Chapter Text
Dean Winchester was being followed.
He noticed it a week ago. Dean had been driving to the motel after knocking back a beer or two at a nearby dive when he suddenly felt the sensation of being watched, like something was lurking just behind his shoulder, eyeing him down. But each time he turned to look in the rear-view mirror, he proved himself wrong - each time, nothing was there. It was clever, whatever this thing was. Clever enough to evade his gaze, not close enough for him to spazz out entirely but never drifting so far that he forgot it was there.
The tricky thing was, Dean had been followed before. Many times. So much that he was accustomed to the feeling of never being quite alone, anymore.
There was the occasional stray vampire that he and his father missed when they took down a nest - or something bigger and stupider, stupid enough to not realize that Dean’s job was hunting it down. They always ended up finding it out, only far too late, by the time Dean had already plunged his dagger through its heart or salted and torched its bones or whatever.
Most often, the recurring presence behind him was just dregs of spirits that latched on like barnacles, caught between the current world and whatever their host had left it for. Lost souls. But these followers were never malignant, merely confused. They faded after a while, into the wind, leaving nothing more than gooseflesh on your neck and a bead of sweat on the brow. Spirit-dregs were a very common thing amongst hunters; considered as another odd part of the job.
Dean wasn’t quite sure what this new follower was, but he doubted it was a lost spirit. It was lingering with a purpose, with predatory calculation.
He didn’t know what that purpose was, yet. Neither did he know how to catch it, or even run away if he wanted, but he knew it had two weaknesses: it only showed at night, and only when Dean was alone.
Well, as alone as he could ever get, with his job.
Dean sighed, rubbing weariness from his eyes, duly noting that he was exhausted at eleven in the morning. His sleep was always choppy in the impala, especially when he and his father had to drive for long stretches of time (as they had coincidentally done the past few days). With much effort, he got up from bed and padded over to the desk, feeling the certain stiffness all over his body that came from sitting in the car for too long. He stretched out his back. Sat down in the chair. Frowned.
Dean had something he needed to do.
But he was avoiding it.
He was alone in the room, for the time being. John had left early, likely to nab some information about their next case. They were in Texas backcountry, following a lead about a haunted field. Or a haunted house. Dean wasn’t quite sure. His father sometimes kept the details of cases private until he himself knew exactly what they were dealing with.
A quick glance out the window proved that wherever he had gone had required the impala. Dean guessed he wouldn’t be back for another thirty minutes, at least.
This motel was just as spectacular as all the others they had lived in while hunting across the country, just as memorable - every part of it was sunken and used, from the mattresses on the bed to the sagging wooden table to the disorienting brown carpet with far too many stains for Dean’s liking. They’d only arrived last night, so the room was yet to develop what he considered the Winchester trademarks: scattered newspaper clippings on every available surface, maps and coordinates taped haphazardly across the wallpaper, a bag of salt here, a sack of ammo there. About as homely as it ever got, when he and his father never spent more than a couple of weeks in the same town.
Instead of thinking about what he had to do that morning, Dean instead rifled through his duffel bag, pulling out his worn folder of case information. It was all pretty basic stuff, just a brief rundown of any kind of evil that he and his father had faced already, a slim stack of neat papers. Nowhere near as in-depth and scattered as John’s journal was.
Dean began spreading out the papers from the folder on the desk in front of him, mostly at random, but with a little rhyme and reason. Corporeal spirits on one side, incorporeal on the other. When that was done he pulled out a few maps of the local area and taped them to the walls, making sure they were lined straight. Then he brushed his teeth and changed. And when that was done, and he had nothing more to distract himself with, Dean grabbed his phone with a sense of finality, unable to delay the inevitable any longer.
It was Sam’s birthday today, and Dean was going to call him.
Dean squirmed at the idea that calling his little brother had morphed into a task of Herculean effort these recent years, instead of being something he should be doing every day with ease. As normal brothers would. But the Winchesters were not normal brothers.
Dean hadn’t spoken to Sam since John had gone and literally shut the door in his face, his way of sending his youngest off to college. Not in person. Not even over the phone.
It was mostly because he knew this fight was largely between his father and his brother. And although it affected him, he would do nothing but make it worse if he went and meddled and tried to rope Sam back in. Dean would wind up pushing him further into the very tense, very silent stalemate of theirs. So he didn’t meddle, but since he was constantly with John, he might as well have picked his side, anyway. It explained his empty inbox. Why Sam hadn’t bothered calling, either.
But Dean had felt the urge to reach out for a little while now, maybe a few months, wanting to close that vast gap of silence between them that he’d allowed to grow for far too long. But he hadn’t had a real reason to until his birthday, since a random call would probably send a thousand different warning signals his way.
Which was sad, Dean thought suddenly, that it would require an absolute disaster for him to talk to Sam again, but that’s just how it was since Sam up and split the business.
To be honest, Dean both resented and admired him for that. There was this certain goodness in Sam - it had always been there, even since they were kids - always choosing to do the right thing, always standing up for people. His brother was one of the most intelligent and righteous people he knew, and the fact made him swell with pride, but some days he couldn’t help but let it piss him off.
Sam always wanted to better himself. That’s why he got out, and why Dean chose not to. He’d rather shoot things with rock salt than get a higher education. So, sue him.
(Sam probably would. He was studying to become a lawyer, little shit that he was.)
Dean grit his teeth. Be a good brother, for once. You can disagree about hunting and still say happy birthday, fuck’s sake.
He’d already rooted around the California landline system a couple of weeks ago, and found his brother’s number easily enough. He’d even gone through the trouble of writing it down on a sticky note and hiding it amongst the pages in his case folder. Last night he’d brought it out again, and when John wasn’t looking, had stuck it to the backside of his phone as a reminder for tomorrow. As if Dean would ever forget his brother’s birthday.
Now, Dean pulled the note off with a grimace and stuck it to the table. He looked down at the numbers he’d written. Looked back at his phone.
All he had to do was dial.
Just dial.
But Dean hesitated.
And he kept hesitating.
It got to the point where he realized he wasn’t hesitating. He was refusing.
Dean tossed the phone on the desk with a useless thud. Defeated, he groaned and pressed his palms against his eyes.
He’d have no way of knowing if his call was welcome, he reasoned. Besides, he didn’t want to bug Stanford-Sam with all of his Deadbeat-Dean shit, because that’s exactly what Sam would ask about, or at the very least, begin to worry about, if he bothered to pick up. The least he could do was respect his brother’s boundaries. Out of sight, out of mind, so to speak.
The prospect of calling him just to rip Sam a new one about abandoning the family business briefly occurred to him, and along with it a flare of anger, but Dean hurriedly dismissed both. He wasn’t angry at his brother - Sam and John were angry with each other. Dean had simply been caught between the two.
Dean put the sticky note back on his phone. He would call Sam tonight. He probably wasn’t even awake yet, anyway, time zones being what they were. But he was going to do it, mark his words.
Yeah right, a mean voice whispered in his ear. Dean brushed it off.
Dean kept organizing the sheets on the desk, idly glancing at the clock as he waited for his father’s return. He shifted them around, skimming the words so as to keep his mind off his blunder with the phone.
Something caught his eye. It was an essay about something with a name he hadn’t a chance of pronouncing - it sounded Swedish.
FOLJESLAGRE: THE INVISIBLE STALKER
Dean’s heart quickened, excited at the clue. He settled down to read the essay.
From what he could gather, Följeslagare were stalker beings. Invisible shadows which latched onto a person's soul and influenced their fortune, often for no reason at all. Common side effects: excess good luck, excess back luck, seeing omens in your daily life, restlessness, paranoia.
Although some details were a little vague - Dean’s luck hadn’t changed significantly, just the same bullshit as it always was - here was a being that stalked, followed and hunted, just as he was being followed and hunted. The first he’d seen to not have a corporeal form, if anything.
Satisfied with himself, Dean folded the piece of paper and tucked it into the front pocket of his jeans. Using his father’s method, he’d been waiting for a piece of tangible evidence before he let him know what was going on. Just so he didn’t waste his time with any false leads.
John returned to the motel soon afterwards. He came in, sweating and panting from the outside heat, and did as much as glance over at Dean’s work around the room before signalling his son to join him outside.
“I’ve got something,” he’d announced. And they’d been off.
Now, sitting passenger side in the impala, Dean nervously patted his jeans pocket, double checking that the paper was still there. He cleared his throat.
“Dad… have you ever heard of a ful-jess-slag-aray?”
Dean winced as the word clumsily slid off his tongue. He hadn’t looked at his father while he spoke but he could tell John was frowning. Something about the way he was sloped over the wheel.
“A what?”
Instead of butchering an attempt at the name again, Dean just pulled the sheet out of his pocket and patiently held it in front of John, over the dashboard. At the next stoplight he glanced down, skimming over the title.
Recognition flashed in his eyes, and he nodded. “Oh. Yes. Did you find that in the folder? I’ve never encountered one. Extremely rare.”
“I think I may…” Dean trailed off. He swallowed, unsure of why he suddenly felt nervous.
“I think one might be following me,” he finished, trying to sound certain with himself. Although the sharp look John sent him moments after was anything but doubtful.
“Son, those things are nearly extinct in the United States. If I had to guess, there’s been two sightings in the last century.” He’d raised his right arm and done air-quotes around the word sightings, because if there was anything John knew, he knew all of the knitty-gritty details about the paranormal. “You feel like you’re being followed? Can’t see what’s following you? It’s a spirit-dreg.”
“But it’s different than that,” Dean said in a rush, feeling a need to justify himself.
“Different how?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s hard to explain.”
John barked out something halfway between laughter and a scoff. “Try.”
And so Dean had tried, and found it extremely difficult, to explain to his father what exactly he had been feeling each night for the past week.
What he should have mentioned was that it started right around dusk, when the sky was purple and empty. It started like dread coiled low in his stomach. And sometimes, that’s all it was. If he was in the motel with John or at a bar. He’d feel it prick at his edges, making him uncomfortable, but he could brush it away, forget about it by morning.
But if he was alone.
If Dean was alone the dread would grow and darken with the sky until it was this black, hopeless thing inside of him, a set of unseen eyes upon his back. And it would do nothing but stay there. Watch. Watch him squirm, and sweat, and keep glancing backwards at nothing until he felt a crick in his neck.
That’s got to be some kind of torture method - the anticipation, Dean waiting for the set of teeth to sink into his neck or the dread to swallow him whole, just to never arrive. He always woke up the next morning feeling normal again. And maybe that was worse.
Dean glazed over all of those important details, and instead mumbled something about feeling funny and only when he’s alone. After he stopped talking John had merely sighed.
“Sounds like a spirit-dreg, Dean.”
“But it’s… I think it’s stronger than that.” He was grasping at straws.
His father turned the wheel, sending the car onto a gravel road. Dean felt himself jostled in the passenger seat “Stronger how?” He asked, voice louder now over the crunching rocks.
“Well, I—” Dean grimaced, then raised his voice a little higher. “I think it’s messing with me on purpose.”
Mercifully, John stopped the car. He distractedly checked the map on the seat next to him, making sure they were at the proper location. Then he looked back at Dean.
“A trickster?” He suggested, and Dean shook his head.
“No. Haven’t seen anything weird. I just feel it.”
John frowned.
“It hasn’t hurt you?”
“...No. Not yet.” Dean shifted in his seat, feeling a sudden wave of embarrassment about this whole thing. About how his Ful-jay-whatever theory had been so quickly dismissed. This sounded like a whole pile of nothing. A waste of time.
“Then what is it doing?” John asked, growing more exasperated at these unhelpful answers. “Dean, come on, it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall here.”
“It’s just making me feel…”
“What’s it making you feel?”
Dean swallowed. Pushed away some of his own pride and dignity.
“Nevermind,” he said quietly. Grabbed the sheet back off the dashboard, and shoved it into his pocket. “Probably just a dreg.”
He nodded out at their view behind the front windshield.
“So, a haunted cornfield.”
John sent him one last wary look, not so much concerned as just frustrated, before grabbing his journal from where it was laying on the floor of the car with a huff. But when he began leafing through it all of his annoyance faded, replaced with utmost focus. He took his time, careful not to mess with any of the assembled pages. It was how Dean knew they were only to discuss the hunt, going forward.
“Spencer Lotman,” he was saying. “Used to own this gem of a field when he was alive.” He stuck out a thumb at the wide expanse of glowing gold. Dean frowned.
“I ain’t a farmer, but doesn’t corn grow in July?”
“Bingo. People say the corn’s here all year. Doesn’t die, wilt, wither, nothing.”
Dean couldn’t help but scoff. “So we’re investigating corn?”
“We’re looking into abnormal activity,” John corrected gruffly, and Dean promptly snapped his mouth shut. “Besides, a farmer went missing in the field a few days ago. Still hasn’t turned up on or near the property.”
They spent the rest of the day and well into the evening traipsing through the somehow perfect cornstalks, looking for any sort of clue or lead, taking notes. They found absolutely nothing.
Dean wouldn’t admit it out loud, but these kinds of cases had always been his favorites, as monotonous as they were; the ones spent with just him and his father, searching together, bouncing theories back and forth. Sure, he liked to shoot and stab and slash, but you can’t strike up a good conversation with an evil spirit on any given day, now could you?
On that thought, the hunts Dean liked least were the ones he wasn’t invited to at all. He’d wake up in the motel and find a note on his pillow, telling him how many days his father would be gone, and where to meet him, if he was going elsewhere. He didn’t like what that implied - that his father didn’t trust him, or didn’t think him capable. He was more than capable, he was a damn good hunter, even approaching John in skill (although he was perpetually god-awful in the research department). Also, it meant he’d have to spend some time alone.
Mostly alone.
John had finally called it quits at sundown. They drove back to the motel silence, tuckered out from spending all day underneath the sun, only talking to give their fast food orders to the worker at the window.
They arrived back at the motel at ten. Dean crashed onto his mattress, dead to the world, and content. Besides the awkward conversation earlier, it had been a good day.
Through trial and error, he and his father had been able to establish a stable routine as a hunting duo - with John calling the shots and Dean backing him up. Now that it was just the two of them there were far less arguments. That had always been Sam’s job, playing devil’s advocate, on the few odd times John had brought him along. Dean was easier to work with, he liked to think. Because he knew his father knew what was best.
It hadn’t always been easy.
Right after Sam had left, John had still held a grudge against his youngest. But Sam wasn’t there - so he’d take it out on anything else. He’d always find time to snarl and spit about the demon that took their mother, but sometimes he’d do the very same to the bitchy waitress at the restaurant, or the slow traffic on the road, or sometimes Dean.
He didn’t take it personally. He knew it must be hard for his dad to accept the fact that because Sam had chosen a life without his family, he must really hate the path his dad had chosen..
Sam. He’d forgotten about calling Sam.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck guiltily. Maybe it was too late, anyway.
Stop making excuses.
He slipped out the door of the room. John didn’t even ask where he was going. If he had, Dean would have lied - no need to start a tiff when he could avoid it. He didn’t know for sure if his father would be upset with him, calling his brother, but he didn’t want him to get silently angry over it and make the next few days uncomfortable. Not when the hunt had already started off so well.
He took his time walking out of the parking lot, deciding to take the call out by the street, where John couldn’t see him from the window, if he decided to look.
Usually it was nice to get outside. He reached the sidewalk and pulled out his phone. Checked the sticky note. Dialed the number. He felt a flush of both nerves and pride when he heard the ring. There, he’d done it. Now came the hard part.
The phone rang for a while. Too long.
Hey, you’ve reached Sam Winchester. I can’t get to the phone right now, so leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.
He tried not to let his heart sink too far. Kid was busy, probably studying. Well, it was his birthday. He was probably partying. Dean hoped he was partying.
The beep in his ear signalled for the voicemail to start. Dean inhaled,
“Hey, Sam. It’s me. It’s Dean. Your brother, remember?” He cringed a little, but soldiered through. “Just wanted to wish you happy birthday, and… uh, don’t spend it reading. Chicks don’t like that. Hope you’re having fun.”
The phone was back in his pocket before he could mull over what he’d said, and then promptly regret it. He sighed. Allowed himself to feel sorry for himself for exactly thirty seconds.
He decided not to return straight to the motel - instead, he’d grab a quick self-pitying beer from the gas station, drink it on his walk back. Aim and throw the bottle at the street, to hear the satisfying crash of the glass against the asphalt. Then come back and sleep it off in silence.
Mood already angling upwards, Dean set off in the direction of the station - he could barely see the dim lights for the place far down the road. Looked to be about a five minute walk.
Driving through Texas had been flat and monotonous. Surrounding the roads were fields and old fences - surrounding the skies were power lines and barren clouds. All the buildings were old and boring, and the same went for the people. Walking through it was a similar experience, only now Dean could hear crickets in the fields, feel the stagnant heat that remained even after the sun’s exit.
It was dusk and the sky was a greyish purple, barely light enough for Dean to see the cement below his feet, crumbling from years of use.
The road stretched out impossibly far ahead, further than the gas station, long and getting longer. He shoved his hands in his pockets.
An old truck unexpectedly sped past him on the road, making him start. Which was strange. No reason to be nervous; no reason at all.
Dean tried to mask his sudden apprehension with a cool sense of calm, as if that would somehow change anything. He double-checked his pockets to feel the sure weight of his pistol and hunting knife on his left and right. Only an idiot would go out unarmed.
Unfortunately, he’d left in such a discreet hurry that he hadn’t thought to bring anything other than his phone and wallet. So he was an unarmed idiot.
Eventually the road broke up into a lonesome intersection. The gas station was much closer now - he could make out the building, and a few of the pumps in front. There were no cars parked there. He slowed down his pace considerably. Dean hadn’t even realized he’d been walking at breakneck speed, as if he couldn’t get to his destination enough.
He had seen no other cars on the road, either, other than that old truck just now, which had already driven well out of Dean’s sight. All the old farmers were in bed with their wives, their children asleep in their rooms. Dean was alone.
He felt a hush in his ear and whipped around, body tense. Nothing was behind him.
Dean peered out into the field that went past the road and could see only shadows of tall grasses and behind those, shadows of trees. His neck prickled with discomfort.
What kind of hunter was he, really, to be unafraid of large and violent monsters but to fear an invisible follower which so far hadn’t laid a finger on him?
The light changed from green to yellow to red, but Dean didn’t notice. He hadn’t moved from the edge of the intersection, looking over his shoulder, entire body frozen with nerves.
Eventually he forced his head to turn and look back forward. But he kept his feet purposefully still.
I’m here, you son of a bitch, come and get me.
He didn’t have a pistol or anything else but he’d be damned if he broke out into a sprint. He hated being chased. Dean kept his eyes focussed on the lights at the station. The sky was black by now.
If anyone had seen him, they’d have thought he was crazy. Some guy standing out in the middle of the road, glaring at nothing. Normal people were gone by now, either at the bar conversing with friends or at home with their family. But Dean was not like other people. He didn’t enjoy conversations, he enjoyed ending them. He had no home, only motels.
You are not real.
The thought popped into his head easily and although it sounded like him, he knew it wasn’t. It was that thing, and it was here. But Dean couldn’t turn around. He could barely breathe. He stared out into the distance and allowed his thoughts to be quietly warped.
Reality was that he was a fraud in ratty jeans and workboots. He played pretend with his hunts and he saved people but he did not matter, so did any of it really matter?
Dean found some grasp of reality and huffed out a breath. All he had to do was turn behind him and face it—
He was watching himself from another place. He saw Dean Winchester, frozen stock-still at the intersection, refusing to move, to do anything, frozen in fear, washed in his own dread and misery, knowing every horrible thing he’d ever thought or heard about himself was true. He was hopeless. He was miserable. He was a sorry excuse for a brother, for a son. For a person. These things were true and he could do nothing to change them. No, he could change them, he just did not want to change, had no drive to better himself, and that’s why he was so awful.
Dean Winchester, you are not a real person.
The light turned green again and Dean returned to himself.
“Fuck!” He shouted. It echoed across the road and into the fields beyond.
Nobody responded.
Dean turned his head over his shoulder to see nothing.
The stalker was gone. If it had ever been there at all.