Who knew thunder could be so soothing? Charlotte mused, pulling a fistful of the plush comforter closer to her chin. The bed was warm, largely thanks to the super soldier sleeping in it behind her. He'd fallen asleep on top of the covers shortly after slipping his boxers back on. She'd initially passed out with him, but when she woke up in the middle of the night, freezing and naked, Charlotte had found a slightly musty smelling crewneck in the bedroom closet and a pair of sweatpants in a drawer. Only a moment after pulling them on and crawling under the covers, she was right back to sleep. Storms never bothered her, but this one felt especially soothing. Something about an exhilarating escape from a mission, a long night, and the peace of a safe house…it was the best nights' sleep she'd had in months.
That was –– until the calm of the early morning was shattered by a sudden clamor downstairs—a violent crash that jerked them from sleep to high alert in mere seconds.
"Did you hear that?" Charlotte whispered, her voice tight with tension as she slipped out of the bed and into a crouch on the floor.
"Yeah," Bucky responded, his hand feeling under the bed frame for what she assumed was a stashed weapon. Sure enough, he pulled out a handgun, checking to make sure it was loaded. "Stay behind me."
Charlotte rolled her eyes as she stepped softly around the bed. "I'm not exactly the stay-behind type, Barnes," she whispered sharply, returning to the closet where she'd found the sweats that –– while perfect for sleeping, were too baggy for comfortable stealth. Sure enough, in a chest on the ground was a stash of miscellaneous weapons. These looked like they'd been haphazardly put here for storage rather than convenient protection like the gun beneath the bed. Not wanting to waste time as she heard Bucky step into the hallway, Charlotte grabbed the first thing she saw: a bow and quiver of arrows. She slid the strap over her shoulder, gritting her teeth as the loose arrows clacked against each other. Catching up to Bucky as he crept to the staircase, she loaded an arrow and pulled it taut, ready to fire over his shoulder if anything should make a sudden move.
They moved stealthily down the stairs, their trained eyes scanning for threats. The living room was a mess, shrapnel from the splintered wooden door sprayed across the room, water from the ongoing storm beginning to puddle at the entryway. Charlotte tried to ignore the fact that her discarded clothes from the day before were right in the midst of the fray. At least she fared better than Bucky, clad in only his boxers as he held the gun out and turned the corner fully. At the center of the chaos stood a figure from Stark's lineup—an Iron Legion bot, the lights through the eye holes flashing red.
Bucky frowned, his gun lowering slightly. "Iron Legion? What's the emergency?"
The drone's mechanical voice responded, "Safety check protocol initiated due to non-response from agents. Please confirm status."
With a sigh, Bucky lowered the gun fully. "Tell the cavalry we're fine. They can call off the search party."
"Agent dismissal protocol not met."
"Sergeant Barnes confirming safe perimeter and no imminent threat. Agent Rossi present and unharmed."
The drone paused, the lights turning from red to white, then turned and exited, leaving the mild destruction in its wake.
Bucky glanced at Charlotte, eyes less than amused as he ran a hand through his tousled hair. "Well, that's one way to start the day."
Stepping carefully across the debris to get to her abandoned bag, Charlotte fished out her phone, wincing at the flood of missed messages and calls. "Looks like we've got some explaining to do." She tossed his phone and the secure comms device to Bucky, both laden with concern at their lack of communication for ten hours. She shot him a sheepish grin. "What's the play here, Sarge?"
"Probably better to keep it to the basics," Bucky suggested, arching an eyebrow. "They know the storm forced us down, communications got spotty."
"So you don't think saying we were too busy hooking up to answer our phones would fly with Hill? Charlotte asked with a smirk, her heart still racing from the rude awakening.
Bucky chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah, let's stick to the storm story."
As they started picking up the broken door, laying down towels to soak up the rainwater, and straightening the furniture, the room was full of a quiet tension. They'd cleared the security check with the Iron Legion, which would surely report back to the Compound, but they'd still have to return the calls, texts, and mission brief requests –– and they knew the team would press them a little harder than the robot did.
"So," Charlotte began, breaking the silence, "are we okay here? I mean, with... this?" She gestured vaguely between them.
Bucky stopped, his gaze meeting hers seriously. "We're good, Char. If you're good, I'm good."
She nodded, relief evident in her features. "I'm good."
His eyes lingered on hers for a second before he thought better of whatever the words were on his lips, turning his attention back to gathering their soaking wet clothes from the ground.
"Buck?" Charlotte stepped across the puddle on the floor towards him, reaching out for the clothes in his hands.
"Hm?" His breath seemed to hitch as he met her eyes.
"I'd hate for our first... whatever this was, to be our last."
Something darker flickered in his eyes. "When have I ever stopped at one lesson?" Bucky's voice was low. His words hung between them, the air so thick it was almost suffocating. As much as she wanted to lean into the moment, to drop the clothes and keep the world at bay, Charlotte knew they shouldn't keep the rest of the team waiting, concerned.
"Guess it's time to face the music," she said, taking the pile of wet clothes and turning for the laundry room. "I'll get these clean so you have something to wear. You can handle the communication."
"Gee, thanks." He scoffed.
"You're the one always reminding me you outrank me, Sarge."
"I've never said that."
"You don't have to say it, the constant barking of orders does a good enough job for you." She winked as she turned the corner.
As she disappeared, Bucky looked down at his phone. The screen lit up with multiple missed calls from Steve. He hesitated a moment before hitting the call back button, preparing himself for the inevitable ribbing.
"Hey, man," Steve answered on the first ring, his voice a mix of relief and curiosity. "Everything okay over there?"
Bucky rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish grin spreading across his face despite the seriousness of the situation. "Yeah, we're fine. Sorry about the scare. We... uh, didn't hear the phones."
Steve paused, the silence on the other end almost palpable. "Didn't hear the phone? For hours? You missed the check in protocol too, you know you have twenty minutes to clear the house and report back before you're marked safe."
"Well, we were a bit... distracted," Bucky admitted, scratching his cheek.
There was a chuckle from Steve. "Distracted, huh? I guess the storm really picked up then."
"You could say that," Bucky replied, his voice wry. "It was quite the... storm."
Steve's laughter came through the phone. "Wow, Buck. Just glad you two are safe. But you might want to adjust your comm settings if you're planning on getting 'distracted' again. Could save us all a heart attack."
"Noted," Bucky said, a genuine smile on his face. "And, uh, thanks, pal."
"Anytime," Steve said. "Oh, hang on, Nat has something to say."
"Uh, okay," His brow furrowed.
"Bucky?" Natasha's voice rang through the phone.
"Yeah?"
"Next time you're trying to be subtle, consider not sleeping with the girl wearing a heart rate monitor."
Bucky's stomach flipped as he closed his eyes. "Shit."
"Yeah." He could hear the shit-eating grin in her voice. "So picture this, Barnes. You have an all-too exciting escape from what's supposed to be a non-combat mission, have to land in the middle of a storm at a safe house, miss your check in point to clear the house, and we get notified from the agents monitoring the two of you on the mission that Charlotte's heart rate monitor is going berserk. Then, you two neglect to answer any of your calls or comm requests for hours, and since we're unable to fly a manned aircraft in this storm, we're forced to dispatch the Iron Legion to obtain proof of life."
Bucky closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose, but fighting a grin. "That sounds like it's going to be a hell of a mission brief when we get back."
"You could say that." She snorted. "We'll cover you with Hill. She's pissed, but we'll tell her you were dealing with structural complications at the safe house or something. Storm won't fully pass until tomorrow anyways, so she'll find someone else to be mad at by then."
"Structural complications aren't too far fetched," Bucky raised an eyebrow at the open doorway, water still blowing in.
"Hey, I'm just thrilled you two remembered to take your earpieces out. We don't need to be paying for therapy for the poor agents monitoring your asses."
"Silver lining." Bucky groaned, hearing Nat pass the phone back to Steve.
"Hey, just be safe the rest of the day. We'll cover for you here, but I'm not sure we can explain a second missed check in."
"We won't make things worse. Thanks, Stevie."
"No problem. I'm just glad you're getting along so well. The team had a pool going that one of you would try to kill the other before you got out of the safe house."
"Hey, there's still twenty four hours left!" He heard Nat's voice call from across the room.
"Alright, I'm gonna figure out how to board up this wide open doorway, I guess." Bucky rubbed the back of his neck, surveying the damage again. "Sorry for the scare."
"Don't worry about it. We'll see you tomorrow, Buck."
As he ended the call, he couldn't help but chuckle at the absurdity of their situation.
Charlotte descended the stairs then, holding a second set of sweats that she extended to him. "Everything okay?" she asked, noticing the residual smile on Bucky's face.
"Yeah, everything's fine," he assured her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Steve sends his best."
She raised an eyebrow, a playful smirk tugging at her lips. "Does he now?"
"He does." Bucky nodded. "And Nat so lovingly reminded me about this." He reached down and grabbed her left wrist, holding it up so her bracelet glinted in the light. Charlotte's eyes flicked from the bracelet to him, widening.
"Oh, fuck."
"Yeah."
"So I take it they didn't buy the storm story…?"
"Not so much."
Charlotte giggled, covering her face with her hand as she gave Bucky the clothes. "So much for a seamless first mission."
"Hey, it wasn't so bad." Bucky stepped into the sweatpants and tugged the sweatshirt over his head. "We just took a little…educational detour."
She peeked through her fingers at him. "A training exercise."
"We've been doing them for months."
"This was no different."
"Wasn't it?" He raised an eyebrow at her. For a moment, Charlotte looked him over and really saw him. How handsome he was, how the stubble decorated his jawline, how his soft lips and blue eyes were the perfect contrast to his rough exterior.
"I need coffee." She brushed past him and into the kitchen. "Want some?"
"Make it strong."
Hours later, Charlotte knelt in front of the old TV set, her brow furrowed in concentration as she fiddled with the back wires. The storm outside howled, sending gusts that rattled the windows, occasionally messing with the static-filled screen. The spare wood Bucky had used to patch up the door kept the majority of the rain out, but not the chill from the wind.
"Come on, you ancient piece of shit," she muttered under her breath, giving the side of the TV a light thump. "In a place designed by Tony Stark himself, you'd think someone would've thought to install a decent entertainment system. Or at least Netflix."
"Isn't it ironic that you'd call anything ancient?" Bucky walked in, a can of beans in one hand and a box of pasta in the other. He raised an eyebrow at her ongoing battle with the television. Charlotte extended her middle finger towards him without looking back.
"Having fun?" he asked, a half-smile playing on his lips.
Charlotte stood up, brushing her hands on her sweats. "Oh, loads. It's like time traveling back to the 90s. Except even then, I think they had better TV reception. Not that I would know."
Bucky chuckled, setting the food on the coffee table. "Well, if you're done tinkering, I found our gourmet dinner options." He gestured towards the modest assortment of canned and boxed goods he'd gathered. "What are you in the mood for? We've got spaghetti with a choice of three expired sauces or two-year-old beans that promise a 'home-cooked' taste."
"Hmm, tough choice," Charlotte teased, walking over to inspect the labels. "Do you trust the sauces? Because honestly, the beans might be safer, but the spaghetti sounds more like a meal."
"Hey, we've survived worse," Bucky decided with a grin. "If we get taken out by pasta, it was probably our time."
"Deal," she replied, smiling. "But if I get food poisoning, there will be hell to pay."
Bucky strode to the kitchen and started setting up a pot on the small stove. "I'll take full responsibility. I'll even nurse you back to health with our vast medical supplies of... well, I think there's some expired aspirin in the bathroom."
"That's very reassuring, thanks," she laughed, finding a can opener in one of the drawers. "This feels like one of those cooking shows where they give you the weirdest ingredients and ask you to make something edible."
"They have shows like that?" Bucky raised an eyebrow skeptically.
"Yeah, they have shows for everything." Charlotte poured the sauce into a pan, stirring it slowly. "Cooking shows, shows where people have to make things out of cake, shows where people get yelled at in kitchens, everything. You've really never seen them?"
"I don't watch much TV."
"I probably watch too much," Charlotte admitted. "It's how I learned…everything. English, even. I think that's how I feel more like I'm a part of this world. Watching people live life and be normal…sometimes I can just get lost in it and feel like I'm normal too."
Bucky was quiet for a moment before speaking softly. "I feel the opposite. Sometimes watching people live their lives makes me feel like I'm too far gone. It's just a reminder of everything I missed out on."
"Yeah, I get that." Charlotte's voice held a pang of sadness that made Bucky wish he'd kept his depressing bullshit to himself. "I guess I'd rather watch it and daydream about it than not know about it at all. At least some people are out there having normal lives and happy families, you know?"
Charlotte hesitated, then spoke softly. "Bucky, do you ever think about it? About having a... normal life?"
Bucky turned to look at her, his expression unreadable. "Sometimes," he admitted. "A quiet life, a family, all that. It's hard not to think about it."
Charlotte nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she stirred absently. "Yeah, me too. But then I think about what that would actually mean—I just don't know if it would be right. Even before all of this, before Hydra…I didn't have a good life. It's not like I had an idyllic childhood to reminisce about or have some desire to recreate." She paused. "These past few months, with the team…this is the best it's ever been for me. I don't think I would ever want to leave this behind."
"I had a lot of good before the war. A good life. But that's long gone now." Bucky looked at her. "The team, the compound…this is a good life too."
Charlotte gave a small smile, trying not to scare away the genuine emotion in his words.
"Even if we did leave," Bucky continued. "It's about whether we'd ever really fit into that kind of life. After everything we've been through, everything we are... could we really live like that? Working a normal job, trying to be normal?"
"I don't know," Charlotte sighed, folding her arms. "Maybe we're too fucked up for normal. Maybe we're just better suited for the chaos and the fights. That's what we're built for, after all."
Bucky moved closer, his eyes searching hers. "Does that scare you?" he asked quietly.
"A little," she confessed. "It's one thing to choose this life because it's exciting and we're good at it. It's another to think maybe we don't have much of a choice, because the other life, the normal one, was taken from us."
He nodded. "I get that. I used to think about what would have happened if I'd never fallen off that train, if I'd just lived a normal life after the war. But after all these years, after all Hydra did, it's hard to imagine being anything but what I am now."
Charlotte looked up at him, her expression softening. "And maybe that's okay. Maybe it's enough to find some semblance of happiness wherever we can, even if it's not the picture-perfect version we're supposed to want."
"Maybe," he agreed.
Charlotte leaned closer, bumping her shoulder against his, a small smile playing at her lips. "Hey, who you are is kind of growing on me."
Bucky shot her a look. "Oh, yeah?"
"Maybe it's the isolation making me crazy…but I'm finding you shockingly less insufferable these past twenty four hours."
"I wonder what made the change." Arrogance was written all across his face.
"There's no real way to tell." Charlotte chuckled as she took the sauce off the burner and poured it over the noodles he'd strained.
After dinner, the night seemed to stretch endlessly in front of them, time ticking slower than usual. They sat in the living room, a restless silence between them. Bucky was leaning back against the couch, with Charlotte lying on her back, her head beside his thighs and her feet on the opposite armrest. Bucky idly re-scrambled a Rubik's cube, handing it over to Charlotte who solved it in seconds.
"Again?" she asked, eyebrows raised as she handed the solved puzzle back to him.
Bucky grunted, tossing it onto the coffee table. "It's too easy for you."
Charlotte chuckled as she plucked it back up, dropping her head back onto the cushions as she fiddled with it. "What did you expect?"
Bucky gave a hollow grin, his eyes betraying his frustration. The air between them crackled. Last night's encounter loomed large in their minds, the solitude and the utter lack of distractions making it impossible to avoid.
"So," Bucky began, his voice low as he watched her hands on the cube rather than meet her eyes, "are we going to talk about...last night?"
Charlotte shifted, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged on the couch. "What about it?"
"Do you…" Bucky paused, choosing his words carefully, "...was it just a one-time thing? Because of the storm, because we were stuck here?"
Charlotte's gaze didn't waver from his eyes, her heart thumping louder against her ribs. "Do you want it to be just a one-time thing?"
"I don't know what I want," he admitted. "But I know I don't want to pretend it didn't mean anything."
Charlotte's breath hitched slightly. "It meant something to me too, Bucky." She hesitated, then added softly, "And I wouldn't mind...if it happened again."
The admission hung between them, charged and heavy. Bucky's gaze intensified, his body leaning slightly towards her.
"Charlotte," he began, his voice a husky whisper, "I—"
But she didn't let him finish. Closing the distance, she leaned forward, her hand reaching up to cradle his cheek, pulling him towards her. Their lips met in a kiss that was both a confirmation and a promise, charged with the pent-up tension of the day.
Bucky responded instantly, his arms wrapping around her, pulling her onto his lap. The Rubik's cube fell to the floor, forgotten as the kiss deepened, filled with the urgency and passion of their bottled-up emotions. The storm outside once again faded to the background, their mingling heartbeats putting the thunder to shame.
They broke apart, brief and breathless, Charlotte whispered against his lips, "I think I'm ready for another lesson."
Bucky grinned, his forehead resting against hers. "What do you want to learn?"
"I think I need to go over the basics again," She gently bit his lower lip, making him tilt his head back. "Just to make sure last night's…training really sunk in."
Bucky's chuckle was low. "I don't think I've ever seen you this excited to train with me," His hands roamed to her back, slipping under her sweatshirt and pulling her even closer.
"It must be your new teaching style," Charlotte quipped, her breath quickening as she felt his heartbeat through his shirt.
Slowly, deliberately, Bucky leaned her back, lowering down until they were lying on the couch, her body perfectly aligned underneath his. "Let's start with the fundamentals then," he murmured, his lips tracing a path along her jawline towards her neck, eliciting a soft moan from her lips. Charlotte's fingers tangled in his hair. Every touch, every kiss made the world fade further from her mind. All she could feel was him. All she knew was him.
Bucky, Bucky Bucky.
As the storm continued to rage outside, the safe house became their secluded world, filled with the sounds of their synchronized breathing and the soft rustle of fabric as clothing was stripped and discarded on the floor. The urgency of their first encounter gave way to a more profound exploration this time. Slower hands, more deliberate movements, absolutely no desire for this to ever end.
"Bucky," Charlotte breathed out as his hands found the hem of her pants, fingers dancing across her skin with a tenderness that belied his rough exterior.
"Yes?" His voice was a husky whisper that sent shivers down her spine.
"Don't stop teaching," Charlotte managed to say, her voice laced with laughter and desire.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied, his eyes locked with hers, a smirk on his lips.