A/N: Hiya, Buttons here! I should probably make this clear for those people who were confused the last time: Nothing untoward happens while Steve is a minor. This will be finished. Sorry about the typos, I actually beta it myself and sometimes I miss things.

To Caitlynn Sidhe, I apologize for the accidental romance that I tried really hard not to display until Steve is an adult, so rest assured that nothing happens before Steve is legal. Also, I do think that the level of trust, friendship, comfort, and affection between the two do have a very good and solid base for a healthy relationship, so I also apologize if that was stepping on any feet. On the flip side, could you or anyone tell me which characters in the Marvelvers are not straight? I know about Deadpool but that's pretty much the extent of my knowledge.

To Qoheleth, I would love to! Send me links and I'll sign up for it!

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't gain. Simply to entertain.

Chapter 2: Far Too Busy for Your Nonsense

Winter, 2007

That was another day that Steve would always remember perfectly. It was Christmas Break and his Mom was away to visit her new boyfriend's family and Steve had told her that he wanted to stay behind ("He has way too many baby cousins," he had said, a completely honest truth that he used to lie with, "I think I'd be more comfortable just spending the holiday with Sam's family.") Steve was in his last year of high school with a good prospect of going to a prestigious art academy on full scholarship. Puberty had hit him like a boulder and he shot up to an easy six and a half feet tall. He'd finally found a medication that eased the minor asthma (although it certainly wasn't minor when he was young) enough for him to play sports, which led him to become the best quarterback his school had ever seen. Steve got asked out by both girls and boys all the time, and he even went out with a few of them.

In short, Steve's life was looking awesome that winter of 2007. And to the unknown human, Steve would probably become President if he wasn't careful. To those in the know (which was all of 2 thinking creatures) however, they weren't expecting much past a little bit of struggling and maybe a few bitten curse words. What Steve was expecting, on a completely different appendage (possibly the foot), was that he would probably never be reborn into life and for as long as his immortal soul lasted he would suffer and be the play thing of demons and monsters that his poor human mind could never even being to conjure up on its own.

That still didn't scare him as much as wondering if demons ate human food or not and if it was proper etiquette for sold souls to feed their demon buyers with food or their own fingers or some other such thing. Because at that very moment Steve was torn between making pastrami, salami, ham or turkey sandwiches with a bit of vegetarian thrown in for good measure. He was going to hell with a very nice demon as he recalled, and he would be damned (not like he already wasn't but it was the principle of the matter) if he allowed such a fine deal to be unthanked when he had the chance. In the end, Steve just ended up making a little bit of everything and tossed in some homemade cookies that he whipped up that morning. Bottles of lemonade, cocoa powder and water, check. Good food, check. Thick blanket to handle the ground with, check. Heavy duty camp-lamps, check. Some firewood with a little bit of starter fuel, check. S'more equipment, "Check, check, and double check!" Stuffed all into a sizable backpack and a heavy duffel bag, Steve was ready.

Steve grinned a little stupidly to himself, "Alright then, all prepared! Picnics with demons who're about to take you to Hell are totally normal, nothing to be worried about!" Chipper as he tried to be, even Steve couldn't help those twisty knots in his stomach. As he was about to leave that same apartment he'd lived in since he could remember, he took one last good look around. Not much had changed over the last decade, the couches a little more worn and holey in some places, that one thin book that was just the right size for the coffee table to even itself on that Steve had never bothered to read, the small fold up table next to a window with lacy curtains that his mother had sewn and the kitchen, where Steve had burned himself so badly he scarred when he was twelve, as spotless as ever. Small TV that was only used to watch the news and Jeopardy when both Steve and his mom were home, floor to ceiling bookshelf stacked with books like Harry Potter and The Art of War and the Bible and more sketchbooks than Steve or his mother knew what to do with. Then the pictures; God there were so many. There were pictures from before The Car Crash, where the whole family was there and Steve was still able to sit on a person's lap without crushing them and his mom still smiled all the way up to her eyes. Then there were the pictures afterwards (a two year gap from the time more pictures were taken) and Steve and his mom were together alone in the pictures, sometimes with friends and sometimes with their chosen family of which most lived in the same building as them. Steve and his mom's life, a fast forward of images.

"I'm never going to see this place again."

The words hit Steve like a freight train, hadn't meant to say them aloud but it made it so much worse that he heard them in his own voice. It was the like he had been in a terribly comfortable bed of safety and naivete before being dumped into the Arctic Ocean. Steve could even feel the salty ocean inside of him, crawling up and out of his eyes, making the whole room swim with him.

And Steve panicked. He thought about running away, or making a break for the hoodoo man who still lived in E3 and asking for help, of calling his mom and asking if she still loved him even if he didn't own his soul anymore. It didn't matter anymore did it, not that a demon was nice to him, not that he was healthy when he was seventeen, not that Buchanan –

Oh. That's right. Buchanan is going to get in trouble if I don't show up, won't he. An angry demon would probably take away Steve's health, his mother's health, all that time it took for them to be happy again. Steve couldn't even bear the thought of going back to before he made the deal, of when a good night was when the both of them had heating and something to eat at the same time and when his mother walked the nights she was able to get up to pay for those things. Of worrying whether he or she would make it through the night. Of wondering whether one of his mom's crazy customers would find them and make them bleed and bruise and so much worse. That praying under moth eaten covers would just be a challenge for whoever was listening. It was Hell. That was Hell. Anything Satan thought he could dish out clearly wasn't going to make Steven G. Rogers bend and break.

And Steve shut and locked the door with a finality that he believed was befitting his decision. He marched down the halls that he grew up in, past that one scratch on the corner that Steve made accidentally when he fell carrying up a chair for the new folks that were moving in down the hall. On the way he passed elderly Mr. Bottlebee sleeping in his favorite arm chair in the hallway (Steve remembered moving that too when he was fifteen and Mr. Bottlebee's dementia had hit full force so that he would only be happy when he had someone to talk too. The easiest solution was to move his armchair out into the hallway and nobody had said a word since). Steve fixed the blanket that was covering Mr. Bottlebee with a fond exasperated smile and continued on his way.

On the way to the meeting place, Steve didn't meet anyone else that he knew. The route was still the same that he remembered, two bus changes and some walking, but the way it felt changed. There wasn't anymore of the terrible hope, of the surety that things were only going to be false and everyone Steve had ever cared about was going to die, that only the kindness of strangers was going to let him get through to the next morning. Now, he knew things were going to be fine and Steve could take care of himself using the money that he had earned at his part-time job (all saved up and in a back account for his mom if she ever needed it). The only thing that Steve could say for certain had never changed was the surety that he would never see the dawn of the next morning and that he had left his mom with all that he could give her. She would never need to worry about him again, because Steve had prepared for that, and sure she would be sad that he wasn't with her anymore but now she had even more people she could rely on to get her through it.

Everyone was going to be fine. Even Steve.

The bus system was still awful, but at least the smelly people didn't try for a conversation and the drunk lady was only handsy for his chest. And no physically debilitating symptoms, also a plus! See, Steve thought as he pushed the hands on the woman off his pecs again, going to see a perfectly polite demon isn't so bad.

When Steve finally made it to the dirt road behind the bus drop off he sighed in relief, shaking his whole body to try and dislodge the feeling of unwanted hands all over him. But when his shivering actually spurred on cold trembles, Steve could only roll his eyes at the unfairness of the weather. It had been one of the biggest blizzards of the decade only a week ago and the snow was refusing to melt during the warmer days. Granted it was December, but that didn't mean that walking in a foot and a half of snow was by any means pleasant.

Trudging his way through the snow made Steve remember that night, precisely ten years ago, that everything had gotten better. His feet had crunched against the hard ground and made a sound every time he moved. Now, in the deep parts of the road, Steve's heavy body only crunched when he packed the ice beneath his feet with only a ghostly shifting when he moved it with the ruts he created walking.

Shh crunch. Shh crunch. Shh crunch. So much noisier and yet so much more silent than when he was a child. Steve marveled at the differences as he walked and he walked and he walked, until he was finally walking uphill. There, at the very end of his literal uphill fight against the elements was the crossroads, smoothed over and flattened until only the smooth gravel and the frozen dirt were left.

Nothing was different, not really. There were power lines erected beside the road that weren't there ten years ago and for some reason there was now a random large rock off to the side near the western corner of the crossroad square, roughly cut and painted a faded out blue. Knowing that he probably wasn't going to get run over (cars running in that snow was going to be next to impossible and only the most stalwart of truck drivers were going to even attempt the trek) Steve found the flattest patch of earth he could and started setting up.

When Buchanan arrived on Earth for what he entitled in his head The Steve Day, what he was expecting was an apartment somewhere in a heavy city area or the backwoods of an out of the way place. What he wasn't expecting was the exact spot he had made the deal ten years ago. For that matter, he certainly wasn't expecting a campfire with a picnic in the dead of winter, but for some reason that defied all logic there was one. And by a very good looking young man at that who was roasting a marshmallow on a stick, graham crackers and pieces of Hershey chocolate stacked neatly beside him.

Buchanan took a moment to just stare at the absurdity of it, unable to move in slight awe of the balls that the young human had to have just to do it. It couldn't have been Steve, nope, had to be some punk that lost a bet or was doing a dare or some other foolish thing. Buchanan remembered doing stupid stuff like that when he was human to impress people, and so Buchanan chose to keep to his southern corner to observe the human. In the back of his mind he let his demon mind keep telling him that the human was Steve while his human mind was laughing at the demon part for ever even considering that the tiny, sickly, clearly a resident of Death's doorstep child was now the strapping, good looking, very healthy young man making –

"S'mores?" Buchanan was jerked from his contemplations by a kind voice. His eyes zeroed in on the hand held out to him with a s'more dripping gooey marshmallow out the sides and chocolate melting steadily over the roasted sugar. His eyes traveled up the toned arm to the face of the human. His hair was cut differently and he had a few acne spots near his hair line and speckled on his fine cheekbones but the eyes were the same. The same blue, the same roundness, the same heavy history with the light of a thousand suns. There was a different sort of hope this time, not of pleading but of kindness. Lips were curved into an unsteady smile that was dropping at the same rate as the marshmallow until it was an awkward grimace. "So, that's a no then? Sorry, I didn't know if demons ate food or not and I didn't want to be impolite. I brought water, lemonade and hot cocoa if you'd rather prefer that – "

"Steve?" Buchanan's mind was sent into a tumble. Of course he expected Steve to have grown up a bit, but into someone short and scrawny not a football player in the making, "Little Steve?"

Steve gave a small embarrassed wave with the hand that wasn't holding his sugary creation, "That's me!"

"Holy shit. You really grew up, didn't you?" Buchanan couldn't help the grin that made its way onto his face, disbelieving and still a little shell shocked. "I didn't expect to see you for a little while yet. You do realize that it's still another half an hour until I'm to pick you up, right?" Oh hell, don't tell me he grew into someone stupid.

"I know," Steve said after taking a bite of s'more, "but I figured you wouldn't have a lot of time to do things like eating or enjoying things like s'mores so I came early. My mom won't ever use these things anyways so she won't miss them. By the way, what kind of meat do you like on your sandwich? I made a little bit of everything and I even I can't eat all of it."

Buchanan took a second to blink before answering, "You, who sold your soul when you were seven years old, who hasn't led your whole life yet, who can't even vote yet or have a drink at the bar or even buy a packet of cigarettes, is offering dinner to the demon about to take his soul to hell." His black eyes, still the same empty abyss that spanned edge to edge, narrowed, "What did you put in it?"

Steve didn't look particularly bothered by the question, "The sandwiches are pretty much just tomato, mayo, lettuce and cheese with whatever meat I tossed on it. The s'mores are your basic marshmallow and –"

"Don't play cute," Buchanan growled, squaring his shoulders and using the shadows cast by a crescent moon swarmed by clouds to make himself seem even bigger, more intimidating, like he could snap Steve in half if he made the wrong move. "I know that you put a demon trap under that blanket, holy water in those drinks, salt in that food!"

"You can't have salt?" Steve looked honestly distressed by that more than anything else, like he just accidentally stepped on a cripple's foot while walking down a hall, "Sorry, I didn't know that! The salami and pastrami has extra salt and so does the pork and roast beef, so I guess all I can give you is the vegetarian and turkey. Sorry about that. On the bright side, I know for a fact that the s'mores, lemonade and hot cocoa all are pretty much salt free so that's good. Unless you're allergic to any of that…?"

"No. No I'm not allergic to anything like that." Buchanan was in a slight daze now, unable to really believe what in all of Heaven, Hell and Earth he was seeing. A boy was trying to be kind to him. A human was trying to feed him. His charge was trying to, to, to… "What the hell are you trying to do?"

The statement came out less like a demand and more like a curious inquiry, which is decidedly not what it was but Steve seemed not to have noticed. "Well, I figured I'd spare you the trouble of finding me and that since this is my last meal that I might as well have the most interesting company I can. Is that alright with you? I don't mean to presume, but I figured we could at least eat before we go..."

Buchanan did not like this kid's hopeful blue eyes, or the way he seemed to grow shyer the more he spoke about what he wanted or how refreshingly honest he was. He did not like how Buchanan felt like reminiscing about the past when he looked at him or how he was so strikingly similar to an old friend that he used to have. In short, Buchanan would try everything to make sure that this guy was as uncomfortable as possible and would be able to feel the hate that Buchanan felt towards him.

"That's fine. I don't get to eat much anyway." WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING YOU STUPID IDIOTIC DEMON SCUM?! Buchanan made his way towards the heavily padded blanket with steady and silent footsteps. BODY STOP FUCKING MOVING AND JUST TAKE THE DAMN KID'S SOUL ALREADY! HE IS LITERALLY WAITING FOR YOU TO TAKE HIS ASS TO HELL!

Buchanan sat down and made himself comfortable on the blanket across from Steve, one knee up for him to lean on and the other tucked into him for comfort. His demon half of the brain was cussing out a storm, telling him to just take the chance and get it all over with while his human half was just pissing itself to have the chance to talk to someone not completely tainted by sin and the shit of Hell. In retrospect, Buchanan was probably going to kick himself later for hanging around the meat suits so much.

Steve offered another s'more, freshly made, and Buchanan took it, marveling at the way that the kid didn't shy away from his hand like a scared little rabbit. Some of his other (as he his boss liked to call them) clients, tried their damnedest to get away and not be found. A couple of them had even succeeded in putting him off for a few years. But Buchanan was nothing if not good at his job and he had yet to ever fail at retrieving a soul, nor would he ever so long as he was a demon.

Buchanan took one bite of the s'more and nearly had a heart attack (if he could he was sure he would've) at the amount of sweet flavor that assaulted his mouth all at once. He might have come off a little bit more eager than he would've liked with the next bite which was clearly better than the last, and the next even more so, until finally he was finished with the most wonderful thing he could remember having in, quite literally, decades. He was wondering if he should ask for another before Steve was holding his hand out again, this time with two s'mores and a little smile. Buchanan didn't much care about pride as he picked up both s'mores from Steve but he made himself at least half way civil in slowly eating and savoring each bite as he did so.

"Do you want a stick?" Bucky was caught off guard by the piece of wood suddenly in his face, blunt end towards him but another honest smile as sharp as ever as it cut deeper into him than he expected. Bucky took it, and Steve scooted over until they were only a couple of feet from each other on the blanket, staring into the fire a little ways from them in, bless Buchanan if he was wrong, companionable silence. The s'more equipment was between them, acting as a barrier for Buchanan's uneasy sense of comfort (which was one of the oddest feelings one could have, and Buchanan had had feelings once upon a time ago).

If Steve was feeling any of the awkwardness he was hiding it well. That only made Buchanan want to talk more, but he refused to be the one to crack, the one to show weakness first.

"Why did you really do this?" Damn it! "Normal, sane people run away from their executioner, not towards them."

Steve just shrugged, pouring a bit of cocoa into a thermos, "I figured you were going to find me and if you didn't then things could go wrong. It's not that I want to go to Hell; it's that I'm repaying a debt for a deal I made fair and square." Steve offered the hot cocoa to Buchanan, who shook his head (he wasn't that trusting of the human) to which Steve just took a sip instead before continuing, "If you had taken away the time I'd spent and sent me back to before I made the deal with you, I don't think I'd mind going to Hell anyways. There are worse things than pain inflicted upon you."

Buchanan watched his charge's eyes darken for a few seconds, going to places Buchanan wasn't sure that the kid had seen yet until then. "And you would know all about that wouldn't you?"

"I'm sure that there are far worse things than what I've imagined," Steve was pulling his knees up to his chest and hugged them with one arm while the other was fiddling with the capped hot cocoa. "Just the same as I'm sure that Hell for me would have been my mother, sick and friendless with another man that only wanted her company for a little while. She's doing fine by the way, got a nice job as a secretary for the landlord where we live and we get fifty bucks knocked off the rent every month." Steve was grinning now, using his while teeth with the snaggle tooth just to the right that Buchanan thought was typical of the human species. Imperfection just made the perfection all the more visible, and it pained him to think that he used to believe that being perfect was the greatest thing man could achieve.

"That's nice," Buchanan took a bite out of a newly made and slightly singed s'more, "I was figuring that you would've moved on to doing things like rebelling by now. Most kids your age try it out before they either realize it's stupid or that being a little walking shit is more liberating than they know what to do with."

Steve didn't even flinch at the cursing, but to Buchanan's astonishment his heat flushed cheeks engulfed his entire face until the demon was sure that his ears would become permanently red. Fascinated at the sudden change, Buchanan regarded Steve as he scratched behind his ear self consciously before saying, "Well…that part of puberty didn't skip over me either. Just because I sold my soul doesn't mean that I was an exception to the rule, unfortunately."

Buchanan's eyes widened at the admission and didn't bother to keep his mischievous grin in check. "Sweet and perfect little Steve actually got the balls to rebel against sweet Mama? Now this I got to hear about."

Steve gave the demon a wry look before taking a sip of his cocoa petulantly like the teenager he was. "I…might have gotten a tattoo."

Buchanan gave a sarcastic gasp, placing a dramatic hand on his chest, "Steve got a tattoo on his holy temple prized to him from the big man upstairs? Why, I'm shocked! Hell surely won't be able to handle the monster that is a rebellious teenage Steve, will it?"

"It wasn't that bad! Just, a little quote is all."

"Oh? What did you get? The lyrics to "Highway to Hell" on your ass?"

"No! Hold on a second, I'll show you," once again Buchanan observed, intrigued and no small amount of stupefied as the boy pulled off his left boot, up his pant leg and down his sock to reveal in slanted writing a spiraling anklet sentence. "It says 'Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.'"

Buchanan could feel his body freeze at the words. "Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr."

Steve looked startled as he was hastily pulling his boot back on. "You know about Oliver Wendell Holmes?"

Buchanan leaned back nonchalantly, "Yeah, I used to read a lot of him when I was younger. My friend – he found that same quote and fell in love with it. It was what he always used to say when he was signing his letters to go back home to his family."

Steve gave him a long look, obviously contemplating something. "I remember someone a long time ago saying something about how it wasn't uncommon for soldiers to write their favorite motto in their letters back home during World War Two. Do you – were you a soldier, back in World War Two?"

The demon didn't say anything for a long time. Then, as Steve was finishing off the last of his cooling cocoa, he spoke. "I used to be human too, you know. All demons were. We are corrupted souls that finally – we couldn't hack it. We broke. If I was a soldier once, I'm not one anymore."

Steve looked like he wanted to ask more, but Buchanan cut off any line of questioning by not looking at him and by making a s'more of pure determination (and wasn't that something Buchanan thought he would ever do). In the end, Steve didn't say anything about Buchanan's confession and finished off his cocoa in silence.

"Why do you look different?" Buchanan was in mid-chew when Steve finally blurted out his question, looking the demon straight in the eye and only mildly embarrassed that he asked. "If it's something embarrassing, sorry, never mind, but if it's something that you're comfortable with I'd really like to know. It's been bugging me the whole time."

"Do you mean how I am now a woman?" Buchanan smirked and smoothed down his (and yes, despite the meat suit Buchanan was still very much male) black pantsuit of invisible creases. "No reason really. She was the closest human available to me and so I'm using her body for the convenience. Male bodies are just as good, but female bodies usually don't put up as much of a fight."

Steve looked at the woman's tight bun of dark hair, her impeccable taste in classy suits and her clearly fit physique before saying, "She doesn't look like the type of lady to just let a demon take over without throwing a few punches at you for good measure."

Bucky let out an unladylike snort and nodded, absently rubbing his (the woman's) cheek. "No kidding. She managed to get in one or two kicks with her soul before I made her sink far enough into her subconsciousness that she isn't struggling anymore."

"Does it hurt?" Buchanan looked over and saw that the kid looked genuinely concerned.

"Me? Nah, I'm good. Any human is going to have a tough time taking me down, doesn't matter if she knows jujitsu or not. Oh, for her? No. She's just sleeping at the back of my mind. It's like I'm shoving her entire personality over so that she has no choice but to sleep to conserve her soul. If she wants to watch then she can, but most humans choose to fall into the blackness when I take over."

"What's her name?"

Buchanan frowned at the question, but searched the woman's memories anyways for the information. "Maria Hill. Ugh, just had to pick someone named after a saint, didn't I? Those are always the tricky ones to keep a reign on."

"Will that happen to me? When I go down to Hell?"

Buchanan was silent for a moment, and Steve wondered if he had some how asked a question that the demon had taken a vow secrecy for or something of that nature. "Maybe. But you're body is a little young to be really useful. Probably would be too unstable for long term usage, other than to get to the younger crowd."

Steve nodded. He understood that some kids just changed one day from good to terrible, and he'd always been able to see the emptiness and the abyss in their eyes, same as the ones that Buchanan had, the orbs that devoured the light instead of housing it. He'd never bothered to confront them, simply because he knew that those kids were already dead. They always led others to more trouble than they could handle, and Steve was sure to keep his distance whenever possible.

"You don't seem too shocked by it."

"I'm not. People will always have a darkness in them that demons can use, right?"

Buchanan's eyebrows disappeared into his current hairline, "Figured that out did'ja?"

Steve simply gave a one shouldered shrug, keeping his eyes to the fire as he continued to speak, "I guess I've always sort of known. Even before I made the deal, I always knew that some people just weren't…people? I don't know how to explain it all the way, but it's always seemed to me that not everyone was right in their soul. If that makes any sense."

Buchanan continued to watch the stillness of the kid, the flames from their campfire casting flickering shadows over his cheeks, into his hair, reflected over blue eyes that pained Buchanan to watch for longer than a few seconds at a time.

"You're an observant kid aren't you?"

Steve grinned sheepishly now, like he had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Yeah," and he did that same self conscious little scratch behind his ear as he spoke, "it's not something I'm particularly good at keeping to myself if you know what I mean."

Buchanan used far too many teeth to smile. "You blackmail people into doing what you want?"

"No!" Steve was positively scandalized and Buchanan let his full body laugh escape without a hint of regret. "Never! It's just, sometimes I see things that other people would rather others didn't know about and I keep forgetting that not everyone sees the same things as me. It's caused a lot of fights I'm sorry to say. Jeez Buchanan, you make it sound like I'm the next Godfather or something."

Whatever the demon was going to say next was lost to the unknown because it seemed the winter had finally killed him right down to his torn up soiled soul. After a few frozen moments of silence Steve looked over, seeing that his companion had stilled so much that perhaps Steve had killed him with s'mores.

"Hey, Buchanan? Are you alright?" Steve reached over the barrier of sweets and only managed to touch the demon's shoulder for half a second before the other lurched away from his touch like it stung him. "Sorry!"

"I don't have time for this." Without warning Buchanan stood up, and Steve thought that for a second he swayed but it must have been a trick of the crescent moonlight. Buchanan hurled his s'more stick into the fire, forcing Steve to cover his eyes with his forearm to keep the resulting sparks away from them. Steve whipped his head to where Buchanan was stomping off in perfect black heels to the southern corner, for the first time making noise. The crunching iced gravel created foot-sized craters with every step and for the first time since Steve was a child he was genuinely afraid of the demon.

"What's wrong? Buchanan – "

"I spent too much time talking to you." Buchanan didn't even spare the time to look behind him as he approached his southern corner, the air colder and sharper than ever without his demon heat to shove aside any winter not warmed by the fire. "We've missed our chance to bring you to Hell tonight. I'll come get you myself whenever it's convenient for me, when you're alone and scared, vulnerable and terrified. So look over your shoulder everyday until then kid, because I will come for you and it will be your last day on Earth."

"Wait, what's going – "

"I have other appointments besides you, kid. Don't think that you're the center of the universe." Before Steve could get another word out, Buchanan disappeared into the air. Steve didn't even blink – he was just gone.

The teen sat there for a few minutes, a little bit stunned, a little bit curious, and not a bit worried. He had time. Not much more time if he guessed, just more. More to spend those holidays with friends and family, more to live a little bit longer. Steve didn't know what he did to deserve such a gift, but he wasn't going to waste it. In five minutes he had all his things packed up, the fire out and covered and the blanket keeping that same incense and fireplace smell that Steve had almost forgotten about was folded away into the duffel bag.

Steve didn't know how he was going to get back home, but if he had to run and hitchhike the whole way then that would only be a small price to pay for the extra freedom he had left. He felt that there were some people who he still needed to see.

His Mama always did like surprise presents.

On the beaches of Normandy, France, one crossroads demon stood upon the shore with icy water lapping at his borrowed feet. The waves sang their mournful lullaby while the sun was heading up the horizon and the sea gulls were squawking angrily at each other.

There Buchanan replayed a portion of his life that he thought he had forgotten: a rain of burning metal shells, a spray of warm blood that collided with the upturned ocean and the thunderous pounding of the canons through flesh to the red stained sand. He thought things were going to be fine when he had his best friend with him, his Steve. His Steve was full of fire and fight, had to be because growing up poor in Brooklyn was hard and when you were skinny and righteous even more so. He fought tooth and nail to get fit enough to join Buchanan when they were shipped off to war, and their first battle, their first real taste of war, that was where it ended.

And there he was, now a demon with no best friend to speak of, reminiscing about the days when he was human and what he thought was Hell incarnate was only a sliver of what the real thing was like. Buchanan used to be called something else back then, had a name only his Steve called him by and that was enough.

But the new Steve, the Soul Sold Steve, he was growing into a man. Not quite there yet, not worth the trouble of getting him to Hell only to break in a few decades. No, he still wasn't ready quite yet. Another year. The kid would get another year to sin and, when he finally was an adult, sin as much as any other kid his age was want to do. It was clearly the only logical thing left to do, to let the Kid Steve be and wait.

It had nothing to do with the fact that a stupid human kid had remembered his name. It had nothing to do with the way he looked when he said it, with the strange familiarity of years of knowing one another that wasn't truly right. It certainly wasn't because his eyes were so old in that young face while they still had the light of the youthful. Absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not because Soul Sold Steve had looked like Buchanan's Steve for half a second. Besides, he hadn't said what his name had been, not really, not the one that His Steve had called him.

A demon was a demon. A crossroads demon was Crowley's bitch, and everyone knew it. Everyone knew that Crowley had just sneered away at the name Buchanan had given back then, knew about the way the King of the Crossroads had slapped on a different title as soon as he was one of them.

"Buchanan."

*** Okie doke, comments? Thoughts? Screams ofrage? I'm up for it!