CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
WHO TF SAID I'M CRUSHING? NUH UH!

All Steve wanted was a day where nothing went wrong and everything was anything but confusing. Just one day.

Ok fine, he'll even settle for half a day.

Six hours?

Instead, the universe decided to laugh in his face, spit on him, do a funny little dance, and gave him four normal hours on a completely random day. Now, for a normal human being the four hours could've been spent chilling on the couch, watching the new Avatar live-action and yelling at Sokka's lack of sexism, drooling over Ozai being unfairly hot, and drinking hot leaf juice. For our local super soldier, these four hours were spent kicking Nazi ass and taking names with his favorite people. To add insult to injury, it was the most boring mission they've had that year.

So, on hour three and forty-three, sitting down in their quinjet flying back to the tower, Steve was just starting to feel good, like maybe, just maybe, it was going to be a perfectly normal day.

Ha. Fool.

Tony was flying ahead, something about getting an alarm about an intruder. So the team hadn't relaxed just yet, Thor was bandaging his hand — he got a splinter from tapping the wooden panel that they had passed by in the Secret Chamber of Nazis, he whined for the rest of the battle and sat this one out — Natasha was flying the jet with her eyes closed, and of course, she was hanging upside down. How else would she be piloting?! Bruce was sitting in a corner going 'Mmm' with his eyes closed and headphones in, clearly listening to Mitski. And Steve was unknowingly enjoying the last minutes of his four hours of chaos-free life.

"Um, Cap?" Tony's voice came in through their comms, "Lucifer got you a gift."

The Devil could be barely heard in the background, saying something about how she didn't do gifts and that the aforementioned gift had come to her willingly and as such, she is not responsible for whatever happens now.

Whatever that means.

At 6:33, exactly four hours after the start of the very-boring-mission-that-was-maybe-probably-sent-from-hell (need to come up with an abbreviation), Steve set foot in the tower with the rest of the Avengers minus Clint who had lost the game of rock-paper-scissors and thus was tasked with staying back and keeping an eye on the literal Devil and their cute little spiderling. Tony had told them to come down to the holding cells, a comment that caused some raised eyebrows, so they went down. Lucifer was leaning against a wall, arms crossed and rolling her eyes while Tony was pacing in front of her, ranting about the safety of his chil-INTERN. The safety of his very professional young intern. Who was sitting opposite the duo eating tacos like he was watching his parents discuss his most recent shenanigan, which was very apt.

Not that he saw Mr. Stark as anything even resembling a father or parental figure. Nah, you're crazy man. Get fucked.

No, Steve was looking at something far more interesting. In the cell behind Lucifer, Bucky Barnes was sitting with his head tilted like a little puppy that was confused with a pink plastic arrow next to him.

Yo, when did Bucky get so... bulky and scruffy? Also, hot damn.

(In 1940, Steve was staring at his best friend in the whole wide world who was also his broest bro. Bro was very muscle-y. Good. Nice. Mmm. He was also the most prettiest bro around if you asked Steve. Yeah.)

America's golden child swallowed and forced himself to put a foot in front of the other until he reached the glass separating the two. The Winter Soldier was now looking back at him, motionless except for the occasional blinks. Is this something that they learn in HYDRA? Cause it's really unsettling.

Sitting in front of the cell, Steve smiled at his old bro, "Hey."

Mr. Winter Bro blinked.

━━━━༒━━━━

Tony didn't have a heart, literally, but he swore to God that he was going to have a heart attack.

Just drop dead.

Ever since he arrived to see a blood-splattered Lucifer, a surprisingly not injured but passed-out assassin which brought up the question of how the fuck did Lucifer got all those splatters, a taco-eating INTERN, and a missing babysitter, Tony was just ready to lay down and pretend to be dead. Or have a very real heart attack like I mentioned.

Lucifer recounted what had happened,

("The child and I were annihilating that poor excuse of an archer during our very important game—"

"You taught my INTERN how to gamble?!"

"It was Uno, calm down. Anyways, we were destroying him and he was throwing a tantrum when this dude showed up."

"And?"

"He passed out."

"Randomly?"

"...I helped him pass out."

"..."

"The abomination also assisted."

"Where is Legolas? I see the very pink arrow but no pink archer."

"Oh, he's bleeding in the vents, I left him to die and rot in there.")

Which cleared up nothing, thank you very much your royal evilness. F.R.I.D.A.Y was hacking and doing her whole badass thing, trying to see what had happened, but no results so far. So yeah.

Cap was chatting at his ancient friend, and said friend was blinking at him. Thor had wandered off to take care of his fatal injury, our thoughts are with him, Bruce had turned right around when he saw the assassin in the cell and Natasha was eating taco with Peter-who-is-just-an-intern. No one went to look for Clint.

"So it was just him?" Tony asked again, wanting to make sure which frustrated Lucifer to a whole new level.

"Yes, Stark. He was alone."

"Sure?"

"If you ask me one more time, I will tear DUM-E into different pieces and scatter him through time and space."

God (?), he hated her.

Why wouldn't she just go away.

"Kid," Peter looked up from where he was sitting, "Tell the horn-y witchy to go away."

Peter teared up, "You're leaving?"

Great, he got attached.

Natasha spoke up from her place on the floor, "I think she should hang out some more, HYDRA just sent their best 'weapon' to us, no way they're not going to try and get him back."

Steve, who until now was telling Bucky about that one time they went to that nice bar in Brooklyn, turned around abruptly, "I'm not letting them get their hands on him!"

Tony rolled his eyes, "Calm down, we're not letting HYDRA get your pre-historic bro."

"We can call up Strange to put some wards around," Natasha suggested and took a bite of her taco.

"I can offer my assistance with his messed up, scrambled, disgrace of a brain?" Lucifer kindly offered, and for some reason, Steve glared at her.

Can't even do nice things around here. Ugh.

Tony sighed. It was time to gear up and kick some HYDRA ass. 

BONJOUR MA DUDES!

last chapter I said see you next year and someone said bro took it seriously. My bad.
I have missed you guys so much, been reading the comments that you've left and wanted to thank you all for your patience and kind words.

So I'm going to try and bring some plot into this mess. We're reclaiming Bucky, making some people gay, and introducing the beginning of our Lucifer/Tony slow burn. (Any ship name suggestions?)

I'll try and update regularly now, seeing as I've gotten my life back together.

If you have any ideas for this book or would like to see something please let me know!

See you in under a year,
Bro out.