#johnmichael

it’s conk creat babey

I can help, the light says. 

The peals of thunder around John's ears sound like alarm bells and gunshots. His head hits the dry dirt hard, and the ringing intensifies, urgent and imposing. 

Between shallow breaths and the pounding in his head, he hears grunts and shouts from the house. Shadows move with unnatural depths behind the open door. Sam, Dean, Mary, the strangers that attacked them - their faces swim past, and he feels familiar panic seep into his bones. Groaning, he opens his eyes, only to screw them back shut when the piercing light invades his vision. 

He doesn't want his life to burn. 

I can help, comes the light again. 

"Yes sir," John answers, a soldier taking refuge behind a trench mound. 

*** 

I can help, the light says. 

The silence around Nick's ears doesn't sound like death. It sounds like the space afterwards, like the graveyard an hour after a burial. It's deep and insidious and certainly doesn't ask permission. His head hits the pillow, and barely breaks the quiet. 

Sarah's face - or the not-stranger that borrows it - hovers over his vision, eyes intense and patient and everything the silence is not. 

His life has burnt already - the ashes taste bitter on his tongue. The world will burn too, the light says. A tribute for what was lost. 

I can help, comes the light again. 

Characters: John Amherst, Michael (Distortion)

Rating: General

Warnings: None

[Bonus AO3 link]

“You’re not my favourite person today.”

“I’m not your favourite person on any day.”

Michael grinned, all teeth and hair and colours that could have been magenta or cyan depending on how you looked at it. It hummed in agreement. “Neither am I, but here we are.”

“Here we are...” Repeated the man who could have been a man or 50,000 ants in a ill-fitting suit, depending on who you asked.

The two people who were not people and likely hadn’t been people in years sat (presumably) a few meters away from each other on an old wall that had been warn down over centuries until smooth by children and pets and couples finding a silly solution to their height differences by the thousands while walking along the seafront on a sunny day out.

This however, was not a sunny day, or even a day at all. The stars twinkled few and far between, dulled by the pollution of the town a short walk away, but the moon shone bright enough to make up for the lack of them.

“Why are we here, exactly?” Said the man who’s name could be traced back to the late 1800’s, though John Amherst had never actually visited this beach before.

Good point. There are many reasons that two monsters could acquaint themselves in a meeting.

“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Logical thinking isn’t something Michael is known for, and neither is telling the truth, so it’s anyone’s guess really.

“You know, I haven’t been in the business of plagues lately. Been a while since I created a good one.” John’s accent vaguely amused Michael in a way that would have been charming if he didn’t sound like he had something stuck in his rasping throat. Michael had never been to Ireland before.

“Oh?”

“Fancy another dancing disease?”

A laugh that didn’t reach Michael’s eyes rang out into the chilly wind like a rusting bell, or a scratched vinyl record that shouldn’t still be working for how distorted it sounds. “No.”

Amherst shrugged, his dirty, too-big jacket nearly falling off of his shoulders. “From the sounds of things, you had a right laugh in the 15th century, if the history books are right. What did you do back then? Before all of—“ John gestured a greasy hand in the vague direction of a street lamp. “—this. Technology. Train stations to get lost in and those wards to find easy pickings.”

Michael tapped its too-long-claws against the worn stone, a clacking like rocks being struck against each other filling the void while it chose how to answer. “Forests mostly, up until doors became stable enough to use as something to materialise into, and staircases. Did you know there are hundreds cases of stairs dotted around woodlands all over the world?”

It’s frown didn’t match the tone of its voice, but it’s frown was more an upside-down smile than anything so maybe it did, in a roundabout way.*

“Sounds like more trouble than its worth, waiting for months at a time for people to wander aimlessly into traps.”

“Mmm...it is more fun nowadays.”

“There you go, then.”

Michael hummed once more in vague annoyance, notes overlapping into a buzzing to make ears ring, if one wasn’t used to buzzing.

John simply grinned; pettiness was something they both shared and petty rivalries, well. The Corruption and The Spiral could never truly get along. And so they sat in uncomfortable silence, waiting for the world to end.

(*reference to my Michael original statement fic)

michael from inside the hallway: you have to ask the right way

john: [deep sigh] and what does my attractively blonde and dishonest boyfriend michael the throat of delusion incarnate have to tell me at this moment regarding why he just fucking disappeared out of nowhere