Chapter Text
WARD HQ pulsed with low light and cold silence, the kind designed to keep secrets within. Officially, it stood for Watch Analysis & Response Division. Unofficially? It was where hunters went when the job got messy. Or global.. The air carried the faint trace of ozone and sterilised steel, tempered by the thrum of servers and the low buzz of arcane sigils buried in the walls.
Dean stepped through the biometric doors like a man who hadn’t slept properly in three years and didn’t plan to start now. His boots clicked once against polished black flooring before the sound vanished into soundproof panelling. He passed techs hunched over screens and agents in sharp suits. Cameras tracked him, and sigils flared and faded as he passed. The space was all function and tension—consoles beside runic engravings, glowing terminals built into polished stone-cut tables. Somewhere deep in the walls, data moved faster than thought, and wards older than cities held it all in place.
Dean just shoved his hands in his pockets and kept walking, looking like he’d just rolled out of a stakeout and straight into classified protocol. His shirt was slightly wrinkled, and his jacket was worn loose, hanging easy over his frame like a man who’d spent years making ‘rough around the edges’ work for him, and his badge hung lopsided at his hip. He was late (again), but whatever. Time was fake, and Bobby only bitched about punctuality when he was sober, which this early in the morning was anyone’s guess.
Dean rubbed at the corner of one eye, wincing as the overhead lights of Bobby’s office hit like a personal attack.
“You couldn’t wait to ruin my day until after I’d had coffee?”
Bobby didn’t look up from his desk. He slapped a file down with enough force to make the papers fan out. “Your day was already ruined the second you walked in wearin’ yesterday’s shirt, son.”
Dean dropped into the chair opposite, ignoring the groan of his spine as he tugged the file toward him with one finger. “This a morning assignment or a full-blown clusterfuck?”
“Open it.”
It was filled with photos and notes. One of them—a young guy, maybe late twenties—lay flat on a slab, mouth parted, expression so peaceful it was unsettling. Another photo, same guy but in his apartment. There was a bottle of wine, a half-burned candle, and razor blades on the table.
Dean’s eyebrow ticked up. “Suicide?”
“Coroner says so. I say keep readin’.”
The next few pages were messier. Journal entries, scribbled post-its, a voice memo transcript that was mostly sobbing.
“I miss him. I need him. He’s in my head. I need him. I neeed him.”
Dean flipped another page, frowning. “What the hell.. this guy get dumped or exorcised?”
Bobby tapped the wood of his desk with a callused finger. “Keep going.”
Dean found the suspect profile, such as it was. A note scrawled at the top in red ink:
POTENTIAL INCUBUS ACTIVITY - FLAGGED FOR INVESTIGATION
And beneath that, barely visible in the report photo, an outline of a figure in the background of a nightclub camera feed.
Dean snorted. “An incubus? Come on. These things are harmless. They fuck, then fuck off. This is barely worth field time.”
Bobby gave him a look that could sand wood. “This one’s different. Ain’t just feeding. Victims don’t bounce back after. They don’t want to.”
Dean leaned back in his chair. “What, they fall in love?”
“They get hooked,” Bobby growled. “This thing leaves them hollow. Obsessed. And if they don’t off themselves, they go off the rails.”
A muscle twitched in Dean’s jaw. He didn’t like addicts. He didn’t like feeling like one either, but whatever this was, it stank, and it had Bobby spooked - that meant something. He closed the file with a soft thwap and stood.
“I’ll check in with Charlie.”
Bobby nodded. “She’s already pulled some surveillance. And try not to be a dick. She’s been up for three days trying to triangulate this bastard’s trail.”
Dean was already halfway out the door. “Tell her to make the coffee stronger.”
WARD HQ sprawled underground, deep beneath an abandoned military base in Nevada. Aboveground, it looked like dust and desert and bureaucratic nothing, but down here? It was brushed steel walls, reinforced glass, and layers of tech and magic humming in an uneasy truce. It all looked cool until you remembered most of it existed because something wanted you dead.
Dean walked the corridor like he owned it and like it owed him something it never paid back. His boots made no sound against the obsidian-finished flooring. Hidden sensors logged his ID, vitals, and clearance as he passed. Cameras tracked him as he moved past WARD’s protective runes that pulsed once, then stilled.
He barely noticed anymore. It hadn’t always been this way. He remembered when this place felt like stepping into the guts of a secret world where you could actually make a goddamn difference. Now it just felt familiar, like every hallway remembered things he didn’t want to.
The years bled together. Kills logged. Cases closed. Casualties.. ignored. He used to care about every single soul he couldn’t save; now, they just felt inevitable. He’d once believed the job would fill him up and that the rush would drown out the rest. That being needed—being useful—would be enough. He was older now, not necessarily in numbers, but in the way that counted.
Relationships had drifted off, and any chance at a stable life had rusted under the weight of the mission. He barely remembered the last time he’d woken up next to someone who could actually take a place in his memories.
He passed the central hall, ignoring the rows of ostentatious portraits, barely glancing at the brass plaques bolted into the wall. The Winchester Legacy. His family’s name was right there, third row from the top. Heroes of old hunts, names etched in silver. His grandfather. His father. Him.
He hated the way it stared back at him, every time. Sam’s name wasn’t up there, but then again, it never needed to be. It wasn’t that Sam wasn’t good, Sam was great—brilliant—but Sam got to choose this life, Dean never did. Dean had been conditioned to take on the worst of the worst cases, and over time, that kind of thing wore a man down. But for him, it wasn’t a calling, it was a birthright. A burden handed down, generation to generation. And now here he was, still walking the halls, still carrying the name, still wondering when it would finally feel like enough.
He was halfway to Charlie’s lab when a voice broke through the hum of cooling systems and the low buzz of arcane wards.
“You look like hell.”
Dean slowed, lips twitching as he glanced to the side. Sam was leaning against the wall near a data terminal, arms folded, suit pristine, too-long hair immaculate. Bastard looked like he’d just walked out of an MI6 catalogue. Dean, by contrast, had the vibe of a detective who’d punched his own reflection on the way out the door.
“Morning to you, too, sweetheart.”
Sam nodded at the file under Dean’s arm. “They’ve got you on the incubus case.”
“Yeah. Apparently, WARD thinks I’m their resident expert in things that fuck.”
Sam didn’t rise to it, and Dean had to suppress the roll of his eyes. He didn’t know how Sam always managed to stay so composed. If the roles were reversed, Dean would have cracked a joke, maybe two, by now. But Sammy? Sammy was a goddamn cathedral of patience.
“Don’t underestimate it,” said Sam.
Dean arched an eyebrow. “You think I’m going to get seduced to death?”
Hell of a headline, he thought dryly. Local Hunter Dies in Freak Sex Accident - Sources Confirm, Nobody Surprised.
“I’m saying not all incubi are harmless. I had a case, years ago. Succubus. Called herself Ruby.”
Dean hummed, intrigued. “Sexy name. I take it she left quite the impression.”
“She went rogue,” said Sam, his tone clipped. “Started targeting government officials. Seduced her way up the ladder. Nearly collapsed half the eastern seaboard’s intel network before I got to her.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Did you at least get your rocks off before you took her out?”
Sam looked at him like he’d suggested foreplay during a hostage situation. “Charming.”
Dean smirked. “Just asking the important questions.”
“She was dangerous,” Sam said coolly. “Brilliant. Manipulative. Nearly killed me twice. This one you’ve got? Might be worse.”
Dean waved a dismissive hand. “Please. I could take on three of these bastards and still walk out zipped.”
Sam’s mouth twitched, like he wanted to smile but had better instincts. “Sure you could, Romeo.”
Dean offered a mock salute, already turning toward Charlie’s lab. “Keep the champagne on ice for me.”
“Just don’t fall in love with it, Dean.”
Dean didn’t answer that, but somewhere, tucked in a grainy photo in that folder, a blurry stranger waited, and Dean didn’t know yet why that bothered him, but it did.
The doors slid open with a quiet hiss, revealing what could only be described as a cross between the Pentagon and Comic-Con. Sigils pulsed beneath the floor in alternating shades of neon. Holographic screens on glass flickered with surveillance footage, magical signatures, and what looked like a Skyrim-modded UI. One workbench had half a disassembled sex talisman next to a blinking Geiger counter.
Dean stepped inside, lips twitching. “Place still looks like Tony Stark fucked a renaissance fair.”
Charlie spun in her chair, grinning. She wore fingerless gloves, thick-rimmed glasses, and a t-shirt that said 'I solemnly swear I’m up to something consensual.'
“Welcome,” she said with theatrical flair, “to the Holodeck of Horny Hell.”
Dean chuckled. “You been sleeping at all?”
She shrugged. “Define ‘sleep’.” She laced her fingers, then cracked them away from herself. “Got the file?”
Dean tossed it onto her desk. “Got the attitude?”
Charlie immediately went full analyst mode. “Six confirmed victims. Men and women. Ages twenty to forty. No shared locations, no obvious pattern until you dig deep. All had romantic or sexual encounters with someone matching our target’s vague description. Most of the witnesses thought it was a dream. Some couldn’t even describe his face, just feelings.”
She tapped a key, and one screen lit up with messy records and phrases like psychic bleed and resonance retention. “Some ended up dead. Others catatonic. A couple institutionalised. All of them sounded like they’d just come out of the best night of their lives and wanted to die because it ended.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “You’re painting a picture here.”
Charlie leaned back. “Whatever this thing is, it’s not following the usual incubus playbook. It doesn’t just feed. It lingers. Stays in your head and leaves something behind.”
She tapped again, and a different screen bloomed to life. Security footage from a nightclub that was dark, distorted, and completely saturated in LED strobe. People moved in waves, glittering and half-drunk. And there, in the lower corner of the frame, was a barely visible figure. Lean frame, elegant posture, and caught mid-turn as if looking directly into the camera.
Charlie gestured to it. “We think that’s him. Closest we’ve got to a sighting.”
Dean stared at the blur and cocked an eyebrow. “Enhance,” he said dryly.
Charlie didn’t even blink. “This isn’t NCIS, Dean. That’s as good as it gets.”
He smirked but didn’t look away. Something about the figure pulled at him, like an outline of shadow and sleekness. The kind of presence that didn’t need clarity to command attention. It felt elegant, dark, and magnetic.
Dean stepped closer, studying the faint line of a jaw and the way the silhouette stood like it knew it was being watched.
“Something feel off to you?” Charlie asked, more curious now than teasing.
Dean blinked and scoffed. “Just trying to ID him.”
She didn’t call him out, but the look she gave was knowing. Dean didn’t even notice because he was already looking again. Charlie leaned back in her chair, the glint in her eye sharpened by caffeine and mischief.
“Soo.. Want the goodie bag now or after your inevitable morally compromising encounter with tall, dark, and deadly?”
Dean finally broke his gaze away from the image and smirked. “Hit me.”
She turned to the secure cabinet in the far corner, muttering a quick spell under her breath while she held her hand up to a palm scanner. The glyphs along the door lit up in sequence from red to gold to white, and it slid open with a soft hiss.
“Alright, Winchester,” she said, selecting items with the flair of someone pulling weapons from a holy arsenal. “Let’s keep you breathing, and, preferably, un-fucked.”
She tossed him a slim black case. Dean flipped it open and whistled low.
“Silver bullets,” Charlie confirmed. “Each one etched with wards and holy symbols. Blessed by Pastor Jim himself before he, you know, exploded.”
Dean held one up to the light, and the engraving shimmered faintly, whispering something in a language he didn’t quite understand.
“Next up—holy water,” she said, placing three small crystal vials into a padded pouch. “Not your average church variety. These are infused with celestial light. Burned three angel feathers and a metric fuckton of silphium for that recipe. Splash it in his face or drop it in his drink, but make sure you use it wisely, or I’ll kick your ass. I lost track of how many times I had to watch Bambi’s mom die to gather enough tears.”
Dean arched an eyebrow. “You always this dramatic?”
She grinned. “Only when the threat’s hot.”
He chuckled despite himself. “What else you got?”
Charlie walked over to a velvet-lined drawer and pulled out a blade. It was sleek, curved, and matte-black with an edge that seemed to shimmer like heated air.
“This,” she said, handing it to him with a little more gravity, “is for when all else fails. Forged in holy fire. Carved runes along the spine. It’ll cut through glamour, shadow, and about three layers of sexy.”
Dean ran a thumb along the flat of the blade, feeling the heat still clinging to it like breath. “This is.. damn.”
“Right?” Charlie practically preened.
Leave it to Charlie to weaponize nerd pride into actual hunter gear. Dean paused for just a second. It was a hell of a kit for something WARD was still classifying as low-intervention. He didn’t say it aloud, but the question stirred anyway: Why the overkill? Someone upstairs knew more than they were sharing.
He sheathed the blade with a slow nod. “Remind me to never piss you off.”
“Oh, you already have,” she said sweetly. Then tossed two foil packets and a tiny lube tube onto the counter without breaking eye contact. “But I’m a professional.”
Dean stared at them, then at her. “..Seriously?”
“In case of emergency,” said Charlie with an air of innocence. “Use protection. If he’s going to try and fuck you to death, I just want you to be prepared.”
He sighed and swept them into his coat pocket. “You’re incorrigible.”
“And you’re going to need it,” she said, already turning back to her screen. “He’s not just dangerous, Dean. He’s beautiful. And I don’t mean that in a ‘this might complicate things’ kind of way. I mean it in a He could walk into a room full of celibate monks and walk out with a harem kind of way.”
Dean glanced down at the array of gear she’d handed over—silver, sigils, holy fire, celestial-grade water - and his brows lifted just slightly as he hummed.
“Does seem like a bit of a heavy loadout for a standard incubus. WARD trying to tell me something, or are you just spoiling me, Charles?”
Charlie didn’t miss a beat. “Maybe I just don’t like watching you die.”
He turned to go, but his eyes flicked just for a second back to the monitor. The footage was still up. That same nightclub frame of the figure caught mid-turn and half-swallowed by shadow. Dean told himself he was just mentally imprinting, ‘facial profiling’, or whatever term Sam liked to throw around—but something about the silhouette stuck, like a thought you try not to have.
He walked out before he could prove himself a liar.
-
Dean dropped his keys on the counter, then shed his jacket and sidearm in practised motions. The blade Charlie gave him glinted faintly from its sheath, and he set it on the table like it might start humming if he wasn’t careful. He poured a glass of whisky but didn’t drink it. He spread the case file across his table. Victim photos and names. Scribbled notes and psychological profiles. There were phrases circled in red.
“He’s in my head.” “I’d die to feel it again.” “He made me want.”
Dean leaned over it all, his elbows on the table, knuckles pressed to his mouth. There was a tension in his chest that hadn’t quite settled since he left HQ. Like he was bracing for something, or was maybe already in the middle of it. He propped the grainy nightclub still up under the lamp and stared at it. Just recon, he told himself. Standard field review. Identify the target. Build the profile. Anticipate the play. But his eyes lingered on the curve of the silhouette. The posture, the poise, the way it made his pulse tick slightly faster. He wasn’t afraid, but something in him leaned forward.
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I should be working bigger cases than this,” he muttered, his voice low and raspy. “Not chasing goddamn pheromone ghosts.”
Dean exhaled through his nose, slowly, feeling the scrape of exhaustion behind his eyes and the dull, familiar ache in his neck that came from sitting too long in his own skin. He’d been doing this job most of his life. Not even because he chose it, really, it was just who he was, what he did. There hadn’t ever been anything else. His daddy was a hunter, his daddy’s daddy was a hunter, and now he and his brother were hunters. Most people had jobs, but Dean was his. That line blurred a long time ago.
And yet.. this case? An incubus? It felt beneath him. He didn’t say that out loud. Bobby would smack him upside the head and call him a goddamn rookie for thinking with his ego. But still, usually, he was the one they called when things escalated. Not when they looked like some dime store seduction gone wrong.
He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. Maybe that was the point. Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like. Bobby had sounded tense, and Charlie had pulled out her A-grade gear. WARD didn’t hand out the good stuff unless someone upstairs was sweating. Dean looked back down at the file, at the blurred silhouette.
He told himself not to stare again, but something in his chest pulled tight. There was a feeling settling in his gut. That low, instinctive hunter sense that had kept him alive longer than luck should allow. Something about this didn’t sit right. And it wasn’t the profile or the case, or even the way the air seemed to shift around that image like it knew it was being watched.
The whisky sat at his elbow, and when he glanced at it he picked it up, downing it in one before setting the glass down a little too hard. He flipped through the file again, slower this time, not just scanning for intel, but actually reading this time. Looking for the thing that didn’t line up. The crack in the story.
Each victim had their own tab. Men. Women. Different backgrounds. Different cities. No visible connection, except for him—whoever he was. One page was a psychiatric report with notes scrawled in black pen over the typed text.
Subject: Rachel H. - 32F, previously stable. Found catatonic in her bathtub surrounded by drawings of a man she couldn’t name.
"Kept saying ‘He’s not gone. He’s inside’."
Dean flipped again. Another victim:
Nathaniel P. - 28M, No criminal record. No history of mental illness. Found naked in a hotel stairwell, muttering prayers in perfect Latin. [Not Catholic].
On the next page, there was something different. Handwritten journal pages that were spidery and erratic.
“It’s in his eyes. Blue like drowning. Blue like ice and fire. I let him in, and he unmade me.”
Dean frowned. There were more—a whole stack of them—but one stood out. It was thicker and stapled together, dated three weeks before the subject’s hospitalisation. A woman named Duma. Victim #4. Her handwriting had deteriorated across the pages. What began as neat, careful cursive devolved into chaos.
“I can still feel his hands on me. Like fire. Like silk. I dreamed of him again. I woke up shaking. The dark-haired men. I found them. I tried. None of them were him. They were wrong. Their eyes were wrong.”
Dean felt the hairs on his arms lift. Next entry:
“I slept with three more. Still wrong. Still not him. I hurt one of them. I think I blinded him. I told him to touch inside my head but he couldn’t.”
Dean blinked, his body still feeling a little stiff. On the next line, in red pen:
“If I find him again, I’ll let him kill me, just to feel it.”
He let the paper fall back to the table, fingers flexing like he needed to shake something off. This wasn’t standard behaviour for an incubus victim. This was obsession. Addiction. The kind that hollowed people out and left the shape of a man inside them. A man no one else could match. Dean reached for the photo again. The silhouette, blurred and aloof, backlit by club lights, but there.. watching.
He exhaled. “What the hell are you?”
He almost missed the small black USB tucked into the back sleeve of the file. Labelled with red marker: Duma - CLASSIFIED. DO NOT COPY. Below it, there was a printed note: Recovered footage. Play with caution. Dean raised an eyebrow and plugged it into his laptop. Through several subfolders, there were eventually two clips, just a few minutes each. The first was black and white surveillance. No timestamp and no sound at first. It was an interrogation room, and Duma sat hunched in a metal chair, hands cuffed, blood dried along her temple. Her eyes were unfocused, her lips cracked, and there were bruises on her wrists from the restraints. A voice was heard offscreen.
“You killed four men, Duma. Did you even know their names?”
She laughed, quiet at first, then louder. Then much louder.
“They weren’t him. I tried to find him again, but none of them were right. I kept checking. I kept trying. It was just sweat and noise and.. wrong.”
“You mean you slept with them?”
“I wanted to be taken apart. But they weren't him. Their eyes were wrong. Their hands didn’t burn.”
The voice offscreen asked something else, but she didn’t answer. She just looked up dead into the camera and smiled. Dean clicked back to the next file. The second clip was in a padded white cell with Duma strapped to a hospital gurney by the ankles, wrists, and forehead. She was soaked in sweat and breathing hard.
A male orderly stepped into frame. “You’ve got to stop. You can’t keep hurting yourself like this.”
Dean frowned, confused. The orderly sighed, muttering under his breath, almost like it was routine.
“Every time we loosen the restraints, she goes straight for it. Scratches herself raw while she’s—” He shook his head. “It’s not sex. It’s.. something else.”
The camera zoomed slightly as Duma arched against the restraints, mouth open in a wordless wail. “He wants me to!” she screamed, thrashing. “He needs it. He needs the pain and the pleasure. He needs it from me!” She arched against the restraints before slamming back down. “Please! Please, I can do better. I'll give him more!” She tried to slam her head back against the table, again and again, until blood bloomed behind her scalp. The orderly cursed and hit the call button, and the feed cut to static.
Dean stared at the screen, the blood in his veins running a little colder. He clicked back through the folders to double-check nothing had been missed, and noticed one last file tucked at the bottom of the list. It wasn’t labelled like the others. There was no date or header.
>.returning.vid
Size: 0.66 MB
Modified: 03:33 AM
Dean frowned. The timestamp didn’t match anything. He hesitated, then clicked it. The screen went black at first, and again there was no sound, but then there was a figure. A silhouette. It was still, upright, facing the camera. There were no eyes or features visible, but the shape was familiar. Slowly, very slowly, it tilted its head, like it knew he was watching. Like it recognised him. Then, there was a whisper that was barely audible. Not from the laptop speakers, from somewhere else.
“Dean.”
The entire screen cut to black, then the laptop booted up again. Dean stared at the screen, heart thudding in that old hunter rhythm he hadn’t felt since the first time he faced down something ancient and deadly.
When the desktop came up again, the screen returned to the USB’s directory. It was empty. Dean scanned the list, slowly and carefully. No file called .returning.vid. No recent modifications. Nothing.. He refreshed the folder twice, still nothing.
Dean sat back in his chair, one hand gripping the edge of the desk like he wasn’t sure if the room had started feeling off or just his heartbeat. Maybe it was a glitch, or a corrupted clip. Maybe he’d imagined it. Except.. he hadn’t. He could still feel it, that voice. His name.
Dean shut the laptop, got up, poured another whisky, and drank it. He stood there, eyes flicking once more toward the file spread across the table, and even as he turned away, he felt it—that impossible, itching certainty deep in his bones. He wasn’t the one watching anymore.
*