Disclaimer: Supernatural is property of the Kripke.

A/N: What my brain does with Season 1 DVDs, and I disclaim all knowledge.

Summary: There are bad things, out there in the dark.

NIGHTMARE THINGS

Mike met Lucas Barr when Asher brought him home from school two years after the monster attack.

"Mike! This is my friend Lucas," Asher bounced through the back door into their living room.

At the table, algebra textbook spread open in front of him and front desk directly through the open door, Mike looked up. Lucas was two years younger than him, a year older than Asher, red hair more deliberately long than the forgot-to-get-it-cut blond strands of the Nicholson brothers.

"Nice to meet you," he said after a minute.

"Zeppelin rules," Lucas answered with a wide grin.

Mike blinked, feeling a smile work across his face. "Oh, hell yeah."

And they were friends.

So the first time Michael flipped out on them for being out, alone, after dark, Lucas only tilted his head, peering out at him from under the spill of orange he called hair. Asher had stormed off to their room, yelling about bossy big brothers with control complexes.

"Why're you so freaked, man?"

They'd been friends for two years now, Michael in the high school leaving Asher and Lucas still at the elementary building. He was coming home even later, expecting to find his baby brother at home waiting. Today he hadn't.

"It's just . . . dangerous out there," was the answer he gave everyone, but Lucas only blinked.

"Well, yeah."

Pressed against the cabinets, one fist still throbbing against the counter, Michael struggled with words. "I'm not just talking about the druggies and the pervs and the drunk drivers, man. There're . . . things, out there. It's – it's not safe." The shadows weren't empty. But Asher didn't know that.

"Yeah." From the distant look in his eyes, Lucas knew.

So Michael told him, the first person ever, about the black-cloaked monster that had slipped into their window and sucked out a piece his brother's soul. About the two guys, brothers, who had rolled into town with guns and balls and the know-how to kill it. Who'd left a stack of bills to cover their way for the credit card that had bounced not long after they'd cleared out.

And Asher had gotten better.

He didn't say how they'd also left him feeling not alone in this scary new world, with the faintest trace of an idea of what it might be like to have an older brother, rather than being one, for a change.

Lucas' eyes had widened at the description of the brothers and their ride, and Michael thought, huh. "So, what happened to you?" he finally got up the courage to ask. Later, Mike didn't think he would have been able to if he hadn't seen the light of recognition in his friend's eyes when he talked about them.

And finally, finally he got their names. Sam and Dean.

"When he was a kid," Lucas said finally, "my grampie killed another kid by accident. Drowned him in the lake." Lake Manitoc, where the younger boy had lived, which had dried up years ago and the town had followed. "His spirit was angry. Killed my dad." The last was a mere whisper. "Tried to kill my mom. Sam saved her."

Michael could tell there was something more, but even that was more than enough. Lucas' mom was nice. He swallowed.

"And Dean kept it from drowning me," Lucas said finally.

It didn't explain how sometimes Lucas would go very quiet, and there was nothing for it but to leave him with his sketchpad and pencils to draw it out into something tangible, something he could see with his eyes instead of his mind. But Mike thought that maybe it was a piece of the puzzle.

It was an hour before Asher opened their bedroom door, emerging with the barest apology and a scowl, but volunteering to do all the dishes that night and jumping to the front desk before Michael could shift away from his homework.

Lucas stayed, too.

Fin