doriz

Dean wipes his dirtied face with a grease-caked palm, sweat trickling from his forehead down to his neck as he wields a wrench under the Impala, fleeing into the cooler shadows, although the black metal seems to attract the blistering sun even more. His jeans, shirt, and skin are stained with grime. His back is already sore from working for hours – days even – on Baby. But he wears his aches like a badge of honor. All that matters to him these days is restoring her to her former glory. 

And maybe fixing her fixes him, too. At least, that is the hope. 

Sam has left him alone for the most part after their last case a week ago, hauling himself up in the coolness of Bobby’s house with boxes of their dad’s stuff – John’s research, old burner phones, and even family photos. The only sore reminder of the brothers’ heated discussion last week is the smashed trunk of the Impala.

Dean winces when he thinks about it again. He’s been cursing himself for the past three days for taking out his frustrations with a crowbar. Baby deserves better. 

“Dammit!” Dean huffs as the wrench slips from his hand and clatters to the gravel. “Son of a bitch…”

The heat of the pavement burns through his shirt, but he doesn’t care. All his mind is willing to focus on is the car. Whenever he stops, his thoughts wander, and he can’t let that happen, so he never stops. 

It’s simple. 

He doesn’t want to think about his father’s death, the weirdness of it all, the strange and hollow feeling in his gut like a black pit, Sam’s sudden drive for revenge, the mystery box full of family secrets, or the burden John’s laid on his shoulders with his dying breath. 

Dean’s been doing the same dance for close to three weeks now, but it’s been working so far – although Sam would probably disagree with that assessment. Who’s asking him, though? God knows the kid’s head hasn’t been screwed on right either since their dad’s passing. 

Granted, they both have said some regretful things over the last few weeks. But why does Sam have to be so goddamn pushy all the time? 

Avoiding Sam is the best option for now. Luckily, his little brother has received the message, too. 

However, Dean’s stomach is growling as he slowly pushes out from under the car. His green eyes narrow when the blinding sun hits them, already feeling more drops of sweat bead along his hairline as he wipes the oil on his hands into his worn jeans. His gaze then flickers to the empty cooler. He’s out of beer, too. His stomach roars once more. 

Great. 

Dean sighs. He supposes he has to face the music now, doesn’t he? 

But approaching the house causes his stomach to twist with more than hunger. What surprise would await him in there on this beautiful, sunny day? Has Sam found even more fun souvenirs in their father’s pandora box?

As Dean finally drags his feet into the house, Sam is sitting by Bobby’s small dining table, still deeply lost in the contents of one of said boxes. Dean almost sighs out loud when he steals a glance at his little brother, strolling straight to the fridge to retrieve a beer and some ingredients for a sandwich. 

Dean still doesn’t know how to ever repay Bobby for his kindness and hospitality over the last few weeks – feeding the boys, lending them working cars, and ensuring Dean’s alcohol level never drops entirely to zero. As soon as the Impala is fixed, Dean plans to finally get out of the old man’s hair. They’ve been staying long enough – some might even say overstaying their welcome – but Bobby never says a thing to them about it. 

He doesn’t dare to glimpse at Sam while he’s fixing his meal on the counter, but he certainly can feel his little brother’s hazel eyes burning a hole into the back of his head. 

“What?” Dean sighs exhaustively and finally spins around to face Sam, stuffing the first bite of his sandwich into his mouth. He has to occupy it with something before losing his temper again. He masks his discomfort with a sarcastic smile. “Found more burner phones?”

One would think Sam stopped his quest after the last one led the brothers to a killer clown – a rakshasa. But Dean doesn’t seem to be so lucky, judging by the twinkling determination in his little brother’s eyes. 

“Uh, no.” Sam shakes his head, a gleam of confusion in his gaze. But it’s not geared toward Dean, a stack of papers in front of his scrunched nose. “Just going through some more of Dad’s research.”

The way Sam says it, Dean knows his little brother surely found something worth discussing. Dean also knows he can’t avoid it forever. Sam will push eventually, so he prefers to get ahead of the problem. 

“Anything interesting?” Dean asks, washing the sour nature of the question down with a gulp of beer. 

“Maybe,” Sam replies, but Dean knows there’s more. There always is. Sam’s just ramping up for the big guns. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last week – how we can’t kill the demon without the Colt, even if we do find it.”

“So?” Dean gives a shrug of his shoulders and keeps nursing his beer. He’s going to need a second one soon if this conversation goes on any longer.

Sam exhales a small sigh of frustration. Dean’s careless attitude has been annoying him as much as Dean’s annoyed by Sam’s relentless agenda to find the demon who killed their entire family and one college girlfriend. What’s so hard to understand about that?

“So,” Sam parrots with strained patience and continues, “I’ve been looking through Dad’s stuff to see if there’s something else. He wouldn’t have given up the Colt if he didn’t have a plan B, right?”

“We don’t know if he gave up the Colt,” Dean mutters, even though he knows it’s all bullshit. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how the gun suddenly went missing after his miraculous recovery in the hospital. Not to mention, their father died practically five minutes later.  

Sam quirks a brow. “Don’t we, though?”

Dean only shakes his head and takes a seat next to Sam. He doesn’t want to have this conversation all over again, so he relents. “Alright, what did you find, huh?” he entertains his little brother’s idea, hoping it’s enough to pacify any revenge plans for the moment.

It’s not like Dean doesn’t want the demon dead. It killed his mother. It killed Jess. And it killed his father and a bunch of other innocent people too. But what if it kills Sam next? What’s he supposed to do then? His dad and brother were the most important people in his life, the only family he had left, and now there’s only Sammy. 

Dean’s not scared of a lot of things, but he’s scared of being alone in this world. 

Lately, it feels like no matter what he does, the demon’s winning. If they go after it and it kills Sam, the thing wins. And if Dean does nothing and lets the bastard keep breathing, it’s still winning. Either way, Dean’s losing, and he doesn’t like those odds. 

Sam doesn’t answer right away. It’s not the thoughtful kind of silence, however. It’s the kind that means Sam is deciding how much truth to unload at once. He gathers a few loose papers and straightens the stack like he needs the extra second to decide how hard he wants to push. That alone puts Dean on edge. He already regrets sitting down. 

“Dad kept circling back to the same handful of things,” Sam says finally. “Symbols. Locations. Names.” 

Dean takes another sip, eyes skimming briefly over the papers before looking away again. “Hunters write stuff down. Shocking.” 

“I’m serious, Dean.” Sam slides one of the notebooks closer, flipping it open. Their dad’s handwriting fills the pages. Dean can recognize it in his sleep at this point – tight, angular, relentless. It still stings a little to see it, another reminder that he’s gone and not coming back this time. “There are patterns here. He wasn’t just cataloging. He was narrowing something down.”

Dean leans back in his chair, stretching his sore shoulders. “And this is where you tell me you’ve cracked the code and we ride off into the sunset together like Thelma and Louise?”

Sam ignores that skillfully. “Dad kept his research on the demon all together in the same box. He even demon-proofed the thing. It’s all in there. Weather patterns, crop failures…”

“Yeah, we already handed all that stuff over to Ash,” Dean points out. 

“I know,” Sam grits, patience wearing thinner, and slides over a ripped and crumpled piece of yellowing paper. “But I found something else in there, too.”

“Looks like he ripped a page out of the journal.” Dean frowns as he takes the piece of flimsy paper into his hands and stares at the few words on the page. 

Sugar Hill, NH

Traced lineage briefly. Potential anomaly. Historically cooperative. Protective alignment. Asset.

Left key in Salem – MO. Not time. Contingency only.

“That’s it?” Dean looks up from the page and stares at Sam, brow raised. “This is what got you all worked up?” 

There aren’t many notes, and that’s what bothers him. John Winchester never shut up on paper. When he wrote less, it meant their dad was being careful.

“You see that symbol in the margin?” Sam asks, moving his finger on the page to a small, angular letter in the right corner. 

ᛒ

Dean squints his eyes at it. The symbol looks familiar, even though he has no idea what it means. It almost feels like he’s seen it before, a vague memory coming to mind of his father explaining it to him when he was just a kid. But Dean can’t remember for sure, which is odd. He usually never forgets the things his dad taught him, so maybe it’s just one of those false memories – his own personal Mandela effect. Most times, all those weird symbols he comes across this job blur together eventually and tend to look pretty much the same. 

“It’s a rune,” Sam adds. “From the Elder Futhark.”

“Fu–what?”

“The Elder Futhark,” Sam repeats with a sigh. “It’s an old-school writing system.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I think it literally translates to ‘birch,’” Sam replies, crinkling his nose slightly. 

Dean cocks a brow. “Like the tree?”

“Yeah, like the tree.” Sam nods, flipping through loose pages. “In older traditions, it’s tied to growth, birth, uh… lineage. Maternal stuff.”

Dean grimaces. “Maternal?”

Sam chuckles a little. “Yeah, but not soft, exactly. See, birch was seen as kind of protective. It’s the first tree to grow back after a fire,” he explains. “It’s about renewal, shelter, quiet protection.”

“Huh. Fire,” Dean breathes and then looks at Sam. “You think it’s got something to do with us?”

Sam considers this for a moment before answering. “Maybe. I think Dad thought so, or he wouldn’t have written it down and put it into that box.”

Dean peeks at his father’s notes again, a few words standing out that definitely (and unfortunately) sound like a plan B according to John Winchester. 

Protective alignment. Asset. Not time. Contingency only.

“What does MO mean?” Dean asks then. “Missouri again? Should we call her?”

But Sam shakes his head, frowning at the page. “I don’t think so. Maybe he meant ‘modus operandi.’ There’s also a Salem in Missouri.”

“You think he put the key thingy there?” Dean looks at his brother and hates that he feels himself getting invested in this nonsense. Leave it to Sam to drag him into even more shit. “What d’you think it is? A weapon like the Colt?”

Sam stares blankly at the pages in front of him, clearly trying to make sense of his father’s research. “I don’t know.”

At that, Dean smiles a little to himself and rises from his seat, patting Sam on the back. “Well, you go have fun figuring it out. I’m going back to work on the car.”

Sam exhales a frustrated sigh but doesn’t bother arguing, returning to the stack of paperwork in front of him. 

Crisis averted, Dean thinks, satisfied. 

For now, at least. 

It takes Sam less than two days to figure out part of the mystery before he plants himself in front of Dean and announces they’re going to Salem, Massachusetts, adding the usual “I’ll fill you in on the way,” which is Sam-code for you’re not backing out of this, so buckle up. 

Luckily, that was just enough time for Dean to get the Impala running right again. God knows he wasn’t borrowing another soccer-mom minivan from Bobby. He still has nightmares about the damn cup holders.

And for a while then, the two of them just drive, and Dean’s happy about the silence, the only sounds coming from classic rock tunes through the stereo and Baby’s steady hum under his boots. Sam keeps his nose buried in a stack of papers while Dean keeps his eyes on the road. It gives him something to focus on – lines, distance, direction. But as they pass Chicago, Dean feels himself getting antsy, his fingers tapping the steering wheel in a rhythm that doesn’t match the music anymore. 

“Alright,” he caves finally, shooting a glance at Sam in the passenger seat. “What did you find? Enlighten me.”

Sam draws an amused smile and arches a brow, but he keeps his eyes focused on the papers in front of him. “Oh, so now you’re suddenly interested.”

“Just spit it out, alright? Least you can do after dragging me all the way out here,” Dean grumbles, although driving is still better than sitting still at Bobby’s, twiddling his thumbs.

“Alright,” Sam chuckles, but Dean doesn’t miss that little hint of triumph in his brother’s voice. “I started with Sugar Hill, New Hampshire. Small town. Nothing out of the ordinary. But there was a house fire in 1995.”

Dean cocks an eyebrow. “A fire?” 

“It was ruled accidental, but there were three fatalities,” Sam says. “A grandmother, a mother, and an eleven-year-old girl.”

Dean scrunches his brow slightly. “Not exactly the usual play…” 

The one and only case so far that they’ve tracked connected to the yellow-eyed demon started the same way their nightmare did – a baby in a crib, six months old, and a mother burning on the ceiling. All of it happened in 1983. That’s the pattern. 

“I know,” Sam replies. “That’s actually what caught my attention.”

Dean throws him a sideways look. “You sure this isn’t just some random fire?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admits and flips a page. “But I’m pretty sure Dad was there because the responding officer on scene was a deputy called Mia Owens.”

“MO,” Dean repeats quietly. 

“Yeah, and get this,” Sam continues, “Mia Owens moved to Salem a few days after the accident and adopted an eleven-year-old girl.”

Dean blinks at that. Alright, that certainly doesn’t sound like a coincidence anymore. He can admit as much. 

“You think it’s the same girl that supposedly died in the fire?” 

“Yeah.” Sam nods. “I don’t think she died, Dean. I think Dad was there, faked her death, and gave her to Mia Owens to hide. There’s a birth certificate for the girl she adopted, but it’s under a different name. But I couldn’t find any school transcripts, medical records, or anything before the age of eleven. Nothing.”

Dean thinks it through carefully. A house fire in 1995. An eleven-year-old girl that may or may not have survived. Shady adoption records and name changes. His father’s notes. 

Asset.  

Dean hates to admit that it does fit his father’s style. John wouldn’t go through the trouble of hiding a girl if he didn’t think she was important. 

“You think Dad meant a little girl with the key?” Dean asks, raising a brow. “A key to what?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I wanna find out,” Sam says pensively, his hazel eyes drifting out the window. “Maybe she’s like me.”

“You think so?” Dean questions skeptically, although he might be biased here. He just really doesn’t want to deal with more freak kids and Sam’s ESP. “I mean, if she was eleven in ’95, she’d be even a year younger than you. Did you have one of your premonition things about her?”

“No.” Sam shakes his head, and Dean feels the relief flooding his body almost immediately. “But maybe she wasn’t part of the original group.”

“You think there were more kids?”

Sam gives a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe Dad did.”

“That’s a lot of maybes, Sam,” Dean mutters. “Please tell me we’re not about to harass that poor girl. We don’t even know if she’s the real deal. Maybe that deputy adopting and moving away after the fire was just a coincidence. I mean, seeing a dead kid probably does something to normal people.”

Sam shoots him a raised look at that. “Dean, there are no coincidences in our line of work. And if there were, this would be a pretty big one.”

“Alright, fine. We’ll talk to her,” Dean caves with a sigh. “But if this girl turns out to be completely normal, promise me you’re gonna leave her alone and not drag her into our mess.”

Sam purses his lips and shrugs. “Sure, promise.”

Dean hears the words, but he’s not entirely convinced Sam actually means them. 

“I couldn’t find anything on the girl or where she is now, but Mia Owens works at Salem PD,” Sam says. “I figure we start there.”

Dean only gives him a nod at that and focuses his eyes back on the gray stretch of highway ahead. 

Salem, Massachusetts

This town might be Dean’s worst nightmare. It’s when his everyday life of horror suddenly turns to an amusing tourist attraction. Witch-themed shop windows, plastic broomsticks, and neon pentagrams litter the cobblestone streets. There’s even someone selling “authentic cursed candles” next to a goddamn coffee shop. 

It’s history turned into fucking merch. The town’s darkness is apparently just part of the decor.

“Oh, look, they’re offering ghost tours. Maybe we should take one,” Dean says with a wry grin and kills the engine a block away from the police station. 

“Yeah, maybe another time.” Sam chuckles, shaking his head, and smooths out the wrinkles in his suit before grabbing his FBI badge from the glove compartment. Then he glances at Dean. “You coming?”

“Nah, you go ahead. I’ll wait here. Maybe take a nap,” Dean says casually, already leaning back in his seat. After all, he did just drive for close to twenty-four hours straight with barely a break between. He deserves some shuteye, considering Sam dragged him out of bed before sunrise. 

Sam gives him a look but heads inside without arguing. Dean’s sleeping plans, however, don’t last for too long before his eyes catch on a flyer stuck to a lamppost, gently fluttering in the ocean breeze. It’s a missing person poster of a young woman, late twenties, last seen three months ago. 

As Dean’s gaze then drifts further down the sidewalk, he spots another one on a bulletin board outside a convenience store. Different face but similar age. And then his eyes land on a third one, partially covered by an ad for a harbor cruise. This one’s also female, early thirties, and was last seen a year ago. 

Three missing women are cause enough to step out of the car and take a closer look. The air smells like salt and rusted metal as tourists and shoppers pass him on the sidewalk. Dean then studies the nearest flyer – no signs of struggle, no suspects, and no vehicles found. As he looks at the other two then as well, he notices the same pattern there. All disappeared without a trace within one year. If he didn’t know any better, he would think all these women vanished into thin air. 

But Dean does know better. His gut is already screaming that there’s more than just answers about lost family secrets in this town. 

There’s a case here. 

When Sam finally strolls out of the police station, Dean’s leaning against the Impala with his arms crossed. His little brother looks thoughtful, which Dean learned a long time ago means complicated. 

“Well?” Dean asks as Sam reaches the car. 

“Mia Owens checks out. Moved here eleven years ago with her daughter,” Sam informs him and then flashes a smile. “And get this – the daughter also works for Salem PD. Apparently, she’s a CSI.”

“CSI, huh?” Dean’s brows shoot up with interest. “She working today?”

“Yeah, but the detective inside said they’re at a crime scene right now.”

“You know where?”

“Yup.”

“Alright, let’s go,” Dean says and already opens the driver’s door before stopping. “Hey, uh, you noticed these?” He gestures with his chin toward the missing person posters. 

Sam follows his gaze to the closest flyer. “Missing persons?”

“Yeah, plural,” Dean notes. “At least three within a year. All women. Similar age range.”

Sam frowns slightly. “It’s a tourist town, Dean. People pass through. Stuff happens.”

“Not like this.”

“I think you’re getting influenced by the merch here,” Sam retorts, laughing it off. “We’re not here for a case. We’re here to get answers.”

“Oh, and since when are we in the business of ignoring cases, huh? You just wanna let more women die?” Dean argues. 

“You don’t know they’re dead,” Sam points out. “You barely even have a case here.”

“We barely ever do, man.”

“Alright,” Sam plays along, leveling with him, which honestly feels really patronizing. Dean knows he’s right about this. His gut is never wrong. It’s the one instinct he can always rely on. “And what do you think killed them, huh?”

Dean gives a defiant shrug. “I don’t know yet. But I’m gonna find out.”

The house sits too far back from the road to feel even remotely welcoming. The white siding looks harmless enough from a distance, neat windows and trimmed hedges included. It’s one of those places that probably has matching towels in the bathroom as well. However, there’s a stillness to it that feels strange and anything but peaceful. 

Dean slows the Impala as the gravel path turns to mud beneath the tires, the big oaks crowding in on either side like they’re trying to pass judgment. As he cuts the engine, all he hears is the ticking of metal cooling under Baby’s hood and the faint buzz of insects in the woods. For a moment, he just studies the place through the windshield and can’t help the odd feeling in the pit of his stomach of being watched. 

“Found her,” Sam says from the passenger seat, snapping him from his stupor, and turns the laptop toward him. “She’s been with Salem PD for about a year now. She graduated early from Boston University with a master’s in biomedical forensic sciences.”

“So she’s smart?” 

Dean doesn’t know why he asked that. Of course the girl must be smart if she graduated college early. He couldn’t even swing high school, so he imagines someone who can use the word “biomedical” correctly in a sentence must be genius-level smart. At least, they’d be definitely smarter than him, but even Sam seems to be impressed, and he’s smart, too. 

Sam huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I’d say.”

Dean sort of admires that. Maybe it’s even jealousy. Because if it’s the girl they’re looking for and not some random coincidence, then it means this girl lost everything, survived unimaginable and unbearable trauma, and still made something of herself. What happened to her didn’t define her, so that’s pretty admirable in Dean’s book. 

“That her?” Dean squints at the personnel photo on the screen. 

He halfway expects the usual washed-out ID photo – bad lighting, stiff posture, grainy DMV quality, maybe even mid-blink. But instead, the picture makes him pause, not just his breath but his heart, too. 

Because even flattened by fluorescent lighting and a bland gray background, the girl on the photo shines and illuminates the whole scene without the need for good angles or straining effort. There’s a natural curve to her mouth that makes even the most neutral facial expression seem like a secret smile. It causes him to wonder what it looks like when she actually smiles. 

Her eyes are somehow soft and sharp at the same time, a steadiness gleaming in them that challenges to hold contact for longer than necessary just to see who breaks it first. He gets the sense that, despite the way she looks – innocent, warm, pretty – this girl doesn’t spook easily. 

“Huh.” Dean shuts the laptop slower than usual and licks his lips. He tells himself it’s just that she’s hot. That’s all. He’s allowed to notice when someone’s hot. But something about the photo persists in his head a heartbeat longer than it should, and he can’t help that now he kind of wants to see her in person – or the smile. 

He wants to see the smile. 

“What?” Sam’s already scowling like he knows what’s coming. He probably does.

“Well,” Dean says and pushes the car door open, stepping out onto the gravel as a smirk begins to form on his lips, “here’s hoping your theory’s wrong.”

Sam halts mid-exit before he slams the passenger door shut. “Excuse me?” 

Dean closes his door and adjusts the lapel of his suit jacket. “‘Cause if this is just a paperwork mix-up and not demon-adjacent, I might actually get a decent night out of it.”

He smirks broad and full then, even though he can tell Sam wants to either smack or throttle him right now. 

Sam stops in his tracks halfway of rounding the hood. “Dude. Are you serious right now?”

He shrugs his shoulders, grin widening. “What? Just saying. She’s cute.” 

“Dean, she might be connected to a house fire tied to the same thing that killed Mom,” Sam points out all righteously. 

Dean’s smirk softens, but it doesn’t disappear. “Yeah,” he says. “And if she’s not, I’d hate to waste a perfectly good opportunity.”

“Unbelievable.” Sam exhales sharply through his nose, already turning toward the house with a shake of his head. 

Dean chuckles and follows, hands slipping into his pockets. The two of them then stroll past uniforms and patrol cars, ducking under yellow tape, badges already out as Dean approaches an officer stationed by the door.

“Hey, uh, where can I find Mia Owens?”

The cop, however, doesn’t even get a chance to answer before an older woman steps up. She’s somewhere in her forties, maybe a little past it, and definitely looks like she doesn’t startle easily. There are crinkles around her eyes that aren’t from laughing but probably from squinting at bad situations way too often. Years of experience have settled into her posture, knowing exactly how much force to use without wasting it. She also probably knows when to talk and when to let silence do the work. 

She gives seasoned cop energy, and Dean sighs internally. This won’t be easy as pie. 

“Right here. Sergeant Owens.” She doesn’t extend a hand but already squares her shoulders instead. 

“FBI, ma’am.” Dean swallows subtly and quickly flashes his badge before she can notice they’re super fucking fake. “Special Agents Hetfield and Sambora.”

Sergeant Owens cocks an eyebrow and places her hands challengingly on her hips. “And what exactly does the FBI want with me?”

God, Dean feels a slight buckle in his knees at the firm tone of her voice. It feels like she’s scolding him for something he hasn’t even thought about doing yet. 

“We’re following up on a case that intersects with your jurisdiction,” Sam jumps in, more fearless than Dean, but that’s probably because Sam’s still driven by his need for answers. Dean doesn’t really want answers. He just wants peace and maybe a burger. “We were hoping to ask you a few questions about someone under your care.” 

“Yeah, eleven years ago, you took in a kid, right?” Dean gets straight to the point, not wasting another minute tiptoeing around the subject. He knows jumping into it will probably shake something loose, even if it’s just a defense mechanism. That would already tell him a lot, and that’s all he really needs. 

“My adoptive daughter, yes,” the sergeant confirms and crosses her arms. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t discuss my family with two men who show up unannounced to an active crime scene. So why don’t you tell me what this is really about?”

Apparently, Sergeant Owens likes getting straight to the point as well. Dean interprets this as a good sign because he’s certainly intimidated by her glare. 

“We–, uh, we’d just like to ask you some questions about a fire that occurred in 1995 in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire,” Sam says carefully. “You were the first responder on scene?”

“I was,” Owens confirms, but her eyes never loose their sternness. “It was ruled an accident.” 

“Three dead. Grandmother. Mother. Eleven-year-old daughter,” Dean adds. 

She nods once. “That’s right.”

Dean tilts his head slightly at that. “Except here’s the thing,” he continues calmly, wetting his lips. “Adoption records show you took in an eleven-year-old girl a few days later. Same age. That’s quite a coincidence.”

Her gaze expectedly darkens. “What are you implying, agent?”

“I think you know,” is all Dean says, not backing down till Sam cuts in to dissolve the tension. 

“We’re not accusing you of anything. We’re just trying to understand what really happened that night.”

But the sergeant steps forward, bristling. “Listen, FBI or not, I don’t appreciate two men waltzing into my crime scene and asking about my kid–”

“Mia, it’s okay,” a soft and sweet voice pipes up suddenly, and there’s movement behind Owens.

Dean notices because the air changes in an instant, like someone opened a window and let a gentle breeze in. And before he can blink, you step up beside the sergeant. 

You’re different from the photo. Somehow, in a worse way, which really means better, and that automatically means worse for him. Because in person, there’s even more warmth. It’s almost heat, like the hottest day in July, causing him to sweat in his suit by just looking at you. There’s a barely detectable trace of something electric crackling underneath the surface, under your skin, that the dull picture didn’t capture. A stream of light seeps through the windows and catches in your eyes as if even the sun herself is seeking you out. 

For a heartbeat, Dean forgets what he wanted to say till Sam elbows him in the ribs. 

Right. Words. FBI. Fire. Focus. 

“You don’t have to–” Sergeant Owens turns toward you instantly, protective instinct written all over her face, and Dean recognizes that one from his own father. Maybe even from himself when he looks in the mirror whenever Sam’s concerned. But if the story is true, Dean thinks he understands why their dad picked Mia Owens to keep a secret. 

“It’s fine,” you assure her with a small nod, completely calm in a way that makes Dean nervous. 

His eyes move before his brain catches up, tracing the line of your shoulders beneath the CSI jacket, the shape of your waist, and the quiet confidence in the way you stand. He can tell you’re not reckless or naïve. You know exactly what’s happening here. You’re not scared or confused. You’re measuring, careful, calculated. 

His stomach tightens imperceptibly. 

“You wanted to speak to me?” Your gaze drifts back and forth between him and Sam, assessing. A swallow gets stuck in Dean’s throat, lump thickening. 

“Yeah, uh–… Yeah.” Dean clears his throat. Smooth, Winchester. Smooth. He then nods and pulls out his badge with a smidge more confidence. “Special Agent Hetfield. This is Special Agent Sambora.”

You step closer to look – really look – and Dean feels the sweat begin to gather in the back of his neck again, probably soon flushing like a waterfall down his spine. You examine his credentials with far more attention than most people ever do. There’s no rush as your eyes scan over the name, the seal, and even the goddamn laminate. 

Please don’t be a Metallica fan. Please don’t be a Metallica fan…

In his periphery, he can see even Sam shift his weight, sees the tension creeping into his shoulders. Dean resists the urge to yank the ID back like a guilty teenager in a liquor store. He wonders if you’ve already figured it out. You’re smart, he reminds himself and watches your expression for recognition. For amusement. For the moment you call him out.

But instead, you smile. And shit, it’s so much more striking than the photo hinted at. It’s even warmer and brighter, like staring directly into the goddamn sun. 

“Sure,” you say smoothly. “What can I do for you, agents?”

Dean licks his lips, studying you for a moment longer, his eyes never leaving yours. It’s long enough that it causes you to straighten your posture just the slightest bit, bracing for whatever comes next. He can already tell you’re not expecting it to be good news. 

“Are you the girl from the fire?” Dean asks you bluntly, but you don’t stump or jolt back like he expected you would. Like most people would.

Instead, your eyes flicker from him to Sam and then back to him again, seemingly weighing both danger and options. “Am I in trouble?”

It’s not a clear yes, but it’s definitely not a no either. An innocent person would never ask that question. A guilty one would. You are the eleven-year-old girl who survived a fire. Who lost her entire family and is now being forced to talk to two strangers about it. Dean suddenly feels incredibly repentant about that, enough to seek out a church. He won’t, but the urge is there. God, he should’ve never let Sam convince him to come here, poke around, and disrupt a life that’s not theirs to disturb. 

“No,” Sam assures you quickly, shaking his head and giving you that soft smile he always reserves for calming victims. “You’re not in any trouble, I promise. We just want to ask you a few questions about that fire. What you remember…”

You grind your jaw, glancing at Dean again as if you know he’s the weak link here, suspicion clear as day in your eyes. “Why does the FBI care? It was ruled an accident.”

Dean lifts a brow at that, smiling cleverly. Gotcha. “Then why were you declared dead and adopted under a different name?”

You narrow your eyes to a little glare at him, which he finds more adorable than threatening. Then you exhale a sigh of defeat, and Dean almost wants to grin at that but bites it back. 

“Fine,” you huff, your eyes darting around the house that’s currently bustling with cops before you lower your voice. “But not here,” you say. “Besides, I don’t have time right now. I’m still on the clock, and I have a ton of evidence to process. You can come by my lab later. My shift ends at six.”

You pull out a business card and hold it out to him. As Dean takes it, his fingers briefly brush yours, and he swears a jolt of electricity travels straight up his arm and slithers down his spine to places it shouldn’t go. 

“We’ll be there,” Dean promises and can’t really control the slight upward twitch of his lips. 

Without another word, you then turn back toward the rest of the crime scene, already slipping your gloves on, the conversation dismissed without being rude. Dean watches you walk away, gaze unapologetically following the curve of your hips down to your ass before dragging back up again.

When he whistles lowly, Sam kicks his leg pretty damn hard, forcing Dean’s eyes away from you. 

“Dean.” Sam glowers and scolds him like a dog who peed on the new carpet. Sometimes, Dean wonders if his little brother ever wishes to bring a spray bottle of water to these things. “Can you not?”

Sure, Dean could try. But the unnameable restlessness that buzzes in his blood when he thinks about you probably won’t let him. There’s something about you that can’t be stuffed neatly into any labeled box he has, but for the sake of finding something to put you in, he chalks it off to simple attraction. Lust. Chemistry. 

Yeah, that’s probably it. Nothing more to it.

As Dean swings the motel room door open, the smell of old carpet and bleach hits him instantly. The TV is on mute, some local news anchor gesturing dramatically about weekend tourism, but Sam’s attention is nowhere near it. 

His little brother is hunched over the small table by the window, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and tie abandoned, the yellow legal pad beside him filled edge to edge with tight handwriting. There’s also a stack of photocopies scattered in front of him, ranging from birth certificates and property records to archived newspaper clippings and police reports.

“You’re back early.” Sam doesn’t even look up when Dean enters, shutting the door behind him.

“Dude, I’ve been gone six hours. It’s almost five,” he notes. Good thing his own investigation didn’t get him kidnapped or shot this time. Otherwise, he’d probably be dead till Sam noticed he was even gone that long.

Sam lifts his head, brows pinched, and checks his watch like he just surfaced from underwater. “Huh.”

“So, you find anything?” Dean asks and tosses the keys onto the dresser. 

Sam exhaustively leans back in his chair, rubbing a hand down his face. “Define anything.”

“Anything weird. Anything cult-y. Any reason a dead kid suddenly isn’t dead anymore.”

“Nope.” Sam exhales hard. “The adoption paperwork is messy but not illegal. Name change’s clean, too. I found the death certificates for her mother and grandmother but not for her.”

Dean’s brow furrows slightly. “So she’s… not officially dead.”

Sam shakes his head slowly with a frustrated look gleaming in his brown eyes. “No, uh, it’s not even in the official police report. I mean, hell, there’s not even a mention of her. Like she never existed. The only thing that mentions three deaths during the fire is a local newspaper, but that’s it.”

“That’s it?” Dean’s brow lifts. 

“That’s it.”

“That’s… weird,” Dean says for lack of better words. 

“Tell me about it,” Sam huffs.

“And Dad?”

“Well, if we assume Dad was involved that night, I think he probably is the ‘civilian’ who ‘assisted in the rescue.’ He disappeared before he could give a full account,” Sam states with a tight smile, reading off the report. “If there’s something supernatural in her background, it’s definitely not on paper.”

That’s not necessarily unusual, especially if their father was part of the coverup. The brothers learned early how to erase their tracks properly.   

“I did look into the property records of the house, though,” Sam adds. “It’s got a lot of history. Been in her family for practically centuries. It’s still in her name – her real name. It’s never been sold to anyone else.”

Dean bobs his head, then smacks his lips. “Alright, so let’s say your theory is right and the fire wasn’t an accident and Dad was really there that night, the worst case scenario is that he saved a little girl and then hid her from the evil thing that was probably still after her to finish the job. Is that what you’re saying?”

Sam sighs. “Yes.” 

“Huh.” Dean purses his lips, nodding. “So basically, you’ve got nothing.”

Sam lets out a breath through his nose, drawing his lips into a tight line. “Yup,” he admits somewhat bitterly. “But she’s still gotta be connected to the demon somehow. Why else would Dad have gone through all that trouble to hide a small piece of paper in a demon-proof lockbox?”

“Look, I hear ya, alright? But not everything the old man did always made a whole lotta sense,” Dean reasons. 

Sam’s brow scrunches significantly at that. “Since when are you saying that? You worshipped the man.”

“Since now,” Dean replies without missing a beat, although he really wants to say since Dad idiotically sacrificed his soul for poor little me. “Maybe a demon was involved. Maybe there wasn’t. Hell, doesn’t even mean the fire ties back to the yellow-eyed demon. There’s other demons around, you know? You forgot Meg? Maybe Dad just tracked it out of habit, and it’s your fault for reading too much into three lines on an old note.”

Sam stares at him for a long moment then, hazel eyes completely stern, and Dean knows his little brother pretty much wants to strangle him right now – because he’s right. For once, Dean’s right and Sam’s wrong. Dean can almost feel the universe losing its balance over it. 

He smirks annoyingly wide at that. “Guess that means the CSI hottie is fair game.”

“I think she already has enough trauma in her life without needing your help, Dean,” Sam mutters, amused. 

“No better cure than Vitamin D for that.”

“Dude!”

Yeah, Dean almost wants to slap himself, but he’s too busy grinning shamelessly. 

“Maybe wait till we’ve talked to her and make sure she’s not connected somehow before you hit on her again,” Sam scolds and then checks his watch once more. “Speaking of, we need to leave soon or we’re gonna be late.”

“Yeah, hang on. Got something, too,” Dean says, victory already curving his lips. “Drove around town and looked into the missing women cases. Dug a little deeper.”

A corner of Sam’s mouth lifts wryly. “Oh, good. This should be interesting.” 

Dean shoots him a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Sam shrugs lightly, then leans forward on the table. “Just curious what kind of deep investigative journalism you conducted today. Talk to any conspiracy bloggers? Interrogate a barista?”

Dean rolls his eyes and grabs the room’s only other chair, dragging it across the carpet so it faces Sam directly. “You’re hilarious. Really. You should take that on the road.”

“Dean–”

“Eight,” Dean cuts in.

His little brother’s brow furrows. “Eight what?”

“Eight missing women. Not three,” Dean states and watches Sam at least straighten at that. “Five more in the last twelve months. All married. All reported missing by their husbands. And all had domestic disturbance calls logged at some point before they disappeared. You know, neighbors calling in yelling, one shattered window, one ‘accidental fall’ down the porch steps that didn’t quite line up with the bruises. And then all of them just vanished without a trace.”

Sam frowns then, shoulders slumping. “Dean, they probably just left their husbands. Doesn’t mean there’s anything weird going on.”

“Sure.” Dean nods, feeling quite clever. “See, that’s what I thought too at first. But then I talked to a few of the husbands.”

Sam arches a brow. “And?”

“And,” Dean continues, “all of them had accidents after their wives’ disappearances.”

“What kinda accidents?”

Dean exhales slowly through his nose. Boy, that one’s a loaded question. He’s heard some weird shit over the years in this job. Seen worse. But this one surely took the cake. He’s never sat across a red-faced contractor in a living room before, who muttered something about a “freak bedroom thing.” The guy turned purple by the time Dean finally got him to say the words “fracture” and “penis” together in the same sentence. 

That was new territory.

Salem – witch capital of America. He almost laughs at that. If there were ever a town for something old and vindictive to take root, it’d be this one. God, he hates witches. Of course some bitch hauled up here of all places and sprinkles hex bags around like it’s fucking confetti.

“You know, shower slips, stair falls, gym injuries,” Dean replies, coughing up the lump in his throat. 

“That’s vague. Could still be unrelated.”

“Could be.” Dean bobs his head, lips pursed, then looks dryly at his brother. “They all broke their dick, Sam.”

“What?” Sam’s brows pinch together. Hard. 

“Yeah, that got your attention, huh?” Dean slumps back in his chair and lets out a sigh. 

Sam’s mouth opens and closes a few times before finding the right words. “Did any of them die?”

“No, Sam, they all just had an itchy cast for a few weeks,” Dean deadpans. “I mean, one guy thinks he might have permanent damage, but that’s only ‘cause he was too freaked out and embarrassed to go to the ER.”

Dean doesn’t mention that the last victim’s husband was still wearing a cast, which he kept repeatedly scratching right in front of him. For an entirety of thirty minutes, Dean didn’t know where to look and kept staring at the ceiling fan. 

Sam muses, head nodding. “So let me get this straight – the women are all probably alive and just left, and the husbands are alive too and got away with minor injuries.”

“Minor?”

“You know what I mean. We’ve seen a lot worse,” Sam clarifies, which Dean can hardly deny. This is basically bush league – no pun intended. “What are you thinking? Witch?”

Dean shrugs. “Probably. Fits the M.O.”  

“Look, it still might be a coincidence,” Sam argues, which frustrates Dean greatly. 

He knew Sam was going to call it a stretch, even with all the evidence laid out in front of him. He knew Sam would say correlation isn’t causation. And he knew Sam would point out that injured men don’t automatically equal hex bags and covens.

And Dean knows that, too. But he also knows eight women just don’t evaporate into thin air and husbands don’t shatter things like that by accident. At least not eight fucking times. 

“Dude, c’mon,” Dean counters. “Eight guys having those kinds of injuries is not nothing. I mean, they’re dicks to their wives and then they get injured in the most ironic way possible? When’s the last time you’ve ever heard of something like that, especially in a town this size?”

Sam doesn’t respond, which Dean takes as admission.

“Exactly.”

Sam studies him for a long moment. “Alright, let’s say you’re right–”

“I am.” 

“Even if it’s witchcraft,” Sam continues, “it sounds like a vigilante and not something purely evil.”

“So? What, you wanna give that bitch a free pass just ‘cause she’s got some weird moral compass?” Dean questions.

“So do we,” Sam points out. 

“It’s different.” 

“How so?”

“‘Cause it just is. ‘Cause I said so, alright?” Dean snaps. “Witches are evil. We kill evil things. End of story. I mean, hell, you love all those serial killer docs. You’ve never heard of escalation before? Whoever’s doing this maybe isn’t killing people right now, which is why we have to stop them before they do.”

Sam exhales a long breath at that, caving slightly. “You find any weird symbols? Hex bags?”

“Nope, not yet. But I’ll find something,” Dean assures his little brother. “I’m telling you, man. There’s something weird going on in this town.”

Your lab is a sanctuary of steel counters and fluorescent lights, humming with the quiet efficiency you’ve come to rely on. The evidence board glows behind you in blue, crime scene photos pinned in neat rows, your notes scrawled in the margin. The faint tang of chemicals keeps everything clinical and contained, and the chaos of magic stays locked away here – no tarot deck in sight, no spell books on the shelves, no runes scratched under the desk. It’s just science doing the heavy lifting while you sort fibers and catalog blood spatter.

A knock on the doorframe a few minutes past six then snaps you out of your peaceful routine, announcing Metallica and Bon Jovi right on schedule. 

Metallica leans one broad shoulder against the frame with a smirk in place, suit jacket already unbuttoned, golden freckles and evergreen eyes sparkling under the bright lights. Bon Jovi stands a half-step behind, posture more careful but no less intense. 

Their auras roll into the room ahead of their bodies, brushing against your senses like a breeze through leaves. 

A while ago, you made your own science out of describing auras. Bland names like yellow usually don’t say a whole lot about a person, do they now? Has anyone ever looked at a color wheel properly? There’s more options than just six. Is it a warm yellow? Or does it have more of a blue-ish tint to it? Brighter? Darker? That already says a lot about someone. So, you grabbed a Pantone color catalog from the hardware store not too long ago and got more creative. 

After all, who doesn’t like a little more sparkle and fun in their life?

Well, judging by Metallica’s aura, he might not. His aura is dense and close to his skin like armor. There’s a deep brick red at the core, steady and restrained. It’s the color of adrenaline held on a leash. Of survival mode that never quite switches off. But hunter green (ironic, yes) glimmers through the red. Big caretaker energy a guy like him probably even denies having. There’s also gunmetal gray that spiderwebs around the red and green, locking them up like chainmail. It speaks of grief he clearly hasn’t let himself feel yet. Maybe even survivor’s guilt chewing at the corners.

That one’s definitely your knight, but not in the sense that you’re the princess he needs to rescue. You’re the dragon he’s convinced himself to slay. He just doesn’t know it yet.

Bon Jovi’s aura, on the other hand, is larger, more diffuse, and a lot harder to pin down. His primary color is a bright buttercup yellow, which pulses unevenly. He’s intelligent, anxious, and probably has a mind that overthinks practically everything. A deep Moroccan blue pools heavily around his center, however, telling of grief, emotional depth, and moral restraint. But the most interesting part about this guy? It’s the flickers of mulberry purple striking through the others like lightning. Uninvited and unpredictable. It feels like something is watching back. Psychic potential, maybe? Or maybe it’s just good intuition.

Their colors aren’t what give you pause, though. It’s how their auras interact with each other, which is certainly a rarity. They’re symbiotic. Not many people have that.

Metallica’s red steadies Bon Jovi’s erratic yellow when their gazes meet. In turn, Bon Jovi’s blue cools the heat in Metallica’s red just enough to keep it from boiling over. Metallica’s gray also thins in the other’s presence, like shadows retreating from light, while the purple in Bon Jovi calms as if Metallica’s grounding him.  

Which tells you one thing: they’re more than just hunting partners. Brothers is your best guess. Either that, or they’re super gay for each other with a soulmate-deep bond. You probably shouldn’t ask them to clarify. That never works out well for you. 

What’s important for you, though, is that they’re clearly stronger together. Dangerous even. But they’re also more vulnerable when separated. 

You strip off your gloves and rise from your swivel chair with a deceptively bright smile. “Agents, right on time. I was just finishing up. Come on in.”

They do. The door clicks shut behind them, which feels threatening enough, considering you’re pretty sure they want to kill you or do God knows what else with you. Did they already bring the matches and lighter fluid? 

But even with the pressure on your shoulders, you gesture to the chairs across your workstation. “Have a seat. Thirsty? I’ve got some water I can offer you.”

You spin to the mini-fridge and pull out two chilled bottles of water – holy water, to be exact. Quietly blessed last week by the local Catholic priest. If they’re demons, it’ll sizzle on contact. If not, well, hydration is key.

“Thanks,” Bon Jovi says, accepting one bottle with a polite nod. He twists the cap, takes a sip. 

Nothing. 

Metallica does the same, gulping half of it down without so much as a blink. Still nothing.

Clean. Human. Hunters. Still dangerous. Still lethal. Especially to someone like you. But they’re not the obvious kind of monster that hides under beds and in closets.

Slightly more relieved, you settle back in your chair, folding your hands on the desk. Warm enough to disarm but cool enough to maintain distance. The goal is to seem professional, helpful, harmless, which is easy because you are. 

“So, the fire. What do you want to know, agents?”

Bon Jovi leans forward first, the buttercup yellow flaring with that anxious intelligence. “We’re looking into some old cases that might connect to similar incidents. The Sugar Hill fire – was there anything unusual about it? Anything you remember that maybe didn’t make the official report?”

You let your expression soften just enough, playing the role of the cooperative survivor. You’ve rehearsed this story a thousand times by now – ever since Mia took you in. You’ve kept it simple, tragic, human. 

“I was only eleven. I don’t remember a whole lot,” you start, swallowing, a hint of old pain creeping into your voice. It’s not an act for their benefit, though. The loss of that night still aches like a root pulled from soil. “I woke up to smoke and flames. My mom and grandma… They didn’t make it out.”  

“How did you survive?” Metallica asks, but it doesn’t sound accusing. It sounds like he’s angling for something specific. 

Are they curious about the demon? Is that why they’re here and sought you out?

“A man pulled me out of the house, carried me to safety, and handed me over to Mia. She adopted me a few days later,” you explain.  

“Did–, uh, did this stranger say what his name was?” Bon Jovi asks. 

You give them a shrug of your shoulders, then shake your head slightly, brow creased. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. Maybe Jim? Jonathan? It was a long time ago. I’m sorry,” you say – or lie. “The cops ruled it an accident back then. Blamed it on faulty wiring.”

Metallica’s brick red holds steady as he watches you the whole time, juniper eyes calm but attentive. “This guy, uhm… did he say why he was there? Anything about your family? Why he was in the right place at the right time?”

You shake your head, offering a sad smile. “Not that I remember. He just… helped. Kind stranger, you know? I mean, I was a traumatized kid. Mia handled the paperwork. I had nothing to do with that. She just changed my name and moved with me here to give me a fresh start. Sugar Hill is a small community. She didn’t want me to live with this my whole life. That’s really all there is to it.”

Bon Jovi’s blue deepens significantly, disappointment glimmering through his yellow. He was hoping for more – something about patterns, maybe, or why your family might have been targeted. But you can’t give him anything to grab onto. Even if they’re here for the demon, trust is earned and not simply given. The cards warned you for a reason.

Metallica, on the other hand, visibly relaxes. His shoulders drop, and the red aura settles as if he internally exhaled. Then a sly, almost triumphant glint crosses his face. He’s clearly decided you’re normal, which brings you relief for the moment. The knight’s armor has been dismantled. Tragic backstory, smart girl who turned pain into a forensics career, no red flags, case closed, you can practically hear him think.

Your own expression stays neutral, but on the inside, you’re smirking wide. Gotcha. Now, you just have to get rid of them and hope they leave town soon without poking around too much. But another knock on the door foils your plans. 

Shit, Paige, you realize as you look up, past the two fake FBI agents in your lab, and see your best friend strolling through the door with her usual cheerful smile. 

As Paige pokes her head in, her curls bounce and her grin widens. “Yo, evidence queen, you better not still be buried in blood. Drinks wait for no woman. I will personally drag you out of here if I have to–”

She stops dead in her tracks when she spots the two men in suits in front of you, her brow knitting more and more with each second that passes by. She’s never been good at hiding her emotions. 

“Shit.” Her eyes widen and her teeth clench before she grimaces fully. “Am I interrupting something?”

Before you can reply, Metallica already twists around with a smirk in place. The guy really goes for anything with boobs and two legs, huh? Makes a girl feel real special. Not that you blame him. Paige has always been pretty and bubbly enough to wrap guys around her little finger. But she’s also been your biggest confidante – the Willow to your Buffy, so to speak. 

“No, not all,” Metallica says with a charm that could be easily mistaken for gentleness if you didn’t see the gun poking out under his suit jacket. “Me and my partner were just finishing up here.”

Paige frowns a little more at that and tilts her head. You already know what she’s thinking. “Partner? As in…”

Do not say gay, you warn her with a sharp look because you can already see Metallica latching onto the implication, shoulders tensing and drawing back, eyes crinkling in bewilderment, like his ego is a physical thing that just got wounded. He’s gotten that accusation before. You can tell and try your hardest not to laugh out loud. 

“FBI,” you provide quickly, shooting her another look. You hope it’s enough to alleviate the sting in Metallica’s ego and keep him from proving his virility by overcompensating in the stupidest way possible as boys often tend to do. You then glance back at Paige. “I’m almost done, alright? Just wait at Clancy’s. I’ll be out in five.”

Paige nods slowly but tosses you a worried look as if she can feel the tension in your muscles. You don’t want her to get hurt. If hunters are poking around in your life and even remotely suspect you’re a witch, they will look at any woman close to you and automatically assume it’s a coven. 

To clarify, it’s not. 

Sure, you’ve taught her a spell or two, mostly for self-defense. Like a father teaching his daughter how to knee a douche in his crown jewels. Not that you have any first-hand experience with that since you don’t know your dad, but you imagine that’s probably a pretty similar reason. However, you’ve never ever sat around a cauldron before and cackled like a maniac.

God, you hate most witch movies. They really give your kind a bad rep. Melissa Joan Hart gets a pass, though. Whoever made Hocus Pocus, on the other hand, should be burned at the stake, especially the person responsible for casting Sarah Jessica Parker. Carrie was fucking annoying in Sex and the City, too.   

“You know, me and my partner could use a drink,” Metallica suddenly chimes in, charismatic grin shaping into form. Fucking hell. He still needs to mend his ego and lick his wounds in front you, it seems. You steel your expression as you meet his expectant eyes. “Mind if we crash girls’ night? Tag along? Off duty, promise.”

Yes, I’d mind, dickhead, you think bitterly. Read the fucking room.

Even Bon Jovi shoots him a look of clear disapproval, blue cooling the flare in Metallica’s red. But his partner skillfully ignores it, undeterred, gaze locked on you. The interest is obvious now that he’s apparently decided you’re safe. You wonder how a guy with those instincts is still alive, considering tricking him only required a smile, a sad story, and a little cleavage from you. You guess Bon Jovi’s intelligence is mostly keeping him out of greater trouble. 

You keep the smile trained on your face, but your frustration spikes. You want them fucking gone, out of this town, and not embedding themselves in your normal life. But refusing outright might ping suspicion. 

Play along. Survive. Make sure no one else gets hurt.

“Sure,” you say and clear your throat slightly. “The more the merrier. The bar’s called Clancy’s. It’s on Church Street. Meet you there at seven?”

“Great.” Metallica gives you a nod, satisfied. In his head, the gears are shifting, already planning the night. “See you, ladies.”

You watch them go, exhaling slowly once the door shuts. Harmless? Hardly. But they’ve bought the act. For now, you’re just the normal girl with the sad story and the cute friend, and Metallica thinks he’s got a shot at taking you back to whatever roach-infested motel they’re crashing in.

You almost laugh out loud at the irony. Keep dreaming, hunter.

“Hey, what’s going on? Why was the FBI here?” Paige whisper-asks as she hurries over to you, even though the door is firmly shut again and the men in black are long gone.

“They’re not really FBI,” you explain. “I think they’re hunters.”

“Shit,” it slips out of her, brow scrunching. “Really? Do they know you’re, like, you know…”

“No, obviously not, or I would be dead by now,” you hiss and start to pace your desk to free yourself of some of the nervous energy buzzing in your veins. 

“Why would you invite them to drinks, then?”

“Dude! What was I supposed to say? I didn’t wanna raise suspicion by trying too hard to get rid of them.”

“Right. Smart.” Paige nods, purses her lips, and then looks back at you. “So, what now? What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know.” You shrug, feeling somewhat helpless. “Act normal? Hope they leave again? Get ‘em drunk enough to miss their aim?”

“Good plan.”

When the door suddenly swings back open, you already brace yourself for a bullet flying your way before recognizing Mia and exhaling another breath of relief. She shuts the door quickly and quietly and then instantly finds your eyes. 

“Just saw those two agents leave the precinct. Are they hunters?” she asks, her voice sterner than usual, but you’ve learned over the years that just means she’s concerned. 

You nod. “I think so, yeah. They asked about the fire. And they wanted to know about John Winchester.”

“Did you tell them anything?”

You shake your head, swallowing. 

“Good. Keep it that way,” she tells you, and you know it’s more than just a command. “Are they leaving town again?”

Another head shake from you. “No, they invited themselves to Clancy’s with me and Paige tonight.” 

Mia takes that in with a pensive bob of her head, then lets out a sigh. “Alright, go, but be careful. Don’t say too much. We don’t need them poking their noses into our business,” she says. “I spoke to Amy at the hospital again. She says she already wants to leave tonight if possible. Try to get rid of them by then, yeah?”

You nod quickly and share another look with Paige. You’ve played normal all your life. You can do it again tonight. 

As Dean slides behind Baby’s wheel, the familiar creak of the door and the distinct scent of old leather and gun oil instantly envelope him like a second skin. The engine rumbles to life with that low, satisfying growl he never gets damn tired of hearing as he lets his head tip back against the seat for half a second and grins like he just won a bet against Sam he never actually made out loud.

“See?” he says, throwing the car into gear and pulling away from the curb. “Hate to say I told you so. Normal girl. Sad story, smart as hell, works with gross stuff dead people leave behind for a living. No demon deals, no witchy vibes, no nothing. Just a hot CSI with a tragic backstory and killer legs.”

Sam slumps in the passenger seat and crosses his long arms, staring straight ahead with a sour look. “She gave us holy water, Dean.”

Dean snorts loudly at that, one hand drumming the steering wheel to the tail end of Zeppelin. “Dude, she gave us water. Cold water. From a fridge. In July. In a lab and a building full of cops. You’re reaching, Sammy.”

“She watched us drink it. Didn’t take her eyes off us once. That’s not casual hospitality. She was testing us,” Sam counters. 

Dean rolls his eyes so hard he’s surprised they don’t fall out the window. “Or she’s polite and didn’t want us dying of dehydration while she answered our invasive questions about her dead family. Either way, you’re projecting. You want her to be part of Dad’s puzzle so bad you’re inventing clues.”

Sam’s jaw flexes. “I think she was playing us. Don’t you think she answered every question too perfectly? She was too calm. She gave us exactly what we wanted to hear and nothing more. No slip-ups, no emotions, nothing. People who’ve been through that kind of trauma usually crack a little when you bring it up. She didn’t.”

Dean’s grin fades a fraction, grip tightening imperceptibly on the wheel. He keeps his eyes on the road, though, but the image of you flickers behind his lids. You’ve learned early to lock your pain down tightly, carrying it without letting it spill. Dean remembers being four. He remembers the smell of smoke, the heat, his mother’s scream cut off like someone snuffed a candle. Sam was only a baby. He got the blank slate version. Dean got the full-color replay that still shows up in nightmares, the taste of ash on his tongue when he wakes up gasping.

An eleven-year-old girl watching her whole world burn? Pulling herself out of that hell – or being pulled – only to have strangers poke at the scars years later?

Yeah, he gets why you’ve built walls. Hell, he respects it.

“She’s allowed to be guarded,” he mutters, quieter than the usual bravado he serves Sam in these instances. “Doesn’t make her a monster. Makes her smart. You’d do the same.”

Sam shoots him a sideways look, surprised. “You’re defending her now?”

“I’m saying she’s human, Sam,” Dean snaps back, but there’s no real heat in it. “And humans who’ve been through hell learn how to smile through the questions. Doesn’t mean she’s hiding a cauldron in her basement. Although, in this town, she just might. But probably only for Halloween decorations.”

He flicks the turn signal, changes lanes, and tries to shake the weird tug in his gut when he thinks about you standing there in that white lab coat, all competence and quiet steel. It felt familiar – like déjà vu he can’t place. Not in a creepy way, though. It’s more like recognizing a song one hasn’t heard since their childhood. But he shoves the feeling aside. After all, what’s the point in chasing something when the facts are clear?

You’re clean. Case closed. And maybe legs open?

Dean knows better than to say that last thought out loud, however. Sam would only smack him again. Nevertheless, there’s something really satisfying about the possibility of ending the night with company that isn’t his little brother or a poltergeist for once. 

“You should go for the friend,” he suggests then, smirk molding back in place. “Paige. She’s got that bubbly energy. Balances out your brooding. You two could talk about feelings or whatever while I handle the grown-up stuff with the Crime Scene Siren. Maybe offer up my body for some scientific research.”

Dean wiggles his brows. Sam snorts, finally cracking a genuine smile. 

“I’m not looking to ‘go for’ anything tonight,” Sam states as expected, however. “I’m going back to the motel. There’s still Dad’s notes, the rune, the adoption records. Something’s off, Dean. I can feel it.”

Dean sighs – internally at first, then out loud for effect. “Yeah, yeah, you and your feelings. Suit yourself. Means more drinks and girls for me. And hey, if things go well, maybe I won’t even come back tonight.” 

The mental image already flashes shamelessly behind his eyes – you laughing at all his jokes across the table, maybe leaning in close enough that he catches whatever shampoo or perfume you use, maybe letting him walk you to your car, maybe–

He cuts the thought off before it gets too detailed (or his jeans become too tight).

But the grin creeps right back a second later. Sam can sulk in a motel room with yellowed journal pages all he wants. But Dean? He’s got plans. And for the first time since his father died, those plans don’t involve a shovel or a shotgun.

He turns up the volume of the stereo as Ramble On kicks in, letting the guitar fill the silence. Even if Sam’s right – and Dean’s pretty damn sure he isn’t – tonight’s not about answers for once. Tonight’s all about forgetting the damn questions for a couple of hours.

Dean’s elbows lean casually on the scarred wood of a high-top table at a cozy little dive bar called Clancy’s, a beer bottle dangling loosely between his fingers while his grin is shamelessly wide as you lean close and hold his gaze in such an easy way that the whole damn room feels a size smaller. 

The bar’s got that lived-in feel as classic rock fills the air in the mid-evening buzz, people chatting and clinking glasses. It’s got just enough grit to keep things lively. Your friend Paige went for a refill a while ago but never made her way back, which Dean doesn’t mind even a little. He’s got you right where he wants you – smiling, leaning in, batting your lashes, and some time ago, you even touched his forearm for several seconds, which is the universal signal for getting laid tonight. He’s three beers in already while you’re only on your second one, so he’s got to watch it a little. 

“By the way, apologies for my partner earlier. Sambora's got that whole, you know, brooding-genius thing locked down. Thinks every loose end’s hiding a conspiracy,” Dean says, takes a sip of beer, and leans an inch closer. “Me? I’m the approachable one. The fun one. The guy who closes cases and still has time for a drink with a sharp forensics expert like you.”

You quirk a brow, lips curving in amusement. “Approachable, huh? Is that what we’re calling ‘the fed who shows up unannounced and asks personal questions’ these days?”

He chuckles, leaning forward a fraction more. “Guilty. But in my defense, it’s hard not to be curious when the CSI on scene is this smart. And easy on the eyes. And funny. Triple threat.”

Your laugh softly, teeth rolling over your bottom lip. “Careful with the flattery, or I might just think you’re after more than just case details here,” you quip and take a sip of beer without breaking eye contact. “So is that your pitch? You’re the cool agent who doesn't let the job eat him alive?” 

“Something like that.” Dean shrugs casually, chuckling. “Gotta balance out the gloom. Life’s too short for all work, no play, right? Otherwise, it’s all stakeouts and bad coffee. Though I’d take bad coffee any day if it came with company like this.” 

Your eyes narrow, but there’s a spark in them that sharpens your smile. “C’mon, Agent Hetfield–”

“Dean,” he offers. 

“Dean,” you repeat, and he shivers a little when you do because it feels like your voice learned its own melody just to say his name. “What’s really on your mind, huh? I’m sure you didn’t tag along just to charm me out of my crime scene stories.” 

He licks his lips, chuckling softly. “Uh, not entirely, no,” he admits and nurses his beer, knuckles lightly tapping the wooden table. “You know, uhm, actually, can I ask you about some other cases?”

You purse your lips, brow pinching slightly. “Uhm, sure.”

“You, uhm, ever seen the missing women posters outside the station?”

“Yeah, sure, I have,” you reply. “Hard to just walk by something like that.”

“Right, uhm, well, I looked into it a little and saw they had all domestic disturbance calls prior to their disappearances,” he says and watches you nod along. “You were the CSI on some of those scenes when things went south, right?”

“Yeah, it’s really sad what happened to them. I hope they’re okay,” you note sympathetically. “Are you suspecting any of the husbands? Because I didn’t find any relations or other things connecting each victim.”

“Uh, no,” he says at first but then quickly shakes his head. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah.” He clears his throat. “When you were at those scenes, you ever notice anything off? You know, weird vibes, anything that screamed ‘not just a runaway’?” 

You pause mid-sip and lower your beer again, brow furrowing slightly as it often does with people whenever he asks those kinds of questions. He may have just ruined his chances for sex, but a case always comes first. Well, most times it does. 

“Vibes?” You arch a brow, amusement sneaking back into your smile. “Didn’t know the FBI was regarding crime scene vibes as cold, hard proof.”

Dean just smirks. “Humor me a little. You’ve seen any symbols? Felt anything off? You know, small things that don’t make the report but stick with you.”

“Off? Symbols? In Salem? Half the town’s built on weird vibes,” you quip, laughing. 

“Right, yeah,” he chuckles. Stupid witch capital of America. 

“Listen, those women mostly came from broken homes, you know? To be quite honest with you, I think they just finally snapped and left without a forwarding address,” you say. “There never was any blood or fingerprints that didn’t match. No ransom notes. If there’s a pattern, it’s probably human nature and not some X-Files twist. In my lab, it’s DNA and fibers only. Sorry to disappoint.”

Dean nods, taking it in. “Human nature, huh? Guess you’re probably right. Still, eight in a year. No trace. Makes a guy wonder.” 

“Oh, wonder all you want, agent,” you say with a sly smile. “But if it was a monster under the bed, I’d have found the claw marks by now. Promise.”

Dean barks a laugh at that because he’d love to tell you how wrong you are, but he only ever steals people’s innocence and shatters their illusions about the real world when he absolutely has to – when their lives depend on it. But for a moment, the FBI mask and bravado still slip. His eyes study you for a beat – not just skimming the surface, but how you’ve constructed your life. You’ve got friends who drag you out, a job that keeps you grounded, and routines that surely don’t involve salt rounds or devil’s traps. 

He envies it more than he wants to admit. Wonders what it would’ve felt like to grow up without the road and without the weight of revenge. If he hadn’t been dragged from one monster to the next. If he’d stayed in one place long enough to finish school, date someone normal – maybe even have a girl like you laugh at his dumb jokes over cheap beer on a Wednesday night without having to lie about his entire existence.

He understands your quiet armor. Admires it even. You’ve turned fire into focus, loss into logic. He carries his own version of it every day. 

“Why?” you ask then, a hint of concern lacing your tone. “You think there’s something more to these cases?”

“Nah.” Dean shakes his head, gulping his beer. “Just covering bases. Town like this – tourists, history, all the ghost-tour crap. Can make someone wonder if the stories ever bleed into real life sometimes.”

“Only on the brochures,” you tease, grinning.

He smirks, raising his bottle in a mock toast. “To keeping it boring, then.”

You clink your bottle with his, the conversation then drifting to bar stories, bad cases, and the sort of small talk that feels bigger because neither of you is pretending to be someone else. Well, at least, not entirely. 

Admittedly, Dean likes how you match him – quick, dry, and never flinching. He likes how you don’t shrink when he leans in or when the flirting edges closer to reality. It feels… natural.

“Paige is a force of nature. Keeps me from turning into a hermit,” you tell him after drink number three, while he switched the beer for a whiskey on the rocks. You’re a little warmer and looser now, but there’s still that silent steel underneath around your heart he clocked back at the lab. “Someone has to drag me out when I start talking to evidence bags like they’re people, you know?”

“I hear ya,” he says, nodding. “And hey, no judgement. I talk to my car.”

“Well, it’s a nice car,” you note and smirk, sharp eyes seeing right past the FBI suit and charm. “Although, you do strike me as the type who’d name it something ridiculous like… I don’t know – Betsy.”

“First of all, it’s a she,” he starts, only halfway serious. Well, seventy-five percent serious. “And her name’s Baby. She’s a ’67 Chevy Impala. Show some respect, alright?”

A laugh bubbles out of you at that, and Dean has to laugh, too. For a second, the tension between him and you sharpens and transforms into electricity. It’s the kind that makes him want to lean across the table and see how far that smile of yours goes. And fuck, he almost does. It’s so fucking easy how you fit – like you’ve done this before, even though Dean knows damn well you haven’t. 

He takes another swig from his beer, lets the cold bite chase away the softer thought. He’s not here for feelings. He’s here for a night that doesn’t end with blood or sulfur or another stained motel ceiling staring back at him. 

One night – that’s the deal he makes with himself every damn time.

Your phone then suddenly vibrates on the table. You glance at the screen for a second before your face shifts into professional calm. “Uh, sorry, it’s work. One sec,” you excuse yourself and turn toward a quieter corner of the bar. 

Dean stays put, but as you move, your bag on the table falls open. He doesn’t mean to snoop. He really, really doesn’t. But it’s almost impossible to keep his eyes away from its contents. 

He spies a small velvet pouch inside, a bundle of herbs that smell too sharply of sage, a notebook with that same angular B-rune on it, and a deck of tarot cards fanning out just enough for him to catch the intricate backs and one visible face – something with swords and a charging knight.

Dean’s gut twists.

Tarot. Herbs. A spell book. Holy water. The flawless deflections. Eight women vanishing clean after scenes you processed.

Goddammit. Was Sam fucking right? He’s never going to let Dean live that down.

But you’re a witch, aren’t you? And not just any witch – you’re the one he’s been hunting. 

When you finish the call, you hurry back to the table and scoop up your bag without noticing his stare. You then spin to him with a quick, apologetic smile. “Sorry. Lab emergency. Gotta run. Rain check?”

He forces the charm back into place. “Sure. No worries. Duty calls. Work never sleeps, right?”

“Yeah, something like that.” You flash a quick smile, nod, and sling the bag over your shoulder, heading for the door.

You’re gone a moment later, Dean’s eyes following you until the door swings shut behind you. Then the flirtatious warmth in his chest sours into hunter focus.

He downs the rest of his whiskey in one go, sets the glass down hard, tosses some cash on the table, and heads for the door as well. 

Game on, witch.

▶️ Chapter 2: Every Bait and Switch – June 5

Oh my, we might've pushed Dean a little too far here lol. You guys think he's more salty that she's a witch or that she got one over on him? 😂 Don't be fooled by the feelings and flirting in this first one, though. That boy's gonna switch quite fast now 🙈

What did you think of this rather rough start? Leave your thoughts and theories below, friends!

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“Don’t move.” His deep voice carries across the courtyard like a blade, the barrel of his gun smoothly trained on your back. 

The familiar click that follows is loud in the quiet night, clean and unmistakable. You spin around so fast it almost makes him flinch, eyes going wide the second you see the weapon in his hands. 

“It’s not what it looks like!” 

Dean huffs out something that might’ve been a laugh in a different situation and steps closer. “Yeah? ‘Cause to me, it looks like you found your next victim.”

“Dean–” Sam already hisses behind him, but Dean skillfully ignores the protest. 

“I got it,” he mutters under his breath and doesn’t lower the gun even for a second, dark green eyes fixed on you. “Step away from them. Now.”

But instead of following his order, you do the opposite and step right in front of them, shielding both mother and son behind your back. The woman lets out a startled sound, pulling her son with her as they tuck tighter behind you. The boy whimpers once, muffled against his mother’s thigh as he clutches a stuffed fox to his body. His eyes are wide and fixed on Dean, but he’s not curious or confused. He’s scared. 

Scared of him.

For a moment, that throws Dean off his game because that’s not usually how it goes. Usually, fear is pointed in the right direction. Usually, it tells him exactly who the monster is. 

Not in this case, though. 

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Dean wipes his dirtied face with a grease-caked palm, sweat trickling from his forehead down to his neck as he wields a wrench under the Impala, fleeing into the cooler shadows, although the black metal seems to attract the blistering sun even more. His jeans, shirt, and skin are stained with grime. His back is already sore from working for hours – days even – on Baby. But he wears his aches like a badge of honor. All that matters to him these days is restoring her to her former glory. 

And maybe fixing her fixes him, too. At least, that is the hope. 

Sam has left him alone for the most part after their last case a week ago, hauling himself up in the coolness of Bobby’s house with boxes of their dad’s stuff – John’s research, old burner phones, and even family photos. The only sore reminder of the brothers’ heated discussion last week is the smashed trunk of the Impala.

Dean winces when he thinks about it again. He’s been cursing himself for the past three days for taking out his frustrations with a crowbar. Baby deserves better. 

“Dammit!” Dean huffs as the wrench slips from his hand and clatters to the gravel. “Son of a bitch…”

The heat of the pavement burns through his shirt, but he doesn’t care. All his mind is willing to focus on is the car. Whenever he stops, his thoughts wander, and he can’t let that happen, so he never stops. 

It’s simple. 

He doesn’t want to think about his father’s death, the weirdness of it all, the strange and hollow feeling in his gut like a black pit, Sam’s sudden drive for revenge, the mystery box full of family secrets, or the burden John’s laid on his shoulders with his dying breath. 

Dean’s been doing the same dance for close to three weeks now, but it’s been working so far – although Sam would probably disagree with that assessment. Who’s asking him, though? God knows the kid’s head hasn’t been screwed on right either since their dad’s passing. 

Granted, they both have said some regretful things over the last few weeks. But why does Sam have to be so goddamn pushy all the time? 

Avoiding Sam is the best option for now. Luckily, his little brother has received the message, too. 

However, Dean’s stomach is growling as he slowly pushes out from under the car. His green eyes narrow when the blinding sun hits them, already feeling more drops of sweat bead along his hairline as he wipes the oil on his hands into his worn jeans. His gaze then flickers to the empty cooler. He’s out of beer, too. His stomach roars once more. 

Great. 

Dean sighs. He supposes he has to face the music now, doesn’t he? 

But approaching the house causes his stomach to twist with more than hunger. What surprise would await him in there on this beautiful, sunny day? Has Sam found even more fun souvenirs in their father’s pandora box?

As Dean finally drags his feet into the house, Sam is sitting by Bobby’s small dining table, still deeply lost in the contents of one of said boxes. Dean almost sighs out loud when he steals a glance at his little brother, strolling straight to the fridge to retrieve a beer and some ingredients for a sandwich. 

Dean still doesn’t know how to ever repay Bobby for his kindness and hospitality over the last few weeks – feeding the boys, lending them working cars, and ensuring Dean’s alcohol level never drops entirely to zero. As soon as the Impala is fixed, Dean plans to finally get out of the old man’s hair. They’ve been staying long enough – some might even say overstaying their welcome – but Bobby never says a thing to them about it. 

He doesn’t dare to glimpse at Sam while he’s fixing his meal on the counter, but he certainly can feel his little brother’s hazel eyes burning a hole into the back of his head. 

“What?” Dean sighs exhaustively and finally spins around to face Sam, stuffing the first bite of his sandwich into his mouth. He has to occupy it with something before losing his temper again. He masks his discomfort with a sarcastic smile. “Found more burner phones?”

One would think Sam stopped his quest after the last one led the brothers to a killer clown – a rakshasa. But Dean doesn’t seem to be so lucky, judging by the twinkling determination in his little brother’s eyes. 

“Uh, no.” Sam shakes his head, a gleam of confusion in his gaze. But it’s not geared toward Dean, a stack of papers in front of his scrunched nose. “Just going through some more of Dad’s research.”

The way Sam says it, Dean knows his little brother surely found something worth discussing. Dean also knows he can’t avoid it forever. Sam will push eventually, so he prefers to get ahead of the problem. 

“Anything interesting?” Dean asks, washing the sour nature of the question down with a gulp of beer. 

“Maybe,” Sam replies, but Dean knows there’s more. There always is. Sam’s just ramping up for the big guns. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last week – how we can’t kill the demon without the Colt, even if we do find it.”

“So?” Dean gives a shrug of his shoulders and keeps nursing his beer. He’s going to need a second one soon if this conversation goes on any longer.

Sam exhales a small sigh of frustration. Dean’s careless attitude has been annoying him as much as Dean’s annoyed by Sam’s relentless agenda to find the demon who killed their entire family and one college girlfriend. What’s so hard to understand about that?

“So,” Sam parrots with strained patience and continues, “I’ve been looking through Dad’s stuff to see if there’s something else. He wouldn’t have given up the Colt if he didn’t have a plan B, right?”

“We don’t know if he gave up the Colt,” Dean mutters, even though he knows it’s all bullshit. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how the gun suddenly went missing after his miraculous recovery in the hospital. Not to mention, their father died practically five minutes later.  

Sam quirks a brow. “Don’t we, though?”

Dean only shakes his head and takes a seat next to Sam. He doesn’t want to have this conversation all over again, so he relents. “Alright, what did you find, huh?” he entertains his little brother’s idea, hoping it’s enough to pacify any revenge plans for the moment.

It’s not like Dean doesn’t want the demon dead. It killed his mother. It killed Jess. And it killed his father and a bunch of other innocent people too. But what if it kills Sam next? What’s he supposed to do then? His dad and brother were the most important people in his life, the only family he had left, and now there’s only Sammy. 

Dean’s not scared of a lot of things, but he’s scared of being alone in this world. 

Lately, it feels like no matter what he does, the demon’s winning. If they go after it and it kills Sam, the thing wins. And if Dean does nothing and lets the bastard keep breathing, it’s still winning. Either way, Dean’s losing, and he doesn’t like those odds. 

Sam doesn’t answer right away. It’s not the thoughtful kind of silence, however. It’s the kind that means Sam is deciding how much truth to unload at once. He gathers a few loose papers and straightens the stack like he needs the extra second to decide how hard he wants to push. That alone puts Dean on edge. He already regrets sitting down. 

“Dad kept circling back to the same handful of things,” Sam says finally. “Symbols. Locations. Names.” 

Dean takes another sip, eyes skimming briefly over the papers before looking away again. “Hunters write stuff down. Shocking.” 

“I’m serious, Dean.” Sam slides one of the notebooks closer, flipping it open. Their dad’s handwriting fills the pages. Dean can recognize it in his sleep at this point – tight, angular, relentless. It still stings a little to see it, another reminder that he’s gone and not coming back this time. “There are patterns here. He wasn’t just cataloging. He was narrowing something down.”

Dean leans back in his chair, stretching his sore shoulders. “And this is where you tell me you’ve cracked the code and we ride off into the sunset together like Thelma and Louise?”

Sam ignores that skillfully. “Dad kept his research on the demon all together in the same box. He even demon-proofed the thing. It’s all in there. Weather patterns, crop failures…”

“Yeah, we already handed all that stuff over to Ash,” Dean points out. 

“I know,” Sam grits, patience wearing thinner, and slides over a ripped and crumpled piece of yellowing paper. “But I found something else in there, too.”

“Looks like he ripped a page out of the journal.” Dean frowns as he takes the piece of flimsy paper into his hands and stares at the few words on the page. 

Sugar Hill, NH

Traced lineage briefly. Potential anomaly. Historically cooperative. Protective alignment. Asset.

Left key in Salem – MO. Not time. Contingency only.

“That’s it?” Dean looks up from the page and stares at Sam, brow raised. “This is what got you all worked up?” 

There aren’t many notes, and that’s what bothers him. John Winchester never shut up on paper. When he wrote less, it meant their dad was being careful.

“You see that symbol in the margin?” Sam asks, moving his finger on the page to a small, angular letter in the right corner. 

ᛒ

Dean squints his eyes at it. The symbol looks familiar, even though he has no idea what it means. It almost feels like he’s seen it before, a vague memory coming to mind of his father explaining it to him when he was just a kid. But Dean can’t remember for sure, which is odd. He usually never forgets the things his dad taught him, so maybe it’s just one of those false memories – his own personal Mandela effect. Most times, all those weird symbols he comes across this job blur together eventually and tend to look pretty much the same. 

“It’s a rune,” Sam adds. “From the Elder Futhark.”

“Fu–what?”

“The Elder Futhark,” Sam repeats with a sigh. “It’s an old-school writing system.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I think it literally translates to ‘birch,’” Sam replies, crinkling his nose slightly. 

Dean cocks a brow. “Like the tree?”

“Yeah, like the tree.” Sam nods, flipping through loose pages. “In older traditions, it’s tied to growth, birth, uh… lineage. Maternal stuff.”

Dean grimaces. “Maternal?”

Sam chuckles a little. “Yeah, but not soft, exactly. See, birch was seen as kind of protective. It’s the first tree to grow back after a fire,” he explains. “It’s about renewal, shelter, quiet protection.”

“Huh. Fire,” Dean breathes and then looks at Sam. “You think it’s got something to do with us?”

Sam considers this for a moment before answering. “Maybe. I think Dad thought so, or he wouldn’t have written it down and put it into that box.”

Dean peeks at his father’s notes again, a few words standing out that definitely (and unfortunately) sound like a plan B according to John Winchester. 

Protective alignment. Asset. Not time. Contingency only.

“What does MO mean?” Dean asks then. “Missouri again? Should we call her?”

But Sam shakes his head, frowning at the page. “I don’t think so. Maybe he meant ‘modus operandi.’ There’s also a Salem in Missouri.”

“You think he put the key thingy there?” Dean looks at his brother and hates that he feels himself getting invested in this nonsense. Leave it to Sam to drag him into even more shit. “What d’you think it is? A weapon like the Colt?”

Sam stares blankly at the pages in front of him, clearly trying to make sense of his father’s research. “I don’t know.”

At that, Dean smiles a little to himself and rises from his seat, patting Sam on the back. “Well, you go have fun figuring it out. I’m going back to work on the car.”

Sam exhales a frustrated sigh but doesn’t bother arguing, returning to the stack of paperwork in front of him. 

Crisis averted, Dean thinks, satisfied. 

For now, at least. 

It takes Sam less than two days to figure out part of the mystery before he plants himself in front of Dean and announces they’re going to Salem, Massachusetts, adding the usual “I’ll fill you in on the way,” which is Sam-code for you’re not backing out of this, so buckle up. 

Luckily, that was just enough time for Dean to get the Impala running right again. God knows he wasn’t borrowing another soccer-mom minivan from Bobby. He still has nightmares about the damn cup holders.

And for a while then, the two of them just drive, and Dean’s happy about the silence, the only sounds coming from classic rock tunes through the stereo and Baby’s steady hum under his boots. Sam keeps his nose buried in a stack of papers while Dean keeps his eyes on the road. It gives him something to focus on – lines, distance, direction. But as they pass Chicago, Dean feels himself getting antsy, his fingers tapping the steering wheel in a rhythm that doesn’t match the music anymore. 

“Alright,” he caves finally, shooting a glance at Sam in the passenger seat. “What did you find? Enlighten me.”

Sam draws an amused smile and arches a brow, but he keeps his eyes focused on the papers in front of him. “Oh, so now you’re suddenly interested.”

“Just spit it out, alright? Least you can do after dragging me all the way out here,” Dean grumbles, although driving is still better than sitting still at Bobby’s, twiddling his thumbs.

“Alright,” Sam chuckles, but Dean doesn’t miss that little hint of triumph in his brother’s voice. “I started with Sugar Hill, New Hampshire. Small town. Nothing out of the ordinary. But there was a house fire in 1995.”

Dean cocks an eyebrow. “A fire?” 

“It was ruled accidental, but there were three fatalities,” Sam says. “A grandmother, a mother, and an eleven-year-old girl.”

Dean scrunches his brow slightly. “Not exactly the usual play…” 

The one and only case so far that they’ve tracked connected to the yellow-eyed demon started the same way their nightmare did – a baby in a crib, six months old, and a mother burning on the ceiling. All of it happened in 1983. That’s the pattern. 

“I know,” Sam replies. “That’s actually what caught my attention.”

Dean throws him a sideways look. “You sure this isn’t just some random fire?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admits and flips a page. “But I’m pretty sure Dad was there because the responding officer on scene was a deputy called Mia Owens.”

“MO,” Dean repeats quietly. 

“Yeah, and get this,” Sam continues, “Mia Owens moved to Salem a few days after the accident and adopted an eleven-year-old girl.”

Dean blinks at that. Alright, that certainly doesn’t sound like a coincidence anymore. He can admit as much. 

“You think it’s the same girl that supposedly died in the fire?” 

“Yeah.” Sam nods. “I don’t think she died, Dean. I think Dad was there, faked her death, and gave her to Mia Owens to hide. There’s a birth certificate for the girl she adopted, but it’s under a different name. But I couldn’t find any school transcripts, medical records, or anything before the age of eleven. Nothing.”

Dean thinks it through carefully. A house fire in 1995. An eleven-year-old girl that may or may not have survived. Shady adoption records and name changes. His father’s notes. 

Asset.  

Dean hates to admit that it does fit his father’s style. John wouldn’t go through the trouble of hiding a girl if he didn’t think she was important. 

“You think Dad meant a little girl with the key?” Dean asks, raising a brow. “A key to what?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I wanna find out,” Sam says pensively, his hazel eyes drifting out the window. “Maybe she’s like me.”

“You think so?” Dean questions skeptically, although he might be biased here. He just really doesn’t want to deal with more freak kids and Sam’s ESP. “I mean, if she was eleven in ’95, she’d be even a year younger than you. Did you have one of your premonition things about her?”

“No.” Sam shakes his head, and Dean feels the relief flooding his body almost immediately. “But maybe she wasn’t part of the original group.”

“You think there were more kids?”

Sam gives a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe Dad did.”

“That’s a lot of maybes, Sam,” Dean mutters. “Please tell me we’re not about to harass that poor girl. We don’t even know if she’s the real deal. Maybe that deputy adopting and moving away after the fire was just a coincidence. I mean, seeing a dead kid probably does something to normal people.”

Sam shoots him a raised look at that. “Dean, there are no coincidences in our line of work. And if there were, this would be a pretty big one.”

“Alright, fine. We’ll talk to her,” Dean caves with a sigh. “But if this girl turns out to be completely normal, promise me you’re gonna leave her alone and not drag her into our mess.”

Sam purses his lips and shrugs. “Sure, promise.”

Dean hears the words, but he’s not entirely convinced Sam actually means them. 

“I couldn’t find anything on the girl or where she is now, but Mia Owens works at Salem PD,” Sam says. “I figure we start there.”

Dean only gives him a nod at that and focuses his eyes back on the gray stretch of highway ahead. 

Salem, Massachusetts

This town might be Dean’s worst nightmare. It’s when his everyday life of horror suddenly turns to an amusing tourist attraction. Witch-themed shop windows, plastic broomsticks, and neon pentagrams litter the cobblestone streets. There’s even someone selling “authentic cursed candles” next to a goddamn coffee shop. 

It’s history turned into fucking merch. The town’s darkness is apparently just part of the decor.

“Oh, look, they’re offering ghost tours. Maybe we should take one,” Dean says with a wry grin and kills the engine a block away from the police station. 

“Yeah, maybe another time.” Sam chuckles, shaking his head, and smooths out the wrinkles in his suit before grabbing his FBI badge from the glove compartment. Then he glances at Dean. “You coming?”

“Nah, you go ahead. I’ll wait here. Maybe take a nap,” Dean says casually, already leaning back in his seat. After all, he did just drive for close to twenty-four hours straight with barely a break between. He deserves some shuteye, considering Sam dragged him out of bed before sunrise. 

Sam gives him a look but heads inside without arguing. Dean’s sleeping plans, however, don’t last for too long before his eyes catch on a flyer stuck to a lamppost, gently fluttering in the ocean breeze. It’s a missing person poster of a young woman, late twenties, last seen three months ago. 

As Dean’s gaze then drifts further down the sidewalk, he spots another one on a bulletin board outside a convenience store. Different face but similar age. And then his eyes land on a third one, partially covered by an ad for a harbor cruise. This one’s also female, early thirties, and was last seen a year ago. 

Three missing women are cause enough to step out of the car and take a closer look. The air smells like salt and rusted metal as tourists and shoppers pass him on the sidewalk. Dean then studies the nearest flyer – no signs of struggle, no suspects, and no vehicles found. As he looks at the other two then as well, he notices the same pattern there. All disappeared without a trace within one year. If he didn’t know any better, he would think all these women vanished into thin air. 

But Dean does know better. His gut is already screaming that there’s more than just answers about lost family secrets in this town. 

There’s a case here. 

When Sam finally strolls out of the police station, Dean’s leaning against the Impala with his arms crossed. His little brother looks thoughtful, which Dean learned a long time ago means complicated. 

“Well?” Dean asks as Sam reaches the car. 

“Mia Owens checks out. Moved here eleven years ago with her daughter,” Sam informs him and then flashes a smile. “And get this – the daughter also works for Salem PD. Apparently, she’s a CSI.”

“CSI, huh?” Dean’s brows shoot up with interest. “She working today?”

“Yeah, but the detective inside said they’re at a crime scene right now.”

“You know where?”

“Yup.”

“Alright, let’s go,” Dean says and already opens the driver’s door before stopping. “Hey, uh, you noticed these?” He gestures with his chin toward the missing person posters. 

Sam follows his gaze to the closest flyer. “Missing persons?”

“Yeah, plural,” Dean notes. “At least three within a year. All women. Similar age range.”

Sam frowns slightly. “It’s a tourist town, Dean. People pass through. Stuff happens.”

“Not like this.”

“I think you’re getting influenced by the merch here,” Sam retorts, laughing it off. “We’re not here for a case. We’re here to get answers.”

“Oh, and since when are we in the business of ignoring cases, huh? You just wanna let more women die?” Dean argues. 

“You don’t know they’re dead,” Sam points out. “You barely even have a case here.”

“We barely ever do, man.”

“Alright,” Sam plays along, leveling with him, which honestly feels really patronizing. Dean knows he’s right about this. His gut is never wrong. It’s the one instinct he can always rely on. “And what do you think killed them, huh?”

Dean gives a defiant shrug. “I don’t know yet. But I’m gonna find out.”

The house sits too far back from the road to feel even remotely welcoming. The white siding looks harmless enough from a distance, neat windows and trimmed hedges included. It’s one of those places that probably has matching towels in the bathroom as well. However, there’s a stillness to it that feels strange and anything but peaceful. 

Dean slows the Impala as the gravel path turns to mud beneath the tires, the big oaks crowding in on either side like they’re trying to pass judgment. As he cuts the engine, all he hears is the ticking of metal cooling under Baby’s hood and the faint buzz of insects in the woods. For a moment, he just studies the place through the windshield and can’t help the odd feeling in the pit of his stomach of being watched. 

“Found her,” Sam says from the passenger seat, snapping him from his stupor, and turns the laptop toward him. “She’s been with Salem PD for about a year now. She graduated early from Boston University with a master’s in biomedical forensic sciences.”

“So she’s smart?” 

Dean doesn’t know why he asked that. Of course the girl must be smart if she graduated college early. He couldn’t even swing high school, so he imagines someone who can use the word “biomedical” correctly in a sentence must be genius-level smart. At least, they’d be definitely smarter than him, but even Sam seems to be impressed, and he’s smart, too. 

Sam huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I’d say.”

Dean sort of admires that. Maybe it’s even jealousy. Because if it’s the girl they’re looking for and not some random coincidence, then it means this girl lost everything, survived unimaginable and unbearable trauma, and still made something of herself. What happened to her didn’t define her, so that’s pretty admirable in Dean’s book. 

“That her?” Dean squints at the personnel photo on the screen. 

He halfway expects the usual washed-out ID photo – bad lighting, stiff posture, grainy DMV quality, maybe even mid-blink. But instead, the picture makes him pause, not just his breath but his heart, too. 

Because even flattened by fluorescent lighting and a bland gray background, the girl on the photo shines and illuminates the whole scene without the need for good angles or straining effort. There’s a natural curve to her mouth that makes even the most neutral facial expression seem like a secret smile. It causes him to wonder what it looks like when she actually smiles. 

Her eyes are somehow soft and sharp at the same time, a steadiness gleaming in them that challenges to hold contact for longer than necessary just to see who breaks it first. He gets the sense that, despite the way she looks – innocent, warm, pretty – this girl doesn’t spook easily. 

“Huh.” Dean shuts the laptop slower than usual and licks his lips. He tells himself it’s just that she’s hot. That’s all. He’s allowed to notice when someone’s hot. But something about the photo persists in his head a heartbeat longer than it should, and he can’t help that now he kind of wants to see her in person – or the smile. 

He wants to see the smile. 

“What?” Sam’s already scowling like he knows what’s coming. He probably does.

“Well,” Dean says and pushes the car door open, stepping out onto the gravel as a smirk begins to form on his lips, “here’s hoping your theory’s wrong.”

Sam halts mid-exit before he slams the passenger door shut. “Excuse me?” 

Dean closes his door and adjusts the lapel of his suit jacket. “‘Cause if this is just a paperwork mix-up and not demon-adjacent, I might actually get a decent night out of it.”

He smirks broad and full then, even though he can tell Sam wants to either smack or throttle him right now. 

Sam stops in his tracks halfway of rounding the hood. “Dude. Are you serious right now?”

He shrugs his shoulders, grin widening. “What? Just saying. She’s cute.” 

“Dean, she might be connected to a house fire tied to the same thing that killed Mom,” Sam points out all righteously. 

Dean’s smirk softens, but it doesn’t disappear. “Yeah,” he says. “And if she’s not, I’d hate to waste a perfectly good opportunity.”

“Unbelievable.” Sam exhales sharply through his nose, already turning toward the house with a shake of his head. 

Dean chuckles and follows, hands slipping into his pockets. The two of them then stroll past uniforms and patrol cars, ducking under yellow tape, badges already out as Dean approaches an officer stationed by the door.

“Hey, uh, where can I find Mia Owens?”

The cop, however, doesn’t even get a chance to answer before an older woman steps up. She’s somewhere in her forties, maybe a little past it, and definitely looks like she doesn’t startle easily. There are crinkles around her eyes that aren’t from laughing but probably from squinting at bad situations way too often. Years of experience have settled into her posture, knowing exactly how much force to use without wasting it. She also probably knows when to talk and when to let silence do the work. 

She gives seasoned cop energy, and Dean sighs internally. This won’t be easy as pie. 

“Right here. Sergeant Owens.” She doesn’t extend a hand but already squares her shoulders instead. 

“FBI, ma’am.” Dean swallows subtly and quickly flashes his badge before she can notice they’re super fucking fake. “Special Agents Hetfield and Sambora.”

Sergeant Owens cocks an eyebrow and places her hands challengingly on her hips. “And what exactly does the FBI want with me?”

God, Dean feels a slight buckle in his knees at the firm tone of her voice. It feels like she’s scolding him for something he hasn’t even thought about doing yet. 

“We’re following up on a case that intersects with your jurisdiction,” Sam jumps in, more fearless than Dean, but that’s probably because Sam’s still driven by his need for answers. Dean doesn’t really want answers. He just wants peace and maybe a burger. “We were hoping to ask you a few questions about someone under your care.” 

“Yeah, eleven years ago, you took in a kid, right?” Dean gets straight to the point, not wasting another minute tiptoeing around the subject. He knows jumping into it will probably shake something loose, even if it’s just a defense mechanism. That would already tell him a lot, and that’s all he really needs. 

“My adoptive daughter, yes,” the sergeant confirms and crosses her arms. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t discuss my family with two men who show up unannounced to an active crime scene. So why don’t you tell me what this is really about?”

Apparently, Sergeant Owens likes getting straight to the point as well. Dean interprets this as a good sign because he’s certainly intimidated by her glare. 

“We–, uh, we’d just like to ask you some questions about a fire that occurred in 1995 in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire,” Sam says carefully. “You were the first responder on scene?”

“I was,” Owens confirms, but her eyes never loose their sternness. “It was ruled an accident.” 

“Three dead. Grandmother. Mother. Eleven-year-old daughter,” Dean adds. 

She nods once. “That’s right.”

Dean tilts his head slightly at that. “Except here’s the thing,” he continues calmly, wetting his lips. “Adoption records show you took in an eleven-year-old girl a few days later. Same age. That’s quite a coincidence.”

Her gaze expectedly darkens. “What are you implying, agent?”

“I think you know,” is all Dean says, not backing down till Sam cuts in to dissolve the tension. 

“We’re not accusing you of anything. We’re just trying to understand what really happened that night.”

But the sergeant steps forward, bristling. “Listen, FBI or not, I don’t appreciate two men waltzing into my crime scene and asking about my kid–”

“Mia, it’s okay,” a soft and sweet voice pipes up suddenly, and there’s movement behind Owens.

Dean notices because the air changes in an instant, like someone opened a window and let a gentle breeze in. And before he can blink, you step up beside the sergeant. 

You’re different from the photo. Somehow, in a worse way, which really means better, and that automatically means worse for him. Because in person, there’s even more warmth. It’s almost heat, like the hottest day in July, causing him to sweat in his suit by just looking at you. There’s a barely detectable trace of something electric crackling underneath the surface, under your skin, that the dull picture didn’t capture. A stream of light seeps through the windows and catches in your eyes as if even the sun herself is seeking you out. 

For a heartbeat, Dean forgets what he wanted to say till Sam elbows him in the ribs. 

Right. Words. FBI. Fire. Focus. 

“You don’t have to–” Sergeant Owens turns toward you instantly, protective instinct written all over her face, and Dean recognizes that one from his own father. Maybe even from himself when he looks in the mirror whenever Sam’s concerned. But if the story is true, Dean thinks he understands why their dad picked Mia Owens to keep a secret. 

“It’s fine,” you assure her with a small nod, completely calm in a way that makes Dean nervous. 

His eyes move before his brain catches up, tracing the line of your shoulders beneath the CSI jacket, the shape of your waist, and the quiet confidence in the way you stand. He can tell you’re not reckless or naïve. You know exactly what’s happening here. You’re not scared or confused. You’re measuring, careful, calculated. 

His stomach tightens imperceptibly. 

“You wanted to speak to me?” Your gaze drifts back and forth between him and Sam, assessing. A swallow gets stuck in Dean’s throat, lump thickening. 

“Yeah, uh–… Yeah.” Dean clears his throat. Smooth, Winchester. Smooth. He then nods and pulls out his badge with a smidge more confidence. “Special Agent Hetfield. This is Special Agent Sambora.”

You step closer to look – really look – and Dean feels the sweat begin to gather in the back of his neck again, probably soon flushing like a waterfall down his spine. You examine his credentials with far more attention than most people ever do. There’s no rush as your eyes scan over the name, the seal, and even the goddamn laminate. 

Please don’t be a Metallica fan. Please don’t be a Metallica fan…

In his periphery, he can see even Sam shift his weight, sees the tension creeping into his shoulders. Dean resists the urge to yank the ID back like a guilty teenager in a liquor store. He wonders if you’ve already figured it out. You’re smart, he reminds himself and watches your expression for recognition. For amusement. For the moment you call him out.

But instead, you smile. And shit, it’s so much more striking than the photo hinted at. It’s even warmer and brighter, like staring directly into the goddamn sun. 

“Sure,” you say smoothly. “What can I do for you, agents?”

Dean licks his lips, studying you for a moment longer, his eyes never leaving yours. It’s long enough that it causes you to straighten your posture just the slightest bit, bracing for whatever comes next. He can already tell you’re not expecting it to be good news. 

“Are you the girl from the fire?” Dean asks you bluntly, but you don’t stump or jolt back like he expected you would. Like most people would.

Instead, your eyes flicker from him to Sam and then back to him again, seemingly weighing both danger and options. “Am I in trouble?”

It’s not a clear yes, but it’s definitely not a no either. An innocent person would never ask that question. A guilty one would. You are the eleven-year-old girl who survived a fire. Who lost her entire family and is now being forced to talk to two strangers about it. Dean suddenly feels incredibly repentant about that, enough to seek out a church. He won’t, but the urge is there. God, he should’ve never let Sam convince him to come here, poke around, and disrupt a life that’s not theirs to disturb. 

“No,” Sam assures you quickly, shaking his head and giving you that soft smile he always reserves for calming victims. “You’re not in any trouble, I promise. We just want to ask you a few questions about that fire. What you remember…”

You grind your jaw, glancing at Dean again as if you know he’s the weak link here, suspicion clear as day in your eyes. “Why does the FBI care? It was ruled an accident.”

Dean lifts a brow at that, smiling cleverly. Gotcha. “Then why were you declared dead and adopted under a different name?”

You narrow your eyes to a little glare at him, which he finds more adorable than threatening. Then you exhale a sigh of defeat, and Dean almost wants to grin at that but bites it back. 

“Fine,” you huff, your eyes darting around the house that’s currently bustling with cops before you lower your voice. “But not here,” you say. “Besides, I don’t have time right now. I’m still on the clock, and I have a ton of evidence to process. You can come by my lab later. My shift ends at six.”

You pull out a business card and hold it out to him. As Dean takes it, his fingers briefly brush yours, and he swears a jolt of electricity travels straight up his arm and slithers down his spine to places it shouldn’t go. 

“We’ll be there,” Dean promises and can’t really control the slight upward twitch of his lips. 

Without another word, you then turn back toward the rest of the crime scene, already slipping your gloves on, the conversation dismissed without being rude. Dean watches you walk away, gaze unapologetically following the curve of your hips down to your ass before dragging back up again.

When he whistles lowly, Sam kicks his leg pretty damn hard, forcing Dean’s eyes away from you. 

“Dean.” Sam glowers and scolds him like a dog who peed on the new carpet. Sometimes, Dean wonders if his little brother ever wishes to bring a spray bottle of water to these things. “Can you not?”

Sure, Dean could try. But the unnameable restlessness that buzzes in his blood when he thinks about you probably won’t let him. There’s something about you that can’t be stuffed neatly into any labeled box he has, but for the sake of finding something to put you in, he chalks it off to simple attraction. Lust. Chemistry. 

Yeah, that’s probably it. Nothing more to it.

As Dean swings the motel room door open, the smell of old carpet and bleach hits him instantly. The TV is on mute, some local news anchor gesturing dramatically about weekend tourism, but Sam’s attention is nowhere near it. 

His little brother is hunched over the small table by the window, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and tie abandoned, the yellow legal pad beside him filled edge to edge with tight handwriting. There’s also a stack of photocopies scattered in front of him, ranging from birth certificates and property records to archived newspaper clippings and police reports.

“You’re back early.” Sam doesn’t even look up when Dean enters, shutting the door behind him.

“Dude, I’ve been gone six hours. It’s almost five,” he notes. Good thing his own investigation didn’t get him kidnapped or shot this time. Otherwise, he’d probably be dead till Sam noticed he was even gone that long.

Sam lifts his head, brows pinched, and checks his watch like he just surfaced from underwater. “Huh.”

“So, you find anything?” Dean asks and tosses the keys onto the dresser. 

Sam exhaustively leans back in his chair, rubbing a hand down his face. “Define anything.”

“Anything weird. Anything cult-y. Any reason a dead kid suddenly isn’t dead anymore.”

“Nope.” Sam exhales hard. “The adoption paperwork is messy but not illegal. Name change’s clean, too. I found the death certificates for her mother and grandmother but not for her.”

Dean’s brow furrows slightly. “So she’s… not officially dead.”

Sam shakes his head slowly with a frustrated look gleaming in his brown eyes. “No, uh, it’s not even in the official police report. I mean, hell, there’s not even a mention of her. Like she never existed. The only thing that mentions three deaths during the fire is a local newspaper, but that’s it.”

“That’s it?” Dean’s brow lifts. 

“That’s it.”

“That’s… weird,” Dean says for lack of better words. 

“Tell me about it,” Sam huffs.

“And Dad?”

“Well, if we assume Dad was involved that night, I think he probably is the ‘civilian’ who ‘assisted in the rescue.’ He disappeared before he could give a full account,” Sam states with a tight smile, reading off the report. “If there’s something supernatural in her background, it’s definitely not on paper.”

That’s not necessarily unusual, especially if their father was part of the coverup. The brothers learned early how to erase their tracks properly.   

“I did look into the property records of the house, though,” Sam adds. “It’s got a lot of history. Been in her family for practically centuries. It’s still in her name – her real name. It’s never been sold to anyone else.”

Dean bobs his head, then smacks his lips. “Alright, so let’s say your theory is right and the fire wasn’t an accident and Dad was really there that night, the worst case scenario is that he saved a little girl and then hid her from the evil thing that was probably still after her to finish the job. Is that what you’re saying?”

Sam sighs. “Yes.” 

“Huh.” Dean purses his lips, nodding. “So basically, you’ve got nothing.”

Sam lets out a breath through his nose, drawing his lips into a tight line. “Yup,” he admits somewhat bitterly. “But she’s still gotta be connected to the demon somehow. Why else would Dad have gone through all that trouble to hide a small piece of paper in a demon-proof lockbox?”

“Look, I hear ya, alright? But not everything the old man did always made a whole lotta sense,” Dean reasons. 

Sam’s brow scrunches significantly at that. “Since when are you saying that? You worshipped the man.”

“Since now,” Dean replies without missing a beat, although he really wants to say since Dad idiotically sacrificed his soul for poor little me. “Maybe a demon was involved. Maybe there wasn’t. Hell, doesn’t even mean the fire ties back to the yellow-eyed demon. There’s other demons around, you know? You forgot Meg? Maybe Dad just tracked it out of habit, and it’s your fault for reading too much into three lines on an old note.”

Sam stares at him for a long moment then, hazel eyes completely stern, and Dean knows his little brother pretty much wants to strangle him right now – because he’s right. For once, Dean’s right and Sam’s wrong. Dean can almost feel the universe losing its balance over it. 

He smirks annoyingly wide at that. “Guess that means the CSI hottie is fair game.”

“I think she already has enough trauma in her life without needing your help, Dean,” Sam mutters, amused. 

“No better cure than Vitamin D for that.”

“Dude!”

Yeah, Dean almost wants to slap himself, but he’s too busy grinning shamelessly. 

“Maybe wait till we’ve talked to her and make sure she’s not connected somehow before you hit on her again,” Sam scolds and then checks his watch once more. “Speaking of, we need to leave soon or we’re gonna be late.”

“Yeah, hang on. Got something, too,” Dean says, victory already curving his lips. “Drove around town and looked into the missing women cases. Dug a little deeper.”

A corner of Sam’s mouth lifts wryly. “Oh, good. This should be interesting.” 

Dean shoots him a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Sam shrugs lightly, then leans forward on the table. “Just curious what kind of deep investigative journalism you conducted today. Talk to any conspiracy bloggers? Interrogate a barista?”

Dean rolls his eyes and grabs the room’s only other chair, dragging it across the carpet so it faces Sam directly. “You’re hilarious. Really. You should take that on the road.”

“Dean–”

“Eight,” Dean cuts in.

His little brother’s brow furrows. “Eight what?”

“Eight missing women. Not three,” Dean states and watches Sam at least straighten at that. “Five more in the last twelve months. All married. All reported missing by their husbands. And all had domestic disturbance calls logged at some point before they disappeared. You know, neighbors calling in yelling, one shattered window, one ‘accidental fall’ down the porch steps that didn’t quite line up with the bruises. And then all of them just vanished without a trace.”

Sam frowns then, shoulders slumping. “Dean, they probably just left their husbands. Doesn’t mean there’s anything weird going on.”

“Sure.” Dean nods, feeling quite clever. “See, that’s what I thought too at first. But then I talked to a few of the husbands.”

Sam arches a brow. “And?”

“And,” Dean continues, “all of them had accidents after their wives’ disappearances.”

“What kinda accidents?”

Dean exhales slowly through his nose. Boy, that one’s a loaded question. He’s heard some weird shit over the years in this job. Seen worse. But this one surely took the cake. He’s never sat across a red-faced contractor in a living room before, who muttered something about a “freak bedroom thing.” The guy turned purple by the time Dean finally got him to say the words “fracture” and “penis” together in the same sentence. 

That was new territory.

Salem – witch capital of America. He almost laughs at that. If there were ever a town for something old and vindictive to take root, it’d be this one. God, he hates witches. Of course some bitch hauled up here of all places and sprinkles hex bags around like it’s fucking confetti.

“You know, shower slips, stair falls, gym injuries,” Dean replies, coughing up the lump in his throat. 

“That’s vague. Could still be unrelated.”

“Could be.” Dean bobs his head, lips pursed, then looks dryly at his brother. “They all broke their dick, Sam.”

“What?” Sam’s brows pinch together. Hard. 

“Yeah, that got your attention, huh?” Dean slumps back in his chair and lets out a sigh. 

Sam’s mouth opens and closes a few times before finding the right words. “Did any of them die?”

“No, Sam, they all just had an itchy cast for a few weeks,” Dean deadpans. “I mean, one guy thinks he might have permanent damage, but that’s only ‘cause he was too freaked out and embarrassed to go to the ER.”

Dean doesn’t mention that the last victim’s husband was still wearing a cast, which he kept repeatedly scratching right in front of him. For an entirety of thirty minutes, Dean didn’t know where to look and kept staring at the ceiling fan. 

Sam muses, head nodding. “So let me get this straight – the women are all probably alive and just left, and the husbands are alive too and got away with minor injuries.”

“Minor?”

“You know what I mean. We’ve seen a lot worse,” Sam clarifies, which Dean can hardly deny. This is basically bush league – no pun intended. “What are you thinking? Witch?”

Dean shrugs. “Probably. Fits the M.O.”  

“Look, it still might be a coincidence,” Sam argues, which frustrates Dean greatly. 

He knew Sam was going to call it a stretch, even with all the evidence laid out in front of him. He knew Sam would say correlation isn’t causation. And he knew Sam would point out that injured men don’t automatically equal hex bags and covens.

And Dean knows that, too. But he also knows eight women just don’t evaporate into thin air and husbands don’t shatter things like that by accident. At least not eight fucking times. 

“Dude, c’mon,” Dean counters. “Eight guys having those kinds of injuries is not nothing. I mean, they’re dicks to their wives and then they get injured in the most ironic way possible? When’s the last time you’ve ever heard of something like that, especially in a town this size?”

Sam doesn’t respond, which Dean takes as admission.

“Exactly.”

Sam studies him for a long moment. “Alright, let’s say you’re right–”

“I am.” 

“Even if it’s witchcraft,” Sam continues, “it sounds like a vigilante and not something purely evil.”

“So? What, you wanna give that bitch a free pass just ‘cause she’s got some weird moral compass?” Dean questions.

“So do we,” Sam points out. 

“It’s different.” 

“How so?”

“‘Cause it just is. ‘Cause I said so, alright?” Dean snaps. “Witches are evil. We kill evil things. End of story. I mean, hell, you love all those serial killer docs. You’ve never heard of escalation before? Whoever’s doing this maybe isn’t killing people right now, which is why we have to stop them before they do.”

Sam exhales a long breath at that, caving slightly. “You find any weird symbols? Hex bags?”

“Nope, not yet. But I’ll find something,” Dean assures his little brother. “I’m telling you, man. There’s something weird going on in this town.”

Your lab is a sanctuary of steel counters and fluorescent lights, humming with the quiet efficiency you’ve come to rely on. The evidence board glows behind you in blue, crime scene photos pinned in neat rows, your notes scrawled in the margin. The faint tang of chemicals keeps everything clinical and contained, and the chaos of magic stays locked away here – no tarot deck in sight, no spell books on the shelves, no runes scratched under the desk. It’s just science doing the heavy lifting while you sort fibers and catalog blood spatter.

A knock on the doorframe a few minutes past six then snaps you out of your peaceful routine, announcing Metallica and Bon Jovi right on schedule. 

Metallica leans one broad shoulder against the frame with a smirk in place, suit jacket already unbuttoned, golden freckles and evergreen eyes sparkling under the bright lights. Bon Jovi stands a half-step behind, posture more careful but no less intense. 

Their auras roll into the room ahead of their bodies, brushing against your senses like a breeze through leaves. 

A while ago, you made your own science out of describing auras. Bland names like yellow usually don’t say a whole lot about a person, do they now? Has anyone ever looked at a color wheel properly? There’s more options than just six. Is it a warm yellow? Or does it have more of a blue-ish tint to it? Brighter? Darker? That already says a lot about someone. So, you grabbed a Pantone color catalog from the hardware store not too long ago and got more creative. 

After all, who doesn’t like a little more sparkle and fun in their life?

Well, judging by Metallica’s aura, he might not. His aura is dense and close to his skin like armor. There’s a deep brick red at the core, steady and restrained. It’s the color of adrenaline held on a leash. Of survival mode that never quite switches off. But hunter green (ironic, yes) glimmers through the red. Big caretaker energy a guy like him probably even denies having. There’s also gunmetal gray that spiderwebs around the red and green, locking them up like chainmail. It speaks of grief he clearly hasn’t let himself feel yet. Maybe even survivor’s guilt chewing at the corners.

That one’s definitely your knight, but not in the sense that you’re the princess he needs to rescue. You’re the dragon he’s convinced himself to slay. He just doesn’t know it yet.

Bon Jovi’s aura, on the other hand, is larger, more diffuse, and a lot harder to pin down. His primary color is a bright buttercup yellow, which pulses unevenly. He’s intelligent, anxious, and probably has a mind that overthinks practically everything. A deep Moroccan blue pools heavily around his center, however, telling of grief, emotional depth, and moral restraint. But the most interesting part about this guy? It’s the flickers of mulberry purple striking through the others like lightning. Uninvited and unpredictable. It feels like something is watching back. Psychic potential, maybe? Or maybe it’s just good intuition.

Their colors aren’t what give you pause, though. It’s how their auras interact with each other, which is certainly a rarity. They’re symbiotic. Not many people have that.

Metallica’s red steadies Bon Jovi’s erratic yellow when their gazes meet. In turn, Bon Jovi’s blue cools the heat in Metallica’s red just enough to keep it from boiling over. Metallica’s gray also thins in the other’s presence, like shadows retreating from light, while the purple in Bon Jovi calms as if Metallica’s grounding him.  

Which tells you one thing: they’re more than just hunting partners. Brothers is your best guess. Either that, or they’re super gay for each other with a soulmate-deep bond. You probably shouldn’t ask them to clarify. That never works out well for you. 

What’s important for you, though, is that they’re clearly stronger together. Dangerous even. But they’re also more vulnerable when separated. 

You strip off your gloves and rise from your swivel chair with a deceptively bright smile. “Agents, right on time. I was just finishing up. Come on in.”

They do. The door clicks shut behind them, which feels threatening enough, considering you’re pretty sure they want to kill you or do God knows what else with you. Did they already bring the matches and lighter fluid? 

But even with the pressure on your shoulders, you gesture to the chairs across your workstation. “Have a seat. Thirsty? I’ve got some water I can offer you.”

You spin to the mini-fridge and pull out two chilled bottles of water – holy water, to be exact. Quietly blessed last week by the local Catholic priest. If they’re demons, it’ll sizzle on contact. If not, well, hydration is key.

“Thanks,” Bon Jovi says, accepting one bottle with a polite nod. He twists the cap, takes a sip. 

Nothing. 

Metallica does the same, gulping half of it down without so much as a blink. Still nothing.

Clean. Human. Hunters. Still dangerous. Still lethal. Especially to someone like you. But they’re not the obvious kind of monster that hides under beds and in closets.

Slightly more relieved, you settle back in your chair, folding your hands on the desk. Warm enough to disarm but cool enough to maintain distance. The goal is to seem professional, helpful, harmless, which is easy because you are. 

“So, the fire. What do you want to know, agents?”

Bon Jovi leans forward first, the buttercup yellow flaring with that anxious intelligence. “We’re looking into some old cases that might connect to similar incidents. The Sugar Hill fire – was there anything unusual about it? Anything you remember that maybe didn’t make the official report?”

You let your expression soften just enough, playing the role of the cooperative survivor. You’ve rehearsed this story a thousand times by now – ever since Mia took you in. You’ve kept it simple, tragic, human. 

“I was only eleven. I don’t remember a whole lot,” you start, swallowing, a hint of old pain creeping into your voice. It’s not an act for their benefit, though. The loss of that night still aches like a root pulled from soil. “I woke up to smoke and flames. My mom and grandma… They didn’t make it out.”  

“How did you survive?” Metallica asks, but it doesn’t sound accusing. It sounds like he’s angling for something specific. 

Are they curious about the demon? Is that why they’re here and sought you out?

“A man pulled me out of the house, carried me to safety, and handed me over to Mia. She adopted me a few days later,” you explain.  

“Did–, uh, did this stranger say what his name was?” Bon Jovi asks. 

You give them a shrug of your shoulders, then shake your head slightly, brow creased. “Uh, no, I don’t think so. Maybe Jim? Jonathan? It was a long time ago. I’m sorry,” you say – or lie. “The cops ruled it an accident back then. Blamed it on faulty wiring.”

Metallica’s brick red holds steady as he watches you the whole time, juniper eyes calm but attentive. “This guy, uhm… did he say why he was there? Anything about your family? Why he was in the right place at the right time?”

You shake your head, offering a sad smile. “Not that I remember. He just… helped. Kind stranger, you know? I mean, I was a traumatized kid. Mia handled the paperwork. I had nothing to do with that. She just changed my name and moved with me here to give me a fresh start. Sugar Hill is a small community. She didn’t want me to live with this my whole life. That’s really all there is to it.”

Bon Jovi’s blue deepens significantly, disappointment glimmering through his yellow. He was hoping for more – something about patterns, maybe, or why your family might have been targeted. But you can’t give him anything to grab onto. Even if they’re here for the demon, trust is earned and not simply given. The cards warned you for a reason.

Metallica, on the other hand, visibly relaxes. His shoulders drop, and the red aura settles as if he internally exhaled. Then a sly, almost triumphant glint crosses his face. He’s clearly decided you’re normal, which brings you relief for the moment. The knight’s armor has been dismantled. Tragic backstory, smart girl who turned pain into a forensics career, no red flags, case closed, you can practically hear him think.

Your own expression stays neutral, but on the inside, you’re smirking wide. Gotcha. Now, you just have to get rid of them and hope they leave town soon without poking around too much. But another knock on the door foils your plans. 

Shit, Paige, you realize as you look up, past the two fake FBI agents in your lab, and see your best friend strolling through the door with her usual cheerful smile. 

As Paige pokes her head in, her curls bounce and her grin widens. “Yo, evidence queen, you better not still be buried in blood. Drinks wait for no woman. I will personally drag you out of here if I have to–”

She stops dead in her tracks when she spots the two men in suits in front of you, her brow knitting more and more with each second that passes by. She’s never been good at hiding her emotions. 

“Shit.” Her eyes widen and her teeth clench before she grimaces fully. “Am I interrupting something?”

Before you can reply, Metallica already twists around with a smirk in place. The guy really goes for anything with boobs and two legs, huh? Makes a girl feel real special. Not that you blame him. Paige has always been pretty and bubbly enough to wrap guys around her little finger. But she’s also been your biggest confidante – the Willow to your Buffy, so to speak. 

“No, not all,” Metallica says with a charm that could be easily mistaken for gentleness if you didn’t see the gun poking out under his suit jacket. “Me and my partner were just finishing up here.”

Paige frowns a little more at that and tilts her head. You already know what she’s thinking. “Partner? As in…”

Do not say gay, you warn her with a sharp look because you can already see Metallica latching onto the implication, shoulders tensing and drawing back, eyes crinkling in bewilderment, like his ego is a physical thing that just got wounded. He’s gotten that accusation before. You can tell and try your hardest not to laugh out loud. 

“FBI,” you provide quickly, shooting her another look. You hope it’s enough to alleviate the sting in Metallica’s ego and keep him from proving his virility by overcompensating in the stupidest way possible as boys often tend to do. You then glance back at Paige. “I’m almost done, alright? Just wait at Clancy’s. I’ll be out in five.”

Paige nods slowly but tosses you a worried look as if she can feel the tension in your muscles. You don’t want her to get hurt. If hunters are poking around in your life and even remotely suspect you’re a witch, they will look at any woman close to you and automatically assume it’s a coven. 

To clarify, it’s not. 

Sure, you’ve taught her a spell or two, mostly for self-defense. Like a father teaching his daughter how to knee a douche in his crown jewels. Not that you have any first-hand experience with that since you don’t know your dad, but you imagine that’s probably a pretty similar reason. However, you’ve never ever sat around a cauldron before and cackled like a maniac.

God, you hate most witch movies. They really give your kind a bad rep. Melissa Joan Hart gets a pass, though. Whoever made Hocus Pocus, on the other hand, should be burned at the stake, especially the person responsible for casting Sarah Jessica Parker. Carrie was fucking annoying in Sex and the City, too.   

“You know, me and my partner could use a drink,” Metallica suddenly chimes in, charismatic grin shaping into form. Fucking hell. He still needs to mend his ego and lick his wounds in front you, it seems. You steel your expression as you meet his expectant eyes. “Mind if we crash girls’ night? Tag along? Off duty, promise.”

Yes, I’d mind, dickhead, you think bitterly. Read the fucking room.

Even Bon Jovi shoots him a look of clear disapproval, blue cooling the flare in Metallica’s red. But his partner skillfully ignores it, undeterred, gaze locked on you. The interest is obvious now that he’s apparently decided you’re safe. You wonder how a guy with those instincts is still alive, considering tricking him only required a smile, a sad story, and a little cleavage from you. You guess Bon Jovi’s intelligence is mostly keeping him out of greater trouble. 

You keep the smile trained on your face, but your frustration spikes. You want them fucking gone, out of this town, and not embedding themselves in your normal life. But refusing outright might ping suspicion. 

Play along. Survive. Make sure no one else gets hurt.

“Sure,” you say and clear your throat slightly. “The more the merrier. The bar’s called Clancy’s. It’s on Church Street. Meet you there at seven?”

“Great.” Metallica gives you a nod, satisfied. In his head, the gears are shifting, already planning the night. “See you, ladies.”

You watch them go, exhaling slowly once the door shuts. Harmless? Hardly. But they’ve bought the act. For now, you’re just the normal girl with the sad story and the cute friend, and Metallica thinks he’s got a shot at taking you back to whatever roach-infested motel they’re crashing in.

You almost laugh out loud at the irony. Keep dreaming, hunter.

“Hey, what’s going on? Why was the FBI here?” Paige whisper-asks as she hurries over to you, even though the door is firmly shut again and the men in black are long gone.

“They’re not really FBI,” you explain. “I think they’re hunters.”

“Shit,” it slips out of her, brow scrunching. “Really? Do they know you’re, like, you know…”

“No, obviously not, or I would be dead by now,” you hiss and start to pace your desk to free yourself of some of the nervous energy buzzing in your veins. 

“Why would you invite them to drinks, then?”

“Dude! What was I supposed to say? I didn’t wanna raise suspicion by trying too hard to get rid of them.”

“Right. Smart.” Paige nods, purses her lips, and then looks back at you. “So, what now? What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know.” You shrug, feeling somewhat helpless. “Act normal? Hope they leave again? Get ‘em drunk enough to miss their aim?”

“Good plan.”

When the door suddenly swings back open, you already brace yourself for a bullet flying your way before recognizing Mia and exhaling another breath of relief. She shuts the door quickly and quietly and then instantly finds your eyes. 

“Just saw those two agents leave the precinct. Are they hunters?” she asks, her voice sterner than usual, but you’ve learned over the years that just means she’s concerned. 

You nod. “I think so, yeah. They asked about the fire. And they wanted to know about John Winchester.”

“Did you tell them anything?”

You shake your head, swallowing. 

“Good. Keep it that way,” she tells you, and you know it’s more than just a command. “Are they leaving town again?”

Another head shake from you. “No, they invited themselves to Clancy’s with me and Paige tonight.” 

Mia takes that in with a pensive bob of her head, then lets out a sigh. “Alright, go, but be careful. Don’t say too much. We don’t need them poking their noses into our business,” she says. “I spoke to Amy at the hospital again. She says she already wants to leave tonight if possible. Try to get rid of them by then, yeah?”

You nod quickly and share another look with Paige. You’ve played normal all your life. You can do it again tonight. 

As Dean slides behind Baby’s wheel, the familiar creak of the door and the distinct scent of old leather and gun oil instantly envelope him like a second skin. The engine rumbles to life with that low, satisfying growl he never gets damn tired of hearing as he lets his head tip back against the seat for half a second and grins like he just won a bet against Sam he never actually made out loud.

“See?” he says, throwing the car into gear and pulling away from the curb. “Hate to say I told you so. Normal girl. Sad story, smart as hell, works with gross stuff dead people leave behind for a living. No demon deals, no witchy vibes, no nothing. Just a hot CSI with a tragic backstory and killer legs.”

Sam slumps in the passenger seat and crosses his long arms, staring straight ahead with a sour look. “She gave us holy water, Dean.”

Dean snorts loudly at that, one hand drumming the steering wheel to the tail end of Zeppelin. “Dude, she gave us water. Cold water. From a fridge. In July. In a lab and a building full of cops. You’re reaching, Sammy.”

“She watched us drink it. Didn’t take her eyes off us once. That’s not casual hospitality. She was testing us,” Sam counters. 

Dean rolls his eyes so hard he’s surprised they don’t fall out the window. “Or she’s polite and didn’t want us dying of dehydration while she answered our invasive questions about her dead family. Either way, you’re projecting. You want her to be part of Dad’s puzzle so bad you’re inventing clues.”

Sam’s jaw flexes. “I think she was playing us. Don’t you think she answered every question too perfectly? She was too calm. She gave us exactly what we wanted to hear and nothing more. No slip-ups, no emotions, nothing. People who’ve been through that kind of trauma usually crack a little when you bring it up. She didn’t.”

Dean’s grin fades a fraction, grip tightening imperceptibly on the wheel. He keeps his eyes on the road, though, but the image of you flickers behind his lids. You’ve learned early to lock your pain down tightly, carrying it without letting it spill. Dean remembers being four. He remembers the smell of smoke, the heat, his mother’s scream cut off like someone snuffed a candle. Sam was only a baby. He got the blank slate version. Dean got the full-color replay that still shows up in nightmares, the taste of ash on his tongue when he wakes up gasping.

An eleven-year-old girl watching her whole world burn? Pulling herself out of that hell – or being pulled – only to have strangers poke at the scars years later?

Yeah, he gets why you’ve built walls. Hell, he respects it.

“She’s allowed to be guarded,” he mutters, quieter than the usual bravado he serves Sam in these instances. “Doesn’t make her a monster. Makes her smart. You’d do the same.”

Sam shoots him a sideways look, surprised. “You’re defending her now?”

“I’m saying she’s human, Sam,” Dean snaps back, but there’s no real heat in it. “And humans who’ve been through hell learn how to smile through the questions. Doesn’t mean she’s hiding a cauldron in her basement. Although, in this town, she just might. But probably only for Halloween decorations.”

He flicks the turn signal, changes lanes, and tries to shake the weird tug in his gut when he thinks about you standing there in that white lab coat, all competence and quiet steel. It felt familiar – like déjà vu he can’t place. Not in a creepy way, though. It’s more like recognizing a song one hasn’t heard since their childhood. But he shoves the feeling aside. After all, what’s the point in chasing something when the facts are clear?

You’re clean. Case closed. And maybe legs open?

Dean knows better than to say that last thought out loud, however. Sam would only smack him again. Nevertheless, there’s something really satisfying about the possibility of ending the night with company that isn’t his little brother or a poltergeist for once. 

“You should go for the friend,” he suggests then, smirk molding back in place. “Paige. She’s got that bubbly energy. Balances out your brooding. You two could talk about feelings or whatever while I handle the grown-up stuff with the Crime Scene Siren. Maybe offer up my body for some scientific research.”

Dean wiggles his brows. Sam snorts, finally cracking a genuine smile. 

“I’m not looking to ‘go for’ anything tonight,” Sam states as expected, however. “I’m going back to the motel. There’s still Dad’s notes, the rune, the adoption records. Something’s off, Dean. I can feel it.”

Dean sighs – internally at first, then out loud for effect. “Yeah, yeah, you and your feelings. Suit yourself. Means more drinks and girls for me. And hey, if things go well, maybe I won’t even come back tonight.” 

The mental image already flashes shamelessly behind his eyes – you laughing at all his jokes across the table, maybe leaning in close enough that he catches whatever shampoo or perfume you use, maybe letting him walk you to your car, maybe–

He cuts the thought off before it gets too detailed (or his jeans become too tight).

But the grin creeps right back a second later. Sam can sulk in a motel room with yellowed journal pages all he wants. But Dean? He’s got plans. And for the first time since his father died, those plans don’t involve a shovel or a shotgun.

He turns up the volume of the stereo as Ramble On kicks in, letting the guitar fill the silence. Even if Sam’s right – and Dean’s pretty damn sure he isn’t – tonight’s not about answers for once. Tonight’s all about forgetting the damn questions for a couple of hours.

Dean’s elbows lean casually on the scarred wood of a high-top table at a cozy little dive bar called Clancy’s, a beer bottle dangling loosely between his fingers while his grin is shamelessly wide as you lean close and hold his gaze in such an easy way that the whole damn room feels a size smaller. 

The bar’s got that lived-in feel as classic rock fills the air in the mid-evening buzz, people chatting and clinking glasses. It’s got just enough grit to keep things lively. Your friend Paige went for a refill a while ago but never made her way back, which Dean doesn’t mind even a little. He’s got you right where he wants you – smiling, leaning in, batting your lashes, and some time ago, you even touched his forearm for several seconds, which is the universal signal for getting laid tonight. He’s three beers in already while you’re only on your second one, so he’s got to watch it a little. 

“By the way, apologies for my partner earlier. Sambora's got that whole, you know, brooding-genius thing locked down. Thinks every loose end’s hiding a conspiracy,” Dean says, takes a sip of beer, and leans an inch closer. “Me? I’m the approachable one. The fun one. The guy who closes cases and still has time for a drink with a sharp forensics expert like you.”

You quirk a brow, lips curving in amusement. “Approachable, huh? Is that what we’re calling ‘the fed who shows up unannounced and asks personal questions’ these days?”

He chuckles, leaning forward a fraction more. “Guilty. But in my defense, it’s hard not to be curious when the CSI on scene is this smart. And easy on the eyes. And funny. Triple threat.”

Your laugh softly, teeth rolling over your bottom lip. “Careful with the flattery, or I might just think you’re after more than just case details here,” you quip and take a sip of beer without breaking eye contact. “So is that your pitch? You’re the cool agent who doesn't let the job eat him alive?” 

“Something like that.” Dean shrugs casually, chuckling. “Gotta balance out the gloom. Life’s too short for all work, no play, right? Otherwise, it’s all stakeouts and bad coffee. Though I’d take bad coffee any day if it came with company like this.” 

Your eyes narrow, but there’s a spark in them that sharpens your smile. “C’mon, Agent Hetfield–”

“Dean,” he offers. 

“Dean,” you repeat, and he shivers a little when you do because it feels like your voice learned its own melody just to say his name. “What’s really on your mind, huh? I’m sure you didn’t tag along just to charm me out of my crime scene stories.” 

He licks his lips, chuckling softly. “Uh, not entirely, no,” he admits and nurses his beer, knuckles lightly tapping the wooden table. “You know, uhm, actually, can I ask you about some other cases?”

You purse your lips, brow pinching slightly. “Uhm, sure.”

“You, uhm, ever seen the missing women posters outside the station?”

“Yeah, sure, I have,” you reply. “Hard to just walk by something like that.”

“Right, uhm, well, I looked into it a little and saw they had all domestic disturbance calls prior to their disappearances,” he says and watches you nod along. “You were the CSI on some of those scenes when things went south, right?”

“Yeah, it’s really sad what happened to them. I hope they’re okay,” you note sympathetically. “Are you suspecting any of the husbands? Because I didn’t find any relations or other things connecting each victim.”

“Uh, no,” he says at first but then quickly shakes his head. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah.” He clears his throat. “When you were at those scenes, you ever notice anything off? You know, weird vibes, anything that screamed ‘not just a runaway’?” 

You pause mid-sip and lower your beer again, brow furrowing slightly as it often does with people whenever he asks those kinds of questions. He may have just ruined his chances for sex, but a case always comes first. Well, most times it does. 

“Vibes?” You arch a brow, amusement sneaking back into your smile. “Didn’t know the FBI was regarding crime scene vibes as cold, hard proof.”

Dean just smirks. “Humor me a little. You’ve seen any symbols? Felt anything off? You know, small things that don’t make the report but stick with you.”

“Off? Symbols? In Salem? Half the town’s built on weird vibes,” you quip, laughing. 

“Right, yeah,” he chuckles. Stupid witch capital of America. 

“Listen, those women mostly came from broken homes, you know? To be quite honest with you, I think they just finally snapped and left without a forwarding address,” you say. “There never was any blood or fingerprints that didn’t match. No ransom notes. If there’s a pattern, it’s probably human nature and not some X-Files twist. In my lab, it’s DNA and fibers only. Sorry to disappoint.”

Dean nods, taking it in. “Human nature, huh? Guess you’re probably right. Still, eight in a year. No trace. Makes a guy wonder.” 

“Oh, wonder all you want, agent,” you say with a sly smile. “But if it was a monster under the bed, I’d have found the claw marks by now. Promise.”

Dean barks a laugh at that because he’d love to tell you how wrong you are, but he only ever steals people’s innocence and shatters their illusions about the real world when he absolutely has to – when their lives depend on it. But for a moment, the FBI mask and bravado still slip. His eyes study you for a beat – not just skimming the surface, but how you’ve constructed your life. You’ve got friends who drag you out, a job that keeps you grounded, and routines that surely don’t involve salt rounds or devil’s traps. 

He envies it more than he wants to admit. Wonders what it would’ve felt like to grow up without the road and without the weight of revenge. If he hadn’t been dragged from one monster to the next. If he’d stayed in one place long enough to finish school, date someone normal – maybe even have a girl like you laugh at his dumb jokes over cheap beer on a Wednesday night without having to lie about his entire existence.

He understands your quiet armor. Admires it even. You’ve turned fire into focus, loss into logic. He carries his own version of it every day. 

“Why?” you ask then, a hint of concern lacing your tone. “You think there’s something more to these cases?”

“Nah.” Dean shakes his head, gulping his beer. “Just covering bases. Town like this – tourists, history, all the ghost-tour crap. Can make someone wonder if the stories ever bleed into real life sometimes.”

“Only on the brochures,” you tease, grinning.

He smirks, raising his bottle in a mock toast. “To keeping it boring, then.”

You clink your bottle with his, the conversation then drifting to bar stories, bad cases, and the sort of small talk that feels bigger because neither of you is pretending to be someone else. Well, at least, not entirely. 

Admittedly, Dean likes how you match him – quick, dry, and never flinching. He likes how you don’t shrink when he leans in or when the flirting edges closer to reality. It feels… natural.

“Paige is a force of nature. Keeps me from turning into a hermit,” you tell him after drink number three, while he switched the beer for a whiskey on the rocks. You’re a little warmer and looser now, but there’s still that silent steel underneath around your heart he clocked back at the lab. “Someone has to drag me out when I start talking to evidence bags like they’re people, you know?”

“I hear ya,” he says, nodding. “And hey, no judgement. I talk to my car.”

“Well, it’s a nice car,” you note and smirk, sharp eyes seeing right past the FBI suit and charm. “Although, you do strike me as the type who’d name it something ridiculous like… I don’t know – Betsy.”

“First of all, it’s a she,” he starts, only halfway serious. Well, seventy-five percent serious. “And her name’s Baby. She’s a ’67 Chevy Impala. Show some respect, alright?”

A laugh bubbles out of you at that, and Dean has to laugh, too. For a second, the tension between him and you sharpens and transforms into electricity. It’s the kind that makes him want to lean across the table and see how far that smile of yours goes. And fuck, he almost does. It’s so fucking easy how you fit – like you’ve done this before, even though Dean knows damn well you haven’t. 

He takes another swig from his beer, lets the cold bite chase away the softer thought. He’s not here for feelings. He’s here for a night that doesn’t end with blood or sulfur or another stained motel ceiling staring back at him. 

One night – that’s the deal he makes with himself every damn time.

Your phone then suddenly vibrates on the table. You glance at the screen for a second before your face shifts into professional calm. “Uh, sorry, it’s work. One sec,” you excuse yourself and turn toward a quieter corner of the bar. 

Dean stays put, but as you move, your bag on the table falls open. He doesn’t mean to snoop. He really, really doesn’t. But it’s almost impossible to keep his eyes away from its contents. 

He spies a small velvet pouch inside, a bundle of herbs that smell too sharply of sage, a notebook with that same angular B-rune on it, and a deck of tarot cards fanning out just enough for him to catch the intricate backs and one visible face – something with swords and a charging knight.

Dean’s gut twists.

Tarot. Herbs. A spell book. Holy water. The flawless deflections. Eight women vanishing clean after scenes you processed.

Goddammit. Was Sam fucking right? He’s never going to let Dean live that down.

But you’re a witch, aren’t you? And not just any witch – you’re the one he’s been hunting. 

When you finish the call, you hurry back to the table and scoop up your bag without noticing his stare. You then spin to him with a quick, apologetic smile. “Sorry. Lab emergency. Gotta run. Rain check?”

He forces the charm back into place. “Sure. No worries. Duty calls. Work never sleeps, right?”

“Yeah, something like that.” You flash a quick smile, nod, and sling the bag over your shoulder, heading for the door.

You’re gone a moment later, Dean’s eyes following you until the door swings shut behind you. Then the flirtatious warmth in his chest sours into hunter focus.

He downs the rest of his whiskey in one go, sets the glass down hard, tosses some cash on the table, and heads for the door as well. 

Game on, witch.

▶️ Chapter 2: Every Bait and Switch – June 5

Oh my, we might've pushed Dean a little too far here lol. You guys think he's more salty that she's a witch or that she got one over on him? 😂 Don't be fooled by the feelings and flirting in this first one, though. That boy's gonna switch quite fast now 🙈

What did you think of this rather rough start? Leave your thoughts and theories below, friends!

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“Don’t move.” His deep voice carries across the courtyard like a blade, the barrel of his gun smoothly trained on your back. 

The familiar click that follows is loud in the quiet night, clean and unmistakable. You spin around so fast it almost makes him flinch, eyes going wide the second you see the weapon in his hands. 

“It’s not what it looks like!” 

Dean huffs out something that might’ve been a laugh in a different situation and steps closer. “Yeah? ‘Cause to me, it looks like you found your next victim.”

“Dean–” Sam already hisses behind him, but Dean skillfully ignores the protest. 

“I got it,” he mutters under his breath and doesn’t lower the gun even for a second, dark green eyes fixed on you. “Step away from them. Now.”

But instead of following his order, you do the opposite and step right in front of them, shielding both mother and son behind your back. The woman lets out a startled sound, pulling her son with her as they tuck tighter behind you. The boy whimpers once, muffled against his mother’s thigh as he clutches a stuffed fox to his body. His eyes are wide and fixed on Dean, but he’s not curious or confused. He’s scared. 

Scared of him.

For a moment, that throws Dean off his game because that’s not usually how it goes. Usually, fear is pointed in the right direction. Usually, it tells him exactly who the monster is. 

Not in this case, though. 

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@spnaquakindgdom @americanvenom13 @lamentationsofalonelypotato @supernotnatural2005 @stoneyggirl2

Later, Dean had ducked into the bathroom, muttering about “this damn glitter being weapon-grade” while the faucet ran.

You padded into the living room where Sam was stacking empty takeout containers, his tall frame hunched in the low kitchen light.

“You don’t have to drive back tonight”, you said softly. “You can stay. Couch is yours if you want it”.

Sam looked up, brow arched. “You sure? Don’t wanna put you out”.

You shook your head. “You won’t. It’s just a couch”.

His mouth tugged into a soft grin. “So Dean gets Lilah’s tiny bed then?”.

You blinked, heat creeping up your neck before you could stop it. “What? No, he—”. You faltered, lowering your voice. “He can… he can sleep in my bed”.

Sam’s grin widened, sharp but not unkind. “Huh”. He leaned an elbow on the counter, looking far too pleased with himself. “Interesting arrangement for two people who are ‘definitely not cuddling’”.

Your face flamed hotter, and you busied yourself with the dishes just to avoid his knowing eyes. “It’s not like that”, you mumbled. "It’s just… Lilah really liked having you here. And I’m still a bit off. I could use some help”. You risked a glance at him, lips twitching despite the heat creeping up your neck. “And, no offense, but I’d rather have my ex… fiancé in my bed than his little brother”.

Sam smirked, shaking his head as he balled up the takeout bag. “Wow. Kinda harsh, considering I brought the food”.

You grinned faintly, setting the plate aside. “Healthy food”, you corrected.

He made a show of sighing, rolling his eyes. “Right. Next time I’ll bring donuts and beer, then maybe I’ll get upgraded from the couch”.

You laughed softly, and Sam’s smile gentled as he leaned back against the counter, studying you. “I’m glad you can still laugh with him here. With both of us here”.

Your chest tightened. You ducked your head, drying your hands on a towel. “It’s complicated”.

Sam’s expression softened further. “Yeah. But complicated doesn’t mean impossible”.

Before you could answer, the bathroom door opened down the hall, and Dean emerged, hair damp and despite his scrubbing still glittering faintly under the light. He paused, eyes flicking between the two of you at the counter, and raised a brow. “What’d I miss?”, he asked, his voice rough, suspicious but careful.

Sam just smirked, shooting you a sidelong glance before pushing off the counter. “Nothing. Just negotiating sleeping arrangements”.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “Sleeping arrangements?”.

You cleared your throat, heart hammering as you met Dean’s gaze. “Yeah. Sam’s taking the couch”. You hesitated, cheeks burning. “And… you’re in my room”.

For a second, Dean just stood there, stunned silent, water still dripping from his hair.

Sam grinned wider, grabbing a pillow off the couch. “Couch is all mine. Have fun”.

Dean blinked, then turned that unreadable green gaze back on you. “In your bed?”.

Your throat went dry. You hadn’t slept next to him since that night a few weeks back—when all that bottled-up ache had spilled out in hours that left you sore for days, his ring, the one you still wore, glinting on your hand while his mouth wrecked you.

You shifted, the dish towel twisting in your hands. “It’s not…”. You tried to sound casual, but your voice betrayed you. “Don’t make it weird, Dean”.

Sam bit back a grin as he flopped onto the couch with his blanket and pillow. “Oh, it’s already weird”, he muttered under his breath, clearly enjoying himself.

Dean shot him a look sharp enough to kill, then pushed off the frame and walked slowly into the kitchen. His eyes stayed locked on you the whole time. “You sure about this?”, he asked finally, his tone stripped of bravado.

Your stomach fluttered, equal parts nerves and something you didn’t want to name. You straightened your shoulders, forcing yourself to meet his gaze. “It’s a bed, Dean. Nothing more”. But your blush betrayed you.

His mouth twitched, not quite a smile, not quite pain, and he nodded once. “Alright. Just a bed”.

Sam fluffed his pillow on the couch, stretching his long legs out like he owned the place. “You know”, he said casually, “if you want, I could distract Lilah in the morning. Take her out for pancakes or something. Give you two a chance to sleep in”.

Your jaw dropped, heat rushing straight to your cheeks. “Sam—”.

Dean froze mid-step, duffel hanging from his hand, staring at his brother like he’d just grown a second head. “What the hell, Sammy?”.

“What? I’m being helpful. Thought you could use a break”.

You snatched the dish towel off the counter and hurled it at him. He caught it one-handed, laughing.

“Didn’t you say earlier me and him were a bad idea, Winchester?”, you muttered, your voice sharp but your lips twitching despite yourself.

“I said it’d be bad if you messed it up”.

You groaned, covering your face with your hands, and Dean muttered something under his breath about killing his brother in his sleep. But even as you fled toward your bathroom, your face hot, you couldn’t quite smother the little smile tugging at your lips.

You leaned over the sink and put your toothbrush in your mouth. The door creaked and then Dean slipped in behind you without a word. The bathroom felt too small instantly.

He didn’t make a sound, just set his duffel on the counter and reached for his own toothbrush like it was the most natural thing in the world. But he was right there, close enough that the heat of him brushed against your back every time he shifted.

You tried to ignore it, tried to focus on the mirror, on the foam in your mouth, but your eyes betrayed you. He caught your gaze in the mirror, and for a second neither of you looked away.

Dean leaned a little closer, his hand brushing the edge of the counter beside yours as he bent to spit into the sink. The space between you shrank to nothing, and it was all too easy to remember another night; his breath hot against your ear, his chest pressed to your back, his hands gripping your hips until you thought you’d break.

You cleared your throat, spitting and rinsing quickly, trying to push past the weight of it. “You don’t have to hover”, you muttered. “I’m not gonna keel over brushing my teeth”.

“Not hovering”, he leaned just slightly, his shoulder brushing yours.

“Dean”, you warned softly.

“Relax”, he said, but his voice was low, like he was anything but relaxed himself.

You looked up before you could stop yourself, meeting his eyes in the mirror again. The green there was darker, searching your face the way he used to in quieter moments. You swallowed hard. “You don’t have to look at me like that”.

His mouth twitched. “Like what?”.

“Like…”. You trailed off, your voice cracking with fatigue and something else. “Like you want something you can’t have”.

Dean shifted, his chest brushing your shoulder blades. Close. Too close. “Who says I can’t?”.

You closed your eyes, your breath shaky. “Don’t,” you whispered. “Not now. I feel like crap. I look like crap. I can’t—”.

Dean cut you off, his voice softer this time, but unflinching. “You look like the woman who gave me a daughter. Who kept her safe. Who’s stronger than anyone I know. And yeah…”. His jaw worked, the reflection of his eyes locking hard on yours. “I want you. Always have. Always will”.

The silence that followed was suffocating, your heart pounding so loud you swore he could hear it.

You turned finally, leaning back against the sink, facing him head-on. He was even closer this way. For a second, you forgot you were sick. Forgot the past. Forgot everything but him, and the way he looked at you like you were still his.

For a beat, neither of you moved. Then Dean dipped his head, slow enough that you could’ve stopped him, fast enough that your breath caught. His lips brushed yours gentle, almost reverent. Not the hungry kiss from weeks ago, not the desperate claiming that had left you sore for days. Just a quiet press, soft and aching.

Your eyes fluttered shut and you let him kiss you. Just for a second. Just long enough to remember how it felt to be wanted like this.

But Dean was Dean, and control had never been his strong suit. His hand slid to your hip, his body angling closer until you felt him hard already, pressing insistently against you through his jeans. Your pulse jumped. You broke the kiss, panting softly, your palms pushing against his chest. “Dean—”.

He stilled immediately, breathing rough, forehead pressed to yours. He didn’t move back, but he didn’t push either.

“I can’t”, you whispered, your voice trembling. “Not this time. Not right now”.

His jaw tightened and his eyes were searching yours with something like pain. But he nodded once before pulling in a steadying breath. “Okay”. He stepped back, dragging a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry”, he muttered.

“Don’t”, you whispered. Just that, nothing more.

Your fingers brushed lightly over his arm as you moved past him, a fleeting touch that lingered longer than it should have. Then you slipped out of the bathroom, padding toward your room without looking back.

Dean stood there, jaw tight, chest heaving, every muscle in his body screaming at him to follow. He sucked in a deep breath, leaning against the sink for support. His jeans pulled tight, his dick a throbbing reminder of what he couldn’t have, what he shouldn’t take. “Easy”, he muttered under his breath, dragging a hand down his face. “Not tonight”. He closed his eyes, trying to will the heat out of his body, to remind himself why he had to hold back. Because this wasn’t about him. Not anymore.

But it didn’t help. Nothing helped. He was still hard. Fucking hard.

“Son of a bitch…”, he muttered.

It had been years. Years of denying himself anything close to this, close to… love. Years of burying the need so deep he almost forgot what it felt like. And now? Just one kiss. Just the brush of your hand. And he was wrecked. Painfully so.

Dean gripped the counter tighter, trying to breathe through it. Because storming down the hall, crawling into your bed, pressing his body to yours until you remembered exactly how good it could be… that wasn’t an option. Not tonight. Not like this.

Eventually, your bedroom door opened. You shifted, eyes closed at first, but you weren’t asleep. Not even close.

Dean slipped inside, the faint scent of soap and aftershave clinging to him, still glitter in his hair no matter how hard he’d tried to scrub it out. He stripped down to just his sweatpants, tossing his T-shirt over the chair. His chest was broad and bare, a faint line of hair trailing down to where the fabric sat low on his hips. And beneath it, though dulled from the worst of it, he was still swollen, the outline obvious as he moved.

He exhaled a long breath, dragging a hand down his face before pulling back the blanket and sliding in beside you. The mattress dipped under his weight, familiar in a way that made your chest ache.

For a moment, neither of you moved. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, fists clenched like he was holding himself together by sheer will.

“You’re still awake”, he said softly, not a question.

You turned just enough to see the outline of him in the dark. His jaw set, his chest rising and falling steady but too quick. He looked… wrecked. Like being this close to you was torture and comfort all at once.

“I can feel you tense”, you murmured, voice low, still raspy from the days of being sick.

Dean’s lips quirked humorlessly. “Yeah, well. Not exactly a monk here”.

You swallowed, tugging the blanket closer to your chin. “Dean…”.

He rolled his head on the pillow, meeting your eyes in the dim light. And for a moment, neither of you breathed.

“I’m not gonna push”, he whispered. “But I can’t just… switch it off either”.

You knew that feeling. As much as you wanted to hate it, to shove it down, your body betrayed you. You looked away, staring at the shadowed curve of the ceiling. “Yeah”, you murmured, almost too quiet. “I know”.

Neither of you moved with intent, but somehow the distance shrank. His shoulder brushed yours when you shifted, his thigh grazed yours under the blanket when you resettled. Each touch accidental, each one a spark.

The air was thick, every inhale flavored with the warmth of his skin, the faint bite of his aftershave, the ache of what wasn’t happening.

You didn’t even remember moving closer, but when you blinked again, your foreheads nearly touched, the blanket pooled low between your chests. His hand twitched where it lay on the mattress, like he wanted to reach for you but didn’t dare.

You mirrored him, your fingers curling tighter around the edge of the blanket, the pull between you as fierce as it had been that night weeks ago. Only now it was softer, more dangerous because of what it meant.

Neither of you said another word. Neither of you pulled away.

The silence stretched, heavy, charged, until you found your voice, uncertain, almost swallowed by the dark. “Just… cuddling?”, you whispered.

Dean stilled. His eyes searched yours in the shadows, like he needed to be sure he’d heard right. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Yeah”, he murmured. “That´s fine”.

Slowly, carefully, like he was afraid one wrong move would spook you, he lifted his arm. The blanket shifted, inviting. Your chest squeezed. You hesitated only a second before inching closer, your body drawn to him in a way that felt both inevitable and terrifying. His warmth enveloped you as you fit yourself against his side, your cheek resting tentatively against his bare chest.

Dean let out a breath you hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His arm wrapped around you, strong and steady, pulling you in, his chin lowering to brush the top of your head.

Dean’s heartbeat thudded steady beneath your ear, but the longer you lay there, the more unbearable it became. His warmth soaked into you, his scent curled around you, and the steady weight of his arm kept you pinned in place.

And it wasn’t enough.

Within moments, your head shifted, lifting off his chest. The blanket rustled as you turned, tilting your chin up. His eyes were already waiting, catching yours like they had a hundred times before, back when there were no walls between you, no years to regret.

You breathed his name, barely more than a sigh. Dean’s throat bobbed, his hand flexing on your side like he wanted to stop you, but couldn’t.

And then you kissed him. Soft, at first. Hesitant. The barest press of lips. But the second his mouth met yours, the dam broke.

Dean groaned low in his chest, kissing you back like he’d been starved of it, like he’d been waiting for this moment every hour of the last four years. His hand slid up your back, steady but firm, pulling you closer until there was no space left between you.

Heat flared instantly, curling deep in your belly. You gasped into his mouth, your fingers gripping his bare shoulder.

Dean broke the kiss first, forehead pressed to yours, breathing hard. His voice was ragged, pleading and restrained all at once. “Sweetheart… if we keep going…”. His lips brushed yours again, trembling. “…I’m not sure I can stop”.

“Maybe just one more time then”, you whispered, so quietly you barely heard yourself. Your eyes were still closed, your forehead pressed to his, lips barely brushing his mouth. You weren’t sure if it was desperation or weakness or just the ache of needing something familiar in a world that still felt cracked down the middle. Maybe it was all of it. Maybe it didn’t matter.

Dean stilled beneath you. You felt his heartbeat, hard and fast against your palm where it rested on his chest. You felt the way his breath hitched, the way his arm tightened around you just a little. But he didn’t move. He didn’t kiss you again. Instead, he turned his head slightly, pulling away just enough for your lips to lose contact. His eyes opened, meeting yours in the dark, and they were full of something that looked a lot like pain. “Don’t”, he said softly.

You blinked, your throat tightening. “Dean—”.

He cupped your jaw gently, thumb brushing your cheek. His voice was low, thick, like every word cost him something. “Every time we do this”, he murmured, “you pull away after. And I get it—I deserve that. But it’s like losing you all over again”. Your breath hitched. He swallowed hard, his eyes locked on yours. “I want you. God, do I want you. But I can’t keep having pieces of you just to watch you take them back the next morning”.

Silence settled over you.

Dean pressed a kiss to your forehead and pulled you against his chest again, cradling you close. “I’m not walking away”, he said. “But not like this. Not just for one more time”.

That hurt more than if he’d taken what you offered. Because for the first time, he wasn’t chasing you for your body. He was waiting for all of you.

The ache of it pressed into your chest. You hated that he was right. Hated that you’d let the push-pull go on this long, punishing him because you couldn’t stop punishing yourself.

Your fingers curled lightly into his skin and in the dark, he pressed another kiss to the top of your head. Just a breath of a touch, but it broke something in you. Tears burned at the corners of your eyes, sliding down your temple into his chest. Dean didn’t say anything, but his arm tightened, pulling you closer.

You lay awake like that, tangled up with him in a way that was equal parts comfort and torment, until the sound of tiny feet on the floor snapped you both out of your haze. The door creaked. “Mommy?”, Lilah’s little voice wavered. “Daddy?”.

You both jerked upright instantly, half-asleep and tangled in the blanket. She stood in the doorway with her hand clutching her tummy. Her face was pale, her bottom lip trembling. “My stomach feels weird”, she whimpered.

Dean was out of bed in a second, scooping her up before you could even sit fully. “C’mere, Buzz. Daddy’s got you”.

She leaned against his shoulder, groaning softly.

Your eyes widened. “Trash can—”.

Dean moved fast, grabbing the little bin from under your makeup table and thrusting it into your hands as he sat on the edge of the bed with her.

And just in time. Lilah gagged once, then bent over the bin in your lap, her tiny body trembling as she threw up.

You smoothed her hair back with one hand, steadying the can with the other, while Dean rubbed circles on her back, murmuring, “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re okay”.

The three of you sat like that until the worst of it passed and Lilah slumped against Dean’s chest, whimpering softly.

You set the trash can aside and reached for a box of tissues, gently wiping her mouth. Her lashes fluttered, eyes watery, and she mumbled, “Sorry…”.

Your throat tightened. “Oh, baby, no. Nothing to be sorry for”. You stroked her hair, then glanced at Dean.

“Let’s get her cleaned up”, he said quietly.

Together, you shuffled into the bathroom. You wet a washcloth with warm water while Dean sat her on the counter, steadying her. Lilah leaned tiredly into him, letting you wipe her face and rinse her mouth. Dean murmured something about “Bee baths in the morning” to make her smile, and she managed the tiniest giggle before resting her cheek against his shoulder again.

Once she was freshened up, you carried the bin back to your room while Dean lifted her easily in his arms. She clung to him, whispering, “Don’t let go”.

“Not a chance”, he promised.

Back in your bed, Dean laid her gently between you. She curled onto her side, one tiny hand finding yours, the other clutching Dean’s shirt.

Dean settled beside her, his arm draped carefully over her small body to rest across your waist, like he was protecting you both at once.

-

You blinked awake slowly, head still heavy with sleep. Lilah’s tiny hand was fisted in your shirt. On her other side, Dean lay flat on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, the other resting protective across her middle, close enough that his fingers brushed your hip under the covers. His chest rose and fell steady, mouth parted slightly in sleep. For once, he looked at peace.

You almost let yourself sink back into the warmth, the rare sense of family, but then a floorboard creaked. You turned your head just as Sam appeared in the doorway, tall frame filling the space. He froze. His eyebrows went up, and then the grin spread, slow and unstoppable.

“Well", he whispered, voice just loud enough to carry. “Would you look at that”.

Your face heated instantly. You pressed a finger to your lips, mouthing, She’s sleeping.

Sam nodded, still grinning like Christmas came early. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking way too pleased with himself. “Didn’t think I’d live to see the day Dean cuddled up with his kid and his—”. He cut himself off, tilting his head. “What are we calling you these days? Ex? Fiancée? …Bedmate?”.

Dean stirred, grumbling low in his chest before cracking an eye open. “Sammy…”. His voice was thick with sleep. He blinked at his brother, then down at the little girl curled between them, and back at you. “Shut up”.

Sam smirked wider. “Not a chance”.

You groaned, pulling the blanket up over your face. Lilah stirred, mumbling sleepily, “Daddy?”, before nuzzling closer into Dean’s side. Dean’s gaze softened immediately. He kissed the top of her messy hair, glaring at Sam over her head. “Out”.

Sam raised his hands in surrender, chuckling as he stepped back. “Fine, fine. Breakfast is on me. But I’m never letting you live this down, man”.

-

It wasn’t until the day before Christmas that it hit again, worse this time. You barely made it from the couch to the bathroom before your stomach rebelled, and by the end of it you were pale, shaking, and wrung out enough that you couldn’t pretend anymore.

For the first time in years, you called Dean.

“Can you watch Lilah for a few hours?”. Your voice cracked, and that was all it took. He didn’t even ask why. “On my way”.

When Baby rumbled into the drive, you weren’t expecting the other doors to open. Sam climbed out, arms full of grocery bags, and behind him was Castiel.

“Seriously?”, you croaked, clinging to the doorframe.

Dean winced. “Wasn’t planning on dropping in with the whole crew, but we just wrapped a case. Didn’t want to waste time driving them back”.

You waved him off, too drained to argue. “Fine. She’s inside. I’ll text if the doctor says anything”.

Lilah came barreling into the hallway, bundled up in her puffy winter jacket and mittens, wool hat pulled so low it almost covered her eyes. “Daddy!”, she squealed, leaping into his arms.

Dean caught her easily, kissing her cheek through the layers of scarf. “Hey, Buzz. Mommy needs a little break, so we’re gonna have some fun, yeah?”.

Her eyes went wide as she spotted Cas, who stood stiffly in the doorway like he wasn’t sure what to do with a four-year-old. “Who’s that?”, she whispered loudly, tugging on Dean’s collar.

Dean smirked. “That’s Cas. He’s… uh… a friend”.

Cas tilted his head. “Hello, Delilah”.

She giggled, hiding her face against Dean’s jacket before peeking out again. “He sounds funny”.

Dean chuckled, ruffling her hat down even further until she squealed. “Yeah, well, you’ll get used to it”.

Minutes later, Baby was back on the road. Sam sat in the back and Cas beside him, looking oddly out of place but calm. And up front, Lilah sat shotgun, swallowed by her jacket, mittens pawing at the dash like she was queen of the world. “Daddy, can you go fast?”, she asked, muffled through her scarf.

“Not with you in the car, Buzz”, Dean said, one hand steady on the wheel.

Cas leaned forward. “Seatbelts are designed to reduce fatal injuries by 45 percent”.

Lilah blinked up at him, eyes huge from under her hat. Then she giggled, pointing at him. “You’re funny!”.

Dean shook his head, muttering under his breath, “Oh, this I gotta see”.

By the time they reached the playground, Lilah was still giggling, announcing to anyone who’d listen, “My daddy’s car is the loudest, and my Uncle Sam is a tree, and Cas is funny!”.

Dean glanced back at his brother and the angel as he parked. “Congrats, Cas. You’re in the club now”.

Cas only blinked, adjusting his coat. “She is… very loud”.

Dean smiled despite himself. “Yeah. That’s my daughter”.

The playground was dusted with snow, the slides frosted over, swings stiff with ice. But Lilah didn’t care. The second Dean set her down, she was running across the park in her puffy jacket, arms out like airplane wings, her scarf trailing behind her.

Dean shoved his hands in his pockets, watching her climb the steps to the slide. “Careful, Buzz—”.

“I’m a bee!”, she hollered, halfway up already. “Bees don’t fall!”.

Dean muttered under his breath, “Yeah, tell that to gravity”.

Sam laughed, shaking his head as he sat on a bench, pulling his jacket tighter. “You really got your hands full, huh?”. Dean grinned faintly, eyes still on his daughter. “Yeah. Wouldn’t trade it”.

Beside him, Cas tilted his head, gaze fixed on Lilah as though studying some rare creature. When she zipped down the frosted slide with a squeal, Cas’s brow furrowed. “She appears… fearless”.

“Yeah”, Dean said, pride sneaking into his voice. “Gets that from me”.

“She also seems… sticky”, Cas added as Lilah sprinted back over, mittens covered in snow she immediately tried to press onto Dean’s face.

Dean dodged, scooping her up before she could succeed. “Buzz, c’mon—no snow in the face. What’d I tell you?”. Lilah squirmed in his arms, giggling. “That bees like snow!”.

“I never said that”, Dean countered, but she was already laughing too hard to care.

Cas, still watching closely, finally spoke again. “She is… loud. But endearing”.

Lilah’s head whipped toward him, eyes wide with glee. “You’re funny again!”, she declared, pointing at him like she’d just discovered treasure. She then squirmed in Dean’s arms, still giggling, trying to wriggle free. Dean only tightened his hold, grinning as he shifted her weight. “Oh no you don’t, Buzz”, he said, hoisting her higher. “You’re not getting away that easy”.

She squealed as he lifted her over his head, her boots kicking in the air. “Put me down, Daddy!”.

“Put you down?”, Dean smirked. “No way. You’re a bee, right? Bees fly”.

And with that, he held her aloft, zooming her through the frosty air, complete with buzzing noises that made Sam groan and Cas tilt his head in confusion. Lilah’s laughter rang out, bright and wild, as her mittened arms stretched wide.

“Alright, Buzz", Dean teased, slowing her flight as he cradled her back down against his chest. “You been good this year?”.

She nodded hard, curls bouncing out from under her hat.

“Yeah? Then what’d you ask Santa for Christmas?”, Dean asked, brushing snow off her scarf.

Lilah leaned in, her voice full of giggles but serious in the way only a four-year-old could be. “I asked him that you wouldn’t have to go to work anymore”.

Dean froze, his breath catching in his chest.

She beamed, not noticing, tucking her cold nose under his chin. “’Cause then you could stay with me and Mommy all the time”.

For a second, Dean couldn’t breathe. The snow, the laughter, even Sam’s soft frown as he watched, it all blurred. Because that was the one thing he couldn’t give. “Buzz…”. His voice cracked before he cleared his throat, forcing lightness back in. He kissed her hat, pressing her close. “That’s… that’s one hell of a Christmas wish”.

She giggled again, happy and oblivious.

Sam’s eyes met his over her head, full of quiet understanding. Cas only tilted his head further, murmuring, “She does not yet comprehend the weight of what she asks”. Dean swallowed hard, holding his little girl tighter as though the strength of his arms alone could make her wish come true.

———————————

A/N: Please let me know what you think.🥰 

-

Dean never said the passenger seat was yours.

He didn’t have to.

It became yours slowly and in pieces. A jacket shoved into the back without complaint. A gas station coffee placed in the cupholder before you even climbed in. Your favourite candy appearing in the glove box beside old cassette tapes, fake IDs, and a knife that definitely did not belong there according to any normal person’s definition of storage.

Sam noticed before you did because of course he did because Sam notices everything.

“You know,” he said one morning outside a diner in Nebraska, “Dean made me sit in the back yesterday.”

You were leaning against the Impala, sipping coffee while the sunrise painted the empty highway gold. The air smelled like dust, bacon grease from the diner vents, and the sharp coolness of early morning before the heat arrived. Dean was inside paying the bill and probably flirting badly with the waitress for the sake of getting extra pie to go.

You glanced at Sam. “Your legs are too long. Maybe he was punishing you for being inconveniently tall.”

Sam gave you a look.

“What?”

“He said you get carsick in the back.”

You blinked. “I don’t.”

“I know.”

You took another sip of coffee to hide your expression while Sam flashed a smile, far too pleased with himself.

“Don’t start,” you said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re saying it with your eyebrows.”

“My eyebrows are neutral.”

“Your eyebrows are meddling.”

The diner door opened, saving you from whatever painfully observant thing Sam had been about to say. Dean came out with a white paper bag in one hand and keys in the other, his boots crunching over gravel. He had sunglasses on even though the sun had barely cleared the horizon, and his hair was still slightly flattened on one side from sleep.

“Ladies,” he said. “We rolling or what?”

Sam sighed. “Always charming.”

Dean tossed him the paper bag. “That’s your breakfast, Sasquatch. Gratitude would look good on you.”

You pushed off the car. “Did you get pie?”

Dean looked offended. “Do you even know me?”

“You got two pieces?”

“Three.”

“For the road?”

“For emotional support.”

You smiled and reached for the passenger door but Dean was already opening it.

You froze as did he.

It was a stupidly small thing. Ridiculous, really. Men opened doors. Friends opened doors. People opened doors when someone else’s hands were full, which yours weren’t. But Dean’s hand was on the handle and yours hovered near it, and for half a second you both stared at the space between you like it had turned into something dangerous.

Sam, blessedly and terribly, said nothing.

Dean cleared his throat. “Door sticks sometimes.”

“It does not.”

“It might.”

“It’s your car.”

“Exactly. I’d know.”

You fought a smile and climbed in, trying not to think about the way he waited until you were settled before closing it.

The road stretched out empty ahead of you.

Nebraska became Iowa. Iowa became Illinois. The hunt was three states away, a possible vengeful spirit haunting a restored theatre, and for once, nobody was bleeding, cursed, possessed, hexed, or wanted by local law enforcement. It was almost peaceful.

Dean drove with one hand on the wheel, the other tapping against his thigh to the beat of Led Zeppelin. Sam slept in the back seat, folded awkwardly against the window with his jacket shoved under his head. You had your boots braced against the floor, a motel map open on your lap even though the GPS was working fine for once.

The sun warmed your knees through the windshield.

Dean glanced over. “You’re quiet.”

“You say that like it’s suspicious.”

“With you? It is.”

“I’m enjoying the calm.”

He snorted. “Rookie mistake.”

You looked at him. “Did you just call me a rookie?”

“Emotionally, maybe.”

“That doesn’t even mean anything.”

“Sure it does.”

“You’re just saying words.”

“Good ones, though.”

You smiled despite yourself and looked back down at the map.

A few minutes passed then Dean reached over and turned the music down. That was what made you look up.

“What?” you asked.

He kept his eyes on the road. “Nothing.”

“You turned down Zeppelin. That’s not nothing. That’s practically a medical emergency.”

He breathed out a laugh. “Just thought you might wanna sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

“You were up half the night researching.”

“So was Sam.”

“Sam sleeps like a Victorian orphan dying of consumption. You sit there pretending you’re fine until you get mean.”

“I do not get mean.”

Dean glanced at you. You narrowed your eyes.

“There she is,” he said.

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t stop smiling.

The truth was, you were tired. Exhausted, actually. The kind of tired that lived in the bones. Hunting did that. It took normal things and made them rare enough to feel luxurious. A warm shower. Clean sheets. Coffee that didn’t taste like burnt mud. A quiet car. A safe place to sit. The passenger seat had started to feel like that.

Safe.

Maybe that was why it scared you.

You looked out the window as fields blurred by, green and gold beneath a wide blue sky. Your reflection stared faintly back from the glass, softer than you felt.

“Sam said you made him sit in the back,” you said.

Dean’s fingers tightened on the wheel for half a second.

“Sam says a lot of things.”

“He said you told him I get carsick.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Huh.”

You turned toward him. “Huh?”

“Guess I misremembered.”

“You don’t misremember anything about this car.”

Dean gave you a sideways glance. “You accusing me of something?”

“Maybe.”

“Careful. I might make you sit in the back.”

“You won’t.”

That hung between you.

Dean looked back at the road, but the corner of his mouth twitched. “Pretty sure of yourself.”

“Pretty sure of you.”

His expression changed then.

Just a little. The teasing eased out of his face, leaving something quieter behind. He didn’t answer right away. The tires hummed against the asphalt. Sam shifted in the back, still asleep. The music played low enough now that it felt more like memory than sound.

Finally, Dean said, “Yeah, well.”

You waited.

He swallowed. “Seat suits you.”

Your heart did something foolish.

You looked away before he could see too much. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Too late. I’m writing it down.”

“I’ll deny everything.”

“Sam’s a witness.”

“Sam’s asleep.”

“He’s always half listening.”

From the back seat, Sam mumbled, “True.”

Dean startled. “Dude.”

You laughed so hard you had to press a hand over your mouth.

Sam didn’t open his eyes. “Also, the passenger seat is definitely hers.”

“Shut up, Sam.”

“Just saying.”

Dean turned the music back up, muttering something about needing new friends.

x

The day after you said goodbye All I did was lay in bed and cry

Never have you ever experienced heartbreak quite like this one. Dean Winchester left a lasting effect on your body and mind. You two weren't together for long, maybe a couple of months, but you fell hard and fast for him. He made it so damn easy to love him.

Dean, when he wants to be, is charming and loving and the perfect gentleman. When he was able to, he’d bring you flowers every time he visited you. When you were together, he made sure to always put you first. When he left, he made promises that he didn’t know he’d be able to keep.

He kept coming back. Sometimes with life-threatening wounds. Sometimes with pure exhaustion.

However, he always came back. The breaks lasted anywhere from one to seven days. You never knew what he did, who he was doing it with, or if he was being safe. Whenever you asked him about the wounds he had, he’d play it off as being clumsy or that he and his brother got into a fight.

You never questioned it because you figured he’d tell you when he was ready.

Now… Now you’re broken into a million little pieces that only Dean can put back together. He left, for good this time. What he left behind is a woman with a broken heart and a shattered soul.

You haven’t left your bed since he said goodbye, and you must have cried enough tears to fill up two bathtubs. Your older sister, Karlie, sits on the edge of your bed with a box of tissues in one hand and the other on your back.

“I’m not going to pretend to know what you felt for him, but this isn’t the end of the world, Y/N…”

“Why did he leave me?” you cry into your pillow. “I love him.”

Karlie has had her fair share of heartbreak, but she’s never seen you like this. It breaks her heart knowing she can’t make it better. It’s just you two after your parents died, so she feels a responsibility to look after you.

“There will be someone else, Y/N. Someone better. Someone you deserve.”

“I don’t want anyone else. I want Dean!”

She remembers you calling her crying when Dean left yesterday. You two had been on a romantic weekend that you were so excited about. She thought things were going well until Dean left. No goodbye, no explanation. He just dropped you off and told you it was over. That he was sorry. Karlie is pissed, and if she ever sees Dean, she’s going to make him regret breaking your heart.

For right now? She needs to be there for you.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

You bury your face in your pillow and continue to bleed tears.

But after one month, I started to move on

For the last month, Karlie has been trying to get you to go out with her. For the first couple of weeks after Dean left, you were bedridden and depressed. Then, that fourth week, Karlie managed to convince you to go out. Dean clearly isn’t coming back. You have no idea where he is or if he’s even alive. All you know about him is that he does dangerous work with his brother, which has him gone for up to an entire week.

“You look beautiful,” Karlie grins when she sees.

“Thanks.” You grab the end of your flowy dress and pull it down. “It’s not too short, is it?”

“No, it’s perfect.”

“I’m not looking for anything tonight, okay? I don’t plan on taking anyone home.”

“I know. We’re just gonna go out, have some drinks, and get away from this house.”

You’re not sure if you want to go out, but it’s time you get off your ass. Karlie drives you two to the nearest bar that’s not overly packed, but has more people than you thought it would.

She finds a spot at the bar and orders drinks for you two while you look around. There is a pool table in the back where a couple is playing against each other. The man has his arms around the girl as he “shows” her how to shoot the ball into the pocket. Tears brim in your eyes when you see yourself and Dean doing the same thing.

His arms felt so strong and safe around you.

“Hey, you okay?” Karlie asks.

You blink away the tears and nod. “Yeah, I’m good.” You take the drink from her. “Thanks.”

“This is going to be good for you, Y/N. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you will get better.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Die,” she jokes.

To that, you laugh and bring the drink to your lips. You have to believe that you’ll be able to move on.

And after two, I felt alright

One thing you told Dean you wanted to do was go back to school. You had gotten your associate's degree in general studies because you didn’t know what you wanted to do. Then your parents died, and something like college didn’t seem so important.

Now it is.

At thirty, you’ve enrolled yourself in university, and today is the first day of school. It’s kind of nerve-racking. You still don’t know what you want to do, but you can’t stay at home anymore. Yes, you still live with Karlie, but at least you’re not cooped up in bed anymore.

The first day is always easy and laid back, so you don’t expect to have a lot of stuff to do. However, the professors gave out the syllabus for the class, and you can see the assignments that are going to be due soon. Better get on it now than wait for the last minute.

Once you’re back at home, you’re inside your room with the blinds open, allowing natural light to shine in your room. Your textbooks are open beside you, and you’re scribbling notes into your notebook.

“Y/N? You home?” Karlie calls out from downstairs.

“In my room!” you call back.

Soft music is pouring from your speakers, so you can hear Karlie’s footsteps come up the stairs. She appears in the doorway of your room and smiles thoughtfully.

“What’s up?” you ask.

“You look good.” You look down at your sweats and tank top with a frown. “Not your clothes. You look… healthier. Like you’re happy.”

“Not fully, but I’m getting there,” you smile.

“I’m glad. It’s good to see you this way.”

Then three months in, you were off my mind

The day seems warmer today. It feels good to be at school. One month into it, and you feel like your best self. Homework is done, tests are completed, and you’ve studied your ass off for the test you’ve just taken for your last class.

You’re walking into the cafeteria, looking around for a good place to eat when you hear your name being called.

You turn around and see a guy jogging up to you. He looks familiar, but you can’t quite place him.

“Hi, do I know you?”

“Sorry, I’m your partner for the project we have. I didn’t catch you after class.”

“Oh, right. What’s your name?”

“Cody.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Cody.”

Cody takes a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to you. “This is my number. You know, if you want to get together for the project. Or not, whatever.”

He’s stuttering and blushing, and it’s kind of cute. You take the number and put it in your pocket. “Thanks, Cody. I’ll text you later.”

“Do you have a free period?”

“Yeah, my next class doesn’t start for another hour.”

“Me, too. Mind if I join you for lunch?” You stare at Cody, and he mistakes that for you being creeped out by him. “Feel free to tell me to fuck off or something. Sorry. I should go.”

“No, it’s okay.” Cody stops and looks at you. “I’d love to have lunch with you.”

“Cool,” he smiles. “What are you having?”

“I’m thinking some pizza.”

You two get into line and chat about your classes. Once you get your food, you find an empty table and sit with him.

“I was kind of glad I got you as a partner, if I’m being honest.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” you ask after you swallow.

“You’re just really pretty, and I like it when you smile.”

Your heart flutters at his compliment, and you take another bite of your pizza to try and hide your smile. Thankfully, he doesn’t press on the issue. Cody is nice, cute, and sweet. Having him as a partner will be a good thing.

And month four and five, I was living my life I was better and didn't have to try Not to think of you, until you reached out And said, "Remember that night?"

After that project was over, you and Cody kept in touch. Toward the end of the semester, he asked you out on a date. To Karlie’s surprise, you said yes. You had a lot of fun with Cody, and he treated you like a damn queen.

Now it’s been about a month of dating him, and you couldn’t be happier. The semester is over, so you’re on a small break before the next semester starts. You and Cody are pursuing the same degree, so you have a couple of classes together next semester.

You and Cody haven’t had sex yet, but you like that you’re taking it slow. It’s better for you to take it at your own pace instead of jumping into things so quickly. The passion is there, just slowly building.

After a date at the mini golf place, Cody drives you home. Karlie has to be up early in the morning, so she might be asleep. The house is dark, except for the table lamp she kept on for you.

Cody gets out of the car and opens the passenger door for you, and you take his hand as you get out. He doesn’t let go of your hand as he walks you to your front door.

“Thank you for taking me out. I had a lot of fun.”

“Me, too.”

He runs his fingers through your hair, and you lean your head into his touch. He trails his fingers down your jaw before pulling you in. You meet him halfway and kiss him tenderly. It’s crazy how the butterflies in your stomach flutter happily whenever he kisses you. You’ll never tire of this.

“Keep this up, and I’ll invite you inside. I don’t think Karlie will appreciate that,” you mutter against his lips.

He kisses you twice before pulling away. “Shame.”

“Maybe next time.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” He steps back without taking his eyes off you. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Bright and early.” He starts later than you do, but he loves driving you to school. “I’ll come with coffee.”

“My hero,” you sing.

You unlock your front door and step inside. When you close the door, Cody walks back to his car, gets in, and drives off. You toe off your shoes and leave them by the door before turning off the lamp and tiptoing upstairs. Never did you ever think that you’d be here. You were a different person five months ago.

Broken.

Cody found all the pieces of yourself and expertly put them back together.

You can’t lose your smile, even as you walk into your room. You toss your phone onto your bed and walk into the bathroom connected to your room to wash off your makeup. When you’re done, you hear your phone chirp.

You bounce over to the phone, thinking it’s Cody.

It’s not.

No, the name wipes the smile off your face completely. Your knees buckle from underneath you, and you fall onto your bed. The grip on your phone tightens so much that your skin turns white.

How dare he message you? You’ve healed. You’ve moved on from him. You were getting better.

Remember that night? Dean Winchester has messaged you.

Of course, you fucking do. All of that healing goes away in an instant, and your entire world comes crashing down around you.

Some wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.

In this case, three of them.

The day after you had reached out I was broken for the second time around I prayed on the third day that I would be okay That I'd forget you were ever mine

Karlie walks into the house to hear you crying. She drops whatever she is holding and races up the stairs.

“Y/N? Are you okay?” She pushes your door open and sees you bawling your eyes out on your bed. “I swear, if Cody hurt you, I’m gonna kick his ass.”

“It’s not him,” you sob.

She walks into the room and sits on the edge of your bed. “What happened?”

You don’t want to talk about it, so you push your phone over to her. She grabs it and reads the message you haven’t stopped thinking about. It took you three months to get over Dean, and now you hope it’ll take three days to get over him.

You thought you were doing really well, but it’s crazy how the right words from the right person can shatter someone’s world to pieces.

In a matter of seconds, you remember the feel of Dean’s arms around you, the feel of his touch, the way he made you feel special, and the love you had for him. That passion was intense and fast. You were jumping steps to get to his heart, not caring how it would hurt you in the end.

In a matter of seconds, you miss him all over again.

Karlie curses under her breath and gets up with your phone in her hand. You don’t even stop her from walking out of your room, and she closes the door on your heartbreaking sobs. Her fingers fly across your screen, and she puts the phone to her ear.

“Hey, Y/N,” Cody greets with a smile in his voice.

“Hey, it’s Karlie.”

“Oh, is everything okay?”

“No, it’s not. You need to come over.”

“I’m on my way.”

Oh, I don't think you realize How long I had to fight to be living my life To get better and never have to try Not to think of you until you reached out And said, "Remember that night?"

Cody shows up ten minutes later, and Karlie greets him at the door.

“What happened?” he asks.

“I’ll let her tell you the details, but there was a guy before you, and she fell hard and fast for him. She was doing really well, and then he messaged her last night.”

Cody doesn’t need to hear more. He pushes past Karlie and heads up to your room. You barely register the door opening and closing, but you do feel someone climb into bed with you. Too large to be your sister.

“Go away,” you say, burying your face into your pillow.

“No, I won’t.”

You don’t want Cody to see you like this. How will it look for you to be in tears over an ex-love? Some of these tears are now for the guilt you’re feeling for crying over Dean in the first place. Cody deserves better.

“I’m here.”

Cody pulls you into his arms, and you turn so you’re facing him instead of your pillow. You clutch his shirt and cry into his chest. He doesn’t say anything as he rubs your back in comfort. He won’t force you to talk if you don’t want to. All he wants is for you to know that he's here and he’s not going anywhere.

After about thirty minutes, you’ve calmed down enough to talk.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper.

“Don’t be.”

“I am. You don’t deserve me crying over another man.”

“Grief comes at us in all forms at random times. Karlie didn’t tell me much, but from what I’ve gathered, he broke your heart?”

“That’s putting it mildly. I shouldn’t even be like this. I was only with him for a couple of months.”

“Did you love him?” You look away from him, guilt shining in your eyes. He doesn’t let you look away with the way his fingers are gently gripping your jaw. “Don’t hide from me. It’s okay if you did.”

“I did,” you whisper painfully. “I know I shouldn’t have fallen for him, but he made it so easy. He broke me and left me with the pieces. It took me a long time to get over him. I was doing better. I met you…” You inhale sharply and look into his blue eyes. “I want you to know I am over him. I am. It’s just…”

“You’re not healed,” he finishes for you.

“I thought I was, but I guess I’m not.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

You don’t want to talk about it, but maybe you should. Cody has been so understanding; he deserves the truth. You grab your phone, bring up the message, and show him.

“What happened that night?”

We went for a drive, 2:30 in the morning I kissed you, it was pouring We held each other tight before the night was over You looked over your shoulder Oh, I was doing fine You said, "Remember that night? Remember that night?" Oh, I was doing fine You said, "Remember that night? Remember that night?"

Rain splatters against the Impala’s windshield. The headlights cut through the darkness, but it doesn’t allow for much visibility. Dean doesn’t slow down because he’s driven these roads thousands of times.

It’s two in the morning, neither of you can sleep, driving around like hopeless fools in love. You two had just gotten back from a romantic getaway. Dean took you up north to play in the snow, and you didn’t want the night to end.

“Where are we going?” you ask.

“Anywhere. Nowhere. Away from here.” Dean turns the radio on and smiles at you. “Just sit back and relax, sweetheart!”

Rock music plays through the speakers, and you scoot closer to Dean. He doesn’t hesitate to wrap his right arm around you, keeping his left hand casually on the wheel. He kisses the side of your head without taking his eyes off the road.

For an hour, Dean drives around in the rain. He finds a secluded place to park, so that’s where you two are now. Rain is pelting the roof, mixing with the sounds of soft rock coming lowly from the speakers. You and Dean are in each other’s arms, just staring out into the darkness.

“You want to talk about what’s bothering you?” you ask.

“How do you know something is bothering me?”

You reach up and smooth the small bump between his eyebrows. “You have a worried look on your face. You can talk about it if you want.”

Dean sighs and thinks about what he wants to share to you. “My brother an I are caught up in some shit right now, and it’s taking a toll on him more than it should.”

“What’s going on?”

“Recently, we’ve taken a kid under our wing. He’s a good kid, but his dad… Well, he’s like Lucifer.” He chuckles at the joke he’s made, but you don’t. “His dad is bad, and Sam can’t help but take responsibility for him.”

“Well Sam news to understand that no one is responsible for someone’s actions except for that person.”

“Yeah, try telling him that.” Dean looks at you and admires the flecks of color in your eyes. He can’t believe he told you that. It’s not much, but it’s more than he's allowed himself to tell anyone. “As his older brother, I try to be strong enough for him, but it’s hard. He’s not the only one who feels responsible.”

“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

“That’s all you sweetheart.”

You lean in and kiss him once, twice, and three times before Dean takes over. He slides his hands into your hair and tilts his head to deepen the kiss. Pleasure spikes down your body, and you find yourself curling into his body.

“I have to tell you something,” Dean whispers.

“What?”

“I’ve never felt this way about another woman before. I’m in uncharted waters here.”

“If it makes you feel any better, so am I.” You rub your nose against his, and you kiss him slowly. “Dean…”

“What?” he whispers back.

“I think… No, I know… I’m falling in love with you.”

Dean pulls back and looks deep into your eyes. He traces his fingers down your cheek, your jaw, and to your neck. “I’m getting there.”

You and Dean spend another hour in each other's arms, listening to the rain and kissing. When Dean arrives at your house to drop you off, the rain is barely a trickle.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“I’ll be waiting,” he grins.

You get out of the car and walk to your front door. After getting the door unlocked and open, you turn to look at Dean. He smiles at you from over his shoulder before driving away.

Talking about that night lifts some of the pressure from your chest, but it’s mostly Cody who lifts it for you. He wipes your tears with his thumbs, and he kisses your lips softly.

“I don’t know much about him or what went down between you two, but when I tell you I’m not leaving, I mean it.” Cody wraps his arms around you, and you rest your head on his chest. “I’m not leaving, baby.”

Dean Winchester, as passionate as being with him can be, is only a chapter in your book. A chapter that deserves to be closed. Cody is the start of a new one, and it’s one that you intend to keep living in for a long time.

x

(1984)

“You’re staring again”

Ben didn’t look away from where he sat sprawled across the bed, one arm lazily slung behind his head. “Can you blame me?”

You rolled your eyes, finishing brushing your messed up hair back into place in front of the mirror. “You say that to every girl?”

“Nah” A smirk pulled at his mouth. “Just the pretty ones that put up with me”

“Jesus Christ” He laughed softly as you grabbed a pillow off the chair and threw it at him. He caught it easily, still grinning– that rare kind of grin nobody else ever seemed to get from him– boyish, unguarded and real. Not the cameras, not the public, not Payback– just you. Outside the room, music from the afterparty thumped faintly through the walls. Someone shouted drunkenly down the hallway. (Probably the twins) You moved toward the door. “We should go before someone notices we disappeared”

Ben caught your wrist before you could pass the bed, moving to sit on the edge of the mattress. The movement was automatic, familiar. Gentle. Your breath hitched slightly as he tugged you between his knees, hands settling on your hips. “Five more minutes” He murmured, voice low and gravelly.

“You said that twenty minutes ago” You say, letting out a soft breath of amusement while brushing the hair away from his face.

“Yeah, well” His thumbs brushed slowly against your waist. “Changed my mind”

For a second, you just looked at him– no cameras, no crowds screaming his name, no Vought workers breathing down his neck– just Ben. And maybe that was why the fear creeping into your chest felt so wrong. Because something had been off all week. The team’s whispered conversations stopping the moment you entered rooms. Crimson Countess avoiding your eyes. Noir watching Ben like he was already gone.

You gently held his face between your hands. “We need to be careful” You spoke softly.

Ben frowned. “Bout what?”

You hesitated. It sounded stupid saying it out loud now– paranoid. But the feeling had been sitting heavy in your chest for days. “Don’t know…” You admitted quietly. “Something’s weird lately” Your hands were still cradling his face, one resting on his bearded cheek while the other continued brushing softly through his hair. His hands rubbed absentmindedly along your waist as he watched you carefully now, the amusement fading slightly from his face. “The team’s been acting off. Noir barely speaks to me anymore, Countess won’t even look at me and–” You shook your head lightly. “Just… got a bad feeling”

The man stared at you for a moment before letting out a soft scoff. “Doll” His thumbs pressed gently into your hips. “Y’think too much”

“Ben–”

“No, c’mere” One of his hands slid up your arm, warm and steady. “Nobody’s gonna do shit”

You wanted to believe him. Maybe that was the problem. He’d spent years being treated like something untouchable– America’s greatest hero, Vought’s golden boy, the strongest man in every room. And Ben carried that confidence like second nature– like betrayal wasn’t even a possibility.

“You trust them too much” You murmured.

That made him grin again, crooked and easy. “Nah, sweetheart” He shook his head simply, pulling you even closer to him by your hips. “They too scared to try anything”

The feeling only got worse the next morning. Normally, mission prep with Payback was loud, chaotic even. The twins arguing, Gunpowder trying too hard to impress Ben, Crimson complaining about anything and everything before they’d even left the States. But that morning felt tense– too quiet. You stepped into the briefing room just as the conversation abruptly died. Even Noir, usually the stoic one– was blanking staring at you. “What?” You asked slowly– the same, creeping, awful feeling blooming inside your chest.

“Nothing” Mindstorm answered too quickly.

One of the Vought assistants stood near the projector screen, perfectly composed as always. “Small change of plans, you’ll remain behind for this operation”

You blinked. “What?”

“It’s a simple retrieval mission–” The worker continued smoothly. “ –a couple members of Payback are more than sufficient. We’ll also need you here for other duties” It felt wrong, too staged– too perfect.

“That’s not what yesterday’s briefing said”

Beside you, Ben let out an annoyed sigh. “Relax, ‘preciate the day off”

Your eyes snapped toward him, something almost pleading in your expression, hoping that he’d see it too and agree. “Ben–”

“We’ll be back in a couple days” He leaned down just enough to press a quick kiss against your temple, careless about who saw this time. He was Soldier Boy after all, who the Hell was gonna call him out on it?  "You'll live” He scoffs, breath brushing your hair before he pulled back.

God you were gonna regret letting him leave.

You knew something had gone wrong when nobody answered the radios– not even Ben. By the time you got clearance to join them, Nicaragua was already burning. Smoke choked the air thick enough to sting your lungs, gunfire echoed somewhere deeper in the jungle, bodies littered the camp in pieces– soldiers and civilians alike. Your boots hit the dirt hard as you ran, dust kicking up behind you. “Ben?” You called out, more raw than you’d liked it to be. Nothing– just screaming in the distance. Then, you looked down– his shield. Half-buried beneath rubble and smeared with blood. Your stomach dropped violently. Around you, the remains of the camp looked less like a mission gone wrong and more like a massacre.

Like a setup.

You barely registered Noir standing several feet away, burned and motionless against one of the car’s engines. Or the twins avoiding your eyes. Or Countess already half-hidden back by their vehicle. All you saw was the group of Russian soldiers dragging something across the ground. No, not something– someone.

Ben.

Even drugged, practically unconscious he was still fighting them. A soldier hit him across the face with the butt of a rifle, another jammed a mask tighter over his mouth while three more struggled to force him down. Your heartbeat thundered so loudly it drowned out everything else.

No.

No, no, no–

You lurched forward before someone grabbed you hard from behind. Hands tightly wrapping around your limbs to hold you down. “Let go!” You screamed with all you had, struggling violently against his grip. They didn’t release you– they couldn’t risk you reaching Soldier Boy. Across the clearing, Ben lifted his head. For one brief, horrible second, his eyes found yours. Dazed Confusion, then realization– then something that looked dangerously close to heartbreak. The gas finally took effect a second later, his body going limp. The Russians dragged him toward the helicopter and nobody stopped them.

Nobody.

The last thing you saw was Ben’s lifeless form as they loaded him inside. Then the helicopter doors shut. And he was gone. He was gone– you tried to warn him, you knew something was wrong. He’d just brushed it off, kissing you and waving it away and now he was gone. You hadn’t even been there to try and save him.

They told the world Soldier Boy died a hero. But heroes weren’t drugged and dragged across battlefields while their teammates watched. The first few weeks after Nicaragua became a blur of bloodshot eyes, stolen files and red-string theories spread across motel room walls. Every rumor, every whisper, every classified document mentioning Russian activity– you chased all of it. Nothing. You tracked down old military contacts, bribed informants, broke into places a Vought front-pager definitely shouldn’t have– still nothing– just fragments.

'Transported east'

'American asset'

'Experimentation'

Enough to keep hope alive, enough to ruin you. Payback avoided you after that– too afraid of what a heartbroken (supe)  woman could do to them if she found out the truth. But their avoidance only confirmed what you already knew– they’d all let it happen.

Vought slowly started trying to tie you down, slow your advances without revealing too much from their involvement. They started reassigning missions, monitoring calls, searching your apartments the moment you were gone, asking questions with picture perfect smiles. You stopped staying anywhere longer than a few weeks after someone tried to put a bullet through your window in Chicago. After that, you understood– you weren’t supposed to keep looking. So? You disappeared before Vought could make you disappear first. New identities, cheap apartments. Your life packed into bags small enough to abandon at a moment’s notice, mostly weapons and whatever memory you could salvage of Ben.

(Present Day)

The deal was simple– Soldier Boy helped them kill Homelander and in return, they helped him hunt down the people who betrayed him. He’d barely been defrosting for a couple days and all he could think about was tracking those assholes and pounding them into the ground. He was being difficult– he knew that– but Soldier Boy was always kind of an ass. (Except when it came to you) He plays it cool, still chewing on his burger as he points at a picture on the table, one of your headshots from back in the day when Payback first debuted.

Then, in that gravelly, gruff voice of his: “Find her”

Butcher frowned, arms still crossed as he glances down at him. “Who?” Ben simply held up the photograph, taking a sip from his beer to play it cool.

“The hell for?” MM asked immediately. “Thought your whole team sold you out, what matters when we find who?”

Soldier Boy’s expression didn’t change, simply doubling down and harshly tapping two fingers into your photo like some kind of stubborn toddler with a beard. Annie exchanged a glance with Hughie. “Look–” Hughie started carefully. “ –if she’s been off-grid this long she’s probably either dead or hiding from Vought…”

“Ain’t dead” He mutters gruffly, not bothered to explain the whole V1 deal and its complexities to a bunch of randoms. “Find her”

Butcher leaned back against the table, studying him carefully. “N’ if we don’t care to find the lovely lady?”

Soldier Boy finally looked up, the motel suddenly felt much smaller under his sharp green eyes. “Just find the fuckin’ broad” His tone left no room for argument. And the boys, being left with no other option– started their fucking search.

The first stop was a burned-out Vought storage office three towns over.

“Officially” Hughie started, nervously pacing the empty space. “This place doesn’t even exist anymore…”

“Oui” Frenchie replied, sauntering in behind him while already looking for anything that might be of use. “That is usually where the good things are” Inside, it was exactly what you’d expect– dust, shredded files, and the faint chemical smell mixing with something coppery and deep. Annie rifled through a collapsed filing cabinet while MM booted up a half-dead terminal.

“This isn’t just a missing person case” MM said, holding up a thin file fragment. “This is a Vought cleanup, through and through” Butcher looked over in a silent ‘ya think?’ like the judgy bastard he was. “They didn’t forget her– suckers lost her after Nicaragua”

Soldier Boy’s jaw tightened, not anger, in recognition. He could almost feel the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his lips– proud at you for getting the Hell outta there after what they did to him– for surviving. Though he quickly schooled it back to his stoic frustration.

Hughie frowned at the screen MM was working on. “Okay, so… if Vought scrubbed her, where do we even start?”

Butcher pointed at MM’s terminal without looking away from Soldier Boy. “Y’said Nicaragua”

MM hesitated. “That was like– what, 1980 something?”

“84” Soldier Boy said flatly.

“Right,” Hughie muttered. “So we’re looking for a forty-year-old coverup in a system designed to erase itself. Great”

Frenchie hummed, crouched near a cracked server rack. “Vought does not erase people unless they are inconvenient and our lady friend here seemed to be plenty inconvenient"

“That one word for it” Butcher scoffed.

Annie straightened slightly. “No. Look– this isn’t random. If she was involved in Payback and Nicaragua, she wouldn’t just disappear. She’d be classified, archived, locked under something deeper than all of this” She points vaguely at the files on screen.

MM looked up. “Like what?”

Starlight hesitated, then tapped the broken terminal screen. “Military subcontract records?”

The room went still for half a second. Soldier Boy finally moved– just a step forward. But enough to show his interest was piqued. “Then get in” He spoke in his usual gruffness.

Hughie blinked. “Into what exactly?”

“Whatever the fuck you need to” Ben replied. “Just get me the fuckin’ file”

Butcher exhaled through his nose. “You’re one helpful cunt, aren’t ya?”

Frenchie, meanwhile, was already plugging in a battered drive from his pocket. “There is a secondary archive route,” He spoke lightly, mainly towards Kimiko who was always half a step beside him. “Old Vought-Russian joint records. Very ugly interface, very secret”

MM stared at him. “You just carry that shit around?”

The French smiled. “I am a man of preparation” The screen flickered– once, twice– then a directory opened– glitching, half-corrupted, but alive.

PROJECT INDEX: NICARAGUA / 1984

Hughie leaned in. “That’s– that’s it, right?”

Soldier Boy was already behind them– watching, waiting. MM clicked the folder, the system lagged but finally loaded a single redacted line of text:

SUBJECT TRANSFER: CONFIRMED STATUS: MOVED EAST CLEARANCE: OBLITERATED

No one reacted, too busy trying to understand what the Hell all those cryptic words even meant. Then– the terminal flickered violently. An error screen flashed up.

ACCESS REVOKED

The entire system wiped itself in real time. Hughie swore nervously. “It’s deleting itself–”

“Yeah no shit!” MM instantly retorted, smashing buttons to try and stop the machine from eliminating all the evidence they had.

“Vought response protocol” Annie said quickly. “They know someone’s in the system– must be a security measure”

MM slammed the keyboard. “We just got flagged”

Butcher straightened. “Right then, that’s our cue to leave”

Frenchie already yanked the drive out. “We have approximately ninety seconds to get out of here, mon amis”

Hughie looked up. “Ninety seconds? Why ninety seconds–” Nobody bothered to answer his stupidly nervous questions, all of them already bolting out of the building and toward the van they’d left outside. At least they had a lead– East. The subject had moved East. The van doors slammed shut behind them as MM threw it into gear, tires screeching as they pulled away from the building like it was trying to swallow them whole. (It kinda was)

“Okay” Hughie said breathlessly, glancing back through the rear window. “Okay, so we’ve got East, we’ve got Queens, we’ve got– whatever that was– now what?” But Soldier Boy wasn’t listening, he sat forward slightly, elbows on knees and eyes fixed. Not at them– at the road ahead like it was narrowing into something only he could see. Hughie noticed it again. “You’re doing that thing where you get all quiet and honestly kind of terrifying”

No response. 

Butcher exhaled through his nose. “Right, so we’re just followin’ magic instinct now, ain’t that bloody lovely”

“Works better than whatever the fuck you cumguzzlers were doin’ ” Soldier Boy muttered. Hughie opened his mouth– then simply closed it again. Because there wasn’t really anything to argue with and he wasn’t about to piss off the same asshole that had been driving them crazy for almost a month. He’d seen what he did to those Payback members– and they were supes– he wasn’t about to test his luck.

The safe house wasn’t on any official map. Of course it wasn’t– wouldn’t be safe if it were. It sat tucked between older buildings, half-forgotten street, the kind of place people only noticed when really looking for it. The van rolled to a stop a block away. Hughie swallowed. “Okay… so this is it?” No answer. Soldier Boy was already out of the van before anyone else spoke again. “Hey! Wait–” Hughie scrambled after him. “We don’t even know if she’s–”

But he stopped mid-sentence. Because the door was already open. Not forced, not broken. Just… not locked the way it should’ve been.

Frenchie frowned. “That is not a good sign”

MM stepped in behind him slowly. “Yeah. That’s a ‘someone knows we’re coming’ kind of sign” Inside was too quiet. Not empty– quiet in the wrong way, like someone was holding their breath and waiting. A chair was slightly turned, a blanket half-folded, a mug still warm enough to feel wrong.

Annie’s voice dropped. “She was here recently”

Hughie looked around, uneasy. “Like… recently recently?”

Before anyone could answer– the back door slammed open– hard and violent. “Now you motherfuckers better stay the Hell still before I blow your brains off” Your voice came from behind them, the unmistakable sound of a gun’s safety clicking off echoing through the room.

MM went rigid, hands already raised in surrender. “Okay– okay, nobody move” Butcher muttered some unintelligible curse under his breath while Annie opted for the usual: “We’re not here to hurt you” As if these half-wits could even nick your V1 powered skin.

You didn’t answer– not yet. Because your eyes had already locked onto something, the center of the group– the one person who wasn’t reacting like the rest. The one who didn’t turn fast. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t reach for anything. Just… stood there. Broad shoulders, familiar posture, that suit– Your stomach dropped before your brain caught up. No. No, that’s not–

Hughie finally twisted enough to see you. “Okay– hi– we can explain–”

“Don’t” You snapped instantly, eyes never leaving Soldier Boy even while speaking to the rest of the group. The gun didn’t move off them, but your attention wasn’t really on them anymore– it was on him. “…Got to be kidding me” You spoke slowly. The words weren’t loud, yet they still cut through everything.

Soldier Boy didn’t react immediately– didn't speak– just turned his head slightly. Enough for you to see him fully.

“You’re not him” You spoke, jaw tight. The words lack conviction even to your own ears. But you weren’t about to risk it– Vought had already tried to catch you with some Shapeshifter asshole posing as the man you loved.

Soldier Boy finally spoke. Flat and controlled– unhurried in that way he always used with you, even back then while telling you not to worry about Payback’s intentions. “Put the gun down” That only made your expression sharpen. Because that voice, that tone? It’d been years since you heard it.

“No” You repeated, quieter now. “No, Vought does not get to pull this shit again– I killed the first motherfucker I ain’t scared to do it twice”

Butcher let out a low whistle. “Oh, this is personal”

Annie glanced between you and him, tension rising. “Wait– what is she talking about?” You didn’t answer– couldn’t. Because Soldier Boy took one step forward. Just one and the room shifted instantly. Your finger tightened over the trigger. (Even if a bullet wouldn’t do shit to him he still stopped you)

“Easy on the artillery, Rambo” That teasing– that shameless taunt, even in the face of danger– that couldn’t possibly be another sick trick. That was Ben, your Ben.

You let out a shaky exhale, gun finally lowering and completely forgotten by your side. “...No shit” A step closer to him. “Ben?”

The name sat in the air like it didn’t fully belong there yet. Soldier Boy didn’t answer right away, just looked at you, like he was trying to decide if reacting too quickly would make you disappear as if reaching into smoke. “Yeah” He replied, voice gruff but softer than before. Something in your posture finally cracked– not dramatically, not all at once– just enough that your shoulders dropped like you’d been holding them up for the last forty years.

You stepped closer to him, when you were close enough– your voice dropped. “…I thought I’d lost you” Something flickered in his eyes at that, not quite vulnerability yet but understanding.

“Yeah” He repeated, quieter this time. “You and me both, doll”

Suddenly you stepped forward and hit his chest with your free hand. Not hard enough to hurt him, but definitely hard enough to mean it. “You fucking idiot” You blurted out. The Boys all stiffened like they’d just watched you spit in his face. Soldier Boy didn’t even react defensively, just looked down at you with the quiet endearment one might look at a puppy trying to misbehave– adorable even when biting his ankles. “Fucking told you something was weird– that those assholes were doing something”

“Didn’t shut up about it” He scoffs, a hint of fondness to his words despite the asshole-ish essence that always seemed to accompany his words.

That almost pulled a laugh out of you– almost. Instead, your expression twisted somewhere between relief and frustration. “Could’ve listened…” You muttered.

He huffed once– barely a laugh, rough around the edges. “Didn’t exactly feel like feeding into your worries, sweetheart” Your expression tightened again– less anger this time, more like reluctantly amused disbelief.

“Oh, so you just decided being blown up n’ dragged to Russia was a better plan?”

One corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close enough to feel dangerous.

“Yeah well, you’re welcome, by the way” That finally dragged something out of you– a short, breathy laugh that sounded half offended, half relieved you could still make that sound at all. At that sound, Ben finally pulls you into him, strong arms holding you against his chest. You should fight it– go off at him a bit longer– instead, you melt into it, hands clasping into the fabric of his back. Too many years waiting for this moment.

“You’re heavier” You muttered into him in an attempt to ease some of the vulnerability and emotional tension. (You were not going to cry in front of a bunch of strangers)

“Thank the fuckin’ reds for that” That almost made you laugh again. Almost. God you’d missed him.

Behind you, someone cleared their throat again. Hughie– very small, very careful. “So…” He started awkwardly. “Is this… like a reunion thing? Or are we still in danger? Because I can do either, I just need to know where I’m at”

MM muttered, “We are always in danger”

But Ben didn’t let go. Not even slightly– completely ignoring the people behind him and fully focusing on you in his arms again. His hand shifted once at the small of your back. Subtle and grounding– like checking you were still real under his fingers. “You good?” He asked quietly.

That alone made your chest tighten again. “…Yeah” You admitted after a moment. Then, more honestly. “Not really– but better now”

That earned a faint huff from him. Approval, almost. “Y’always were dramatic”

“You died” You shot back immediately.

“Didn’t stick”

You nodded once against his chest.

“…Don’t do that again” You muttered, only for him to hear.

“No promises”

You lifted your head slightly just enough to glare at him. That got a real smirk this time.

And then, finally, you let out a breath that sounded like you’d been holding it since 1984. “Asshole” You scoffed, pressing your face back into his broad chest.

You've always had a bit of an issue with your gag reflex, which your supe boyfriend also had a bit of an issue with. For as much as he loves to eat your sweet cunt (which he can do for hours, bless his heart), he expects some sort of reciprocation. He's an old-fashioned sexist. You've got a lot to teach him about the new world and he is willing to listen!! ..... at times. When he wants. Does he take this advice? Yeah, with a grain of fucking salt. Again, you have a long way to go, but it's worth it.

So here you are, standing at the back of Spencer's as it was the closest thing to your apartment. It's not the most ideal shop for sex related things, but it's not terrible. Your eyes scan a rack of throat numbing sprays, gels, and lozenges. You did truly want to, as Cardi B puts it; "I don't wanna spit, I wanna gulp, I wanna gag, I wanna choke, I want you to touch that lil' dangly thing that swing in the back of my throat." (WAP, 2020, by Cardi B feat. Meg the Stallion). So you were gonna do exactly that.

With your purchase secured, you hastily head back to the apartment where you find Ben watching brainless TV. You have to let out a tiny sigh of relief that it isn't Fox News. There had been a few times you caught him watching that bullshit, though he didn't seem to agree with anything said, mostly.

"Where the hell did you go?" He asks, eyes glued to the TV.

"Out." You reply, heading to the bedroom with the throat spray hidden in your purse.

Ben grunts in acknowledgment, too focused on some woman getting grilled on Jerry Springer. "Dumb fucking broad. Serves you right for cheating with that fat piece of shit." He comments, grabbing the joint next to him and lighting it up. After 3 long drags from the smoldering stick, Ben's attention is turned to your figure standing in the doorway. A smirk crawls across his handsome face, and he adjusts himself in his chair. "What's all this for?" He nods his head toward you.

You bat your lashes at him and toy with the silky belt of your short robe. "Nothin'" you give him a quick smile, swaying your hips as you saunter over to him and take place between his legs.

"This don't look like nothin', doll." Ben's voice lowers, intrigued by what you're offering. "You want daddy to fuck you stupid? That what you want?" His eyes glimmer with promise as he reaches behind you, smacking your ass hard. The pretty green of his eyes darken as he doesn't feel any sort of panty beneath your robe.

"Kind of." You reply and sink to your knees, shedding the robe off to bare your nude form. Gingerly, your hands creep up on his strong thighs.

Ben sighs, taking a drag of his joint before putting it out. "No. We're not doing that." He turns his attention back to the TV. "Last time you tried gulping down my cock you threw up everywhere and it was fucking disgusting. Was picking out chunks of whatever the hell you ate from my pubes for 2 fuckin' days."

"No! No. Ben. I-I bought something to help." Your grip tightens a little. You really wanted to please him.

"Bullshit. You either take it like a good girl, or you repeat that bullshit all over again. There's no fucking way someone's made some crap to help deep throat a man." Ben begins to get up but catches what you're holding out of the corner of his eye. He sighs heavily through his nose and raises his brows, taking it. "I'll be damned." He mutters as he turns the spray in his large hand. Every time he didn't think something could be possible, the future had proven him wrong.

"I told you. I figured I'd have to keep that on me because you wouldn't believe me." You huff, rolling your eyes.

"Yeah, I actually didn't. Still don't." He places the bottle on the coffee table next to where he was sitting.

You have half a mind to shoot a glare at him, but opt to give him a seductive smile. "Well, that's why I bought it. To see if I can gag on that big cock of yours."

For a moment, the room is silent, and Ben nods to himself. "You throw up on me again, and it'll only be anal for this whole month." He plops down in the chair and nods his head at you. "It ain't gonna suck itself, sweetheart."

Finally, you thought to yourself as you hungrily unbuckle his belt and ease his half hard length from the confines of his briefs. Your eyes dart to his as you lick your hand before spitting on your palm to lubricate it. Once you were satisfied with the amount, you grab his cock and begin to pump your hand up and down.

Ben bats your hand away and gets off the chair, pulling his pants and briefs down to his ankles. "The boys need some love, too." He chuckles.

"They will get their attention, too." You use your other hand to give a gentle squeeze to his balls. The bottle of throat numbing spray was at least 30 dollars. You hoped that it would work. Your throat certainly felt funny, so that was a good sign. If not, then this whole notion of wanting to please your beloved, crass supe boyfriend would be all for naught.... And you'd be 30 dollars less with a bitter aftertaste in your mouth.

Without further ado, you open your mouth and slide his length right down your throat. Almost immediately, your stomach lurches, but you don't feel the urge to puke. You hear Ben groan and feel his fingers tangle in your hair as he pushes you impossibly closer to his pelvis. Your nose is buried in his bush, and it tickles your nostrils.

"Ohhh, fuck. Don't you dare fucking throw up. Don't you fucking dare." He growls, easing your head back and forth along his cock.

You let him guide your movements for a little while until you pull off of him, gasping for air. Wanting to take some control, you begin to drag your tongue along his spit covered length. "Mmmh." You moan as you clean off the small mess you caused. Your gaze never leaves his. Once you're satisfied with licking him up and down, your lips wrap around his bulbous tip and suck.

"Look at you, sucking my hog like a desperate whore." Ben grins, watching you worship him with your mouth.

"S' big..." You manage to mumble with a mouthful of him, rubbing the head against the inside of your cheek before pulling him out. As promised, you angle your head and stick your tongue out as far as you can to lathe the wet muscle over his hefty balls. "Mmm, these too. Must be so sore." You gently suck on the flesh, being mindful of your teeth.

"That's fucking right. Good fucking girl." He growls, chest heaving slightly. Your mouth feels like heaven to him, and he would be lying if he said he wasn't surprised the spray worked. Maybe the future did have more to offer than he initially thought.

You take Ben's balls in your mouth as much as you can, practically gargling them with your spit. All of this ball and cock sucking has your pussy throbbing. Just hearing Ben moan and know he is hard because of you is enough to make your clit pulse with desperate need to be touched. Drool spills from the corners of your mouth as you let it build up to lathe his sack in your spit. You make a lewd sucking noise before releasing the pair and focusing on slobbering his cock again. "Tastes so good, daddy." You look up at him, eyes blown out from lust.

Ben chuckles a bit, inhaling sharply as he feels your tongue trace a prominent vein. "Yeah? You want daddy to shoot his load down your throat? Fill up your tummy with his cum? I bet that slutty mouth of yours is hungry to guzzle down my cum."

"Uh-huh." You nod, opening your mouth and letting some of your saliva drip onto his dick before slurping it clean. Once again, you take him down your throat and bob your head up and down. Your throat makes strange noises as you push yourself further to deep throat him.

"Mmm.. Look at that. What a fucking sight." Ben reaches down and pinches your nose. He laughs at your expression of shock and smacks your face with the other hand. "Keep sucking." He growls, starting to move his hips.

With your airflow cut off, your eyes roll after a good 15 seconds, and tears blur your vision. This is what you want. You want Ben to use your throat for his pleasure while you're unable to do anything. His little fuckdoll. His personal glory hole. You're so desperate to touch yourself, you know that your puffy pussy is dripping. That would have to wait. It was Ben's time after all the other moments that had been short-lived from your poor gag reflex.

Finally, Ben decides to be a little nice and let you breathe. He watches in delight as you sputter and cough around his length. "So fucking pretty when you're all messy. My icky little slut."

Mustering the last of your strength, you start to bob your head again. This isn't enough for Ben. A noise of surprise is mixed in with the sounds of him fucking your throat as he begins to use it. Saliva leaks from your slacked jaw and onto your bare tits. Your eyes are burning slightly from the mascara you had on earlier. The black material runs down your face with sweat and tears as it mixes with snot and spit.

"Gotta say, I didn't believe you at all, but maybe we should be getting a surplus of this shit. Fuck-" Ben grunts, teeth clenched as he feels you squeeze your throat around him. "Gonna come. You want it down your slutty throat? Smeared on your face? Leaking down your pretty tits?"

Listlessly, you point to your stomach and moan. You want it all. You will swallow it all.

Both of you moan as Ben comes. The grip in your hair is tight as he pushes your face into his groin as much as he possibly can, growling from how amazing this whole experience felt. Once he is sure he's finished, Ben pulls his cock out of your throat and smears the combination of semen and foamy spit on your face.

Without being asked, you open your mouth to show him you swallowed it all. "Lemme clean my mess, daddy." Your voice is hoarse, and your face is an absolute mess. With a throbbing pussy, you eagerly lick the viscous mix off his softening cock and finish with a kiss to the tip.

The file hit his lap. Ben looked down with the kind of flat, exhausted annoyance he had been wearing since he woke up in that obscene room high over the city. Homelander’s room. Homelander stood across from him bright-eyed. “Think about it again”, he had said. Then the file.

Ben almost told him to go fuck himself twice. His fingers were already closing around the folder to throw it. Then he saw the label. A name. Not yours when you were his wife. Not Mrs. anything. Not the name on the marriage license, or the bills, or the little card at the dry cleaner back when there had still been ordinary days. Your name. The one from before him.

Ben went still. The suite got very quiet.

Ben looked down at the folder again. SUBJECT STATUS: CRYOGENIC CONTAINMENT STABLE For one second his brain refused to understand the words in the right order. Then it did.

His thumb slipped under the edge and opened the file. The first page was a photograph. Black-and-white. Studio-lit. Clinical in a way that made his stomach turn. You were in your twenties in it. He knew that before the file told him, because he knew your face. Not the lined, careful face you might have worn if life had kept happening to you. Not the older version time should have made. This was you as you had been when he left you. Soft mouth, watchful eyes, hair set neatly back from your face, trying so hard in the picture to look composed that it hurt to see.

Twenty-seven. Frozen there. Eighty-five years gone and not a day on your face.

Ben stopped breathing. Below the photograph, line after line of text blurred and sharpened and blurred again.

Initial retrieval. Unauthorized domestic association with asset. Emotional leverage viability high. Compound V survivability unexpectedly successful. Long-term storage authorized. Pressure contingency. Pressure contingency. Pressure contingency.

His hand tightened on the page hard enough to crease it.

Across the room, Homelander lifted his glass and watched him with open interest. “She´s alive”.

Ben did not look up. The suite had narrowed to the file in his hands and the sound of blood rushing hot and violent in his ears.

There were more pages. Medical charts. Temperature logs. Monitoring summaries. A diagram of some buried facility with sectors blacked out in thick ink. One page clipped in later than the rest with a new date stamped at the top and a note: Subject remains non-public. Retention advised. Utility value may increase if Soldier Boy becomes noncompliant.

Ben stared at that line until the letters stopped being letters and became something else. Something with teeth.

He had thought leaving you had been the worst thing he ever did to you. Not because he had not done worse things to other people. He had. Plenty. Enough to wake sweating with names he never let himself say out loud. But leaving you, walking out of that little kitchen for good, letting Vought sand down whatever was left of Ben until Soldier Boy fit cleanly over the top, had always sat in him like rust. Hidden. Eating through from the inside.

And all that time… All that goddamn time… They had had you. Kept. Stored.

“I figured that might get your attention”.

Ben lifted his head then. Slowly. He had looked dangerous before. Hungover, heavy-eyed, broad across the shoulders even in borrowed clothes. Now he looked like something much older and uglier than danger.

Homelander’s expression flickered, just a little, delighted and cautious at once. “She was always there”, he said lightly, as if discussing an old account finally brought current. “Cute trick, really. Vought keeps all sorts of contingencies. You of all people should appreciate preparedness”.

Ben rose from the couch.

“So”, Homelander said. “Now that you understand the leverage, are you ready to be useful?”.

“You knew”.

Homelander tilted his head. “I know lots of things”.

“You knew”, Ben said again.

The file hung at his side, crushed under his fingers now, your photograph bent where his grip had warped the paper.

Homelander gave a small shrug. “I knew enough”.

That was all it took. Ben crossed the room. He caught Homelander by the throat and hit him through the edge of the bar. Marble split. Bottles exploded and glass sprayed the room.

Homelander laughed. Even half-crushed under Soldier Boy’s hand, he laughed. “Ah”, he choked out, eyes bright and mad, “there he is”.

Ben hit him again. This time the sound was wetter. Angrier. A lamp went over. A slab of black stone cracked down the middle.

Homelander’s smile came back bloodied. “She’s alive”, he rasped. “That’s the important part”.

Ben’s fingers tightened at his throat. For one terrible second, he really might have killed him. Then Homelander, even pinned and bruised and half-grinning through blood, said the one thing that cut clean through the red: “You kill me, you lose her”.

Ben froze. Homelander smiled wider despite the hand at his neck.

Ben looked at him and saw, all at once, every Vought man he had ever hated. The executives with polished shoes. The handlers. The doctors. The ones who turned human beings into concepts and concepts into assets and assets into pressure. Homelander was just the latest model, shinier, but made from the same rotten blueprint.

Very slowly, Ben let him go.

Homelander staggered back, still smiling because he could not help himself. Because getting under skin was the only intimacy he understood.

Ben wiped his bleeding palm on his shirt and looked down at the file again. Your picture stared back up at him. Twenty-seven. A whole life stolen and held in a drawer.

His chest went tight in a way no fight had ever managed. Not even Russia. Not the furnace. Not the years in a tube under a foreign sky while his own name turned into a mascot and then a joke and then a warning. You.

He thought of the side yard between your houses. Your mittened fingers tucked into his elbow. Your voice, soft and bossy at sixteen: Hold still. The little kitchen table where you had cleaned blood off his face while his father’s voice still rang in his ears, calling him a fucking disappointment. The way you had looked at him when nobody else looked at him like there was anything worth saving.

He had left you. That was his sin.

But this… This was something else.

They had taken what he left behind and turned it into inventory.

Homelander straightened. “Get Butcher for me”, he said, as if the room were not half-destroyed around them. “And I show you where she its”.

-

The air bit cold enough to sting the back of your throat just breathing it. Frost filmed the pipes overhead. Ben stood in the middle of the bunker, bloody from wrist to collar. Some of it was his. Most of it wasn’t. Bodies lay where they had fallen. One by the far control panel, neck bent wrong over a spill of shattered glass. Two by the blast door, rifles kicked out of reach. One half-slumped against the wall. Another near the alarm box, hand frozen inches from the switch he never got to hit in time. Ben had not made much noise doing it. That was what frightened him now, standing there with the little remote in his hand and your tank in front of him. Not the killing itself. He had done too much of that for it to feel new. Not even the speed of it. It was how easy it had been. How clean. How Soldier Boy it had felt.

The remote was small in his palm. One red button under a flip-cover guard. Ridiculous, really, that after eighty-five years, after Russia and fire and Butcher and Homelander and all the rot in between, the distance between him and you had come down to one ugly little button.

He stared at it. Did not move. In front of him, behind a curved wall of glass gone pearly with cold, you stood upright in the tank. Frozen. Perfectly still. Twenty-seven. That was the first thing that had wrecked him when Homelander shoved the file at him in the tower. Not the reports. Not the coordinates. Not even the word cryogenic typed in neat black letters above your name. Your age. Twenty-seven.

He had been old enough to rot and be reborn and rot again. The world had gone through wars and presidents and hairstyles and goddamn moons and computers in people’s pockets.

He had been buried under Russian steel while his own legend got sold by men who had never once had to dirty their own hands. And you were still twenty-seven. Still wearing the same face he remembered from the last years before he left. Softer in rest than in life, maybe, because whatever fear or sorrow Vought had dragged through you hadn’t made it through the ice.

Your hair was pinned back from your face by frost and suspension gel and machinery he did not understand. Your lashes lay dark against your skin. Your mouth looked pale and closed and familiar enough to stop his heart. You looked exactly like all those years ago.

And the second he saw you, all the time between then and now collapsed so violently it left him dizzy. The little house. The kitchen table. Rain on the windows. Your pink satin nightgown. Your face wet with tears while he stood in the doorway and let Soldier Boy win.

He had imagined finding you a hundred different ways on the drive out here. Older. Dead. Bones in a box. A grave with some false name. He had not imagined this.

You looked like you could open your eyes any second and ask why he was home so late.

Ben’s fingers tightened around the remote until the casing creaked. He was afraid. Afraid of pressing a button. B ecause once he did, it became real. Once he did, there would be no more distance between the idea of you and your body in front of him.

You might wake and not know him. You might wake and know him too well. You might look at him and see only the man who left. Worse—you might not wake right. Vought had held you for eighty-five years like inventory. Shot you full of V and put you under glass. Used your name as leverage in files. He had no reason to trust anything about what came next.

“Jesus Christ”. He stepped closer to the tank. Up close, he could see where frost feathered over the seams of the metal braces holding the glass in place. Tubes snaked from the back of the chamber into your arms, your spine, the base of your skull. Machines had been kissing you longer than he had. The thought made something black roll over in him.

He lifted his free hand and pressed his palm to the glass. The cold bit instantly through blood and skin. Behind the fogged surface, your face stayed calm. Untouched by any of it. Soft in that old familiar way that used to wreck him even when he was a boy with split knuckles and too much pride. You had always looked gentler than the world deserved.

He bowed his head once, just enough that his forehead nearly hit the glass. Blood from his hand smeared across the frost in a rust-dark streak. For a second, all he could see was another kind of red. Lipstick on a collar. Then your tears. Your wedding band glinting while you tried not to cry in front of him. All the little moments he had buried under war and whiskey and Vought work and rage because digging them up would mean admitting what he had done with his own hands.

His thumb found the edge of the safety cover on the remote and flipped it open. Ben’s heartbeat kicked hard. Then something inside him, something older than Soldier Boy and uglier than pride and maybe closer to Ben than he had been in years, made the decision for him. He pressed the button.

For one horrible second, nothing happened. Then the chamber gave a low hydraulic thud. Lights changed from green to amber. Somewhere under the floor, machinery woke in layers—pumps, vents, hissing valves releasing pressure in precise bursts.

Frost shivered loose from the tank seams and fell in powdery sheets. The hum deepened into a mechanical roar.

Ben took one step back, then stopped himself and stood his ground.

Amber turned to white. Warm fluid began draining in spirals around your body, slipping down the inside of the glass in pale pink streaks where blood had mixed into the solution somewhere in the tubing.

Numbers on the monitor started changing faster now. You did not move. Ben’s throat tightened until breathing hurt. “Come on”, he muttered.

The glass clouded, then cleared in patches. Your skin changed color by degrees, from the waxy stillness of preserved flesh to something nearer living. Frost melted from your lashes. One lock of hair slipped loose against your temple. The line of your mouth softened as the cold released it. Still nothing.

Ben stepped closer again without realizing he had. The chamber hissed. A latch somewhere deep in the mechanism disengaged with a heavy clunk. Then your fingers twitched. So small he might have imagined it in another life. Not now. Ben stopped breathing altogether.

A second later your hand jerked again, this time harder, tendons pulling under your skin. Your chest gave a shallow, ragged hitch as if your body had forgotten the shape of breath and was trying to relearn it by force.

The front seal cracked with a metallic snap. Ben was moving before the door had fully opened. It swung out in a gust of freezing vapor, and you pitched forward with the dead weight of someone waking into gravity after a century. Tubes tore free. Glassy fluid spilled over the lip of the tank onto the floor. Your knees buckled instantly. Ben caught you.

Your body convulsed against him. Then you coughed. Ben looked down and saw the tube shifting at the back of your throat. “Shit”. He dropped to one knee in the spill of coolant and freezing fluid, one arm locked behind your shoulders to keep you upright. The other hand hovered for a second over the tubing, his fingers slick with blood and condensation.

You gagged again, harder this time. “Easy”, he said, though his own voice was shot through with something dangerously close to panic. “Easy, sweetheart, I got it”. He had no idea if he did.

He slid two fingers carefully to the base of the tube, trying to ignore how unnatural it looked disappearing past your lips, trying to ignore the old terror that came whenever your body was involved and his hands had to do something delicate.

His touch, for once, was painstakingly light. Your throat worked around the plastic. Another cough tore through you. Ben pulled. The moment it cleared your mouth you folded forward with a choking gasp. Your forehead knocked weakly against his collarbone. Cold fluid soaked through the front of his shirt where you leaned against him. You kept coughing. Your whole body shook with it.

“Breathe”, he said, low and rough. “Come on. There you go”.

There were wires everywhere. Thin sensor leads plastered to your skin. Adhesive pads at your icollarbone, your ribs, your temples. A cluster of ports and lines trailed from your back and arms and disappeared into the ruined chamber behind you. The monitor to the side was beeping too fast now, numbers climbing. Ben glanced at it once. He didn’t know what most of it meant. But he knew the sound of a heart trying to decide whether it belonged in a living body again. Fast. Wrong. Then skipping. Then racing.

His jaw tightened. “C’mon”, he muttered, more fiercely now. “Don’t do this”.

He reached for the first wire at your chest and peeled it back with maddening care. Then another. Then another. The adhesive came loose with soft wet sounds against your skin. His fingers shook once when one of the leads snagged in your hair and you flinched faintly even half-conscious. “Sorry”, he said instantly. The word left his mouth before he could stop it. He stared at your face after saying it, as if even now some part of him expected you to open your eyes just to tell him it was too late for apologies. But your eyes stayed shut. Your mouth was parted, drawing in broken little breaths that. Every now and then another cough shuddered through you, weaker than the one before.

Ben stripped the last wire from your throat and shoulder, then found more at your wrists. At the inside of your elbows. At the base of your neck. Whoever had put you in there had instrumented every inch of you like they were trying to measure a miracle and own it.

He tore the leads free one by one. The monitor screamed once before the rhythm smoothed. Still too quick and shallow. But steadier. Ben went still long enough to listen. And there was your heartbeat. Fast. Frightened… Human.

He frowned and looked toward the monitor again. That made no sense. They had pumped you full of V. He knew that from the file, from the notes. He had come down here half-prepared to find something else in the tank. Some glowing-eyed Vought experiment wearing your face. Some twisted answer to a question nobody should have asked.

But your heart didn’t sound like his. Didn’t sound like Homelander’s, his own or any of the monsters and mascots he had spent too much of his life around. It sounded breakable. Human.

Your breathing hitched again and your eyelids fluttered.

Ben’s pulse hammered. He had faced gunfire with less dread. He could fight. Kill. Blow through steel doors. March into a bunker alone and paint the walls with guards and not blink. But waiting for your eyes to open… that nearly undid him.

Because now there was nothing between you. Now it was just you waking up. And him. The man who left. The husband who broke your heart before strangers finished the job. The one who had not come back in time. Not in 1970. Not in 1980. Not in any of the years after that.

The one who had let himself become Soldier Boy so completely that the company had thought the only way to control him was to freeze the last soft part of his old life and keep it in storage.

Ben sat back on his heels in the freezing slush and watched your face with the kind of terrible focus that made everything else disappear. A dozen possibilities chased each other through his head, none of them good. You might wake confused. You might wake screaming. You might wake and remember only the worst of him. You might wake and hate him on sight. You had every right.

That last thought lodged in him hardest.

Did you still hate him? Worse—had the hatred had eighty-five years to sharpen somewhere inside whatever dreaming half-life Vought had trapped you in? Or had the ice kept you right at the moment of your ruin, your grief as fresh as blood under skin?

Ben rubbed a hand once over his mouth and came away with red still drying there from someone else. He looked down at it with sudden disgust and wiped it on the concrete.

Your heartbeat jumped again. His attention snapped back to you instantly. “Hey”, he said. “Stay with me”.

Your fingers closed weakly around two of his without any strength in them at all. The contact hit him so hard it almost made him bow forward.

There you were. Cold. Half-conscious. Newly dragged from eighty-five years of dark. And still, by some reflex too old for either of you to kill, your hand had reached.

Ben swallowed hard enough it hurt. “I know”, he said softly, though you had not spoken. “I know”.

He didn’t know what he meant by it. That he knew you were frightened? That he knew he shouldn’t be the one you woke up to? That he knew exactly what kind of man he had been the last time you saw him properly and how impossible it was to ask for anything gentler from this moment? Maybe all of it.

Your breathing steadied a little more. Still shaky. Still too quick. But less torn-up on the way in. Less like drowning.

The lights buzzed overhead. Down the corridor, a distant alarm warbled and cut out, maybe killed by the same broken circuits that had left this section half running on backup. Cold fog curled low around the empty chamber. Corpses stared at the ceiling in silence. And in the middle of all of it, Soldier Boy knelt on a concrete floor holding your hand like it was the only thing in the world he couldn’t afford to break.

Your lashes trembled again. This time your eyes opened halfway. Blurred. Unfocused. They moved over the room in fragments—white light, concrete, the silver of the blankets around you, the dark shape of him kneeling in front of you. Your brow drew faintly, confusion coming first. Then discomfort. Then the weak animal fear of waking somewhere wrong.

Ben saw the exact second your gaze snagged on his face and tried to make sense of it.

He was older. The face was still Ben’s. The damage wasn’t.

Recognition came slowly and painfully in pieces. Your lips parted. No sound at first.

Ben’s chest went tight. “Don’t push it”, he said, instinctively rough, then caught himself and lowered his voice. “You don’t gotta—”.

Your mouth worked again. This time a thread of breath shaped itself into a word so faint he almost thought he imagined it. “Ben…?”. There was no hate in your voice. Not yet. Not understanding either. Just stunned, impossible recognition.

His eyes closed for one beat. When he opened them again, something naked had slipped through the cracks in his face before he could stop it. “Yeah”, he said. “It’s me”.

Your gaze held on him, still struggling to focus, still dragged under by cold and waking and the sheer wrongness of the room. He could see your mind trying to fit him somewhere it understood and failing. The last Ben you knew should have been twenty-something and standing in a little house with his shadow too long on the wall. Not this.

Your fingers tightened weakly around his. Then your gaze dropped to the blood on him. To the bodies beyond. Back to the tank. Confusion turned to fear in a quick, bright flare. Ben felt it like a knife. “No”, he said at once, too fast. “No, easy. You’re okay”.

That was a lie, and both of them knew it. But he could not bear the look in your eyes when it landed on the room.

He shifted closer, slowly enough to give you time to recoil if you wanted to. You tensed anyway. Only a little. Only instinct. Still enough. Ben stopped right there. His throat worked once. “I know”. The words were almost to himself. He loosened his hand under yours, giving you the room to let go if that was what you wanted. His other hand stayed braced on the concrete beside your hip.

“You were in there”, he said quietly, glancing toward the tank. “They had you under. Long time”. His mouth tightened. “I got you out”.

Your eyes flicked to the tank again, then back to him. Your voice, when it came, was no more than a scrape. “How…?”.

Ben let out a breath through his nose. How did one answer that? How did one bridge war and Vought and Homelander and files and eighty-five years buried under concrete and ice? He chose the only part that mattered first. “I found you”.

Your lashes fluttered. Confusion still clouded everything. “You left”, you whispered. The words were so weak they should not have had any force at all. They hit him like a bullet. Ben went motionless. Of course. Of course that was the first clear thing. Not the bunker. Not the blood. Not the impossible machinery. Him leaving. The door. The kitchen table. The keys.

Your mind had come back through ice and nightmare and whatever half-life Vought had forced on you, and the first solid fact it reached for was the one that hurt most.

He looked at you and did not even try to defend himself. “Yeah”, he said.

Your face changed, not into anger exactly, because you were too weak yet for anything so hot. More like the old wound had opened before the rest of you had even finished waking.

Ben felt panic rise in him then. Helplessness. The kind he had always hated most.

Just then, your world tipped sideways.

One second you were looking at him and the next, everything in you simply gave out. Your fingers slipped from his. Your eyes rolled shut.

Ben caught you before your head hit the concrete. “Hey”. The word cracked out of him, sharp with fear.

He felt for your pulse before he even realized he was doing it, two fingers at the side of your throat, then lower when his hand shook too much to trust the first reading. Your heartbeat was still there. Fast, too thin, but there. Your breathing came shallow and uneven against the front of his shirt. You were alive. Just unconscious.

Ben closed his eyes for half a second and let the relief hit him hard enough to make his teeth grit. Then he wrapped the blankets tighter around you, slid one arm behind your back and the other beneath your knees, and lifted you with a care that would have looked unnatural on anybody who knew what his hands could do.

Your head fell against his chest. Damp hair brushed his throat.

He got out of the bunker before the next wave came. More alarms. More men. Maybe Vought cleanup. Maybe Homelander changing his mind.

He didn’t stay to find out.

The car crooked in the gravel behind the bunker entrance, engine still idling.

He laid you in the back seat of the car he’d taken from the last guard first, then stopped, swore under his breath, and moved you again.

“No”, he mumbled. Not back there. Not where he couldn’t hear every breath right beside him. So he settled you in the front instead, reclined the seat as far as it would go, belted you in with maddening care, then pulled both emergency blankets up to your chin before slamming the door and getting behind the wheel.

He took back roads first, then frontage roads, then some dark stretch of highway lined with shut gas stations and chain restaurants glowing in the distance. He didn’t know where he was going until he saw a motel sign.

The place sat off a quiet road outside town, the sort of motel people used when they didn’t want questions or company.

Ben carried you in through the side entrance of room twelve with the key still warm from the clerk’s hand.

Inside, the room was dim and ugly and blessedly quiet.

He set you down on the bed and for a second he just stood over you.

Your face was pale against the motel pillow. Your lips still had that bluish cast around the edges that scared the hell out of him. Coolant and thawed frost and fluid had soaked through everything. Blood, other people’s, maybe some yours, marked the silver blanket and his ruined jacket wrapped around your shoulders.

You looked small. Not fragile exactly. You had always hated that word. But small in a way the world had no business making you.

Ben turned on the bathroom light. Found washcloths, thin towels, a sealed little bar of soap. Ran the sink until water came hot enough to steam. He went back out with a wet towel and sat on the edge of the bed.

Then he hesitated.

Not because he hadn’t seen your body. Christ, he had. A thousand times, in better years and worse. In satin and cotton and nothing at all. In the narrow bed of your first house with summer heat making the sheets stick, in dark mornings before he left for work, in the rare soft pauses where he had once believed wanting and keeping were the same thing.

That was exactly why it hit him so hard now. Because all those memories came from a life before he broke the right to any of this.

Still, you were half-frozen and unconscious and shaking every now and then in little leftover aftershocks. He could not leave you soaked in chemicals and blood. So he did what needed doing. Carefully.

He cleaned you with warm water and the washcloth, rinsing fluid and blood from your arms, your shoulders, your legs, your throat. Wiped the residue of adhesive from your skin where the sensors had been. Smoothed damp hair away from your face with fingers that dwarfed your temple and yet somehow barely touched.

Every now and then he stopped just to listen. Heartbeat. Breathing. Human. Still there.

When you shivered hard enough to make your teeth knock together in your sleep, he stripped off the ruined top half of his suit without a second thought. Underneath, he had the long-sleeve undershirt Vought had built under the costume warm from his own skin. He pulled it over his head and for a second stood there in only his suit pants.

Then he dressed you in it.

That took longer than it should have. One limp arm at a time. Your head supported in the crook of his elbow while he eased the shirt down over you. The fabric swallowed you whole, hem falling to your thighs, sleeves past your wrists. His shirt on your body looked indecently intimate in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with history. He hated how much that undid him.

By the time he got you under the blankets, you were warmer than before. Not warm enough. But no longer ice. Ben sat beside you and stayed there.

-

At 2:07, you woke with a gasp that hurt all the way down. The room lurched into view in broken pieces. A yellow lamp with a stained shade. Floral curtains pulled almost shut. A ceiling painted the color of old nicotine. The stale smell of motel soap, dust and somebody else’s cigarettes soaked into the carpet long before you ever got here.

Your body felt wrong in every possible direction and for one wild second, you did not know where you were.

Then you tried to move and everything came back badly. The tank. The bunker. The blood.

Ben.

You pushed yourself up on instinct. Pain and dizziness hit at once. Your head swam. Your stomach turned over hard enough to make you press one hand against it. The blankets slid down your lap. Something warm and steady moved in the chair beside the bed.

“Don’t do that”. His voice came low and immediate. Awake already. Waiting.

You turned your head.

Ben sat in the chair by the bed with his elbows on his knees. He had no shirt on. Only those green superhero suit pants still clung to him. He looked tired enough to split. His hair was damp, pushed back from his face by impatient fingers. There was gray at his temples now, not the gray of age so much as damage that had decided to show itself there first. Faint scars cut across his chest and shoulder, old and pale. His eyes stayed fixed on you with the kind of concentration men used on bombs.

You realized then that what you were wearing was not yours. A dark long-sleeve shirt swallowed your body whole. It smelled like soap and something underneath it that was unmistakably him. Not cologne. Not city. Not the chemical glitter that had clung to him in the last years before he left…. Just Ben.

Your throat went tight.

He saw your gaze drop to the shirt. “You were freezing”, he said. The explanation came out rough, almost defensive, like he was bracing for accusation. “You had all that fluid shit on you”.

You tried to speak too quickly. Your voice came out scraped raw. “What—”. You stopped to swallow.

Ben was already reaching for the bottle on the nightstand. You took a sip and looked around the room again, slower this time. Cheap dresser. One door with a heavy chain lock. A purse-sized Gideon Bible on the nightstand. “This…”. Your voice failed. You tried again. “Where are we?”.

“Motel”, he said. His eyes did not leave your face. “Outside the city”. That answered almost nothing.

You licked dry lips and looked at him more carefully. Really looked. The last time you had seen him properly, he had still been young in a way that made sense. Dangerous maybe, yes. Mean, yes. Already turning into something… cruel. But still recognizably anchored to the world you knew.

This Ben was not that.

The face was the same underneath. The mouth. The brow. The shape of his jaw when he clenched it. But time—however it had touched him—had done it from the inside out. He looked like a man who had been lived through by too much. A man who had survived things badly.

Your eyes dropped to the green pants again. To the ridiculous costume piece in a room that might have existed nowhere in the world you remembered. Cold crept into you from somewhere deeper than your skin. “What year is it?”.

Ben went still. You saw the way his shoulders locked and the way his eyes changed. As if this had been the question he had been dreading most. When he answered, he did not soften it. “2026”.

You stared at him. The number meant nothing for a beat. Then too much. Your hand loosened around the bottle. “No”, you said.

Ben’s jaw tightened. “Yeah”.

“No”. You shook your head once, then regretted it instantly when the room tipped again. The clock on the nightstand glowed red. 2:08. That horrible little digital brightness alone looked wrong enough to make your chest pull tight. “That’s not…”. You swallowed. “That’s not funny”.

His face changed at that. Something like pain crossed it fast and was gone. “I’m not joking”.

You looked at the lamp. The clock. The cut of the curtains. The shape of the phone on the nightstand, plastic and smooth and alien compared to what memory expected. The air itself felt different. Colder in some mechanical way, flatter, less alive than the rooms you remembered.

You pressed your hand harder to your stomach. Eighty-five years. The number opened under your feet like a trapdoor.

Your mind reached for smaller things instead. Safer things. The last details it could still trust.

Rain on the kitchen windows. The tick of the clock above the stove. His keys on the table. The newspaper on the floor.

Your breath started coming too fast.

Ben heard it immediately. He pushed out of the chair before you could register the motion, then stopped himself halfway to the bed, hands open at his sides, as if remembering all at once that moving fast toward you was no longer neutral. “Hey”, he said, lower now. “Breathe”.

You looked at him and wanted to ask ten things at once.

Where had he been. What had they done to you. Why were you still twenty-seven. Why did he look the same and not the same. Who had dressed you. Why did the room smell like bleach and old heat.

Why, why, why.

Instead what came out was, “I was dead”.

“No”. The answer was immediate. Too sharp. Almost angry.

Ben dragged a hand over his mouth and forced his voice back down. “No. They had you under. Frozen”. His mouth twisted around the word, hating it. “Long time”.

Your eyes burned. “Who?”.

“Vought”. The name sat between you like acid.

You looked away. Of course. Of course it was them. Who else took people and turned them into property with a clean desk and a typed memo?

Your fingers curled into the blanket. “Why?”.

He laughed once through his nose. No humor in it. “For me”.

You turned back to him. He did not look away. “They kept you as leverage”, he said. “Pressure. In case I ever stepped out of line”.

You looked down at your own hands. Pale against dark fabric. A stranger’s motel light on skin that had not aged. The shirt sleeve hanging over your knuckles, his shirt, because there had been no time or right or choice left in anything. “For you”, you repeated.

Ben’s throat worked once. “Yeah”.

A hundred feelings moved through you at once, too tangled to separate—shock, fear, grief, humiliation so old it woke up instantly, and somewhere under all of it a raw little thread of anger that had somehow survived even the ice.

You laughed once, softly and without any joy in it. “That sounds about right”.

He flinched.

You had not meant to make him do that. Or maybe you had. You didn’t know. Your whole body felt like it belonged to someone else.

Silence settled.

Ben stayed standing where he was, not near enough to crowd you, not far enough to pretend he wasn’t waiting for every breath.

You looked at the motel door with the chain lock, then the window, then back at him. The movement was instinctive. Measuring exits. Safety. The habit felt new and old at the same time.

Ben noticed. “This place is clean”, he said. “I checked”.

You almost smiled at the phrasing. Almost. It died before it got there.

“Did you kill them?”.

Ben went very still. You already knew the answer. You had seen the blood on him in the bunker. The bodies. The way he carried violence now like a second skin. Still, some part of you needed to hear whether he would lie.

He didn’t. “Yes”.

You closed your eyes. When you opened them, he was still watching you with that unbearable focus. “They were keeping you in a tank”, he said, voice roughening. “I wasn’t gonna ask nicely”.

No. He wouldn’t have. That answer should have frightened you more than it did. Maybe because there was no room left for new kinds of fear yet. Only the old one, sitting between your ribs with his name on it.

You shifted under the blankets and the motion pulled a small, involuntary wince out of you. Ben caught it instantly. “What hurts?”.

You blinked at him. The question came so fast it sounded as though he had been waiting to ask it for hours. “Nothing”, you said automatically.

His expression said he didn’t believe you for a second. “Everything?”, he tried instead, and there was something almost grimly dry in the adjustment, something old-Ben enough to catch you off guard.

A tired, disbelieving breath escaped you. “Pretty much”.

That did something to his face. Softened wasn’t the word. Wounded maybe. Or maybe just made him look like a man listening to damage he could neither fix nor fight. He sat back down in the chair slowly. He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, giving you less height to have to look up at. That seemed deliberate too. You watched him for a while.

“You were waiting for me to wake up”.

Ben looked at the floor for a second before answering. “Yeah”.

“How long?”.

He flicked a glance at the clock. “Couple hours”.

The absurdity of that hit you strangely. The world had moved nearly a century. Vought had stolen your life. You had woken in a motel wearing your estranged husband’s undershirt while he sat shirtless in superhero pants beside the bed like a sentry. And still some small, intimate truth survived in the middle of all that ruin: he had waited. You didn’t know what to do with that. Neither did he, by the look of him.

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, lower than before, “You can go back to sleep”.

You almost laughed. “Ben”, you whispered. “I woke up in 2026”.

His mouth flattened. “Yeah”.

“I don’t think I’m sleeping”.

No answer at first. Then, almost under his breath, “Fair enough”.

Around three, Ben started talking, because the silence had become its own kind of cruelty. He gave you the shortest version he knew how to give, which still wasn’t short, because his life after you had been one long chain of violence, bad choices, and men using one another like weapons.

He told you about Countess first. Not gently. Ben had never known how to make ugly truths pretty. He sat there half-turned in that ugly motel chair, forearms on his knees, looking at the carpet instead of you when he said, “Yeah. I loved her. In my way”.

The words hit low and hard. You kept your face still, but your fingers curled tighter in the blanket. He must have heard the change in your breathing, because his jaw tightened. For a second you thought he might take it back, soften it, say something to save you from the shape of it. He didn’t.

“She wasn’t you”, he said after a beat, rougher now. “Never was”.

That should not have helped. It did and didn’t, both at once.

Then came the rest. His team. The betrayal. Countess turning on him with the others. The Russians taking him. Decades in a lab, drugged and buried and cut open and studied. He told it flatly, like if he stripped the feeling out of it first, maybe neither of you would have to touch it.

You listened with your arms around yourself. Every now and then you asked a question, and every answer only seemed to make the world wider and colder.

Then Butcher. His guys. Homelander. Vought changing shape over the years without changing its soul. Companies swallowing countries. Supes becoming celebrities and products and idols and nightmares all at once. The world getting louder, faster, filthier, greedier. Men in suits still running everything, just with better technology and whiter teeth.

You sat there trying to imagine all of it and couldn’t.

Television everywhere. Phones without cords. Cars that barely made noise. People living half their lives inside screens.

And then, for some ungodly reason, Ben spent far too long explaining porn.

At first you thought you had misheard him.

Then you realized, with growing horror, that no, he was seriously trying to explain the scale of modern depravity through the existence of instant filth on demand, as if that were somehow one of the key pillars of civilization you needed updated on.

“Ben”, you said at last, appalled, while he sat there shirtless in his green suit pants talking in the calmest voice imaginable about how “there’s whole websites for every weird thing a person can think of”.

“What?”, he said, actually looking offended. “It’s relevant”.

“It is not relevant”.

“It tells you a lot about the culture”.

“It tells me people need church”.

That shut him up for half a second. Then one corner of his mouth twitched.

You saw it and hated that part of you still recognized that almost-smile. “This is funny to you?”, you asked.

“A little”.

“Benjamin”.

That made the smile vanish properly, because you only used his full name when you were genuinely scandalized, and apparently even after eighty-five years that still worked on him.

You straightened under the blankets as much as your weak body would allow and gave him, in your raw half-frozen voice in a cheap motel room in 2026, a tired, sincere lesson about morality, modesty, Christian decency and the collapse of civilization.

Ben sat there and took it. Mostly because he looked too tired to fight. Partly, maybe, because hearing you sound like yourself again, even lecturing him, did something to his face he could not hide fast enough.

When you were done, he rubbed a hand over his mouth and muttered, “You wake up after eighty-five years and your first real opinion is that everybody needs Jesus”.

“Yes”, you said. “Obviously”.

That got a breath of laughter out of him. Quiet. Brief. Gone almost immediately.

From here, Ben should have let it go there.

He should have taken the small, strange mercy of that moment. Your outrage, his almost-laugh, the fact that for half a second the room had felt less like a grave dug up and more like two people who once knew how to talk.

But Ben was still Ben. Which meant the second the air got almost manageable, he ruined it.

He leaned back in the chair, scrubbed a hand over his jaw, and said, with the kind of false casualness that was never a good sign, “You should probably hear about Herogasm from me too”.

You blinked. “What”.

His eyes flicked to you, then away. “It’s… a thing”.

“A thing”, you repeated.

“Yeah”.

The way he said it made your stomach drop before you even understood why. You stared at him. “Benjamin”. That full name again. Sharper this time.

He shifted in the chair, suddenly looking like he knew he’d stepped wrong and had decided, in typical fashion, to keep walking anyway. “Look, I’m telling you now because if you find out some other way later, it’ll be worse”.

You sat up straighter despite the ache in your body. “Find out what”.

Ben exhaled through his nose. “It’s this yearly—”. He made a vague motion with one hand. “Supes-only event. Vought pretends it doesn’t know about it. Everybody knows about it”.

You kept staring.

His mouth flattened. “Basically a giant degenerate free-for-all”.

Your mouth fell open. For one full second, you could not even form words. “A what?”.

That won you the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth, which only made your horror worse. “A giant degenerate free-for-all”, he repeated, less flippant this time, as if he knew very well how it sounded and had accepted that there was no better version.

You looked around wildly as though the motel room itself might confirm you had finally lost your mind. Then your eyes snapped back to him. “And you”, you said, each word distinct with disbelief, “were involved”.

Ben had the nerve to look almost rueful. “I kind of started it”.

You made a sound so scandalized it barely qualified as language. Then you grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it at him. Not hard. You were too weak for hard. But with all the outrage and heartbreak your body could muster at four in the morning in a motel in 2026.

The pillow hit him square in the face. Ben caught it a beat too late and let it fall into his lap.

For one stunned second, he looked at you over the top of it like he couldn’t quite believe you’d done that. Then, because he was exhausted and half-broken and still somehow capable of being amused at exactly the wrong moment, he let out a quiet huff of laughter.

You pointed at him from under the blankets, appalled. “Do not laugh”.

“I’m not laughing”.

“You are”.

“A little”.

“Ben”.

That cut it off again. He dropped the pillow to the floor and held up both hands in surrender, though there was still a trace of something almost warm in his face. “All right. All right”.

You stared at him in open horror. “A yearly—”, you broke off, unable to even repeat it properly. “With other people”.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah”.

Your cheeks felt hot now, which was ridiculous after everything. After tanks and bunkers and eighty-five years and blood and Vought and the end of the world as you knew it. And yet this—this obscene, careless, public filth attached to the man you had married in a church while wearing white gloves and trembling because you loved him so much—this was somehow what undid the last of your composure.

“You are disgusting”, you whispered.

Ben took that one. Didn’t argue. Didn’t posture. Just sat there in the chair, shirtless, looking more tired than offended. “It was a long time ago”, he said after a beat.

“That is not helping”.

“I know”.

“And you thought I needed to know this now?”.

“Yes”.

“Why?”.

He looked at you then and whatever joking edge had been there faded. “Because if you hear it from someone else, it’ll sound worse”.

You gave him a stricken, incredulous look. “How could it possibly sound worse.”

His mouth opened. Closed. To his credit, he did not try to answer that.

The silence that followed trembled with the remains of your outrage. Your heart was beating too fast again, but for a different reason now—less fear than a kind of mortified heartbreak, the shame of imagining too much and wishing you could imagine none of it. Because beneath the scandal, beneath the appalled moral horror, there was something much simpler and more painful.

He was your husband.

He had been your only man. The only body you had ever made room for in your life. The only one you had ever known like that.

And now here he was, matter-of-factly admitting to entire arenas of dirt and excess and other people and acts so vulgar your mind kept swerving away from them before they fully formed.

Your eyes stung. You looked down at the blanket before he could see it, but too late. One tear slipped free and landed dark on the fabric pooled over your knees.

Ben went still. All the humor dropped out of him at once. “Ah, hell”, he said quietly.

You wiped at your face angrily.

“I didn’t mean—”.

“You never mean”, you said and your voice broke halfway through.

That shut him up.

You pressed the heel of your hand to your mouth, furious with yourself now. Furious that after everything he had already told you, this was what pushed tears out. Furious that your body still kept finding new ways to humiliate you in front of him.

But it wasn’t just Herogasm. It was Countess. It was the years. It was his body becoming public in every possible way while yours had been locked underground and forgotten. It was the obscene scale of all the lives he had lived without you. The filth of it only made the distance easier to picture.

Ben leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees again, hands hanging between them. He looked stricken in that angry, helpless way of his, like if there had been someone else in the room to hit, he’d have preferred that to watching you cry. “I was trying to tell you straight”, he said.

You laughed once through the tears, a soft miserable sound. “And that worked out beautifully”.

His eyes shut for half a second. “No”, he muttered. “Guess not”.

You kept your face turned down, breathing carefully, trying to stop the tears before they became more than a few. The blanket bunched under your fists.

After a moment, Ben said, lower now, “It didn’t mean anything”.

There were so many things wrong with that sentence you almost laughed again. Instead you looked up at him with wet eyes and said, “That might be the saddest part”.

You sat there for a long time without speaking.

The tears had mostly stopped, but your face still felt tight with them. Your throat ached. The room had gone dimmer in a way that only happened toward morning, when the lamp seemed too yellow and the window too pale and everything looked exhausted with you.

Ben watched you from the chair.

He was bad at silence on a good day. Silence left too much room for things he didn’t want to sit with. Guilt. Shame. Memory. The sight of you in his shirt with your eyes red from crying because of him.

So, after a few minutes of the kind of quiet that made the whole room feel held underwater, he tried again. Not with anything important. That was how you knew he was trying. He started telling you stupid little things about the new world. Not the big terrible ones this time. The ridiculous ones. The things that seemed to offend him personally on principle.

He told you about self-checkout machines that made customers do the cashier’s job for free. About electric scooters left all over sidewalks “like some kind of plague”. About men in suits paying nine dollars for coffee and thanking the barista like they’d just been handed medicine. About something called “influencers” and the look on your face at that word alone was so baffled that one corner of his mouth twitched before he could stop it.

“They just… influence what?”, you asked weakly.

“Everything, apparently”.

“That is not a job”.

“No”, he said. “It is not”.

Then he told you about juice cleanses and gender reveal explosions and people filming themselves crying on the internet for strangers, and for the first time all night a sound escaped you that wasn’t pain. A small, startled chuckle. It slipped out while your cheeks were still damp. The noise seemed to hit him almost as hard as your tears had. His face changed around it. Not into a smile exactly. Something quieter. More careful. As if hearing you sound like yourself, even in that tiny way, made him afraid to move too fast and lose it.

“There she is”, he murmured.

You wiped under one eye with the heel of your hand and gave him a tired look. “This world sounds ridiculous”.

“It is”.

“And immoral”.

“That too”.

“And badly dressed”.

That got a real laugh out of him. Low and brief and gone quickly, but real. “Yeah”, he said. “You’re gonna hate half of it on sight”.

“Only half?”.

“Maybe seventy percent”.

You gave a weak, watery breath that was almost another laugh.

The room loosened by one thread. Not fixed, but loosened.

Ben shifted forward a little in the chair, elbows on his knees. The lamplight caught the line of one scar down his shoulder. He looked, suddenly, less like a myth and more like a very tired man trying and failing not to scare the one person he most wanted near him.

His hand lifted. Slowly.

You saw what he meant to do before he did it. Just brush your arm, maybe, or smooth the blanket where it had bunched near your elbow. Your body flinched back anyway. Small. Quick. Pure reflex.

Ben froze and his hand stopped in midair. Then dropped. The look that crossed his face was so nakedly guilty it made something twist in your chest. He looked down at his own hand like it belonged to someone else. Then, very quietly, “I’m in control now”.

You didn’t answer right away.

His voice roughened. “I am”. Ben swallowed once and kept his eyes on the floor. “I know that doesn’t mean much coming from me”, he said. “But it’s true”. A beat passed. “I spent years in Russia with every goddamn thing in me chained down and measured. Then more years after trying not to level a room every time I got pissed”. His mouth tightened. “I know my own strength now”.

You watched him.

He finally looked up. “I would never hurt you by accident again”.

The sentence sat between you, heavy and imperfect. Not because you didn’t believe he meant it. Because “by accident” still left too many other kinds of hurt in the room. Maybe he knew that. Maybe that was why he looked away first.

Your voice came soft. “That wasn’t the only problem, Ben”.

His jaw flexed. “I know”.

And there was too much history in those two words to press any farther right then. So you didn’t. Instead you asked other things. Smaller things. What music sounded like now. Why everyone’s clothes looked so cheap in the brochures he found in the motel drawer. Why women wore running shoes with dresses. What a microwave was. Why cars all looked rounded.

Ben answered as best he could. Sometimes badly. Sometimes with surprising patience. Sometimes with that old dry streak of humor that had once caught you off guard in kitchens and backyards and school corridors before life had filed all its edges into weapons.

By the time the clock dragged toward six, your body had started losing the fight. The adrenaline had burned off. The shock had settled deeper. Every muscle in you felt borrowed and sore. Your eyelids turned heavy between one blink and the next. The room kept going a little soft at the edges no matter how hard you tried to keep your thoughts lined up.

Ben saw it before you said anything. “You’re done”, he said.

You frowned faintly. “I’m awake”.

“Barely”.

“I am”.

He gave you a look. Not mean. Not even amused, exactly. Just familiar in a way that hurt. “You look like you’re about to fall over sitting still”.

You wanted to argue. Instead you yawned. That made one side of his mouth twitch despite everything. “Yeah”, he muttered. “Thought so”.

He stood then, slowly enough not to startle you, and crossed to the lamp.

“Don’t”, you said, more quickly than you meant to. His hand paused over the switch. You looked toward the window, where the first weak gray of dawn was beginning to thin the dark. “Not all the way”.

Ben glanced back at you and seemed to understand. The lamp stayed on, just dimmed lower.

Then came the awkward part. The room had one bed.

You looked at the chair. At him. At the bed. Your tired brain could not quite make those pieces into a shape that felt sensible.

Ben solved it the way he solved most things: by making a decision and standing still inside it. “I’m not sleeping in that chair”, he said.

The bluntness of it would have annoyed you in any other life. Now you only looked at him through the fog of exhaustion. “I wasn’t asking you to”.

He studied your face for a second, like he was checking whether that was true or just politeness shaped like surrender. Maybe it was both. You were too tired to sort it out.

He came to the bed carefully, pulling the blanket aside on the far edge and lying down over the comforter first, not under it, as if to prove he wasn’t assuming anything. The mattress dipped with his weight. Your body noticed immediately. Tensed a little. Then, because you had nothing left in you for another flinch, slowly let go.

He kept his distance. An honest distance. A strip of mattress between you. One arm folded under his head, the other lying still on top of the blanket where you could see it.

You didn’t complain. Part of that was exhaustion. Part of it was that your thoughts had gone too loose and strange to fight anything except sleep by now. And part of it—though you hated admitting it, even to yourself—was older than all of this. Older than Vought and tanks and neon motel signs and digital clocks. Old training in your bones. A wife did not make a scene over a bed. A wife did not tell her husband no just because the world had ended and remade itself around them. Not when she was raised in the years you were. Not when love and obedience and habit had been braided together so early you could no longer always tell where one stopped and the next began.

Ben must have sensed some of that in the silence, because after a long beat he said into the dim room, “If you want me out of the bed, say it”.

You turned your head on the pillow and looked at him.

The offer sounded almost painful coming from him. Like it had cost him. You were too tired to unpack that too.

“I don’t”, you murmured.

It wasn’t the whole truth. It wasn’t a lie either.

He nodded once, eyes on the ceiling. “All right”.

———————————

A/N: Didn’t plan on posting it this soon, but… well, here we go because Lila can’t wait. Like always. The next one will probably be up in a week.

Also, just so you know, I had this one finished before season 5 aired 🙃 I wrote it after that teaser of Ben in Homelander’s suite came out. Kinda funny considering all the church and Jesus stuff… well, you’ll see in the following chapters 😭

Please let me know what you think.🥰 

-

now, every time it happens, there’s a clear absence of alcohol or a hangover, missing trauma from a hunt gone wrong or something to celebrate, so there’s no reason for it to keep happening. but it does, and each time it gets more real. it’s proof enough for the both of you, though; dean looks at you like you’re the sun and moon combined when you’re in the bunker’s kitchen the next morning, playing it cool with sam, and you’re just happy that he’s content with letting you exist in his life.

it’s funny. if it’d been that one time, then neither of you would be where you are right now (and right now? it’s some backwater state, one you can’t remember the name of because a case of “were-pires” is more important). you know not to get ahead of yourself, like you’ve done in the past; for a start, dean’s about a thousand years older than you– or so you lovingly claim, much to his dismay– and you’re both hunters. sure, there’s no application for this job, but monogamous isn’t exactly a concept to many in this line of work. 

so, what was a casual, one-time thing, fueled by adrenaline-laced blood and god-knows what else, has turned into something else. 

a relationship. love.

and what you like to believe is the sudden realisation that dean is actually very interesting. 

she lies in the dark, exposed, just begging for the monster under the bed to emerge, rub its tentacles up and along her inner thighs and make its way to her wet, aching cunt.  and when it does slip in, her mind goes numb. the tentacle thrusts in and out, whilst another one trails up her body, toying with her soft tits, rolling and suckling against the flushed skin–

yeah. interesting.

maybe if it was just this one time, you could ignore it– pretend you never found this. but you can’t. 

simply put, you can’t get it out of your head. you will never get this out of your head. you’ve known for a while that dean’s got acquired tastes, especially when it comes to sex– heard the snarky comments from crowley about things they’ve done together; rowena’s utterances about how she’s surprised that you’re “not some stuffed sex doll” yet; sam’s grimaces and castiel’s concerns about what you two do in private– but you didn’t expect it to be this. 

tentacle hentai.

you sit on the edge of the motel bed, eyes scouring the screen of dean’s fucked-up laptop that’s been abused by years of viruses from porn viruses and whatever else he does on here. you’re seeking out more than you should, than you need, but you can’t stop it. you want to read this. if anything, you’re getting the best version of dean you’ve ever had; the daddy’s soldier, porn-addicted dean, put together by your snooping through his personal, explicit belongings. and you can’t really pretend that it doesn’t intrigue you. 

whilst it shouldn’t surprise you– you always seem to roll your eyes at his comments laden with sexual innuendos or poorly-timed sex jokes; a part of his personality, you assumed– it sort of does. this is the same man who goes to you, first, after a hunt– no matter how good or bad it is, no matter if you’re in different states or not. he makes you laugh. he (sometimes) makes you cry. he buys you things with that credit card that the charlie girl fixed up for the winchesters, takes care of you like it’s a part-time job that he actually enjoys, even if there’s no pay. maybe definitely, he just wants you.

so. you’re in too deep. you’re both in too deep. the lines between co-workers (wait– is that even a thing when you’re hunters? co-hunters?) and lovers blurs, and suddenly, you find yourself finding interesting, albeit slightly nauseating, hentai and smut on your boyfriend’s laptop whilst he’s out getting beer from the only store in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.

nothing could be any more romantic. really.

it fucks her for hours, its appetite insatiable no matter how much she cums on it. her fluids leak down her dripping, stretched hole, run down her thighs as it ravages her body. she drifts in and out of consciousness, wondering if it’s all real–

“what are you doing?”

you grasp the sides of the laptop tightly, freezing up like you’ve become paralysed. it’s as if you’ve been caught with your hand down you pants as you will yourself to tear away your eyes from the glowing screen, only to find dean standing in the centre of the motel room. you were so engrossed with.. whatever it is that you’ve been doing that you didn’t notice him coming in. and, you also didn’t notice that the laptop started playing some of the porn that’d been saved on the hard drive.

“i, um, didn’t think you could read,” you reply, feeling your face warm up as there’s an overdramatic moan from the speakers. there’s an ache between your thighs as you eyes glance back at the screen, and then back to the man who probably definitely wants you to get fucked by tentacles. “is there–” another moan. squelching. your fingers fumble over the keyboard as you finally mute the video. “is there something you want to tell me?”

somehow, dean’s face is expressionless. he crosses his arms over his chest defensively. “dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” and whilst he seems calm, in control, the laugh that accompanies his oblivion is unconvincing. “uh, you seem busy, so i’m gonna come back later–”

now, you could not put up a fight, accept that he’s going to live in denial that you now know about the erotic porn he’s in to, but you won’t. for a start, the evidence is right in front of you– bright, technicolour images of women getting fucked brutally by pulsing tentacles; literature that’s made of stuff that would give anyone a heart attack– and you’re not entirely sure if you can look him in the eyes after this. 

you’re not going to lose him over this– no, that’s too childish, getting embarrassed over your boyfriend’s interests. but, to your knowledge, there’s no wiki-how or anything that tells you how to handle something like this.

“–sweetheart?”

you snap your head back up, lowering the laptop screen just a bit. he’s still keeping a distance between you two, as if your budding curiosity is actually some strange, infectious perversion, and it makes something in your chest ache. 

“i don’t know what to say,” you decide to keep it honest, a little lighthearted, as he nods slowly. he shifts on the spot. “i mean– i don’t see anything wrong with this– it’s just–”

“–it’s just that you’re not into it,” he answers for you, leaving no space for you to confirm nor deny his claim. “and that’s fine, it’s cool– like– i’m not expecting you to be into that shit, ‘cause it’s just– it’s fuckin’ weird–”

between the two of you, neither of you can get out a coherent, complete sentence. your heart beats faster, your body aching with it, as dean rambles on. he’s trying to dig himself out of this hole he’s gotten himself stuck in, and you just can’t help but to imagine what he looks like when he–

legs spread. hand wrapped loosely around himself because, unlike you, he can actually hold himself with one hand– well, just about. head tipped back a little, as he strokes himself, wanting it to be you in the videos–

you shake your head. “dean– i. don’t. care,” even though you do, if the way your underwear seems to grow wetter with each passing second. “i mean, everyone’s got something that turns them on, and, y’know, it could be like child porn or something you were into.. and only then would we have issues,” and, of course, your poorly-phased and ill-timed joke lands with no laughs, but still, you continue. to try and make this as not weird as possible. “i just didn’t know you were into all this stuff, and you could’ve told me–”

“what, you wanna watch tentacle hentai together? let me hold your hand like i do when i eat you out?”

maybe this is because you’re a pervert (which, maybe). maybe it’s because you know that dean likes this, that you now can’t get the image of him touching himself to the vulgar content out of your head, your cunt throbbing like you’re literally on fire as your vision is filled with the lurid colours of cartoon girls getting all her holes filled by some tentacle monster.

but you really can’t forget what you’ve seen. the feeling of your heart pounding– much like the tentacles did into some young woman’s cunt– inside your chest as you try to process this new realisation is something of a heart attack.

tentacle porn. there’s tentacle porn on dean’s laptop. there’s tentacle porn on dean’s laptop and he enjoys it.

and maybe there’s also the fact that you enjoy it as well. you like it so much that it’s taking every bit of your self-control not to look back at the screen, even though you can see slivers of it in the reflection on the keyboard of the laptop, see how the girl writhes and moans. your skin feels hot.

however, this isn’t about you. 

“it’s– god–” you whine, you catch how dean looks unreasonably pleased, bobbing slightly on the balls of his feet when you do so. “like, i’m all for kink exploration, and i’m definitely down to do whatever you like–”

“so you’d be into it?” there’s more excitement in his voice than necessary, and you feel yourself grow even hotter. you realise your face is sort of in line with his dick at this height, and you have to drop your eyes to the slightly-closed laptop so you don’t think about how hard he is from all of this. it's all-too obvious as his dick strains against his jeans.

“no, it’s just– but i– i mean, this?” you find yourself saying to him, ignoring the visceral demand from your body to say “yes”. you push the laptop open, your eyes hurriedly looking for an excerpt to read aloud. to prove a point to him– that you are not into tentacle porn like he is. “here– and i quote; ‘each time the tentacles enter her, a spurt of liquid seeps from her pussy, joining the sheen of sweat on her body. they fuck into her relentlessly, brutally, never giving her a chance to’–”

and before you can continue, he’s gone. like, ‘out the door and probably not coming back’ gone.

you sigh to yourself, putting the laptop to one side. in hindsight, you should’ve known this was bound to happen;

maybe you’re just not perverted enough for someone who has enough trauma to fill the grand canyon. for someone who’s used hyper-sexuality like a shield to get through life, fucking one woman after random woman. daddy’s little soldier, or so you’ve heard over the years. 

but it’s weird– you’ll admit it because you can’t deny it any longer without feeling insane– fucking bonkers, and yet so undeniably intimate– even if he didn’t exactly share this with you. that, yeah, he may have run away, but he didn’t lash out, or even try to throw hands or some shit (compared to some guys you’ve been with, who lost their minds when you suggested they might have a mommy kink). 

you’re pretty sure the tightness in your chest is guilt. heavy-laden, sticking your bones and all to your muscles, restricting your breathing. it’s stupid– stupid– to feel like this, because you haven’t done anything wrong. neither of you have, actually. it’s just that you’re here, alone, and dean is somewhere, alone. 

all over fucking tentacles..

..but, to your surprise, he does come back. about five or so minutes later. bursting through the door whilst he’s slightly flushed in the face, looking as if he’s ran a marathon.. and the suspicious damp spot on the front of his jeans. naturally, your eyes wander there, and it doesn’t take you half a second to work out why it’s there.

“okay, uh– sorry ‘bout that–“

you blink slowly. “you jerked off?”

“hey, i’m only a man,” he points an accusatory finger your way, like you’re to blame for all of this, as if he wasn’t the one who had to go and jerk himself off over the thought of hentai. but he must catch your guilt-ridden face, because he’s straightening up soon enough. “i just.. i know there’s a lot of freaks out there, but i didn’t think you would be, y’know, into that.”

“what do you mean?” you laugh nervously. “i’m down for.. it.” you try to sound convincing, even though the words feel like barbed wire in your mouth as you force them out. 

“sweetheart, i’m not judging you or anything, but your version of ‘down for it’ typically consists of some apple-pie level shit– and, y’know it’s not that i’m not into it, but..”

you wave a hand, nonchalant. “it’s fine,” it’s not. “i get it.” you don’t get it.

you’re not very convincing, it seems, because he keeps going. “seriously, sweetheart? should i remind of when i tied you up and we did anal?” you feel that guilt dissipate, instantly replaced with horny nostalgia and mild shame. you know where he’s going with this. “how much you cried? jeez, even sammy cries during sex, but it’s nothing like the way you did– or do, really.”

you can’t decide if that’s an insult or a compliment. 

“so, uh– yeah, i can see it in your face that you wanna try it, but you really don’t have to if you’re not comfortable with it,” dean pushes the laptop across the crumpled motel sheets, before sitting down next to you. you’re glad he’s now next to you, instead of before you– he can’t see the way your eyes glass over. “but i know you, and i know you won’t let this go no matter how much i say it, but i’m tellin’ you– we don’t have to do it.”

..so. you aren’t a pervert.

what you really are, is just a girl in love. a girl in love with someone much older than her, who knows things, is into kinky things. 

you swallow that uncomfortable ache in your throat, realising that he probably finds you endearing, enamoured by your innocence. empathy and sympathy don’t really exist in the dean winchester dictionary, but with you, they do. and you notice it– how, when he’s with you, those parts of his brain and heart are active. 

and as a man who thrives on repressed emotion and bloody hands, he’s going to have more.. perverse tastes. it’s only natural, because never in his life has he had something like this– precious and delicate, something to be kept behind glass and observed. 

simply put, it consumes you. the overwhelming peace you’ve seem to brought upon him, with that deep pit of senseless dread as you wonder when the impending end of your cookie-cutter relationship will hit you. because this isn’t him. this is not dean. he’s not made for domestic solitude. the yearning.

and all because you’re not–

“i want to do it.”

“wait– are you sure?” dean’s got your face between his hands, his eyes intent on your own. “‘cause, we really don’t have to, sweetheart, i’ll survive.”

you shake your head as best you can. “no, i’m serious. i want to do it.”

and it’s the first time you’ve sounded confident throughout this whole conversation.

of course, dean being dean, he just can’t help himself. with his mouth suddenly on yours, you can’t will yourself to pull away, and especially not when he drags you harder onto him, crushing his lips against yours. it’s sloppy, eager, loving. 

and when he pulls away, he grins at you– lovingly, unbelievably wide. you’re pretty sure you’ve died. 

“you’d really do it.. for me?”

fuck.

you can’t tell if this will be a bad idea or not. 

in hindsight, you should’ve known dean would pay for express shipping. 

however, you’d downplayed his excitement a little too much; not realising that the next morning, he’d been online and looking at custom-made dildos that were shaped like tentacles, talking feverishly about how many inches he could stuff inside your cunt. all the while you silently nodded and smiled, pretending you were not internally freaking out about those.. things going inside of you. 

(also, you don’t think sam will ever look at you the same way again, considering dean was hypothesising about how much tentacle dick you could take at the goddamn breakfast table). 

and now, you’re in the bedroom on the bed– the shared bed– elbow on your knee and your hand over your mouth. nothing’s actually happening at the moment, but your adrenaline-ridden anticipation is threatening to make an appearance in the form of a scream. or vomit.

every minute noise sets you more on edge than you were before. you’re merely waiting, something you’ve done before, but this feels different. it is different. you’re waiting, because dean’s gone to pick up his “special delivery”, and you wanted to get ready. for what, you’re not sure, as he’s kept his plans for you quiet. and dean’s not one to be quiet.

your mind feels like a never-ending hamster wheel of thoughts. the other hentai he has that he showed you earlier– and, yes, he did hold your hand like he said he would– plays on loops in your mind, making your cunt even wetter than it already is. and you just kept saying “yes” over and over, agreeing mindlessly to whatever he said or suggested, until you ended up here. feeling like you’re two seconds away from an euphoric-induced heart attack. because, soon enough, it’s going to be you.

using an anthropomorphic toy isn’t the type of thing you do in front of people (unless that’s your job, of course), let alone allow your boyfriend fuck you with a tentacle dildo and have a front-row seat. since this discovery, you thought about telling him how you used to ride his pillow to get off, make it fair and all, but you’d rather die before you did that. whatever this is, it’s enough extremely sexual intimacy for now. 

(though, you doubt that dean would judge you for that, considering what you’re about to do. it was only like.. just around one hundred times. but to be fair, you lost count in the end, so it was probably more).

the door to the bedroom creaks open, and dean strides in. he’s got something behind his back. as he catches the sight of you, his face lights up with that predatory grin, and that’s when you see it.

the box.

you gape at it. for something small (because he was kind enough to not want to kill you with this.. thing), it’s thirty-five, maybe forty inches. and whilst you know that’s only the size of the box, you’re more concerned with the contents inside.

silently, you pray there’s ice at hand. 

“you put that in.. someone?”

“yeah? that’s the whole point?” dean frowns, but softens up soon after– he must see the disturbed concern that’s etched into your face like a second skin. and, of course, he interprets it as you being concerned for him. “don’t worry, sammy didn’t see this,” he gently shakes the box, and you swallow thickly when you hear the dull, heavy thudding from inside. “you’re gonna be alright, promise. i know what i’m doing.. sort of–“

and when you find the words you really want to say, you cut him off and ask, “i still can’t believe you’re into this.”

“well, you never know what a guy may be into,” he shrugs, as if it’s the most normal thing to admit to. it’s fucking tentacle porn, your brain screams. “and, i mean, i know what you’re into, sweetheart.”

it’s your turn to frown.

“it’s– just–” you lose your thoughts as he begins to hurriedly unbox it. something flips in your stomach when you hear him let out a quiet, low whistle. “sex doesn’t always have to be so.. violent.”

he turns to you slowly, raising a brow. “i know that,” his hand lingers over the half-open box. “and i’m not sayin’ there’s anything wrong with it, sweetheart. i’m happy enough to do what you like.”

“and that’s the thing!” you jump up from the bed, making your way over to dean. when you reach him, you feel a shiver of dreaded anticipation rush over you as you see it; the dildo. dark pink and swirled with purple glitter, probably definitely about ten or so inches. it’s obviously bigger than him, already making your insides hurt from the look of it, as you take in the pointed tip and thick base. the ridges that run up and down it, the slight curve at the end. as you freeze up from the sight of it, he wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you in, your noses touching. anything to get rid of your fears. “you always do so much for me, and what do i do? nothing, that’s what. please– i just wanna– want to–”

“let me fuck you silly because i deserve it?”

it’s not the exact phrasing you’d use, but he’s not wrong. even outside of the bedroom, he’s doting; a downright lover-boy. there’s also the small things– showering you with affection and gifts, like he needs to anything and everything to keep you happy, even though you’ve told him countless times that he doesn’t need to. rakes his hands through your hair, buys you the ice-cream you like (even though it’s a flavour he hates). you’re something for him to take care of.

it’s sick– sick– how much he loves you. you’re in debt to him. and so, you’re going to push yourself out of the comfort zone, be a big girl, even though you’ve never been one to willingly get yourself hurt, let alone do something like.. this.

but all you want is for dean to feel good, just like he does for you.

“i– sweetheart,” he sighs, bringing you back to the present. you meet his eyes– ones you’ve looked at time and time again, but right now? they seem too intent; too serious. he must pick up on the anxieties that wash over you. “none of that matters to me, okay? all that i care about is how you feel. but the fact you want to do this– do this for me? okay, yeah, it means the world to me, but you..” he cups your face with one hand, lips grazing yours. “now. shall we get this plug out and.. stuff you?”

you nod shyly, feeling your cunt clench around nothing as he reaches around to palm your ass, his fingers fumbling blindly to find the plug. he’d wanted you to be ready– ready for you to take his cock as well as the dildo he bought for you. 

and because you’re nice and kind– and, well, you– you said yes. 

he’s quick to strip you down– drags your jeans off with no hesitation, chucks your panties onto the bed along with the dildo. when he’s gotten himself comfortable on the bed, he pulls you onto his lap, his hard cock brushing against your cunt and making you gasp slightly. you shift your position as you grind a little on him, your ass feeling strangely empty and loose now without the plug. but you don’t even have a chance to think of a complaint, before he’s pushing himself into your ass, making you cry out. 

“shh– ‘s okay,” dean gently clamps his hand over your mouth, forcing you to look at him through blurring vision. “‘m not gonna hurt you sweetheart; you know that. you–” he hisses through his teeth as your nails dig into his flannel. “you’re gonna be okay. just gotta trust me.”

every inch of him has you whimpering against his hand, you teeth wetting his skin. it’s nothing short of a lot, made possibly more painful and pleasurable as he begins to grind upwards into you, pushing himself further into your ass. the stretch isn’t like what you felt with the plug; new, moving, but it begins to mellow as you feel your breathing return to normal, your body (and ass) adjusting to his cock. 

“you good?” he asks, one hand on your waist as he finally removes the other from your mouth. you don’t trust yourself to speak, but nod firmly, blinking away the tears.

“yeah, i’m– ‘s just a lot,” you manage to get out, even if your stomach tenses every time your cunt clenches around nothing. he hums in response to this, his fingers wet as he drags them lazily over your cunt. “it’s– dean–”

“already so wet f’me,” he mutters, wet teeth grazing your jawline. you whine in response, feeling so exposed and vulnerable, as he pushes his fingers in. “bein’ so good right now, yeah?”

you let out a stifled gasp as he rubs against your clit. “yeah, i– i am.”

dean laughs softly at that, his mouth finding yours, as he continues to finger you. making you as ready– and loose– as possible, ready for what he’s about to do. and all you can do to contribute to this is whine and writhe, tell yourself over and over that he’s never anything but gentle and kind with you. he’s not going to hurt you. 

and, once you’re reduced to a begging mess on his lap, he pulls his fingers from you and picks it up. your brain goes numb at the sight of it, your mouth dry as he guides the fat, silicone tip to your wet cunt. the firmness of it startles you, threatening to push forcefully into your wet folds as he pokes and prods at you with it. in another time– one where you’re not about to get fucked with a tentacle– you’d have laughed, but not now. 

now, your breath catches when he pushes a bit harder, the fat tip grazing up against your clot and making you whimper. you press your face into his shoulder, his cock pulsing slightly in your ass. 

he’s most definitely getting off on this alone. 

you decide that by doing this– hiding your face away, because out of sight; out of mind is applicable here– it won’t be as bad, but as soon as the head pushes past your folds, stretching you ever-so slightly, you’re more than ready to chicken out. but you won’t. you will not do that to dean. 

a shiver runs over you as your cunt tried to grasp onto the couple of inches he’s got in you; those thick and ridged and thick inches. he’s still got you by the waist, hand wrapping around to the small of your back to pull you closer to him.. and also the toy. 

“don’t have to do this,” he reminds you, hesitating. “it’s fine, we can–“

you pull quickly away from his shoulder, shaking your head. “i can do it,” slips from your mouth, before you place your head back where it was. he doesn’t complain. “i’m– just–”

you take in a deep breath, holding back a whine as the girth of the dildo becomes too much. he’s still pushing it in, going as slow as he can, until he’s got as much as humanly can into you. he holds it there as he gives you time to adjust; the stretch is enough to bring tears to your eyes, you cunt tightening and spasming around the toy. you can feel the ridges against your walls, the corded veins of varying shades of pink that are never to soften. it’s just so fucking big.

it’s nothing short of overwhelming, even with dean ensuring you that this is safe and comfortable. but you can tell– he’s desperate to shove the toy into you. and you can’t deny that you also want him to do that. however, the two of you both know that this needs to be slow, taken at a certain pace.. though, you’re beginning to grow restless.

his hand gropes at the small of your back and your ass as you breathe in and out deeply, trying to regain control of your overwhelmed senses. his other hand leaves the toy where it is, sandwiched between his abdomen and your cunt, coming up to cup your cheek and bring your eyes to meet his.

“you promise me that you’re fine?” he’s smiling softly, but his tone is concerned. he brings your face closer to his, your noses touching. “‘cause you sound like you’re seconds away from a heart attack.”

and despite how your head is currently swimming, everything feeling like you’re on cloud nine, you nod lazily. it can’t have been more than five or so minutes, but it feels like you’ve been doing this for forever.

“look so fuckin’ pretty f’me like this,” he comments, planting soft kisses on your lips inbetween his words. “feelin’ good?”

“‘s good,” you find his hand on your face, removing it entirely and bringing his fingers to your mouth. “but i want you to fuck me.”

his brows furrow. “and i will– but let’s take this slow, yeah?” he’s looking at you in a way you’ve never seen before– all soft and tender; almost vulnerable– and it melts you, even if you’re whining and pawing at him. 

“wanna feel you,” you mutter. dean sighs, laying back against the headboard of the bed like he hasn’t got his cock shoved entirely up your ass, or an eleven-inch dildo in your cunt. despite the claims that you’re okay, that you can do this, you’re already sweating and panting. “‘s so deep–”

“yeah, i know,” he stifles a laugh, before he’s guiding your head back to his shoulder. he’s working the dildo in and out of you slowly now, his other hand either petting your hair or holding onto your waist and pulling you down onto him. he keeps praising you as you pathetically ride the two cocks stuffed in you. “and you’re doin’ so well, sweetheart. gonna be so gentle with you, ‘kay?”

his hand gently gropes the fat of your ass as he begins to push his hips up into you a bit harder– even though his cock is buried in you– making you whine. your face burns when his fingers scrape against your scalp, keeping you down on him. “just gotta– gotta stay where you are,” dean’s gritting his teeth, and if you weren’t so delirious, you’d pick up on his purposeful obliviousness. “helpin’ me out so much..”

his groans fill the sex-stained air, along with your own noises of either discomfort or pleasure (and with the way you currently are, you’ll never decide which one it is), as his hand tightens on your waist– especially when you tighten around him a little too much, whimper because you’re struggling to take two cocks. in a way, it’s comforting, having him to do, but it’s also not. it’s slightly humiliating, letting your boyfriend have his way with your body, stuffing you full in two very special places. it’d be rude to start complaining.. right?

when he pulls back the dildo again, using a bit more force than the last time to thrust it into your wet cunt, a sob slips past your lips and you grind your hips into his. you hear him hiss through gritted teeth, before his hand is leaving your waist and finding one of yours. 

“i’m fi– fuck,” your voice is all high and strung-out, the way it tends to do when you’re deeply overstimulated. though, on this occasion, you’re deeply, deeply overstimulated. “you’re just really good at this.”

without moving your head, you hear him huff. he places his jaw on top of your head as his fingers intertwine with yours. the sanctity, if you can call it that, of the moment invades your body with a certain warmth, some invisible and inexplicable promise. it makes you shiver.

“so fuckin’ good f’me, sweetheart,” dean mutters into your hair, pushing the toy into your faster; deeper; harder. the feeling of something so big and unruly being stuffed into your gaping cunt each time only makes you grind down onto his cock even more feverishly. “god, ‘m so glad you did this. gonna fuckin’ fill your ass, yeah?”

you let out a muffled mumble, something incoherent that even you don’t understand, trying to comprehend the pleasure you feel from the weight of both cocks against your walls. truthfully, there’s nothing left in your head– all you can hear is your own pathetic sobbing, his slight pants and strained groans. your cunt makes the most obscene sounds you’ve ever heard– sounds that would put those porn videos to shame– and leaking, getting him and the bed all wet. and he seems to show no mercy as he repeatedly starts to shove the toy into you over and over, even when you stop grinding entirely.

dean pushes your legs further apart over his thighs, giving himself a better angle to fuck the dildo into you. you’re opened up enough for him to get one, maybe two, more inches in you, as you begin to writhe and grind on his lap again. you bite down on your bottom lip, ignoring the sheer burn that comes with the new stretch– deep, a little forceful, but soften slightly when his hand lets go of yours and finds its way to your clit.

with your face still buried in his shoulder, you open your eyes to a blurred, watery vision. you pull away entirely and meet his gaze. even as the tears start to fall more freely, your brain feeling like mush from the overstimulation that you think should definitely be considered a crime, he’s suddenly cooing at you, wiping away the stray tears from your face. 

“jesus, sweetheart,” he chokes on a laugh as his cock pulses in your ass. “y’see, i told you– you always cry durin’ sex. but at least you look pretty when you do.” 

slews of praise fall from his lips as he keeps fucking the toy into you, his thumb moving from your cheek and to your mouth, sliding it over your bottom lip and right in. you whimper around the digit as he starts rutting his hips up into you a bit more feverishly now, that tell-tale sign he’s close to orgasm. 

he’s rutting needily, desperately, whilst still thrusting that damn toy into your cunt that clenches around it tightly each time. you can tell he’s going to finish first– after all, this is his fantasy– wanting to get as much of himself in you as possible.

his breath hitches as he cums, a final, deep and hard roll of his hips, and you feel warm cum seep into your ass. you moan loudly around his thumb, your cunt and ass spasming around the two cocks shoved deep inside of you. you’re also close, and when he suddenly grabs your face by the jaw and gets you to look at him, you think you’re done. you’re completely fucked raw; covered in drool, eyes half-lidded as you gaze hazily at the man you so perversely love. 

“put it in,” you sob, your head aching with a nasty case of overwhelmed euphoria. he’s shaking his head, his hips stuttering under yours again as you feel more cum being pumped into you. “put it all in.”

“fine– fine. y’want me to put it all in?” dean asks, and you catch the way his hand shakes slightly with anticipation. you nod fervently, mutter something that comes out as incoherent nonsense. you’re determined to do the right thing for him– the best thing for him– and right now, that’s letting him fuck you raw. in both holes. “‘kay, then, just gotta– gotta take a bit more..”

through wet lashes, you notice how he looks down; admiring your gaping cunt, the one he made gape. the same cunt he’d worship any day.

the small yelp that you let out as he forces the final inches of the dildo into your cunt make him pause momentarily, before he’s grinning wickedly at you. with that, he manages to bury the toy into you right to the base, reassuring and cooing at you. “look at that.. fuckin’ did it for me, sweetheart,” dean admires, before thrusting all of it in and out of you. 

you don’t know if it’s all of the toy, or that you’re just too damn overstimulated, but you’re pretty sure you die when you do cum. the whole world seems to disappear, except for the feeling of two cocks in your body, the constant motion of them moving in and out of you. if you felt dumb before, enshrouded in a tranquility that you can only refer to as cockdrunk, you have no clue what it is that you’re feeling now. your grinding becomes extremely sloppy as your orgasm gets the better of you, leaving him to do all the heavy work again.

he keeps shoving the dildo into you over and over, at such a harsh pace until you’re sure that you’re blue in the face. your face is pressed to his, cheek-to-cheek, as he thumbs your face, still brushing away your tears, whilst you keep crying and whining. and by the time you’re both done, there’s at least three loads of cum stuffed into your ass, more of it leaking out and onto the sticky bedsheets. you’re both overstimulated, nerves shot straight to hell, but dean keeps up his promise of never hurting you; just holds you in his arms, his cock still pressed up inside of you, the toy buried in your sore cunt. the two of you aren’t moving any time soon, so, through laboured breaths and whispered sweet nothings, he keeps you in his lap, treating you like you might break at any moment (and you’re pretty sure you will). just like a lover would.

he pulls out with a grunt, then collapses beside your spent body. your heart beats faster than usual from both the intensity of the orgasm and the little human/supe growing inside your womb. ben on the other hand, doesn’t have a drop of sweat on his sculpted body. part of you is envious, wishing you had the same stamina as he. he sits up, his head leaning against the headboard as he waits for you to catch your breath.

once you do, he comments, “i’m surprised you didn’t ask for me to go harder. you usually do.”

“i figured i need to get used to being handled more gently.”

“where’s the fun in that?”

“didn’t say it was.”

“so why the sudden change?”

you turn your head, and with a smile on your face, you confess, “i’m pregnant.”

he laughs at your words, a little too hard. “t-that’s a good one, doll.”

“i’m serious.”

“sure you are.”

“i am.”

his brows crease before his neck turns to finally look at you. his eyes search your face to detect a lie, but he can’t find any. you’re telling the truth, and that was a problem for him. he already had one kid he couldn’t stand; he didn’t need another. your hand finds its way to cradle your swelling belly, and his eyes follow. oh, fuck. he noticed you gaining weight, but figured you were just getting fat. there was no use in insulting you; he knew good pussy when he had it, and he wasn’t going to ruin that. but then you had to go and tell him you’re pregnant.

“you’re shitting me, right?”

“not at all.”

he almost looks unbothered when he turns away and says, “‘s alright. we gotta doctor here that’ll take that sucker right out and have you fuck-ready in a few days.”

“w-what?”

“you think you’re the only one who’s been impregnated by a supe? we have a doc on standby for these type of situations. vought doesn’t want another ryan.”

his words unsettle your tummy, forcing you to sit up. “ben, i’m not...i’m keeping it.”

“the hell you are.”

you’re mortified. you weren’t sure how this conversation would go, but this was something you didn’t plan for. sure, you figured he’d mention the abortion, maybe even push for it, but this...no, this was on another level. he isn’t giving you a choice.

“i-i’m not killing our baby!”

“relax, you won’t be. trained professionals will.”

hell, no. you hop out of bed and practically run to your discarded clothes, needing to re-dress as fast as possible so you can get the hell out of there.

“nuh uh. no. absolutely not. no one’s fucking touching me. not, you. not those fucking doctors—!”

he clutches your arm and forcefully pulls you away from your clothes. he tugs you into his chest, his nostrils flaring and his face hard as stone. you’ve never seen him angrier. his fingers dig into your fragile skin, and though you whimper, he doesn’t let up. tears flood your eyes from pain, but they fall once you hear his words:

“i’m afraid i must insist.”

“ben, please. just let me go, y-you don’t have to help—”

You stroll through the Red Keep like a ghost, trying to make yourself as unnoticeable as possible. You can't stop thinking about your conversation and Lady Jena's proposal; it's keeping you up at night. You think everyone in King’s Landing knows about it. No matter how innocent, every look in your direction made you want to run. 

You follow through on your promise to write to your father. You clearly did not tell him what happened and how your soul is burdened with a sin you did not commit. You wished to write to him and tell him everything. You craved his warm embrace and wise words.

Lady Jena and Prince Baelor are frequently seen together, with their sons following behind them. You try to see the cracks in their marriage that Jena revealed, but you can't. Prince Baelor's gaze is focused solely on his wife and children. His hand delicately hovered over his wife's back. He did not seem like a man who was lusting for a woman who was not his wife.

You and Prince Baelor have only spoken once in the months you've spent in King's Landing. It happened during a feast. You were sipping wine and laughing with the other courtiers. He approached you and asked how you were enjoying the party. You giggled and told him you wished the party would never end. He smiled at you, and you thought he smiled very nicely. The question was not directed solely at you, and you can't help but wonder if another lady had answered it – would he have been interested in her?

Days have passed since you had tea with Lady Jena, and you still have not responded, nor have you heard from her or the Prince. 

Your grandmother always told you that if you are troubled and do not want to tell anyone, you should seek guidance from the Gods; they will not reveal your secrets to a living soul.

You visited the Great Sept and kneeled before the Maiden. You asked her for guidance. You prayed for Prince Baelor's soul and asked her to forget about you. You prayed that she would lead Lady Jena back to her husband.

You knelt till your knees ached. When the noon bell rang, you stood up with a grunt and walked away. You take in the fresh air, and you're surprised it doesn't have the foul odour of the city. The orchids planted nearby must be masking the smell.

You froze as you were about to descend the stairs. Prince Baelor was at the bottom of the Great Sept's stairs, and when he saw you, he stood still. You both stare at one another. 

You imagine what his conversation with Lady Jena would have been like after she spoke with you. In your fantasies, they argue; he tells her that she has gone insane, that he would never dishonour her like that, and that he adores her and desires only her. In your prayers, you asked the maiden for this to be the reason their marriage grows stronger.

You are the first to move. You bow to him. The blank mask he was holding broke as a result. He began to ascend the stairs. You keep your eyes down and allow him to pass you. What could be said?

He came to a complete stop right behind you.

“It’s a beautiful day today.” He spoke quietly.

You nodded. "Yes, it is."

Before the day ended, you wrote to Jena. You agreed to her proposal. You gave the parchment to her steward with a shaking hand. 

A fortnight later, a letter bearing the seal of House Targaryen, not House Dondarrion, reached your chambers. The Hand invited you to the tower of hand for tea.

...

Author's Note:

Careful what you wish for, Reader!

"Well, it's a rather complicated story..." you said, glancing at him, who was sitting next to you, carefully giving you space. However, he looked like a child waiting for a story from an adult. "I was young, and he was very good at pretending to be good.

Hughie nodded slowly, swallowing hard, his eyes dropping to his own lap. "Yeah… I guess he was."

"That's the best summary I can give you. Even though it didn't all start that way…" you muttered back.

But you were trying to calm yourself because your head was now starting a weird, faint, rhythmic throbbing behind your temples. You were nervous about seeing him again. Damn it, who wouldn't be? The guy was a real jerk on many occasions: blunt, unfiltered, and a misogynist, though fundamentally broken.

He was a product of a time when men like him were told the world belonged to them, and women were just the scenery. Unfortunately, although everyone else just saw the image of that womanizing playboy, you knew he was just a young man who had desperately wanted to be someone for his dad but took the wrong path, becoming something entirely different.

He had swallowed Vought’s lies whole just to feel like he mattered, trading whatever humanity he had left for a shield. The heavy thud of a brown paper bag being tossed into your lap by Butcher snapped you out of your thoughts.

"Rations, love..." Butcher scoffed from the passenger seat, not even bothering to turn around. "Eat up. Don't want you fainting before you can put a leash on the mad dog." You opened the bag and stared inside.

"A bacon cheeseburger" Hughie had called it. In 1982, fast food existed, of course, but it hadn't evolved into this weird shit, a compressed disc of meat drowning in a sauce so artificial it almost looked like paint.

"What the fuck is this?" you said as you took the hamburger out of the bag. You had an expression somewhere between disgust and curiosity, which undoubtedly amused Butcher a lot. In other words, in the small town where you lived there were hamburgers, but they were homemade, and they didn't look like this one.

"That's progress." Butcher responded with his trademark cynicism. "Speaking of your lovey-dovey, he's currently holed up in a shithole motel. Watching television and drinking himself into a stupor. He hasn't changed a bit."

"Benjamin never changed." you noted, your voice dropping as you carefully placed the bizarre burger back into the greasy paper, the hamburger tasted strange.

"He was always a monster..." Marvin's voice cut through the hum of the engine. It wasn't loud, but it had a sudden, rigid edge that made everyone shut up. In the passenger seat, Butcher rolled his eyes.

Here he went again…

You frowned slightly, looking at the back of Marvin's head. "Ben was an arrogant, toxic bastard, Mr. Milk. But he was Vought's premier puppet. A bully with a shield."

"He wasn't just a bully..." Marvin replied, his knuckles squeezing tight against the steering wheel.

"Marvin..." Hughie started, his voice cautious, trying to placate him. "We don't have to—"

"No, Hughie. She needs to know who the hell she’s going to see." Marvin interrupted. Without another word, he violently pulled the van into the empty parking lot, killing the engine. He turned his torso around to look at you, his eyes bloodshot, shining with a raw pain that was decades old. "In 1965, your husband was doing a Vought publicity stunt in Harlem. A couple of car thieves were running away..."

Marvin began to speak, trying to do so as firmly as possible, without letting the anger consume him. "Soldier Boy decided to show off for the cameras. He picked up a station wagon and threw it..." Then he paused. Butcher, surprisingly quiet, placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, giving him the silent strength to continue the story.

"He threw it through the roof of a house..." Marvin continued, each word dropping like lead. "My grandfather's house. My grandfather was sitting right there in his armchair. My father… my father watched his dad get crushed into paste by a car your husband threw because he wanted to look like a big man on the evening news."

Your breath caught in your throat as the horrific mental image hit you.

"My father spent the rest of his life working himself to death, trying to sue Vought, trying to get justice until his heart gave out."

A young boy, unable to do anything, watched his father get crushed by a car inside his own home. Sadly, by 1965, you had practically separated from Ben emotionally because the charm had worn off, and exhausted by his suffocating need for female attention, you had locked yourself away in your own corner of the apartment, refusing to feed his monstrous ego.

And Benjamin hadn't handled your withdrawal well.

Denied the attention he felt entitled to at home, he had spiraled hard into a haze of drugs, heavy drinking, and whatever starlets Vought threw at him to keep him compliant. He was constantly high, paranoid, and desperate to prove he was still a god. That was the Ben who went to Harlem that day. A man frantic to feel powerful because his own wife was slipping through his fingers.

"I…" your voice, usually so calm, was barely a whisper. "Marvin… I didn't know. When he came home boasting about 'cleaning up the streets' that night, he was so high he could barely stand. I didn't ask questions because I just wanted him out of my sight. Vought told me it was a routine patrol."

"Of course Vought lied…" Marvin said, his shoulders trembling slightly as he turned back to the steering wheel. "But it wasn't a patrol to me. It was my whole life."

You remained silent. You felt guilty for some reason, even though you weren't the one who committed that horrendous act.

"But your husband is the one who owes me a debt… not you." Marvin’s voice added, entirely devoid of malice toward you. He was a good man, driven by justice, and despite the raw, unadulterated weight of sixty years of stolen peace, he knew how to separate the monster from the woman who had shared his cage.

From the passenger seat, Butcher let out a low, dark whistle, a shark-like grin cutting through his beard as he glanced back at you.

"Well..." Butcher murmured, his eyes gleaming with malicious satisfaction. "Now's your chance to help him collect, love. The next stop is Ohio."

You all arrived at the motel a few hours later. You looked around with deep suspicion; it was undoubtedly a seedy, disgusting place to see your supposed ex-husband staying. Butcher reached out to open the door, but Marvin stopped his hand, looking at you one last time. "There's something we need to tell you. You don't really know who you're going to meet…"

"Open the door, Butcher. There's nothing I haven't seen from him..." you said with a sudden surge of courage.

He didn't need to be told twice. With a heavy shove of his shoulder, the flimsy wooden door of Room 104 gave way with a pathetic click of the lock, swinging open into the dim, damp interior. The stench hit you first. It was so suffocating you felt your eyes watering from the smell of cheap weed, stale gin, and decades of unwashed misery that belonged to shitty motels like this one.

Letting out a sigh to keep from getting dizzy, you stepped inside with the boys, noticing that the only light came from the flickering, bluish glow of a massive, bulky television set from the late nineties.

Benjamin was sitting on the edge of a sagging mattress, wearing a flowered robe that looked like a woman's because of how ridiculously short it was. Holy fuck, you could almost see everything. Nothing you hadn't seen before, of course, but it was still surprising. He stared blankly at the screen, a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey dangling loosely from his fingertips.

"Oi... I brought some old friends, mate" Butcher announced, his voice dripping with his usual casual arrogance as he stepped fully into the room. "And a very special guest."

"Did you bring me a whore or something? Because damn it, I’m sick of polishing my own medal in this shithole. My hand's about to fall off…" Ben muttered.

This wasn't the flawless, sun-bronzed god that Vought had plastered on billboards for decades. His eyes, once so bright and full of a terrifying, sharp energy, were bloodshot, hollow, and ringed with dark, heavy shadows. He looked completely worn down to the bone, like a ghost trapped in a body too strong to die. Butcher glanced back at you, his eyes tilting in a silent question. You just scoffed in disgust.

Yet, that sharp, familiar sound somehow made Benjamin move his head slowly, his gaze sweeping past Butcher and landing squarely on you.

"Great..." Ben muttered, his voice raspy as he rubbed his bloodshot eyes with his free hand. "Fucking great. Now that shit is making me see things. I knew those pills smelled like fucking bad battery acid..." He raised the whiskey bottle to his lips again, expecting your image to dissolve into the damp wallpaper.

But you didn't dissolve, and that was a problem.

You just stood there, arms crossed, staring down at him with the exact same look of absolute exhaustion you used to give him back in New York before you told him you wanted a divorce. You actually felt sorry for him, even now. It was something that, deep down, despite his infidelity and everything else, you hadn't wanted for him. Ben was frozen. The bottle hovered inches from his mouth, his gaze snapping from your face to Butcher’s shark-like grin and then to Hughie.

"Something's wrong, mate?" Butcher asked, leaning against the doorframe, clearly wanting to see if he could provoke him a little. "Seeing visions?"

The bottle slipped from his fingertips, shattering on the floor. Dark liquid splashed over his bare feet, but he didn't even flinch. He stood up slowly, the ridiculously short, flowered robe hanging open as the sheer, imposing size of his chest filled the space between you.

You looked up at his head, actively ignoring his groin.

"Gillian?" Fuck, that was all you needed. Benjamin wants to use his name on you, trying to have a claim to something that expired decades ago. Because for forty years, his mind had been a prison of Russian torture, but as he stared at you, the paranoia of a man warped by Vought and betrayal locked right back into place. You noticed a terrifying spike of heat radiating from his chest.

That part was completely new to you, and it was deeply unsettling.

"What the fuck is this?" Ben growled, his eyes never leaving yours as he took a heavy step forward, stopping just two feet away from you. Up close, he was a wall of muscle, stale alcohol, and raw panic. "Did they send you to put me back in a box?! Huh? Vought decided to send the devoted wife to try and beg her husband to come back?"

Ben's jaw tightened. He stared down at you, his chest heaving under the silk robe, completely blindsided by your lack of fear. He took a step closer, invading your personal space until you could smell the bitter sting of gin on his breath.

"What's the plan, hmm?" he sneered, his voice dropping into a low rasp that made you remember exactly how it was before everything went to shit. "You gonna get down on your knees and beg me to let 'em lock me up again? Because I remember you used to look real good down there, but I don't think you've got the mouth to talk me into a box today."

It was a disgusting, vile display of the exact unfiltered trash that had driven you away forty years ago. You didn't blink. Before the last disgusting word could even leave his mouth, your hand connected perfectly with his cheek. The slap was incredibly loud, echoing through the cramped motel room. Benjamin’s face snapped violently to the side from the sheer force of your blow.

In the corner, Hughie covered his mouth, while Butcher's eyebrows shot up in genuine, dark amusement. You really had the non-existent balls to raise your hand to him. Amazing.

"You're still a jerk..." you said, your voice cutting through his bravado. "Nobody sent me, Benjamin. And don't call me Gillian... I'm not your wife anymore."

Benjamin stayed like that for a long, agonizing second. But then, slowly, his shoulders began to shake. He turned his head back to look at you, and to everyone's absolute shock, a dark, slow smirk was spreading across his face. He swiped a thumb over his lip, tasting the bitter sting of the slap, his bloodshot eyes suddenly alive with a dangerous, wicked spark.

"Goddamn..." Ben murmured, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly chuckle that was entirely too intimate. "There she is. I was wondering where my girl went."

He leaned down slightly, his gaze dropping to your lips before snapping back to your eyes. You moved your hands, holding them up slightly to maintain a distance without touching him.

"You always did like it rough, sweet cheeks. Remember Buenos Aires in '56? Damn, you gave me the exact same look right before we tore that hotel suite apart."

A sudden spike of heat hit your lower belly hearing those words. You hated it. You hated that just the mention of that sweaty, chaotic night in Argentina made your pulse race it was still that phase of honeymoon. Before you knew the whole truth behind him, the women, the drugs, Crimson Countess, and everything else. You hated too that, despite the cheap weed, the ridiculous flowered robe, and the forty-year gap, the animalistic pull between you two was still right there.

But you weren't going to blush like you used to in those early years, because you knew Benjamin's playbook now.

So you decided to play along, at least a little. You reached out, your fingers lightly trailing over the lapel of his absurd robe, just a hair's breadth away from his skin. You didn't know if it was from being locked up in this motel room all this time or what, but he now had an abnormal, intense warmth radiating from his chest.

Then, you hummed, your eyes locking onto his.

"You know, honey? Back then, you actually had the stamina to back up that big mouth of yours."

Ben's breath hitched. His smirk widened, and the bastard actually dared to bite his lower lip, his eyes darkening with a hunger that was entirely too familiar.

"But now?" you continued, your fingers giving the silk of his robe a sharp, playful tug that forced him to lean a little closer to your face. "Now you’re just a pathetic wreck hiding in a garbage shithole. And it's kind of a turn-off, darling."

Ben was caught between intense arousal and absolute mortification at your words. He knew that time had made you a different woman; you had not only matured but also adapted. He opened his mouth to fire back a devastating, macho retort, but his brain completely short-circuited under the weight of your insult.

"Umh, okay, this is great, really..." Hughie muttered, his voice impatient as he stepped forward. "But Crimson Countess is already dead, Homelander is losing his mind by the second, and we didn't track you down to this shithole to watch you two have a mid-century marriage counseling session."

Hughie then let out one of his nervous laughs, trying not to seem apprehensive to anyone.

"But Ben, we have a deal. We get you the rest of Payback, and you help us kill Homelander. Are we doing this or what?" Hughie swallowed nervously, worried that this might trigger more vulgarities from Ben; he had already said several things to him before.

You let go of Ben’s lapel with a sharp, amused click of your tongue.

"Nice robe…" you muttered, looking at him up and down, and then you moved towards the sofa, sitting down and calmly crossing your legs. Benjamin snapped his head toward Hughie, his eyes narrowing into a dangerous glare.

"Watch your mouth, kid!" he growled, fixing his robe with an aggressive, embarrassed yank to cover his thighs as if, out of nowhere, he had an attack of modesty. "I didn't forget the deal. I'm just… evaluating the company."

"Right..." Butcher chimed in, stepping between you and Ben, a manipulative grin cutting through his beard. "And now that you’ve reunited with the ex-wife, I suggest you get your pants on, sunbeam. You don't know where the rest of your old teammates are hiding in 2026, but we do. We have a lead on Mindstorm."

You looked at Butcher; he hadn't told you that you were going with them to look for that jerk.

"I'm not going..." you said, frowning. Butcher looked at you as if you had insulted something very precious to him, and before he could say anything else, you added: "No, Butcher. You told me that this senile old man was acting crazy and that you wanted to know if I could stop him."

"Oh, love…" Butcher sighed heavily, taking a step closer to you, his voice dropping into that smooth, deceitful tone he used when he was trying to sell a lie. "Plans change, don't they? We need a leash on the big guy, and you're the only bloody thing he actually looks at without wanting to blow it to pieces. Think about it: we get Mindstorm, we get the rest of Payback, and you get to make sure your lovely ex-husband doesn't accidentally level half the country."

What a fucking prick, you thought when you saw him. He sounded like you were your ex-husband's nanny, an ex-husband you didn't really want to be involved with anymore, you just wanted… well, you know what? You didn't even know what the hell you wanted. You could have told those three guys to get lost and slammed the door in their faces.

But something made you come here, something pulled you here. Maybe it was the fact that you wanted to make sure he was still alive, or maybe... you don't know.

"Don't talk about me like I'm not in the goddamn room, Butcher." Ben barked from the edge of the bed. He looked at you, his eyes scanning your face with a mixture of intense hunger and bitter resentment. "And you... you think you have a choice? You always did love to play the independent woman, sweetheart, but let’s be real for a second. You missed me. You spent forty years running around, probably letting every cheap suit at Vought handle you, just waiting for the real thing to come back."

"Are you calling me a whore?" you snapped back. "Because you're the last person on this goddamn earth who can, Benjamin. And I did run away, it's true, but because I was sick of how sick Vought was as you were, and I went far away…"

"Far away?" Ben cut you off. "You didn't go anywhere, doll. You're still breathing my air, you're still using my last name, and you're right here in front of me. You can pretend you're done with me all you want, but we both know how this ends."

You didn't back down. In fact, you got up from the sofa: "You know? I had faith that them taking you to the Russians would change you, but you're still the same arrogant piece of shit I left behind."

Ben's entire demeanor shifted when the Russians were mentioned. The boys had told you what the Russians had done to Benjamin back then, it was undoubtedly a low and awful blow to have said that to him.

But… deep down, you know he kind of deserves it.

So you simply stepped back, giving him a cold, dismissive look: "Keep telling yourself that, Benjamin. If it helps your bruised ego handle the fact that I survived just fine without you."

And with those words you leave the motel room to wait in the van.

Yay, finally part 2!

i admit i got a little tangled up in it myself because i've decided not to plan the stories too much, because i get stuck in a planning loop and nothing ever comes of it. anyway, i hope you enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing it.

You opened the door and saw a man with black hair, a thick beard, and a somewhat polite smile; a broad man in a leather jacket; and a young boy who looked like he would run away at the slightest provocation.

"Mrs. Gillian." said the man with the thick beard, his hands in front of him, feigning respect.

"No one's called me Mrs. Gillian in a while..." you said, narrowing your eyes. Only a few people knew that had been your married name. You moved your hand behind the door to reach for your weapon, but the young man moved faster.

"No, wait! We're not here because we're from Vought!" he said nervously. He swallowed and glared at the thick-bearded man, then looked at you again. "We're only here because we need your help. My name is Hughie."

He extended his hand. You hesitated, unsure whether to take it, but he seemed trustworthy at least more so than the other two.

"This is Butcher and MM." Hughie added, gesturing to each of them.

You simply nodded but didn't shake hands with the other two.

"What the hell do you want, gentlemen?" you asked. Without hesitation, you noticed a van parked near the road; it was probably theirs. "Because you haven't driven all the way to this corner of the world to buy tomatoes. I assume..."

Butcher let out a dry laugh and took a step forward, subtly invading your porch. You pulled the shotgun from behind the door; it had been with you for quite some time.

You never know with these idiots.

"Straight to the point. I like it. You see, Mrs. Gillian, we have a problem of… nuclear proportions." Butcher paused, considering his words carefully. He needed to be careful if he didn't want another hole in his body. "We've unearthed something that should have stayed in the eighties, but it turns out the idiot's in perfect health."

You scoffed. "So what? Do you want to bury it in my yard?" you asked in a very sarcastic way, though hearing "nuclear proportions" and "perfect health" sent a shiver down your spine.

There was only one person who could possess those two qualities. Hughie noticed it.

"It's Soldier Boy..." Hughie blurted out, almost apologetically. "He's alive. And he's… hunting down his old crew. He's killing them all, one by one."

"Payback…" you whispered. Somehow you knew this day would come, but you remained calm. After everything that happened when Payback went to hell, it was more than enough to make you feel bitterly amused.

Because of those bastards and Vought, your marriage to Benjamin went to hell. Benjamin was an idiot himself, but they all went along with his idiocy.

"You've definitely come to bring me good news." You smiled, resting the shotgun slightly on the tip of your toe. "I'd love to hear more about that. Come in..."

You moved from the door, letting them in. Hughie hesitated; it wasn't the first time someone had seemed friendly only to try to kill them later.

Upon entering, the house was undeniably welcoming, a perfect blend of the 1950s and 1980s. Well-preserved objects, wooden furniture, and porcelain decorations; it was like living in a grandmother's house.

It was… curious.

"Nice house..." Butcher said, looking around with curiosity. MM felt uncomfortable, not because he didn't like the house, but because he knew that you were more dangerous than Ben.

You invited them to sit. Despite offering coffee or something to eat, neither wanted it, so you sat on the opposite couch to resume the conversation.

"I appreciate that you have made this long trip, but I regret to inform you, gentlemen, that it's not my problem if he's gone crazy and wants to kill them all." You shrugged and added with a nonchalance that surprised them: "I didn't betray him. I just… left before the ship sank."

They were idiots. Payback. They thought they were kings, swearing that because they had superpowers, they'd never face consequences. But you knew better than anyone that nothing is more dangerous than someone with those powers but no moral compass.

"For him, the world is a strange place..." MM interjected, his deep voice betraying a weariness similar to yours. "He's paranoid, he's furious, and frankly, he seems half-dead inside half the time. He just keeps going out of inertia and hatred."

So he's alive, you thought. You were surprised; you had divorced him in '82, and the last thing you'd been told was that he'd died stopping a nuclear meltdown in Ohio.

The biggest bullshit you've ever heard besides Benjamin's: "I've never been unfaithful to you".

Butcher settled onto the sofa and spoke again in his low voice: "We've seen it, Gillian. He doesn't listen to reason, he doesn't listen to plans… but we think he might listen to you."

Sitting cross-legged, you sighed. You knew it was a 50/50 situation. If they had come looking for you, it was because Benjamin was still the same out-of-control bastard you married.

You remembered the last time you saw Ben: the shouting, the flying objects, and the dangerous glint in his eyes before everything went wrong.

You were the only one who wasn't truly afraid of him.

For a second you remembered those mahogany panels of your old New York apartment; it was 1982, and you could almost smell the expensive scotch that Benjamin drank. It was a good year despite all the bad things that were happening in the world at that time.

You had complained to him about half an hour ago about the lipstick on his collar, a shade of red that only Crimson Countess wore. You didn't like her; she always claimed to be "a girl's girl" but it was a facade faker than a ladder made of Styrofoam.

More than once you could feel the heat emanating from her pores, the desire to sleep with your then-husband, and, besides, Crimson had always been a loudmouth, dropping hints about their "late-night rehearsals" just to see you flinch.

But you never did.

You never gave her the satisfaction of seeing you unwell.

He had towered over you, a god among men, his voice a roar that could shatter glass because you’d dared to confront him. You hadn't flinched when a heavy glass decanter shattered against the wall behind your head.

You had simply looked him in the eye.

"I want a divorce, Benjamin." That was all you said, with a calmness that could undoubtedly frighten anyone. You even frightened many at Vought.

"A divorce?" Ben laughed, but his eyes were bloodshot from alcohol and anger. You knew he'd had enough to drink. "You're not going anywhere, sweet cheeks. You're my wife. You're part of the scenery, and the scenery doesn't move. It doesn't leave."

He approached you, invading your space, and you knew he wasn't capable of laying a hand on you.

"Every time you act like this, I know you were with Crimson Countess again!" you said, kept looking at him; you knew that if you touched him, it would all end in a fight. "She fills your head with ego, trying to get into our bed, into our marriage!"

You could see the muscles in his jaw tighten and the sheer physical pressure he exhaled whenever he was challenged. And for a second...

"Mrs. Gillian?"

You blinked, your eyes refocusing on the present. Hughie was leaning forward slightly; his face had an awkward concern. He had noticed you’d gone somewhere else, somewhere dark and far away.

Butcher was watching you with those shark-like eyes, leaning back on your sofa as if he already knew exactly what ghosts you were wrestling with.

"Is everything alright?" Hughie asked softly.

You took a slow breath, feeling the cool air of the countryside fill your lungs. You nodded.

"I'm fine, honey, thanks..." you said with a slight smile on your lips and rubbing your temple a little.

Vought spent years monitoring you, calculating something they couldn't solve. They were terrified because they’d built a world of unstoppable gods, and then there was you, the only thing that could make them look ordinary.

You were the only one who wasn't truly afraid of Soldier Boy.

After all, you also had a superpower, though it was more subtle.

I'm writing the second part. So I hope you give this one lots of love 💖

I think it's time for writers to return to these wonderful hobbies to detox the internet.

Let me know what you think.

your gun shakes in your hands.

“sweetheart,” the one on the left says, breathless. “look at me.”

the one on the right flinches. “don’t call her that,” he snaps.

same voice. same rough edge. same wounded anger tucked under the words. your stomach turns. “stop,” you say, and it comes out smaller than you want. “both of you. stop talking.”

they do and it almost makes it worse.

the shapeshifter has dean’s memories. sam warned you, voice tight over the phone while you were still running through wet alleyways and trying not to throw up. it can know things. private things. motel rooms and bad jokes and the way dean hums under his breath when he thinks you’re asleep. the first time he kissed you. the first time he said i love you and then immediately panicked and pretended to check the car’s oil. all of it. stolen.

“ask me something,” left-dean says, stepping half an inch forward.

you lift the gun higher. “don’t.”

he stops.

right-dean’s jaw tightens. “ask me.”

your eyes burn. “you both know.”

“not everything,” right-dean says.

left-dean scoffs, and god, it sounds so much like him you feel sick. “that’s what i’d say too.”

your finger rests near the trigger. not on it. near.

you think of dean’s hands on your hips in the bunker kitchen, warm and grease-stained from fixing something that didn’t need fixing. you think of him stealing your fries, then pretending he didn’t. you think of the night he crawled into bed beside you without a word after a hunt went bad, pressing his forehead between your shoulder blades, silent until he finally whispered “don’t make me talk yet”.

you know him. you do. so why can’t you breathe? “what did you tell me,” you start, voice cracking despite the effort, “after jolene’s case? when i wanted to quit?”

both of them go still. left-dean answers first. “i told you that you could. that i’d drive you anywhere you wanted. no guilt trip.”

your chest caves a little. right answer. perfect answer.

right-dean swallows hard. “and then i said i was selfish.”

left-dean turns sharply. you freeze.

right-dean looks at you. “i said i was selfish because i wanted you to stay,” he says. “and then i got scared you’d hear that as pressure, so i made a joke about your terrible motel coffee and you threw a pillow at my head.”

left-dean’s mouth twists. “cute. doesn’t prove anything.”

no. it doesn’t. that’s the awful thing. it still doesn’t.

then left-dean softens his face, careful and familiar, and takes one slow step toward you. “baby, come on. you know me.”

baby. too easy. too clean. your dean almost never uses that when he’s scared. he gets rougher. quieter. meaner to himself.

right-dean’s eyes flick to your gun. then to you. “shoot me,” he says.

your heart drops. left-dean goes silent.

“what?”

right-dean’s voice is hoarse. “if you can’t tell, shoot me. leg, shoulder, whatever. silver’ll show you. don’t let him near you.”

“dean—”

“don’t argue with me.” his face breaks, just for a second. “please.”

there. not in the memory. not in the words. in the way he makes himself the sacrifice before he lets you become one.

your hand steadies.

left-dean sees the shift before you move. his expression hardens, dean’s face turning strange with something that is not dean at all. “you sure about that?” he says.

you aim at him. “yeah,” you whisper. “i am.”

the shot splits the rain. silver hits shoulder, not heart, because even now—stupid, stupid—you can’t shoot dean’s face without mercy. the thing screams with his mouth, skin rippling wrong under the streetlight, and then sam is there from nowhere, finishing it before your knees can give out.

after, dean catches you before you fall. the real dean. solid. shaking. warm. you grab his jacket with both fists and shove your face into his chest, furious at him, furious at yourself, furious that you ever had to learn him this way.

“you told me to shoot you,” you choke.

his arms tighten around you. “yeah,” he says, voice breaking at the edges. “i know.”

“i hate you.”

“yeah,” he whispers into your hair. “i know that too.”

you hold him harder anyway, because his heartbeat is under your ear and it is his. it is his. it is his.

It had started off like your own warped fairy tale. One with demons and vampires and unnameable monsters on every turn, but also love that felt so damn pure. All yours to cherish and keep.

You'd rejected his advances the first few times, told him you weren't into anything casual, and he'd break your heart if it was anything more. You knew how he operated, how he led his life, motel room to motel room, from one night in someone's bed to another night in somebody else's.

You were no one to judge, really. But you knew that you could not get involved with Dean Winchester without falling in love, and falling in love with him would break your heart.

And it did.

You didn't know what the worst part was, that you didn't see this coming at all, or that you still couldn't bring yourself to regret falling in love with him. Was it pathetic to think that your pain was worth the time he let you have with him? That all this pain was worth getting to love him for however long he let you? Probably.

The night you started to let him in comes back like the smell of his perfume you can't forget the memory of; you'd been sharing a smoke by his Baby, standing in front of a lake that you'd found on your way to the next hunt.

"What are you so afraid of?" He'd asked again

You let the silence sit for a while, before answering honestly for the first time "You"

When he shot you a look of unbridled hurt and shame, you hurried to clarify, "You realising that I'm not worth your time. I'm afraid you'll leave me once you actually get to know me"

He'd gaped at you then, like that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard in his life

"I don't know what I'd do with myself, if I let myself fall in love with you only for you to realise you don't want me anymore" You couldn't bear to look him in the eyes when you told him that

He'd assured you that he'd rather throw himself to a pack of werewolves before doing that

You laugh to yourself thinking about it now. How stupid of you to actually believe that. Of course he'd left. Everyone does. But you truly did not see this, him, coming.

He'd been unusually quiet for the entirety of the hunt. Well around you that is. Sam thought you were overthinking it, mostly because he actually spoke more than two words at a time to him. You'd kept asking yourself what you'd done wrong?

You thought it better to ask him than overthink it, with the vampire nest finally cleared out

"Have I done something?" You'd asked him

He looked up at you as if you broke him out of a daze, "Huh?"

"Are you angry at me? Did I do something?"

He'd sighed and the pit in your stomach deepened somehow. He cleared his throat and took a step back, as if bracing himself for whatever he was about to say

"This isn't working out anymore"

The silence could have shattered your heart all over again, "What?" you breathed, "What do you mean? If it's something I've done, tell me, please. What do you mean this isn't working out anymore"

He gulped, "I-It just isn't okay? It's not you it's just- this won't work between us"

He'd left you standing there, ran away from you and the mess he created, for a reason you would never be able to understand because he did not even bother to tell you whatever it was

Even still, you'd told yourself he was just tired. The hunt had been long and he was projecting feelings onto you, that were never about you to begin with. You'd decided to hunt with them still, because 'Dean will change his mind won't he? He has to'. Pathetic

But the next morning broke your heart worse.

Dean wouldn't so much as look at you, much less speak a word. But you'd told yourself it will get better, you'll still be here for him and he'll see that you're not leaving him like everybody else does. You're here to stay.

So foolish of you to assume he was too.

For one moment he was ignoring your existence and talking to Sam about a potential case a few towns over, and the next moment he was chatting up the waitress that approached your table, putting on his usual charm, smiling in that crooked, cocky way he did when he flirted with you, throwing around 'darling's and 'sweetheart's, and sitting a little taller when she giggled at his corny jokes

Looking back, could you really blame him? She was tall, had beautiful skin, pretty hair and she is everything you can only ever dream to be

"Well what time do you get off work, darling" He'd asked and that had been it

You did not wait around to know when, or where he'd take her, or what they would potentially do together. You could not do this to yourself anymore.

And that's what he wanted right? He did not want you there. He made that pretty fucking clear.

So you'd taken the little shred of dignity left within your soul, fucking walked to the nearest bus stop in town, found your way to the bunker, packed up every thing you owned, every single fucking piece of you, and left. For good. For ever.

And now here you were, a week later, hunting alone in a different state, far fucking away from him. You did not bother eating or buying anything that wasn't alcohol, drunk yourself silly till you did not remember his face and tried to find what comfort you could in a stranger's bed for the night.

Still fucking pathetic

For this had been the worst realisation out of all of them, He left too.

A/N: I don't know guys I'm sad