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The two-story witch-themed witch bar, aptly named Witch Bar, is dim but warmly lit, a tasteful red and gold honeycomb of comfortable, cozy nooks for patrons to crowd into and drink alone or in company. The tables are scarred but polished oak, the booths and wingback chairs and couches plush and inviting, the soundless thrum of calming magic subtle against Steve’s skin as he and Bucky shoulder past the wary bouncer. As they approach the velvet staircase to the main floor, Steve sees that potion vials and herb bundles are as plentiful on the mirrored bar wall as alcohol bottles.
Then they pass a human drinking a Love’s First Blush shot, and Steve’s goodwill evaporates. “Iron Man likes this place?” he hisses at Bucky, his centuries-long witch-hunting partner and husband in all but name. “They’re using magic on humans.” Which is illegal. Steve doesn’t mind seeing humans frequent witch establishments—contrary to what witches believe, he’s always liked seeing humans and witches coexist peacefully. It’s a far cry from how things were when he and Bucky grew up, and it’s one of the best outcomes of the treaty, in his opinion. Does he wish humans at large knew about witches so they could practice publicly? Yes. But every time knowledge of witches and their abilities becomes common among humans, fearful human populations turn to genocide to feel safe, and then witches defend themselves and grow bitter and wonder why they need feel afraid when witches could run the world with a little genocide of their own, and it all ends in a bloodbath.
That’s why there’s a treaty now, witches practice underground, and humans have been weaned of the knowledge magic exists.
The catch of this peace is that since humans don’t believe magic exists, they can’t exactly consent to it being used on them, which means someone has to enforce the treaty protecting humankind from unwitting ensorcellment by unethical witches. “Someone” being Steve and Bucky. Which Iron Man damned well knows.
So why would Iron Man recommend they come to a bar that uses magic on humans? “Buck, we have to do something,” Steve says with a frown. He wants to stop and snatch away every bespelled drink he sees in front of a human, but Bucky’s grip on his arm is firm, and he keeps them striding purposefully through the popular witch-themed bar toward the bartender downstairs, who’s gesticulating his way through what looks like a hell of a story to a small, rapt audience. The way he moves feels strangely familiar. When Steve shifts focus to figure out why, a wholly new realization sideswipes him.
The bartender is distractingly hot.
Steve stumbles minutely.
Bucky shoots him a knowing glance and grins wolfishly, and for a moment, he’s indistinguishable from the old Bucky: the one who’s fought rogue witches by Steve’s side for centuries, and was with him the fateful night they killed the witch queen Hydra and she cursed them with immortality; the Bucky who hadn’t yet been captured by that dead queen’s devotees decades ago, had his mind enslaved, and been used to commit atrocities against witches and humans alike before Steve, Iron Man, and Sam could free him—and Iron Man (whoever he is inside that enchanted armor) broke the spell holding Bucky’s mind captive; the Bucky who was a riot of joyful energy, a smooth talker, gregarious; who never flinched if someone touched him when he wasn’t paying attention; who wasn’t haunted by guilty memories so strong that some days his smiles never reached his eyes; who wasn’t still, cold, and hypervigilant when he thought no one was looking.
God, Steve loves that grin. He’s missed it so much.
He stumbles again.
Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’d say it’s a miracle these witches haven’t run screaming from us already, but you look like a dope.”
The witch community at large doesn’t think highly of them, the Witch Hunters who enforce the human–witch treaty made centuries ago to end the war. Now Steve and Bucky dispel magical threats to that tenuous peace, and kill evil witches bent on creating a world order where witches reign supreme and humans are their playthings—a goal the witch lords nearly achieved so long ago. Modern witches, for the most part, still think Steve and Bucky kill witches indiscriminately. Bucky takes their fearful hatred in stride, seems to accept it more since his captivity, but knowing so many good people are afraid of them is painful to Steve. He’s only ever wanted to help protect people from bullies—all people, not just humans.
But the witches in this bar aren’t bolting for the doors. It’s a nice change. They’re still wary when they see Steve and Bucky, but they keep their seats and drinking their drinks.
Hot Bartender sidles away from his audience and watches Steve and Bucky approach. His hands are drying a pint glass with a familiar air of restless purpose.
He moves like Iron Man, Steve realizes. God, what if that’s really him? Steve sweeps his gaze across the bartender, trying to overlay this stranger with the armor he’s come to love as an extension of the man inside it, a man he’s never seen.
Hot Bartender’s wide brown eyes are shrewd and unafraid—he seems amused by their presence, if anything. That’s encouraging. He’s got a neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard, short brown hair that sweeps across his forehead and curls adorably around his ears, and a full lower lip Steve wants to nibble on. The top two buttons of his purple dress shirt are open, its long sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms. He exudes such presence that Steve’s surprised and disappointed to find the man is a few inches shorter than him and Bucky when they reach the scarred oak bar.
Iron Man is as tall as Steve and Bucky. Hot Bartender’s not him.
Steve masks his disappointment and pretends not to notice the way a few of the patrons the bartender was chatting with look ready to jump to his defense, Steve and Bucky’s deadly witch hunter reputations be damned. Steve wonders if Iron Man is among them. But there’s no guarantee he’s even here, Steve reminds himself, trying to smother his hope.
Then he notices the human woman sitting with the bartender’s…friends?…a few bar stools away: a slim redhead in an impeccably tailored suit and matching pencil skirt, whose leg is tucked under her, the six-inch heel for which she’s let drop to the floor. She’s drinking a calming potion.
Calming potions are a witch’s go-to date rape spell. In strong enough doses, drinkers have allowed their own murders.
And a human is drinking one mere feet away from him, in full view of Hot Bartender—Who Is Disappointingly Not Iron Man But Given The Situation Maybe That’s For The Best—who probably gave it to her without telling her how dangerous it is.
Steve can’t figure out who she’s come in with—the group on the stools seem to know each other, but none seem particularly amorous. Steve returns his suspicious gaze to Hot Bartender.
Who wolf whistles as they step up to the bar. “Wow. Would you look at that bone structure. You didn’t by any chance inspire any of Michaelangelo’s work, did you? The David? No? Whatever.” He sets the freshly dried glass down and leans invitingly close, hip cocked, arms spread, hands grasping the bartop. “Word is, a visit from the witch hunting wonder twins means I’ve either been very good or very bad.” He all but purrs this last, which doesn’t help Steve’s focus; the ambient golden light seems to caress Hot Bartender’s tanned forearms, and Steve gets lost in the the corded muscles on display. The David indeed. He licks his lips.
Bucky elbows him.
Steve looks up, caught, only to find Bucky’s expression approving, not annoyed. Steve’s lips quirk into a small, sly grin. Assuming Hot Bartender has a good explanation for why humans at Witch Bar have spelled drinks, it seems they’re both thinking of taking him home for the night. Ideally they would take home Iron Man and keep him permanently…but until Iron Man trusts them enough to reveal who he is beneath the armor, his answer will probably be no, so they haven’t asked outright despite the flirting they’ve all been doing in the year or so since they met.
Thinking of Iron Man makes Steve hope anew that they won’t have to arrest Hot Bartender. He’d hate to shut down their friend’s favorite bar for illegal activity.
“I’m Tony,” Hot Bartender continues, “owner and sometimes bartender. This is our menu. Let me know if you see something you like.”
Bucky slides the menu to Steve unopened and leans over the bar. “What if what I like isn’t on the menu?” he asks, shamelessly pouring his molten gaze down Tony’s body.
“Depends what it is. You sure we have it here?”
“Very.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to convince me you’re worth giving it to,” Tony says, crossing his gorgeous arms on the bartop and pushing into Bucky’s space like he belongs there. “I only give the good stuff to people I like.”
Bucky’s eyes and mouth dip into bashful sweetness, and Steve knows the look he’s giving Tony through his long eyelashes is the one that makes Steve weak in the knees—every—time. “So what’s a guy like me gotta do to get a guy like you to like him enough to…negotiate an exchange of goods and services?”
Tony laughs sharply through his nose, which wrinkles adorably. “Exchange of goods and services,” he repeats, shaking his head. But he’s grinning as he treats Bucky to his own assessing gaze. “Well, you’re off to a good start, I can tell you that.” He’s not looking at Bucky’s face when he says, “Seems like you’re on the up and up.”
Steve smiles; he loves watching Bucky flirt, and if he closed his eyes and Tony’s voice sounded flatter, filtered, it would feel like any other day Bucky and Iron Man flirted in the field while Steve pretended not to enjoy the repartee he was still hopeless at matching despite his unnaturally long life span. But then the redhead takes a sip of her drink and Steve’s contentment curdles. She’s living proof they can’t trust Tony, no matter how much Steve wants to. And he really, really wants to, for some reason. His gut seems to trust Tony implicitly, even like him, and it’s hard to fight that instinct, but Steve does. He knows the inclination is probably because he’s in love with Iron Man; Tony certainly hasn’t earned Steve’s trust himself.
“Not sure I like your friend though,” Tony tells Bucky, and Steve tunes back in just in time to hear, “He seems like kind of a jerk, and I hear you’re a matched set.”
Steve bristles. “Really?” He hadn’t even said anything!
In his head, he hears Iron Man’s snarky reply: Put your goddamned eyes away, Steve, your Disapproval Face is concentrated judgment distilled over centuries—like wine, but nobody likes it. You could shame Mother Teresa with that face. I feel guilty and I haven’t even done anything. Jesus.
Steve winces and ducks his head, suddenly embarrassed.
Tony, watching, has the gall to wink at him.
Steve’s cheeks have the gall to flush back. Still, he refuses to flirt with this man until he knows for sure they won’t have to arrest him.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” Bucky tells Tony, grinning at Steve’s discomfort right along with him.
Why is Steve always attracted to jerks?
Bucky continues, “Stevie’s a sweetheart once he decides you’re good people. He’ll warm up to you once he knows you’re not breaking the treaty.” Bucky’s flirtatious expression doesn’t change, but for a moment, his slate gray eyes are as flinty and cold as when he was under the Hydra witches’ control. “You’re not, are you? Casting magic on innocent humans?”
Tony’s coy expression doesn’t waver, but for a moment—maybe it’s a minute slope of his shoulders, or a catch in his breath, or a slight twitch in his fingers, Steve isn’t exactly sure—Steve feels like Tony’s as haunted as he is by Bucky’s cold-blooded gaze. Not afraid. Haunted. Like what happened to Bucky is somehow also his fault.
But…but he’s too short. He can’t be… No. Nothing in Tony’s demeanor changed. Steve’s just seeing what he wants to see.
“If I say yes, are you gonna tie me up and bring me in?” Tony hasn’t stopped flirting, but Steve knows a challenge when he hears one, and straightens to meet it.
He doesn’t miss the way Tony’s eyes dilate when he mentions being tied up, however, and a stern, “Buck might. I don’t reward bad behavior,” slips out of his mouth before he can pry his thoughts away from imagining exactly how he’d tie Tony down if they took him to bed.
Steve’s comment surprises a laugh out of Bucky, who shrugs and agrees, and a wide, wondering smile from Tony—both of which do their best to further derail Steve’s higher processing functions.
“Please tell me that means what I think it means,” Tony says in a rush.
“Sugar,” Bucky says smugly, “Steve’s only a lady in the streets.”
Tony’s wide brown eyes get darker. “Pepper,” he calls breathlessly, gaze fixed on Steve.
“No, Tony,” the redhead answers.
“But—”
“Whatever you’re about to say, the answer is no. There is not enough calming potion in the world for that tone of voice.” She punctuates this by taking a long sip of hers while glaring at him.
This gives Steve pause. The woman, Pepper—she’s a human, but she knows she’s drinking a calming spell. Does she…does she know this is a witch bar?
“Damned straight,” says the witch sitting next to her, a black man with shorn hair nursing a craft beer. “If it has to do with those two idiots—”
“It does,” Pepper sighs. “It always does.”
Always?
“—it’s going to end in me having a heart attack,” the man finishes.
“Really, honeybear?” Tony protests.
“And me working overtime doing damage control,” Pepper adds.
“Always? Not always.” Tony stops rolling his eyes and instead puts a hand to his heart as if he’s been slandered.
His hand has an unusual number of burn scars in very specialized locations. Metalworking will give you scars like that if you do it often enough.
Not a lot of witches are serious metalworkers these days. Locally, Steve only knows of one.
When Steve glances at Bucky, he sees he’s not the only one who’s noticed.
“I feel so attacked right now,” Tony says theatrically. “Steve, go defend my honor, that’s what you do, right? That’s Pepper, my PA, and that’s Rhodey, my boring best friend. Please tell them taking two witch hunters home is not the witch equivalent of suicide, and that they worry too much.”
Steve laughs. He can’t help it. Maybe the armor adds a few inches, he’ll ask Tony later, but that particular brand of diva is unmistakably Iron Man. Tony is Iron Man. Steve looks at Bucky and sees the same recognition on his face.
Steve clears his throat, but try as he might, he can’t smother the giant grin that’s taking over his face. “Excuse me, Ms. Pepper? You’re aware of the spell in your drink?”
“Of course,” Pepper says. “It wouldn’t affect me otherwise.”
Steve eyes Tony. “And what about the seventeen other humans I passed on my way down here who’re eating and drinking spells? Are you telling me all of them know what they really ordered?”
Tony grins at him. “No,” he says, playfully drawing out the vowel. “Our spells only activate for patrons who know what it is they’re about to ingest. That’s part of the draw: our spelled products don’t work on the unwilling. We’re big on consent here at Witch Bar.”
Bucky looks somewhere between intrigued and enchanted. Steve probably looks similar. They’ve never come across a…a consent spell before. That kind of magic doesn’t exist. If a spell is cast correctly, it works—the recipient’s consent, informed or not, is irrelevant. The only witch they know who might be capable of both inventing and then casting a consent spell is Iron Man—but as far as Steve knew, his Mind Shaping was still more potential than practice, and would probably remain so; witches born with that ability were all but exterminated by witches and humans alike in the 1700s because it so frightened both sides. Steve had passed on what he remembered about how Mind Shaping worked and was used, even invited Iron Man—Tony, wow, and he’s gorgeous, and dear God those eyes—into his own mind to practice before Iron Man ventured into the minefield that was Bucky’s under Hydra-acolyte thrall. Iron Man had mentioned exploring his Mind Shaping abilities since, but then, Iron Man is rarely content to stay a novice when he can become an expert. Nonetheless, the ability to infuse a spell with a Mind Shaper’s ability was unheard of even before the pogroms.
“Ir—” Bucky stops and corrects himself. “Tony. Did you seriously invent a spell that piggybacks on other spells and decides whether they’ll go off?”
Tony fails to look innocent when he says, “What makes you think I invented it?”
Bucky snorts. “Really, doll?”
Tony seems surprised by this pet name in a way he wasn’t when Bucky called him ”sugar”—and only Iron Man would know Bucky reserves “doll” for him and Steve.
Steve sighs happily as he finally allows himself to lean into their little huddle. “Tony,” Steve says, and his chest warms, knowing this is Iron Man’s real name taking shape in his mouth, “your disposition, skillset, and abilities make you uniquely qualified to invent a spell like that. I’ve lived a long time, and I think you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’d be capable of doing it.”
Steve is charmed by the shy smile that softens Tony’s face when he realizes they know exactly who they’re talking to. “Oh,” Tony says. “Well, that’s… Uh, I am a genius, so, I mean…” Tony runs a hand over his face and takes a deep breath. When he speaks again, he’s every inch a showman. “It’s more a potion than a spell, but I can show you how it works, if you want. Demonstrations are fun—unless it’s for those two. They stopped appreciating my genius years ago.” He motions at Pepper and Rhodey like a man burdened.
“I love a good show,” Bucky says.
Steve snorts at the innuendo, because Bucky really does. “I’m game,” he tells Tony. “Need a guinea pig?”
“Bucky’s gonna be my guinea pig for this one,” Tony says, excitement sparking in his dark eyes. “You’re gonna want to see this,” he tells Steve with a wink. “You’re welcome in advance, both of you. Turn around, Terminator, maybe go take a walk. The point is for you not to know what spell I’m giving you.”
Bucky shrugs genially and thumps the bartop. “Done. I think I saw Sam’s stupid face in the mirror; I’m gonna go ruin his night. Enjoy the view while I’m gone, Stevie,” he says with a leer in Tony’s direction.
Steve rolls his eyes. “You love Sam.”
Bucky snickers and vanishes around a velvet-curtained corner.
Tony frowns. “Pararescue Sam?” At Steve’s nod, he says, “Tell Bucky to bring him back when we’re ready for him—Rhodey’s Air Force too, he loves military pilot types, he’ll go nuts. It’s gonna be great.”
Steve texts Bucky to do so. When he looks up, he sees Tony pulling down ingredients for a happiness potion. He types Happiness spell? in his chat window and shows it to Tony, who confirms it. Steve erases the words and pockets his phone to watch.
A happiness spell of the strength Tony’s making is enough to cause uninhibited giddiness—and likely raucous laughter—for maybe half an hour. Steve suspects his and Bucky’s bodies will metabolize the ingredients more quickly than that, but still. He’d love to see Bucky laugh like he used to.
When the spell is finished, Tony picks up a small, clear squeeze bottle of lavender-tinted liquid—one of several Steve sees spaced at regular intervals along the bartender’s long counter.
“Is that the consent spell?” Steve asks, reaching for it.
“It is.” Tony hands it over, lets Steve study it.
It looks like water with food coloring in it. Steve can’t see any particles to hint at its ingredients. “How does it work?” He asks, handing it back.
Tony swirls it, puts three drops into the glass containing the pink-gold happiness spell, and stirs the mix. The happiness spell is swept into a lavender cloud before reverting to its natural pink-tinted gold. Tony then stirs in a healthy dose of scotch—“He does like scotch, right?”—to mask the spell’s taste. It doesn’t change the color of the liquid in the glass.
“Okay, now what?” Steve asks. “He’s gonna know that spell on sight.”
“He good with cherries?” Tony asks with a smirk. He seems a little too pleased with himself for his question not to have contained some innuendo.
“He can handle anything you give him,” Steve says, hoping that covers the innuendo and not just the question.
“Perfect,” Tony all but purrs. He pulls a new butterfly needle from under the bar and injects four giant maraschino cherries with the entirety of the spell glass’s contents, plates the cherries where Bucky was standing, and pulls out his cell phone. “Call him back,” he says, fiddling with something on his screen and then setting it on the shelf behind him.
It’s set to record. Steve can see himself and the empty space Bucky occupied clearly on the phone screen. “You’re sending me that video,” he tells Tony.
“Is that your roundabout way of asking for my number?” Tony asks playfully.
Steve blushes, realizing that’s essentially what he just did, but rolls with it. “Why, did it work?”
“Give me your phone and we’ll find out.”
Steve is grinning like a fool at the new number in his contacts list when Bucky returns not just with Sam, but Natasha—a very skilled, very deadly witch and former assassin, who Steve trusts with his life. She apparently bartends at Witch Bar, because she slips behind the bar as introductions are being made and bumps Tony with her hip. “I leave you in charge for ten minutes—”
“Hey, it’s my bar. I’m never not in charge,” Tony says.
“—For ten minutes,” she says, “and you stop working to flirt with your boyfriends.”
“They’re not my—” Tony looks apologetically at Steve and Bucky, as if expecting them to be offended. “We’re not actually—”
“Hey, don’t scare off our boyfriend,” Bucky snaps cheerfully at Nat.
When Tony looks at him in surprise, Bucky winks. Tony responds by flushing adorably and puttering a bit, as if the appearance of working will somehow hide his pleasure.
Rhodey and Sam hit it off quickly. Natasha chats with Pepper more quietly between serving drinks; with her arrival, patrons apparently feel safe coming up to the bar again—on the end farthest from Steve and Bucky. Steve guesses no one wanted to risk gaining the infamous witch hunters’ attention by interrupting their conversation to get Tony to make them a drink.
“Alright, hit me,” Bucky says when he, Steve, and Tony are back in their little huddle.
Tony starts recording and stands to the side as he slides the cherries in front of Bucky an inch closer to him. “Eat one.”
Bucky makes a show of looking at his hands, then the cherries. “My hands are dirty.”
They’re not.
But Bucky folds them on the bartop and nudges the plate closer to Tony with his wrist. “Gonna need your help.”
Tony snorts. “Right,” he drawls.
Steve snickers and shakes his head. “You’re incorrigible,” he tells Bucky with far more pride than judgment.
“Steve, be a gentleman and give this man my cherry,” Tony says.
Rhodey snorts down the table. Tony grins over at him, unrepentant.
Steve, a gentleman, picks up a cherry by the stem, sets it in Bucky’s open mouth, and pulls the stem from it through Bucky’s shit-eating grin.
“What’s it taste like?” Tony asks when Bucky starts chewing.
“Decent scotch and candy cherry,” Bucky says after a pensive moment.
“Cool. There’s a spell in those cherries. Same one in all four. Try another one.”
Bucky takes the next one from Steve’s fingers much more sensually.
Tony’s eyes are wide as his pupils when Steve turns back to him. Steve raises an eyebrow at him. “You breathing okay?” he asks with mock concern. “I used to have asthma, you know. It’s no joke.”
“Might need mouth to mouth soon,” Tony says, watching Bucky chew and swallow like a man entranced. “What’s that one taste like?” he asks Bucky.
“Still scotch. And candied cherry, obviously.”
“How do you feel? You did just eat a spell, Steve can vouch for that.”
“You did,” Steve confirms, fascinated by the spell’s lack of effect.
“Well, unless the spell is to make me feel normal, nothing’s happening.”
“Good,” Tony says, seeming antsy with anticipatory glee. “Bucky, these cherries are dosed with a happiness spell. It’ll lower your inhibitions and make everything seem awesome and hilarious. You’ll be ridiculously happy for about thirty minutes—maybe less since your physiologies are weird. Feel anything now?”
Bucky shakes his head ruefully. “Should I?”
“Nah, you’ve already eaten it. The potion doesn’t let spells work retroactively. You have to know what it is you’re taking before you take it for it to work. Now!” He gestures at Steve and checks the camera’s placement. “Try another cherry and tell me how you’d feel about a Hello Kitty-themed Iron Man armor.”
“Judgmental,” Bucky answers immediately, then opens his mouth for Steve to feed him the next cherry.
Steve does. Bucky chews it.
“Instead of energy beams, it would shoot angry kittens,” Tony adds, like the idea is perfectly reasonable.
Bucky swallows. And bursts out laughing.
Loud, attention-grabbing belly-laughs that squinch his slate gray eyes nearly shut, wrinkle his nose, and leave him scrabbling for Steve to keep himself upright. Steve hasn’t seen Bucky so carefree since… Since they were kids. God, has it really been that long? Steve holds Bucky up by the waist and elbow and smiles helplessly at him, memorizing the expression to pour over in his mind and sketchbooks, burning these moments into his memory.
Tony chuckles and leans his hip against the counter, arms crossed, smile soft, and brown eyes dancing. “Well.” He shakes his head. “Isn’t that something.”
It really is. Bucky may have taken the potion, but Steve feels overwhelmed with happiness watching the results. Iron Man invited them here, and not only surprised them by trusting them with his secret identity, but orchestrated a spell demonstration to give them both the priceless gift of Bucky’s unadulterated joy. If Steve didn’t love Iron Man before, he certainly does now.
“Kittens!” Bucky gasps. He’s now laughing so hard no sound is coming out, it’s just wheezing breaths, jelly legs, and pawing at Steve with weak fingers to keep from falling over.
Bucky laughs for minutes at a time. Each time his laughter wanes, Tony says something funny to set him off again. Steve starts volleying comments back when his shock wears off enough. He and Tony are deep in a rabbit hole of how to win hypothetical battles with ridiculous spells and still more ridiculous weaponry by the time the happiness spell starts to wear off—Bucky’s enhanced physiology finally making a dent in cleaning its ingredients from his system.
“There is no good goddamn reason to enchant a chandelier to come when you call it,” Bucky insists, his mountains of laughter finally quieting to foothills of giggles. He wipes tears from his eyes with unsteady fingers, and palms the rest from his cheeks and chin.
Steve drags his eyes from his lover to Tony. “Thank you,” he says, and means it in the core of his being. Only as he says it does he realize how rough his voice has become, register the prickle in his eyes. “That was…” He flounders. What could possibly express how overwhelmed, how happy, how grateful, how adoring he feels?
“Perfect,” Tony finishes for him, eyes on Bucky before looking back at Steve with a proud grin.
“Yeah,” Steve says. Bucky’s laughter, Bucky, Tony—they’re perfect.
“Amazing,” Bucky says, wonder seeping back into his tone and wide eyes. He sucks in a deep breath. “Wow. So, consent spell. Is it pre-made? It’s gotta be or you could never go on break.”
Tony hands him the nearest bottle, explains its use more fully, lets them ask questions. Apparently anyone can use it, but Tony’s the only witch he knows who can make it. Makes sense—not a lot of Mind Shapers left, and Steve doubts most know enough about their ability to learn control. When Tony’s answered all Steve and Bucky’s questions, he slides the last cherry toward Steve and sets up his phone again. When Steve hesitates—does he really want to lose his composure in a bar full of potentially-hostile witches?—Tony’s expression dims. “C’mon, Steve,” he says. “It’ll only last ten minutes. Let me make you happy.”
Steve softens. “Tony, you always make me happy.”
Tony gets that startled look he’s made a few times tonight, like he’s genuinely surprised they think he’s amazing and crave his company, like he’s trying not to argue, like such genuine adoration just does not compute. Steve knows why compliments make Iron Man quiet and still now: Tony never expects them and doesn’t know how to react. He finally huffs at Steve. “The day you figure out how to weaponize sincerity on a larger scale than one-on-one, we’re all fucked.”
“God, I hope so,” Bucky says. “I would personally love to live in a world where the three of us are fucking. Speaking of which, when do you get off tonight, doll?”
Tony grins wryly. “Well, since Clint’s back,” he says, motioning at what must be the kitchen door, “that depends on my brand new boyfriends, doesn’t it?”
“Great,” Steve says, playful challenge in his voice. “So as soon as I eat this cherry and the spell wears off you’re coming home with us. That’s what you said, right?”
“That’s what I heard,” Bucky says. “Tony?”
Tony positively beams at them. “I love men who can read between the lines. Lemme just—” He starts his phone recording. “Okay, Steve. Eat and be merry.”
But when Steve reaches for the cherry, Bucky slaps his hand away, then grabs his wrist when he reaches again. “Your hands are filthy, Steven,” he says.
Steve rolls his eyes. “My hands are fine.”
“Very fine,” Tony says, not at all meaning the same thing.
“You can’t just take Tony’s cherry, Stevie, he has to give it to you,” Bucky says.
“Buck—” Steve snaps, annoyed they’re wasting time they could be using to take Tony home and take him apart.
“No, no, he’s right,” Tony says. “Consent is sexy, and we’re all about consent here at Witch Bar. C’mere Steve.” He crooks his finger and, when Steve follows, picks up the last cherry by the stem. “Open for me, babe.”
Steve resolutely does not think about Tony feeding him his dick instead of this cherry. He opens his mouth and pulls off the cherry. Chews.
As he swallows, Tony’s lips pull into a self-satisfied smirk. “So how long did it take you to figure out it was me?” he asks.
Steve’s jaw drops. Then he throws back his head and laughs.