Chapter Text
It was cold and gray, with dark-bellied clouds looming overhead and warning of more snow; but in spite of the gloom, Sock was feeling all kinds of wonderful. The colorfully-dressed demon floated upward and performed a series of loops in the air, just to let off some of the exuberance welling in his chest. Mid-air, he glanced down at his human counterpart, trudging down the narrow path of cleared sidewalk.
Jonathan tugged the hood of his gray sweatshirt over his blond head and hunched his shoulders against the cold. He glanced sideways up at Sock and the corner of his mouth quirked for an instant before he pasted on his usual apathetic scowl. “Come down here,” he grumbled. “You’re making me cold just looking at you.”
Sock laughed gleefully, barrel-rolling in the air until he was upside down, gazing at Jonathan from an inverted position. “I’m not cold. I’m never cold,” he reminded Jonathan cheerfully. “You know, you wouldn’t feel the cold if you’d just—”
“Kill myself?” Jonathan arched a brow at him, a clearly reluctant smile tipping the corners of his mouth up. “Yeah, yeah, so you keep saying. Maybe you should get some new material.”
Sock laughed, dropping down to shoulder-height and flipping over, leisurely stretching out in a position that made him look like he was lounging on his belly on a bed, even though all that was below him was only air. “Why change a sure thing?” he asked, resting his chin on folded arms and kicking his brown-booted feet idly behind him.
Jonathan rolled blue eyes at him, his expression one of long-suffering patience. “It hasn’t worked yet.”
“Give it time,” Sock rebutted cheerily. “Eventually it will.”
Jonathan snorted, a cloud of white curling around his cheeks. “You still suck at this.”
Sock was in too good a mood to let Jonathan’s barb bother him very much. “Why don’t you go out more often? I mean, you were having fun. You almost smiled.”
Jonathan huffed air through his nose and looked away. “It’s not my kind of thing. I don’t like crowds, drunks or needless violence.”
Sock grinned. It was a minor sin; Jonathan using a fake ID to sneak into the bar, but it had given Sock the gleeful feeling he was having some real influence on his human counterpart. “Well, there were all three of those there tonight,” he chirped, lifting a hand to tick off fingers. “There were two fights within the first five minutes of us getting in, and that blond in the bunny hat that kept hitting on you was totally wasted. That boyfriend of hers almost made it three fights! And crowded? I had more people walk through me than the door of a Taco Bell restroom.”
Jonathan barked a surprised laugh. “Not my fault. You didn’t have to follow me, you know.”
Sock pulled his face into a frown, having to concentrate to keep it in place when all he really wanted to do was keep grinning and enjoying the evening. “It’s my job!” he protested.
“It’s Saturday,” Jonathan retorted, no heat in his tone. “You have weekends off.”
“There is no rest for a demon. Through sleet, snow—”
“You are not the post office. Though you are postal.” Jonathan teased, an almost smile curling the edge of his lips.
Sock stuck his tongue out. “Shows what you know. The postal service is a division of Hell. So’s Walmart. Oh, and a whole bunch of fast food places too. Surprisingly, Taco Bell isn’t one of them, so you can’t blame us for what happens when you eat there.”
Jonathan snorted laughter again. “That explains so much.” He grinned up at Sock, eyes sparkling with amusement.
Sock laughed, dropping his pose to hover at Jonathan’s shoulder. “Doesn’t it though? Hey, speaking of explaining things, if you hate everything about the bar scene why did you wanna sneak in one tonight?”
Jonathan glanced over his shoulder, back toward the bar they had left. “The band. They’re local, but they do some really awesome covers of Valhalla Soundbox and Irish Stew of Sindidun. I heard they were playing here tonight.”
“Oh,” Sock brightened. “Wow, maybe I should listen to your music more often! I really liked some of the songs. Couldn’t understand all of them over the noise, but the ones I did, I liked!”
Jonathan half-smiled, glancing back over his shoulder again. “I’ll put on some when we get home, then. Maybe Valhalla’s premiere album, it has some of their best stuff on it, before they got a record deal.” He picked up his pace a bit, carefully avoiding a patch of ice. “Hey, Sock?” There was a new thread of tension running through his voice.
“Yeah?” Alert now, Sock looked down into Jonathan’s face, noting how pinched his lips were and the crease between his brows.
“I think someone’s following me. Since he can’t see you, wanna check for me? I don’t want to turn around again, in case he is.” Jonathan hunched his shoulders, his pace moving up to a fast trot.
Sock whirled in the air and darted back down the street. He spun around the last corner they had turned and phased right through someone. If he’d been corporeal, he’d have crashed right into him. The man shivered like he’d felt something, giving Sock a good look at his face. It was the guy from the bar, the drunk chick’s boyfriend. His spiked, pink-dyed hair was roughly mussed, like he’d run his hands through it repeatedly, and his red-rimmed eyes darted nervously around, almost like he sensed Sock passing through him. Sock brushed a hand through his arm again, hoping he was wrong.
The man flinched, rubbing his shoulder as if it were cold. His dilated eyes flicked around wildly for a moment before fixing again on Jonathan’s receding form. His lips lifted to bare his teeth in a snarl and he hurried his pace.
More than worried now, Sock put on a burst of speed. His thoughts were a useless jumble of panic and concern. “Keep walking,” he warned Jonathan as soon as he was in earshot. “You’re right; you are being followed. It’s the dude from the bar, the one whose girlfriend kept hitting on you. He’s got a mad-on and I seriously think he’s on something. I mean, he felt me when I crashed into him! Who does that?” He knew he was babbling, but couldn’t seem to put a rein on his mouth. He twisted to look over his shoulder again, fingers knotting uselessly in the fabric of his skirt. “He’s only about a block behind. You have to hurry. Stay on the main street, close to the streetlights. No shortcuts, even if it will get you to the bus stop faster—”
“Sock.” Jonathan’s voice still thrummed with that wire-tight tension, but the face he turned up to Sock was calm. “You’re babbling. I know this stuff, okay?”
Sock sighed, out of habit mostly, being that he didn’t need to breathe anymore and tried to calm himself. “I know. I know you know this stuff, but—”
“You’re scared,” Jonathan interrupted quietly. “Believe me, I am too.”
“I’m not scared,” Sock protested. “I’m a demon. We’re the scary ones!”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Jonathan retorted, picking up his pace again, his breath coming in rapid puffs of white vapor.
Sock turned to keep an eye on the nutjob following them. He wasn’t exactly keeping up to Jonathan’s not-quite-a-run, but he was still closing the distance.
Suddenly, there was a startled yip from Jonathan, followed by a thud.
Sock whipped his head back around.
Jonathan had slipped on a spot of black ice, all but invisible under the glare of the streetlights. He’d gone down awkwardly, one knee still on the patch of ice, his other knee and both arms buried in a snowdrift. There was a cut on his chin from a chunk of ice, red blood spattering the snow in a melting pattern.
Panicked, Sock dropped out of the air to futilely attempt to tug Jonathan upright. Cursing the intangibility of his demonic state, he pled, “C’mon, Jonathan, Let me help you.”
Jonathan ignored his plea, struggling to get his feet under him.
Then there was no time left, as a fist passed right through Sock to plow into Jonathan’s face.
“Jonathan!”
Shaking his head dizzily, Jonathan struggled out of the snowbank, one hand going to his rapidly bruising cheek. “What the fuck, man?” He glared daggers at his assailant. “What the hell do you want?”
Whatever he was on, it seemed to fill the man with a manic sort of energy, He bounced on his toes, glowering at Jonathan. “You stay away from her, bastard!” he snarled. “She’s mine!” He swung wildly.
Deftly ducking the windmilling fist, Jonathan skipped back a step. He nearly twisted an ankle on the ice but managed to stay upright, bracing his feet on a part of the sidewalk that was thankfully free of ice. “Dude, she came onto me, not the other way around!”
“Jonathan, do not antagonize the crazy person!” Sock shouted, darting in to swing rather ineffectively at Jonathan’s pink-haired attacker
The blows, incorporeal as they were, seemed to disorient the man for a moment. “Jonathan, get out of here!” Sock shouted, still attempting to attack.
The man flailed wildly at the air, none of his strikes coming anywhere near Sock, then his eye fell on Jonathan’s retreating form and drunken rage filled his face.
“Stay away from her!” he roared, lunging through Sock and after Jonathan. “I’ll fucking murder you, you touch her again!”
Jonathan backed up rapidly, holding his hands up. “Seriously, I never touched her except to pry her drunk butt off of me. I’m not going near her, ever again.” The lunatic seemed to be listening, so Jonathan continued. “Look, man, I just wanna get on the bus and go home. You can go back to bunny-girl and forget yo—”
It was the wrong thing to say. The rage on the man’s flushed face turned into homicidal fury and he launched himself at Jonathan. ”Don’t call her that!”
Jonathan barely managed to block the first strike, but a backhanded blow to his already bruising cheek sent him reeling backwards. Staggered, he lost his balance and went down on his ass. Sock could see the hit had dazed him.
Bracing himself over Jonathan’s slumped form, Sock clenched his fists and glared furiously at his attacker. “You’re not touching him again!”
“He can’t hear you, Sock,” Jonathan mumbled dazedly, shaking his head slowly.
“I don’t care,” Sock retorted, daring to glance down at Jonathan, who was trying to get back to his feet. It took him two tries to make it as far as his knees. “He can’t do that!”
Sock knew the hits Jonathan had taken had to have been brutal because he was swaying unsteadily on his knees, and gingerly touching the purpling side of his face with a sort of detached fascination.
Sock crouched over him. “Jonathan, stay down for a minute, okay?”
Jonathan, being Jonathan, ignored him, trying a third time to rise to his feet.
A hand shoved straight through Sock’s chest to grab the front of Jonathan’s hoodie, hauling him forward. For an instant, Sock and Jonathan were nose to nose, dazed blue eyes staring into green.
Then the world dissolved into white, washed with red.