Xander surveyed the scene before him with the jaded amusement of a veteran Scooby. The bizarre tableau somehow reminded him of the school talent show. Two unearthly gorgeous specimens of manhood were wrapped in some sort of magical entrapment, but it looked like one of them had Andrew in a pretty tight spot as well, with his gun pointed at the blond's throat.
"Well!" he said aloud. "This is probably not as bad as the thing I expected to walk in on. Andrew, wanna fill me in?" he asked, tucking his hands in his pockets and tilting his head in charming befuddlement. Andrew's jaw clenched.
"These two impostors wormed their way in here by donning the guise of mild mannered innocents who happened upon the darker nature of our world, but revealed themselves to be nothing more than tempting wolves in enticing sheep's clothing by divulging their true names!"
Xander, who was used to Andrew by this point and accepted his dramatic nature, didn't so much as blink at the lengthy diatribe.
"And their true names would be...?"
"Winchester. Sam and Dean Winchester," Dean interrupted with just a touch of irritation. "And we didn't "don" any "guise," we genuinely came here for help but as soon as we told him our names this psycho Dracula wannabe hit us with some mojo and now none of us can move." Xander stared at Dean's ruggedly handsome jaw as he gritted out the necessary exposition.
And even while that name was tickling long forgotten neural pathways, Xander couldn't help the errant thought that swam through his sexually frustrated brain: "dear god, he's pretty."
Aloud, he merely said, "Ok, so...not entirely sure what's going on just now, but I'm getting the sense that all is not copacetic with tall and handsome over here. So Andrew, any way I can just unfreeze you?"
Andrew's response was cut off by Sam's earnest voice earnestly butting in.
"You're right," he said quickly. "We weren't totally honest."
"Sam!" Dean yelled, eyes cutting angrily towards his little brother, trying to convey what the rest of his body was incapable of expressing. That he needed to shut up right the hell now.
Xander watched the exchange impassively, noting that Sam, while totally rocking the tall, full haired, sensitive thing, had nothing on Mr. Gorgeous Green Eyes.
"It's true, we weren't completely honest," Sasquatch continued on, "but honestly, we just didn't want you to think we were completely nuts."
Xander grinned cockily, all boyish charm and irresistible cupid bow lips that you just want to bite until they're all kiss swollen and delicious. "Try me."
Black. Darkness. Dankness. Stenchquietdrippingsleepingquietstrechingononon.
Nothing the same.
Buried forever,forgotten. point. No .
Dark,quiet,dank,foreversleep.
Scent.
. .
Scent. Spark.
.canthopecantdreamcanthurtscant it huuuuuuuuuurts...
SPARK!
In the solid darkness of the heart of the Eternal Slumber, six eyelids heavy with caked dirt and age and stone and blood and eternity slid open. Life returned to the Malformed. And the air trembled.
"Soooooo...what you're essentially telling me," Xander summarized, sitting on Andrew's desk and petting the small kitten which had flung itself into his lap, demanding affection with hedonistic abandon, "is that you got cursed in your world, tried to Slide to a world without magic, and for some inexplicable reason wound up here?"
Sam tried to nod, remembered he couldn't, and said, "Yeah, that's about the size of it." Xander was silent for several minutes as he assimilated their tale of wonder. The little kitty purred contentedly under his masterful ministrations. Dean looked on with subconscious interest.
"Yeah...ok. What you've said fits, for the most part. Although you have gone out of your way to tell me as little as you possibly can," he said with a chastising grin in Sam's direction.
"And they're not telling you everything!" Andrew piped up, following his uncharacteristically long silence. "They're not who they claim to be! They've stolen their identities, nay, their personas, from a graphic novel found only in this world!"
Dean rolled his eyes.
"We're telling the truth, asshat! The fact that we popped up in comic books here just means that you got a psychic or a prophet in the nerd business."
"Oh please! If I had a nickel for every time someone tried that hackneyed explainer I'd...have...several nickels!" Andrew shouted.
Xander studied Dean's face. Aside from looking pissed off, he also looked incredibly stressed out. And suddenly it clicked.
"Oh! You mean that super gay comic you sent me when I was in Africa?"
Everyone glared at Xander. As well as they were able, what with the being frozen and all.
Xander just grinned like a guy who wasn't frozen. And then suddenly stopped grinning.
"Hey!" Dean shouted as Xander took an intent step into his personal space. Xander ignored him in favor of staring at his arm.
"Hey Andrew, will anything bad happen to me if I touch someone who's been frozen by this spell?" Andrew was silent for a moment as he tried to shake his head, realized he couldn't, and cursed inwardly.
"No, it won't affect anyone who wasn't in the room at the time of casting."
Moderately reassured, Xander reached forward and pulled the sleeve of Dean's shirt farther up his arm. In addition to revealing Dean's delicious man smell and radiating warmth, the gesture revealed the sinister occult mark which had been burned into Dean's arm.
"Wanna tell me what that is?" he asked, looking into Dean's eyes which he realized too late were much too close to his own. He ignored the quickening of his heart, instead giving his best Willow-inspired Resolve Face. He doubted it would work on a guy he'd just met and who may or may not be evil, but he figured it was worth a shot. Amazingly, staring into his mystic green depths, Xander thought he detected a hint of embarrassment and shame before it was replaced with blank hostility.
"Skiing accident." he said flatly. Sam rolled his eyes. Xander frowned for a moment, and then nodded decisively. He pulled out his camera and snapped his second pic of the evening. Then, reluctantly, he pulled away from the warm presence that was Dean Winchester.
"Alright. Andrew, sit tight. I'm gonna confer with the Home Office, see if they have any idea what that nifty little mark is. I sympathize with your stony plight, but before I completely undo the enchantment I want an idea of how dangerous these two are."
Andrew let out an aggrieved sigh.
"Do as you must, I shall endure."
Xander contained a snort of laughter, not wanting to undermine Andrew in front of potential threats, and walked out into the hall. He closed the door behind him and leaned against the wall as he dialed Giles. He picked up on the second ring.
"Xander?"
"G-man. Get the pic I sent you?"
"Yes, although I've hardly had time to look into it."
"I know, I was just hoping you could give me a quick impression, dangerous or harmless. Andrew's got two gun wielding rednecks stuck in some kind of freeze spell, which he actually got himself stuck in too. One of the gun wielding rednecks had that burned into his arm."
"Oh dear. Are you in any danger?"
Xander smiled at the concern in his voice. The Scoobies may have spread out a bit, but they had all grown closer following the fall of Sunnydale.
"I'm fine for the moment. Just sort of wondering how to proceed. I don't think I can unfreeze Andrew without unfreezing the other two. So if that mark means he's actually a long leggedy beasty in disguise, I think I'll hold off on the rescuing of Andrew for a bit."
"Mmm. Well, I don't recognize it, and quite frankly, it looks like something a drunken teenager would get during his rebellious phase. However, it is best to be cautious about these things. Despite what you children seem to think, I do not know every magical symbol in creation by heart." Xander grinned. Giles's irritated voice would never cease to give him a warm fuzzy for simpler days in a high school library.
"Works for me. So should I just..." Xander trailed off suddenly. He looked down the hallway towards the elevator. The torches cast flickering lights throughout the hallway, darkening the shadows which seemed suddenly more dense than the wholesome shadows of the world above-ground. He couldn't have said how, (wouldn't have bothered if you asked), but he could feel the hairs rise on the back of his neck and he knew with life saving certainty that he was not alone.
"Xander?" Giles asked tentatively, sensing the menacing tone of the sudden silence.
"Not sure, Code Magpie," he said quietly, staring into the darkness and slowly walking backwards. He was just crossing the threshold into Andrew's office when six pairs of shiny red eyes sparked open in the far corner. Xander gave up all pretense of stealth and slammed the doors to Andrew's inner sanctum shut just as the eyes and attached body lunged for him. Xander bolted the door as the thing slammed against the other side.
"What's that?" Dean asked nervously, rolling his eyes back as far as they would go. "What the hell is that?"
"Xander?" Andrew asked nervously. Xander's eyes darted around frantically as the thing started slamming itself against the door.
"Apparently something followed me in. What do you got in the way of defense here, Andrew?"
Andrew made a noise of distress in the back of his throat. "this place is practically a fortress-"
"Oh thank god," Xander breathed.
"-when I'm at the controls." Xander's heart sank. He looked between Andrew, the door, and the frozen brothers. He hesitated a moment, painfully aware of the pounding of certain and painful death on the other side.
"Ok, so, any way I can raise the defense grid in your stead?" he asked just on the edge of sarcasm. Andrew rolled his eyes.
"Can you do magic, Xander?" Xander winced.
"Alright, guess we're out of options then. How do I unfreeze you?"
"Xander, you can't! What if they summoned that creature with their minds in an effort to manipulate you into doing just exactly what you're proposing?" Andrew asked shrilly.
"Hey!" Sam and Dean exclaimed at the same time with comparable levels of outrage.
"Well, then, the beast they summoned is still gonna kill us both when it breaks through what I'm guessing is right now just an ordinary overly-ostentatious door. So tell me how to unfreeze you."
"Hey!" Andrew yelled. "There is nothing ostentatious about that door! The guy who installed it called it brilliantly understated!"
"Andrew!" Xander yelled urgently as the thing slammed against the door hard enough to make it crack. Andrew made an annoyed sound in his throat before acquiescing.
"Fine! In the desk drawer." Xander ran around the desk to where Andrew stood frozen. The desk drawer stood open with his hand inside. It was resting atop a cheap looking black ceramic skull.
"What do I do?" Xander asked as a chunk of the door flew inward.
"Break the skull!"
Not wanting to risk touching anything else on Andrew's desk, Xander drew his knife and slammed the handle into the side of the skull. It mostly glanced off the smooth surface but managed to crack it nonetheless.
Apparently that was enough because all three men immediately went stumbling from their awkward poses. They had just enough time to glance at each other in wary trepidation before the door exploded inward, spraying debris throughout the room.
Xander stared at the gaping hole where the door used to be, knife still in hand. The thing on the other side of the doorway was difficult to describe. Largely because it was difficult to look at. The thing seemed to be there and at the same time not, as though it were absorbing the light around it. In the hall it had seemed like a shadow, but now Xander realized it was just borrowing the appearance of its surroundings, aside from six glittering ruby eyes which were vibrating sickeningly. Staring at the thing gave Xander an unaccountably sickening sense of nausea, and judging from the gagging sounds he could hear coming from Andrew he guessed it wasn't just his own sensitive disposition.
Apparently the hunters were made of slightly sterner stuff because the room suddenly rang out with the deafening thunder of gunshots. The thing seemed largely unimpressed by the sudden show of ballistics. The bullets appeared to absorb into the noxious swirling colors that composed its body and it continued to slither forward. Xander grabbed Andrew by the shoulders from where he was hunched over dry heaving.
"Andrew! Defense!" He yelled into Andrew's glazed expression. Despite what seemed to be overwhelming nausea, Andrew managed to gather himself and nodded resolutely. He scrabbled for something on the table. He snapped what looked like a tiny finger bone in half and muttered something Xander couldn't quite hear. Suddenly, the air above the monstrosity rippled, and swirled, taking on a burnt quality. Before Xander realized what was happening, the air thickened into an amber liquid which dripped down to encase the crawling creeper. The weird liquid seemed to have some effect as the thing began thrashing sluggishly against the gold-brown cocoon. Before it could fight itself free, Andrew ran forward and made a hilariously flamboyant gesture before the struggling mass. Before their eyes, the goo slowly hardened into a dark lump the color of burnished brass, until there was nothing but a grotesque statuary in the middle of Andrew's once orderly lair.
The brothers stopped firing once they realized the abomination no longer posed a threat. Gradually getting to their feet they glanced around the room, first at each other to make sure they were both okay, and then at the wreckage. Dean was the first to speak.
"What the hell was that?"
Xander looked at Andrew, but Andrew was still shaking and looked deathly pale in the aftermath of having to fight through nausea to cast magic. Plus, he didn't look like he had any more clue than the rest of them. Xander looked back to Dean and shrugged helplessly.
"Demon, probably? Never run across something like that before. But hey, it takes all kinds," he said with a weak attempt at humor. Dean didn't seem to notice as he looked back at the monstrosity.
"Ok then. Well, this has been a very enlightening experience," Dean said briskly, holstering his weapon, "but we're just gonna go. You geeks have fun with your psycho freaky demons, and you're dungeons and dragons. Okay?" he said with a fake smile. Xander frowned as Dean strode towards his brother, inadvertently crossing directly in front of the frozen horror.
"Whoa, wait a minute. That thing showed up at the same time you did," Xander said, taking a definitive step forward before his animal brain had a chance to shout 'what are you doing, idiot!? He has a gun!'
Dean paused mid-stride, coincidentally and with absolutely no relevance to the plot managing to stop directly in front of the solidified beast. He stared at Xander challengingly.
"And your point is?" he asked sarcastically. Xander felt a flash of irritation.
"My point is that the only reason any of us survived this attack was Andrew's foresight and skill. If you leave now we can't protect you."
Dean couldn't help the incredulous smile that formed on his lips. Staring at this kid, finally seeing him and taking his mettle for the first time, Dean realized that Xander was serious. For whatever reason, this kid legitimately, earnestly wanted to protect him. Dean found himself...oddly touched. The only person who had ever wanted to protect him was Dad, and that had only lasted so long. It was a nice, strange, somewhat warm feeling. Dean reacted the same way he usually did when confronted with confusing emotions. He lashed out with sarcasm.
"Well, thanks, what was it, uh...Xanadu? But, I think we'll take our chances."
Xander winced inwardly. No matter how many times it happened, being casually belittled and dismissed by the cool kids still stung. Only now that he was a self actualized adult, he could push past that sting to rational thought fairly quickly.
"Oh yeah? Gonna rely on your crazy redneck fightin' skills? Cuz that worked out sooooo well for you this time." Two could play the sarcasm game. Dean glared.
"Look, you-"
*CRACK!*
All conversation stopped as the sound reverberated throughout the room. Dean and Xander looked at each other in startlement.
*SNAP!*
With comically timed slowness, they both looked towards the horrific sculpture in the middle of the room. Dean was closer, and so more able to perceive the way the statue slowly moved within its hard amber shell. It was bulging outwards towards the place where Dean stood motionless, as though the dark presence inside were reaching for him through it's rigid prison. Dean took a step back, realizing with alarm that the statue's movements were becoming uncomfortably more rapid.
"Sammy," he said gruffly. "Let's get the hell out of here."
A deafening splintering noise rent the air, this time accompanied by a visible crack in the globular mass.
"Hey Andrew..." Xander said slowly, "is it supposed to do that?"
Andrew was staring in shock at the slowly morphing form, too stunned to answer. Xander figured the question was mostly rhetorical anyway. Freezing in fear had long since been terrified out of him. He turned and in a swift, almost graceful motion scooped Andrew up in a fireman carry and started heading for the door.
"We gotta go!" he yelled at the two brothers. Dean was staring in fascinated horror at the shape that was slowly reaching for him. He noticed with sickening realization that the thing was reaching towards his forearm. Towards the mark.
"Hey!" Xander yelled in his ear, bringing him suddenly to attention. "Move your ass!" Dean glared but found his body moving on instinct at the curt command. With a glance at Sammy to make sure he was following, he ran after Xander and the flopping form of Andrew as they hauled ass away from the quickly crumbling cage.