When your life becomes Hell

2

Bucky had seen some pretty weird things in his thirty four years of life. But the three people - creatures, beings, something - standing in his living room made him wonder if Steve had finally lost his marbles.

What do normal people do when they come across a strange, ancient book drenched in dust in a godforesaken corner of a shelf in the college library? Give it a weird look and forget about it.
What does Steve do when he came across a strange, ancient book drenched in dust in a godforesaken corner of a shelf in the college library?
Take it home and try to read it even though the language was gibberish.

Moral of the story: stay the fuck away from weird books, kids.

After he'd read out a particularly hard-to-dechipher page, there was a pop, and voila!

Three mostly normal looking people had just appeared out of nowhere. He would have mistaken them for humans with abilities (wasn't there something about that in the paper the other day?).
But then he realized one of them was literally biting another. Like an actual frigging vampire.
Those two were pretty tall, but the last one was a little on the short side. Not that height really mattered, because. . .was that blood dripping from the first one's fangs? Oh fuck.

That brings us to the present.
Bucky wasn't quite sure how he was still standing. He felt faint. Heck, he wanted to faint. Then maybe he could wake up and this would be all a dream.
A very bad and very weird dream, but whatever.

As if he hadn't had enough bad luck in his life yet, the vamp was looking directly at him. His expression was shocked and his grey eyes held guilt? And was that recognition?
Bucky was absolutely sure he hadn't seen him before, but when he whispered "James", Bucky knew he was a, in trouble and b, this guy definitely knew him.
On second thought, b was a very big part of "in trouble", so let's just scratch it out.

Unsurprisingly, it was Steve who broke the silence, his shoulders tense and arms crossed defensively. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

The shortest of the three, who'd already started wandering around the room and poking things, replied without turning to look at him, more interested in the contents of their fridge. "I'd hoped you would have an answer, seeing as you summoned us." He pointed vaguely towards the book still lying open on the couch.

Bucky gaped. Summoned?

The tallest one was sat on the kitchen counter and chewed on an apple as he swung his legs - where the hell did he get an apple from? - "Yup. Don't ask me how. Than's the expert."
The last one seemed to have recovered and sent a glare the former's way. He turned back towards them with an apologetic look. "Sorry for that. I'm Athan." His expression pinched. "A vampire."

Welp, he was right.

"Those two idiots," he pointed to the other two, who just grinned cheekily, "are demons. The tiny one is Anthony, and the blonde one is Clint."
Anthony made an indignant sound, but didn't seem too offended. Clint just waved enthusiastically.

"Uh, hi." Steve, brave and stupid as ever, went on, as if it didn't bother him that vampires and demons actually existed and were standing right in front of them. "Ethan? Could you please explain the summoning thing, uh, Anthony mentioned? And do you. . ."

"No. I don't drink blood without explicit consent and they don't take, sell or buy souls."

That was slightly relieving, but Bucky still had his reservations. Could you blame him?

"I don't know about these very well, but it seems that you have. . ." he hesitated.
Bucky frowned. He didn't seem the type to be shy.
"Bonded our souls. All of our souls."

Clint choked on his apple as Anthony spit out the sip of water he'd taken.
Four heads simultaneously turned to Steve, who looked like he wanted to shrink away.

"Steve," his voice was deadly calm, "What the fuck did you do?"
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Word count: 685