Louisiana wrapped around Benny like an old wound that never quite healed.

The bayou breathed slow and heavy under the moon, insects singing their endless chorus while the water hid things better left forgotten. Benny had tried, really tried, to build something that looked like a life after Purgatory. A job; a small place for himself that smelled like dust and coffee instead of blood for nights where he sat alone and reminded himself he wasn’t what he used to be.

Then the bodies started turning up.

Not drained, not torn apart in the way vampires left their mark. Just… eaten. Flesh missing in uneven, desperate bites. With bones cracked wrong; no ritual and no feeding pattern Benny recognized. It crawled under his skin in a way monsters usually didn’t, because this didn’t feel like instinct—it felt like panic, like guilt soaked into muscle and marrow.

He thought about calling Dean a few times. The phone sat heavy in his pocket for three nights straight but something stopped him. A sense he couldn’t explain, the same one that had kept him alive when smarter men died screaming. This wasn’t a nest, this wasn’t a rogue vamp or something crawled up from the swamp; no, this was quieter and sadder.

So Benny went looking on his own.

He followed the bayou trails where the water ran thick and black, boots sinking into mud that clung like memory. The smell found him before the sight; iron, rot, salt, and something achingly human beneath it. Benny slowed, senses sharp, heart doing that old, familiar ache it always did when death was close.

That’s when he saw you.

You weren’t hiding well, not really. Knees pressed into the wet earth, shoulders shaking as you fed, hands trembling like they didn’t belong to you. The body beneath you was already still, face turned away as if spared the shame of being seen like this. You paused between bites, breath hitching, like every mouthful hurt worse than the last.

Benny stopped dead. This wasn’t a monster crouched over a kill, this was a person trying not to break.

He didn’t rush you; didn’t snarl or bare fangs or reach for the blade tucked at his side. He just watched, chest tight with something ugly and familiar: recognition. He knew hunger, knew what it meant to hate yourself for needing something that ruined lives. He knew the quiet hell of surviving when you didn’t think you deserved to.

You sensed him suddenly, head lifting, eyes wide and wild and wrecked. Fear flared, sharp and bright, and Benny raised his hands slowly, palms open, showing you exactly what he was and what he wasn’t. Moonlight caught his face, the lines etched there by centuries of violence and one stubborn choice to be better.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, Cajun-soft, rough around the edges but careful not to spook you. “Easy there, alright? I ain’t here to hurt you. You look like you’re hurtin’ enough already—mind tellin’ me what's happening here?”

He stayed where he was, heart pounding, thinking of if he should whether he called Dean… or stay with you and try to understand what you were.