Venom

055

Fifteen minutes. That was how long Helen had been waiting outside Mickey's apartment. Knocking and knocking, no one opened up. At some point, the knocking had turned into an actual banging on the wooden door.

"Jesus Christ," she muttered, deeply annoyed. Last night she hadn't been able to sleep much, her thoughts being too loud in her head. As she started pacing back and forth in the hall, her phone rang. She picked up without even looking at the name. "What," she bit harshly.

"Woah. Good morning to you too, darling."

An instant smile tugged at her lips. "Hi, Dean. Sorry about that," she said more softly.

Dean could hear her smile all the way from his office in Chicago. "Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?"

"Hmm," she ironically hummed. "Yeah. You know, the other side was occupied by another person, so..." she teased him.

Even though he chuckled, his hands still clenched. "Funny. Anyway, is everything alright there? The two boys are behaving, right?" he changed the subject, playing with a pen resting on the desk. He noticed a little stain on the white carpet on the floor. Damn it. He'd told his men to perfectly clean up the blood of yesterday's victim. Incompetent idiots.

"If they bothered to open the goddamn door, maybe I'd know. I'm about to kick it down, I swear to God," she said, angry, as her eyes flashed to the still locked door.

Dean laughed a little, moving the table leg over the blood stain. "It's not like you haven't already done it once. And that time, you found him in bed with..." He trailed off. "Well, ahem, just... go on and kick it down, darling."

Helen lowered her eyes, starting to sting with needling tears. She cleared her throat. "I think I'll pick the lock this time. Last time, I crushed the hinges. Wouldn't want that to happen again, right?" she said, crouching in front of the door with her phone pressed between her ear and shoulder. She took out from her bag the utensils she needed and started working on the lock. It gave out easily. "Let's see what we've got in there."

She opened the door and stepped in quietly. The house was clean, but seemed empty. Helen dropped her bag on the table and slowly approached the rooms of the apartment.

The living room was empty, obviously. The bathroom was too, but the glass of the shower was still fogged up and wet, meaning that someone had used it recently.

"All clear?" Dean asked.

"I think we're about to find out if you owe me those two hundred bucks or not," she said in little more than a whisper, wrapping her hand around the bedroom door's handle.

"Ooh, hell yeah," he replied, amused.

Silently, she lowered the handle and creaked the door open of just a sliver. She poked inside with her eye. A genuine smile formed on her lips. "You have to see this," she whispered to Dean, opening their chat and taking a picture.

Dean opened it and grinned as well. Mickey was resting on his back with his arm wrapped around Isaac, who lay sleepily on the sniper's bare chest. The mess of tangled legs that were out of the sheets suggested that they were not wearing anything at all.

"I want cash," Helen said, closing the door behind her with a soft click. She heard Dean's chuckle, and smirked. "So, when are you coming back?" she asked, leaving the apartment and walking down the few stairs of the building.

"Miss me?" he teased her.

"Just some tiny parts of you," she said, unlocking her car and getting in. She started driving.