Erotylos: love stones prompt list

Brontea

A/N: Bucky and the reader are stuck in a motel for the night, when a storm begins. The thunder wakes her up, and out of fear she snuggles next to her partner, but he never seemed to like her much. Bucky takes advantage of the situation to show her exactly how much he does like her.

— PAIRING: dark!Bucky Barnes x female!Reader
— PROMPT: Brontea - holding each other, during a stormy night
— WORDCOUNT: 2.3k

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She looked out the window toward the greying sky as Bucky put away their luggage for the night. They'd booked a room at a motel, and signed in as "husband and wife" for the sake of consistency more than anything else, as they returned to headquarters after a successful mission. The past few weeks hadn't been easy — on either of them, apparently. Bucky didn't seem all that happy to have her tag along, and she was always caught left-footed with his every change of plan. He didn't hate her too obviously, but she wondered how much of that restraint was professional in nature.

The sun was setting, not that you could see it anymore. There were storm clouds on the horizon, and a distant thunder rolled. The whole place seemed abandoned too — middle of nowhere, out of season, there weren't any other guests around.

She turns around to see Bucky folding some clothes away, staring down and frowning, probably pretending she wasn't there at all.

"Can I help?"

"I'm almost done, don't bother," he grunted, still not looking up.

The girl sighed and put her shoes back on, and went to wait outside. There were benches on a porch, and a table with little potted flowers. Off in the bushes cicadas sung, and up in the sky a few night birds did the rounds before they settled in the trees. The wind had the cool and heavy air of rain about it, and she sat down facing the sunset, trying not to think. She stayed there for some 15 minutes, until Bucky poked his head out and called her back inside.

He seemed to have set everything up for the night, had even showered and put up clothes for next morning.

"Shouldn't we write back to —"

"I've already sent a message to base, they know we're on the way."

"Oh."

"Why don't you take a shower, and we can..."

The pair stared awkwardly at the large bed, fit for a couple, and neither looked forward to using it.

"I'll just sleep on the floor."

"No. Please..."

"It's fine. Don't want to make you uncomfortable or anything." It was the first time that he seemed shy around her, even very courteous. She had even expected him to make her sleep on the floor, and now she felt guilty to have even thought it.

"Please don't, I'd feel awful. I'll do it."

"Are you kidding? No way."

"We'll share the bed, then. It'll be fine," she smiled and nodded firmly, then went to the bathroom before he could disagree.

They put it off as long as they could, but eventually the girl tucked herself in, while Bucky was still fiddling with a tablet at the desk. She turned the night light off and tried to relax, but the rumbling kept getting closer. The girl pretended to sleep all the while until he couldn't put it off any longer and, with the stealth of an assassin, the man crawled in bed behind her.

Now that he was there, she eventually fell asleep, and into awful dreams: nightmares of running and falling and hiding away. She woke with a start when a great lightning flashed, its whiteness bright even through her closed eyelids. Her body woke up before she did, muscles tensing almost as if to grab on to something, and then she slowly slipped awake as a peal of thunder rolled over their room. The girl blinked a few times in the darkness, remembering where she was, but not a moment later, another lighting flashed. It cracked across the sky like a whip, the light making it seem so close, and the bolt was long and stretched across the whole width of the window. The thunder came right after, loud and booming and so intense it shook the bed.