It's Thursday, so you know what that means. Let's do this thing!
Skovko, But puppy Seth in a tiara and beads looks soooo pretty! Plus, I don't think he hates it quite as much as he makes out!
xXBalorBabeXx, Happy (late) Thanksgiving to you too. Hope you had a good one.
Rebel8954, I get the feeling that being on his best behaviour was more stressful for Dean than Seth! As for the conspiracy website, well, let's just say the next chapter is full of believers…
Mandy, Oh wow. Your friend is so lucky getting a picture of Mox (Dean. Deep down he'll probably always be Dean to me!) I couldn't resist the throwback to their Ride Along. Might have to go back and watch it again too. Big hugs.
Minnie1015, Aww, I'm thankful for our friendship too and I'm glad the last chapter was a nice cosy one for Thanksgiving. That worked out well, because this one is a little bit more gross in parts!
Phoenix lord of rebirth, Happy Thanksgiving to you too (sorry I'm a week late on that!) Glad you liked the last one. It's always nice to change it down a gear and have an easy, fun chapter from time to time. Plus Dean really did need to meet the rest of the Reigns fam. But this week they're definitely back to the case.
Wolfgirl2013, Thank you!
Not-that-kinda-gurl, Lots and lots of cuteness for you on the last one, but I felt it was about time for some. Plus I mostly loved the idea of Seth being dressed up and looking pissed about it. Hence that last chapter was born!
Okay...
FOURTEEN
Henry Hurley lives in a building on the east side that is so damn derelict it makes the brownstone look swish. Since at least the brownstone has most of its windows and steps to the front door and an actual front door. Instead of just the hinges where a front door had been once and a guy smoking pot on the doorstep outside, who frowns suspiciously at Roman's blue pinstripe.
"Hey man. You a fed? Is this some kinda raid? Because here we don't subscribe to your capitalist system."
Roman blinks at him,
"Huh?"
"No dude. Nope. Not a raid. Stripes over here just has a real eye for fashion," Dean chirps hurriedly, pushing Roman back as the stoner blinks deliberately at them like he thinks they might be lying. Then he leans closer,
"They're everywhere man," he waves his hand around in the ether which scatters half the contents of his disintegrating blunt. Not that the guy much seems to take notice. He taps at his head, "Sometimes even in here."
"Yeah, well," Dean wafts some pot smoke away from him, "Thanks for the tip dude. We'll keep it in mind. But right now we're kinda here lookin' for someone. You seen this guy?" he pulls a photograph out which is one of the ones Christopher Hurley had given them, along with his oddball offspring's last known address, which had led them first to a slightly rundown building, then a more rundown building and then finally there. A glorified squat in the asshole of Cinci, asking potheads for help.
The stoner blinks at it,
"Ho man. Is that Gunhawk?"
Dean blinks in bewilderment,
"Uh, is that who now?"
"His name is Henry Hurley," Roman adds helpfully, "He runs a conspiracy website. Is he in? Because we need to speak to him about something pretty urgently."
"Are you running from the man too?" the pothead asks them, wide eyed with wonder like he thinks he's stumbled into The Matrix. Dean decides it's best to go along with it. Or maybe not, but on the plus side it makes things more fun,
"Uh, yeah dude. You got us," he slings his arm around Roman and then slaps the big man's chest, "This one escaped from a secret lab. He's a super soldier that the uh, man is breedin', an' we need your buddy to help us take 'em down."
Roman frowns,
"What?"
"Just go along with it," Dean hisses, digging an elbow into his ribs as the pothead blinks incredulously at the big man, whose footballing physique is certainly super soldier like. He takes another quick drag on his blizzie and then nods energetically,
"Sure man, sure. He's upstairs. Second floor. In the media room,"
"Hold on a second. You have a freakin' media room here?" Dean frowns, as Roman clears his throat pointedly behind him,
"Babe?"
"Oh, right. Fuck. Uh, I mean thanks man."
As Roman goes to step past the baffled stoner – who Dean figures is probably only twenty years, old but who looks way older thanks to all of his beard growth – the kid snakes out a hand and grabs the big guy's arm, planting a grubby looking print on the pinstripe and then nodding in admiration.
"You were brave to get away. We need more people like you to win the war man."
"Uh, thanks," Roman grimaces as Dean peels off the guy's hand and then steers his partner ahead through the doorway with a small parting bow,
"Mazel tov. Down with the man," then he steps in over the threshold and straight into a waiting pile of vomit, "Oh come on."
Because somehow the inside is even worse than the outside, with most of the floorboards either broken or ripped up and with graffiti and other assorted – well – substances daubed haphazardly over the walls.
"Holy crap. Makes the brownstone look like The Ritz, huh?" Dean comments cheerfully, wiping his shoes on a stamped down box that may or may not be some poor fucker's bedspread, "Bet you're glad you wore your suit uce."
Roman shoots him a raised-brow look, but otherwise seems to be surprisingly even for a man who has probably just entered his first squat,
"Babe, how about we find Henry Hurley and then get the hell out of here?"
Or maybe not so even as it turns out.
Dean nods,
"Deal."
Stepping over a sleeping girl and a soiled looking mattress, Dean leads the way up the rickety stairs, which remind him of the ones he was reading about last night to Roman's daughter, since the treads are either warping or else are straight up freaking gone, which could be some weird kind of stick-it-to-the-man crap, or else because in the winter it gets super cold and the residents are all out of freshly chopped firewood. At one point his foot disappears through one completely, but luckily Roman grabs at him.
"Babe you okay?"
"Yeah," Dean looks back over his shoulder, "But this is – dude are you usin' a handkerchief?"
Roman shrugs back up at him cluelessly. But, yep, sure enough he has a handkerchief beneath his hand, which he's using to create a cotton barrier to the handrail, which is actually kind of genius.
"You stood in puke babe."
"Fair enough, but the next time we go a rundown freakin' buildin' full of weird fuckin' hippies, you might wanna bring two."
Roman grunts,
"Nope because the next time we go to a rundown freaking building full of weird fucking hippies, this suited ass is staying put in the car."
"Wimp." Dean mutters resentfully,
"What was that babe?"
"Nothin'. I said uh, let's go find this kid."
He still has the photograph Hurley had given them clutched in his fingers, although it won't be much use if the stoner's reaction had been anything to go by and which means they climb up to the second floor blind, scanning every face for one that could be Hurley and therefore their killer. Or the mastermind at least, since he would have needed help jumping Dean in the dog park. Which makes everyone a suspect.
Roman grabs him,
"Babe, look."
A youngish looking man is crossing over the hallway in a pair of espadrilles that don't exactly look cheap and with long wavy hair from straight out of a commercial. Dean opens the crumpled photograph,
"Holy shit. You think it's him?"
Roman shrugs, keeping his deep voice low in the empty corridor which bounces the sound back like he's brought a megaphone,
"You tell me."
"I mean, it freakin' could be."
The guy disappears behind an old piece of sheeting which has been hung up above another door-less door and Dean nods,
"Fuck. Okay, let's get him. Like we talked about, remember?"
He pulls out his gun, which up until now has been hidden in his waistband but is about to prove its worth. It's a small looking thing, with a short silver barrel and a snug wooden hand grip that has always looked badass on the few times he's needed it to. Stepping up to the doorway he flattens against it and then watches as Roman does the same on the other side.
"Ready?" he mouths. His partner nods back at him and so he holds up his fingers in a countdown –
Three, two, one.
Together they both blast in through the sheeting, shouting, which scares the living crap out of the guy inside, who is sat in front of a bank of computers in what has to be the hovel's apparent media room.
"Gig's up Henry," Dean barks over the gun barrel, "We know what you did."
"I – I'm not Henry," the guy cries.
At some point he has slid from his seat at the desktop onto his knees and put his hands in the air.
Dean blinks,
"You're what?"
"I'm not Henry Hurley," the man splutters desperately, "I'm Lewis. Lewis Hughes. I'm Henry's friend. He's — he's not here at the moment. He went out this morning. I don't know where. Please don't shoot me. I have so much to live for."
As a cold gust of wind blows in through the blackouts that have covered the windowless windows on three sides, Dean gets a glimpse of a pair of round glasses and a mole on the guy's cheek that their wacky suspect doesn't have and then sort of seems to deflate just a little.
He lowers the gun
"Oh. Fuck. Sorry about that."
In response to the barrel being pointed away from him, the bespectacled man looks up with a frown and then seems to gather a semblance of ballsiness, which probably isn't smart.
"Now who the hell are you guys and what are you doing looking for Gunhawk?"
"Gunhawk," Dean snorts in derision. Yeah, okay.
"Because if you feds think you can just come waltzing in here, pointing guns at people then – ,"
"Hey, relax dude," Dean chirps back st him, sauntering closer to peer at the computers and then pulling the trigger on the tiny handgun. A flame pops out of the end, "It's a lighter. An' for the second freakin' time since we turned up here, we're not feds."
The guy blinks,
"You're not? Well then who the hell are you?"
"We could ask you the same thing," Roman grunts back, stepping in close so that the guy skitters backwards and bumps into the desktop.
"I already told you. I'm Lewis Hughes. I help Gunhawk – I mean, Henry – run Truthfinders, which – hey, get away from that."
Dean has moved across the room and is fiddling with a camera propped up on a tripod with a green sheet behind it. The filming door is opened wide and so Dean hits the playback and then raises an eyebrow as Lewis appears on the screen wearing a mask.
"These photos, which we will release on Monday, prove that not only were the moon landings made up, but that there is an alien space station on the moon which we believe is a gateway to another dimension and furthermore – ,"
Lewis launches himself across the room and turns it back off with a whole lot of fumbling before pushing up his glasses,
"Look, what do you want?"
"We want to talk to Henry Hurley about his mother," Roman growls evenly.
Lewis blinks,
"Oh, that. Yes, that came as a real shock to Henry – uh, I mean Gunhawk – he hasn't been himself since. That's why I've taken over the videos."
"Not himself how?"
Lewis shrugs,
"I don't know. Just kind of shifty, erratic, kind of angry. I mean, he threw a keyboard out of the window the other day. Plus he nearly smashed up our camera and those things are expensive. That one cost a thousand bucks."
Roman peers back at him looking deeply unimpressed,
"Do the people who live here know you have all this fancy equipment lying around?"
Lewis shrugs,
"Some of them. But we're not a bunch of squatters. This building is for intelligent, like-minded folk, who don't stand for injustice or social inequality and who don't follow – ,"
"The man," Dean grumbles, "We know."
In the meantime he has moved over to the window, beneath which a rumpled sleeping bag is laid out, with a moth eaten sketchbook pushed underneath it.
He pulls it out,
"Hey," Lewis Hughes steps forward again, but Roman puts a fist on his breastbone to keep him in place like a bouncer at a club and yep, Dean really likes having uce with him. He flicks open the sketchbook, "You can't look at that. It's private. And by the way, you haven't said who you are yet. Because this is a violation – ,"
Roman grunts at him,
"Shut up."
"Uce," Dean blinks in alarm, "You better see this."
Turning around he lets the pages fall open so that his partner can see in the flapping sheet-based light and can read what is scrawled over every last inch of paper.
Page after page of it.
Ella and Christopher must die.
Thoughts?