Love Grows: Love Series 1 (demon!Bucky and pre-serum!Steve omegaverse au)

4

STEVE WAS BUSY AND HAPPY. Still unpacking and organizing, making Uncle Arnie's apartment feel more like his and Hodge's. Trying to make it feel more like home.

Hanging new, blackout curtains; putting energy efficient bulbs in the beautiful Victorian glass lamps in the living room; hung pots and pans on the kitchen wall. Once done vacuuming Uncle Arnie's Persian rug, he wheeled it over to the closet at the end of the hall, and paused. Seeing that the shelves were leaning vertically against each other on the floor, his brows furrowed. What the hell? Figuring that Uncle Arnie probably had his reasons – whatever they might be – Steve shrugged and fit them across the wood cleats on the side walls.

While Steve was busy, Hodge was too. Hodge worked each morning with his acting coach and then auditioned for plays and commercials in the afternoon. Steve did his best to assure and encourage his spouse with his dream.

At breakfast, Hodge was touchy, reading a review of a play that he hadn't gotten cast in. "He doesn't even know how to pronounce library, but he still got the part."

Kissing the top of his head, Steve offered, "They were intimidated by you."

"Right," Hodge rolled his eyes, taking a drink of his coffee. Seeing the time, he stood, "Shit. I gotta go."

"Have a good day," Steve smiled, standing on his tiptoes to kiss him goodbye. Hoping, desperately, that the beta would finally get the role he wanted. Knowing that no one deserved it more than Hodge.

"You too."

Left alone, Steve got back to work. With everything unpacked, he gathered the dirty clothes that seemed to litter around the hamper but his husband rarely got in the basket. Maybe he should take a page out of Sarah Rogers' handbook and get a basketball hoop hamper to go on the back of the door like she had when Steve was growing up. He tried not to be too annoyed. Hodge was in a rough patch, and Steve was a lot of things but never not supportive.

Carrying the basket to the basement, Steve remembered Abraham's misgivings and suddenly felt uneasy. It wasn't the first time he had been to the laundry room, but it was the first time he had gone without Hodge.

Had the elevator always creaked like that? Were those tremors on the ride down normal? What about distance? Had the basement always been so far?

The basement – like most basements – was an eerie place of whitewashed brick passageways and dim corridors. Footsteps echoed and whispered, unseen doors thudded closed, and the storage areas created suspicious shadows.

It was here where Steve remembered the pack of feral pups that were found feasting on a baby's corpse. How did the feral pups get in? Who did they belong to? Who found them? Whose baby was it? Was it a sibling? Had any of them been caught? Had any of them been punished? He thought about getting his phone out and googling it, but that would've made it real and even more dreadful than it already was. Partial ignorance, Steve decided, was partial bliss.

With the coin-operated machine going, Steve sat in one of the chairs, reading one of the plays that Hodge was wanting to audition for. It wasn't the best play, but it also wasn't the worst. Steve thought that the beta had a real shot. He knew that very soon he'd get something good. Something that people talked about and took notice in the broad blond for.

As Steve sat there reading, waiting to switch the clean clothes to the dryer, a blonde girl joined him. Glancing over at her, Steve did a double take. With a start, he realized that she was Irma Kruhl. Never in a million years did Steve imagine that he'd bump into an award winning actress such as Irma Kruhl. He'd seen just about everything she's been in. Keeping up on the new episodes of Femme Force, longing for another season of Daughters of Liberty, and impatiently awaiting her newest project Kubekult.