Title: The Firefighter, The Witch and The Closet
Author: Silverkitsune
Part: 1 of 5
Pairings: None
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Summary: Dean's apple pie life was going along quite nicely until a man stole his brother.
Warnings: Depending on what character you're talking to this may or may not be an AU.
Spoilers: Through Nightmare in Season one
Author's note: Special thanks to my very good friend Christie for her words of encouragement.
Chapter 1- Dean Winchester, Firefighter
"Sweet Jesus Sammy, you are the king of all geek boys!" Cradling the phone between his chin and shoulder, Dean tossed the flat popcorn bag into the microwave and punched in the appropriate time.
"Your finals are done. You're on vacation. Mom, dad and big brother are all out of the house for the night, and I call expecting to hear a party in the background. Instead you tell me you're reading?" he exclaimed, heading for the fridge. "What could you possibly need to do more reading for?"
On the other end of the line, his younger brother chuckled. "Dean, I know this is going to be shocking for you to hear, but some people, not many, but some, read for fun."
Dean snorted. "I raised you better than to be one of those people."
Sam laughed again. "Shouldn't you be off bonding with your fellow firefighters as you lay in wait for a cat to get stuck up a tree?"
The microwave bell dinged, and Dean set the two pops he'd retrieved from the fridge on top of the counter.
"We've bonded already. We're practically crazy glued to one another," Dean responded, holding the bag between his two fingers and shaking it.
"What do you want, Dean?"
"I want you to be a good little nerd and bring your ultra cool big brother his phone."
"What?" Sam cried. "No way! I'm not walking to your apartment in the snow."
"Those puny flakes?" Dean asked incredulously. "California has made you soft. This is nothing."
"Come on Dean," Sam sighed. "I'm ready to pass out over here. I was going to fall asleep with my nose in a paperback and not a textbook for once. Do you know how much I've missed paperbacks?"
"Please Sammy-" Dean begged leaning his hip against the firehouse's kitchen table.
"Don't call me that."
"Come on man. I'm expecting a call."
Dean could practically hear Sam roll his eyes. "Is your call from a girl? Are you joking?"
"I never joke about the ladies," Dean said with a smirk.
"Dean-"
"Winchester!" Jeffery's voice shouted from the living room. "What the hell are you doing in there? The game is starting."
"I'm coming. Give me five freaking minutes," Dean called back. Returning his attention to his brother, he ran a hand through his short hair. "Come on Sammy, I really like this girl."
"You always say that," Sam whined.
"You can drive the Impala."
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line.
"Really?"
Gathering up the popcorn and the cans of pop, Dean started for the living room. "About the car or the girl?"
"Both."
Dean sighed, "Yes, really. Dad and I were checking the breaks. We finished yesterday, but I got a ride to work so the car is still in the garage. Mom's extra set of keys should be in the basket on the kitchen counter." He dropped the snacks in front of Jeffery, a shorter, round faced black man five years his senior who gave Dean a nod of thanks before cracking open his drink. "Take the car, drive over to my place, get my phone, drop it off here, and then you can go home and live out your ultra dork existence."
"Well," Sam said hesitantly. "Alright, fine."
"Awesome. I'll be waiting." Dean shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth. "And Sammy," he said around chews.
"Yeah?"
"If you screw up my car, I'll kill you."
The dial tone was his only answer.
Grinning, Dean flopped down onto the seat next to Jeffery.
"What's the score?" he asked grabbing another handful of popcorn.
Jeffery pointed an accusing finger at the screen. "We're losing, because of him."
"The rookie?" Dean asked leaning forward. "Again?"
"Damn hot dog doesn't seem to know how to pass the ball," Jeffery grumbled.
Picking up his pop, Jeffery took a long pull, and belched.
"Go put that thing back on the charger before we lose it again," he said, motioning to the portable phone Dean had been using only moments ago.
"When a commercial comes on," Dean said, leaning back into the couch cushions.
"There's a commercial on now," Jeffery responded sweetly giving Dean a toothy grin.
"No there's not." Dean looked up at the T.V., and saw that the basketball game had been replaced by a cuddly teddy bear advertising fabric softener.
Throwing Jeffery a dark look, Dean snatched the phone off the table and stormed back into the kitchen.
"You're a bastard," he called over his shoulder.
The charger hung on the wall in the back of the kitchen next to the closet that they had turned into an extra food pantry years before Dean joined the department. Dropping the phone into the waiting slot, Dean turned smartly on his heels and started to make his way back to the other room when he heard a crash followed by a litany of muffled curses sound out from behind the flimsy wooden door.
Dean froze.
Grabbing one of the kitchen chairs by the legs Dean hefted it into the air. Keeping the chair's back facing the door he grabbed the doorknob, twisted the handle, and pulled. The kitchen light wasn't strong enough to flood the closet, but just enough managed to trickle into the smaller room to show off the recently restocked shelves of canned vegetables and dry cereals. A can of tomato soup rolled past his feet, and Dean kicked it out of the way. The back wall of the room was thick with shadows, but he could make out a shape pressed against the brick. Dean narrowed his eyes and stepped forward.
"Come out of there," Dean snapped.
The shape didn't move. Dean could feel a penetrating gaze slide over him, and he felt a cold chill run through his body. His fingers reflexively tightened around his makeshift weapon.
"Now," Dean barked. "Come out now."
There was a sigh, and the figure moved out of the shadows and into the light.
Dean blinked once, twice, three times, each time hoping that when he opened his eyes he wouldn't see his own face staring back at him. It was a much dirtier version of his face, shiny with sweat and streaked with dirt, but still his face. In fact, there were a lot of things he had assumed belonged only to him that were now staring back. His green eyes, his short blond hair, his lips, his hands, hell even his very annoyed expression, the one he'd been sporting only moments ago now were in the possession of another. Dean had been robbed plenty of times in his life, but never of something as important as his face.
The man held his hands out in front of him. There was a worn out map clenched in his left fist, and Dean could make out a thin, obviously hand drawn line running up one of the sides. The other man looked from Dean, to the chair, and then back to Dean. He walked slowly, stepping around the cans of soup that now littered the ground. One of the jars of spaghetti sauce lay broken on the floor, and the face stealer must have stepped in it because he left a trail of sloppy red prints behind him.
Cheers erupted from the other room, Jeffery's voice mingling among the hundreds of voices that leapt out of the speakers.
Rookie must have made a basket, Dean thought dumbly as he backed away from the approaching figure.
What he suspected was dried blood from an already clotted cut ran down the right side of the other man's temple. Mud was splashed across his leather coat, and there was dust streaked across his torn jeans.
"Who the hell are you?" Dean asked.
The grin thrown back at his question was yet another piece of Dean's property, and he got a queasy feeling in his stomach at the sight of it. That grin had been Dean's since he was five, the one that had never failed at getting him a date on Saturday night or the extra cookie when he was a kid. How careless he must have been with it to have made it so easy for this stranger to pinch it off of him.
"No one important," his own voice answered. "In fact, I'm so unimportant that you can pretend this was all some freaky dream, and go back to doing," he took an interested glance at Dean's uniform, "Whatever it is that you were doing before I showed up. I'll just move on. Get out of your hair." He started for the door.
"No," Dean said, lifting the chair a little higher. "What the hell is this? Is this a prank? What's going on?"
"Nothing is going on that you need to know about," his voice reassured him. "Now get out of my way."
Dean didn't move. "What are you?" he asked softly.
The other man's stolen eyes narrowed.
"Irritated," he snapped. "And you know what? I do not have time to play Fox Mulder."
The chair was knocked out of Dean's hands before he could even register that the other man was moving. It crashed to the floor, sliding across the tile and into the kitchen cabinets. Dean heard Jeffery shout something at him from the other room. The other man shot past him. Dean grabbed the back of his coat, yanking him back to his side, but was unprepared for the punch his nose received at the maneuver. Whatever this was it could move like a cat.
The punch was hard enough to send him to the ground, his head hitting the tile with a painful thud. Stunned, he waited for the stream of colorful beams and spots to stop swimming across his eyes before sitting up. He groaned at the sight of the blood that coated his hand from his still bleeding nose. The floor vibrated slightly, and Dean looked up to see Jeffery kneeling next to him.
"Winchester. What the hell?"
Dean didn't answer, just scrambled to his feet and took off after his own personal doppelganger.
The trail was easy enough to follow thanks to the fading red spaghetti sauce prints the other man was leaving behind. The living area was on the second floor, the only exit through the garage, and Dean was confident that he would be able to catch the other man before he could make it onto the Lawrence city streets. He sprinted down the hall, taking a sharp turn onto the staircase before thundering down to the station's lower level. Darting around the trucks and the firehouse's ambulance he caught sight of the dirty leather coat, but he jerked to a stop when he saw what stood in front of it.
There were still bits of snow melting in Sam's shaggy brown hair, but even with the ungodly bangs hanging in his eyes, Dean could still see the worried look that shone out of them. His younger brother's hand hovered over the other man's cut temple.
"Sam, get away from him!" Dean cried, running straight for the leather coat, intending to tackle the thing to the ground.
Surprised, Sam looked from Dean to the dirty man in front of him, his hand frozen in mid-air. Before Sam could react, his outstretch hand was grabbed, his arm twisted behind him. Another arm came across his throat as he was pulled against the man he'd moments ago thought was his brother.
"Stop!" There was his voice again. Coming from another mouth, another set of vocal chords was his voice. Dean stopped so quickly he almost stumbled over his own two feet. He never thought he'd hear his own voice giving him orders, or that he would be so fast to obey them.
The two of them stared at one another, green eyes sizing up green eyes. Dean was sure that the only thing moving in the entire station was his own rapidly beating heart. He was grateful that the doppelganger hadn't stolen that from him as well.
"Let him go," Dean growled.
"Dean?" Sam questioned, his voice shaky.
"It's going to be fine, Sammy," Dean responded.
"It is?"
"Yeah," the voice of the doppelganger responded. "It is."
His brother twisted in an attempt to get a better look at what held him, but firm hands kept him in place.
"What do you want?" Dean hissed.
"Nothing either of you have," the man responded. It backed up several steps, pulling Sam with him, heading to the door. Dean tried to follow, but the move was rewarded by the doppelganger tightening the grip he had on Sam's wrist and throat.
"Stay there," the other man said again, his voice covering the whimper Dean was sure Sam had let out. "I'm not here to hurt anybody."
"That's not what it looks like," Dean said.
It was so strange to see his own face roll its eyes at him that he almost began to laugh.
"Well, this wasn't exactly Plan A," the doppelganger said, frustrated. It seemed to collect itself, and dragging Sam across the last few feet of floor it came to the door. "Stay in here. You stay in here and everything will be fine." He gave Dean a mega watt grin. "I promise." The handle twisted, and the doppelganger disappeared into the cold night, taking his brother with.