn't mean much. Beyond the technical failures was a wall covered in scratch marks, blue colored blue staining the floor and, of course, the enormous corpse of… whatever that thing was that got through her portal and wrecked the place. Bucky kicked its foot a few times, guns at the ready. It was well and truly dead by all appearances, but he wasn't taking chances.

"You sure its not just playing possum?" he asked.

Jane rolled her eyes, and Bucky wanted to scream because she did not have any fucking right to scoff at him after this.

"James, it has a hole in its stomach that I could stand in. It's dead."

Bucky studied it a while longer, appeased for the most part but unable to turn off that part of his brain that demanded he be sure.

"Fine," he said, holstering his guns. "Now, do you want to tell me what happened here?"

Jane fidgeted. She had her hands in her pockets and her shoulders hunched. It made her look even smaller than she was.

"Um… well, I was making some last minute adjustments to the formula for opening the portal."

"Okay," Bucky said.

"And everything was running smoothly on the simulator, so I wanted to do a live test."

"Right."

"I set everything up and activated the bridge."

"Right."

"And then there was a glitch in the program that messed with the coordinates and let the bilgesnipe in."

Jane finished with a smile and a flutter of her lashes. In the blink of an eye, she had gone from hiding behind her collar like a mouse to trying to look as adorable as possible. She might as well rub her head against his leg and purr while she was at it. Not that it would have helped her. She could twirl her hair and bat her eyes all day long until the cows came home, and he would still be throwing up his hands and falling back on a desk chair and cursing the Lord above for having made him some kind of magnet for reckless idiots.

"You know what? I'm not even shocked," he said, laughing. "Not even a little. I expect this from you now."

"Hey," Jane whined, puffing out her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, but you actually thought it was okay to open a trans-dimensional portal in the middle of your lab without telling anyone and without a backup plan in case something went wrong. If Thor and his friends hadn't been visiting, you'd be the bloodstain on the floor right now. And the craziest part is that this is exactly like you."

"For your information, I did have a backup plan," Jane snapped.

"And what was it?"

An awkward pause.

"…um, call Thor and his friends?"

He could barely form coherent sentences anymore. His shoulders shook and his stomach ached. It was a good think he already sat down or else he would have tripped over his own feet trying to move. He inhaled deeply until his lungs hurt more than his stomach and let it out. He did it two more times until it was all out of his system. Jane watched him, her arms crossed and a deep frown marring her features.

"Are you finished?" she asked.

"For now," he said. "At least until tomorrow when you manage to top yourself yet again."

"Well, maybe you should give me a reason to stay in bed for once."

Bucky's eyes darkened. He stood, towering over Jane, backing her against the table.

"You challenging me?"

Jane grinned.

She didn't get out of bed until late evening the next day.