“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, appearing in the flaming doorway of Bucky’s bedroom. (Bucky’s idea entirely. Steve keeps trying to tell him it’s impractical, but he likes the whiff of smoke every time he passes through, okay.) Bucky looks up warily from his phone, because Steve’s wearing that semi-guilty expression that literally no other demon is capable of making.
“Oh no,” Bucky says. “What did you do now.”
Steve makes a distressed noise. “An accident,” he begins meaningfully. “I didn’t. I didn’t mean to. It’s just, you know how you were saying I should ask that one human out already?”
Oh, Steve’s human, that shortstack who was a hot topic for the denizens of Hell. Steve’s been nursing a puppy crush on him since the fiasco with Bain trying and failing to seduce the Stark heir. (Actually, puppy crush might be an understatement for it. Steve hadn’t resembled anything like the cute mortal puppies when he found out what Bain did to Tony and chased her down in his demonic form. Like a demon puppy crush, then.) “What? Did you finally ask him?”
Steve fidgets. He’s fidgeting. This is bad. “Um.”
Bucky decides that the dread building up in his stomach is going to be bad for his health, so he gets up and walks out his room so he can nip this in the bud before it shaves off a century from his lifespan. “I swear I will draw demon wards on your orange juice if you–”
He pauses in the living room, because there is a human in their vestibule, standing over some protection runes. No, not just any human, Steve’s human. “Oh, hell,” Bucky swears, “Steve, I didn’t fucking mean kidnap him, the humans just got over the whole Hades and Persephone thing–”
“There’s more of you?” the human shouts. “Holy shit, Steve, this is insane.”
“He knows your name?” Bucky demands, turning to his lifelong best friend.
“Oh my god, is your carpet on fire?” Now the human’s crouching down and poking around their vestibule. Bucky’s vestibule! He infused the wood with energy himself! “Wait, am I allowed to say that here or is it considered blasphemous? Oh my god, your carpet is on fire.”
“Tony,” Steve says, sounding strangled. Bucky’s about to give him a reason to sound like that.
“Are you a demon too?” the human, Tony, asks Bucky this time.
Bucky, unimpressed (Steve’s been gushing about how smart this human is), unfurls his wings a little.
“I summoned two demons!” Tony exclaims in delight. “Wicked.”
More like he was summoned by a demon. And wicked? Steve looks positively enamored despite the situation. But then Bucky turns a severe glare on him and Steve wilts, and his conflicting joy and guilt is so palpable that Bucky just eventually gives up. “Okay, fine. You dragged a human to hell with you. I forgive you. Now what the hell do we do?”
“I was about to leave, and then he hugged me. I wasn’t expecting it,” Steve says mournfully. “Now he wants a tour.”
“Hell yeah I do,” Tony agrees from his protection circle. Then he laughs like he’s made the most clever joke, and it takes Bucky a while to understand, then promptly groan and drag a hand down his face.
“Do not let him go into my room,” Bucky warns him, and Steve perks up immediately, tail flicking and wings bristling in newfound excitement. “I will not be held accountable if he gets barbecued.”
“That would be so cool,” Tony breathes.
“I’m not letting you get barbecued, Tony,” Steve protests, shooting Bucky a stern look as he moves towards the human. Bucky turns and covers his ears so he doesn’t have to listen to Steve fretting over Tony, who’s doing his best to smudge the protection circle so he can experience Hell for real, Steve, you have no idea how many people have told me to go here and now I actually am!
LemonGrenade 