A/N: You know, this whole thing was supposed to be a 5,000 word one-shot. I don't think that thought is valid anymore.

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

Chapter 3: Inconveniently Convenient

Winter, 2008

One year precisely was the third time that Steve talked with the crossroads demon. That was also the day that Steve could fondly remember as the night that he introduced his best friend to his own personal demon, even if it once again didn't end the way he'd planned it to.

There really wasn't anything remarkable about that date, not in the weather or the events of that day that led up to the time, not even in the way that animals reacted (Steve had done lots of reading on demons since his narrow escape last year and had even picked up a few more tid bits from the hoodoo man in E3). Thus, the only thing that could contribute to the fact that Steve was already prepared for the demon's arrival was that he just knew.

It was closing towards midnight that December Sunday, snow was draped across the window sills in blankets while the frost gripped the panes like a worried lover, fighting against the heat of the apartment. Angela Rogers was away to visit her parent's grave up North and wasn't expected to be back until the following day, leaving Steve alone and slightly giddy at the prospect of being by himself in his home for an entire night like most teenagers. He had gotten the day off from work and had spent it with Sam jogging around the areas that weren't too icy and throwing bits of frozen mess at each other the rest of the time. Steve gave him his scarf because Sam hadn't had the sense to bring one himself, claiming he was manly enough to deal with the cold.

A whole day being children when you were adults was a tiring business, and they had stopped off at a convenience store before heading to their respective homes. Steve was already in the kitchen by the time he heard the voice behind him, smooth and completely different but still the exact same mixture of cocky and suppressed darkness.

"Hi there, Steve."

Steve didn't even turn around, didn't even seem surprised, as a switched on the stove and removed various things from his cupboards and his refrigerator, "Hey there, Buchanan! Long time no see. How've you been?"

There was a contemplative pause. "How the hell did you not just flip the table in panic?" For a second there Buchanan was harboring the worry that Steve had told someone about the deal, meaning that Buchanan would have to deal with some very unfortunate consequences that he wasn't sure he was ready to deal with.

"I could smell you," Steve said instead, quite simply like one would discuss their favorite color or their best time for a stroll in the best type of weather. "You always smell like a fireplace and incense, like the psychic woman's shop a few blocks over. It's what she calls sage, cedar wood and lavender, right? An interesting combination for a demonic spirit, but I get the feeling you like the irony."

When Steve finally turned to look at Buchanan after a stifling silence it was, to his shock and discomfort, a look that was ready made to flay the skin off enemies and then pin it to the rug for him to clean his boots of muck and filth. "So you did break the deal, you filthy rat."

"I'm sorry?"

"You heard me," Buchanan's eyes, the same empty blackness that stretched across the entire orb gave away no emotions but the brow around it was plenty angry, disgusted, and if Steve was right, hurt and betrayed. "You told someone about the deal, didn't you?!"

Steve held up his hands in a placating manner, "Now hold on there –"

"I told you never to say anything, you disgusting son of a whore!" Buchanan's new body, a plain faced man with no really distinguishing feature, seemed to grow larger and more menacing with every second, the lights in the apartment flickering into dimness and casting the home into heavy shadows that swirled and collected behind Buchanan like a monstrous army. The very air itself was thick and nearly choking with the smells of incense ashes and hellfire. Buchanan's voice descended into the deepest pits of Hell, carrying fear and the promise of pain. "You're going to pay for – ACK!"

However, despite how menacing an angry demon can be it cannot quite compare to the wrath of a Steven G. Rogers when blamed for something he did not do. In his retaliation, Steve had thrown an unopened bag of marshmallows at his crossroads dealer so fast and hard it had actually knocked the light back into the appliances and the air back into its slightly too cool to be comfortable winter setting. Buchanan landed on his backside, shocked and thrown for a loop by Steve's own kindly face contorted into a visage of disappointment and righteous anger.

Hands on hips in a most eerily familiar fashion to his mother, Steve was leaning forward as he barked, "I was trying to figure out what I could do for you without making an embarrassing mistake like I did with the sandwiches last year, you DUMMY!"

Buchanan stared. There really no other way to say it, except that he stared, and stared, and finally when it began to grate on Steve's nerves (he could feel an eyebrow twitching which was never a good sign) the demon finally managed to tumble out, "So you didn't use this entire year to protect yourself from my demonic advances. You did it so you could…"

"Feed you properly," Steve gave him as exasperated look and walked over to the living room where he bent down to offer Buchanan a hand, "Yes. I figured that you wouldn't want to wait much longer and that we're going soon, but I also think that we can squeeze in a bit of time for hot cocoa and s'mores, huh?"

Buchanan gazed up at Steve with something akin to awe and disbelief, noting the small differences in Sold Soul Steve as he did so; a more defined jaw, hair a tad bit longer like it needed to be cut soon, a bit of stubble drifting across his jaw glinting in the light, and it appeared that his acne spots had cleared up. This Steve, only a year later, was no longer a kid, a full grown up version of the little boy he had made a deal with eleven years ago.

"You've become quite the thoughtful man, haven't you, Steve," Buchanan stated, taking Steve's hand and almost lost his balance when Steve's strength caught him off guard. Catching himself a split second from toppling into the fit chest of his charge, Buchanan took the initiative and stepped away from their four inches of separate space to a middle ground of eighteen.

Steve merely gave a depreciating shrug and went back to the kitchen, "I just try to do the best I can with the time I have left. What's the use of making a deal with the devil if I can't make sure that everyone I leave behind is taken care of too?"

Buchanan rolled his eyes without any of the annoyance that he wanted to imbue in it (he didn't understand why it wasn't coming this time, like it had with others) and leaned on the bar that separated the living room and the kitchen. "Okay, 1) I am a demon, not the Devil. And 2) So you keep telling me. But this makes me wonder what you do that only satisfies you?"

Steve looked genuinely confused when he looked up from two cups of warm milk he was stirring cocoa powder into, "What?"

"You know, the things that people do that satisfy themselves and it doesn't matter if it satisfies anyone else." Buchanan watched the confusion grow on Steve's face and the demon couldn't stop the gaping and the disconcerting feeling that Steve might have been damaged when he made the deal as a child. "You don't know, do you?"

"Don't know what?"

Buchanan didn't have chance to say anything because right then a blur of movement burst through the door wielding a frying pan and an attempt at a menacing snarl that actually was closer to a cross between a sneeze and a frightened puppy. "Steve!" The man waving the frying pan was not much older than Steve if Buchanan had to guess, but far more ready to do battle with Buchanan if the way he was angling himself in front of a bewildered Steve was any sign. "I heard shouting when I got out of the shower! You okay? Who's this guy? He hurting you, buddy?"

"No, it's okay, Sam!" Steve grabbed the skillet (oh wow, cast iron, that had to be heavy but Steve was just holding it like it was made of plastic), "This is my friend, Buchanan. He was just visiting me is all and we got into a little bit of an argument. Nothing to worry about."

Steve's voice was soothing like he was talking down a cat up in a tree, but it didn't seem to have any affect on Sam who was still tense and watching Buchanan like a bird of prey. Then, like someone had flicked a switch, Sam's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. "That's Buchanan? The Buchanan?"

The demon in question narrowed his eyes suspiciously, not quite over his mistaken breach in trust. Steve just looked slightly abashed and refused to look at Buchanan as he said, "Yes Sam, that's my friend, Buchanan. He dropped by for a visit and a s'more. Oh, do you want some too?"

Sam looked more relaxed now that he thought Steve was okay (and wasn't that just a kick in the balls for Buchanan), and made his way into the living room like he had been there hundreds of times before, flopping down onto the couch with a familiarity that Buchanan could easily say he was jealous of. Steve just rolled his eyes with a put upon sigh that wasn't nearly as effective as a tool in guilt when he was smiling. He set back into the kitchen, muttering something about how his friends were strange and that he needed to reheat chocolate and what not.

Buchanan was only half paying attention to Steve, because one look from Sam at the couch had him walking over and sitting down at the opposite end, none of the friendly surprise or open expressions from before. This Sam was serious, was cautious and seemed to want to have a serious talk with the demon.

It took only a few moments of Buchanan on the couch before the man finally spoke up. "So you're Buchanan," Sam looked the crossroad demon's current form up and down with an unimpressed look, and it gave Buchanan the oddest urge to get up and show him exactly what he looked like without the meat suit on. Ah, but that was against the rules and that was something that really shouldn't be tampered with unless he was dragging someone down to the pits. Like he was supposed to be doing with Steve coincidentally, but those same rules said no casualties that weren't their targets – the less hunters that existed the better for their business after all.

"Steve talks about me?" And what Steve had to say about him would correlate exactly to how he was going to treat him when they went downstairs for good, and for some reason his own well being wasn't the highest thing on that priority list.

Sam took another second to watch what he perceived to be a man's body in a flawless suit tense up slightly beneath his gaze. His voice was still hard as he said, "Steve said that you gave him and his mom medicine when he was a kid and that's why he's still alive today. Then he said that you got together again last year and chatted about s'mores and the meaning of life. I get the feeling that half of that is the truth and the other half is a bold faces life, but Steve never lies. Never. So what's got me wondering is what exactly he's tied up in, that you probably tied him up in, to get him this way." Sam was almost startled by the way that the man named Buchanan had visibly relaxed at his statement, but didn't reveal it. He didn't trust that guy enough to do that yet.

"So Steve just said that I helped him, huh?" Buchanan scratched at the back of his borrowed head in awkward relief (seriously, he was glad that Steve didn't say anything because that meant that he wouldn't get caught for bending the rules a little bit but this feeling was just ridiculous), "Well, he's not wrong."

"Are you going to tell me why he's indebted to you, or are you just going to leave me hanging?" Buchanan sent Sam a look that answered his question. Sam sighed and rubbed his face with harsh palms, like Buchanan and Steve's unknown relationship was a wart on his life. "Fine. But let's get something straight before you take up any thoughts on Steve's reciprocation of whatever you've done for him."

"Steve is special," Sam was leaning forward on the worn couch, his elbows on his knees and staring at the old carpet like it would tell him what to say, "Always has been. When we met I had just moved in to the apartment across the hall and hadn't met any of the nearby kids yet. I was taking a walk around the neighborhood, minding my own business when I hear fighting in the alleyway. And what do I see? I see this kid made of skin and bones and maybe matchsticks because there's a fire in his eyes that I'd never seen before. He was fighting off three guys twice his size at once and I just couldn't leave him there so like the idiot I am I hopped in next to him. We sent them packing, but we had a few good hits of our own too. And while we were getting patched up and yelled at by his mom we became friends."

Buchanan felt the feelings of humorous irony, bitter nostalgia and intense jealousy all at once and he didn't like to think about what that meant. "That sounds like him."

"I know, but do you see what I'm saying? Steve doesn't have a survival instinct. He doesn't care about what happens to him and he will do anything to help another person. Even if they don't need it. And now that he's a good looking guy with a penchant for doing anything and giving anything, people are starting to realize it, too. Bad people." A significant look towards Buchanan was all he needed to understand.

"You think I'm going to take advantage of him. Of his kindness and his stupid need to please everyone."

"Am I wrong?"

Buchanan gratefully didn't have the chance to answer, as Steve called from the kitchen, "S'mores and hot cocoa's up! Buchanan, Sam, come and get it before I eat it all myself."

Sam stood from the couch, his eyes never leaving Buchanan's as he looked down on him. "You're eyes are blue, like any other person's, but they don't hold any soul in them. If you keep hanging around Steve, he's going to notice too, and try and do anything to bring life back into them. If you make him do anything that will ruin his life, anything that is even remotely questionable in its activity…I will find you. And I will not hesitate to kick a hole so far up your ass that you won't be able to see the sun without looking at my boot. I will find other people, people that want to protect Steve even half as much as me, and we will make you hurt, hurt like the Devil himself has you. He might like you, but I don't trust you." With that, he left for the snacks.

Buchanan watched from that body's eyes Sam's rigid posture, his straight back and clenched fists. Phil Coulson's body (for that was the meat suit's name and he didn't know why he looked for the name but it seemed appropriate in Steve's home) shuddered in…not fear. Not anger. Was that…sadness? Why the hell would Buchanan be feeling sadness?

Steve was a job. That's what he's always been, that's all he ever would be. And yet, after what Sam had told him, about Steve's inherent kindness towards all, his inability to back down to a bully, his natural instincts to protect – they were all traits that Buchanan's Steve had. And the way that Sold Soul Steve was growing, he was like Buchanan's Steve in so many ways and yet not at all. Buchanan's Steve was reckless and a little selfish, putting the big picture before an individual. He was thin and small, scrappy and prone to cussing out a storm when someone did something he viewed as wrong. He couldn't cook worth a damn and would've lived off of hardtack for the rest of his life if Buchanan hadn't taught him the basics. But Sold Soul Steve could cook, was giving beyond all measure, fought the small battles for the near future rather than thinking ahead, was gentle. They were so different but – they had the same (Buchanan couldn't describe it any other way) fire, a need to help people and a magnetic force that brought people to them and the best people want to protect them and that light that shone from them.

No, he's not ready now either. I guess I'll just have to wait a little bit longer.

"Buchanan?" Steve poked his head over the bar to the living room. There was nothing there except a lingering smell of ashes and burned lilies.

o~o~O~o~o

Summer, 2009

Buchanan chose that particular night because he knew that the mother and Sam were gone at the same time. Steve's mother was away to stay at her new fiance's house for the weekend and Sam's basic training started that weekend, leaving Steve truly all alone. No, he didn't stalk Steve (stalking was for predators and perverts, of which Buchanan was neither) he just scanned the surrounding building and found that even his next door neighbor wasn't there, which was just the most perfect opportunity for the crossroads demon to go in and snatch his payment and leave.

The sky would have been lit up by a half moon supposedly, but at a storm's insistence nobody but the weatherman knew for sure. Fat water droplets fell like bullets and stung when they went into contact with the skin, never mind the fact that they felt like newly melted ice in the mid-summer mugginess, while the clouds clogged the sky and descended into a cold mist around the body.

Buchanan thought it would have been more dramatic and thereby more demon-like to catch Steve unawares in an alley to drag him off to his death and eternal suffering. However, after five minutes of weather worse than Hell's the crossroads demon spat, "Fuck it, fuck me, and fuck my fucking death," he teleported (that neat demon trick that Buchanan was actually quite happy to use to his advantage) into his charge's living room and waited there with the lights off, intent on the surprise this time. Steve was definitely going with him this time, no matter what.

It was nearly nine o'clock at night, long after Buchanan was dry while lounging in the darkness (demon's eyes didn't need light after all) when he finally became bored enough in waiting to go up to the bookcase on the left (oh, two bookcases now, that's new) and start scanning the rows for something mildly interesting. The last two rows were what finally caught his attention, as dozens of spiral and bound journals were crammed together and budged for space from one another. Grabbing the last one on the end, a spiral black cardboard book with at least two hundred pages, he randomly flipped to a page.

And stared.

Buchanan was beginning to see a pattern in the things that were Sold Soul Steve related, mainly the vast amount of staring and slight awe at his too-good humanity. But that – what was on the page was truly stare worthy.

It was a picture of Buchanan when he first encountered Steve, his true body because only the true bodies of demons could make the contracts. The attention to detail was beyond anything he'd ever seen before outside of a photograph, but there was no doubt that the head-shot was pencil. And the way that he was portrayed, well, Buchanan would be lying if he said that he looked less than demonic, but it wasn't a threatening picture. There was no snarling or squinting or gnashing teeth like he would have expected of a demon portrait, but rather a cocky slant of lips and a guarded kindness in the eyes that were a flat black from edge to edge.

Buchanan flipped to the next page, and sure enough there were other head shots of Buchanan, in his true body, as Maria Hill and Phil Coulson. He wondered, for a single fleeting thought that was stamped down on as soon as he acknowledged it, if his new body, Clinton Barton, would get his own head-shot too. What a ridiculous thought. Buchanan was going to take Steve down to Hell as soon as he came back. But until then, it wouldn't hurt to look through the rest of the sketchbook. And the next one after that to then slowly make his way through the whole second to last shelf, all the sketchbooks put back once he was done looking through them.

But that first picture of his true body kept coming back to him, kept making him put down the current sketch of a cat or an old man or Sam and go back to the original one he'd seen. It wasn't until he found himself just looking at it for the hundreth time that he'd had enough and just tore the page out (he flinched at the sound but he was a demon, he was hardcore enough to take a page out of a sketchbook) to fold carefully and place gently in his inner jacket pocket. Rather, his current body's inner jacket pocket but he'd get it later.

At almost the exact moment he'd turned back to the current sketchbook there was a jingling and a jangling of keys at the door. Buchanan dropped the sketchbook and hopped over the back of the couch to land in its cushions like a waiting prince to a servant. It wasn't until Steve stumbled through the door like an old cripple, the light from the hall casting soft shadows onto his slumped body, that he knew something was wrong.

Steve turned on the lights of the apartment with a simple flick! His eyes were on Buchanan before the apartment was even lit, red rimmed and glassy with flushed cheeks and a hitch to each breath. His voice, cracked and soft, croaked out a single word.

"Buchanan."

The crossroads demon was off the couch and striding to stand only a few feet from Steve before he knew what was happening. "Steve? Steve what's wrong?" Oh Lucifer, why did he care?

"It was, um," Steve stumbled over his words, leaning onto the kitchen bar for support but leaning towards Buchanan for…whatever reason. "Uh, Mr. Bottlebee. He, he um, he's…" Buchanan took a cautious step step towards his charge, getting ready to grab him if he was going to topple over. Steve's face was bloodless white, frightening in its brutal honesty and unadulterated wide-eyed nausea. Buchanan had a flash of what Steve looked like that night he had sold his soul, then determined that he looked much worse than from back then.

"Take a seat before you hurt yourself, Stevie," Buchanan said and firmly shepherded the young man to the worn out couch. It didn't even register what he had said until he sat himself beside his dazed charge. The demon felt something heavy in his stomach drop beside a stone load of worry (what? When did that happen?) and stress. Pushing away those thoughts, Buchanan promised to look at them later. "Alright, now tell me what's wrong? Why'd you look like someone just d-" the crossroads demon's eyes widened. "…oh."

"He – Mr. Bottlebee I mean, he – this afternoon and the police called me to, to identify him, and I just, I couldn't cry in front of them! I held it together with all their questions and their stupid interrogations and it was…it was horrible. They thought that, that someone had murdered him because he was a lottery winner twenty years ago and he just stuck it all in a bank and oh god. They thought I was after his money." There was no holding back the uproar of wails and sobs, the raining tears that rivaled the downpour outside, and all Buchanan could do was watch as Steve curled himself into a ball on the cushion to bar away the world.

Buchanan didn't know the full extent of Steve and Mr. Bottlebee's relationship, but he did know from his daily surveillance that Steve always visited the old man at least twice a day, listening to stories from the past and dreams that he had then and the day before, sometimes happily listening to the same story told twice in the span of twenty minutes. If one didn't know, then it was easy to mistake them for close grandfather and grandson, best friends even despite the generations that separated them.

And now Mr. Bottlebee was dead.

Cursing himself for the lack of luck and the police for their lack of subtlety, Buchanan made the heroic decision of slowly raising his arm to cross the shoulders of the sobbing young man. Steve didn't flinch or scream as the demon was expecting (sympathy from a demon was the lowest kind of mockery for most humans), didn't punch or fight and didn't even stiffen. No, what happened was a solid mass of human body launching at Buchanan, wrapping iron cable arms around the demon's stolen middle and pushing the two of them into the couch cushions, Buchanan's uncomfortably hitting the couch's arm behind him while Steve's mussed blond head was laying atop Buchanan's chest. Buchanan was half sitting up and half lying down with Steve on top of him, and he could feel each sob reverberate throughout his body, each tear soak through Clinton Barton's flimsy T-shirt to bathe him in human grief and loss.

Steve didn't seem to notice the change in position, the way he curled up on Buchanan's chest or was cramped up on skinny legs and the other end of the couch and Buchanan didn't know how to tell him that he'd probably be seriously sore later if he stayed that way. Instead, an old memory floated to the surface from Steve's lake of tears on Clinton Barton's T-shirt.

"There there, Sergeant. He fought till the very end. He died a prouder soldier's death than you or any General could ever dream of."

The soldier wailed and screamed, wordlessly begging the world to stop spinning and just die with his heart. He knelt beside the cold bed of the most important person in the world, the one who should have had the greatest future, clinging onto a limp icy hand that was only growing stiffer every passing minute.

No one deserved to die less than Steve. No one. Because the only people that were living were the big shots and their next of kin or the kids that new someone who knew someone. Steve didn't have any of that, but he was worth a thousand of those miserable maggots. He fought and he died and he suffered for months before he finally allowed infection to take him.

Everything was wrong. Everything was so wrong and everything would never be the same again and everything would be worthless now that Steve was gone. He could only screw his eyes shut as the shear unfairness of it all, that same child's belief that if he couldn't see it then it didn't exist a slight ease on his mind.

"Shh, shh," the nurse was kind old woman, whose empty eyes shone with kindness and understanding deeper than he could have ever needed to see. Her wrinkled hands pet a soothing rhythm into his shorn hair, so like a lost memory of a fever dream he had as a child when it was just him and Steve against the world. "There there, child. You shall see him again someday."

"But I don't want to just have it be someday!" He remembered that particular howl like it was imprinted on his entire being, "I want Steve here, now, with me! He said till the end of the line, and the end of the line isn't now!" He clung to the old nurse's skirts with the hand that wasn't holding Stevie's, her hands around his shoulders and in his hair the only thing keeping him half way sane, "I can't live without him now. Not like this!"

The old nurse stilled her motions, and it forced him to finally bring his head away from the soaked apron of her uniform and look up into a face that promised the world and everything in it. "I might know how I can ease your pain."

Buchanan shook his head of that old memory. Steve was slowly coming down from his grief stricken crying, and it had finally de-evolved into pitiful, pathetic sniffs and sharp intakes of breaths that exhaled the slightest of whimpers. Steve's eyes were still clamped shut from the world, but Buchanan's hand was combing through blond strands and it seemed to be doing the trick. The demons couldn't say when he had started petting the young man, but whatever works, works was his favorite philosophy. He was half tempted to stop just for the fact that it made him remember something atrocious and wrong from his old life, but he could honestly say that he was not equipped to handle his own emotions, let alone the emotions of a wrecked nineteen-year-old.

Buchanan's hands hitched in its movements before continuing without another interruption. This Steve is nineteen years old, the crossroads demon examined the way the light bent around each rain dampened golden hair, the way that Steve's weight while heavy wasn't entirely uncomfortable and only one of those things was like his Steve. This Steve is going to die at the same age as my Steve. It was that thought that halted all of Buchanan's processes, his thoughts and his hand and perhaps even his heart.

After several seconds of stillness, Steve took a final wet sniff and turned his head to look up at Buchanan whose face was stone hard and unreadable. "Buchanan…?"

"What?" Buchanan snapped out of his panicked daze to look down into Steve's bloodshot glassy eyes and the first thought that struck him was how goddamn blue they were, as deep as the sea and as expansive as the world. They were the exact same as they were when he was a child, and that fact ate his guts. "Sorry, got a little lost there for a second. My thoughts are not the best place to go wandering in sometimes." Buchanan cleared his throat, "Are you, uh, well…"

Steve's smile was tiny and pathetic and didn't deserve to really be called a smile, but Buchanan was taking his victories as he went (victories? When the hell had this Steve started taking the place of his Steve?) and he continued his petting the same way he had been. Steve closed his eyes more gently this time, sighing and laying his head back down onto the crossroad demon's chest. "Better, just a little bit. Thanks for being there. I just, I needed to cry and sorry I got your body's shirt wet. Sorry, it was stupid of me to just break down on you like that, when you needed to get your job done and all."

Steve's voice wasn't much more than soft croaking but Buchanan could honestly say that it was preferable to the crying. "That's fine," his voice was just as low and soft as Steve's because for some reason it seemed a terrible farce to be anything close to normal right that moment, "Everyone needs to mourn whenever they lose someone they love. It's only natural. I was just remembering someone I had lost too, a really, really long time ago. I remember all these things that were useless and what I thought was worthless to know about him at the time, and I can honestly say that it's those same little things that still stick in my mind the most. What can you say, makes you think about your person so much?"

Steve let out a little hiccup before he answered. "Mr. Bottlebee…He was 94. He'd seen the World Wars, had even fought in World War II. He'd lived through the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, the Stock Market Crash, the Civil Rights March, Kennedy…He was the first friend I ever made when we moved here. I was three, I can't even remember my father or my siblings or my other family. They say that it was retrograde amnesia, because I was in The Car Crash, too. My mother and me, we moved here and that's the beginning of my memory. Mr. Bottlebee was always there. He told me stories, taught me to draw and army cadences. He even broke his hip trying to teach me how to ride a bike." Steve opened his eyes just a bit to stare at the wall to the kitchen opposite them, a tiny real smile trying to come to life on his lips, "Man, my Mom was more mad at him than she ever was at me because she thinks he taught me to be reckless! No, well maybe, he is the one who showed me how to throw a punch so I could protect myself and others. He's the one who taught me never to throw the first punch, to always stand up for the little guy…"

Buchanan didn't say anything when Steve curled up into him a little bit more, clung to his body a little bit tighter. Buchanan didn't say anything as he continued his petting. Buchanan didn't say anything when it seemed that Steve might have cried himself to sleep wrapped around a demon.

Buchanan didn't say a damn thing when the urge to kiss his charge's forehead entered his mind. He just leaned down the little bit and did it, a dry press of lips to a pale forehead.

And he couldn't do it. Not tonight. Next time. Next time he would bring this Steve to Hell, but tonight, tonight he seemed to have suffered enough.

Buchanan would think about his thoughts in the morning, after a nap, after a short rest with just his eyes closed. The crossroads demon pulled the blanket that draped the back of the couch over Steve and himself, leaving just enough room for Steve's head to be visible. Buchanan wiggled his borrowed body down as much as he could without waking Steve, having his head resting on a couch pillow he found on the floor and Steve's over his heart. They're legs were intertwined with each other and too long, so they stuck out over the arm of the other couch arm like ill fitting dolls on a too small bed.

None of it mattered though, when Steve scooted up just a bit to nuzzle his nose into Buchanan's neck, receiving his full fireplace and incense scent with a deep and satisfying breath. It made Buchanan's face feel hot and strange, but in a good way he hadn't felt in decades so ignored it. He just settled down and decided to do something for himself for the first time in fifty years.

Buchanan, crossroads demon with the perfect record, more souls delivered in his run than most contractors would believe, closed his eyes and pretended. Tonight he was human. Tonight, he would sleep in peace. Everything else could wait until the sun came up.

It was the first night, in a very long time, that he was Bucky again.

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Okie doke kiddos, comments? Opinions? Quick edits? Rage noises? Whatever you have to offer I'm happily willing to receive.