Hey all, thank you so much again for your reviews and continued interest can't believe we're at chapter four already...doesn't time fly when we're all having fun?! New development in the case coming up in this installment but will it be good or bad?

Minnie1015, Hey, look at you being all first on the review list! Yeah, couldn't resist bringing Bo back. I mean, who else is going to try to help them out? Haha. You can keep your eyes on whoever makes you happy, but I won't be saying anything either way!

Wolfgirl2013, Aww, thanks you lovely personage you! I hope you enjoy this one, this was one of my favorite chapters to write because it's always so much easy when the guys are together bouncing off one another being big kids!

LHisawesome4ever, I'm the same too. Even if the other person is lovely it takes me time to warm up to newcomers in my friendship groups! I figure Dean would be the same because he covets his brothers so much. Of course we would be grumpy rather than talking it through! He's a man!

Mandy, Thank you, my mum just needs an operation now and then hopefully we'll be good to go! Glad you're happy that Bo blundered back in. I might be addicted to him, I can't seem to not try and put him into these somewhere. Lots of Seth in this one too.

SkittlezLvr79, Well, in Bo's defence, impregnate and implicate do sound pretty similar...no, you're right, he's just an idiot! Oooh, glad I'm making it vague. I mean, I was hoping I was but it's good to hear it from you. Can't wait to read your guesses (and quietly cry if they're right first time!)

Derick Lindsey, I think if it were anyone other than Bo then Dean would have murdered them a long time ago, but there's just something about Dallas I guess! There is some bonding in this one, but not with Mark, I figured Dean just needed some quality time with his boys! Hope you like it!

Daisysakura, Bo totally needs protecting, frankly how he made it this far in life is a mystery! I figure he probably has lucky genes or something (because they ain't smart ones that's for sure). Dean has some fun in this one teasing the others about Mark, hopefully it makes you laugh!

Skovko, Okay, I'm picturing you giving Bo a belly scratch and him doing the involuntary hind leg kicking out thing that dogs do. That's totally a Bo sort of move to pull right? He would also have his tongue lolling out because...well, because it's Bo so he just would!

Kirrak, Yay! I'm glad you love Bo as much as I do. He's such a crazy little kook and he makes everything better...well, except for Dean. Mostly he tends to make things far worse for Dean, but on the plus side at least it's super fun to write and (I like to think) read as well. Bo for President!

Cherry619, Heehee, Bo is just the kind of guy that lurches from one calamity to the next but I suppose on the plus side, he's usually doing it for the best of intentions! Heart of gold, IQ lower than the average room temperature, but that's the way we love him, right?!

Rebel8954, I think even by Bo's standards incorrectly using the word impregnate in a sentence takes the cake! No wonder Mark thought the boy was mad! Yep, totally a delicate truce between them right now and you're not the only one who's cautious, since so are Seth and Roman as well...

On we go then...


Bluebird is Dead

Mark headed home sometime early in the evening having decided that nine hours was a pretty solid first stint back and likely still reeling from his encounter with the informant whose entrance and personality had been the highlight of that. Or possibly the lowlight. It was kind of fifty-fifty but either way he had stood and stretched from his spot at the table, having taken the hint and given Dean his desk back, then cracked his spine and rubbed a hand across his stubble,

"Think I'm gonna have to call it a night."

Dean had blinked up from the light of his computer and been surprised to find the world outside lying thickly black and punctuated only by tiny orbs of starlight and the bright glow of the security light on the building opposite.

He had nodded,

"Uh, sure man, see you tomorrow?"

"Bright and early kid."

Roman and Seth had still been out but had left a half scrawled note of semi-explanation that they were heading to the crime scene to give the place a scope around but would be back in time to update him on their progress and so to that end Dean had decided it was best to stay put, relocating himself across to the sofa with a box of the old and vaguely watermarked case files. He wasn't sure when he had fallen asleep precisely and nor was he even convinced that he had, but Roman shaking his shoulder seemed conclusive and so did his waking confusion,

"Uce?"

"Huh, wha – ,"

"Easy babe, whoa, just take it easy."

Dean blinked into the overhead lights that one of his returning teammates had flipped on again to counter the swirling black of the night and then took in the brown eyed expression smiling back at him,

"Wha' t'me is it?"

"'Bout a half past eight."

Pushing himself back up onto his forearms was a hell of a lot harder than he cared to admit and hardly seemed worth it since the act of becoming vertical screwed his equilibrium then set up a pounding in his head.

"Fuck."

"You alright?"

Roman was hunkered in low beside the cushions with a big elbow draped over the arm of the couch, because obviously the sight of the middle of his brothers crashed out and likely snoring had done things to his oversized fraternal heart.

"Yeah, m' good."

"We stopped and got pizza."

Dean grinned,

"My boy knows what I like, huh?"

He rolled off the couch in an inelegant little movement that landed him nearly face first on the floor but was luckily saved by the big man beside him who reached down and artfully plucked up his shirt and who then braced a big broad palm across his collarbone until the scruffy copper blonde had fully re-found his feet at which point he reached over and tousled the tangle with a chuckle of fondness,

"Nice and slow uce, nice and slow."

Seth had already set things up in the kitchen by the time the pair of them stumbled through into view, with the pizza boxes open and wafting out aromas and the caps popped from three icy cold beer bottles as well. Dean fell into a seat with a grumble that bordered on a weirdly orgasmic sort of sound, then launched for the nearest greasy slice of pepperoni before stuffing the thing wholesale into his mouth,

"You two know I love you for this, right?"

Fragments of stuffed crust flew out as he spoke but were then replaced rapidly by another bite of pizza as the copper blonde ate like he had recently been starved. Seth wrinkled his nose and used the cuff of his jacket to brush some of the mildly chewed pieces off the edge then looked up with a predictable measure of unhappiness as he took a seat opposite,

"Geez, say it don't spray it man."

In response to the disgust Dean opened his mouth pointedly in a petty manoeuvre that revealed the contents inside and which made the younger man turn away revolted with a hiss of frustration,

"Damn it man, you're such a child."

Roman swept a beer up and chuckled,

"Play nice now."

But in spite of the fierce teasing the general mood was good and the exact sort of feeling that Dean had been protecting when he had thought their veteran cohort was muscling in on their turf and trying to turn his family into his thing which would never be okay –

He liked shit the way it was.

Not that he was totally alone in his thinking on the veteran side of things that was, since Roman swept his big brown eyes lazily around the office then looked back slowly like he was trying to sound cool,

"Mark get off alright?"

Dean gazed back at him,

"No, I beat him over the head with the microwave an' buried him under the floorboards over there. You know that one that squeaks when you go over it? Yeah, well, it doesn't squeak anymore."

Roman snorted,

"Nah, I'm not buying it, no way would you have gotten the place this clean, this fast. Besides uce, I've seen your apartment remember and while you've got talents, housekeeping ain't one."

"Hey, low blow man, that's it, I want my key back."

"Never had one in the first place."

"An' yet you wonder why?"

Dean reached out across the pizza boxes beaming then swiped up the nearest untouched bottle of beer, which he used to chase down the cheese and meat concoction that was slowly beginning to bring him back to life and which was also in the process of making him realize that he had missed out on breakfast since they had left the diner in a rush and if he really thought about properly he was pretty fucking certain that he had also totally forgotten to grab lunch.

Seth bit into a spinach covered thin slice,

"So what did you do with him?"

Dean sat back in disgust and then pretended to be horribly offended as he flapped an overdramatic hand across the space,

"Dude, please. I mean, eatin' with your mouth open is pretty disgustin' – ,"

"Real funny man."

But since Roman chuckled and then shook his head a little, the copper blonde figured that it therefore likely was and so grinned in response before sobering just long enough to answer the question to which he also threw in a shrug,

"He took his big ass home 'bout three hours back, think meetin' Bo kinda freaked him out."

Seth snorted,

"I'm not surprised."

"So how was it babe?" Roman asked, interrupting as he slung a slice of pizza up into his mouth, "Working together out there with our houseguest?"

Dean paused,

"It was fine, not that I had a fuckin' choice."

"You manage to get somewhere?"

"With the case or each other?"

Because that was what the bigger man was clearly fishing for and had also evidently been the topic of conversation between the two of them in the hours since they'd been gone. Obviously they had hoped that throwing him together with the object of his enmity would straighten things out and frustratingly on that front they had been right in their assumptions which he actually kind of hated because it meant that he'd been conned.

Roman shrugged lightly back at him,

"Either."

"Bo's gonna try and source who's buyin' the drugs."

"Sounds like a plan."

"So what about you two? Find anythin' useful?"

Seth blew a breath out and then added another crust to the collection he was building with careful precision on the lid of the pizza box in an obvious attempt to keep his calorie count down and which was possibly the reason that his reply was so hot because holy gods did the man ever need carbohydrates.

Possibly a woman too –

Yep.

Seth needed to get laid.

"Come on man, you know exactly what we're asking here. Are you and Calaway all cool now? Because this is gonna be pretty impossible if you're gonna spend the whole time sniping at his ass."

Dean grunted mildly,

"Relax okay? I fixed it."

"How?"

"We – I don't know – we talked about shit, we cleared the air or whatever it is you're meant to do and based on it I've decided to stop actin' like a bitch," he paused to take a loose swig of beer from his bottle then looked up sarcastically, "You fuckin' happy now?"

Seth nodded,

"I guess, but I can't figure out why you were so against him, I mean the guy's a hero who worked thirty four years and arrested over three hundred people in the process, how is that not impressive to you?"

Dean shrugged idly,

"You know where I grew up man, you think I'd still be here if my hero had been a cop? My ass would have been beaten up, down and fuckin' sideways every god damn day of my life. An' since I managed to get hit plenty anyway, extra black eyes were shit I tended to avoid."

Seth blinked,

"Dean – ,"

Both the men in front of him hated hearing the particulars of his crappy early life and felt the stories ridiculously keenly like it was somehow their fault or like they should have known or helped, regardless of the fact that they had moved in different circles and spent most of their lives being a literal year apart. His teammates felt like they should have been there anyway and in spite of the fact that his childhood memories hurt him his brothers being furious was a pretty warming thing, plus it powered a fierce stab of belonging and did a bunch of flippy things inside his otherwise cold heart.

He waved a hand,

"It's fine or whatever, the point is I just didn't see the big guy like you."

"So do you now?"

Dean paused,

"Maybe a little, but m' still gonna be happy to see the last of his ass and get things back to the way they fuckin' should be when it's just – like – the three of us an' no one else y' know?"

Seth cleared his throat then nodded,

"Yeah, we know man, we totally know."

Behind them the lights in the storage warehouse opposite flickered in their hangings and then briskly turned off as even the men working late on the dock fronts decided it was time to pack up and head home and which painted a strange sort of hush across the landscape that was actually pretty restful.

Peace and quiet for once.

Dean grabbed up another slice in the interim and then flicked a particularly ugly looking piece of olive off before tearing the tip away in one big snapping motion and then chewing open mouthed.

"Oh yeah, I looked that note thing up."

"What note thing?"

"The one our strangler fucker likes writin', the sin at the door crap."

"Crouching," Roman put in, although as usual their younger brother was decidedly more forthright as he brushed off his hands on one of the napkins he'd plundered, but that so far had been the only person to use since his teammates preferred simply licking at their fingers or else wiping their greasy paws over the fabric of their pants.

"Well, where's it from man?"

"Genesis, Cain an' Abel."

Dean swiped an errant roundel of pepperoni up and then tossed it towards his mouth but missed catching the thing badly with a huff of frustration as it slapped back into the box.

Roman frowned,

"Biblical?"

"I mean it goes on for way longer, talkin' 'bout not givin' into sin an' that shit and how you have to become – like – it's master so I figure if nothin' else my ass is covered on that front."

Roman snorted back at him,

"You got it on a leash uce,"

"Yep."

Seth however sat forward with a blink and then waved a crust of pizza in their direction like one of those white pointers professors used to teach kids.

"So what does it mean?"

He was looking to their big man, who was by far and away the most religious of their gang since he had been raised in a good observant household, whereas his brothers were either clueless or practising atheist.

Roman thought for a second,

"Cain and Abel? Uh, best I can remember they were brothers who turned their backs, older one let his jealousy of the younger take over and killed him for it."

"So why choose that line?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, what exactly is this guy trying to tell us by sayin' it?"

Dean shrugged,

"Why does it have to be anythin' at all? I mean, maybe he knows by puttin' it up there we'll have to bust our humps tryin' a' figure it out. For all we know he might a' fired up his computer and typed creepy ass sentences into the search, then all he needs to do is click on a button an' hey presto his killer schtick is all worked out."

Roman smiled mildly,

"I'm not sure that's it uce."

"Why not?"

"Because – ,"

"Did you know they had computers back then?"

Based on their reactions they obviously had done because his brothers simply blinked in bewilderment at him, like the question was the craziest piece of shit he had ever put to them but in the grand scheme of things wasn't really even close, since he had once asked if vegetarians could have animal crackers and meant every word of it.

Dean took a quick chug,

"How 'bout you two then? Don't leave me hangin'."

He meant had they found anything of note at the crime scene and the fact that neither man had to ask him to clarify was one more reminder of how close they all were, or else how attuned they were to the way his mind worked, which in essence was pretty much exactly the same thing and made him grin a little like an idiot as his younger brother grunted,

"Except the entire city's press hanging around like god damn vultures?"

Roman sighed and then sat himself back,

"Didn't find anything that's going to help us, but I figure we got a feel for how the guy works, he likes to choose places that are real run down and lonely so no one will – ,"

Hear.

Roman didn't say the word but then again he didn't really need to say it since the knowledge of it shuddered in an instant through them all, along with the thought of the poor helpless victims struggling while a pillow was placed over their face.

Seth growled,

"Fuck, we need to get this asshole."

He pushed at the pile of newly empty pizza boxes and then pulled loose a slightly crumpled up looking snapshot, which had been stuffed into the pocket of the thick winter jacket that at some point he had flung over the back of his seat. He took a second to smooth out the creases and then nudged it across the table top out towards Dean, who hauled it in closer frowning a little and then looking up cluelessly,

"Okay, so who's this?"

Roman sighed,

"The second victim."

Dean made an understanding o-shape with his mouth and then grit his teeth a little in frustration as the face of another young woman stared back, grinning in some snap from what was probably a party since her brown skin was glowing with the familiar flush of drink and her wavy long toffee hair looked a little dishevelled as if she had been headbanging on some crowded dance floor happily somewhere.

Roman filled the blanks in further,

"Alicia Fox a thirty one year old dancer, been working here for the last two months, her boss called the police when she missed work two days running and they couldn't get an answer."

Dean blinked,

"Same deal as before?"

"Still waiting on the autopsy report but they think so, since he even used that same freaking god damn red cord, but the police on the scene couldn't find any compression marks, so she sure wasn't strangled."

"So then what the hell is the point?"

Dean wasn't simply asking because he was baffled, but instead because there had to be a reason behind it all and in their line of work and as a crime-fighting taskforce, they had learnt they did their best work when bouncing ideas around and pooling their collective resources and brain power into a big sort of policeman style thoughtful melting pot.

"Isn't it obvious?" Seth snorted back hotly, "He's trying to relive the glory years again."

"Then why does it feel like he's tryin' to say somethin'?"

"Because he's an asshole?"

Dean stopped and scratched his neck, in a sure fire gesture that his head space was spinning but the reason for which he couldn't really figure out, like there was something in the case and the quote and the method that was giving them a message that they should have understood, but which passed right on over them and then just kept going in the swirls of serial killings and returning veteran cops.

He frowned and the look was so thoughtfully folded that it made his older brother blink,

"What's going on up there?"

He lifted his bottle and then used it to gesture lightly towards the unusually cluttered up head and the brain toiling hard beneath the copper blonde tangle like some sort of workhorse towing a plough.

Dean shook his head,

"Nothin' I just think that maybe – ,"

But he was swiftly interrupted by a sudden harsh noise, which sounded a lot like something vibrating but was then hurriedly followed by a cackling laugh and the swoop of what was supposedly meant to be a broomstick from the loud but tinny speakers of his cell phone.

He groaned,

"Crap."

Commissioner Stephanie McMahon was calling him, which was either a good or a very bad sign and was also the reason that he had drunkenly set her ringtone to the sound of an evil witch sailing through the sky, which Seth and Roman had goaded him into and which had quite frankly been fucking hilarious at the time, but had then backfired dramatically in public when it had frightened several people by going off in a crowd.

It beat being frightened by the real thing however –

He probably still needed to change it up though.

Dean climbed to his feet with a pensive little grumble then waved his totally bewildered seeming hands, in a baffled appeal for a general direction since he rarely had any clue where his errant phone was. Seth pointed back into the blackness with an eye roll,

"I don't know, how about you try your desk man?"

Fumbling his way from the brightness of the kitchen he crossed the dark office squinting into the gloom, then zeroed himself in on the angry sounding buzzing noise and shunted off a few papers before –

He held it up with an aha.

In the exact same moment that he hit the call button, he spun towards his brothers so they could both see his face and therefore potentially keep tabs on what was happening based on his reaction or else the look of horror on his face. He started things out cheerily enough to begin with however, possibly because he was full of pizza and beer,

"Boss, how can I – ,"

Her sneer pinged back at him,

"I need you three at the corner of Hart and Michaels."

"Care to tell me why?"

"They found another one."

"What?"

"Mark is on his way over already."

"But – ,"

"Ambrose, no arguing this time, get there now."

By way of a farewell she cut the call off again, but the copper blonde kept the cell to his ear for a while as he tried to somehow process the information but fast lost the ability to put it into words. Instead he slid the cell back into his pocket then reached over to swipe his trusty leather jacket up, before blowing a sigh out and then turning blue eyes towards them,

"Look sharp boys, this night ain't fuckin' done."


Dun dun duuuunnnn….

The killer strikes again. Next chapter we're off to the crime scene for some gruesome stuff, hopefully I'll see you all there!