Chapter Text
As always, this was started by Tony Stark.
According to Pepper, there is a "Tony Rule." The Tony Rule states that any and all craziness that occurs in the general area of what was now the Avengers Tower was Tony's fault.
Tony would like to protest this rule, that in fact, there is a significant percentage of Incidents Around the Tower that were definitely Not His Fault. He had reason to do this because he had two super assassins on his team, a brilliant scientist who occasionally turned into a giant green rage monster, a Norse thunder god, Norse thunder god's girlfriend who was also a brilliant scientist plus her intern and personal assistant, a birdman who could actually give Rhodey a run for his money in the sanity department (seriously, REAL WINGS?), one defrosted World War II super soldier and his also defrosted formerly brainwashed Soviet super assassin BFF and now actual boyfriend. The number of Official Weirdness Magnets around Tony increased the chances for Incidents exponentially. He could get JARVIS to run the numbers --
-- JARVIS actually refused. This is what Tony gets for making a smartass AI.
But this digresses from the story. Which was, as follows:
Originally, Tony Stark made jokes about Captain America’s “Russian boyfriend,” had “From Russia With Love” as Bucky’s ringtone and was definitely courting Death by Black Widow when he proposed watching Anastasia for Movie Night. That was Tony for you.
Eventually, Bucky responded with, “You do realize that I’m not really Russian, right?”
"Yeah, yeah, you’re a Brooklyn boy like Capsicle over here," Tony dismissed.
"He’s Romanian," Steve volunteered helpfully.
"Technically, born and bred in Brooklyn," Bucky explained. "But Romania was the old country for all my folks, who first came over."
Of course, Tony looked like it was Christmas all over again. And over the next several weeks, the jokes consisted of “Cap’s boyfriend Dracula,” “Cap’s non-sparkly vampire boyfriend,” “Better Looking than Edward Cullen THANK CHRIST” and bad Romanian (“Jeezas, Bela Lugosi was Hungarian, you guys!” - Bucky) accents. Also, there were several showings of various Dracula movies for movie night.
It did not help when Thor volunteered that there were such “creatures of the night” somewhere in the nine realms.
And then, Bucky began telling the "real" vampire stories his grandfather used to tell him. Stories about outbreaks and epidemics in Romanian villages, how the strigoi would show up at the doorstep of the family members they left behind and feed on them. How said family members eventually would make their way to the graveyards, armed with stake and hammer and scythes, with garlic and wild roses. How they would dig up the graves of the suspected strigoi only to find their worst suspicions confirmed when they found bodies with longer hair and nails, floating in bloody coffins.
Of course, that led Bruce to start off a discussion about how the natural decomposition of human bodies could lead superstitious people to think different things. However, Bucky was oddly insistent about his grandfather's stories and he added in all these little details that made it both creepy and convincing.
It didn't help that Steve, who had this knack for looking completely innocent and earnest at the same time, backed Bucky's stories up to the hilt. After all, he'd grown up listening to Bucky's grandfather too.
For the record, it was Clint who snuck into Natasha’s room, after being thoroughly traumatized by the whole vampire thing.
Movies that specifically featured Dracula was a source of great, if poorly concealed amusement from Bucky and Steve even as Bucky grumbled that Bela Lugosi really had the wrong accent, as he was not actually Romanian himself. However, it was during a screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula that the pair now dubbed as the team's Stupidly Adorable Nonagenarians were completely unable to hold back the gigglefits.
"Oh geez, Grampy would blow his top over this," Bucky wheezed.
"Oh man, he hated Bram Stoker so much," Steve snickered. "That damn Irish hack, he called him - only he used some sort of swear word in Romanian and then said ‘present company exempted’ if I was around."
"Right, I getcha," Clint said. "The real Dracula’s supposed to be a Romanian national hero or something right?"
"Well," Bucky hedged.
"Go on, tell ‘em," Steve encouraged.
"Fine, so that wasn’t just the reason why Grampy was so steamed about this," Bucky began. "See, when they came over here, they figured that ‘Tsepesh’ was gonna be too hard to pronounce for American tongues and Dracul was just going to invite a whole shitstorm of trouble. So Grampy figured might as well pick out a name that’s totally American and he went with Barnes. Simple, safe and no vampire jokes.”
"Exactly," Steve affirmed. And then he turned a bit pink. "Though no matter what name you pick out, you still have the family tendency to nibble on necks."
"Hey, you enjoyed that,” Bucky leered.
"They’re trolling us," Sam shook his head. "Ten bucks says they’re trolling us."
"You can’t be related to fucking Dracula," Tony announced.
"Hey, I don’t hafta convince you guys," Bucky shrugged. "Facts are facts. Supposedly I could come back to the old country and take on the whole ‘prince’ thing now, what with all the changes in government but it’s too much trouble."
"Just remember James, I’m not auditioning for your vampire harem," Natasha deadpanned.
"Sorry, no. I’m a one-fella guy, once my mind’s made up - vampire or no vampire."
And then he and Steve sauntered out of the rec room.
The rest of the team still hasn’t figured out whether Bucky and Steve were trolling the hell out of them or not. It didn’t help that after some very careful and discreet research was done - and this time JARVIS was willing to indulge Tony's shenanigans, Bucky’s claims about his folks were apparently accurate.
- tbc -