![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: "Drawn"
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Crossover: Supernatural/Queer as Folk
Rating: Adult (horror themes, language)
Written for:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ucp_ficathon for gothhuntress
Prompts:A Demon haunts Michael’s Comic Shop
Notes: Please forgive any lapses like the layout of Mikey's comic book store. I'm working without a net!
Summary:“Wow, you’re really tall,” Mikey observed shakily as Sam stood to his full height. Mikey stretched his arms above his head and encountered nothing. “I’m kinda getting a ‘trapped down a well with no Lassie’ feeling,” he said as Sam dropped to one knee again and Mikey slid off backwards.
“Don’t worry,” Sam assured, smiling. “I have a Lassie.”
When they approached, Sam made the tiny mew of disappointment that Dean knew well. He didn’t need to turn around to know that on his brother’s face would be a mix of hurt and disappointment and the words spoken only a few moments after were as familiar as their own two names.
“We’re too late.”
The comic book store was dark and the police tape crisscrossing the entrance had to have been a week old. Part of it had come free and was dragging on the ground, the rasp of it like an accusation.
“You only had the dream three days ago. Looks like the party was over long before you got the invite,” Dean commented dryly, wanting to take the edge of Sam’s inevitable annoyance with himself. He knew there were black moods and recriminations ahead. Sometimes they just didn’t get there on time and nothing short of time travel would change it.
“Let’s check it out anyway,” Sam said, brushing past him so Dean was edged out of the way with a bony shoulder. Sam reached out a hand and tugged the remainder of the police tape free, shaking it from his fingers with a hiss of annoyance when it stuck. He then tentatively placed his palm against the front door and pushed. The door swung inward with no hindrance.
The interior was dark and there was a pungent smell, almost sickly sweet like drying apples. Sam wrinkled his nose and looked back at Dean, who shrugged and gestured for him to proceed. Glass crunched underfoot from the broken light fixtures and Sam looked back at Dean with a grin because he had been snapping the light switch up and down.
“Who the fuck are you?” A voice issued from the darkness and the brothers startled, Dean reaching for his sidearm automatically and cursing whatever had made him leave it in the car for once.
A man appeared in the slash of light left from the open doorway. He was tall and severe looking with green eyes and what looked like a tumbler half full of whiskey in hand. As he approached, he sidestepped clumsily and Dean relaxed a little, realising the man was drunk.
“We’re from the crime lab,” Dean said. “Just doing a follow-up.” He reached into his back pocket, brought forth his battered wallet and flipped it open and closed in one smooth movement, sliding it back home before the man had had a chance to lean forward and look at any ID that had been proffered. He blinked owlishly, snorted and made his unsteady way back to what looked like a display case with the front smashed out.
“I thought you guys were finished poking around and being useless,” he snapped and Dean blinked, looking the man over with a more careful eye. Dean knew what grief looked like and this man was painted in it. The man had reached forward to set the whiskey tumbler on the display case, not noticing that the top glass was gone so when he opened his fingers it fell through and smashed on the floor below. The man looked at it for a beat and then frowned. “Well, fuck me,” he sighed.
“Listen,” Sam began, moving forward with his hands out, ever the diplomat. “We only got very vague details about what happened here. Do you think you could tell us, without worrying about whether it sounds crazy?” Sam tilted his head and opened his eyes wide, one of his repertoire of sincere looks that usually won people over, but the man before them just narrowed his eyes and snorted.
“This isn’t the place to get your jollies. Go bother someone else.” He said this as he leant down to retrieve something from the floor. When he rose, there was a comic book in his hands which he passed fingers over almost reverentially. “Just leave us alone.”
Dean huffed and stepped forward, thinking that honesty was probably the best approach. “Look, we have no idea what happened here, but we know something bad went down and we’re in the habit of… we… deal with this kind of thing all the time.” The sickly sweet smell was getting stronger and Dean rubbed his nose.
The taller man turned and advanced on Dean, graceful despite his intoxication as if he were practiced at pulling it together if he needed to. “Either leave on your own or I’m putting you out on your ass,” he snarled and Dean tensed, standing his ground.
“Oh yeah, I’d like to see that,” he invited.
“Whoa, okay, we’re not here to make any trouble,” Sam interjected. “He’s telling the truth.”
“Yeah, it would be the first time tonight,” the man sneered. “He tried to pass off a library card as ID.”
Dean blinked. “How did you-?”
“I own a club. I’m used to the flick and hide. It helps that you’re particularly bad at it.”
Dean bristled. “Look dude, we’re in the habit of helping people, but I’m not being anyone’s punching bag. If you really want us gone, we’ll go.” Sam looked at him quickly, wanting to protest but Dean held up a hand in his direction. “Whatever happened here looks done anyway.”
The man seemed to deflate before them, all bravado draining from his body and he slid down the nearest wall, pulling his legs up to his chest. “Nobody can tell me what happened to him,” he said, his voice a broken whisper and Sam looked at Dean and then back at the man.
“I’m Sam and this is my brother, Dean. We’d like to help you if we can.”
***
His name was Brian and the owner of the comic book store was his best friend, a man named Mikey. He told them how the police swept through and basically concluded that the whole thing was an insurance scam. They hadn’t found a body but had spoken like Mikey was dead.
Brian hadn’t bought it for one second.
“I’d just, I know it’s stupid but I’d know.”
Dean watched his brother rub his temple, the headache that usually followed one of his particularly horrific visions still present, and grinned wryly. “Not so stupid,” he mused, watching as Brian moved about the store shuffling like an old man although he couldn’t have been much past his mid thirties. He was handsome in a slightly surreal way, all of his features a little too symmetrical. He had a languid way about him that became more evident as sobriety found him.
He was a man of excesses. Dean knew the type.
Dean also knew that he was devastated by the loss of his friend in a way that meant he wasn’t used to dealing with tragedy very often and it didn’t sit well with him. He was someone that would bully the result he desired using charm and his face and when it wasn’t a problem that could be fixed in that way, he was lost.
“When was the last time you saw Mikey?” Sam asked, having found a stool in the back and now sitting on it, his lanky frame perched at a weird angle. He had a notebook out and his face had the serious cast to it that meant he had launched into research-mode.
“He said he was going to work late to finish up some stuff and we were supposed to meet for coffee at about 2am. He never made it. I came here and the police were already surrounding the place. Apparently the neighbours across the street heard terrible noises and called the cops. There was…” Brian took a moment, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “They said there was a lot of blood where…” Brian gestured towards the back of the store. “I had a look before. I don’t think I can see that again.”
Sam looked to Dean who nodded grimly and made his way deeper into the store. The smell grew as he advanced, turning from dried apples to rotten ones. He found the doorway to the storeroom in the back ajar and pushed it open. There was a stack of boxes overturned and a streak of blood across the floor that ended abruptly at the wall. Dean hunkered down and touched fingers to the streak, finding it still tacky. He frowned, knowing that if everything had gone down a week earlier like they had supposed, then the blood should have been dried. He stood again and at eye level was a page of a comic book, stuck fast in the wall. He reached up and tugged but it didn’t move. It almost looked like the page was half in the wall.
“Find anything?” Sam’s head appeared around the doorway and Dean pointed at the page.
“Just that. Weird, huh?”
“The blood?”
“I don’t think it’s blood,” Dean said, frowning. “How long ago did Brian say this happened?”
“About five days,” Sam said, shrugging and moving into the room. He grasped the piece of comic book page and tugged.
“I tried that,” Dean sighed, rolling his eyes.
“Oh really?” Sam snapped, tugging harder. When the page refused to come free Dean smirked, but the smile fell from his face.
“Let it go,” he said urgently, horrified at the way the bright splashes of colour of the comic seemed to be curling tendrils up Sam’s hand. Sam grunted when he tried pulling his hand free, the fingers refusing to unclasp.
“Dean,” he said, his voice edged with panic. “I can’t feel my hand.”
Dean wrapped both hands around Sam’s wrist, yanking hard but the colours edged their way under his hands, making his skin itch. He yanked harder when fingers of red, blue and green arced up Sam’s bicep and raced across his shoulder. “Oh hell no,” Dean growled, putting his foot flat on the wall to gain some leverage as he and Sam both leaned their full weight backwards, trying to pull free.
“It’s getting… Christ!” Sam yelped, tilting his head away to no avail when vibrant purple chased across his throat and up one cheek. Blue etched a path across his lips and a spike of dark red flowed over one eye. It looked as if Sam was being painted but what was more horrifying was that he was now almost elbow deep in the wall.
Dean darted out of the room, coming around to the other side but finding nothing but blameless wall. He raced back to the shopfront and lifted the stool Sam had been using, running back to the storeroom with it. He found the storeroom empty.
“Sam!” he yelled raggedly, hefting the stool and then swinging it with all his strength at the wall. The stool smashed into pieces. Brian appeared in the doorway.
“What happened?” he asked, looking stricken and watching Dean drop broken chair pieces from shaking hands.
“I think I know what happened to your friend,” Dean said, his voice hollow. He thumped the wall with a fist.
The half comic page was gone.
***
There were tentative hands on his face and Sam jerked awake, scrabbling backwards. He took a moment to look around; breathing hard, until he noticed the smaller man crouched in front of him, hands out.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“I…think so,” Sam said, holding his hands out in front of himself. There was nothing but pink skin and the dark olive green of his jacket and for that small mercy he was grateful. “Where am I?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that,” the man said, shrugging.
“Are you Mikey?” Sam hazarded, pushing himself to his feet. The man before him certainly fit the description, dark haired with a wide smiling face and compact. He was looking at his hands but his head jerked up when Sam asked.
“Yes! How did you get here? Where is here?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Sam sighed, looking about himself. They were in what looked like a small cell with no doors and windows, just dirt walls. “Doesn’t look good, does it?”
“No, it really doesn’t,” Mikey agreed.
***
Dean broke three more chairs, bent his pocket knife blade and had nearly broken his toes on the wall by the time Brian was able to coax him away. “Pounding on it obviously isn’t doing anything,” he pointed out, steering Dean back into the front room.
“It happened back there, right?” Dean asked, dropping himself into the only chair left not broken.
“I guess so,” Brian agreed, leaning over and taking one of Dean’s hands, looking at the bloodied knuckles that he’d gotten from beating them against the brickwork. His breath still had the tang of whiskey on it but his eyes were clear.
“Then what’s with the trashed front?” Dean had always assumed Sam was the smart one of the family, not giving enough credence to the low cunning he had been blessed with that meant not a lot escaped his attention and he could make connections with a fluid mental grace that was rare.
Brian frowned, stepping back and looking around the store as if seeing it for the first time. “I don’t know, I just assumed vandals had a go before the police got here because the store was empty.”
Dean had stood also and was now walking a slow circuit around, casting his gaze over everything and then finally coming back to the display case in the middle. “All the damage is pretty incidental, and it all radiates out from here. Someone wanted to take focus away from the fact that this had been broken open.” Dean leaned down and fingered the lock on the display case and then passed his hand through where glass would have been. “What was in here?”
“Some figurines and just… I don’t know, junk.”
“Valuable to someone,” Dean commented, scrunching up his nose and canting his head. “Anything recent?”
Brian scratched his temple, huffing and then snapped his fingers. “Yeah, there was this weird comic book Mikey got in the mail. No return address or who it was from. Mikey thought it was fun to have a mystery but the book… I didn’t like it.”
Dean straightened, smoothing hands down his jean legs. “Why not?”
“I don’t know, it was just… creepy looking.” Brian leaned across the front counter and retrieved a couple of other books that had survived the trashing. “Mikey had some horror books,” he said, holding them up for Dean to see. “A lot of rotting corpses and evil guys, the usual stuff. This book, it had no title and there were just all these… people on the cover. They didn’t look horrible or disfigured or anything… just kinda lost.”
“Freaky.”
“Yeah, and the inside wasn’t like a normal comic, no panels or anything. It was black pages with silver writing and it was all just… boring little stories. Some guy is going down the store to get milk, some chick is nursing her baby, stuff like that.”
“You still got what it came in?”
Brian shrugged. “I have no idea. Mikey’s office is next to the storeroom so we can have a look.”
***
Mikey looked up at Sam. “Tell me we’re going to be fine,” he implored, nothing on his face to say that he would actually buy it, but wanting to hear it anyway.
“We’ll be fine,” Sam assured, squeezing his shoulder and Mikey blinked at him.
“Wow, I almost believed you.”
“Believe me,” Sam chuckled. “I’ve been in worse situations.”
Mikey crossed his arms and leaned back against the opposite wall. “Okay, I find that hard to believe. You, if what happened to you was the same as me, got sucked through a wall and ended up in an oubliette.”
“Well, this one time…wait, oubliette?”
Mikey grimaced. “I got it from Labyrinth. A cell with no doors or windows.”
Sam frowned. “No, an oubliette is a room or a dungeon with only a trapdoor in the ceiling.”
Mikey grinned. “Wow, it’s been a long time since I haven’t been the geekiest person in the room,” he said, but then looked up slowly, following Sam’s gaze. Although the muted light in the room was enough to see each other and the walls, the ceiling of the room was in total darkness. Sam stretched up but his fingertips failed to touch anything.
He looked at Mikey and smiled. “Do you mind?” he asked, indicating the roof and then himself. Mikey sighed and stepped up onto Sam’s knee when he knelt, letting Sam swing him around until he was on his shoulders.
“Wow, you’re really tall,” Mikey observed shakily as Sam stood to his full height. Mikey stretched his arms above his head and encountered nothing. “I’m kinda getting a ‘trapped down a well with no Lassie’ feeling,” he added as Sam dropped to one knee again and Mikey slid off backwards.
“Don’t worry,” Sam said, smiling. “I have a Lassie.”
***
“Why didn’t you say you had surveillance tapes?” Dean demanded as soon as he spotted the two monitors on the desk. They were currently off, but Dean practically skipped over to the desk, leaning forward to thumb the power on both. One of the screens showed nothing but snow but the other showed a canted angel of the street and the front door.
“Because the cops took the hard drive,” Brian said, patting the blank space in the shelving next to the desk. Dean grinned at him, pulling the flash drive on the shelf beneath forward.
“I’m hoping your friend is anal,” he said and then scowled when Brian just cocked an eyebrow and snorted. Instead he went back to the front of the store and retrieved Sam’s backpack, pulling the laptop free as he went. He set it down on the desk and flipped it open, plugging the flash drive into the laptop and drumming his fingers impatiently as the laptop flickered to life.
“So, do this type of thing often?” Brian asked, sitting on the free edge of desk.
“Not specifically this, but yeah. This type of thing.” Dean frowned. “I… certainly lose my brother more often than I’d like,” he added, tapping the keys necessary to bring up the flash drives contents. “Bingo,” he breathed when a list of files appeared, all dated. It looked as if he had everything up to six days earlier.
“We’re missing the day we need,” Brian remarked, leaning over Dean’s shoulder to have a look.
“Not necessarily,” Dean held up a finger and double tapped the file from the day previous to the disappearance. He used the scroll bar at the bottom to flash by a small guy with dark hair entering the store and then opening it to the public. A couple of kids came in and then a younger blonde guy who stayed for what looked like an hour, chatting and helping to unload some boxes.
“He’s a friend,” Brian said cryptically when Dean looked at him and Dean shrugged, going back to the screen. After an hour and towards the end of the day by the time stamp on the footage, a man entered the store and Dean automatically slowed the action, instinctively knowing that he was who he was searching for.
“It would help if there was sound,” Dean grumbled, watching the grainy black and white image of the man making a show of coasting around the store before he finally came to perch by the display case, placing his hands to the top and leaning over it, his nose practically pressed to the glass.
“It’s the middle of summer. Why is he wearing an overcoat?”
“You noticed that too, huh?” Dean leaned forward, squinting at the screen. “There’s something wrong with him,” he noted, indicating with a brush of his finger the line of the man’s shoulders and how one shoulder was practically up by his ear while the other looked misshapen to such an extent that the heavy coat did precious little to disguise it. They watched as Mikey approached the coated figure. The man stabbed a finger against the top of the display case and then thumped his own chest. Mikey shook his head, holding up his hands, automatically wary of the man’s aggressive demeanour. When denied, the man glowered, but then turned with a swirl of coat and strode out of the store. Mikey watched him go, seemingly rooted to the spot. He then dug a set of keys out of his pocket and opened the display case, pulling a comic free and disappearing from view.
“Ah hell! No camera in the storeroom I’m guessing,” Dean said, his tone not very hopeful and then swore when Brian shook his head.
“Oh hey,” Brian said leaning sideways and pulling something from the trashcan. “It’s still here.” He held a brown envelope aloft, about the same size as a comic book. His brow furrowed when he looked at it and then held it out for Dean’s inspection. “Looks like it came to the wrong place,” he remarked, tapping the address with a finger.
“How far is that from here?” Dean asked, loathe to leave the last place he’d seen his brother, but knowing they were running out of options.
“About half an hour,” Brian said, standing and stepping towards the door. Dean stayed him with a hand to the shoulder.
“Look, I got this. It might be-“
“The fuck you do,” Brian snarled. “Mikey is one of the few good things in this shitty world.”
Dean looked at Brian and then shrugged. “Okay, but stay out of my way and do what I tell you.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “As if,” he snorted, striding out of the office and Dean sighed.
***
They were sitting across from each other in the small room, the tininess accentuated by the mere fact that their feet were touching.
“So, how is it you know this is something supernatural and not just some serial killer who slipped a hallucinogen into our drinks?” Mikey asked, one eyebrow raised.
“You should be dead,” Sam answered, shrugging lightly, the raise and fall of his shoulders making the cloth covering them whisper against the dirt walls.
“I should be… hmmm.” Mikey tapped his chin with a finger, frowning. “Why is that?”
“By my reckoning, you’ve been in this room for about five days, not counting the time I’ve been in here which feels like another day at least. So, are you feeling the slightest bit thirsty? Maybe a little peckish?”
Mikey blinked, his mouth dropping open in an ‘o’ of surprise. “Oh my god,” he breathed. “I should be dead!”
Sam grinned, tapping his feet against Mikey’s.
***
“Yep, I can see how they mistook Mikey’s comic book store for this place,” Dean remarked dryly, hands on his hips and squinting at the darkened façade they were standing in front of. The windows of the store were blacked out with flaking paint and the whole place had a drunken lean to it. There were empty lots on either side and the grass that touched the building was brown. A sign above the cracked door said ‘Occult Bookshoppe’.
“Can I have one of those?” Brian asked, eyeing Dean’s revolver which Dean had pulled out to check once and then slip back into his jeans.
Dean looked at Brian incredulously. “Of course not,” he snapped. “I’m not really in the mood for getting shot in the ass.”
“How do you know I don’t know how to use a gun?” Brian asked, scowling. Dean snorted and grabbed one of Brian’s hands, holding the fingers up to the light. He held his own free hand up beside it, running a thumb over his calluses and the cracked skin that had dirt so ingrained that he would never get them completely clean. He then ran a finger over Brian’s neat nails. Brian rolled his eyes and snatched his hand back. “So you want me to go into the haunted shop with just my dick in my hand?” he asked and Dean chuckled.
Brian was crass in a way Dean could appreciate.
“Whatever makes you happy,” Dean shrugged, walking up to the door and pushing it open with the tip of his index finger. He looked back at Brian and quirked an eyebrow. “Doesn’t anyone lock their doors anymore?”
They entered slowly, both looking around. On either side of the doorway were tall bookshelves, stuffed with ancient looking tomes. There was a coffee table and an overstuffed couch sitting off to the side in front of a blackened fireplace and then more bookshelves beyond that. The whole place had a musty smell but just below that, a faint trace of rotten apples.
“I think this might be-“
“Can I help you guys?”
Both Dean and Brian jerked sideways and looked at the young man who was standing beside one of the bookshelves, watching them with a mix of curiosity and amusement. He was in his early twenties, wearing a too-big shirt and a baseball cap and looked completely out of place.
Dean was the expert on out of place.
“Where are they?” he demanded, reaching behind himself and putting fingers on his gun. The wide, open grin on the guy fell away and one lip curled up in a snarl.
“Big mistake,” he growled and large black, wet and leathery looking wings unfurled from his back.
“That’s something you don’t see everyday,” Brian said, a tremble in his voice.
“Crap,” Dean sighed, pulling his gun free.
***
Sam had been turned to the side and was running fingers along the walls while Mikey napped. About shoulder height on him and a little higher, there were deep gouges in the wall. He felt upwards and they stopped just a little below where he could reach while stretching himself to the limit. He knew what they were and hoped Mikey hadn’t seen them in the dim light.
Somebody had tried to climb out and hadn’t gotten very far.
“Don’t worry, I’ve already seen them,” Mikey said, sitting up and half his face disappearing in a giant yawn.
Sam turned and flushed, hunkering back down so they were eye level. “Sorry, I didn’t want to make it any more horrible for you.”
“You haven’t made this horrible,” Mikey said, smiling. “If anything, you’re making this a little easier to stand. If I’d been in here by myself much longer I probably would’ve gone insane.”
“Glad to help,” Sam said, rolling his eyes at how cheesy it sounded.
“At least I have something nice to look at,” Mikey quipped, laughing when Sam flushed bright red.
“I’m sorry… I’m not really, I mean I don’t… ah hell,” Sam blurted, rubbing the back of his head.
“Don’t worry, I’m not hitting on you. One overly tall and unattainably pretty man in my life is enough.”
Sam blushed more furiously. “I’m not…you think I’m pretty?” he asked, the immediate desire to kick himself arising as soon as he’d said it.
Mikey rolled his eyes. “Oh my lord, pretty and oblivious. That’s a new one.”
“I didn’t, I mean Dean’s always been the pretty one,” Sam explained, the desire to kick himself growing stronger with how absurd a conversation he was having.
“I don’t know who Dean is, but he’d have to be more than pretty to make you think you’re the dowdy one,” Mikey said, his face earnest. “Don’t worry, I know what it’s like being the nice one people climb over to get to the one they want to fuck.”
Sam let out a choked laugh of shock. “Hey, I was married.”
“Let me guess, the one girl that didn’t look at this Dean person first. You thought, this one’s a keeper, am I right?”
“Way off,” Sam sighed, although he’d never admit that he’d secretly been a little thrilled every time he’d mentioned Dean and Jess had made a face.
When Mikey tried to stand, he made a hurt noise and looked down at his leg. His left foot was fine but the right one was grey, like the colour had bled out of it. His sneaker and the skin showing just under the cuff of his pants are exactly the same non-colour.
“Oh that can’t be good,” Mikey said, the first flutterings of panic in his voice.
“C’mon Dean,” Sam whispered, helping Mikey back to the floor. “Save our asses.”
***
“Do guns usually work?” Brian snapped as they cowered behind a storeroom door and the furniture they’d hastily piled against it, Dean furiously reloading. He’d already emptied twice into the thing that was stalking them through the store and he was down to his last few rounds.
“Surprisingly often,” Dean responded. “I found a guy about three months ago that made me some ammo with a little bit of everything.” There was a frustrated growl from the front of the store and smashing noises before the whole wall the door was seated in trembled and dust rained down on them from the ceiling. “All of these babies have a tiny sliver of wood, some consecrated earth, a little silver, a little gold and a couple of other things. If this guy isn’t going down then I’m fast running outta ideas.”
There was another almighty crash and a chunk of the door came free, one arm with long taloned fingers reaching through. Dean stood, put his gun flush against the creatures hand and pulled the trigger. Black ichor exploded outwards in an arc and there was a terrible howl and the arm was pulled back through the door.
Brian had scooted forwards, away from the door and he let out a little yell of triumph, pulling a trapdoor in the floor open. “We might be able to get out,” he said, waving Dean over.
“Here’s hoping,” Dean agreed, following Brian down into the dank cellar beneath. They stopped short when they both realised that it was a bare room with no doors or windows, just an old podium in the middle and sitting on top of it was what looked like a comic book.
“Tell me this is it!” Dean demanded, running over to the podium and looking at the book set in the centre. The cover was filled with depictions of people and Dean had to agree, it was creepy. They all looked hollow-eyed and gaunt and yes, the description ‘lost’ was an apt one. “Oh hell no,” Dean breathed.
“What?” Brian demanded.
Dean held up the book, tapping the bottom corner of the cover.
“Look familiar?” he asked, indicating two figures that stood a little apart from the others. One was short and dark haired, looking up at the taller, shaggy haired one who was stooping, shoulders hunched in a way Dean would recognise anywhere.
“How do we get them out?” Brian asked.
At that moment, there was a crashing sound from the upstairs and then something was scrabbling at the trapdoor. The trap door was ripped away and a dark figure darted through. Dean held up his gun, shouldering Brian behind himself but then inspiration hit him. As the creature advanced, he turned his gun and pressed it to the comic.
The creature stopped dead.
“Put that down,” it rasped, darting a blue tinged tongue out to swipe across its lips, its eyes gleaming in the dim light.
“I don’t think so,” Dean snarled, pulling the trigger.
***
The floor seemed to fall out from under them and the next moment Sam landed on something hard that was swearing loudly. He pulled himself up and off Dean and grinned. “Took you long enough,” he said, letting Dean pull him into a relieved hug.
Sam got up, brushing dust off himself and then looked at the figure lying prone on the ground, ragged bullet holes covering its chest. What looked like a comic book lay beside it, holes through its cover.
“That was crazy,” Brian breathed, helping Mikey to his feet and squeezing him until Mikey protested about a lack of oxygen.
“What was that?” Sam asked, wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell.
“Something very different,” Dean said, prodding the body with a boot. He turned to see that Mikey was eyeing him quizzically and raised an eyebrow. “What?”
Mikey leaned around Dean to raise an eyebrow at Sam. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to disagree. You’re definitely prettier.”
“Hey!” Dean snapped as the others laughed.
***
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you guys again,” Brian said.
They were standing in the doorway of his loft, having had some coffee and all having taken a turn in the shower and Dean and Sam both wearing clothing supplied by Brian. Dean had been particularly chuffed with the soft-as-butter black leather jacket he’d been handed without a word until Sam had smirked at him and told him to stop preening.
Dean grinned. “We get that a lot.”
“If you get a mysterious comic book in the mail that is a demon’s conduit to the world and sucks souls in to keep it living, what do you do?” Sam prompted and Mikey grinned.
“Burn it as fast as I can,” Mikey nodded and there was laughter again. “Seriously, you guys-“
Dean held up his hands, backing out of the doorway. “Uh, uh, no getting mushy on us.”
Sam rolled his eyes and accepted a hug from both Mikey and Brian. After a beat and some foot shifting, Dean allowed himself to be hugged as well. “Alright, we gotta go. You two stay out of trouble.”
Brian snorted. “As if,” he quipped.
As the door slid closed and Dean and Sam made their way to the lift, Dean shook his head and sighed.
“What?” Sam prodded.
“That poor Mikey, the whole thing must have gotten to him.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked, his brow furrowing in worry.
“Well, clearly he was delusional,” Dean said, flinging his hands up dramatically. “There is no way you’re prettier than me.”
Sam clipped the back of Dean’s boot with his own, making Dean stumble and knock his elbow against the wall. Dean looked back at his brother, a dangerous smile on his face.
“Oh you’re dead,” he growled.
Author:
kellifer_ficCrossover: Supernatural/Queer as Folk
Rating: Adult (horror themes, language)
Written for:
ucp_ficathon for gothhuntressPrompts:A Demon haunts Michael’s Comic Shop
Notes: Please forgive any lapses like the layout of Mikey's comic book store. I'm working without a net!
Summary:“Wow, you’re really tall,” Mikey observed shakily as Sam stood to his full height. Mikey stretched his arms above his head and encountered nothing. “I’m kinda getting a ‘trapped down a well with no Lassie’ feeling,” he said as Sam dropped to one knee again and Mikey slid off backwards.
“Don’t worry,” Sam assured, smiling. “I have a Lassie.”
When they approached, Sam made the tiny mew of disappointment that Dean knew well. He didn’t need to turn around to know that on his brother’s face would be a mix of hurt and disappointment and the words spoken only a few moments after were as familiar as their own two names.
“We’re too late.”
The comic book store was dark and the police tape crisscrossing the entrance had to have been a week old. Part of it had come free and was dragging on the ground, the rasp of it like an accusation.
“You only had the dream three days ago. Looks like the party was over long before you got the invite,” Dean commented dryly, wanting to take the edge of Sam’s inevitable annoyance with himself. He knew there were black moods and recriminations ahead. Sometimes they just didn’t get there on time and nothing short of time travel would change it.
“Let’s check it out anyway,” Sam said, brushing past him so Dean was edged out of the way with a bony shoulder. Sam reached out a hand and tugged the remainder of the police tape free, shaking it from his fingers with a hiss of annoyance when it stuck. He then tentatively placed his palm against the front door and pushed. The door swung inward with no hindrance.
The interior was dark and there was a pungent smell, almost sickly sweet like drying apples. Sam wrinkled his nose and looked back at Dean, who shrugged and gestured for him to proceed. Glass crunched underfoot from the broken light fixtures and Sam looked back at Dean with a grin because he had been snapping the light switch up and down.
“Who the fuck are you?” A voice issued from the darkness and the brothers startled, Dean reaching for his sidearm automatically and cursing whatever had made him leave it in the car for once.
A man appeared in the slash of light left from the open doorway. He was tall and severe looking with green eyes and what looked like a tumbler half full of whiskey in hand. As he approached, he sidestepped clumsily and Dean relaxed a little, realising the man was drunk.
“We’re from the crime lab,” Dean said. “Just doing a follow-up.” He reached into his back pocket, brought forth his battered wallet and flipped it open and closed in one smooth movement, sliding it back home before the man had had a chance to lean forward and look at any ID that had been proffered. He blinked owlishly, snorted and made his unsteady way back to what looked like a display case with the front smashed out.
“I thought you guys were finished poking around and being useless,” he snapped and Dean blinked, looking the man over with a more careful eye. Dean knew what grief looked like and this man was painted in it. The man had reached forward to set the whiskey tumbler on the display case, not noticing that the top glass was gone so when he opened his fingers it fell through and smashed on the floor below. The man looked at it for a beat and then frowned. “Well, fuck me,” he sighed.
“Listen,” Sam began, moving forward with his hands out, ever the diplomat. “We only got very vague details about what happened here. Do you think you could tell us, without worrying about whether it sounds crazy?” Sam tilted his head and opened his eyes wide, one of his repertoire of sincere looks that usually won people over, but the man before them just narrowed his eyes and snorted.
“This isn’t the place to get your jollies. Go bother someone else.” He said this as he leant down to retrieve something from the floor. When he rose, there was a comic book in his hands which he passed fingers over almost reverentially. “Just leave us alone.”
Dean huffed and stepped forward, thinking that honesty was probably the best approach. “Look, we have no idea what happened here, but we know something bad went down and we’re in the habit of… we… deal with this kind of thing all the time.” The sickly sweet smell was getting stronger and Dean rubbed his nose.
The taller man turned and advanced on Dean, graceful despite his intoxication as if he were practiced at pulling it together if he needed to. “Either leave on your own or I’m putting you out on your ass,” he snarled and Dean tensed, standing his ground.
“Oh yeah, I’d like to see that,” he invited.
“Whoa, okay, we’re not here to make any trouble,” Sam interjected. “He’s telling the truth.”
“Yeah, it would be the first time tonight,” the man sneered. “He tried to pass off a library card as ID.”
Dean blinked. “How did you-?”
“I own a club. I’m used to the flick and hide. It helps that you’re particularly bad at it.”
Dean bristled. “Look dude, we’re in the habit of helping people, but I’m not being anyone’s punching bag. If you really want us gone, we’ll go.” Sam looked at him quickly, wanting to protest but Dean held up a hand in his direction. “Whatever happened here looks done anyway.”
The man seemed to deflate before them, all bravado draining from his body and he slid down the nearest wall, pulling his legs up to his chest. “Nobody can tell me what happened to him,” he said, his voice a broken whisper and Sam looked at Dean and then back at the man.
“I’m Sam and this is my brother, Dean. We’d like to help you if we can.”
His name was Brian and the owner of the comic book store was his best friend, a man named Mikey. He told them how the police swept through and basically concluded that the whole thing was an insurance scam. They hadn’t found a body but had spoken like Mikey was dead.
Brian hadn’t bought it for one second.
“I’d just, I know it’s stupid but I’d know.”
Dean watched his brother rub his temple, the headache that usually followed one of his particularly horrific visions still present, and grinned wryly. “Not so stupid,” he mused, watching as Brian moved about the store shuffling like an old man although he couldn’t have been much past his mid thirties. He was handsome in a slightly surreal way, all of his features a little too symmetrical. He had a languid way about him that became more evident as sobriety found him.
He was a man of excesses. Dean knew the type.
Dean also knew that he was devastated by the loss of his friend in a way that meant he wasn’t used to dealing with tragedy very often and it didn’t sit well with him. He was someone that would bully the result he desired using charm and his face and when it wasn’t a problem that could be fixed in that way, he was lost.
“When was the last time you saw Mikey?” Sam asked, having found a stool in the back and now sitting on it, his lanky frame perched at a weird angle. He had a notebook out and his face had the serious cast to it that meant he had launched into research-mode.
“He said he was going to work late to finish up some stuff and we were supposed to meet for coffee at about 2am. He never made it. I came here and the police were already surrounding the place. Apparently the neighbours across the street heard terrible noises and called the cops. There was…” Brian took a moment, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “They said there was a lot of blood where…” Brian gestured towards the back of the store. “I had a look before. I don’t think I can see that again.”
Sam looked to Dean who nodded grimly and made his way deeper into the store. The smell grew as he advanced, turning from dried apples to rotten ones. He found the doorway to the storeroom in the back ajar and pushed it open. There was a stack of boxes overturned and a streak of blood across the floor that ended abruptly at the wall. Dean hunkered down and touched fingers to the streak, finding it still tacky. He frowned, knowing that if everything had gone down a week earlier like they had supposed, then the blood should have been dried. He stood again and at eye level was a page of a comic book, stuck fast in the wall. He reached up and tugged but it didn’t move. It almost looked like the page was half in the wall.
“Find anything?” Sam’s head appeared around the doorway and Dean pointed at the page.
“Just that. Weird, huh?”
“The blood?”
“I don’t think it’s blood,” Dean said, frowning. “How long ago did Brian say this happened?”
“About five days,” Sam said, shrugging and moving into the room. He grasped the piece of comic book page and tugged.
“I tried that,” Dean sighed, rolling his eyes.
“Oh really?” Sam snapped, tugging harder. When the page refused to come free Dean smirked, but the smile fell from his face.
“Let it go,” he said urgently, horrified at the way the bright splashes of colour of the comic seemed to be curling tendrils up Sam’s hand. Sam grunted when he tried pulling his hand free, the fingers refusing to unclasp.
“Dean,” he said, his voice edged with panic. “I can’t feel my hand.”
Dean wrapped both hands around Sam’s wrist, yanking hard but the colours edged their way under his hands, making his skin itch. He yanked harder when fingers of red, blue and green arced up Sam’s bicep and raced across his shoulder. “Oh hell no,” Dean growled, putting his foot flat on the wall to gain some leverage as he and Sam both leaned their full weight backwards, trying to pull free.
“It’s getting… Christ!” Sam yelped, tilting his head away to no avail when vibrant purple chased across his throat and up one cheek. Blue etched a path across his lips and a spike of dark red flowed over one eye. It looked as if Sam was being painted but what was more horrifying was that he was now almost elbow deep in the wall.
Dean darted out of the room, coming around to the other side but finding nothing but blameless wall. He raced back to the shopfront and lifted the stool Sam had been using, running back to the storeroom with it. He found the storeroom empty.
“Sam!” he yelled raggedly, hefting the stool and then swinging it with all his strength at the wall. The stool smashed into pieces. Brian appeared in the doorway.
“What happened?” he asked, looking stricken and watching Dean drop broken chair pieces from shaking hands.
“I think I know what happened to your friend,” Dean said, his voice hollow. He thumped the wall with a fist.
The half comic page was gone.
There were tentative hands on his face and Sam jerked awake, scrabbling backwards. He took a moment to look around; breathing hard, until he noticed the smaller man crouched in front of him, hands out.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“I…think so,” Sam said, holding his hands out in front of himself. There was nothing but pink skin and the dark olive green of his jacket and for that small mercy he was grateful. “Where am I?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that,” the man said, shrugging.
“Are you Mikey?” Sam hazarded, pushing himself to his feet. The man before him certainly fit the description, dark haired with a wide smiling face and compact. He was looking at his hands but his head jerked up when Sam asked.
“Yes! How did you get here? Where is here?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Sam sighed, looking about himself. They were in what looked like a small cell with no doors and windows, just dirt walls. “Doesn’t look good, does it?”
“No, it really doesn’t,” Mikey agreed.
Dean broke three more chairs, bent his pocket knife blade and had nearly broken his toes on the wall by the time Brian was able to coax him away. “Pounding on it obviously isn’t doing anything,” he pointed out, steering Dean back into the front room.
“It happened back there, right?” Dean asked, dropping himself into the only chair left not broken.
“I guess so,” Brian agreed, leaning over and taking one of Dean’s hands, looking at the bloodied knuckles that he’d gotten from beating them against the brickwork. His breath still had the tang of whiskey on it but his eyes were clear.
“Then what’s with the trashed front?” Dean had always assumed Sam was the smart one of the family, not giving enough credence to the low cunning he had been blessed with that meant not a lot escaped his attention and he could make connections with a fluid mental grace that was rare.
Brian frowned, stepping back and looking around the store as if seeing it for the first time. “I don’t know, I just assumed vandals had a go before the police got here because the store was empty.”
Dean had stood also and was now walking a slow circuit around, casting his gaze over everything and then finally coming back to the display case in the middle. “All the damage is pretty incidental, and it all radiates out from here. Someone wanted to take focus away from the fact that this had been broken open.” Dean leaned down and fingered the lock on the display case and then passed his hand through where glass would have been. “What was in here?”
“Some figurines and just… I don’t know, junk.”
“Valuable to someone,” Dean commented, scrunching up his nose and canting his head. “Anything recent?”
Brian scratched his temple, huffing and then snapped his fingers. “Yeah, there was this weird comic book Mikey got in the mail. No return address or who it was from. Mikey thought it was fun to have a mystery but the book… I didn’t like it.”
Dean straightened, smoothing hands down his jean legs. “Why not?”
“I don’t know, it was just… creepy looking.” Brian leaned across the front counter and retrieved a couple of other books that had survived the trashing. “Mikey had some horror books,” he said, holding them up for Dean to see. “A lot of rotting corpses and evil guys, the usual stuff. This book, it had no title and there were just all these… people on the cover. They didn’t look horrible or disfigured or anything… just kinda lost.”
“Freaky.”
“Yeah, and the inside wasn’t like a normal comic, no panels or anything. It was black pages with silver writing and it was all just… boring little stories. Some guy is going down the store to get milk, some chick is nursing her baby, stuff like that.”
“You still got what it came in?”
Brian shrugged. “I have no idea. Mikey’s office is next to the storeroom so we can have a look.”
Mikey looked up at Sam. “Tell me we’re going to be fine,” he implored, nothing on his face to say that he would actually buy it, but wanting to hear it anyway.
“We’ll be fine,” Sam assured, squeezing his shoulder and Mikey blinked at him.
“Wow, I almost believed you.”
“Believe me,” Sam chuckled. “I’ve been in worse situations.”
Mikey crossed his arms and leaned back against the opposite wall. “Okay, I find that hard to believe. You, if what happened to you was the same as me, got sucked through a wall and ended up in an oubliette.”
“Well, this one time…wait, oubliette?”
Mikey grimaced. “I got it from Labyrinth. A cell with no doors or windows.”
Sam frowned. “No, an oubliette is a room or a dungeon with only a trapdoor in the ceiling.”
Mikey grinned. “Wow, it’s been a long time since I haven’t been the geekiest person in the room,” he said, but then looked up slowly, following Sam’s gaze. Although the muted light in the room was enough to see each other and the walls, the ceiling of the room was in total darkness. Sam stretched up but his fingertips failed to touch anything.
He looked at Mikey and smiled. “Do you mind?” he asked, indicating the roof and then himself. Mikey sighed and stepped up onto Sam’s knee when he knelt, letting Sam swing him around until he was on his shoulders.
“Wow, you’re really tall,” Mikey observed shakily as Sam stood to his full height. Mikey stretched his arms above his head and encountered nothing. “I’m kinda getting a ‘trapped down a well with no Lassie’ feeling,” he added as Sam dropped to one knee again and Mikey slid off backwards.
“Don’t worry,” Sam said, smiling. “I have a Lassie.”
“Why didn’t you say you had surveillance tapes?” Dean demanded as soon as he spotted the two monitors on the desk. They were currently off, but Dean practically skipped over to the desk, leaning forward to thumb the power on both. One of the screens showed nothing but snow but the other showed a canted angel of the street and the front door.
“Because the cops took the hard drive,” Brian said, patting the blank space in the shelving next to the desk. Dean grinned at him, pulling the flash drive on the shelf beneath forward.
“I’m hoping your friend is anal,” he said and then scowled when Brian just cocked an eyebrow and snorted. Instead he went back to the front of the store and retrieved Sam’s backpack, pulling the laptop free as he went. He set it down on the desk and flipped it open, plugging the flash drive into the laptop and drumming his fingers impatiently as the laptop flickered to life.
“So, do this type of thing often?” Brian asked, sitting on the free edge of desk.
“Not specifically this, but yeah. This type of thing.” Dean frowned. “I… certainly lose my brother more often than I’d like,” he added, tapping the keys necessary to bring up the flash drives contents. “Bingo,” he breathed when a list of files appeared, all dated. It looked as if he had everything up to six days earlier.
“We’re missing the day we need,” Brian remarked, leaning over Dean’s shoulder to have a look.
“Not necessarily,” Dean held up a finger and double tapped the file from the day previous to the disappearance. He used the scroll bar at the bottom to flash by a small guy with dark hair entering the store and then opening it to the public. A couple of kids came in and then a younger blonde guy who stayed for what looked like an hour, chatting and helping to unload some boxes.
“He’s a friend,” Brian said cryptically when Dean looked at him and Dean shrugged, going back to the screen. After an hour and towards the end of the day by the time stamp on the footage, a man entered the store and Dean automatically slowed the action, instinctively knowing that he was who he was searching for.
“It would help if there was sound,” Dean grumbled, watching the grainy black and white image of the man making a show of coasting around the store before he finally came to perch by the display case, placing his hands to the top and leaning over it, his nose practically pressed to the glass.
“It’s the middle of summer. Why is he wearing an overcoat?”
“You noticed that too, huh?” Dean leaned forward, squinting at the screen. “There’s something wrong with him,” he noted, indicating with a brush of his finger the line of the man’s shoulders and how one shoulder was practically up by his ear while the other looked misshapen to such an extent that the heavy coat did precious little to disguise it. They watched as Mikey approached the coated figure. The man stabbed a finger against the top of the display case and then thumped his own chest. Mikey shook his head, holding up his hands, automatically wary of the man’s aggressive demeanour. When denied, the man glowered, but then turned with a swirl of coat and strode out of the store. Mikey watched him go, seemingly rooted to the spot. He then dug a set of keys out of his pocket and opened the display case, pulling a comic free and disappearing from view.
“Ah hell! No camera in the storeroom I’m guessing,” Dean said, his tone not very hopeful and then swore when Brian shook his head.
“Oh hey,” Brian said leaning sideways and pulling something from the trashcan. “It’s still here.” He held a brown envelope aloft, about the same size as a comic book. His brow furrowed when he looked at it and then held it out for Dean’s inspection. “Looks like it came to the wrong place,” he remarked, tapping the address with a finger.
“How far is that from here?” Dean asked, loathe to leave the last place he’d seen his brother, but knowing they were running out of options.
“About half an hour,” Brian said, standing and stepping towards the door. Dean stayed him with a hand to the shoulder.
“Look, I got this. It might be-“
“The fuck you do,” Brian snarled. “Mikey is one of the few good things in this shitty world.”
Dean looked at Brian and then shrugged. “Okay, but stay out of my way and do what I tell you.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “As if,” he snorted, striding out of the office and Dean sighed.
They were sitting across from each other in the small room, the tininess accentuated by the mere fact that their feet were touching.
“So, how is it you know this is something supernatural and not just some serial killer who slipped a hallucinogen into our drinks?” Mikey asked, one eyebrow raised.
“You should be dead,” Sam answered, shrugging lightly, the raise and fall of his shoulders making the cloth covering them whisper against the dirt walls.
“I should be… hmmm.” Mikey tapped his chin with a finger, frowning. “Why is that?”
“By my reckoning, you’ve been in this room for about five days, not counting the time I’ve been in here which feels like another day at least. So, are you feeling the slightest bit thirsty? Maybe a little peckish?”
Mikey blinked, his mouth dropping open in an ‘o’ of surprise. “Oh my god,” he breathed. “I should be dead!”
Sam grinned, tapping his feet against Mikey’s.
“Yep, I can see how they mistook Mikey’s comic book store for this place,” Dean remarked dryly, hands on his hips and squinting at the darkened façade they were standing in front of. The windows of the store were blacked out with flaking paint and the whole place had a drunken lean to it. There were empty lots on either side and the grass that touched the building was brown. A sign above the cracked door said ‘Occult Bookshoppe’.
“Can I have one of those?” Brian asked, eyeing Dean’s revolver which Dean had pulled out to check once and then slip back into his jeans.
Dean looked at Brian incredulously. “Of course not,” he snapped. “I’m not really in the mood for getting shot in the ass.”
“How do you know I don’t know how to use a gun?” Brian asked, scowling. Dean snorted and grabbed one of Brian’s hands, holding the fingers up to the light. He held his own free hand up beside it, running a thumb over his calluses and the cracked skin that had dirt so ingrained that he would never get them completely clean. He then ran a finger over Brian’s neat nails. Brian rolled his eyes and snatched his hand back. “So you want me to go into the haunted shop with just my dick in my hand?” he asked and Dean chuckled.
Brian was crass in a way Dean could appreciate.
“Whatever makes you happy,” Dean shrugged, walking up to the door and pushing it open with the tip of his index finger. He looked back at Brian and quirked an eyebrow. “Doesn’t anyone lock their doors anymore?”
They entered slowly, both looking around. On either side of the doorway were tall bookshelves, stuffed with ancient looking tomes. There was a coffee table and an overstuffed couch sitting off to the side in front of a blackened fireplace and then more bookshelves beyond that. The whole place had a musty smell but just below that, a faint trace of rotten apples.
“I think this might be-“
“Can I help you guys?”
Both Dean and Brian jerked sideways and looked at the young man who was standing beside one of the bookshelves, watching them with a mix of curiosity and amusement. He was in his early twenties, wearing a too-big shirt and a baseball cap and looked completely out of place.
Dean was the expert on out of place.
“Where are they?” he demanded, reaching behind himself and putting fingers on his gun. The wide, open grin on the guy fell away and one lip curled up in a snarl.
“Big mistake,” he growled and large black, wet and leathery looking wings unfurled from his back.
“That’s something you don’t see everyday,” Brian said, a tremble in his voice.
“Crap,” Dean sighed, pulling his gun free.
Sam had been turned to the side and was running fingers along the walls while Mikey napped. About shoulder height on him and a little higher, there were deep gouges in the wall. He felt upwards and they stopped just a little below where he could reach while stretching himself to the limit. He knew what they were and hoped Mikey hadn’t seen them in the dim light.
Somebody had tried to climb out and hadn’t gotten very far.
“Don’t worry, I’ve already seen them,” Mikey said, sitting up and half his face disappearing in a giant yawn.
Sam turned and flushed, hunkering back down so they were eye level. “Sorry, I didn’t want to make it any more horrible for you.”
“You haven’t made this horrible,” Mikey said, smiling. “If anything, you’re making this a little easier to stand. If I’d been in here by myself much longer I probably would’ve gone insane.”
“Glad to help,” Sam said, rolling his eyes at how cheesy it sounded.
“At least I have something nice to look at,” Mikey quipped, laughing when Sam flushed bright red.
“I’m sorry… I’m not really, I mean I don’t… ah hell,” Sam blurted, rubbing the back of his head.
“Don’t worry, I’m not hitting on you. One overly tall and unattainably pretty man in my life is enough.”
Sam blushed more furiously. “I’m not…you think I’m pretty?” he asked, the immediate desire to kick himself arising as soon as he’d said it.
Mikey rolled his eyes. “Oh my lord, pretty and oblivious. That’s a new one.”
“I didn’t, I mean Dean’s always been the pretty one,” Sam explained, the desire to kick himself growing stronger with how absurd a conversation he was having.
“I don’t know who Dean is, but he’d have to be more than pretty to make you think you’re the dowdy one,” Mikey said, his face earnest. “Don’t worry, I know what it’s like being the nice one people climb over to get to the one they want to fuck.”
Sam let out a choked laugh of shock. “Hey, I was married.”
“Let me guess, the one girl that didn’t look at this Dean person first. You thought, this one’s a keeper, am I right?”
“Way off,” Sam sighed, although he’d never admit that he’d secretly been a little thrilled every time he’d mentioned Dean and Jess had made a face.
When Mikey tried to stand, he made a hurt noise and looked down at his leg. His left foot was fine but the right one was grey, like the colour had bled out of it. His sneaker and the skin showing just under the cuff of his pants are exactly the same non-colour.
“Oh that can’t be good,” Mikey said, the first flutterings of panic in his voice.
“C’mon Dean,” Sam whispered, helping Mikey back to the floor. “Save our asses.”
“Do guns usually work?” Brian snapped as they cowered behind a storeroom door and the furniture they’d hastily piled against it, Dean furiously reloading. He’d already emptied twice into the thing that was stalking them through the store and he was down to his last few rounds.
“Surprisingly often,” Dean responded. “I found a guy about three months ago that made me some ammo with a little bit of everything.” There was a frustrated growl from the front of the store and smashing noises before the whole wall the door was seated in trembled and dust rained down on them from the ceiling. “All of these babies have a tiny sliver of wood, some consecrated earth, a little silver, a little gold and a couple of other things. If this guy isn’t going down then I’m fast running outta ideas.”
There was another almighty crash and a chunk of the door came free, one arm with long taloned fingers reaching through. Dean stood, put his gun flush against the creatures hand and pulled the trigger. Black ichor exploded outwards in an arc and there was a terrible howl and the arm was pulled back through the door.
Brian had scooted forwards, away from the door and he let out a little yell of triumph, pulling a trapdoor in the floor open. “We might be able to get out,” he said, waving Dean over.
“Here’s hoping,” Dean agreed, following Brian down into the dank cellar beneath. They stopped short when they both realised that it was a bare room with no doors or windows, just an old podium in the middle and sitting on top of it was what looked like a comic book.
“Tell me this is it!” Dean demanded, running over to the podium and looking at the book set in the centre. The cover was filled with depictions of people and Dean had to agree, it was creepy. They all looked hollow-eyed and gaunt and yes, the description ‘lost’ was an apt one. “Oh hell no,” Dean breathed.
“What?” Brian demanded.
Dean held up the book, tapping the bottom corner of the cover.
“Look familiar?” he asked, indicating two figures that stood a little apart from the others. One was short and dark haired, looking up at the taller, shaggy haired one who was stooping, shoulders hunched in a way Dean would recognise anywhere.
“How do we get them out?” Brian asked.
At that moment, there was a crashing sound from the upstairs and then something was scrabbling at the trapdoor. The trap door was ripped away and a dark figure darted through. Dean held up his gun, shouldering Brian behind himself but then inspiration hit him. As the creature advanced, he turned his gun and pressed it to the comic.
The creature stopped dead.
“Put that down,” it rasped, darting a blue tinged tongue out to swipe across its lips, its eyes gleaming in the dim light.
“I don’t think so,” Dean snarled, pulling the trigger.
The floor seemed to fall out from under them and the next moment Sam landed on something hard that was swearing loudly. He pulled himself up and off Dean and grinned. “Took you long enough,” he said, letting Dean pull him into a relieved hug.
Sam got up, brushing dust off himself and then looked at the figure lying prone on the ground, ragged bullet holes covering its chest. What looked like a comic book lay beside it, holes through its cover.
“That was crazy,” Brian breathed, helping Mikey to his feet and squeezing him until Mikey protested about a lack of oxygen.
“What was that?” Sam asked, wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell.
“Something very different,” Dean said, prodding the body with a boot. He turned to see that Mikey was eyeing him quizzically and raised an eyebrow. “What?”
Mikey leaned around Dean to raise an eyebrow at Sam. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to disagree. You’re definitely prettier.”
“Hey!” Dean snapped as the others laughed.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you guys again,” Brian said.
They were standing in the doorway of his loft, having had some coffee and all having taken a turn in the shower and Dean and Sam both wearing clothing supplied by Brian. Dean had been particularly chuffed with the soft-as-butter black leather jacket he’d been handed without a word until Sam had smirked at him and told him to stop preening.
Dean grinned. “We get that a lot.”
“If you get a mysterious comic book in the mail that is a demon’s conduit to the world and sucks souls in to keep it living, what do you do?” Sam prompted and Mikey grinned.
“Burn it as fast as I can,” Mikey nodded and there was laughter again. “Seriously, you guys-“
Dean held up his hands, backing out of the doorway. “Uh, uh, no getting mushy on us.”
Sam rolled his eyes and accepted a hug from both Mikey and Brian. After a beat and some foot shifting, Dean allowed himself to be hugged as well. “Alright, we gotta go. You two stay out of trouble.”
Brian snorted. “As if,” he quipped.
As the door slid closed and Dean and Sam made their way to the lift, Dean shook his head and sighed.
“What?” Sam prodded.
“That poor Mikey, the whole thing must have gotten to him.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked, his brow furrowing in worry.
“Well, clearly he was delusional,” Dean said, flinging his hands up dramatically. “There is no way you’re prettier than me.”
Sam clipped the back of Dean’s boot with his own, making Dean stumble and knock his elbow against the wall. Dean looked back at his brother, a dangerous smile on his face.
“Oh you’re dead,” he growled.
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