Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What’s burning?” Sam shouted from the library.

The echo through the hallway to the kitchen startled Dean, who was busy staring off into space, and he slid the grilled cheese off the pan and onto his plate in one jerky motion. “Nothing. You want a grilled cheese?”

“Well, not that one.” Sam stood in the doorway, leaning against the tiles, looking just a hair too large for the bunker’s architecture. He’d been in pajamas since they’d gotten back three days ago, and that alone was enough to tell Dean that Werther’s fucking enchantment had scared Sam a hell of a lot more than he would ever admit.

“S’okay.” Dean said and sliced another pat of butter for the pan. “Burnt one’s mine.”

“Are you okay? Sleeping on your feet?” Sam declined to comment on Dean’s dead-guy bathrobe, which was for the best.

“I was playing puzzlequest, okay?” Dean glanced at his phone on the counter, where it had been sitting since he started cooking.

“Fine.” Sam went to the refrigerator behind Dean and stood there with the door open for a dog’s age.

Just about when Dean’s patience was at an end, and the backs of his calves were goose pimpled from the cold, Sam sighed and shut the door again.

“You find what you were lookin’ for in there, buddy?”

“Nevermind. Just let me know when lunch is ready,” Sam huffed, probably fantasizing about salad. He left Dean in the kitchen with his thoughts and a sizzling pan.

His arm hurt, almost like he’d pulled something just inside his elbow. Of course he hadn’t, but he’d rather pretend that that was what the ache meant, rather than that pulsing mark.

Dean took a few breaths as he set the bread gently in the pan and took a slice of cheese to lay on top. The sizzle of butter was disruptive, grating, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Usually he liked cooking. He privately hoped that Castiel wouldn’t visit; Cas could see right through him, and his brother was trying to irritate him into talking about it, when what he ought to be doing was leaving it the fuck alone.

The damn Werther Box could have showed him anybody, any number of people that he’d let down. Lisa, or Ben—that would have hurt just as much, maybe. Ben was turning sixteen soon, and again he wasn’t going to send the kid a card.

But nope, it had to show him Benny . Benny, who was stuck in Purgatory because Dean had asked him to go back.

It cut him deeper than he’d ever admit. He’d fucking marooned him.

He picked up the burned sandwich and chewed it, jaw aching, watching Sam’s sandwich sizzle. When he’d flipped it and watched it brown until it was enough to slide onto a plate, he’d opened and drank two beers and left the bottles on the kitchen counter. Three more full ones followed him to the library.

He’d run into the book that he thought he might need a few weeks before when he’d skimmed them, shrugging them off until now. Things that weren’t about the mark, or pre-biblical history went in a certain pile in the library, and now he tossed through the hardbacks and hand-bound notes, kneeling on the floor in his soft terrycloth robe.

His hand ran over the cover of it—black, with a silver stamped rendering of a medusa’s head. The inside was in Greek, and Dean had to translate it with a greek-english dictionary, which was a pain in the ass. He remembered something referring to “Ichor,” the blood of the Greek gods. It was a half-clue to the pre-historical origin of vampires, or maybe a miracle cure that went beyond the one that worked on the newly turned. The book had sounded like a story about immortals, and Dean had filed it under “probably dumber than Twilight” and tossed it aside.

He had thought that he’d have time, someday. Benny was immortal: Dean could get him pulled out of Purgatory when his life wasn’t so complicated. But then the hallucination had hit, and there Benny was, big as life. He even smelled just right.

There wasn’t anything turning up on the Mark of Cain, even as it bore a hole right through his soul like a hot bullet. He couldn’t sit and wait until it was deep enough to leave him hollowed out.

Dean had to move. Might as well take out his bucket list of people and lovers he’d let down, and start to make things right. It was a thin thread at best, but fuck destiny and purpose. He was going.

The Impala’s keys were already in the pocket of his jeans when he slipped them on. And of course the bag was ready with rolled socks, shirts, and underwear, in case of emergency.

Dean rattled away from the bunker without dwelling on consequences, as though it would be as easy as running away. The medusa’s head reflected onto the windshield as it winked in the sunlight on the dashboard, and he floored it, manic grin plastered across his face as he racked a tape into the stereo. Doubtlessly, Sam would call him in a few hours, flustered and bent out of shape about how Dean took off without him.

He still wasn’t sure what he was going to tell him about where he was off to, and Dean could could see an argument coming whether he told him the truth or not.

Everything was going to be fine.

---

Death looked tired, but somehow didn’t surrender any of his power with his weary countenance. He drew a boundary in the pine-needle dirt with his cane and regarded Dean with cold eyes and a tilted head.

For his part, the hunter had a grease-stained paper bag of burgers in his hand, and held it up with a stiff arm. Death tilted his head, lips a thin, colorless line.

“Look, I know it ain't the polite thing to do to call on you. You’re a busy guy.”

“Yes.” The diminutive man seemed amused. “I suppose I am.”

“This is for you,” Dean said, offering him the bag and milkshake.

“How thoughtful. Why did you call on me?” He took the bag and looked inside it.

“I need to get into purgatory.”

“Ah. I see. So you’ve driven all the way out here. You do know that I could have transported you there from the parking lot of this resturaunt?” Death wrinkled his nose. “These are nearly stone cold.”

Dean leaned on the car and set down the milkshake on Baby’s hood. “Look, I know you don’t want me loose with this thing on my arm.”

“That’s a very self-centered way of looking at it.”

“What?” Dean frowned a little.

“Have you killed anything that wasn’t going to die someday?” He ate a cold french fry and looked up at the stars.

“... no, I guess not.”

“Dean, the mark isn’t outside the natural order of things. The natural order is just considerably more strange than you would imagine.”

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I wanted to go through you instead of bribing any of your underlings.”

“I didn’t say no . But you know you’re only going to make things worse.”

Dean gulped and looked away. Maybe it would. Benny had come topside for revenge in the first place, and he’d gone back to Purgatory when Dean had asked. What if Benny didn’t just say no; what if he told him to fuck off?

He hadn’t come back with Sam. Dean was reasonably sure that he could have, if Benny had wanted to. It was a goodbye, and Dean couldn’t even fault him for it. They’d said Adios months before. Dean gulped and shook his head. “This is gonna be a milk run."

Death shrugged, and the world went sideways.

Dean stood up on vibrating legs and took a few ragged steps, and the adrenaline poured out of him and just left. Dean couldn’t see far past the trees, but he picked a direction and started staggering over the rolling knolls and split dry roots of Purgatory’s eternal, infuriating bastard trees.

Chapter Text

A heartbeat he’d never forget—that was what initially drew Benny close. Dean was here, where he shouldn’t be, where he’d never be safe. And yet; the wake that Dean left behind him looked like a slaughterhouse where the ragged bits of monsters wore scraps of clothing and human faces. It should have eased the panic that seized Benny initially—if nothing else, Dean was more than capable of defending himself. The remains of the souls of purgatory laid still on the ground and stared unseeing as Benny walked slowly past.

One or two were clean, quick kills, but Benny’s stomach turned at some defensive wounds—and after he saw a vampire woman’s palm sliced down to the bone, he stopped looking, merely following the sound of Dean’s beating heart.

Purgatory wasn’t a great place to take a vacation, and letting your guard down could be just about the last thing you ever did, but he seldom saw anything on this sort of vicious tear. It was Dean… and maybe it was some kind of plan gone awry.   

He first laid eyes on him when he reached the top of a rise. Benny paused and watched the man as he sat. Slumping forward on the ground, Dean had his hands in the dirt before him, fidgeting.

There was a lot that Benny could say to open a conversation, but the words kept dying—the Dean he remembered wouldn’t kill as easy as breathing. Even when it was a monster in front of him, he had a sense of fair play. He was changed. From the smell, Benny could tell that Dean was as human as he’d ever been. He’d come for his old buddy to fish him out, or finish him off.

Benny wasn’t sure what exactly that implied. He stood and watched the hunter for a full minute while Dean wiped his hands on his coat, then wiped his face, and ran his fingers through his hair. Then he picked up his knife and turned his head.

He hadn’t expected Dean to be so quick to smile, to meet Benny’s eyes with that familiar, easy grin, like he’d only been chopping lumber instead of performing gruesome decapitations. But there it was, dimples and all.

“Hey, Benny.” Dean had his arms out at his sides, just a little away from his body, and turned them towards him like he wanted to go in for a hug.

Benny knew that there was something in his expression that made the hunter falter. Good—it belonged there. “Dean,” he said, watching his old friend’s smile slowly slide off his face. “Didn’t think to see you so soon. Or… ever, really.”

“I came to get you out. Sorry it took so long.”

Benny swallowed around a hard lump in his throat. “Didn’t mean to be unclear when I spoke to Sam. Dean… this is where I belong.”

It was obvious that Dean either hadn’t gotten the message, or more likely he hadn’t wanted to hear what his brother had told him. The hunter set his jaw and nodded. “Yeah, but I… think we have a cure.”

Benny stared sadly for a long while and shook his head, turned on his heel, and started walking away from him.

Dean ambled behind him, keeping more than arm’s length away, but clearly not willing to let him go. “Damnit, Benny, I couldn’t let you stay here. Not forever.”

Benny shoved his hand in his pocket and spared a look back. “Dean, like I said, this is where I belong.”

Dean nodded curtly, as though he’d listened. “But not if I can make you human again.”

“It’s been too long.” Benny shook his head.

“But I… we have a home now, in Kansas. A safe place. You won’t have to live on the road or in the back of your truck—”

Benny gave in a little and sighed with exasperation. “Damnit, Dean. I don’t mean it’s been too long since I was topside—I mean it’s been too long since I was a man .”

Dean opened his mouth and then shut it, apparently at a loss for words. It was rare enough to see him struck dumb that Benny almost made a crack about it, and then Dean took a couple steps forward and grabbed Benny by the coat, and yanked him into a kiss that held a heavy taste of copper—all Benny wanted for those bare seconds was to push Dean against a tree, grab his splayed thighs, and pull them up around his waist. Like old times.

Instead, he put his hands on Dean’s arms and slowly pulled his hands away. “Don’t do that.”

Dean looked crushed, and his bravado couldn’t hide it. The hunter shook his head and looked away. “Damnit, Benny.”

Benny took a step back. “It’s not fair and you know it.”

Dean clenched his jaw, constantly in motion, looking back over his shoulder and wiping his wet eyes. “Yeah. I… I just thought you’d jump at the chance. To get out.” He gestured vaguely, encompassing all of Purgatory with a swing of his arm.

Benny looked down at his feet and turned away, unable to watch him gesticulate any more. “I’ll help you out, Dean. But I’m doin’ alright here.”

Dean was quiet and didn’t respond, but he fell into step behind him anyway. Benny sniffed the air and wound their way through the trees, ducking under low branches and following the few landmarks that led him back to where he had a habit of staying.

The rock pile was too obvious, too central to the glade. He regretted bringing Dean here, but perhaps some part of him wanted his hunter to see the cairn and ask about it.

He kept it free of weeds and roots, and spent most of his time near enough to it that it was like a home to him. He sat down on the far side, back against a flat log, and closed his eyes for a moment to listen to the sounds beyond the clearing, between the deafening thuds of Dean’s heart.

Dean, for his part, sat down on the same log, a few feet away and went still.

Nothing stirred around the bower and Benny opened his eyes.

Dean broke the silence. “I don’t really need to rest, Benny. I’m doing fine.”

Benny took a long moment to reply. “No, Dean. You’re really not.”

Dean’s throat clicked as he swallowed a few times, shaking his head. “Damnit,” he eventually muttered.

“Dean, why are you really here? Are you trying to… I don’t know… recreate how it was the first time you dropped in?”

Dean shuddered and it made the whole log tremble behind Benny’s back. “Yeah. Okay. I just… If I can’t figure out how to solve one thing, I figure… I can fix something that… that I fucked up.”

Benny hated to see him like this, overflowing with self-loathing and cloying pity. “You need to understand, Dean. I chose this.”

“And you gotta understand, I have a place for you. We can take you in. Whether you want to like… stay with me or not.”

He wondered if Dean had really thought about this, or if he just assumed that Benny would jump at the chance to leave this place. He stared at the cairn, which he’d built, knowing exactly whose body lay inside. Andrea had been so motionless when he found her, like a cruel illusion. Benny cleared his throat. “What do you suppose happens to us, when we die?”

“…what do you mean, Benny?”

“I mean us monsters, here in Purgatory. Do we go on to the sorting pile and go to heaven or hell, or do we just… get snuffed out?”

“Hey, don’t—Benny, please.”

It was the pained tone in Dean’s voice that made Benny look. Dean shook his head and took a heavy breath. “I’m trying to do right by you, Benny. It went so bad last time, and I let it go to shit.”

“Dean, none of that was your fault.”

“Yeah, it was,” Dean sighed.

He looked at Andrea’s grave, knowing that that wasn’t exactly true. Benny had it hard up in the world, and being near Dean didn’t seem to make it much easier. If nothing else, though, he wasn’t alone. And Dean, for his part, couldn’t help but take on the burdens and problems of other people, as though he just had to continually show how strong and capable and independent he was.

Benny saw easily that the hunter feared that he was none of these things. He knew him too well. “How’s Cas and Sam?”

Dean shrugged. “We’ve been researching. And it’s… we have to get it done, but I just… I’m getting cabin fever.”

Benny took a long time to reply, and tried to keep judgement out of his voice. “It’s plain to me that something’s eating you alive, Dean. Not just me, I hope.”

Dean picked at the knees of his jeans. “Is your plan to just lay down here and die, Benny? Because that doesn’t sound like you.”

“Brother, I don’t belong anywhere else.”

Dean sighed and shook his head. “I got this thing happening. It’s… well, it’s a hell of a thing, actually. I… I messed up really bad, Benny.”

He felt the crack of Dean’s voice like a fishhook in his throat.  “Did you hurt Sam, or—”

Dean answered whip-fast. “No, no. Sam’s… he’s fine. I killed some people. Normal… normal people.”

Benny had to pause for a moment. “…Why’d you do it?”

“What?”

“You don’t do things without a reason. Why did you kill them?”

“It was… it doesn’t matter. I have this thing, this curse now. I just… I want to kill. I need to, and… and sometimes if I’m in a bad situation, and killing is easier… I just do it.”

Dean had turned away a little and didn’t look at Benny when he sucked in air through his teeth. “That’s a lot of guilt you’re haulin’ around there.”

Dean sighed. “Sorry. I just… thought that you would jump at the chance, and I could help you; return the favors you’ve done me, at least.”

“You need to lose that score card. I ain’t worth the trouble and I ain’t askin you to get yourself kilt fishing me outta here.”

The hunter stood up and kicked one of the rocks in the big pile. “Okay.”

Benny had flinched when Dean’s boot sent the stone on a tumble, but said nothing.

Dean paced, jaw creaking, clenched shut around his obviously wayward emotions. “Yeah, well, maybe… maybe I’m the one that needs something.”

He hadn’t thought that Dean would have realized it himself, much less come out and say it. Benny had no idea what to tell him.

Dean turned to look at him, but didn’t meet his eyes. “Maybe I thought you’d miss me, too.”

Benny smiled sadly. He did, of course. He loved the hunter. Dean was probably the best friend he’d ever had, even outside of other stuff they’d gotten up to in the sack.

“And now we’re sitting down and you ask what happens when you die here, and I just…” Dean shook his head. “I can’t …you can’t just give up and die!”

“Who said I was giving up?”

He looked a little baffled. “Well, you, for one.”

“I asked if you figured out what happened when monsters die here. I didn’t say it was me I was wondering about.”

Dean shook his head. “Okay, okay, then what brought that on?”

“I buried Andrea not long after I got here,” he gestured to the cairn, without looking. “They got her again.”

“They?”

“Sorrento and a couple of his boys.”

“Jesus. Sorry, Benny.”

Benny shook his head and wiped his eyes, embarrassed that he could still cry about her, that there was anything left in him of that pain.

“I don’t… I know I probably can’t convince you to go with me, and that’s… fine.” Dean sounded defeated. “But is this your plan? To just… camp out here forever?”

Benny nodded.

“You ain’t… Benny, you’re the baddest mofo in this place.”

“Thanks, but what’s your point?”

“You could be king of Purgatory.”

He made a face and shook his head, looking up to the always gray sky that seemed as superfluous as it was depressing; this place seemed so much like Earth, but it was just a mocking echo. “It happens every now and then, somebody grabs together a pack and takes over. But there’s no need. Nothing here worth fighting over.”

“Benny, I’m begging you here. Come back with me.”

He let the silence roll out in the glade and slowly closed his eyes. Dean was right, there was nothing more to do here. He just didn’t know what to do with himself, besides laying down and dying. And that didn’t sit right. It would be the worst final note that he could think of. Dean said he had a cure, so if he didn’t see it through, then it really would be an unforgivable act of purposeful ignorance. Besides, Dean needed him.

“Did you bury my body?”

Dean was gritting his teeth, and Benny’s ears had no problem hearing it. “Yeah, in your family plot.”

“Alright, then.” He gave him a fragile smile. “Okay. Second chance, I guess.”

Dean grabbed him in a hug that would have been crushing if he were a human, and Benny realized that the hunter felt strangely warm. He decided to not mention it and bowed his head against Dean’s shoulder, letting his hands pull the canvas of his coat. It was okay, Dean could feel like home if he let himself dream of the best possible future.

After a few moments, Benny pushed him away gently, wiped his nose, and gestured vaguely sideways. “Let’s get a move on, then.”

Chapter Text

Dean’s arms burned as he set foot on the ground, taking a moment to collect his wits, a feral grin trying to crawl onto his face. He’d made it , and Benny was in his left arm while the mark of Cain pulsed on his right. After a few minutes of worrying that it would hurt the entire drive to Louisiana, the both of them calmed down, and Dean got up, rocked a little on the balls of his feet, and started plodding to the car.

This time, he’d had enough foresight to plan his route; Baby was sitting behind an unused ranger station, less than an hour hike from the cleft in reality where Purgatory spat him out. He was happy to see that the portal was still in the same place, but he still checked his compass and map to make sure that he was on the right heading.

He couldn’t help the spring in his step as he laid eyes on the silent silhouette of his car in the cold moonlight.

The drive wasn’t fast, not exactly. It was just that Dean was fine on four hours of sleep, and the Impala was fresh with new tires and an oil change just the week before, so he pushed on and on until he was already in Virginia on the first time he pulled off to get some shuteye.

When the sun rose he managed to negotiate with his appetite to allow him a couple of doughnuts and a cup of coffee at a Gas N’ Sip before he drove on through to Georgia, stopped for gas in Alabama, and nearly made it to the Mississippi river before he had to fill up again. It was a two day drive at a minimum. Dean made it in under 36 hours.

The shovel was over his shoulder as soon as he parked and opened the trunk. He paused to savor the moment, figuring that he'd never been so happy to be digging up an old bag of bones.  He didn't like to think about the last time he had been there, how his knee had almost given out when he hoisted Benny’s dead body out of the Impala and over his shoulder.  

He stepped over the looped, rusted barb wire and headed around the broken-down barn to the tiny little graveyard where… there should not be an empty hole.

It defied him, the open grave beside a mound of dirt, already old enough to have dandelions sprouting from the soil.

Dean made a strangled noise and dropped the shovel. He stumbled to the edge and looked in, bleary eyes raking back and forth for the barest fleck of bone, anything he could use. But there didn’t even look like there was any ash from someone else coming along and burning the corpse.

An hour later and he was still in the pit, leaning on the earthen wall and at a loss as to what he could do. Benny’s soul lazily coiled in his wrist. When he had done this the first time, he felt the stowaway soul trying to claw through his skin and out into the night air.

His phone rang in his pocket and startled Dean out of his paralysis.

Of course it was Sam. He’d had the ping of four voicemails and seven texts all at once when he switched the phone back on when he got back. Even the hundred-mile wilderness had four bars near the road—the back roads of Louisiana were no different.

Time to man up. He answered with a grimace. “Sammy. Hey.”

“Dean? You’re not dead?”

“Well, that’s sweet,” Dean sighed.

“You scared the hell out of me. No word for five days?”

“I know, I just had a real bad case of cabin fever, had to get out for a bit.”

“Damnit, Dean, I know we’re stalled out on research with the mark…”

He tuned him out for a moment. It wasn’t as if he was going to start feeling any better anytime soon. Sam rattled on about filial responsibility and didn’t he know that Sam would help with the cases.

“It wasn’t anything big, Sammy. Dead end.” He put his forehead against the grave dirt and closed his eyes. “I’m heading home.”  

“Yeah, how long?”

“Gimmie a day.” He cleared his throat. “And Sammy? …I’m sorry. Shoulda kept you posted.”

“…Okay, Dean.” Sam sounded like he was hearing entirely too much in Dean’s voice.

He hung up before more of his guilt could leak over the line. When he climbed out of the grave, it was later than sunset. He dragged his feet back to the car and started her up.

Sixteen hours or so to Lebanon. Dean shut his eyes for a minute and let the radio play, and when a commercial started for solar paneling, he snapped a tape in and steered the car onto the road.

Maybe the bunker would have some sort of solution—hell, maybe he could conjure Benny a new body or stash his soul somewhere nicer than Purgatory while he figured out who could have stolen his body.

---

It was just after breakfast when he pulled into the bunker’s garage and shook off a spell of dizziness. He hadn’t felt like sleeping, but he felt like he ought to get into bed as soon as he could get a shower and wash some of the grit out from under his fingernails.

He hoisted his bag over his shoulder and headed to the door.

As soon as he crossed the threshold and left the garage, breathing started to hurt . He gripped the metal rail of the staircase and let his kit drop—it suddenly seemed much less important, even the shotgun rolling down the steps wasn’t his greatest concern. Dean fought the greying edges in his vision as his left arm burned. Not the mark on his right, no—the soul he carried with him was a vampire, and that was definitely something the Men of Letters would have warded against.

Dean knew he’d been so fucking stupid, and clung to the railing, shuddering and only half-aware that his knees were buckling under him. He knew he was making some kind of sound, but couldn’t hear it over the high-pitched siren that was pouring itself into his ears.

He blacked out as he wobbled and pitched sideways down the stairs, body refusing to stay upright.

---

He woke up in his own bed, mouth dry, his entire body throbbing in a vivid parody of a hangover. He groaned and looked at the clock—3:30 p.m. He’d been out for a long while, still needed a shower, and—

Dean felt the absence of Benny’s soul and looked down at his arm dumbly. All that for nothing. Shit, all that for worse than nothing.

Surely he should have anticipated the bunker’s defenses against unnatural creatures. Hell, the only reason it wasn’t warded against Castiel was because the Men of Letters hadn’t known how.

Dean raked his hands through his hair and stumbled out of bed, down the hall to take a shower. He rubbed his fingers over the spot where he’d cut himself to let Benny in, twice, and then stripped himself naked quickly, throwing his clothing in a heap before stepping into the scalding water.

He stood under it for a time, wondering just how horrible it would really be if he just chained a cement block around his neck and walked into Lake Superior as far as he could manage. He thought that maybe the weight of the water on top of him would be comforting, and keep him from coming apart, from unleashing himself as a black-eyed parody.

Dean was scrubbing automatically, head under the stream, and his whole body jerked when he heard Sam at the entrance to the showers.  

“Dean, you’re… hey. You feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Did I pass out?” Dean knew full well that he had, but figured he’d play his cards close to the vest while he decided how to tell Sam what he’d done.

“Yeah, found you at the bottom of the stairs.” Sam stepped into the tile room and pointedly looked down at the pile of clothing strewn on the floor.

“Hey, personal space, buddy?”

“Dean, I had to wipe your drool off the floor this morning. I thought you broke your damn neck.”

“I don’t know, man.” He couldn’t tell him step one about it. If he’d had any degree of success in getting Benny out, that would have been one thing. But he’d probably killed his friend and he couldn’t even think about it without wanting to carve on himself. He swallowed the bile that was rising in his throat and thought up a quick lie.

Dean ducked his head under the water. “Nothing weird happened. Just a ghost hunt down in Plano, and I was goddamn tired.”

“Dean, did you kill anybody this time?”

“Ugh, no. Now will you let me finish my shower in peace?”

“Yeah, okay, sure. I’ll make you a sandwich or something.”

Dean sighed and leaned on the tile wall, and took his time turning the shower off. He wondered where Cas was—he could lie to Sam until he was blue in the face, but the angel would see right through him and could tell a lot more about things happening in his head.

He just wanted to rest, but he didn’t want to be badgered into it. He also didn’t want Sam to treat him like he was some kind of rabid animal, even though it was more or less true.

He was starting to really understand why Cain was hiding away in a corner of Missouri with his beehives and old photos. Being treated like he could go off at any moment was nearly as bad as how often he had to assure Sam that no really, he was fine . He wanted to lay in bed and watch telenovelas for a week.

Dean shrugged on some clean denim and a T-shirt that had a 1987 Wisconsin Tractor Pull advertized on it. He couldn’t remember going. He put on his flannel and his coat too, then a set of boots that didn’t have mud in the treads.

It was high time he got the hell away from himself, and the bunker that killed his friend. He needed to properly mourn, and not in the proverbial closet.

He re-packed, just some clean clothes and a fresh toothbrush. Maybe a couple nights away would help.

---

He drove in his sleep, sometimes, entire dreams about the level road stretching before him, endlessly paralleled by telephone line or barb wire.

Dean knew he’d have to get some proper rest soon, and he prayed for that kind of bland dream when he closed his eyes. He was a hundred miles into Texas when he pulled off at a bar next to a motel on the Turnpike.

He shut off the car and went to register for a room. While the desk lady put the credit card under the flimsy sheet of carbon paper and made copies, he returned Sam’s panicked texts.

“I’m fine. Just needed fresh air.”

The pingback happened almost immediately. “ Jesus Christ Dean you PASSED OUT.” It was followed soon by the skull emoji.

Dean poked out a reply. “If you see Cas tell him hello.” He turned off his phone after hitting send.

The receptionist slid a key across the counter with a terse smile. Dean returned it and left the cigarette-smelling office, strolling across the sunset-lit parking lot to toss his things into the room. He put a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the table for later, and locked the car, so he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

The bar itself wasn’t anything notable. The bikes out front were nicely vintage, he even spotted a ’50s era Harley, beat-up and rusted on the forks. Dean stepped inside and let the air conditioning filter under his collar, making his way slowly to the bar. He didn’t much feel like hustling, even though this place looked ideal with two pinball machines and a pool table with an audience of a couple tables.

A cracked-top vinyl stool would do fine. He sat down and signaled the bartender, motioning for a beer.

The last death of Benny Lafitte was something that should have been properly eulogized, and there really should have been a proper funeral. When he finished his beer, he ordered four fingers of bourbon, neat, and held it with both hands as he closed his eyes, wishing for all the world that he hadn’t gone inside the damn Bunker without even fucking thinking about its defenses.

The mirror over the bar reflected the orange light from the parking lot, and Dean could just see the sun slipping over the horizons. He toasted the mirror, and smiled sadly before knocking back his drink.

Chapter Text

Benny woke up at a polished wood bar with an empty glass in front of him and blinked. The taste of whiskey or bourbon was on his tongue, and he felt slightly drunk, which was surprising considering how much it usually took to let him feel it.

Looking up at the rows of bottles, he saw Dean sitting behind them and smiled- then noticed the matching empty glass in front of his friend.

Dean was in the mirror, looking back at him confusedly as the reality of the situation dawned on him.

He was still inside of Dean. Hell, he had total control. He touched the glass and looked at the palm of his hand, struck by how unfamiliar it was. The loops and whorls of his own fingertips; while he wasn’t sure exactly how they looked, he could see that Dean’s palm wasn’t quite as broad as his own.

He looked around the room and noticed the other patrons, none of whom seemed to be really watching him. He stood up while holding the bar and feeling a bit unsteady. Everything was just different enough to make him feel like a marionette with tangled strings.

“Hey, you leavin’?” The bartender had noticed him standing up.

“Yeah, uh…” He heard Dean’s voice coming out of his throat and fell silent for a moment. “How much do I owe?”

“Twenty-six bucks. You drivin’?”

“No, don’t think so, friend.”

“Your accent’s out.” The bartender smirked knowingly.

“Oh yeah, that’s the usual.” He shrugged and searched for Dean’s wallet, finding it in his coat pocket after patting his pants. Benny handed over a couple of bills before slinking to the restroom and locking the door so that he could look at himself in the mirror without being interrupted.

Dean’s face had looked startlingly older in Purgatory when his despair was most transparent, but now, with Benny behind the facade, his eyes looked brittle and frightened. He started the water and splashed his face. Benny hoped this was just a weird dream, or a joke. Soon, he’d wake up, and Dean would shove him back in his corpse. With his forearms on the sink and his back hunched, he closed his eyes and willed himself to consciousness. Nothing.

The door handle to the restroom rattled, and he knew he couldn’t stay any longer. Benny dried his hands slowly and went to open it. “Sorry, must have slipped the lock by accident.”

“Yeah, sure you ain’t suckin’ a dick in here?” the man pushed past him and strolled to the urinal.

He froze against the doorjamb, feeling Dean's’ heart speed up and his temper surge. His right arm burned, flaring in tandem with his anger. It was like his bloodlust but hotter, burning bright in the corner of his mind, refusing to fade. It didn't settle down and gnaw at his guts—it slammed into him headlong and boiled his eyeballs.

Benny staggered away from the bathroom and straight out the front door of the bar right quickly, praying that nobody would stand in his way. He had no idea what he would find himself doing, but he knew he couldn’t call it a fair fight. There was a wound inside Dean’s elbow, and he realized that it was throbbing with his disorienting heartbeat.

The parking lot was sparse and cooled by a gentle breeze, so Benny took deep breaths, let his legs slow down; his eyes scanned the lot until he saw the Impala. He listed towards it and put his hand on the hood, finding it just slightly warm. He leaned on her fender and started to go through his pockets again, looking through Dean’s wallet for a clue. He picked up the cell phone and pushed the only button until it turned on, only to be foiled by a numerical passcode on the giant screen.

He found a key in his pocket that wasn’t attached to the impala’s set, and the keyring had a yellow plastic tab on it with the number six on one side, and the other read “All Tucked Inn” .

It matched the motel that stretched out to the right of the bar. Maybe Sam was around somewhere, although he wasn’t sure what he’d say to Dean’s brother about this predicament.

He walked slowly to the door of the motel room and paused, key in hand, and knocked. The room’s window was dark, and after a few seconds without any movement, he unlocked it and walked in.

Dean’s pack was on the sole motel bed, and a bottle of whiskey was sitting on the small table near the bathroom door. Benny considered the bottle and touched it, then moved through the garishly decorated room and let the door swing closed behind him.

He took out the phone again and stared at the passcode screen, rapidly becoming so frustrated that he had to put the thing down before he hurled it across the room and into the checker-patterned wallpaper. His right arm ached like it had a seeping infection, so Benny started to pull off the layers to inspect what Dean had done to himself.

The scar he found where he expected stitches and red skin was a little more alarming. It was almost like a number seven, but with a couple other little marks near it. Maybe it was a backwards “F.”

He cracked open Dean’s pack and hesitated, worrying over the intimacy of it all. Dean had gone to a bunch of trouble to get him out of Purgatory just to have him back in any way he could have him. But there were things he’d said, about the impulse to kill, to do violence, that raised quite a few questions. If Dean had been feeling his temper flare the same way Benny had in the bar, and with the phone’s lock screen, then he was truly in far worse shape than he’d been able to see with his own eyes.

Condoms in the top of the bag made him cringe. He couldn’t help wondering what the hell Dean had planned, or where his own body was in all this. Was Dean planning on finding an easy lay at this bar, or was he holding out for someone in particular? Benny tried to put it out of his mind. Hell, maybe he was waiting for him.

There was a leather journal that Benny knew the look of—Dean had said it was his dad’s hunting journal, but the truth of it was that it was Dean’s now, and had been for the last eight years. Probably even more personal than the condoms. He set it on the bed and looked at the brochure sitting by the phone—this was Texas, apparently, so mostly they were advertising gun shops and barbecue joints in Lubbock.

It looked like Dean had overshot Louisiana by a few hundred miles.

Benny kicked off his shoes and socks, but paused with his hands on his belt buckle—he wasn’t about to go undressing the man and feel like a goddamn pervert. He’d sit tight and wait for Sam.

He shut the lights off and climbed into bed with his clothes still on and set his head on the pillow. Dean’s body had to be tired, didn’t it? He didn’t like moving around, and doing anything at all without the hunter’s permission seemed specious at best.

Sleep just didn’t come easy. He closed his eyes and put his hands behind his head, listening to the other occupants of the motel through the thin walls, and no matter how dark and quiet it got, his ears could still pick up their heartbeats, their breathing. He apparently hadn’t left all of his vampiric nature behind. At least he didn’t feel hungry.

He eventually turned on his side to watch the clock’s red numbers tick forward.

When it hit five in the morning, Benny got out and put on a fresh pair of socks and slipped his shoes back on. The sun was lightening the blinds, and he wanted to try something. Maybe if he was inside of Dean, he could see the dawn without having to turn away from it and hide.

The parking lot was silent and the nearby highway was just the same. It was as if he was the last person alive on the planet, and that made him smile. The last time he was up in the world, the constant bustle, even in rural areas, could make him more nervous than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

The sky lit up red with high clouds and turned a mellow orange within minutes, and then a hint, just a sliver of piercing gold pouring over the far horizon. It was arrestingly beautiful, and it was the last thing he saw.

Chapter Text

Dean jolted awake with his eyes already open, on his feet, standing in front of the Impala in the early sunrise. He shivered and felt for his missing flannel and coat, goosebumps on his arms.

It was inexplicably morning, and the last thing he’d planned on was being awake at this time, much less in such an eerie predicament. There wasn’t a drunken fog in his memory, or the watery sickness of a hangover brought on by a blackout: He felt as sober as a judge.

He gulped and looked in his pockets for his keys, knocking out the motel key while he found the ones for the car. What else had he done last night?

Dean checked through the car for his bag and found the trunk undisturbed- his bag was probably still in the room, then. He picked up a flask of holy water from the glove box and took a hasty swig just to check. It tasted metallic but didn’t make his tongue sizzle. He hated to admit how afraid he was that it would burn his lips and blister his gums.

Back to the motel; the lights were off and the curtains drawn. The bed had been slept in and his bag was neatly on the chair at the table where his untouched bottle of whiskey still sat. It was just a room, and he felt like it was lying to him.

The door creaked as it shut behind him and startled him into action. His phone was on the table, battery nearly dead. Nothing new in his call history or his texts except one from Sam which read, simply “Please just tell me what’s going on.”  

It twisted his guts a little to put the phone down without replying, and just get his power cable out and plug it in. The flannel and jacket were draped over a chair, and John’s journal was by the bedside; and while there didn’t seem to have been anything untoward happening in the room, it was more than evident that something strange was going on. He thought about it as he brushed his teeth, even going so far as to smell the unused towels in the bathroom to make sure they hadn’t absorbed the odor of sulphur.

Nothing but febreze and some cheap powdered laundry soap.

Well, maybe he could call Sam and try to … hell, he didn’t know. Put him at ease. At least one of them didn’t have be going crazy worrying about shit they couldn’t do anything about.

And since it was technically morning, he knew Sam would be awake. He snatched up his phone and called his brother, sitting down on the foot of the bed.

He normally would have felt a little vindicated when he woke Sam up out of a dead sleep, but when he heard him groan as he answered, Dean wished he’d called an hour or two later.

“Rise and shine, Sammy.”

“Dean? What?”

“Yeah, sorry. Bit early for you on a Wednesday, I understand.”

“Where are you, Dean? Are you ok?”

“I’m fine, look. I just couldn’t stick around, you know… helping people… it’s my therapy, man.”

“Some people just see a therapist,” Sam added crankily.

“Yeah, well… I need to hunt, Sam. And… I know that you’re doing what helps you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He sounded offended when Dean hadn’t meant anything by it.

“Nothing. You’re good at research. You like it. And I can’t… If I never see another book again, it’ll be too soon.”

“What hunt are you on?”

He hadn’t been prepared for Sam to change the subject so quickly. “Um, werewolf in Oklahoma. Or a rugaru, maybe. I’m packed for either.”

“Updates every four hours. At a minimum.”

“Bitch. I sleep. Gimmie eight.” He rubbed the back of his neck and laid down on the bed, feeling his spine ache as it relaxed a little.

“Dean, we both know you’re not asleep for most of that. Six.”

He had to admit he was normally right, although he couldn’t explain what happened last night to cause his blackout. But he wasn’t about to go blabbing about that to Sammy and invite a tidal wave of questions. Dean gulped. “Yeah, okay. I’ll call with an update at noon.”

“Great,” replied Sam, with little enthusiasm.

“Night Sam.” Dean hung up, and dropped the phone next to his head.

---

He checked out a couple of hours later after he’d showered, shaved, and changed his clothes. Once he had some food in him, he might even feel human. He checked out and drove a mile into town until he saw a diner, and brought his laptop in to check out the police blotter and work on research in a corner booth while he ate a pancake stack.

The wave of relief at the blank police blotter from the night before help settle his stomach. He was able to sip his coffee without much of the acidic feeling creeping up his gut.

It wasn’t that he hated research, precisely. It used to be that he teased Sam about how much the kid liked it, but he really only did that because he was so much better than Dean had been at his age. Dean combed through back pages and under-reported bizarre reports, searching for stuff happening in Oklahoma or north Texas. Just as he asked the waitress for another cup of coffee, something about the news articles slotted into place and he remembered an old case from the same town.

Sammy could connect dots that Dean was only starting to see after hours of squinting at the screen. He called him up.

“You’re checking in at four hours, Dean, did you get mixed up?”

“Remember Bobby mentioning a … uh, ‘werewolf dance party’ on I-40?”

“Not even a little bit, nope.”

“Look, I think I’ve found something; could you look up Elk City in Bobby’s old documents?”

“Man, you owe me.”

“It is known, Kahleesi.” Dean grinned and hung up. His hunch was a little weird. Hearts removed and pulped as though they were chewed out, four victims in the same local few blocks. With the locked doors and closed windows, though, signs were pointing to a ghost. Ghost werewolf, thought Dean- that would make a great band name.

“Any more coffee, sweetheart?” The waitress startled the living hell out of Dean and he set his phone down a little harder than he’d intended. She flinched a little and apologized. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Dean slowly pulled his hand back up to above the table’s surface; it had dropped to the butt of his gun. He prayed she didn’t notice, and flashed her a flirty grin. “It’s fine. No more coffee, thanks.”

Dean watched her eyes skitter away from him, to the screen of his laptop, and he quickly closed it. She blinked several times, doubtlessly trying to scrub the pictures from the police files Dean had remotely accessed through a dummy IP.

“I’ll take the check, please.” He started to pack up, trying to look unhurried as he unplugged from under the table and wrapped the cord up.

She was as fast as she could be without running, and soon he turned the keys in Baby’s ignition and lit out for Beckham county.

He really did feel fine, now that he’d had a half-dozen hours of being awake, and he had no conceivable reason for having so many missing hours the night before.

It took a few rings for his brother to pick up at lunch. Sam sounded hushed. “Dean?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Any luck with Bobby’s old paperwork and Elk City?”

“Yeah, um… it looks like there was a problem there and they had to tent the infestation.” There was a sound behind Sam, a woman’s voice- maybe a clerk.

“...you went out?” Dean walked around his car, munching on a couple french fries from his lunch.

“Yeah, we needed groceries. I should say, I needed groceries, since you never stick around long enough to eat anything other than a frozen Hungry-Man dinner.”

“Alright, Samantha. What can you tell me about the infestation of werewolves having a dance party?”

Sam huffed and sounded as if he was walking, maybe getting to somewhere more private. “Crowley calls me Samantha.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Dean fidgeted. “Anyway, what did you get?”

“Bobby had to go there in ‘93. Might have been a large pack, might have even been some kind of convention.”

He paced a little, kicking at a few loose bits of gravel in the parking lot. “Maybe one of them died, somehow managed to become a ghost.”

Sam laughed softly. “Ghost, what?”

“I guess you didn’t get a look at the reports. Locked rooms and werewolf attacks. Four block radius in Elk City, and it ain’t a big town.” Dean leaned on the car.

“What if it’s one of those… purebreds-- you know, the kind that can control the transformation..”

Dean looked around at the flat landscape, rolling his neck a little to crack it as he considered Sam’s words. “Maybe, but locking the door, that’s just weird.”

Sam was obviously deep in his head, thinking. “Not weird. Regretful. And they’re probably not doing it because they’re hungry. Not with that frequency.”

“I know you’re gonna laugh, but I could really use an easy win right now.”

Thankfully, Sam didn’t laugh. He made a little awkward noise like he almost said something, but paused a moment before he committed. “Alright, I’ll take a look and make some calls. Do you want me to head out and help?”

“Nah, it’s okay. I’ve got a handle on it so far, and I might need you to dig up more information. No wi-fi out here.”

“All right, well… call me at dinnertime, yeah?”

“Yeah, Adios.” Dean hung up. He’d need to call him and check in again at 6:30.

It sucked a little bit that this case looked like a real one. He wanted something simple, like a few ghosts or maybe a stray demon- complicated things meant that it would be a while before he could feed the mark.

He hated that he’d started to think about it like an addict needing a fix.  It had only been maybe four days since Purgatory, and already he felt weirdly thirsty.

He didn’t need to think about this right now. But just in case, he went to a hardware store and bought six cinderblocks.

Aside from the low thrumming desire to gut anyone who looked at him funny, his afternoon was just peachy. But that was pretty much what passed for normal. He spent the remainder of the day driving slowly, making his way up into Oklahoma and the tiny town off I-40 that seemed to have a werewolf ghost problem. He planned on suiting up in the morning and making a few inquiries about the murders, and hopefully a town of just over ten thousand wouldn’t have too many secrets.

After another night, if he lost time again, he’d cut the hunt short and head back to the bunker, call Cas, and get himself put out to pasture one way or another.  That was just the way it had to be. The bricks shifted on the floorboards when the Impala’s wheels skated over a bump, a hollow grating sound. Dean sighed and turned up the radio.

Chapter Text

When Benny found himself suddenly in the driver's seat of the speeding Impala, he was startled and jerked the wheel, swerving across an empty lane and then back over for a moment to his own. The car had too much momentum in the back for him to recover with a stomp on the brakes and yanking the wheel back the other way just made her rear end skid out. A horrible creak and then her rear end stopped in a roadside ditch, the front right tire sliding along to a halt down in the gravel too.

Benny let out a breath. “Voila merde.” He wiped his face and pulled at his hair a little, once again startled by the minor differences in Dean’s hands and face. Not to mentioned the panicked heartbeat that kept stuttering on.  

He hadn’t figured that he’d still be inside of Dean. There was a pun or a dirty joke in there somewhere he knew the hunter would appreciate. He adjusted the steering wheel and tried to gently get the Impala to navigate back onto the road. Her back end shuddered a little and just spun the gravel under her wheels with a rough rattle of rocks against the undercarriage, but ultimately she stayed halfway in a ditch.

Benny blinked at the dashboard, jaw clenched shut, trying to get Dean to come back and drive his own damn car. He couldn’t feel him riding along with him in his own body, and only heard Dean’s voice when he spoke his words with the man’s damn mouth.

The sunset, to his left and a little behind him, was distressingly pretty. He wished to God that he could enjoy it.

After a few minutes of just sitting and watching the sky get dark, Benny cut the engine and got out of the car. He walked around her back end, looking regretfully at the gouges in the soft dirt of the roadside. Could have been worse- at least the axle wasn’t broken.

He mentally apologized to Dean and stared at the Impala, still furious with himself despite the fact that the car didn’t seem to be harmed. The mark on his arm burned coppery and simmered.

Benny opened the door to the car and slipped her into neutral, then pushed the wheel to the left, and walked around to her trunk to give the car a push.

There wasn’t any way that Dean could push her out by himself-- not with his human strength and the slope her backside was on. Benny laid his hands on her bumper and put his muscle behind the attempt carefully. He could remember how his knees would ache and his back hurt when he was mortal, and he didn’t want to pass that on to Dean.

He managed to get her back end onto the roadside and out of the ditch, disturbed by the only car that had passed him in the last ten minutes, which honked at him as he straightened up.

That rage flaring up was still there, worming a line of fire up his arm and wiring his jaw into an angry clench.  By the time he was able to sit back down in the car, the offending motorist was almost a speck on the horizon.   

Benny closed his eyes as he started the car up again, and sighed as the music on the radio was just terrible, but he just turned it far down instead of getting angry.

He tried to assess what he knew about where he was with Dean’s body and his car. Sam still wasn’t with him, and Dean’s phone’s lock screen still gave him no answers. It was almost totally dark now, and he could tell that he was pointed Northeast and it wasn’t too chilly yet.

Benny turned on the headlights and almost jumped out of his skin when the cell phone on his front seat began to ring.

He stared at it for a second before shutting the engine off again and picking it up, and poking at the phone icon, which read “Sammy” in white text.

“Hello?” He held it up near his ear. Benny’s last phone had a hinge and a number pad. He wasn’t sure that he was using Dean’s right.

“Hello, Dean? You were supposed to call at six-thirty for check-in.”

Benny blinked. “Oh. Dang, I’m sorry.”

“Okay, well… any progress on your end? Did you make it to Elk City?”

“Don’t think so.”

“... did something happen?”

“Yeah, look, Sam. Can you tell me where you are?”

Sam was silent for a few seconds, and obviously that was the wrong question for his brother to ask. “At the bunker, why?”

Benny gulped. “I need … I’m not even sure where I am right now.”

“Are you drunk? You sound weird.”

He hated how being lost made him feel so vulnerable. “Please come pick me up.”

“Did you kill anyone this time?”

That made Benny’s brain grind to a full stop. There was no way that what Dean had said in Purgatory was a routine thing. “I… Sam, I need to get someplace safe. I’ll… keep on this road, but I can’t figure out how to make the phone work, and… nothing makes sense, goddamnit.”

Sam was much too quiet.

Benny started to question whether or not their phone connection had gone bad. “Sam, are you still there?”

“Who is this and what the hell happened to Dean?”

“...I… Sam, he’s fine--”

The driver’s side window shattered suddenly, made him jump, and hands with sharp nails grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him bodily out of the window in a shower of glittering glass.

Dean's’ phone was knocked out of his hand and then he had a werewolf ripping at his clothing with his teeth, grotesquely twisted mouth snapping near his neck.

Benny grabbed his attacker around his middle and slammed him into the car, hearing the air whoosh out of the monster’s lungs and feeling a slight amount of satisfaction at the startled look on his mostly human face. Benny roared and stomped on his thigh, and drove his fist into the creature’s jaw.

He felt something break and prayed that it wasn’t a bone in Dean’s hand. Benny backed up around the car, patting himself for the knife he knew Dean kept in one of his pockets. There was an idling pickup parked across the road, headlights off. He guessed that this particular werewolf still had his faculties when he decided to attack.

He found a blade in the back of his waistband and went back to stand over his attacker. “I’m huntin’ you today, then.”

The werewolf started to scramble away, more or less crawling across the road. Benny grabbed him by the ankle and plunged the knife into his back, sawing upward, breaking through a rib and twisting out the side.

He wished to god the knife was silver, but a decapitation would have to do. His next cut went right into the neck and pushed between the vertebrae until the body began to twitch instead of struggle.

It was quick work, really, and the thrum of Dean’s heartbeat and the flare of simmering satisfaction brought him back down from the untimely adrenaline rush. His legs trembled a little, in time with his fluttering pulse.

Benny wiped the knife and his hands on a dry patch on the werewolf’s bloody jacket and rolled the body into the ditch, getting it neatly off the road and out of the way of Dean’s car.

He callously tossed the head to the other side of the road. Silver or not, he doubted he could regrow that.

The phone was on the floor of the car by the gas pedal, call disconnected. He was again locked out of the phone, and found that unhelpfully, it would only tell him that it was 7:02pm.

If this was anything like what had happened the last time, Benny was going to be stuck in Dean until the sun came up. He wasn’t about to stay on the side of the road near the idling truck and the werewolf’s body. He started the car and pulled out onto the asphalt, putting immediate distance between him and the scene of the disaster.

---

This had to stop. He didn’t really know where he was headed to. Benny crossed the line into Elk City and parked at a gas station, watching the halogen orange glint off the slick black hood of the Impala. Pulling the phone out again and poking at the sole button on the surface, he brought the screen to life. It still demanded Dean’s passcode-- Benny wasn’t sure that he expected anything different.

He felt oddly hungry. It was of course the ugly feeling of an empty stomach, but it had been roughly eighty years since he’d felt normal hunger, so it took some time to figure it out. He found Dean’s wallet and put his keys in his pocket for safekeeping, and got out of the car. He felt weird letting it out of his sight with the window broken out, but he couldn’t stay tethered inside of the Impala if he was going to get anything to eat.

Inside the gas station, a buzzing fluorescent light illuminated a row of chip packets and chocolate bars. Benny grabbed some corn chips and a bottle of ginger ale from the cooler, and paid with a few crumpled bills instead of the credit card in Dean’s wallet. He knew the hunter’s fondness for stolen American Express, and he’d even used one of his phony cards, but it still wasn’t something he was entirely at ease with. He smiled at the clerk and she seemed flustered, blushing as she handed him change. Sometimes he forgot just how goddamn cute Dean could be.

Benny headed back to the car and ate leaning against the trunk, looking out across the fields. It was awfully flat, and he could hear a swarm of bats out there as they flapped around and screeched and feasted on newly hatched cicadas.

Purgatory and the world had a lot in common, when you were alone. The biggest difference was that the monsters used to be obvious, stripped of their humanity, and now they hid behind ordinary faces.

When Dean had given him the Adios the last time he was topside, he’d almost begged. And that October in Alabama, when it got really difficult, he’d nearly gone completely adrift and brought Purgatory to the mortal world. He ended up drinking from cows, which hardly helped.  

Benny’s hackles went up when cars drove by the gas station. He munched quietly on the Fritos and sipped the ginger ale, marveling at the horribly strong flavors of sweetness and salt.

He knew that Dean had come from Kansas. He would make a break for it, and hope that Sam would call again. He hated that phone. The last time he had been topside, they’d at least had number buttons. And no passcodes.

Benny got back into the car once he’d finished the soda, and headed East, skirting Elk city. He only drove a half-hour or so to get himself out of town, but then he stopped the car again after pulling off on an isolated dirt road. He couldn’t drive Dean’s body to some strange place without knowing where he was even heading to .

He found Dean’s pen and picked up the journal, and looked at the edges of it for a spare scrap of paper or a receipt.

A well-folded piece of hotel stationary fell out and Benny immediately recognized it. It was the letter that he’d written Dean to say goodbye. And Dean had kept it, in his book.

Benny let out a shaky breath and wiped his eyes. He wanted to burn the damn letter, but he figured that the back of it would make some suitable stationary. He swallowed around the lump in his throat and started to write.

Chapter Text

Dean woke sitting up in his car in a completely strange place, with the window down. Dawn again. The keys were in his hand and his father’s journal was on the seat next to him, pen perched in the middle.

Seeing Benny’s letter unfolded under the worn notebook was something of a surprise, and it flipped his stomach a little with the thought that the nightside part of himself, the demon, was rifling through his guilt and loss for a cheap giggle.

Dean went to refold the letter again and found something new on the back. It was unmistakably Benny’s writing, fresh and unworn.

It read, simply, “ Sam is coming and you’ll be fine. Call him and go home. ”   

Dean gulped and started to shake. “What the fuck, Benny.” He couldn’t fathom what the hell was happening, maybe some kind of fucking ghost sickness or possession.

But that would have to be dealt with later, because right now, Dean was so hungry that he wasn’t able to even think about himself as a case . He put the key in the ignition and went to roll up the window. Broken glass crunched and the handle spun freely. He had no earthly idea how that had happened, but it was just another shitty chapter in a year of great big piles of shit.

He had to open the back of the phone where the battery had shaken loose, and then he clicked it back into place and booted it up.

As soon as the phone came alive and got to the home screen, he saw that Sam had called and texted, and it was easy enough to see that the crux of the messages was simply “ What the fuck, Dean. I’m headed to Goat City. ”

He called his brother back, and Sam picked up on the second ring, which was a little odd; Sam was an early riser, but the sky was still pink.

“What’s going on?” Sam already sounded angry. Surprisingly, it sounded like he was driving.

“Calm down, Sammy. I think I have an idea.”

“How do I know it’s really you?”

“…did I answer the phone last night?”

“Yeah, damnit. What the Christ, Dean.”

“It’s Elk City by the way. Not Goat City or whatever you said.”

“Autocorrect. Give me your location.”

“I’m not sure. Hang on.” Dean pulled the phone away from his head and looked at the map on it. He wasn’t that far from Elk City.

What the hell had Benny been doing last night? “Okay, so I’m gonna be in Elk City, I’m gonna find a diner there near the highway. I’ll text you where exactly.”  

Sam started speaking quickly. “ Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis —”

“What? Oh, wow . Sam, really, it’s fine.” He let him finish, rolling his eyes. It would probably help his brother feel better, at least. “You’re headed my way, right?”

Sam sounded reluctant to tell him. “Yes.”

“Good. I’ll explain this shit when I see you.” He hung up the phone and started the Impala.

A half-hour later, Dean slid into the red vinyl seat of a diner, and texted Sam the precise address. He smiled tiredly at the waitress and asked for a cup of coffee and egg and sausage scramble, then waited and looked out the window while the cook fried up his order, and watched his coffee steam.

Sam rolled up in a comically small and obviously stolen Volkswagen Golf, and parked it next to the Impala. Dean sighed internally and gave him a little wave through the glass. His brother looked confused, and hurt, and more than a little angry as he simply stared at him in the diner. Dean referred to this particular bouquet of emotions as “bitchface number four” or “curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal.”

He could practically hear his labored sigh as Sam dragged his hand through his hair and got out of the car with a duffel and headed towards the diner.

Dean waved again as he came in the door, keeping his smile in place, trying to let him know that all was well, considering he’d ditched him without an explanation.

Sam slid into the booth with his bag, pulled out a silver flask, set it on the table, and slid it across towards Dean. This was a double-whammy: A test for shifters, with holy water inside to see if Dean’s mouth would blister and steam.

Dean picked it up and took a sip. It was bitter and metallic. “We should change this out soon, before we give someone tetanus.” He handed it back to Sam.

“Okay.” Sam took a deep breath, then pulled out a bottle of windex and squirted Dean right in the jaw.

Dean clenched his teeth for a moment, shutting his eyes in reflex, and kept them closed as he wiped himself clean with his sleeve. He didn’t need to be angry right now. Sam was just doing his job.

He swallowed and looked at Sam, then down at his coffee, which would no doubt taste of the splattered window cleaner.

The waitress stood at the end of the booth, staring at Sam. Dean licked his lips and regretted it instantly. “Ma'am, you’ll have to excuse my brother. He’s something of a germaphobe.”

She blinked her round eyes as her brain slowly rebooted. “ Oh. Well,  our kitchen’s real clean, sir.”

“Egg white omelette with veggies.” Sam deadpanned. “And coffee. Thanks.”

She shuffled away and the brothers were left to stare at each other, the air steaming with a menacing pre-confrontation vibe. Dean was an expert at knowing when a fight was coming, and an olympic medalist at shifting blame.

Sam opened his mouth and Dean interceded. “I went to Purgatory, Sam.”

His little brother frowned a little and squinted at him. “You said you were going on a research trip. You took that book.”

“Yeah, well… the research wouldn’t have been much good if Benny were dead.”

Sam sat back in the booth as the waitress brought his coffee, her gold and enamel charm bracelet clinking against the cup. She passed on like a tumbleweed, quicker than she needed to.

“That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.” Sam nudged the cup of coffee and took a sip.

“Yeah,” he murmured. Dean’s face shut down a little and he had a hard time putting himself back together. “He didn’t really even want to come back. But I talked him into it.”

“But why now?” Sam asked reluctantly. “Something to do with the mark?”

Dean shook his head. “I… I got whammied pretty hard by that box that Werther built, for the Men of Letters.”

Sam’s eyes fluttered and his cheeks paled. They hadn’t really talked about it, but Sam had scared the shit out of himself that day, it was pretty clear. “Oh,” he said plainly.  

“I saw him. Wasn’t really him, but… It got me thinkin’ about how many good people we’ve let go. How you and I seem to bring each other back lickety split, but somebody like Benny… we just let him lie.”

Sam nodded, looking vaguely guilty.

“I got his soul back up here, same as last time, and went straight for his grave, just like before, too. But the grave was empty.”

“... you buried him, right?”

“Yeah. Same place he came from. Family plot.” Dean looked out the window. “Not even fragments, or clothing scraps. Cleaned out, Sam. Not burnt up.”

Sam pursed his lips in his “thoughtful bitchface,” looked out the window, sun reflecting in his greenish eyes. “Then what?”

“I booked it back to the bunker. I hadn’t really slept in a long time, and I figured maybe we could track down whoever stole the body from there.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? Guy saved Bobby and me. Hell, the only reason you had to send him was because Crowley screwed up the plan.”

Dean nodded, drained and sad. “Yeah, I know. Remember the alarms when I set foot in the Bunker?”

“Of course. It stopped quick enough though, but you were… for a second I thought you’d fallen down the stairs and died.”

“Ha, but it wasn’t Tuesday, so you checked for a pulse and stuck me in bed, right?”

“Not funny.” Sam’s nose wrinkled.

Dean killed his smirk. “Anyway. I thought that the bunker had taken Benny’s soul and just… snuffed it out. I couldn’t feel it in my arm anymore.”

“So you left.”

“I thought I killed my friend. I needed to get away for a while. Just drove.”

Sam pointed a finger across the table. “Doesn’t excuse you being a douche. You could have said something.”

“I wasn’t lookin’ for sympathy, Sam.”

“Well, good, because I’m not dishing it out.”

The waitress brought their food. Dean’s had been under a heat lamp while Sam’s was relatively fresh. At least it hadn’t been on the table when he’d taken a shot of windex to the face. “Thanks,” Dean smiled at her.

“So, what about last night?”

“Well, don’t get ahead, Sammy,” Dean took a bite chewed. “I blacked out at sunset, night before last. It’s just blank.”

Sam’s spine straightened. “Shit, man.”

“I know. I wasn’t even drunk or hungover. But the car was clean, and my clothes were fine… I just figured it was exhaustion and sleepwalking.”

“Nothing happened?”

“Not that I can figure,” Dean shrugged as he sipped his coffee. “Didn’t even change shirts. But the last thing I remember from yesterday was driving, and I woke up a couple of hours ago facing the sunrise on a totally different piece of road. And my damn window’s broken.”

“I called you. You sounded weird.”

“Sam, it’s Benny. His soul isn’t gone. It’s just… hiding out. Or something.”

Sam stared at him and eventually nodded. “Yeah, you were a bit folksy last night.”

“So the good news is I’m not a demon.”

It was the worst possible moment in the conversation for the waitress to be coming along behind him. Dean choked on a piece of egg and washed it down with windex-tasting coffee, nearly gagging. She patiently waited for Dean to put his cup down and refilled it, then moved on without a word, eyes wide and wary.

Sam scoffed when she was out of earshot and leaned on an elbow, combing his fingers through his hair. “I haven’t been able to sleep, Dean. I couldn’t figure out how you’d gone dark again.”

Dean shrugged and sighed. “Let’s head home and get some things figured out.”

“Wasn’t there a case?”

“Yeah, a paper-thin one. Journalist sounded a bit tin-hat, claimed to have been fired over reporting on the weird murders in locked rooms around here. But we can pass it on to Garth.”

“Yeah? What was it?”

Dean chuckled. “My theory? Ghost werewolf.”

Sam snorted. “That’s different.”

Dean stood up and pulled out some bills to leave for their bill. “I’ll drive, you can nap.”

“Guess again, fucker.”

Dean turned left towards the voice to see three men—scratch that, three werewolves—one with a vivid red stripe across his neck and a bloody t-shirt, standing at the door of the diner. In his wake, the skinny cop barely registered until his eyes started to look big and feral.

Sam jerked out of the booth, offering an angel blade for Dean. He pulled out a silver bowie knife for himself.

Dean’s fingers touched the blade and he rolled his head on his shoulders. “Well. To what do I owe this esteemed honor, gentleweres?” He was very amused by that pun; he’d had it in his pocket for some time.

The officer spoke, mouth full of gangly canines yet his words startlingly clear. “Gonna wipe that smile off real quick, son. You cut my boy’s head off last night.”

“Jesus, and you put it back?” Dean looked incredulously at the one with the obvious neck wound.

“We’re putting you boys down, maybe take a to-go box for the rest.” The other fella spoke up. Dean supposed he felt he had to contribute some sort of quip before the bloodbath.

I’ve been having a rough week, let’s hurry this up.” Dean grinned crookedly and the mark throbbed. He regretted doing this in the diner, and maybe the old Dean would have tried to get them outside or back through the kitchens, where civilians were out of the way.

“You fucking dick!” The one covered in blood rasped and lunged forward. He didn’t make it past Dean’s outstretched boot, and actually huffed in surprise when Dean planted his knee squarely in his groin. Werewolf or not, it slowed him down some, and Dean didn’t hesitate to stab him deftly under his shoulderblade and pierce his heart.

In the convoluted game of rock-paper-scissors that hunting could feel like, silver was better than cold iron. The angel blade was better than silver just because the damn thing killed like nobody’s business. The first blade would have paired better, with the feel of a proper sacrifice ripping through him like a wave of serene bliss.

How much he needed that relief frightened the living daylights out of Dean. He closed his eyes for a second as he dropped the dead guy to the floor.

A gun pretty much beat the whole shelf of cutlery that Dean carried on him. Sam clamored over to defend Dean from the dead werewolf’s friends and Dean heard the cop’s .38 hammer cock back.

He dove in front of Sam and charged the cop. Dean didn’t think, and truly, he would have done the same even after careful consideration. Always, first and foremost, protect Sam.

The first bullet popped his shoulder and spun him a little, but the second and third hit far more fatal marks in his chest and belly. Dean savored the burning sting and tingle as his legs quit and he slid to the floor, reflexively grabbing the wound in his chest that hit like a blow from a sledgehammer. Colors faded abruptly from the world, his vision tunneled and blackened around the edges — Dean couldn’t draw breath to scream out the denial that festered on his tongue.

Chapter Text

Sam heard the gun go off twice and realized that they’d shot Dean — everything happened in slow motion, and it felt like he was moving through soup. He ducked his head and reached for his brother’s back. The next bullet went right through Dean and spattered the floor and Sam’s leg with a smattering of blood and shredded jacket.

Those were hollow-point rounds. Sam’s mind wouldn’t stop feeding him information, wouldn’t let him panic like an ordinary person. Good news was that the bullets wouldn’t be able to tear through the countertop — but he and his brother were less than bulletproof.

Dean fell. It tore at the edge of his mind as he dove to the side and evaded the next two shots that splintered the diner’s chrome-wrapped counter: his brother was down. The waitress’s screaming was almost loud enough that he couldn’t hear the blood thudding in his own ears.

He took shelter behind the cash register, and pulled his gun out of the holster in his waistband.

“We better get going, man. This is a bad scene,” the third man remarked. He was probably a werewolf too, just hadn’t popped his claws or fangs. He had stayed behind the cop through the whole confrontation, obviously reluctant to engage.

“Listen to your friend, officer,” Sam spoke through gritted teeth. He slid a silver bullet he’d carried since his last encounter with a shifter into the chamber of his weapon and flicked the safety off. He only had one shot, and the guy was wearing body armor.

The diner bell chimed softly, and then Sam heard Dean’s voice from the floor.

“Y’all don’t have no goddamn idea what you’re messing with.”

Sam peeked around the corner of the register. Dean stood up slowly, listing a little bit, as though dragging himself upright was a herculean effort.

The gun went off three more times rapidly and Sam flinched. He knew there was a couple of possibilities about what was getting off the floor wearing his brother, and it just might be a demon.

He got his answer soon enough — Dean dove into the police officer and ripped his throat open with his teeth.

Sam’s brain stuttered before it kicked in. The last werewolf, who was trying to get his gun cocked, was so distracted by Dean’s throat-biting that Sam was able to level his gun and blow the back of his head across the floor with the singular silver bullet.

The cop under Dean was squirming, struggling to use his strength to throw Dean off.

Sam looked at the patrons of the diner, finding a little strange space of quiet over the revolting slurping noises of the vampire drinking the werewolf’s blood. He felt his throat close at the thought and met the waitress’ eyes. “Get everybody out. You all need to clear the area.”

Once the waitress started to move, the proverbial floodgates opened and the civilians streamed through to the parking lot, a few of them running full-tilt down the road.

“Benny? We need to move.” Sam looked at Dean’s back as he stood near him, stopping just out of arm’s reach in case the vampire turned on him, a pit of nervous energy wouldn’t let him lower his gun.

His brother’s body straightened and he swallowed his fear enough to pull the silver blade out and wait until he had enough room to finally end the werewolf. Even if he was unconscious from blood loss, the only way to be sure was traditional. Sam knelt over the body and stabbed it through the heart quickly.

Dean/Benny reeled back and sat on the floor against the counter, looking out the windows at the sky. He started to wipe his face, trying to clear the blood off. “Sam, I … I think Dean’s gonna pop back any second.”

Sam looked at all the blood on Dean’s shirt, his jacket sleeve, the holes that were still dripping wet and red, and gulped. “Clean up. Spare clothes in the car. Come on.”

He staggered off the floor, clutching at one of the wounds and walking awkwardly. “Sam, there’s a bullet still in me — I mean him.”

That gave him pause. “Do those come out on their own?”

All of Benny’s mannerisms erupted out of his brother as he shoved at the door to the diner and staggered into the parking lot. The sight was just strange and wrong enough that the hair on the backs of Sam’s arms tried to stand up.

Benny shrugged. “Sometimes.” He looked back at Sam, his face went casually blank, and Dean slid back into place like a latch clicking shut.

“Oh goddamn,” Dean whispered and looked at Sam, then at his hands, his clothes, wiping his face and looking at the blood that nearly coated him from head to toe. “Oh shit, Sam, what did I do ?”

Sam took his arm. “It’s not the mark. Come on, I’ll drive.” He hated the fear in his brother’s voice, in addition to the guilt and uncertainty that rolled off Dean in waves.

Dean dug numbly for the keys, mostly finding them by reflex. “He shot me, and I… what happened, Sam? Talk to me!”

He grabbed the keys from Dean and walked him to the car; sitting black and dusty with a busted window. “You got shot. Hit the floor. Benny got back up.”

Dean yanked open the passenger door and slid into the leather bench seat, immediately peeling his jacket off his shoulder and looking at the bullet hole. “I hate when you’re terse.”

“Was that your daily word?” Sam teased but his heart wasn’t in it. He gulped and turned the engine over. He kept listening for sirens.

“I’m glad you’re finding the humor in this situation, Sam. This shit hurts.” Dean grunted and wiped his face with his shirt before peeling off all the layers he was wearing on his upper body. He seemed to consider the fresh marks on his torso before diving into the glove box for the jar of ibuprofen, and popping two in his mouth dry.

The wound on his chest was a small pink divot, like a fresh scar, just slightly hollow. Sam only glanced at it before steering the car onto the road and letting the engine of the Impala open up a little to get them away faster.

If it hadn’t been for Benny, his brother would be a demon again. That was handy, really. Sam gulped as he pondered the situation. “Maybe we should call Cas.”

Dean was using the holy water to clean the blood out of his stubble, and snorted. “Not exactly his area, Sammy. Besides, he’s busy with Claire.”

Sam knew what Castiel was actually doing — supervising Rowena and Charlie as they tried to crack the Book of the Damned — but he’d been keeping that from Dean for a solid week before he took off for Purgatory. Sam pulled onto I-40, calculating that it would take about six hours or so to get them back to the bunker, if he avoided toll roads.

“You’re awfully quiet there, Sam.”

“Sorry, was just thinking of… anything else we can try.”

“Get us home, then we’ll think about the laundry list of shit we can do.”

Chapter Text

At the foot of a gray concrete building, Benny slid back to consciousness. Sam was beside him, driving the Impala slowly towards an opening garage door.

Benny felt for the places on Dean’s chest where he’d been shot, then dropped his hand. He’d have to tell Sam it was him and not his brother, so he tried the direct approach. “Hey, Sam. Sun just set?”

Sam jumped, grit his teeth, and carefully pulled the car into a roomy space in the center of two rows of streamlined cars. “Yeah, it’s going down now.”

Benny blinked and nodded. “Feels weird.”

“Being in someone else’s body will do that. Come on. I need to eat something that doesn’t come in a bag.” Sam picked up his duffel and got out of the car.

Benny picked up Dean’s bag from the floorboard of the backseat, settled it under his arm, and walked after Sam, sparing the other cars in the garage a backwards glance. They seemed current to Benny, which probably meant they were as old as Dean’s grandfather.

If he’d been picking out real estate as a vamp, this windowless place would have been ideal, except for the throbbing headache that was creeping up his brainstem and the faint buzz of an alarm that got louder the further he walked.

He looked around the place, noticing different hallways and rooms that betrayed a sizable building—and no windows. Flashing red lights didn’t seem to add anything to the atmosphere besides the pain crawling up his spine.

Benny had to stop in the hall and hold his head, and while he told himself that it was just for a minute, he ended up leaning bodily against the half-tile hallway and struggling to keep Dean’s body upright.

Sam rounded the corner, coming back towards him with a concerned expression, and of course, all Benny could smell was the blood pumping through his veins.

“Can you turn that off?” Benny bent down and knelt on the tile floor, realizing a little late that he was gripping the weird mark on Dean’s forearm as it pulsed and carved bloody murder into his bones. He looked up at Sam and grimaced, and thankfully, the hunter froze in his tracks a few yards away.

“Benny, shit … stay right there. I’ll shut it down.” Sam left him, turning back and walking hurriedly down the hall.

He wished that the brothers had thought about this—but then again, nobody knew the rules of what part of him was still a vampire and how much of this body was just plain Dean.

The part of Dean that needed air was beating against the inside of his ribs and he took great big heaving breaths, feeling nauseated. The urge to flee ran through him but his legs wouldn’t cooperate, so he whimpered and pressed his forehead to the cold floor.

Benny felt, rather than heard, the alarm lift from him. He was gratefully still alone, and so stood slowly without losing any more dignity. The mark on Dean’s arm throbbed and his mouth tasted like metal, but the nausea was mostly gone, along with the sensation of a pitching sea under his feet. He closed his eyes and leaned on the wall.

It took a minute for Sam to get back to him—this place seemed large for something that was entirely underground, and Sam’s footfalls echoed as he approached. Benny squared his shoulders a little. “Better now,” he rubbed the back of his neck, but quickly stopped at the gritty feeling of dried blood from their encounter back at the diner.

“Okay, well… I bet you want a shower.”

Benny nodded. “Sounds like the thing to do,” he mumbled and picked up Dean’s bag.  

“Yeah, you’re kinda rank. I’ll get dinner going while you wash up.” Sam led him downstairs and to a shower room of green and white tile.

Benny stopped at the threshold and shook his head. “I’ll wait. Dean would… probably like to take care of the mess himself.”

Sam turned around and squinted at him, then crossed his arms. “So you guys aren’t back on good terms, huh?”

“No, it’s not like that. We ain’t on any terms at all right now. I’m stuck inside him, but it’s still his body. Ain’t mine to fool with.”

“So you’re not going to change clothes, shower, or brush his teeth? No matter how bad he needs it?”

Benny frowned a little. “He ain’t mine.”  

Sam shook his head, expression pained. “I know this isn’t something he planned. It’s a goddamn disaster.” Sam threw up his hands. “Do you know how he is about being a mess? About germs?”

Benny had an inkling about it and hesitantly nodded. Dean had tried to keep clean in Purgatory, and his habit of showering was something that Benny had just written off as being a symptom of modern times.

Sam’s phone rang and his eyebrows went up at the sight of the caller ID. He let it continue a moment. “Just take a shower. His room is number eleven, down the hall. Dinner’s in an hour,” he said to Benny, before putting the phone to his head and walking away.

“Hey, Charlie,” Sam said, and Benny walked into the showers, setting Dean’s bag down on a bench.

He tried to filter out the conversation that Sam was having, but his ears were unearthly keen, and he could hear every word of what both parties said.

“ Did you find him? ” a woman was asking, voice shot through with urgency.

“Yeah, in Oklahoma. We’re at the bunker now.”

“ Thank goodness. Okay. I got in touch with Garth, he says he can do some cleanup with local law enforcement.”

“Okay, that’s good. That’s… how’s the book coming?”

“Progress is really crawling. Rowena is driving me crazy. Can we just bring Dean in on this? ”

“No, he’s not gonna cooperate. Just get it done, so we can—”

Benny turned on the shower, and it drowned out the sound of Sam on the phone enough for him to ignore what wasn’t his business. He sighed and started to strip. At every turn he felt more and more like he didn’t belong.

The shower was already steaming so he hurried, took off Dean’s pants and nearly dropped his gun from the back of the waistband. He set it down and stepped out of his trousers, his boxers, and socks, weirdly compelled to avert his eyes.

He didn’t want to think about Dean’s body being under his control. He didn’t want to think that Dean would say yes to just about anything he wanted—it wasn’t fair to lust after Dean’s body, when he wasn’t in control.

In the same breath that Benny took off Dean’s last undershirt, he stepped under the brutally hot water and flinched at the scalding heat.

He fumbled at the taps until it cooled a little and then scrubbed at his hair, combing his blunted nails through the bristled hair at the back of his neck, scraping and rubbing, quickly losing himself in the soothing sensation. Dean’s body felt like home, it felt, if he allowed himself to remember, just the same as it had when Benny had needed a friend and partner.

He stopped suddenly and reached for a washcloth, jaw clenched and set. He wasn’t going to think about the feel of Dean’s skin, or the tension in the muscles of his back, or the scars as he rubbed his hands over them. He wasn’t going to think about how pretty Dean was, pressed against the wall of a tawdry motel shower.

Damnit. Benny opened his eyes and looked down at the traitor between his bowed legs, rudely interested and jutting out in an obscene invitation.

Benny washed it minimally, ignoring how it twitched insistently in his hand. He shut the water off and wrapped himself in a towel, bundled Dean’s things, and walked into Dean’s room without a proper invitation.

The small room was stunted, a dim box lined with weapons, and achingly lonely. He let the door shut behind him and spared a small smile for the record player, a photograph of Dean with Sam years and years ago. There was a hamper, and Benny tossed the bloody clothing in, with a thought that perhaps later he could do the cleaning himself, or burn the shirts at least.

Dean’s purgatory blade was on the wall. He wondered what it represented to Dean, whether he’d had it there to remember his time in purgatory, or if it was waiting, ready if he wanted to pluck it up and hack bloodily at something. Benny didn’t want to think about why his eyes started to sting looking at it.

He wasn’t sure what had changed between him and Dean. They used to shuffle in together like cards. Easy bedfellows, brothers in arms, and vulnerable with each other, open with their feelings. And then the adios.

Benny opened the dresser and looked at the military-style rolled t-shirts before selecting a burgundy one. He thought about it a moment before deciding on a plain red flannel to go with it.

Dean’s dick was still set on interfering with the process of dressing. He was very careful with the pair of jeans he selected, getting them on slowly, working around his boxers. He set Dean’s kit bag down on his bed, still unwilling to rifle through it, and slowly walked through the bunker up to the level that seemed to contain more open rooms, following his nose.

Sam had a pair of plates set across from each other on a white, narrow table in the kitchen. It looked almost as well-equipped as Elizabeth’s restaurant, and whatever Sam was cooking, it smelled divine.

“Is that garlic alfredo?”

“With brussel sprouts. Need to get something nutritious in him, if you don’t mind.”

“You know garlic doesn’t work on vampires, right?”

Sam laughed shallowly. “Yeah. But it works pretty well on brussel sprouts.”

“You put ketchup on your scrambled eggs?”

“Usually just pepper. Dean, on the other hand…” Sam let the statement hang.

“It smells a lot better than my meals usually do. I appreciate it.”

Sam nodded and served them both. “Water ok, or beer? Milk’s gone over.”

“Water’s just fine.” Benny sat slowly, fingers picking at the napkin.

Sam sitting down at the table was an awkward process—he was simply too large for a lot of spaces, but seemed more than used to it.

“Do we just dig in, or—” Benny wasn’t sure if they said grace.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

Benny took a bite and chewed slowly, carefully, a little worried that he could accidentally bite Dean’s tongue or the inside of his cheek. It tasted spectacular, bursting with flavor. “You used bacon, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Look, Dean explained what happened. We’ll figure this out.”

Benny nodded a little and paused instead of taking another bite. “What went wrong?”

“Dean said that he went to get you out of Purgatory.”

“I know this part, Sam. No need to go over it.”

Sam seemed taken aback, but nodded anyway. “He went to dig you up again,  but… someone took your body.”

The mark murmured, not quite intense enough to be audible, but making a low hum inside his elbow. “Someone stole my body out of my grave?”

“That’s what Dean said. He didn’t have any leads, and… I guess he came home to figure out what to do.”

Benny gulped. “How do we get me out of him?”

“Well… without your body, I don’t know.”

Benny frowned a little. “Sam… I’ve thought about this, and whatever you have to do to get me out of him, it’s fine.”

Sam blinked at him, understanding. “Benny, that won’t—that won’t fly well with Dean.”

“I don’t care. It’s gonna disappoint him terribly, but this… this ain’t right. I ain’t supposed to be in his body like this.”

“What if you don’t go back to Purgatory? What if getting you out of him means you’re just… gone?”

“I’m over a hundred years old, Sam. I’m fine with being done.”

Sam put his hands to his forehead and then slowly smoothed back his hair. “That’s not… Dean wouldn’t let this go. Whatever you guys had, it was important. To him, at least.”

He gulped and looked at the plate in front of him. “I’m worried that Dean might do something stupid.”

“Yeah, I get that feeling a lot.” Sam sighed and took a bite of his food.

“What is the thing on his arm, Sam?”

Sam swallowed awkwardly, and looked at Dean’s arm, at the point inside his elbow where the scar was neatly tucked under his shirt. “Dean and I… We don’t really know what it is. But it’s called ‘The Mark of Cain’ and it’s… I can tell you what it makes Dean do.”

“Does it make him a different person?” Benny said it carefully, unsure of the breadth of this curse.

Sam looked away, a flinch crossing his brow. “No, but it… it’s gotten worse. It seems to give him a very short fuse. And I’ve seen him.. I’ve seen him coming down from it. It’s like he’s in a fugue. He’s… he seemed better today. Maybe less hyper-vigilant. I think he was relieved to find he hadn’t killed you.”

Benny’s appetite was shallow, but he had to feed Dean’s body, so he took a bite of eggs. “Can you look into… how to get me back out of him, whether you’ve got my body or not?”

Sam nodded and waved his hand dismissively, then stifled a yawn. “I know it’s not ideal, Benny, but you can help control the mark… you’re sharing it with Dean, so he doesn’t have to… deal with it all the time.”

He stared at Sam for a long minute, until Sam looked at his food. Benny cleared his throat. “Sam, that’s a terrible idea and you know it. If I ‘ get worse ’ it’s not going to be pretty. I might be in Dean’s body, but I’m still a vamp.”  

“Fine. Okay. We’ll just have a backup plan, in case your body doesn’t turn up.” Sam shrugged. “Do you have any ideas who else knew about your grave site?”

Benny frowned and chewed. He thought of the island where he’d killed his maker, and Sorrento, and seen Andrea die. Of the nest, those three knew where he had been, but when he’d been killed, decades before, there had been others. But how many had the will to dig up their old nest-mate for souvenirs? And would he dare risking Sam on a job that could get as bloody and shameful as his sordid past? Benny swallowed. “Get me a pen?”

Sam got up from the table and took a few steps to the counter, fetching a small motel notepad and a stubby golf pencil for Benny.

“Do you know of any nests down there around Louisiana, East Texas, and the like? Maybe not on the water.” Benny picked up the pencil and hesitated, doodled a series of small teardrops up in the top margin.

“When we know about a nest, we get to work on it as soon as we can.”

“These names are fifty, sixty years old.” Benny began to write them out in neat cursive. He swallowed and thought a little, dozens of names in his head. “And if they’re all dead ends, well… just promise me you won’t let this keep happening. Drain me into a ditch if you have to.”

Sam nodded and looked away—if there were a clearer, more beautiful, saintly face for “ about to lie” he hadn’t seen it. “Yeah. I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

The mark on Dean’s arm was growling at him. So Benny wrote out the names of those he knew to be there that night, and those acquaintances he thought might have the tenacity to survive this long. But there was one that he kept for himself. If he stopped to rationalize it, it was because the name was too common, and Sam would never find him.

He thought about how Dean would probably light himself on fire to find the only name that had a chance of bearing fruit. And how Sam was keeping something from Dean that Benny had overheard on a phone conversation.

Sam yawned in a massive, exaggerated gesture.

“I’ll get the dishes, Sam,” Benny said, ending his list and passing the pad across the table.

“Thanks. I need sleep, so I’ll, uh… see you later. TV’s right over there.” He pointed to the cupboard as he stood.

Benny nodded and took a few more bites of his near-cold dinner. His mind was being pulled back into the memories he didn’t want to dwell on, scanning through them for the vaguest snatches of anything that they could use.

His hands moved mechanically over the dishes, scrubbing patiently, taking his time with putting them in the rack.

Of course this whole mess was his fault. Of the names of vamps he’d written down, a few might still be alive and know where his grave was, but only the one he’d left out had the sheer gall to go back and dig up his bones—and frankly, the devotion.

He’d kept the name of the only vampire he’d ever created. Benny felt like putting his fist through the wall.

His keen ears picked up on the bunker’s low thrum, the whistle of the steam hissing through the radiators. Sam’s snoring in his room. He’d sleep heavy, probably past dawn.

Benny hesitated a bit before packing Dean’s bag, more fresh clothes and a couple of guns, a sawn-off and the colt, which he could operate. There wasn’t going to be any way to take this back, and no shelter for him if it went wrong. He scribbled a note, and crammed it into the bag.

In the garage he looked at the Impala. The window was still broken, and more than that, it was clearly Dean’s. It was one thing to walk around in Dean’s skin, and another entirely to steal his car. Besides, it wouldn’t fly under the radar.

The rack of keys was neat, and orderly—pegs next to the garage’s entrance. Benny picked one, the last motorcycle in the row—a Vincent Black Lightning. He tossed the rest of the keys on the floor, and the mark purred just a little at the tiny offering of discord.

This was going to be hard.

Chapter Text

Dean came awake sitting on a motorcycle, pulled over to the side of the road, face feeling chapped and windburned. The sunrise was straight ahead of him, and it smelled like there was a cattle yard somewhere nearby.

It took him a minute to fill in the blanks, to come to the realization that this wasn’t a dream. In the last twelve hours, Benny had taken a shower, changed his clothes, packed a fresh bag, and picked up a motorcycle. But where was Sammy and the car?

“Jesus, Benny, what the hell?” He stood up, thighs aching a little from the seat of the bike, and patted his pockets down for his phone. He didn’t find it until he opened his bag, but there was a folded piece of paper on top of it.

He glanced at the phone first—no messages from Sam, and only five percent of his battery left. Of course Benny wouldn’t really think about how he needed that phone like air. Finding a place to charge it went at the top of his list.

The note tented on top of it had been folded and refolded several times, and he opened it hesitantly.

“ Dean, I’m sorry it’s turning out this way. I ran away from Sam and your home. It… (several words were thoroughly scribbled out here) the Cain’s mark on your right arm — I have a mighty short fuse, and the last thing I want is to hurt your brother.

Also, he’s keeping something secret from you to do with a lady named Charlie and a book, and I don’t think he’s in a hurry to separate us. I needed to get away. I gave him some dummy names from back in the day, and it’ll take him a while to look my old vamp acquaintances up — but I know who it was, and I didn’t give that name to Sam.

I  We’re heading for the Mississippi, need to find a witch that sells vamp blood. It’s a long shot, but it’s something to start with.

I wish I could talk to you about this. You have to find a vamp named Jon Oakes. He used to go by Harvard, back in the early 1950s. All the others that might have had a hankerin’ to dig me up are the kin I met in Purgatory, or died on Prentiss Island.

I’m sorry I took you away from Sam.

Dean flipped the paper over and found it blank. His stomach was tied up in knots and his arm throbbed—this was one of the thinnest cases he’d ever had, he was only able to be conscious when the sun was up, and all he wanted to do was drag himself into a motel and drink until things made sense.

He patted his jacket, found a pocket to tuck the note into. Dean rubbed his face, finding it a bit more scruffy than he liked. Of course Lafitte hadn’t shaved him. He remembered Benny’s wiry hair scraping against his cheekbone, and sagged in the seat, helmeted forehead bent to touch the gauges of the bike.

Hot oil wafted into his nostrils. This bike was over sixty years old, and Dean had cleaned and replaced every seal. He was a decent mechanic, but this was a temperamental British bike. He internally apologized, sat up, and turned the key.

The Lightning’s engine kicked into an easy purr. Dean bit his lip and nudged the kickstand up with his boot, then hit the throttle, steering slowly back onto the road.

It was odd how familiar this stretch of road was to Dean—it took him a mile of driving to start to recognize it, and then the just-so situation of the overpass next to a culvert fired his neurons and he knew he was on highway 60, heading out of Kansas even straighter than the crow could fly. The flat white shield of the roadsign confirmed it a few miles later, and he kept the throttle mellow and flat until he came into a small gas station outside of a little town called Emmott and put his bike next to the pump to get a couple gallons in. The Vincent Black Lightning wasn’t as efficient as a modern bike, but it beat Baby flat out for mpg by leaps and bounds. He would never admit it out loud, but she probably got nearly 35 mpg.

Considering it came from the Men of Letters Garage, he supposed he should be grateful that the bike didn’t run on witch tears or ectoplasm.

The gas tank was full in the time it took for him to check his notifications again, finding nothing besides spam emails and some jackalope sighting down near Taos.

He piloted the bike slowly—he was getting better at it—to the side of the station where he found an outlet next to an ice cooler, and started to dig through his bag for a charger to help his phone out.

John’s journal was in the bottom and he had a sudden hankering to look at Benny’s old letter again. Not the one he’d found this morning, but the one he’d kept from the time… the time when they almost had a thing but set it down .

Dean didn’t like to think about how that ended. How helpless he’d felt, in more ways than one. He bought some snacks and picked up a lightning cable charger and stared at it, comparing the micro usb to the one on the ass-end of his smartphone. Thankfully, they were the same. He paid twenty bucks to the weary cashier and left his few pennies of change in the shallow white cup next to the register, taking his cable and jerky outside.

He sat down behind his bike, back against the wall, and plugged the charger in, plastic casing pried apart in sharp shards next to his bag. He gnawed on a piece of jerky and set the phone down to let the battery get its daily volts.

The letter was folded precisely five times. The first three were by Benny’s hand, done when he left it next to Dean’s head on a shitty motel bed in southern Missouri. The second two were his own hard creases, done out of denial and pain, trying to undo the words by crushing and folding them more.

It was so sentimental to travel with it tucked away in his journal, a time bomb of depression. Maybe he’d kept it to remind himself of exactly how faulty he was, maybe to tell himself to not put his needs on anybody else—he wasn’t sure. He’d wanted so many things from Benny, and Benny had been willing to give him anything he could name, until his goddamn profession got in the way.

Dean hesitantly unfolded the letter. He wondered shallowly if he’d be able to make it through the whole thing this time.

Dean,

Been a long time traveling away from my home, and maybe I’m thinking about it more these days because you feel so right for me, just like that old stretch of acreage where I settled down and tried to make an honest man of myself.

I’m gonna miss you like burning; you should know that this wasn’t an easy decision.

I ain’t a man, and I never will be again, and what I am puts you at risk. I don’t drink humans but I can get awful close when I’m thirsty enough and — Dean, there’s no excuse for what I am. I’m a goddamn monster. You letting me in your bed doesn’t fix that, it just taints you.

I can’t believe how lucky I am to have your faith in me. And your love. It ain’t something I take lightly, or something I’m not grateful for. You are my sunshine.

And here I am, not wounded at all, and you’re on so many painkillers that a bomb could go off and it wouldn’t wake you.

I feel like we shouldn’t have met, truth be told. You’re too good for me, too righteous. You carry so many burdens and what I am shouldn’t be one of them. You gave me something I can’t put a price on — revenge for what happened to Andrea and I, some fifty years ago. And yeah, I wouldn’t have gotten that without you. But I can’t define what happened between us and call it good. You’re a remarkable man, and I’m something else .

More than anythin’, I’m sorry. You deserve better than being left in the lurch. But you’ve got Sam, and I’ve got some things to see to before I find some place to tuck in and wait for the end.

If I were human I’d make an honest man of you. But as it is, I can’t stand to put you at risk.

Dean didn’t quite make the end. He palmed his face, thrown off by the length of his stubble, scrubbing at his eyes as though digging could expel the tears. He folded the letter back together automatically, following the folds without needing to look.

“Okay, yeah,” he muttered to himself. “I’ve got this.” He stuffed the note in his breast pocket next to the fresh note that he’d found, and picked up his phone to search for Jon Oakes.

Apparently Jon Oakes was either a glass blower and ceramicist, or the producer of Drive. Dean wished he’d seen that movie, it had looked good. He doubted that the producer was a vampire. He set the phone down and closed his eyes, wishing he was tired. He certainly should be at least a little bit exhausted, considering the week he had. If the mark wasn’t fuelling him, maybe Benny was.

He could worry about things all day. Maybe it was time to be direct. He picked the phone up again and called Charlie.

She really did cheer him up. And she was a fucking wizard at the computer.

Charlie picked up quickly. “Customer service, this is Charlie.”

He snickered. “Cute. Hey, Charlie.”

“Hey, Dean. How’s it going?”

“Not great, really.”

She audibly took a breath. “So that patented Winchester facade is finally taking a break?”

“Charlie, I know you’ve been talking to Sam.”

“Ah… yeah.”

“So… what’s the plan?”

“The plan?” Charlie sounded nervous. Maybe even scared. He hated hearing it in her voice. She was afraid of him, and it made him want to die.

He gulped and shut his eyes. “Charlie, it’s fine. I know Sam’s got you working on something I didn’t green-light. It’s the mark, isn’t it?”

“Dean, I’m sorry. But yeah, I’m trying to help you. Even if you don’t want it. Maybe especially because you don’t want it.”

Dean grit his teeth and looked out at the road. “I’ve been a total asshole.”

“Hey, c’mon. Don’t do that,” she protested.  “Are you okay? You made it back to the Death Star, right?”

“Yeah. Y’know. Briefly.” Dean cleared his throat. “I gotta ask you to keep this from Sam. I have to find a guy.”

“ Old Charlie would make a crass joke about how you need a man. But new Charlie wouldn’t dream of it.”

Dean rolled his eyes but it did kinda make him smile. “Jon Oakes. Spelled O-A-K-E-S. Also may go by the nickname Harvard. Probably looking pretty good for a mid-century vamp.”

“So he’s a vampire?”

“Yeah, and that’s about all I got.”

“Do you think he produced Drive ? Christina Hendricks looked amazing in that.”

“He probably didn’t, and I haven’t had a chance to see it yet.”

“You know I think that Buster Keaton might have been a vampire?” He was more than content to let her yammer on; he could hear her hitting keys in the background. She maybe clocked in at a couple hundred of words per minute, and could still carry on a conversation.

Dean licked his lips. “You know in the silent era they had to shoot in bright daylight?”

“They also had to wear heavy stage makeup.”

“Damn. Wait, no, he actually aged.” That gave Dean pause. “Look into Keanu Reeves, though.”

Charlie snorted. “Yeah, there’s a theory about him. Okay. I have some hits here—and I’m assuming you want them by distance to your location…”

“That’s a good idea.”

“So, looks like a Jon Oakes had an antiques dealership in the mid-nineties, briefly flirted with message boards and very early Craigslist. Offered up some… looks like nautical memorabilia by the description, but the photo is long gone.”

“Is there a business license with an address to start with?” Dean asked.

“I’m so far ahead I’m practically lapping you. Okay, that address is just the shop, which closed. So that’s a dead end.”

“Text me the address anyway. I’ll just go scout it out.”

“Good idea. It’ll take me at least twenty minutes to find his tax preparer. This is some old paperwork, 1996. Did I mention that I was like… ten years old when this was filed?”

Dean groaned a little, then laughed. “I already feel old as hell, Charlie. You don’t have to rub it in.”

“You’re welcome. Stay safe.”

He smiled and hung up. Less than a minute later, his phone caught an incoming text from Charlie, of a street address in Cairo, Illinois.

He kind of missed the way he used to have to dig for coordinates on a map out of the glove box and find the tiny highway number in a crease of brittle paper. Smartphones made it easier but he supposed that being nostalgic for more complicated things made him an old man.

It looked like Cairo was pinned between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, the last little sliver of Illinois before it slipped into the silt of the tributary. Dean would wait until he had at least half a charge before he took off, and closed his eyes to mentally plan his route, letting his skin soak up the sunshine.

Chapter Text

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Charlie centered on Cairo, Illinois with a laser focus. It wasn’t hard to find a trail of breadcrumbs in a town so small; however, most of the records had never been entered online. Charlie had to extrapolate based upon ancient tax filings and bank records, until she had a link between the old business owned by Jon Oakes, and the current business that took over after Oakes’ antiques shop closed in the late ’90s. The business owner was paying her rent with checks that were made out to J. Oakes. She paused a moment and rubbed her sore eyes before texting Dean the address.

She wondered if Cas could conjure up a latte with two pumps of Hazelnut. That would be amazing.

Charlie cracked her knuckles and tried to relax in the cavernous room—she’d just read something the other day about how the warehouse-workplace-feel in Silicon Valley was destroying productivity and regarded as being much more damaging to the psyche of paranoid, introverted programmers. She could see why this sort of place would make computer science majors crave the cubicle rat maze. Open-plan workspaces were for people who liked to be seen. She slouched in her chair with a soft sigh and easily swooped the login information for the bank that had cashed the checks made out to Oakes. She started looking for adjacent account numbers, or a social number that he might use to file taxes. When she hit a dead end, she set up a matching program for property records. So far, this was much more productive than trying to crack the book of the Damned.

The really hard thing was screening out Rowena’s incessant clucking.

“These two sigils are very close,” the witch ruminated. “Not precisely the same. If you’re not too distracted by Dean and his emergency.”

Charlie glanced over. The related symbols were something she’d spotted the day before, but Rowena had ignored her. “Hmmn, yeah, that’s already entered.”

Rowena huffed. “Oh, any input on the matter?”

“They might be related, but we haven’t got the complete set, so it’s not prudent to speculate.” Charlie hid her eye roll behind her hand and started downloading the entirety of the property records of the county Dean was headed to.

She worked at setting up a subroutine to stack and group duplicates and related entries, because why work hard when you could work smart.

“Suit yourself,” Rowena spoke after a period of silence, apparently settling for trying to distract Charlie from her keyboard.  Bad Charlie would have gagged her days ago.

Castiel walked in from outside, holstering his phone in his pocket. Charlie thought he looked despondent, maybe even despairing. But she didn’t want to talk to him in front of Rowena.

The angel noticed her staring. “What is it? Have you made any progress?”

She shook her head as Rowena interrupted with an impish, “No, of course not.”

Charlie huffed and stood up from her desk, taking Cas by the elbow. “Step into the office?”

“This is a janitorial closet.” Cas opened the door for her.

Charlie waited for him to get all the way into the room before she asked. “Who just called? Was it Dean?”

Cas looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. She could almost imagine the scope of what he had witnessed in his lifetime, and it made her feel like a bacteria in a petri dish. “No,” he said, his low tone making the air tremble. “That was Sam.”

“Ah. Well,” Charlie bit her lip and made a choice; “The thing is, Dean called me.”

“Did he tell you where he was?” The angel’s eyebrows were drawn close together and she wondered if he could read her mind. Probably.

“He’s… headed to Illinois.”

“Charlie, he ran away from home again.”

She gulped. “They literally do that all the time. I do that all the time. You do that all the time.”

Cas rolled his eyes. She had to hand it to him, it looked pretty natural for somebody wearing another dude’s face. “I’m calling Sam right away,” he said. “He’s very concerned.”

“Tell him… I can help.”

“I was assuming you would.” He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I mean, I’ll go with him. Have him pick me up.” Castiel opened his mouth, so she kept on, hoping to persuade him. “Please. I can do a lot of work on the road, and I need to get away from Rowena. She hasn’t given me anything new in a whole day. ”

Castiel nodded.

“Oh god, thank you . I’m about to puncture my own eardrums if this keeps up.”

“I understand completely. Get your things together.” He opened the door with one hand and pulled his phone out of his pocket with his other.

Charlie gave him a quick smile and a maybe socially-awkward hand-wave, and stopped to stare at her desk. Rowena had clearly been prodding at her laptop, since it was now closed and the lock screen indicated a few password attempts.

“Fucking really, Rowena?”

The witch shrugged, now back at her table and busily squinting at a page in that infernal book.

Charlie didn’t look at Rowena again as she packed up, which might have been rude. She honestly didn’t give a heck. When this was over, she’d never have to hear the witch’s name again.

---

Sam pulled up in the Impala, driver’s window down, tense smile plastered across his tired, unshaven face.

“Well, hey there, good lookin.” She walked around to the passenger side and opened the door. There was a parka and a snow hat on the seat. “Sam, we’re not going to Canada, are we?”

“Window’s broken. Gonna be a cold ride.”

“Shit. Okay.” She scooted her laptop onto the floorboard and got in, careful not to step on it—her luggage was unceremoniously dumped in the backseat. Charlie put on the snow hat and Sam watched her; it was weirdly uncomfortable.

After she got the oversized—probably Dean’s—parka on, he finally broke the silence. “Where to, Charlie?”

“Oh. Southern tip of Illinois. Cairo.”  

He nodded curtly and steered onto the road. “There’s an old fort there.”

“Neat. I’m still working on indexing the information I’ve got. And I told Dean I’d call him back when I had a lead for him.”

Sam nodded. “Has he said anything about Benny?”

“Benny? The name’s familiar—I think he came in around the time I stopped reading. It was too weird seeing myself in those books.”

“No kidding,” Sam murmured. “Listen, the thing is… Dean’s possessed by Benny.”

“What… oh man. Didn't they bang?”

Sam didn't laugh, it was more of an awkward hiccuping noise. “Yeah. Benny’s only in control after sundown, He’s still Dean during the day. Unless he gets hurt,” Sam added, lips thin and eyes focused on the bleak horizon.

“So… it's like Ladyhawke ?” Charlie blinked at Sam’s profile. “Is he a vampire at night?

“I don't think he has fangs. I don’t know, I haven’t checked. But get this: Somebody stole Benny’s body. He wants to get put back into it. In the glove box, there's a list of old vampires he gave me that might have stolen it.”

Charlie balanced her laptop on her legs and dug the letter out of the glove box, ignoring the spare handgun under it. She squinted at the neat, old-fashioned cursive. “Half of these are crossed out.”

“Yeah, I cross-checked it. Those are the ones that Bobby's notes said were already dead.”

“John Oakes isn't on here.”

“Who?”

“Did Dean run away, or was it really Benny?” She cracked her computer open and tapped in her password one-handed.

“…not sure. Probably Benny. I was sleeping when he left.”

“He has a few hours on us, Sam, but I’m not sure exactly where he is now.”

“When you call him, can you get him to tell you?”

Charlie nodded. “I can get the tower data and figure out the general area, at least. Benny kept Oakes from you, though.”

Sam’s jaw flexed. “Yep. Sent me on a wild goose chase.”

“Cairo’s right on the Mississippi, at a major tributary at least… could be that this Jon Oakes is one of the vampirates.”

Sam nodded and got onto the freeway, and Charlie paused in her work to put on the ski cap to counter the crisp air whipping her hair around her head.

The compiled database of properties was complete for the last couple decades, and she had a text recognition program working on the PDF files of microfilm from the county records before that. Really, it was simple to work the case since she had access and a name.

“Got something.” She was able to announce after ten minutes.

“Yeah?” Sam had a beanie on. It made him look like the world’s biggest skater.

“He owns a small block of retail, like a cafe and two stores. Maybe less, seems to be mostly vacant.” She squinted at the results. Charlie really needed to see an optometrist in the next month or two, when she got a break. “Wow, this town is cheap. He paid less than a hundred thousand for it.”

Sam scoffed, a smile winking in and out of existence.  “You have to tell me your secrets of WiFi.”

“I use my phone as a hotspot, and I downloaded most of this back at the lab.”

“What else does this guy have, just retail?”

“He may have purchased something else, but it’s either under another name, or the records are so old that they haven’t been digitized.”

“Got it. Missed you, Charlie.”

She might have blushed—she pulled the collar of her coat up. “I missed you too, Sam. You would have loved Europe.”

“When this is over, we have to look through your vacation photos.”

It was an odd thing to say, since she wasn’t really on vacation, but he sounded sincere. She brought up the satellite image of Cairo and zipped her coat up higher.

Chapter Text

This town was on the skids, and not in a small way. Dean let the bike purr between his thighs as he leaned into slow turns throughout the downtown area of Cairo, admiring the strips of brick and wood buildings, taking note of how many were boarded up against incursions. Too many– the place felt sour and hollowed out, like Detroit but without the people.

According to Charlie, John Oakes owned one of the strips of retail buildings, including the rusty signs, broken bike racks, and defunct facades of more than half a dozen businesses. There was a boarded-up antiques shop that was probably the business that Oakes had had a hand in himself, but a peek around the plywood covering the main window showed a lonely, empty room. Dean might circle back if nothing else was fruitful.

Out of six shops in the row, only one was open for business, lights on inside. It had a neon-lit hand in the window with an eight-pointed star in its center, made by two red squares intersecting. Green letters around it said that palm-reading was available, and it reeked of patchouli even out on the sidewalk.

There was always an instinct about a place– Sam told him that it was his subconscious reading the room, interpreting what his senses took in that his brain couldn’t consciously process. He pushed aside a peeling door in the entryway with his elbow and blinked, hesitating, helmet under his arm. A bell chimed from over his head.

“Hello,” a voice came from somewhere back in the cluttered, nightmarishly garish shop.

“Hey.” He looked at the bell above the door jam, found that the clapper was a tooth, and looked away, letting the door swing shut. He tried to tell himself that it was a deer tooth, or maybe a coyote. It was just the same size as an adult molar.

“I don’t get a lot of new people in this neck of the woods.” She was swimming in layers, a real earth-mother type in swatches of wine-colored tunics and robes. She was wearing more than four necklaces, charms clacking softly against large stone beads.

“Yeah, this place is kinda a dead end.” Dean looked at the shelves of tarot cards, the rack of pentacle and charm necklaces, even seeing the symbol of the Men-of-Letters amongst them, but with a curious little addition in the center. That made him a little more cautious– maybe there was some vestiges of Henry’s old buddies around in this neck of the woods. “I like this one,” he gestured to the case.

She shuffled over, hand delving for a set of keys– the tiny silver one for the case, but there were several others that were old, ornate chest keys, and even a clock winder.

“That symbol is called Thelema. You’ve seen it?”

“It’s interesting,” Dean stayed noncommittal and flashed her a wink. “What’s that little clover in the middle mean?”

She ignored him and tilted her head, fine salt-and pepper curls cascading around her shoulders. “There’s something about you,” she murmured.

Oh good, Dean thought. The old cold read. “Oh?” He tried to look like a schlub, and keep the incredulous look off his face.

“What do you know about Aleister Crowley?”

Dean debated briefly– if he looked like he knew a couple things, maybe she’d spill. “Early 19th century occultist? Golden Dawn, right?” He winked.

She raised her head imperiously. She reminded him of Meg, but older, slower. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

“Cool,” Dean said. His eyes glanced over the pendants again, but then caught on one of her many ornamental rings, one which featured a silver-clad finger-bone. His brain took a moment to catch up with his vision, but that was clearly a human metacarpal, probably the pointer finger. He licked his lips and turned on his smile again.

“You’ve heard that before,” she replied, knowingly.

Dean  knew his poker face was shit– since the mark hit, he’d dropped most of the polite pretenses that used to be survival reflexes. “Jon Oakes said it to me once. Ring any bells?”

He could practically see the chill passing over her. Maybe she’d take it as a threat. Good.

“More like Crowley’s Book of Lies,” she deflected with a strange laugh. The keys vanished from her hand, clunkily pushed into a pocket in the folds of her robes. “I have several of his published works, including the unabridged, with margin doodles, if you’re interested…” she trailed off and backed towards the office.

He gestured at the glass case. “Well yeah, but what about the charm?”

She vanished around the corner of a tall cabinet and Dean swore under his breath. The place was so crowded and busy that he wouldn’t be able to track anything unless it was wearing a reflective vest. He tried to casually stalk after her. The jumbled piles of books, bottles of strange ingredients, and hanging chotchkies made of shiny pieces of glass and copper all made the space inside the shop oppressively dense and distracting. Dean grit his teeth, and put his hand on his gun.

He hated witches. Couldn’t trust anything in their spaces- doorways could be smeared with lamb’s blood, thresholds laden with hexes. “Hello?” he glanced to the phone behind the desk– there were lights next to the receiver for other lines, and one of them was lit with a glowing red indicator.

The witch was on the phone, and Dean could hear the faint murmur of her talking over the line; no idea what she was saying back there in the office, but he had to push forward and get to her now before she called for help.

“–asking for you, yes.” She paled and dropped the phone on the desk, line left open.

“So you do know him,” Dean growled as he shut the door behind him.

Her lips thinned and she fixed him with a glare. “This area is private. And you’re no longer welcome in this building.”

His face twisted in a snarl, mark pulsing up the inside of his elbow. “Tell me where Oakes is.”

“No.” She opened her desk drawer with calm, precise movements.

Dean pulled out his knife and tried to move forward to corner the witch. His legs stayed put. He had a moment of blind panic, where his defiance and belief in his own invulnerability immediately vanished in confusion.

Then he felt it– clawing at his guts from the inside. She’d nailed him with a spell.

He took in a few deep breaths of air and licked his lips. “How long do you think it’ll take me to gut you after this wears off?”

“Wears off? It’s fatal, unless you choose to leave.”

His eyeballs ached and the sensation of having his insides picked over by sharp nails wasn’t getting any better. His voice was straining. “Not happening. I’m not going. Where’s Oakes?”   

She ignored the question and sat down in her chair, picking up a crystal set in a handle, like a magnifying glass. “You’re carrying another soul, aren’t you?”

Dean groaned shallowly, knuckles creaking around the knife. He managed to move his leg forward a little bit. Blood dribbled from his nose, down his upper lip and onto his shirt. This should break him wide open, but it couldn’t, not with the mark on his side. Even Rowena’s spell had slid off of him like water off a duck, and it only took a few seconds. This wasn’t anything.

She looked at him through the quartz, studying his face as he contorted in pain. “Of course, how else would you not be dead already? You must be a very powerful demon. What a lovely vessel you possess. I don’t suppose you’d tell me your name?”

“You really have no idea what you’ve stepped in–” Dean croaked out and managed to move his other foot, still feet away from her. The feeling of scratching under his skin was ebbing, fading away under the throbbing of the mark. Dean’s heart thundered in his ears.

She sat up slightly. “Don’t worry. When they’re both burnt out this will all be over.”

Dean felt a little stab of worry, then. The mark was telling him that getting her blood up to his elbows would solve a whole mess of problems, but the thought that Benny’s soul was burning out wouldn’t leave his mind.

He felt a burst of adrenaline as finally, the mark of Cain shook off the spell. Her face straightened and she shot up out of her chair, but Dean jumped over the desk and grabbed her by the neck. He should have said something, just then, before he started carving, but his mouth would only cooperate for an awful snarl.

He reversed the knife in his hand and sliced up the side of her face, and when she shrieked and flinched away, he notched her earlobe and snagged her earring, tearing it off. It clattered as he squeezed her throat tighter, cutting off her screaming. If she’d hurt Benny’s soul, killed it, he’d chase her down all the way to hell.

“You think you burnt out my soul, is that it?” He punched the knife into her forearm and twisted it between the fragile bones, cracking one of them before he yanked it out. He wasn’t amused by the struggling she was doing, or the sounds that she made when he let her breathe.

Dean shook her by the neck, and the mark throbbed, the spilt blood and slow murder satisfying it. A morbid and sanguine tithe that barely managed to appease.

He made a sound that could have been laughter, if he’d never heard himself doing it. “You warned him, didn’t you?” He pulled the knife out and let go of her neck, letting her cries scrape down the insides of his skull. This should bother him. It would bother him, later.

“Y-yes, please don’t kill me!” she managed to choke out behind her ragged sobs.

Dean smiled, knowing it didn’t reach his eyes. “Do you think he’s coming?” He held up the knife between her face and his, seeing how the blood on the hilt and his hand made them appear to be made from the same material.

She breathed unevenly, in an incredible amount of pain, and nodded.

“Good. We’ll see if you die before he gets here.” He heard the words coming out of his mouth and nearly took them back. He should make this a quick death. But if she hurt Benny with that soul-killing spell of hers…

He cut the webbing between the fingers of her left hand. It was weird how quickly hell came back to him, how the effective methods of torture hadn’t left. This was no longer an interrogation– it was punishment; revenge.

Dean checked out mentally while he worked, so much so that he did not hear his phone ring, or hear the chime on the door to the shop minutes later. She had stopped screaming, but his heart was thumping, a deep bass line that took over, soothing, rocking him into a meditative, primitive state.

Something hard hit him in the skull from behind, and he went down, world spinning and eyes buzzing. He saw a pair of patent leather shoes stepping gingerly through all the blood on the floor before he fainted.

Chapter Text

Charlie had her feet on the seat, crossed under her‒ Sam had given her a side-eye when she’d done it, but her boots were off. He sighed and took the exit off the highway.

“The sign said downtown, we should cruise the south end for that bank of storefronts you turned up.”

“I may have an index of residences he owns. Jesus, Sam, this guy is kinda loaded. Is it unethical to steal from a vampire?”

“… probably not.” Sam’s little dark raincloud of pessimism didn’t even crack a smile at her question.

“Okay, wrap south to the Ohio River bypass. That’ll take us to old town.”

Sam drove them down the boulevard past closed businesses, corrugated metal barn-churches, a pharmacy with walkers in the windows, and a four-story post office that told of an earlier era where the county held far more people. Charlie bit her lip and scanned for Dean’s phone, to see if it was pinging a nearby tower.

Nothing. The last time his phone had communicated with a tower was two hours before. It wasn’t a good sign, but this was a dead-end area, and there were spots without coverage. She resigned herself to waiting for Sam to come to the actual location, looking out on the shuttered town. “Is Benny a good fit for Dean?” she glanced at Sam.

He looked out over the wheel, his face a wall. “He thinks so. I’m… listen, it’s not about him being a guy.”

Charlie pursed her lips. Sometimes she was the ambassador of all that was gay . Even with her best friends. “I actually believe you, but I sense a caveat.”

“Benny is… Dean does stupid things for him. His judgment is‒”

“Like when you’re in trouble?”

Sam derailed instantly. “Uh, what?”

“When you’re in trouble, Dean crosses his moral boundaries like he’s playing hopscotch, Sam.”

“We’re family. You know that I’ve done the same for him.”

“Because you love him.”

Sam’s jaw was clenched for a moment. “He’s my brother.”

“I know, that’s what I meant.” Charlie sighed and looked out the window.

They passed more time in silence, until the streets narrowed and the buildings grew older and smaller, pressed together as though land had been at a premium once in this little peninsula. The sun winked out on the horizon between the trees lining the river.

“On the right in half a block,” she closed her laptop. Sam pulled up next to a old black motorcycle and killed the engine.

“That’s from the garage. He’s here.” Sam stuck his gun in his waistband as he stepped out of the Impala.

Charlie didn’t mention her gun that she kept in a shoulder holster in her coat. She stayed behind Sam and paused a moment to check the bike’s motor with her hand‒ it was cold.

Charlie frowned and followed Sam inside, the bell chime weirdly cheerful in the silent shop. It looked like a jumble of hanging chotchkies, self-help books disguised with mysticism, and overpriced jewelry in counter cases. Sam nearly had to turn sideways to pass between some of the tables.

“Hello?” he called, then stood to listen for a few moments as silence answered him.

“It’s been hours, Sam,” she whispered. “Dean might not even be here.” She didn’t like the look of the place. The incense on the counter next to the untouched old register was completely burned down to ash, and it was so crowded with junk that she was worried about needles in this haystack. Or hex bags.

Sam drew his gun. “Okay. Check the front. I’m gonna look at the back. Then we’ll see if there’s a basement.”

Charlie nodded and started scanning shelves and aisles, looking for fingerprints in the dust or things that was askew- well, more askew than the general shop.

She heard Sam swear. It wasn’t loud, but Charlie drew her gun and silently walked around the counter to get to the door of the back room. There was blood smeared on the doorjamb, darkening and nearly dry.

Charlie pushed the door in, seeing a rug on the floor, soaked red, and a black patent shoe sticking out past a desk.

“Charlie, don’t come in here.” Sam was down behind the desk. “You don’t want to see this.”

That was the problem with Sam and Dean. They always assumed that they knew what was best for her. She stepped around the desk and took in the scene. Sam was in the way of most of the torso, but Charlie could see the woman’s still face, her legs and one arm. There was so much blood. It was smeared on the wall above and behind her, on the floor like a red angel. She’d struggled.

“Did… did a vampire do this?” Charlie’s gun pointed at the floor, nearly forgotten.

“I don’t know.” Sam closed the body’s staring eyes and wiped his hand on his pants. Charlie walked in slow, avoiding the puddles and streaks. The body had cuts and scratches and ugly discolorations under her neck, but nothing that looked like a bite.

The little voice in the back of her head told her that good Charlie would be disgusted with the scene. She gulped and ignored Sam’s presence, his worry over her being exposed to this mess.

It had been done with a knife. And it had been painful. Bad Charlie knew.

“Dean did this,” she said numbly.

“The mark did this,” Sam corrected.

Charlie refrained from pacing. “Okay. Dean’s been gone for hours.” Her fingers itched. “This Oakes guy owns too many properties to really narrow down.. Bought most of them on foreclosure.”

“So what?” Sam sighed.

“So I can’t figure out from that list which one he might go to.”

“We need to find Dean, not John Oakes.”

“Do you think Dean walked out of here, Sam? His boots would have been… Coated with blood.”

“He was carried.” Sam put the picture together. “You’re right, he wouldn’t have left his transportation behind.”

Charlie started to pick up books from the desk, ledgers and phone lists. “There’s too many possibilities if I just follow the property angle. Finding the vamp’s actual house is our best bet.”

He nodded, distracted, and went to get a coat from a nearby rack to cover the body with, then locked the front door. Charlie dug into the logs, trying to not think about the smell of death in the room.

The date book on the desk was the most interesting of the bunch. The witch‒ Sue Cotillard by name, had kept something like a diary of calls and visitors in it.

She had attended a solstice party, and the street was scrawled‒ River Cross ave.

Charlie was 90% sure that she’d seen that on the list of properties owned by Oakes. “Holy shit. Well that was easy,” she murmured.

“You found it?”

“Very probable address, yep.” Charlie started to ransack the office. The things in front were jingoistic witchcraft, nothing much of real power. Reassuring tokenism. The books back here, though- there were some real keepers.

“Let’s get moving.” Sam was already heading out the door.

“I’ll hotwire the bike.” She wrapped her arms around all the books, and followed him while balancing the pile nearly as high as her head.

“Who taught you that?”

“Youtube. How do you think I got around in Europe?”

Sam shrugged, face turned away and unreadable. “Right. I’ll follow you.”

Charlie thought he sounded like he wanted to murder someone. She dumped the witch’s books in the back seat with her rucksack and went to work on the bike.

The earth underneath Benny’s boots crunched and gave a little, soft forest ground spongy, smelling of layers on layers of mildewing pine needles. He blinked. Benny was in his own body, and that was worlds more confusing than he could have described.

It felt like Purgatory, maybe. If Purgatory only went fifty yards and ended in swirling clouds, blacker than any fog Benny had ever seen.

Also, Purgatory didn’t have cars . Dean’s Impala shone through the trees, shiny carapace reflecting the pale light. Benny walked towards it, snaking between the trunks. This wasn’t real, but the car was still worth investigating.

Dean’s car looked like it was floating over the soil, it was so shadowed beneath. He laid his hand on the roof tentatively, and Benny’s skin felt chilled by the contact like he was grazing a block of ice.

“Dean, where am I?” He asked the Impala, rhetorically. This wasn’t anywhere. Maybe this was where his soul went when Dean was walking around with him inside his body, but he couldn’t remember ever having been in this place before.

The last thing Benny remembered was the night he stole the motorcycle and lit out from the Winchester’s fortress. And before that, the time when he woke up after that werewolf had shot Dean full of holes. As far back as he searched in his memory, there wasn’t a place like this, that mocked his real past.

“This old husk will have to do,” mumbled a bearded, wavy-haired man that quite suddenly stood near the front grill of the Impala, wearing a wool coat and a gold-buttoned vest.

“Who are you?”

“I am the un-maker and one who will not be bound.” He sighed softly, and hesitated a long moment as though deeply troubled. “The father of murder. I am Cain.”

Benny squinted. Dean carried this man’s sigil on his arm‒ that and his disjointed mannerisms made Benny suspicious, to say the least. “What is this place?”

The man cocked his head and the swirling darkness clouded around his face, obscuring his features and distorting them.

Benny did not receive an immediate answer. It looked as though Cain was listening to something that only he could hear. The man looked at Benny for a moment and rubbed the inside of his elbow, where Dean carried the mark.

It was easy to read his face, because Cain didn’t try to conceal his malice or intentions. He had a blade made of bone in his hand, like something that Benny would have made in Purgatory out of a jaw of one of the bigger beasts. The man moved like something inhuman, feet gliding over the floor of the woods as he closed the distance between them.

Whenever Benny had been hunting after someone, he’d let the cut be felt before he showed his teeth, he’d gone in slick and stealthy and without preamble. He always felt that the truly evil monsters really savored the panicked quarry, hunted the ones who would scream the loudest and longest.

For all the good it did, Benny didn’t wait to see what part of him Cain wanted to cut into‒ he turned and ran.  

A soft, sublime sensation of tender skin underneath the bone of his jaw was what brought Dean around. There was a hand underneath his shirt, cold, crawling up his spine, holding him close to a body at his front.

Dean was in darkness and there was something jamming his mouth wide open-- his arms were full of pins and needles above his head.

“You’re awake.” A man’s voice said near his ear, unfamiliar.

“GHKH HFF!” He thrashed as all the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.He hated not being able to see. He could feel that the room was damp, and smelled of mildewed books. The man near him reeked of sunscreen.

“No, no. I will not be “getting off” as you’ve suggested. Although…” the hand in the small of his back slipped down to the waist of his jeans, turning nails against his skin.

Dean hated how his heart kicked up at that. He jerked a little, just to stop his captor’s fingers from trailing on his skin.

His hands snarled and bit at Dean’s sides, digging in cruelly. Dean yelped through the gag. “You murdered my friend, hunter. And not quickly.”

Dean panted and hung from his wrists, swaying a little. He didn’t make a sound. He thought about the witch.

“Did she know she was going to die?”

Dean’s jaw ached as he bit at the cloth. He didn’t want to think about it. The mark and his head throbbed discordantly.

“Did she beg?”

She had. Dean shook his head in denial.

“Did she give you any information?”

She hadn’t. Dean could have made her tell him that the sun was collapsing, and she would have. He might have wanted it to be an interrogation initially, but the mark took over and he’d let it have what it wanted- Her suffering and pain and death. No questions after it had him in its grasp.

“Why were you asking for me, Mr… Nugent?”

Dean couldn’t help it. He guffawed through the cloth in his mouth, caught off-guard by the un-ironic use of the name on his fake I.D.  

He received a punch to his midsection that cracked his floating rib and spun him by his wrists. Dean yelped but got his feet back under him.

“What’s so funny?”

Still gagged, you asshole, thought Dean. He took a deep breath through his nose and groaned a little.

“Ah yes. How rude of me.” The vampire slowly took the bag off of his head, taking his time. Dean examined his face as it came into view, seeing very little anger, or really any emotion. That might have scared him more than the fact that his interrogator was a vampire. Jon Oakes didn’t give a shit about him, not in the end. To him, Dean was a meal, or a diversion. Oakes yanked the gag off his head and dropped it on the floor.

Dean took a breath, jaw aching.

From what he could see, Oakes was taller than him- maybe as tall as Sam, if he wasn’t wearing heels. His face was narrow and he had long, light-toned wavy hair that hung in his face. Oakes grabbed him by the neck, hand cold and unyielding. “You’ve found me, Nugent. What do you want?”

“I want your fucking head, Oakes.”

The vampire laughed at that, even letting Dean go to sway a little. He walked around his back, pulling at Dean’s hair to make him arch his neck.

“I’m going to kill you, hunter.”

Dean growled. “That’s going to be a mistake.”

Oakes snorted and combed his fingers through his hair in an intimate way that made Dean want to kick and scream, made him brace and bite his tongue, trying not to anticipate being stripped and raped. He tested the cuffs, wishing they were ropes, something he could work with.

Jon Oakes purred in his ear. “I have a score to settle with you, and we’ll get there one way or another. You really should tell me where you heard my name.”

“You kill me, and you’re going to have a much, much bigger problem on your hands.”

“Hollow threats,” the vampire remarked and yanked Dean’s head to the side. His lips ghosted over his carotid artery and he cringed. The mark was throbbing, demanding action.

Dean yelped when Oakes bit him, but this was flirting with death, not the vampire’s supper. He pulled his teeth out of Dean’s neck and sucked softly at the wound, letting it flow down his skin and soak into his shirt.

“I can make this last for months, hunter. I can dine here and there and feed you just enough to let you stay conscious and alive. But perhaps I’ll just invite some friends over and see what a supper you’ll make.”

“You’re bluffing,” Dean quipped. “You don’t have any friends. They’re all dead. I’ve been busy clearing out the midwest for the last decade.”

The vampire laughed and snaked his hand around his chest. Dean found his head freed from his grip and tried to hide his neck wound in his shoulder.

Jon Oakes walked around to his front. “You’re not Nugent… You’re a Winchester, aren’t you?”

“Goddamn, you’re brilliant. No wonder your sire chose you.”

And that was the sore spot. Oakes punched him and spun his torso like a top. Dean kept his teeth clenched so when he landed another hit, he only let out a grunt and a huff of air.

In the course of Dean’s spins as he was pummeled, he managed to see a small window in the below-ground room, no bigger than a shoebox. He hadn’t spotted it before. It was dark outside, the first stars Dean had seen in four or more days.

And Benny wasn’t with him. When Oakes finally finished the beating, he paced the room, watching Dean shake and twitch and sway.

“You don’t want to kill me,” Dean huffed. He was very worried about it being after dark, but it would have to wait.

“Your bravado is tiresome. No matter your pedigree, you are still vincible.”

“I can see why he liked you. I bet he used to wind you up until you dropped those… ten dollar words, and started talking with your real accent.”

Oakes grabbed him by the throat and squeezed- Dean could hear him gnashing his teeth behind his lips. After Dean saw stars and started kicking, he let him go.

“You speak as one remarkably informed.” Oakes walked behind him again- he could probably hear the way that Dean’s heart sped up when he was out of sight.

Dean took a few deep breaths. “His name was Benny.”

Oakes was silent behind him. Dean ran his tongue over his lips, weighing his options. He’d already tipped his hand, but not everything was on the table just yet. “Somebody stole his body from his grave.”

A small, satisfied huff. “Not quite interesting enough to keep you alive, hunter. Although I do wonder who told you about him.”

Dean swallowed, shutting his eyes. “He didn’t talk about himself much. His nest hunted him down and killed him after he settled down with his woman in Louisiana.”

Fingernails down the back of his neck made his hair stand up on end. Oakes asked, pointedly- “Are you the one that stole him from his grave, or the one that returned him to it?”

The mark wouldn’t shut up with Oakes touching him like that. Dean yanked away by centimeters and growled. “Both.”

Oakes spun him with another solid punch to his middle, this one making Dean cry out as it overlapped where he’d been struck before. The vampire grabbed him by the face, boxing him in as he pulled him close, eye to unreadable eye.

Oakes showed his teeth, smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Yes. Very good, Winchester. Every hunter is indeed a hypocrite, isn’t he?”

“And you? You let his master kill him, and turn Andrea?”

Oakes snarled a little, fingernails digging into the meat behind Dean’s ears. “I would not question my loyalty to my sire, if I were you.”

Dean growled back. “That’s how you knew where his body was buried. You were with them.”

Oakes shook him like a rag doll, and Dean’s neck creaked. “What could I do against so many? And after it happened… I could not simply leave him, to be eaten by vultures…”

Dean was dizzy, and at some point he’d bitten his cheek and his mouth tasted of blood. He swallowed it down. “Couldn’t stand up for the guy, so you buried him instead. I bet you Benny’s favorite, before Andrea.”

“It’s been many years since I’ve killed anyone, Winchester. And I don’t think anyone has asked for it so succinctly.”

“Do I win a prize?” The sarcasm sounded odd, accompanied by boiling rage in his voice.

“Why, yes. I’m so glad you asked. I’m going to turn you, hunter,” he murmured, and pulled Dean down from the ceiling, and dragged him upstairs for dinner.

Chapter Text

Dean was appalled at the house- he was pulled between stacks of newspapers, banged against a stack of chairs, and through a library stacked triple deep with books of various pedigree, without any sort of evident filing system. It was dark, with candles sporadically placed on flat surfaces, only half of them lit. Framed lithographs and cracked oil paintings leaned together, nearly blocking a disused fireplace.

Dean wished that he could make his brain shut up and find something useful, like a nice serrated knife or a shiny little handcuff key.

Instead, his eyes found a glass case, like an old museum display, stacked with the yellowed bones of a human skeleton. A reliquary. For Benny’s bones. It was surrounded by wilted flowers.

Dean dug his heels in and kicked, sent a pile of books crashing to the floor.

Oakes growled and yanked Dean into the kitchen, where he threw him bodily against the table. Dean stumbled and got back up to his feet, lunging for the butcher block.

His fingers closed around a knife handle and he pulled it, swinging around blind.

Dean had been fighting monsters since he was old enough to hold a gun level. He’d trained every day for these sorts of fights, the kind that couldn’t be anticipated or prepared for. The kind where he’d be handcuffed, using a rusty butcher’s knife that he didn’t have the distance to swing properly.

He didn’t know what sort of past Jon Oakes had, or if he’d even been in a fight before he’d become a vampire. But it was clear that he’d learned from Benny. Oakes dodged quickly out of the way when Dean swept the blade sideways, then crowded in to knock him against the stove.

A gas knob stabbed into his back and Dean roared, got back up to his feet, and lunged again, only to have his wrist wrenched sideways with a decisive crunch.

The knife slid out of his fingers before the pain hit him. “Fuck,” he gasped through clenched teeth. Dean fought dizziness and tried to keep his hand against his chest, backing against a cupboard door. “Fuck you.”

“That part comes later, when you’re more willing.” Oakes crowded close and grabbed Dean’s forearms, jolting the injured joint.

Dean couldn’t breathe when the pain lanced through him. He wanted to throw up, and the mark wanted him to slam his wrist into the vampire’s eye socket until he blinded him. Dean yelled his rage into Oakes’ impassive face and kicked as he was slammed into the counter and sideways onto the floor.

His body hurt so much that he was nauseous. He felt like if he did throw up, it would be the dark sludge that was left of his soul. His wrist was mangled under him, and Dean couldn’t hold back the pained sound he had bottled inside. The demon would wait until his heart stopped to quit, and there was no way to get around the pain and suffering on the way down.

He was bitten before he realized what was happening, and the vampire’s body draped over him was sensuous for a half-second, before he started to fight and bucked up against the weight. It didn’t do much good, and every time he managed to push an inch, his effort was immediately countered.

Oakes was toying with him and took his time until Dean was exhausted, and pulled away to sit back next to him. “My maker had… interesting moral flexibilities. Which I suppose he demonstrated when he chose Andrea over the family he had been made into, and those who he created…”

Dean shut his eyes and grit his jaw, trying to will the spinning sensation out of his body. He’d lost a lot of blood, but he’d been through worse--

“I forgave him, you know, after he paid for his mistakes so dearly. I buried him on his mortal family’s land, and when the property finally went on the market, I bought that little piece of acreage. I suppose I’m sentimental.”

The lecture was bad enough. It was like Mr. Rodgers had become an amoral narcissist. He was even wearing a fucking cardigan. Dean wished he had a gun to reach for, or a knife in his belt. He was probably going to die here, and he was unimpressed, to put it mildly.

Oakes continued, not catching Dean’s eyeroll. “My maker had a way about him. He chose his honest moments so oddly. Did you think you knew him well, when you met him?”

Dean could only growl incoherently, too dizzy to figure out where his exit might be. He didn’t sound intimidating, he was too breathy and pained.

Oakes shook him a little, just jarring him enough to get his attention, and repeated the question. “Did you think you knew him well?”  

Dean stammered and aimlessly kicked the kitchen table, sending most of what was strewn across the top tumbling to the floor. “You… you know what? I kinda thought I did.” He sounded hoarse; couldn’t remember if he’d been screaming when John’s teeth were in his neck.

“You brought his body back and buried it in the same place, and for that I am grateful. Without you, I would never have known of his resurrection. My maker is a thing of legend. He is thrice-dead, and has seen more of God’s creation than any other vampire. Let me show you my gratitude.”

He stared along the linoleum as Oakes bit him again, this time the vampire’s gulping was audible, close to his ear. A candle Dean had knocked from the kitchen table, askew against a stack of yellowed paperbacks, blackened their paper as they lit up like a torch.

Dean smiled. Good. This whole place would go up like a tinderbox.

The Vampire stopped drinking a few seconds later, lips dark red as he sat up. “How dare you,” seethed Oakes. A crash resonated through the house, smoke was filling the kitchen, and Dean had to remind himself that the sight of flames licking the ceiling and light fixtures was happening right now , and not in a fever dream.

“Benny?!”

That was Sam’s voice. Dean hiccoughed and latched onto Oakes with his good hand, of course jostling his hurt wrist. He clenched his jaw. He had to keep this monster away from Sammy. With determination, he grabbed and pulled him down by his lapel.

Oakes snarled and sent him rolling, jumping up to his feet as though Dean’s effort was meaningless.

He could hear the crackle and the heat washed over him, and he stayed on his knees.

Sam was shouting and Dean crawled out of the kitchen, between paper stacks whose tallest edges were lost in the smoke. “Sam!” he shouted, barely able to breathe in the smoke.

He could hear a fight, coming from the front of the house. Shots rang out, three in quick succession. He had to get to Sam and help- make sure that Oakes was decapitated and not just filled with holes.

Dean shuffled around a stack of chairs and his hand fell on some fine, curled hair, attached to a cold, motionless and dead scalp of Oakes’ severed head.

Dean could barely see the shadow of the body leaning near the door.

Sam clapped his shoulder and pulled him up. “I got him, are you-- is Dean okay?”

Dean nodded dumbly, watched Sam’s eyes dart over the bites on his neck, the way he held his wrist. He looked like shit, he knew.

Sam tugged him towards the exit. “Come on, the whole place is going to burn.”

Dean nodded dumbly and let himself be led. The dizzy feeling was coming back again, crashing the adrenaline and pushing it back in waves.

He was so blind to go after Benny like this, to try to get a fair shake for the man he’d met in purgatory. Who was Dean to mete out justice for monsters? How could he, after so many years as their executioner?

On the porch his knees locked and he wavered. Charlie was so close that he could see the whites of her eyes as she clamored over to help. She hesitated, hand hovering near his side.

“Charlie,” he wanted to put on a smile and say something cocky like usual, but she was just so genuinely concerned that he couldn’t manage. It was weird that people caring for him was so overwhelming, made him feel weaker than anything else. “Uh… hey.”

Sam took him by the elbow and started pulling him to the car. He closed his eyes and let Sam steer him down the drive, back warmed by the blaze. He couldn’t stop thinking about Benny. This was it. Dean pulled away, pain jarring up his arm.

Sam held up his palms. “Benny, come on, we gotta get out of here.” Sam and Charlie were both looking at him, maybe a little scared, prepared for him to lash out with his cuffed hands.

“Sam, I’m not… I’m not him right now. Just Dean.” He licked his lips and felt his face twitch. He willed his eyes to stop watering.   

Sam’s eyebrows signaled disbelief, and shock, and maybe a flicker of relief. Dean didn’t want to speculate about that third thing. He had to do something before it was too late.

He turned and sprinted back to the house, darting through the front entryway and face-first into a wall of black billowing smoke.

Dean hit the floor with his knees and scrambled through the stacks- it wasn’t quite blazing in this room yet, but it was hot, and stifling, the way hell was supposed be, the place he thought he was headed to- long ago, when the hounds were after him.

He was worried that Sam would follow him. He tried to keep his injured wrist from banging against the floor, but crawling in handcuffs wasn’t really possible without both hands being involved. He could either breathe on the floor and put weight on it, or stagger through thick smoke and heat and fill his lungs with soot.

He heard Charlie screaming behind him and the mark stabbed up his arm and behind his eyes. He wasn’t sure why it seemed so impartial to some sorts of pain, and then erupted when those he loved were in jeopardy. He coughed and stumbled over Oakes’s head, kicking it with his knee for good measure.

He thumped headlong into the credenza with the reliquary on top and stood long enough to pick it up by trapping it between his good arm and his body, then pulled it back to the floor and began to scoot backwards slowly, on his back. He held his breath with marginal success, the smoke stung his eyes and made him blind.

Again, Sam saved him. His brother’s hand found his shoulder and clutched his jacket, and pulled him hard backwards, coughing the entire time. Dean could barely hear the sound over the crackle in the house, and the glass of the case was hot through his coat, the bones rattling inside.

Dean realized that he was seeing stars in the smoke. He groaned and took in a gulp of air, immediately regretting it. His coughing shook his whole chest.

He could never apologize to Sam enough for dragging him into this whole mess, making him drag him back out, and for running away half-cocked so many times. He clutched the box and pushed with his legs to help.

The air outside was like ice over his face and neck and he choked on it, lungs still spasming from the smoke in them. He wheezed. “Sam, Sammy, I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry.” He clutched the case with his good hand and wept.

Sam and Charlie both helped him to his feet and led him to the car while he trembled and shook; but most importantly, Dean held onto the case.

Chapter Text

Sam’s lungs felt crispy, and he broke into coughing fits now and then that burned awfully, but he was having a better time with the smoke inhalation than Dean, who was strewn across the back seat with that fucking box, wheezing, and his neck still seeping blood.

When the impala reached the end of the long, dirt driveway, Sam threw back the first aid kit to his brother. “Patch your neck. I’ll pull over in a few miles once we get away from here.”

Dean wheezed and gave him a weary thumbs-up in the rear view mirror. Charlie was behind them on the motorbike, he could hear the motor just above the sound of the Impala’s V8. Faintly, he could hear the sirens of fire trucks rolling to these outskirts.

Sam pulled onto the highway and set his jaw, nearly flooring it until he saw the next rest stop, where he pulled in and stopped far, far away from other cars.

Dean sat up in the back seat, resembling a giant marionette with his head lolling. “Give me a knife, Sam. I want to get this case open.”

Sam shut his eyes. “We can do that at the bunker, Dean. Just rest,” Sam wanted to sleep, knew he had to find a motel, and call Cas. Maybe he shouldn’t get his brother out of the handcuffs. It was a tempting but horrible thought. He tossed Dean a set of keys, heard him grumble and wince as he got the handcuff he hadn’t managed to pick off of his wrist.  

Charlie parked her bike next to the car and dismounted. Dean’s helmet was a little too big for her head, but her hair was still dragged askew.

She looked at Dean through the window and bit her lip- she wasn’t quite one of them, didn’t know how to keep things off her face when they bit her deep.

“Let me stitch your neck, we’ll get to a motel soon,” Sam got out of the car and opened the back door.

Dean had a hand on the case of bones, seeming territorial, but he was also holding gauze to his neck, and his eyes were glassy. At least he’d gotten the cuffs off.

Charlie leaned in with a flashlight and shone it on his neck, over Sam’s shoulder. Dean looked at the light and flinched, but ultimately stayed where he was. “I’m fine. Don’t need stitches.”

He tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice, but talking to his brother wasn’t unlike dealing with a petulant teenager, sometimes. “Let me see, Dean.”

Dean mumbled something under his breath, closing his eyes. Sam pushed his hand out of the way and got a good look at his neck, where the blood was trying to make the cotton bandage stick to the skin.

Sam sighed, making an educated guess. “I’m just gonna tape this shut.”

Charlie was clearly looking. “He bit you what… three times? Holy shit.”

Dean’s jaw set for a moment and he glanced down at the box. “I’m fine, Charlie.”

She made a little noise and continued to hold the light steady while Sam worked. He’d call Cas as soon as they landed in a motel, get him to come and heal his brother.  

Oakes had bitten his brother more than once. He had clearly decided not to kill him, or to prolong it as long as possible- was this about Dean, or was it because of Benny’s phantom presence?

Why wasn’t Benny sitting here in the car, wearing his brother’s skin? Sam was worrying over the question, swallowing his anxiety as he patiently taped his neck. “What happened, Dean?”

Dean pursed his lips and shut his eyes, surely recalling what he was going to withhold with perfect clarity. “Oakes got the drop on me. Woke up in his basement, and I… I don’t know what happened to Benny but I think– I think the witch, ah… She did something. Hit me with a spell.”

“Is this him?” Sam nodded to the glass box, full of bones, a couple human femur bones just able to fit. There was still dirt clinging to the joints, places where tendons would attach.  

“I… I don’t know for sure, but it better be. It has to be. Oakes dug him up again.” Dean rubbed his face. “He knew he’d been brought back. Called him thrice-dead, does that mean anything?”

Charlie spoke up. “I’ll look into it. We’ll be back to the bunker tomorrow.”

Sam nodded. “She’s right. We’ve got time. Let’s just get moving.” He sat up and patted Dean’s leg. “You can sleep in the car for now, I’ll get us a couple rooms in the next town.”

Dean nodded and looked down at the case. “You got it.”

It was like that had let the air out of Dean. His brother laid his head back and looked out the window, eyes glinting reflections of passing cars instead of being closed, resting.

Sam wanted to ask him more than a couple questions, but it wasn’t the time. Maybe it wouldn’t ever be. He steered the car into a cheap periwinkle motel with yellow and red neon here and there, where it wasn’t shattered out of the signs, and killed the engine.  “You gonna stay in the car?”

Dean shifted on the seat. “Yeah. You get the room. I’m a goddamn mess.”

Sam nodded and waved to Charlie, who was pulling up next to them on  sputtering bike. As she dismounted, she pulled the helmet off. “Sam, my thighs haven’t hurt like this since I did a semester at Mills College. Also, it’s idling really rough, I think the throttle’s done.”

Sam would have blushed from her first comment if he wasn’t so tired. “Want your own room?”

“Don’t really care, as long as we won’t run out of hot water,” she yawned.

Sam nodded and peeled off his singed and blood-crusted outer layer before walking into the office.

–-

The room they got had two full beds and a small couch, which Sam claimed as his by simply dumping his duffel there.

Charlie helped Dean with the bone box, after a little awkward maneuvering. Dean’s wrist was purplish and swollen.

“I’m gonna get some ice. Dean, you want first shower?”

Dean shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

His brother barely looked at him or Charlie, but not because he was fixated on the damn case- he seemed withdrawn, and embarrassed. Sam sighed and took the small plastic bucket down the row of  rooms until he got to an old-fashioned ice-box that the had to fill by a scoop.

He decided to not worry about the cigarette butt that he could see someone tossed in with the cubes. This wasn’t the kind of place that would do anything about complaints if he made one. He flicked it over his shoulder and trudged back to the room.

“Dean, please,” he heard Charlie say through the window. Sam already had the  room key in his hand.

He popped the door open quick, nearly splintering the frame. Dean looked at him guiltily and closed the case of bones that he’d managed to jimmy open somehow.

“Dean,” Sam sighed. “You’ve got to rest. Just leave it, wait until we get to the bunker.”

Dean’s lips thinned like he was going to argue, but he nodded and looked away.

Sam made Dean an ice pack, managing to do so even while he was trembling with anger. Sam wasn’t even sure why he was pissed, and Dean was in no shape to defend himself from inarticulate angst. He handed him the washcloth with ice in it. “You take first shower.”

Charlie was sitting on her bed, hands folded behind her neck, face tense as she watched Dean disappear into the bathroom with his bag. There was a moment of quiet while the water turned on and the pipes clunked.

Sam deflated, running his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry, Charlie. You get the next shower.” Sam moved the box of bones to the table, looking at them rattle as he set it flat.

“That’s just about the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.” Charlie sighed. “I mean, maybe not the creepiest, but it’s up there.”

“Yeah. Seeing bones out, I’ve gotten over it. But condensed and folded up like this… yeah, it’s weird.” Sam flopped onto the couch.

“That’s Benny.”

Sam shook his head. “Probably… not sure. Dean thinks so– he did get a better look at the inside of the house than I did.”

Charlie took a deep breath. “Yeah… Hey Sam?”

He looked over at her. “What is it?”

“We can be out in the open about the book, right? And Rowena?”

Sam kept his voice low, unsure if his brother might still hear. “Dean might not need to know everything, mostly because I’m not sure what’ll make him fly off the handle.”

“Yeah. We should get him home. Is it too early to suggest a padded cell?”

Sam smirked, more for her benefit than his own. “It’s crossed my mind. Listen, I’m gonna get Cas on the phone, have him meet us at the bunker tomorrow.”

She nodded and he reluctantly got off the couch, stretching and feeling his shoulder pop in the socket. For his part, Sam stepped outside again and leaned on the rail that stretched in front of the rooms, looked up at the stars, and called Cas on his phone.

Chapter Text

Benny fled his pursuer as long as he could, which was a difficult thing to understand. His sense of time was no longer at all reliable, and his feel for the terrain was shifting with every step. The movement out of the corner of his eye never left, and the sounds of Cain crashing irreverently through the woods was constant and uninterrupted.

He turned sharply around a tree trunk and made his stand. Cain’s head was clouded in black smoke as he mounted the rise, feet stomping through dry brush, appearing reckless in his swinging of his toothed blade. Benny rolled backwards and then scrambled back to his feet, trying to read his movements as they telegraphed a coming jab at his midsection. He felt the chill of the air as the strike missed by a hair’s breadth. Cain was no slouch when it came to killing, and Benny was gonna have to give as good as could if he didn’t want to end up rotting in this glade.

If he’d had a moment to prepare himself, he would have searched for a stick to serve as a club or spear. But now, the strategy was to stay alive long enough to have half a plan to deal with his pursuer.

Benny broke away from Cain and sprinted to the edge of shadow he saw past the trees. It was his last resort, to seek shelter in what appeared to be complete darkness, but he figured that if Cain had to use his eyes to hunt him, they’d be on more equal footing in the pitch black.

Cain didn’t need his sight to pursue him with dauntless speed and unerringly found him in the dark, taking him down to the dirt with a hard slice across the back of his thigh that made his leg go cold and numb-- he fell and rolled to his back, arms out to guard against more blows.

It only bought him a few more seconds, and Benny’s jacket was hard to cut, but a slice went through the outside of his elbow. Cain straddled him and forced the blade in under his chin, skidding across his trachea and slitting the skin. No preamble, no speech. Blood dripped into his throat and filled his mouth, and Benny spat it at him until the moment Cain finished sawing through his neck.

Benny blinked, and was at the car again. He laid his hands on the cold hulk and looked around, the same misty facade of purgatory surrounding him. Cain was in front of him again, head clouded in black smoke.

Benny turned and ran again, for all the good it did. Cain followed him, patiently, unrelentingly, and after what felt like hours, brought him down again. Lafitte roared and fought back with everything he had, tearing at his face and kicking his middle, managing to just barely wrench Cain off of him and scramble away. He clutched at a tree branch and spun to strike, breaking it across Cain’s face. It barely stunned the man, and his eyes were black and swirling pools of emptiness.

“You ain’t no man at all. What are you?” Benny picked up another stick to use and scrambled to his feet.

Cain lunged, knife first, and cut into his belly; Benny spun with the impact, falling with him.

Benny ended up impaled on top of him and struggled to dislodge the blade.

“I am the end of all things,” Cain’s voice echoed, and there was a voice underneath, inhumanly smooth and unperturbed.

“What are you?” Benny gasped, lungs caving as the knife thrust upwards. He was bleeding all over Cain. He wouldn’t be able to ask a third time, there was no air left in his lungs.

“Darkness.” Cain pulled the knife out and shoved it up into Benny’s neck, cutting across messily. Benny’s hands scrabbled and clawed at his arm, but couldn’t stop it. Cain severed his head, again.

Benny was next to the Impala, whole and clean.  Things were growing more clear to him now: This was inside Dean, the metaphor the Impala supplied at the center of it more than obvious. Benny wiped his face with his hands and tried the handle, found it locked tight.  Did he do this every time the sun came up, only to lose the memory of it at sunset? He didn’t think so- he had no problem recalling what had just happened, how long he’d been able to stay alive the last time. It was like purgatory, but at the same time, he’d never died in purgatory.

His mind went to finding a weapon. He wouldn’t have enough time to craft one.

Cain’s feet crunched the fallen branches, slowly moving on the periphery of the ring of trees around the car.  Benny kept moving, kept the car between them, and picked up a rock that nearly fit in his fist. It would have to do.

This time, Cain approached around the car slowly, holding his weapon loosely at his side-- although Benny would never be foolish enough to think the man wasn’t threatening.

He pondered giving in and waiting for Cain to kill him again, but he knew once he gave up on surviving, he’d have lost the tenuous foothold he had on existing.

If he didn’t care, there wasn’t a chance he’d survive to make it out of this mess.  Benny glared at Cain defiantly and squared his shoulders.

“What do you want?” He demanded.

“I…” Cain’s face slipped just a little, and the facade became something undeniably inhuman and otherworldly, a serene countenance with black voids for eyes.  It was gone before Benny had a chance to really absorb what he’d seen. “I want the end of all things.”

“You’re inside Dean, too. You aren’t getting anywhere or ending nothin’.”

The voice that responded wasn’t Cain’s at all, but lower, sultry, and utterly calm. “You’ll see. He feeds us. We keep him alive and he… pays a tithe.”

Benny gulped as Cain melted away, leaving a shape that could be vaguely described as a cloud of nothing that brushed the ground, and surged towards him.

“You’ll pay, too,” the voice surrounded him as the darkness washed over his body.  “Everything created will give us what’s due.”

Chapter Text

Dean ached. He was sure that he would have passed out a few times over, but the mark kept him on his feet. He moved slowly in the yellowed motel shower, automatically washing his body with nothing in his head but disdain for its weaknesses and injuries.

The bandage was sloppy so he peeled it off and touched the wounds in his neck— they were shallow, and seeped blood. Dean sighed and worked soap through his hair, maybe savoring the sting when it touched the holes and abrasions in his skin.

He felt so thin these days. Like chipping paint, or bald tires. When he shut off the water and stepped out, he heard the conversation in the room between his brother and Charlie grind to a halt. So Dean took his time getting dry and putting bandages on himself, having the hardest time with his hurt wrist- the bandage felt too tight, and it throbbed, but when he loosened it up it was just an extra sleeve. He thought about how many hunts he’d been on, how often he’d been busted up this badly or worse- and how he’d been fixed so simply, as though nothing had ever happened— as though the pain wasn’t real.

He pulled a t-shirt on with boxers and kicked his bloody clothes into a bag, walked out of the bathroom, looked at his brother and Charlie in turn, and laid down on the bed that was his.

After about half a minute of strange silence, Dean cleared his throat. “Somebody else want the shower, or…”

“Yeah, um. I might fall asleep in there, but it’s my turn,” Charlie’s laugh was nervous, not genuine. She shut the bathroom door.

Sam was still quiet. Dean rolled over, and looked at the clock. It was just after three in the morning, and Sam still seemed like he was simmering. “Sam, something you need to say? Just get it out.”

“No,” his brother replied petulantly. “Can you just sleep?”

“Yeah, okay.” Dean rolled onto his back, moved his arm to a place where he wouldn’t jar his wrist. He looked at the bones on the table, where’d they’d been put while he showered. He hoped it would be all right. It had to be.

He slept and did not dream.

Sam bossed them out of the room at nine, wiped it down for prints, and loaded the car. Dean helped a little, more or less insisting on not being utterly useless.

He pulled a blanket around himself and huddled in the back seat while the wind whipped Charlie’s and Sam’s hair around. He covered the box next to it and laid his head back on the seat while the miles ticked by, trying to be patient, but still worrying over the fact that he hadn’t been Benny last night, he couldn’t feel his soul inside him, and he wasn’t totally sure that the bones he’d rescued from the fire belonged to his friend.

There was a whole stack of books nudging his knee, and now and then Charlie reached back for a fresh one. The chaotic pile covered the cinderblocks that he’d stashed there, and were just high enough of a stack that he could be cross-legged on top of them comfortably. Charlie reached back and he moved his thigh— Dean saw the black leather-bound tome with the embossed medusa’s head go by, and had a flicker of recognition. He almost mentioned that the book was his from the library at the bunker, but thought better of it— if anyone could make heads or tails of the damn thing, it was Charlie.

It was windy as fuck in the Impala. Better to close his eyes and lay his head back, letting the air run whirlwinds through his hair. Dean napped pretty solidly, waking here and there when a commercial came on the radio that broke the constant flow of tunes. He barely looked at Sam in the rear view mirror— Dean had way too much to apologize for.

The bunker was cold and it was the early afternoon by the time that they rolled into the garage and tipped out of the car. Dean took one look at Sam and felt like apologizing again.

He started to fumble at the box of bones, but Cas’ voice straightened his spine and he nearly bumped his head on the roof of the impala.

“Hello Dean.”

Sam spoke first, “Hey, Cas. Glad you’re here.”

“Yeah, hi.” Charlie was smiling broadly.

Dean sighed and leaned into the backseat again to drag out the case of bones. “Hey Cas.”

“... would you like some help?” Cas was hovering.

Dean was shaking his head already when he realized that Cas was staring at his face, searching his expression, looking for the dark corners that he wanted to hide. He turned away from the angel, hoping hollowly that he wouldn’t have to justify or excuse what a mess he was. “Nah, I’m fine,” he intoned, hoping it came across casually.

Cas didn’t keep at him, thankfully. Sam was doing his eyebrow thing at the angel, communicating some kind of subliminal bullshit back and forth.

Benny was tucked under his arm, and his bones rattled a bit as Dean got his bag and limped away from the car, walking slowly through the kitchen that Sam had left in a hurry, past the library where beers sat opened next to manilla envelopes, and a laptop sat dead where it had been left on without being plugged in.

He entered his dusty room, set the bones on his desk with some misgivings, and sat down on the bed to stare at them, absentmindedly prodding his wrist and the bandage that kept it wrapped tight.

He couldn’t feel Benny’s soul inside him; not that he had been able to, when he had been swapping with him every sunset. All of his thoughts, even the ones about eating and unpacking, derailed at the thought that he’d somehow fucked it all up when the witch cast her spell, and burned his friend out. Dean threw his rucksack in the corner near the hamper and went to open the box of bones.

It smelled a little unpleasant, sure, but it wasn’t fresh, and mostly Benny’s skeleton just held the odor of grave dirt. He laid him out on the floor gingerly, hoping for the best when it came to a few of the vertebrae and ribs.

He sat down on his bed and looked at it, biting his lip while unscrewing a bottle of scotch he kept under the bed. Dean took a sip and stared at the skull, and thought about the knives he had within easy reach. It would be easy to open up his wrist and speak the incantation, see if anything worthy squeezed out. He drank a little more.

And then some more. Thrice-dead, Oakes had said.

Dean wondered over the times he had died— the ones he could remember, anyway. His score was three, too.

Sam wanted to have a nap, but he was just too hungry, and while the butter was melting in the pan, he brewed a pot of coffee from muscle memory,  and poured himself a mug without thinking. He made a grilled cheese, because the spinach in the fridge had gone bad while they were out galavanting around.

He really wanted to drug Dean for the week so he could get a decent amount of sleep without being woken up by every tiny little sound.

Castiel had walked into the middle of the kitchen and he’d already said something. Sam jerked, managing to keep his coffee from spilling. He had no idea what his friend had said. “What was that, Cas?”

“Charlie is sleeping. You should too, soon.”

Sam ignored the suggestion. “What did you do with Rowena?”

“I’ll return soon. She might be a witch, but she still sleeps.”

Sam was willing to accept that answer, even if it made him worry a little. “Did you get a look at Dean? I know he didn’t let you heal him, but—”

“He’s not well, but we both know that Dean won’t admit it.”

“Yeah.” He looked at his cup of coffee and bit his lip. He wanted to suggest that Cas just heal him anyways. But that would mean no longer ignoring the fact that Dean wasn’t capable of making his own decisions. That was still a bridge too far.

Cas shrugged. “I’ll try again before I go. Is there anything else you need?”

“Just a solution for the mark,” Sam murmured into his coffee.

“Yes. You should sleep.”

Sam sighed, defeated. “I know.”

Cas stood there for a moment. “Why did he decide to bring Benny back?” he asked, hands at his sides, fidgeting with his pockets.

He stared at his mug. “I think… well, I know why.  But he would say it’s because he wanted to give him a fair shake, or because he couldn’t just sit around waiting.”

“What’s his real answer, Sam?”

“Because he’s in love with Benny, and he wants to have one last fling.”

Cas was quiet for a while after that, and Sam slid his sandwich onto a paper towel and took a bite.

“It would be... selfish to intervene. Wouldn’t it?”

Something in Castiel’s tone caught Sam and made him worry. “What do you mean?”

“Sam… being without my grace was not something that I would willingly repeat, but it— I have a new perspective as a result.”

He blinked. He had thought, for some reason, that an angelic identity would have somehow encompassed the human experience and surpassed it. He hadn’t thought that it would be an entirely different thing.

“We don’t have a lot of time. But this is what Dean wants, what he’s chosen. And you don’t want it.”

That hit harder than it should, and he laughed a little to try to deny it. “I… yeah, you’re right, Cas. It’s a terrible idea. It took him halfway across the damn country, and I couldn’t make him quit. Nothing short of tying him down would stop him.”

“I know, Sam. I feel the same way. But I don’t wish to intervene with his… attachment to Benny.”

“I’m not sure I— Look, Benny is a good guy. Vampire. Whatever.”

Castiel adjusted his tie. “You’re jealous.”

Sam eyeballed the doorway, thankful that neither Charlie nor Dean were lurking there. “No. That’s… um.”

“I mean you’re jealous that he confides in Benny.” The angel raised his hands in a concession. “I didn’t mean what you’re thinking.”

Sam sighed. After a moment with his eyes shut tightly, he flipped his sandwich out of the pan and onto a paper towel.  It was barely done, but he was hungry.

Castiel apparently took his silence as simmering resentment. “I have to say, in my limited experience with Benny, he… is not nearly as bad as I thought he would be.”

“I know. I do. I like Benny. But my ear is open to Dean, I’ll help in any way I can, and he just… it’s like he can’t see me.” Sam sat down heavily and stared at his coffee and grilled cheese.

“Sam, you can’t give your brother what he needs.” Cas sat across from him and put his hands on the table. “It’s not that he doesn’t know that you’re there. But he needs— sex.”

Sam contemplated leaving the room. He felt his jaw set and his teeth creak. “Ah.”

Cas continued, oblivious to his discomfort. “Also, considering Cain’s history, Dean is likely worried that he may murder you.”

That would have to do for a palette cleanser; at least he wasn’t thinking about Benny’s hairy back anymore. Sam nibbled his sandwich.

“If you were killed I don’t think Dean would ever forgive himself. And I would have missed any opportunity to tell you that I… I stopped thinking of you as tainted years and years ago, Sam.”

“Um,” Sam replied intelligently with a mouth half-full of cheese.

“Being mortal forced me to contemplate my own death more than I’d like, and the thought of dying without you knowing was quite upsetting. I’m very grateful that I was brought back after that reaper killed me.”

“That was Gadreel.” Sam regretted saying it as soon as the words left him. Sam couldn’t remember bringing Cas back from the dead after that reaper murdered him, but he remembered scrabbling to unbind Cas’ dead hands and release his unresponding body. His stomach flipped.

Cas stared at him for a full five seconds before standing and leaving with a small nod.

“Shit,” Sam muttered to his grilled cheese.   

Dean was laying down with his bottle leaning on his pillow next to his head, glass cool on his cheek. He was trying to decide if he was better off sleeping some more, or if he should watch a dumb movie to take his mind off things. He was just drunk enough that turning his gaze downward to the skeleton on the floor didn’t make him feel anything at all.

Of course there was a knock at the door. He fumbled the bottle of Glenfiddich away and onto the bedside table without putting the cap back on and it fell over once, but there wasn’t enough left in it to make a mess.

“Come in,” Dean said, hoping to be casual, with a skeleton laying next to his bed.

Castiel opened the door. “I’m sorry I haven’t been… able to help much lately.” His eyes passed over the bones without lingering.

Dean rubbed his forehead. “Don’t start. I know what Sam’s had you doing.”

Castiel froze, hand still on the doorknob. “Dean, you can’t ask me to stand by while… I can’t let you do this to yourself.” He sounded half-disgusted.

“Hey, this is between me, my liver, and nobody else.”

Cas let the door close behind him. “No, Dean.” Cas passed close to the bed, but his eyes were on the bottle on the table. He sighed softly. “If you were an angel, I would warn you of falling.”

Dean groaned and rolled his eyes. “It’s a good thing I’m not, then.”

His expression was pained and it was a long few seconds before he looked at Dean again. “Let me heal your wounds and I’ll go.”

He felt incredibly stupid. “Yeah… okay, I guess.”

Castiel sighed as though he’d thought Dean would offer more resistance. His hand reached down to Dean’s head, and maybe for a half-second, he was tempted to pull away, again afraid of what Cas might see staining his insides.

It didn’t happen. Castiel froze with his hand on Dean’s head and closed his eyes— when he opened them they were slivers of glowing blue, and then Dean  did flinch. His body was healed in that same old way that seemed almost a sacrilege, erasing the pain without touching the memory. At least he was still drunk, so Cas hadn't purified his kidneys and liver.

Cas squinted and searched Dean’s eyes, and then leaned down to touch him again, almost accusingly.

Dean slouched on the bed, waiting for the coming moment when Cas would pull away and pronounce that it was time, and he was too far tainted to continue. He thought about what he’d done to the witch, how far across the line he’d danced in recent months. His mouth was dry and his eyeballs were swimming. “This is it, isn’t it?”

Cas seemed to be lost somewhere behind his eyes, searching. When he finally acknowledged Dean’s question, it was with a distracted little head-shake. “What do you mean, Dean?”

“I’m done. It’s time for you to put me down.” His voice rasped as the angel pulled away.

“That’s not what I saw, Dean. The Mark… and Benny— they’re both there inside you.”

“You saw him?” He sat up.

“I felt his presence. He is not gone, as you feared.”

There was a lump in Dean’s throat. He swallowed it and nodded. “Yeah, so I can…” Dean opened his bedside table and pulled out a knife.

“No, Dean. Not like that,” Cas shook his head as he grabbed his wrist. Like he didn’t trust him— like he needed supervision.

Dean gulped and looked away. “Then what?”

“He’s bound up with the Mark. I have to work at getting him out without—”

“Okay, I get it.” Dean pulled his hand away. “Do your thing.”

But instead of whatever glowing-eyed bullshit Cas was planning, the guy just stood up. “I have to prepare.”

Dean was trying not to get angry at the infuriating angel. “Goddamnit, fine. Fine. I’ll just… I’ll just wait here then.” He realized what he’d said and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He tried, and failed, at not remembering that song from the fucking girl’s school play.

Castiel looked at the bones as he stepped back. “Yes. I’ll be back tomorrow night at the latest, Dean. Just get some rest.”

Dean looked at his hands and nodded. “Okay. Yeah. I got it.”

Cas nodded and closed his door after himself quietly.

Chapter Text

Sam was passed out snoring on top of his covers. Dean just put his eye through the cracked door to his room and then closed it, went down the hall to Charlie’s room. He found her hunched over her laptop, earphones on, covering her mouth to laugh silently at Ren and Stimpy.

He thought about intruding, but backed away before she could feel his presence. Poking through the fridge proved worthless. It was disgraceful, and empty of beer.

Dean made toast and went to the garage to look at the Impala while chewing on the crust first. He had to order her a new window, use the local P.O. box to receive so he wouldn’t have to drive more than seven miles to get it.

He wanted to fix it now. But since he couldn’t, he opened the tools and got to work on the brakes of a 1948 Chevy Sport Coupe with wood sides.  

After four hours of work, he washed up and went to sleep.

He dreamed for the first time in a long few weeks. He was in the bunker, in the kitchen, cooking burgers that wouldn’t stop bleeding on the skillet-top. No matter how browned and flame-scorched the patties were, they still oozed fresh, thick red.

It was on Dean’s palms, too. He wiped them on a towel, but then they were wet again, getting on the spatula, so he turned off the grill and looked down at his shirt. He was full of holes. It didn’t hurt this time, but now everywhere he looked he saw bullet casings, pock-marks up the walls, and gore splattered across the kitchen floor.

Fear set on him like a rope around his neck.

He dropped the spatula on the floor as he ran out to the war room and the library, finding puddles of red and splatters over the chairs.

“Sam?! Charlie?!” He looked into their rooms, finding them wrecked and bloody. There wasn’t a single room that wasn’t thrashed. Breathing was getting difficult, his chest felt tight.

He was jolted out of the nightmare by Sam fumbling at his shoulder. Dean lifted his head from the pillow and gasped cold air. Sam pulled him up to sitting and let him breathe.

“Heard you yelling,” Sam explained. “Even through your pillow.”

Dean nodded, still reeling and checking the room for splatters of red. “I’m fine. I’m okay.”

“Bad one?”

Dean rubbed his face and shook his head. “Not really.” He took a couple deep breaths. “Morning yet?”

Sam stood up, “It’s six-thirty. How come you put the bones out?”

Dean knew he had a dumb look on his face. He just blinked, wondering what he was talking about.

His brother gestured to the floor by his bed. “You put Benny’s skeleton out?”

He was forced to think about how much of a serial killer he looked like, and how even his brother probably thought it was fucking weird. “Um… I just wanted to check… make sure he was all there.”

“Okay. Cas texted me.”

“About what? Last night? I was kinda drunk when he came in… might have said something dumb.” Dean cleared his throat and tried to think about what he’d said. Nothing he wanted to share with Sam.

His brother paced a little. “Yeah, probably. Listen. I’m going on a supply run. He has a plan, though.”

“What is it?”

Sam looked away, dodging his eyes. “I’m not exactly sure. He said he’d be ready tonight, though.”

Dean rubbed his face.

“You gonna sleep some more?” Sam asked.

“Nah. Nah, I’m up.” Dean set his bare feet on the cold floor—it was better than a bucket of ice for waking him all the way. “Want me to cook breakfast?”

“Only after I go get something that isn’t crackers and peanut butter,” he smiled.

Dean nodded “Right. I’ll get laundry started then.”

Sam nodded and left the room. Dean looked at the bones on the floor and felt a little ashamed—he wasn’t exactly sure if he’d have done it while sober—this was too intimate and grisly.

With a muttered apology, he covered Benny with one of his blankets.  

He should feel victorious. Benny’s soul was inside him, his bones were with him, and there was a plan to get him put together.

Dean didn’t mull over why he wasn’t exactly brimming with pride at his accomplishments. He had to make himself busy instead of thinking about the possibility that the moment Benny came back, he could just decide he’d rather be elsewhere.

After all, he had to consider that Benny had made Jon Oakes, and while the gulf of time between them was wide, that would be something he and Benny would have to talk about, and Dean really didn’t know how Benny would react to his creation being dead. Or to Dean thinking that Oakes was an irredeemable, creepy narcissist.

He thought about what it would feel like if Benny picked up and left again this time, prepared himself for that pain. He wouldn’t try to make him stay, he wouldn’t cry. Just adios. And then maybe he’d try not to check the news every day to see if Benny went dark and started killing folks.

He shoved the bleakness down inside him and sorted his laundry, pulling the clothes that had smoke clinging to them out of his kit bag and sorting the piles. The machine chugged on and whirred and agitated.

Sam stuck the cooler in the fridge, just to keep things cold, and then unloaded the groceries. He had already stowed some of the dry goods, the toilet paper, the shampoo, the giant bag of Pixy Stix and Jolt Cola that Charlie had maybe-jokingly demanded. Jolt Cola had stopped being made in 2009, so he’d just gotten her a 12-pack of Red Bull.

He hadn’t gone looking for his brother. He had to trust that he was in the bunker, but even so, his brain was still giving him what-ifs: What if he’d gone on foot, while Sam had the car? What if the sound of the dryer was just a decoy? What if the music and the lights on and the clean dishes were just Charlie trying to earn her keep?

His phone rang in his pocket. After he was able to get his hands free, he saw that it was Cas and answered quickly, just as Dean sauntered into the kitchen. His heart loosened a little.

“Hey, Cas.” He could hear everything on the other end of the line, even the rustle of the angel’s collar. The bunker was impregnable unless your phone was 4G, apparently.

“Sam,” Cas took a deep breath. “Do you remember when I used a syringe to get the remains of Gadreel’s grace out of your vess—body?”

Sam wore a tight smile, and managed to give a “thumbs up” gesture to Dean, while his stomach tied itself into knots. “Yeah, I remember,” he replied lightly.

“The procedure…” he seemed to understand that Sam wasn’t in private. “Will largely be the same. If you like, you can tell Dean about it. Or let him drink today.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“What’s he saying?” Dean spoke up after opening his first beer of the day, barely cold from touching the inside of the refrigerator.

Sam waved his hand a little, kept talking to Cas. “It’s mostly the same, though?”

“It is the same in principle. I’ll be there when Rowena sleeps again. She’s been asking after Charlie.”

“I’ll see what I can do on that front. Charlie doesn’t like her much.”

“Sam.” Castiel’s tone had a grim finality to it. “If her work were not of the utmost importance, I would smite her.”

On the other end of the line, Sam heard Rowena’s outraged shriek: “I heard that.”

Sam cleared his throat. “I’ll let you go. See you later.”

He hung up and sighed. Dean was making a face at him.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Nothing. How is he?”

Sam decided to be honest, to a point. “Rowena’s driving him up the wall, but he’s on track.”

“She’s not coming, is she?” The prospect seemed to disturb Dean, which Sam would normally have teased him about, but not at this moment.

“Nah. I wouldn’t trust her near the library.” Sam turned away and started to get out things to cook with.

Dean considered the celery that Sam had just placed on the counter, looking troubled by it. “What are you making? Need help?”

“Nah. Making chicken soup for dinner. Got you all the fixings for one of those giant dagwood sandwiches you like to make.”

“Right, I’ll go for that.” Dean started to pull things to the counter, snacking on cheese and pepperoncinis while he did so.

Right about the time when he finally had his sandwich arranged, Charlie walked in, wearing a t-shirt that Sam thought might be one of his old ones, nearly reaching her jean-clad knees. “Hey, morning guys, what’s up?”

“Sandwiches,” Dean smirked.

“Cas needs you back decoding the book,” Sam spoke at the same time.

Charlie scoffed and shrugged. “Great. Yeah. Okay, sandwiches. Got it.”

“Charlie,” Sam sighed.

“I heard you, Sam. I just really want a sandwich. But like… half of one of the kind Dean’s having. Jesus, that’s huge.”

Sam bit his lip and looked down at the cutting board while he worked on the potatoes and mushrooms and celery. He didn’t look up again until Charlie and Dean were on their way out of the kitchen with their plates.

She looked at him as she followed Dean out, seeming to apologize with her eyes. He knew that she’d go back to working on the book with Rowena. That wasn’t a denial. Charlie just didn’t want to think about it.

Out in the hallway, Sam could hear her and Dean talking about some movie or show—he wasn’t sure if it was about those Hobbit movies, or about Game of Thrones, but he felt like Dean needed to take his mind off everything.

Charlie was honestly kinda strange for Dean. Here was this attractive girl, funny as heck, into the same things as he was, and nestled into the crook of his shoulder, laughing at Daria DVDs, and she didn’t need anything from him that he wasn’t already doing. He could actually relax with her, and God, it was nice.

He wasn’t sure what Castiel’s plan would be, but Sam brought it up when the stew was being dished up for them.

“Ugh, so healthy, Sam.” Dean wouldn’t say that it smelled fucking delicious but he had to assume that Sam’s nose still worked.

“Yeah,” Sam said, eyes distant for a moment. “So Cas is on his way. And I kinda… uh… I know what his plan is.”

Charlie had her mouth full but was trying to breathe to cool it down, looking like a fish out of water and making Dean smirk despite the clear signals of bad news coming from Sam.

“Okay. Okay. Well, good.” Dean blew on a spoonful.

Sam nodded and looked at his soup. “It happened after the whole thing with Gadreel. Cas and I were trying to track him down, and… well, when an entity possesses a body, it leaves… traces behind.”

It was already a lot to unpack, but Dean just nodded.

“So it hurts. It’s… there’s a needle… for some reason it’s a needle, and Cas has to put it into your neck, probably.  But it’s also into your soul.”

Dean nodded slightly and tasted the stew. He blinked, considering. “Hurts, huh?”

Sam glanced away and nodded.  

He and Sam had a lot of shorthand communications between them, he knew his brother’s tics and vice versa. So Dean knew just from how Sam held his head that this was going to hurt.

Good, he thought. Maybe he deserved it. “Okay.”

Cas didn’t get to the bunker until well after dinner, just when Dean was staring at his phone for the third time. Dean put down the cookbook he’d been reading in the kitchen and stood up.

His angel looked worried, and harrowed, and a few other adjectives that told just how far he’d come, how distant he was from his earliest incarnation, when he oozed power under his skin. Back when Dean just couldn’t tear him out of his lustful fantasies. That damn profound bond.

Maybe it was the angel’s power that did it for Dean. He didn’t like to think about how he’d fallen out with him, when he’d drunk up all the souls that he could. When the betrayal had gone just a little too far.

Castiel looked at him and everything was spelled out on his face.  “Dean.”

“Hey. Yeah.” He knew that he was an open book to the angel, too.

“Are you prepared?”

Dean just barely held back from saying something smartass, and nodded.

“Did Sam leave you the needle and the bowl?”

“Uh… no. He talked about it, though. How it’s gonna work.”

Cas looked pensive at that, and met his eyes hesitantly. “It may be a good idea to restrain you.”

Dean would have said something smartass just a few months ago, but now he just nodded and led the way to the library.

Sam was sitting with his laptop and a cup of coffee, probably surfing the classy kind of porn that he would never admit to. Then again, it was Sam—he probably only did that in his room, with the door locked, while feeling guilty for objectifying the actors.

Sam looked up and closed the laptop. “Hey, is it time?”

Dean leaned on the bookcase. “Looks like it.”

Cas just stood there, at a loss of what to say. He was staring at Sam, though.

“Where should we do this?” asked Sam.

“Wherever,” Dean shrugged. “Get it on with.”

Sam nodded. “Your room, Dean. That’s where you’ve got him stashed still, right?”

He looked back at the angel, who was following, adjusting his tie. Dean thought that maybe he looked like he needed a shower.

He was acutely embarrassed by the state of his room, when it hadn’t bothered Dean at all before. The stack of photos on the desk, the mostly empty bottle of whiskey near his bed, the askew crucifix and dusty shotgun mounted on the wall. Dean sat on the bed while Sam took up too much space, pacing. The rooms in the bunker were made for smaller folks, maybe less active.

“Sam,” Dean interrupted his brother’s worrying. “I’ll be fine, okay?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, uh… be right back.” He left the room.

Cas took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. Dean watched, stomach churning and glanced at the bones. “Is this going to work?”

“I believe so.”

Dean nodded a little. “If it doesn’t… what else is there?”

“I’m not sure. I’d rather not conjecture.” He touched Dean’s shoulder, opposite of where his mark was. “Lay down and relax. I’ll ask Sam to hold your legs down.”

Dean considered his words and nodded. The next little bit would be hard to remember later, but he knew that he laid down, and Sam returned, and sat down touching his shins while Castiel put the needle in.

When pain became all-encompassing, that was when it started to happen—Dean’s doubt grew, blossomed and flooded out reality. He was on the rack, Alastair was laughing, because he’d been so stupid to think he’d ever left hell in the first place.

The needle was piercing his neck, of course. But, more to the truth, it was sunk deep into him and stabbing into something that Dean couldn’t name. He was aware that he was making noises, and they were awful. But then, blissfully, he fell away from the pain and into unconsciousness.

Castiel was relieved when he was finally able to withdraw. It hadn’t taken nearly so long to retrieve Gadreel’s essence from Sam, but he chalked that up to the otherness of the old angel from Sam. Benny and Dean were… well, bound.

It was a hard task to separate the two. It had taken its toll on Dean, and on Sam, who was feeling his brother’s pulse and counting under his breath while Cas worked.

The distilled essence in the red liquid glowed softly, blazing in the angel’s eyes when he looked a little closer, teeming with life both long and unnatural.

If the soul had not been Benny’s, he would have thought the substance disgusting. As it was, he couldn’t be sure that anything was truly entirely evil, or purely good. How far he’d come from the way he’d seen existence before the Winchesters.

He stopped musing on how muddled he’d become, and slowly, carefully spoke the words that made Benny’s soul slither out of the bowl and onto his broken remains.

He watched his body tremble and knit and remake itself from the core essence of the man’s soul. There was so much more information available to his eyes than there would ever be to any mortal, and he could see the pulsating nerves catching alight and connecting with the brain, hear the music of his tendons pulling taut, the whisper of skin crawling over fresh muscle.

There was a terrible fault in his reincarnation, and Cas stared, completely still even as the vampire opened his eyes, seeming frightened for a split-second before he processed his surroundings.

Sam had been looking, too. Of course he had. He was the most observant human that Cas knew. “Cas… is that the mark?”

Benny sat up, covering his naked groin with strange modesty and backing into the dresser. “Where’s Dean?” he asked. His eyes fell to the bed and he blanched, probably would have paled if he wasn’t already corpse-colored.

“He’s here, he’s gonna be fine.” Sam licked his lips and pulled Dean towards him.

“Dean? What’s wrong with him?” Benny moved towards the bed, hand outstretched to touch the man’s sandy brown hair, and without thinking, Cas grabbed him by the neck and pinned him to the wall, crashing him into the side table.

The vampire sputtered and struggled until Benny realized how fruitless it was and just settled, clutching Castiel’s forearm and awaiting judgement.

Sam pulled Dean’s shirt open and down his arm, being a little less than gentle. Dean, for his part, groaned and tossed his head, eyelids trembling but staying shut. Castiel watched, patience thin. This was a terrible aberration. The vampire should not bear the mark—the only soul he’d pulled from Dean was Benny’s, after all.

Unless he was mistaken, and the mark permeated every corner of Dean’s essence, and everything he carried with him.

If he was prone to emotional outbursts, Castiel would have cursed.

Sam looked up at Benny, then to Castiel. “He still has the mark, Cas. It’s still here.”

“Ngh, Sam?” Dean was fighting to wake up, slurring even his brother’s name. He grabbed Sam by the lapel and spun his head, cringing at the lights.

Benny had seen the mark on his own forearm and was gulping under the webbing of Castiel’s thumb and forefinger.

Cas, considering his own fault, and the vampire’s temperate reaction, allowed his hand to drop. “They’re both bearing the mark of Cain. I have… and I have failed.”

Chapter Text

He was being held up by Sam, his whole body tingling like a numb limb. Dean groaned and shook his head as though it would help to clear it.

“They’re both bearing the mark of Cain. I have… and I have failed.” Castiel was talking, and it hardly made sense.

“We’ll fix it, Cas,” Sam’s voice was near his ear.

Dean managed to open his eyes and whimper at the light; everything was bright and vague. His bed was under him, and his pulse was thundering in his ears. Dean had to remind himself that they were all in his room for some reason—and then it dawned on him. “Benny?” His voice was  hoarse from all the screaming he’d done earlier.

“I’m here, chief. I’m here.” Benny’s voice was low, almost a whisper.

“Dean, can you see?” Sam shook him until he shoved at his hands.

“Yeah, it’s…” he could make out Cas, near the door. And Sam, trying to monopolize his field of view. Dean rolled his head over and saw Benny next to his bedside table, blurry and naked. “... fine.” He might have been smiling, he was just loopy enough to not have control of his face.

He could almost hear Sam’s eyeroll. “Okay, but can we get Benny his pants?”

“I’ll get him his pants, now get outta my room, Sammy.” He slumped back on the bed, blinking at the ceiling as it came into focus.

“But he has the mark, Dean,” Sam argued weakly.

Castiel opened the door. “I should take Charlie back to Rowena, now.”

Sam sighed and the bed shifted, which Dean took to mean he’d stood up.

“It’s cool, Sam. Go.” Dean waved towards the door.

“I’ll… I’ll be back soon, to check on you.” Sam left. It was weird, and Dean had to look around the room to make sure that what he’d blurrily seen was right. His brother shut the door behind him.

Benny knelt down on the floor. It took a moment to work out that he was wrapping himself in the blanket that Dean had used to cover his bones.  Dean’s eyes focused on him slowly, pulling his face into focus. He was staring right back, eyes startlingly blue and the whites reddened.

“Shoulda gone clothes shopping, Benny. I’m sorry.” All the things Dean had to apologize for, and that was what he chose to lead with. He cringed at the mountain of transgressions. He was going to have to explain so much.

Benny combed his fingernails through his beard. “Dean, I…” he hesitated and looked at his hands, at the mark inside his right elbow. “I was in you somewhere I’d never been before, and I’m sorry if… this sounds odd, but I’m havin’ a problem—I thought that it was the end.”

Dean took a deep breath and let it sink in. “Yeah, me too.” He rubbed his face. “Thought I wasn’t really here for a minute there, and it couldn’t have been very long, but… my throbbing head’s real enough now.”

“I got the mark, Dean. I tried not to, but he was just too quick, and he never let up.” Benny’s voice wavered.

“What?”

“I met Cain while I was hitchin’ a ride.” Benny cleared his throat, looked at his hands some more, then glanced up at Dean. “Maybe I was in your soul, or near it enough. But he was there.”

“What did he say? What happened?”

“We fought, and I tried to come out on top, but… I didn’t make it. And then it started over.”

Dean licked his upper lip while he pondered it. “Listen. Sam and Cas… they’re working on a cure for the mark. It doesn’t have to be on you forever.” A thought slowly dawned on Dean. “I had to accept it. I had to want to take it from Cain.”

Benny licked his lips. “Maybe the rules are different, me being technically dead.” He looked around the room. “Do you have any clothes for my dusty old backside?”

He felt dumb for not having them already out for him. “Yeah, I have some.” Dean slid off the bed to crawl closer and thumped his elbow into the dresser while fumbling at it. Benny’s arm went around him and held him steady, and damnit, Dean couldn’t help but relax into it.

“You look like a stiff wind would blow you over,” Benny rumbled in his ear.

He just couldn’t keep the facade in place, even though he wanted to surrender and just be held. “Benny, wait. Please.” Dean wrenched the drawer open and dropped his hand in, clawing the twill slacks and cotton shirt out to flop on the floor.

Benny took his hands off him immediately and scooted back a little.

Dean knelt against his desk chair and looked at the floor. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t do things like that when—you don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I don’t, but it can’t be as bad as you’re making it out to be. And I ain’t never told you how terrible I was.”

“I met Jon Oakes,” Dean countered.

Benny gulped. “Oh.”

Everything wanted to bubble out of him, and recalling it turned his stomach while the mark murmured on his arm at the memory. “I killed this witch, she was… I guess probably associated with him. She knew his name,” He couldn’t look at Benny. “It was messy, and I made it last, so…”

“Is Jon dead?”

“What? Yeah.”

Benny nodded. “Okay. Good,” he picked up the shirt. “I thought I might have to do it myself.”  

Dean bit his lip and suppressed a despairing laugh. “Yeah, okay. Well, you can thank Sam, he’s the one that got him.”

“Okay, I will, and that… that cure for my fangs you talked about, is that happening soon?”

Dean had almost forgotten about that particular lie. He stood up, hands on the dresser. “It’s… it’s something I’m working on.” He knew he was showing too much on his face and dropped his head between his shoulders.

Benny shifted on the floor, but stayed where he was. Dean was grateful, he didn’t think he could stand to be touched right now.

Eventually Benny asked, “You don’t really have a cure, do you?” His tone was quiet, not furious as he had every right to be.

“There’s a book, it… I just have to work it out.”

“Oh.”

He started to say something again, to make the lie of curing Benny more palpable. Dean would cure him , he wanted to say. It could be true, if he had more than a hunch and a few lines in ancient Greek. Of course he’d jumped the gun before he even knew it was a real thing. The words wouldn’t even rise out of his throat. Dean didn’t know what to say. He was just so damn tired, everything he’d usually keep a lid on was fighting to get out, including his self-loathing.

He made the mistake of looking behind him. Benny’s face was in his hand.

“I ain’t mad, Dean,” Benny said haltingly. “I mean… I’m disappointed. This was a whole lot more mess than I thought it would be. And I know you need me. Or someone.”

Dean swallowed a lump in his throat. “You aren’t just someone. I’m not just reaching for anybody here. And it’s fucking selfish as hell, Benny, but I needed you.”

“But you don’t want me to touch you,” he softly replied, “because you’ve done some bad things, and you came to get me before you had the cure in hand.”

Dean sighed brokenly. “I’m so sorry, Benny.”

Benny stood up slowly and leaned towards him, blanket around one shoulder, looking like he was going to a toga party. Dean thought for a moment that he was going to reach out and hug him, but instead he lowered his head and rested his brow on Dean’s shoulder with a soft sigh.  

“Brother, I’m gonna shower and get dressed. If you can forgive me for Harvard—I mean Jon, I can forgive you for not thinkin’ everything through.”

Dean took a shuddering breath and nodded. Benny was so close. He could just let himself reach out and touch his arm, and take his absolution.

And anything else he wanted. Dean leaned into Benny and brushed his trembling hands along his makeshift toga. He shut his eyes and Benny brought his arm around to embrace him gently, giving him enough time to get himself under control. He was worn through with exhaustion.

“I’m gonna get into the shower, Dean. If you want to get in too… well,” Benny’s voice dropped to a low rumble, and Dean’s heart fluttered despite himself. “We got some things to work out, non?”

Chapter Text

Benny turned on the shower and let the blanket drop to the floor. He could hear Dean behind him, tossing towels on the bench, unbuttoning his shirt, throwing it into the hamper.

He wasn’t sure that he was ready for this, to be honest. It seemed too good, too easy. It had been far too long, and thinking that they could just fall back together, like cards shuffling into the same deck— Benny wanted this as badly as he wanted to feel true sunlight on his face without any pain, but he couldn’t relax without thinking that it was about to evaporate.

Dean was right next to him. The things Benny wanted to do were impulsive and needy and possibly a little selfish, so he turned his back to Dean and stepped under the lukewarm water. He had to hope it would make his dick calm the hell down. This went way deeper than a quick hook-up. He ducked his head under the water and closed his eyes, leaning his forearms on the tile wall. This is real, he reminded himself again.

He wasn’t going to think about the promised cure. From now on, he’d just pretend that hadn’t happened, because if he was honest with himself, he didn’t really need to be bribed to be here.

Benny had been far more lonely in the two years since Dean had sent him to Purgatory than he’d been in the fifty years before that. There were fishhooks in his soul that could attest to it, and the feeling of Dean’s heart beating near him, taking the place of his own…  

“Are you okay, Benny?” Dean asked from behind him, body heat radiating from more than a foot away.

“Yeah,” he turned his head the barest amount, saw that Dean was nude, and despite his misgivings, reached for him. “C’mere, get clean.”

Dean didn't do that exactly, but he did step close under the shower and put his hands on Benny’s back.

“I missed you,” Dean breathed. “Kept waking up all turned around… and it was like you’d just left the room.”

Benny nodded agreement. “I was with you, Dean, but I was trespassing, like squatting in an empty house.”

Dean pressed his face between his shoulderblades, breathing hitched like he was about to cry. “Needed you so bad, I just… I didn’t think it through.”

Benny turned to face him before he could start with the waterworks. “Don't tear yourself down any more, cheré.” He put his hands on either side of Dean's neck. “Just relax, let me take care of you.”

Dean was already nodding, with his eyes squeezed shut. Benny placed his forehead against his and brushed his lips at the corner of his mouth.  

His mouth opened and instead of letting Dean say something to tear himself down again, he kissed him to shut him up. He groaned into the kiss— Benny needed this far more than he’d care to admit. And kissing made him feel human, and gentle.

Being back in his body was good. He ran his hands slowly up Dean’s back and moaned with his own voice against the man’s soft, trembling lips. He'd had so little time feeling with Dean’s skin, seeing things with his eyes, that it seemed odd to miss it so much. He wanted to tell Dean to be kind to himself, because he meant well.

At least Dean had to forgive what he’d ended up doing to Benny, because if nothing else, they were together and safe in this underground fortress.

Dean was very nearly still against him, but leaned, as though he’d fall if Benny let him.

However they’d gotten him out of Dean’s body, it didn’t seem to have been an easy thing.  Benny kissed his cheek and sighed, “Do you want to sit down?”

“In the shower?” Dean asked, confused. “Why?”

“Because I think you’re gonna slip and fall, darlin’,” Benny reached up and tilted the shower head, then guided him to sit on the tile floor, back to Benny’s chest.

The warm water cascaded over their shoulders, ran between their bodies, and flowed into the floor drain. Dean relaxed a little and put his hand down tentatively to touch his thigh.

“Dean, is this okay?” Benny held him against his chest. He could feel his heart beating and it was a little fast.

“Better than okay, I… this is so good,” he gulped air— “I never get a break. We don’t get breaks.”

“I know, I remember. Even your vacations suck.” Benny smiled against Dean’s ear.

Dean laughed softly and rolled his head back on his shoulder. “Yeah, that’s true. These days I just lock myself in and watch Three Stooges.”

Benny chuckled. “Wow, that’s pretty old, even I know those guys.”

Dean seemed to relax, so Benny started to wash him, combing his hand through his hair. He took his time when Dean didn’t protest, and even reached for the soap to lather his freckled skin. He found himself humming tunelessly, gravitating towards something slow by Artie Shaw.

Dean took his hand when it was low by his ribs and pulled it around himself, knitting his fingers through Benny’s and stilling his hand.

“I know you missed me,” Benny sighed in his ear. “Have I said I missed you too?”

Dean rolled his head around a little. “No. Maybe. Could listen to you say that all day.”

Benny looked over Dean’s chest, down the planes of his stomach, and slowly down to his freckled thighs. “Missed you. You’re so goddamn pretty, and… the view I had in the mirror every night, Dean.”

“Stop, I’m gonna blush.”

He kissed his cheek and rumbled in his ear, “I didn’t take advantage, and you gotta know, your body without you in it… It was like looking into an empty house.”

Dean shifted and laughed strangely, replying, “…Benny, are you telling me that I haven’t jerked off in eight or nine days?”   

Benny chuckled, mood lightening. He glanced at Dean’s cock and kissed beneath the shell of his ear. “Yeah, it seemed like I shouldn’t.”

“How about now?” He pushed back against his groin with his hips and Benny… well, he couldn’t say he wasn’t interested.

But he also knew the man had his limits, physically, and was very near them. “Dean, I don’t want you to bite off more than you can chew. You’re so tired, darlin’.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to,” Dean sounded a little dejected.

“Just because I ain’t gonna fuck you right now, that don’t mean we can’t fool around a little,” Benny murmured. He skated his hand down his abdomen and ran his fingers through the hair between Dean’s legs, teasing and combing through it, just short of grasping his cock.

“Oh, fuck yeah.” Dean squirmed and splayed his knees wide, his legs stretching out from the wall to the drain.

“Gonna get this cleaner than it’s ever been, cheré.” He wrapped his hand around the base of Dean’s cock and pumped slowly.

“Nnngh, you clearly have no idea of my teenage shower habits.”

Benny chuckled and squeezed, drawing a startled gasp from Dean’s mouth. “Could listen to you all day, you know that.”

“You might get to, we have a quiet couple days here.” Dean moaned and looked down at himself, watching Benny stroke languidly, unhurried.

He’d wanted this view, actually thought about it a lot more than he’d cared to admit, but after a handful of seconds of watching Dean’s abdominal muscles flex and clench, Benny buried his nose behind Dean’s ear and groaned.

Dean put his hands behind him and squeezed Benny’s sides, then raised his arms to touch his head.

Benny, for his part, kept his pace slow and while he worked, used his other hand to cup and squeeze Dean's balls gently, petting them intermittently just to keep him squirming between Benny's thighs. Dean panted and scratched his blunted nails along the back of his neck.

“Good god, Dean,” Benny purred, “Just like that, yeah?”

“Yeah, please,” Dean moaned and shivered lightly while Benny picked up the pace.

He wanted to be deliberate and show Dean that he was the center of his universe. At the same time, Benny didn’t want to tire him any more than he had to. He kept kissing the curve of his jaw, and when Dean turned his head, he kissed his open mouth with a hungry groan.

Pushing Dean to the edge was easy, and he got frantic when he was nearly there, biting Benny’s lip and grunting urgently, until he finally held his breath and came over Benny’s knuckles.

Benny kissed him gentler still, hoping that Dean wouldn’t feel as though he had to reciprocate and take care of him too. He really was fine with giving and not getting a damn thing back in return.

“I just…” Dean was still panting a little, twitching in his hand. “God, I needed that so bad.”

“I know, let me clean you up a little more there.” He turned him towards the stream of the shower and gently washed Dean’s lower torso, letting the fine trembling of post-blissful orgasm hum against his palms.

Dean yawned suddenly, jaw looking like it could unhinge for a second. He blinked a few times and pet Benny’s thigh. “Can we go to bed after this? Like, straight there?”

“Yeah, cheré. We can do that if you like.”     

“I think I gotta sleep.”

Benny was somewhat proud of Dean for recognizing his own exhaustion. “That’s what a bed’s for, most of the time.”

Dean chuckled and Benny kissed his shoulder. He mumbled something under his breath, something the vampire could still hear despite how badly Dean probably didn’t want him to— he’d said; “Please stay.”

For a moment, Benny considered reassuring the man in his arms, but that might bruise his fragile dignity and expose his insecurity. So instead of replying, Benny buried it, and resolved to stay with Dean until the end of the line. It would be better, this time.

It became apparent that they would never reach the end of the bunker’s reserve of piping hot water, and Benny had even washed the pads of Dean’s feet- so he turned it off and helped him to stand, holding him in a loose embrace as they both fumbled for the crisp, white towels to dry themselves.

Benny could stay, and his heart wanted to beat with the joy of it— he had a home, and it was here, in the bunker, doing dumb domestic chores like cleaning the grout and folding the laundry and frying beignets. He smiled at Dean while he wrapped the towel over the man’s head and dried his hair, and found his smile returned by a blushing, freckled, astonishingly handsome man.

This was it. This was everything he’d wanted, cure or not.

He let Dean tumble into bed naked. There had been a cooler full of fresh blood pints parked next to Dean’s room’s door, and if Benny could’ve, he’d have blushed that Sam had probably done the detective work about them being in the shower together. He wrapped himself in Dean’s robe while Dean tossed and turned and settled on his back, to the side of the bed, as though both of them could really, actually fit on a full-sized mattress. Maybe so, if they spooned. Benny pet Dean’s shoulder and settled in a chair he pulled near the bedside. “Get some sleep, darlin. I’ll be in when I’m done eating.

“You mean drinkin,” Dean smirked, eyes half-lidded. He pulled the blankets up and stretched his arms above his head.

It was a horrible thing how often Dean could present an irresistible picture, becoming an arbitrary and effortless Adonis— Benny had to look away. The last thing he wanted to associate his meals with was Dean’s beauty. He had enough of a problem keeping his fangs in check when kissing, and hunger being satiated had no part in what they did in the dark together.

He watched Dean’s eyelids droop, blink, open to look at him briefly, and close.

Benny sat for a long while and sipped, staring at the door, listening for movement within the bunker; doors were closing, opening, and distantly, there was a sound of coffee brewing, or a leaky pipe, he couldn’t be sure.

When the pack of blood was finished, Benny put it back in the cooler. He didn’t want to presume that leaving “biological waste” in Dean’s wastebasket would be welcome.

He briefly contemplated sleeping next to Dean, turned on his side, but in the end, he leaned over to turn the light off, and slept in the chair, sitting upright, utterly still.

He hadn’t dreamed in years .

The thing about Benny’s dreams was that they always made him feel so damn guilty, directly replaying the things that he’d seen, and if he had a hand in them, he found himself unable to resist their inevitable trek. Sometimes they had a relationship with the current geography, although it was more generally a moral relativism than a solid connection.  

He was in the hospital where Jon Oakes had lain, in the tuberculosis ward where he waited to die. Their conversations were in the past— he’d asked Oakes about his family, he had none that cared to visit— no mother or father anymore. Benny had worn an orderly’s simple uniform and changed his sheets in the middle of the night, of course they got to talking, while Jon trembled and sweated and shook under several scratchy wool blankets.

“I was a volunteer,” he said; voice thready, mortal, and clotted with fluid.

“You were, sir? That’s very noble of you,” Benny looked at his hands as he worked at the bedclothes— he could feel the heart of every sick man in the ward, and he could choose any of them. But Jon was so weak, it was not at all likely that he’d survive. There was another quality that Benny wouldn’t admit was part of why he lingered near the sick engineer— Jon Oakes was needy. Thirsty for attention, his eyes followed Benny around the room and spoke to him when he attended a neighboring bed. It was nice to be wanted.

“Damned islands. Full of disease and filth.”

“I’ve heard,” Benny replied. He’d actually seen the Soviet occupation of Poland, and worse than that: The blight of internment camps in Europe. Nothing now could shock him. He was preoccupied with his maker’s command: “Find a new one to bring to the nest.”   Benny already knew that nobody was going to be searching for this man.

“I was going to go to Harvard, you know, last year in the fall,” His eyes were heavy lidded, and the chart depicted a steady loss of weight, at his height of 6’4” and weighing less than 125lbs he was little more than a skeleton. He coughed quietly, weakly, then said, “but I enlisted instead.”

“The college surely would accept you again, sir,” Benny replied, tucking the sheet in with a neat hospital corner.

He rolled his head, trembling from a cold that only he could feel. “Damn right they would. Damn the Core of Engineers. Damn the islands. Damn the telegraph cables.”

“Let’s get you back into bed, friend.” Benny took his hand, and froze when the man’s clammy, hot fingers clasped his wrist.

“Damn them all. I’m going to die here.” Jon pulled at Benny’s hand, forcing him to lean down. “And I can’t say it’s worth it, wasting away in this filthy ward.”

“We’re all damned, Oakes,” he put his hand on his cheek and found that the man was crying. Benny knew how bad it was in here, and he’d only been stalking this secluded wing for a week. Nurses and staff who worked in this ward did not work in others— they couldn’t risk bringing tuberculosis to patients suffering malaria and pneumonia. But the stench of abandonment couldn’t be covered by a few sheet changes, and it was why Benny had come.

It was his privilege to bring his master a new child, so he might as well make their nest a new child that was soon going to die a mortal death: One whom the world of men had abandoned, but still had so much still to offer. Oakes reached up and cupped his hand where it was still resting on his cheek, and sealed his fate.

Instead of helping him to lay down on his fresh sheets, Benny wheeled him down the hall— and instead of tucking a blanket around him, he brought him into the vacant mortuary. Jon seemed frightened but quiet, tilted his head up towards him; he thought Benny was going to kiss him, perhaps. And in a manner of speaking, Benny did.

He bit him neatly under his jaw, holding Jon’s head with his neck arched back, jaw proud and jutting into his nose. He made a child that night, but all that really mattered was that his master was pleased.

He woke in a shudder and watched Dean sleep the rest of the night.

Chapter Text

It was Castiel’s Cadillac, of course, but Charlie opened the driver’s side first and dumped an armful of books into the back, as well as a shortsword she’d swiped from the library. The volume of symbolic translations that Sam wanted her to try on the Book of the Damned was set on the front seat between her and her companion. It looked creepier than most, scratched with a crude quill in… blood, probably.

“You’re bringing a sword,” Castiel stated in his usual manner, where it was almost a question, but his tone didn’t shift up at the end.

“Yup. My theory is that trouble is everywhere. Would you rather I just brought another case of bullets?”

“I believe they’re called magazines. Or clips… I’m actually unclear on the nomenclature.”

“You’re so very Cas, Cas.” She snickered as she started the engine, then sighed. “I really wanted to stay and meet Benny.”

“You will, later. I… am almost completely sure of it.” He looked at the side view mirror of his dated Cadillac as she backed it up out of the garage.

“I guess him and Dean needed the snoggin’ time.” She turned in the shallow gravel drive and pulled onto their isolated road.

Castiel didn’t reply immediately, and when he did, Charlie’s skin started to crawl. “The mark has multiplied, and they both have it now.”

“Uh… what?” She’d heard him right, but the problems were stacking up in her head, and her eyes were wide.

Cas touched her shoulder in an awkward and probably practiced gesture that was most likely meant to be reassuring. “Dean’s… soul,” he said softly, “It spread the mark of Cain to Benny. It will probably take a while for it to truly start to affect him, presuming it works the same on vampires as humans.”

She blinked at the road. “Sam will be fine, yeah?”

He hesitated before replying. “I would not have left if he hadn’t insisted, Charlie. We need you and Rowena to finish your work on the book.”

“Yeah, dang; I’ll say,” she muttered, and put on a fake smile. She had to finish cracking the codex, within the next few days, if she could. “I’m going to need some redbull and some earplugs.”

“You know ignoring Rowena will only drive her to greater acts of annoyance.”

“Yeah, I know,” she sighed. “You have any good tunes, or a radio station?”

He put his hand in front of the tape deck and it began to play without him hitting any buttons— it was Led Zeppelin of course.

She settled in for the drive.

Sam had selective hearing when it came to his brother and the various hook-ups he’d had on the road. But then, it hadn’t bothered him the way this did. He was trying to avoid the entire area downstairs, near Dean’s room.

They were in the shower together, by the time Cas and Charlie were packed and gone in the car. He didn’t want them to go, but they needed a breakthrough on the book, and that wasn’t going to happen with them all sitting around waiting for Dean and Benny to come out of their room and socialize.

This was what Dean wanted, and Benny seemed like a good enough guy— it wasn’t that Sam objected to them, not really. The elephant in the room was that Dean was so dead-set on Benny, as serious as he’d ever been about Lisa.

And Sam had known Benny for less than a handful of days, if he was being honest.  He missed Cas and Charlie already, and not just because they were a brief moment of levity in a year with very little to laugh at.

He had to continue to be prepared, to catch Dean when he fell.  The cooler he’d brought in before, without making a big deal out of it, was packed with blood on blue ice packs.  As unobtrusively as possible, he set it down in front of Dean’s door and went back up the stairs to the library, where he slumped down in a hard chair that was hardly comfortable.

He needed to do some checking in. He started his laptop and dialed up Garth.

Garth picked up on the third ring. “Hey Sam. How’s things?”

He considered. “Calm, for the moment. That’s why I checked in, how did the cleanup go?”

“Pretty smoothly. The sheriff was a pureblood, so were his kin.”

“Was?” Sam started pulling up the news in Elk City, finding a jumble of dead ends and interlinked articles on the corrupt department. Too many people had just plain vanished in the last decade for it to be a coincidence.

“Well, there was only five werewolves in town… and they were all his family, cousins and the like.”

“So what’s the story on the diner?”

“Drug deal gone bad, it’s the easiest lie. It helps that the meth in this county is out of control.”

“You told them we were dealers?” Sam found himself laughing at the absurdity.

“Yeah, you two weirdos stick out like sore thumbs in a two-horse town, especially with that car— so you want to tell me what’s really going on?”

“Yeah, well… Dean kinda stumbled into the werewolf thing… the truth is… he was on a run to pick up Benny.”

“Oh. Purgatory Benny?” Garth gulped.

“Yep, Purgatory Benny.”

Garth made a strange noise. “Aeeh, that’s uh… great.”

“Any trouble with state police?”

“No, they weren’t quick enough, and now they’re buying the story that most of them high-tailed it out of here. Couldn’t clean up the diner, of course, but
I did sneak a baggie of crystal into the sheriff's car.”

Sam was flabbergasted. “Where’d you get that, Garth?”

“Please, Sammy— I’m a hunter in the midwest. I run across that stuff in all kinda places.”

“Yeah, okay, okay. Anything I can do on my end?”

Garth shrugged audibly. “Nah, I’m a few hundred miles away, burned the ones they’re looking for. Let me know if something on your end blows up and I’ll be there in a handful of hours.”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, man,” Sam hung up before Garth could say something awkward.

He went back to looking at the screen in front of him, skimming over the handful of police reports that had been flagged by the alert he set up for animal attacks, maulings, and missing persons. Having an algorithm for this sort of thing gave him a little comfort. If something went sideways, he’d know about it. Sam rubbed his eyes and started reading.

A case with a witness caught his eye- a woman had been murdered in an optometrist’s office and her eyeballs removed from her head. The witness, a janitor, saw the assailant escape by jumping from a third-story window.  Sam flagged it as priority, it was too weird to be dismissed as a ghoul or a vampire, or even a serial killer.

He started with looking into the local police report, which seemed dismissive of the witness’ credibility since the man had an arrest for drunk and disorderly conduct in the prior decade. Sam rolled his eyes and looked into the building’s security, happily finding a barely-secured server that hosted the security video.

He looked at the last week’s loop, found the file that had been accessed repeatedly and copied no less than seventeen times, and pulled it up to observe it.

Just the parking lot, a four-hour file. Sam paused it and went to brew a cup of coffee.

Even in the dark, Benny’s eyes were fine with just the tiny sliver of light from under the door. The shape of Dean’s shoulder rising and falling with his breath was an easy thing to watch, and he could do that for hours. He hardly moved.

Dean’s phone chimed and beeped obnoxiously, and Dean twitched awake. If Benny had been faster, he would have reached over and silenced it. As it was, he was caught out, looming over the bed, hand reaching for the phone as Dean woke up.

“Jesus!”

“Sorry Darlin. You should sleep some more. Ain’t got no clue who’d be calling at this hour.”

“Just my alarm, man.”

“Not this early, you need to rest.” Benny knelt on the bed and placed his hand on Dean’s arm— the skin instantly broke out in goose-bumps. Benny was so cold on the surface.

Dean ignored his advice, sitting up a little. “You didn’t sleep?”

“Only for a little while. Don’t need to sleep much.”

“Come here?”

“Honey, I’ll make you cold.”

“I could use a little cold,” Dean rolled to the side and peeled back the covers.

Benny almost called him on the cheesy line, but he was too busy smiling. He slid in next to him and settled his chest against Dean’s shoulder.

“You look good in my bathrobe.”

“Shh, don’t lie— it’s too dark in here for you to know that,” he rumbled in his ear and Dean turned to kiss him, hungry.

He held Dean’s head in his hands and was gentle with him, letting Dean scoot closer. He moaned softly when he felt Dean’s hands sneak to pull the robe open.  

“You’re feeling better?” Benny asked.

“Yeah, much,” Dean whispered against his lips and ran his fingers down Benny’s side, groaning lowly, “all better now.”

Dean’s leg slid between Benny’s and slowly rose to meet his groin, the top of his thigh softly pressing against Benny’s erection. Dean made a little noise in the back of his throat and kissed him softly, then rolled his hips to slide their cocks together.

Benny’s hands were greedy; they slid down his back and below his waist, feeling the contours of his ass before he began to slowly squeeze and knead the muscle that was there.

“Lube’s in the top drawer, Benny,” Dean groaned softly.

“Takin’ my time, we don’t need to rush.” He moved Dean against him, pushing their groins together, digging his fingers into his bottom— just on the far side of gentle so Dean could really feel it.  

“You always want to make it take so much time,” Dean shuddered and rolled on top of him.

Benny chuckled. “When you live as long as I have, I guess savoring the good bits is—”

Dean shut him up with a forceful kiss. “We’ll take time later. I want you right the hell now.”

Benny nodded, sucking on Dean’s bottom lip. He gave a throaty groan and let go of the man’s ass to reach for the bedside drawer— trying to be casual, he brushed the grip of a pistol, picked up a chapstick for a moment, and then found the plastic, light tube. “If I put toothpaste on you, it’s your own damn fault.”

Dean laughed and shoved the blankets down his back, moving to straddle him. “It’s been a while,” he said, hips constantly in motion, driving Benny mad.

“Yeah, me too,” he uncapped the tube and squeezed a little onto the fingers of one hand, before slipping it down between Dean’s backside, rubbing slowly across the muscle and applying just a little pressure to tease him.

Dean’s hand snuck down to join him and press inside himself, faster than Benny would have. Dean pressed his face to Benny’s shoulder and hooked his other hand around his neck.

“Faster, I can take it,” He growled into Benny’s ear.

Benny wanted the same thing, so he pushed his finger in alongside his lover’s and kissed along Dean’s cheek while Dean gasped and moved, scissoring himself open. Dean had showered the night before, but he smelled like himself, the skin against his tongue was addictive and delicious. The stubble grated and tickled a little.

Dean took the lube from Benny’s hand and twisted the cap open behind his back. He had to admire how nimble his hand was, how he could do this without removing his finger from himself, and then add another slick-coated digit— plunging in fast, whimpering loudly and yet never hesitating.

Dean always wanted to rush things, like he thought Benny would evaporate— maybe he was just worried that another job would come up. Benny grunted as Dean moved to straddle him, pulled out his fingers to slick his cock and steer it into himself quickly.

Dean made a raw sound as he sank down, taking Benny in much faster than he thought was healthy. Benny locked his hands on his waist, trying to ease him down. Dean shuddered.

“E-easy, Dean.” Benny felt him trembling and tried to lift him a little.

“I said I can take it,” Dean gasped and put his hands on Benny’s shoulders, rocking back on him in quick little jerky movements.

Benny wanted to hush him, wrap him in his arms and hold him close. However, Dean wanted him so desperately that he was practically pinning him to the bed.

Dean needed it hard, needed to feel it for a day. Benny strained up to kiss him, could have fought the man if he’d needed to. He ended up turning his head and kissing the inside of Dean’s wrist. It was okay, to just let Dean be in charge and call the shots.

Dean bucked on his lap when he finally seated himself, gasping  and nearly pulsating around Benny’s cock.

In the darkness,  Benny could still see every plane of Dean’s face, could see how his eyes were squeezed shut in pained concentration, could see him biting his lip. He wanted to comfort him, to take him tenderly— but that wasn’t what Dean wanted from him, not in the slightest.

When Dean got himself going fast enough, his dick slapped down on Benny’s belly, groaned wildly, and did it again.

Benny took Dean’s cock in hand and squeezed at the base, feeling his pulse through it. “Darlin, you’re goin’ a mile a minute. Would think it was you that didn’t get any last night.”

“Hnngh, fuck,” was Dean’s ragged reply; threw his head back in total abandon, and Benny bucked up, rattling the bed.

Dean’s heart was knocking on the walls, thumping the air. Benny couldn’t screen it out, and after a moment’s consideration, he didn’t want to. This was the way things were between them, riding the same tidal wave of crazy lust and pounding blood.

Benny was strong; he didn’t always like to exalt in it, but right now, he wanted Dean under him. He gripped him by the hips and rolled, turning them over sideways so that Dean’s head hung off the side of the bed and one of Benny’s legs could brace on the floor while he pushed in hard, shoving the air from Dean’s lungs.

Dean’s hands and wide eyes betrayed his disorientation, and he seized the bed on his sides and then touched Benny’s torso, gasping for breath— he dug his heels in just above Benny’s ass and panted.

Benny kept his pace relentless, snapping his hips forward, and bowed his head to taste Dean’s chest. The robe slid down his shoulders, barely hanging on. He reached down between them to find Dean’s hand already stroking himself in time with his thrusts.

He wrapped his fingers around Dean’s and listened to him groan —he was close. Benny was waiting for those telltale clenches, the earthquakes up his spine that would seize his legs and steal his breath.  

Caught up in the thrum of Dean’s heartbeat, in the tight clench of his body, the struggle of scrabbling hands on his shoulders, pulling at the robe; Benny almost didn’t notice his own fangs descending.

It happened so easy— but between the visceral pop of his second set of teeth and plunging them into Dean’s chest, he managed to keep his head enough to turn his face away.

Benny bit into the bunched shoulder of his robe, as his hips stuttered. Dean’s cock was leaking enough that both of their hands were wet, and Benny shoved home just as Dean shuddered and stopped breathing, coming abruptly over their knuckles and onto his chest.

Dean’s heart was still thrumming in Benny’s ears. Benny shook his way silently through his orgasm, eventually retracting his fangs.

Which was good, because Dean was pawing at his head, pulling him down into a sloppy, uncoordinated kiss.

He couldn’t have asked for more. Benny peeled his robe off and started to lap at Dean’s chest.  When he pulled out gingerly, it got a little easier to maneuver and clean his lover.

Benny started to think, troubled with shame— his fangs had come on too early, too quick, and he’d nearly bitten Dean. It had almost seemed permissible, something that he hadn’t had to really reign in since he was newly made, and unused to his vampiric urges.

Dean mumbled incoherently and shivered as he was licked clean, but Benny couldn’t stop his mind from ruminating— how close had he really been to biting his lover?

They’d always been attracted like a pair of magnets. But this was different— Benny felt the reassurance of Dean’s welcoming blood, he could practically taste it on his tongue, even though he’d never known it.

He finally pulled away, the dull thrum fading as the chill of the air set in.

“Okay, yeah, wow.” Dean was still breathing heavily. “Holy shit, Benny, can we do that again?”

Benny didn’t really know  how to argue with Dean; he loved him too much. “Yeah, in a little while, cheré.”

Dean just laid in the dark and smiled.

Chapter Text

Sam had a file ready and left on the kitchen table with a post-it, which simply said, “Case in Omaha. Pack your shit.”

Dean considered it for a moment. Then he flipped the file open, found a series of video stills of a man hopping down into a parking lot, and then read the caption of “third floor window??” in Sam’s messy writing. Kid really should’ve been a doctor.

There was a printed photo or two from a security camera, of a guy in a white lab coat in a parking lot, jumping down from somewhere above.

The zoomed-in enhancement that was paperclipped to it was of a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. Dean’s skin broke out in goose pimples. Same tattoo as Jacob Styne.

Benny walked into the kitchen in the clothes that Dean had bought for him, nearly bursting the seams of the thin thermal top, and for a moment Dean couldn’t think beyond the span of his shoulders and the pull of his trapezius at the tight collar.

He was so screwed if this went south. “Sam found a case,” he commented.

“Allright. Want me to make you some eggs while you pack?”

“Yeah, but…” his self-confidence was already fragile enough, so he muttered the next part- “You’re coming with us, right?”

“Don’t think I’ll be a third wheel? I can stay if you like.” Benny smiled.

“I… yeah, nah-” Dean blinked, realized that was a little unclear, and clarified. “Come with, you won’t be a third wheel, shit. And we gotta buy you clothes.”

“... you have a thing for dressing me, don’t you?”

Dean felt his face flush. “Okay, yeah, maybe. Not like I want to play dress-up, but something nice would be good.”

Benny smirked knowingly at that, reached for a frying pan, and lit the burner on the stove with a twist of his other wrist. “Over easy, Dean?”

“Yeah. Awesome. I’m gonna get us packed, take ten minutes. Oh… and I guess we better wake up Sam.” He laughed. “God he’d be so burnt up if we ditched him again.”

“Sometimes the words you use don’t make no sense,” Benny laughed. “But you know, if we run off on him again, Sam’s gonna probably murder me.”

Dean contemplated a prank while he snickered, but it seemed a little too mean. “All right, I’ll go wake him up. Can you do a spinach egg-white omelette for him?”

“Is that what he’ll eat?”

“Yeah, I know.” Dean smirked and left, amused more than he could say by Benny’s low whistle.

He hit Sam’s door with his knee and said his brother’s name a few times, until he heard him groan and shuffle to the door.

“What.” Sam opened the door with one eye open.

“You found us a case, Sammy?”

“Jeez, yeah. Come on, man, I spent all night on that.”

“Get your beauty sleep in the car. Benny’s making breakfast.”

Sam grunted an affirmative and shut the door in Dean’s face.

In his room, ( in our room, Dean corrected himself) he packed a few changes of clothes for himself, his toothbrush, and a suit just in case. They’d have to hit a store for more clothes for Benny, and yeah, Dean was really looking forward to taking him shopping in a stupidly domestic way.

He was so damn gone over this guy.

In the car, Sam sat in front and promptly fell asleep, like some impossibly gargantuan cock-blocking sasquatch. Benny was in the left side of the back seat, moving now and then to avoid the sun when he needed to. Dean’s tunes were on low, but the drive was flat, and while he could have really opened up and flown baby down the highway at eighty, he was keeping her at 65.

Benny could have slept, but he didn’t. Just sat there, arm propped up on his cooler of blood, sunglasses on, staring out at the land. Eventually, he commented “This drive’s only three hours, but it feels longer. It’s so damn flat, Dean.”

He was right, of course. “Yeah. When we were kids Sammy and I would count the cows. We ran mostly north-south back in those days, and man… the haul down to Texas got kinda dull.”

“Your Dad’s hunts?”

Dean nodded and glanced at Sam, still conked out like a sack of potatoes. “Yeah. Ours too, I guess.”

“You don’t talk about him too much.”

Dean couldn’t help the grimace that crossed his face. “I guess… it still kinda hurts. He uh… he was a real hardass. Focused on the job, you know, and he never let up.”

“Because of revenge, right?” Benny rolled his shoulders.

“Yeah, maybe. I used to think that. Now I think that hunting was the only way that he could make the world… make any sense to him. He could stick himself between normal people and the dark.”

“Hmn,” Benny tilted his head, “Just like you. I mean, I know you have hunting, and it’s not about revenge. But it needs doing.”

Dean felt something bitter squirm in him, and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe because Benny might want him to quit hunting, before it killed him (again). “Yeah. It’s what we know.”

“When’d you start makin’ friends with things like me?” Benny’s smirk was a fleeting shade across his face, he could just see it in the rear-view mirror.

Dean laughed— he hadn’t seen that question coming. “Wow, Benny. Well… I don’t know, man. There were always cases where the monster didn’t exactly deserve it. But there’s a line, you know.”

“Yeah. Killin humans, right?”

“Right. So there was this vamp we met, back ten years ago,” he glanced at Sam, saw his eyes open, staring at the road. “ Lenore. Her nest was eating cows now and then. She actually… asked us for help. Well, asked Sammy, because I’m a hardass and everybody knows it.”

Sam mumbled “You’re a giant softie and everyone knows it.”

Dean smacked his brother’s knee. “Morning Sammy, what’s our exit?”

“You have seven phones in this car, and not one of them has navigation running?” Sam griped and pulled out the one in his pocket.

Benny scooted a little bit towards the middle of the car to stay out of the encroaching sun. “Don’t suppose anybody has a spare hat?”

Of course Dean hadn’t brought one, he barely had a spare set of pants that fit him. “We still got that cowboy hat in the trunk, Sam?”

Sam chuckled. “Yeah, and it’s black, might not even be stained.”

“Stained?” Benny asked.

“Picked it up on a.. uh… ghoul hunt.” Dean said bashfully.

His brother outright laughed. “You said it was lucky.”

“Had to be! The guy’s head practically exploded and the hat didn’t have any holes in it.”

“Well, I am good with a shotgun.”

Benny leaned back on the cooler. “I’m sure it’ll do.”

It took a few hours for Sam to get anywhere on the phone with the Janitor- apparently the guy was having a rough time with a hangover, and Sam had to tell him he was FBI to get him to agree to a meet. His name was Conrad Meeks, and he had a prior for grand larceny- Sam seemed reluctant to bring that up, but he did, and then the guy agreed to a meeting. They had time to kill.

The Impala pulled into a big, half-empty mall and they left her to get lunch. After Dean ordered his burger and milkshake in the food court, he handed the credit card to Benny, who looked puzzled and out-of-place under the neon light in the black cowboy hat.

“Take it, get a suit.”

Benny blinked. “Is there a Woolworth’s around here?”

Dean laughed out loud. “Nah, it’s okay. There’s a Macy’s right there, they have a men’s section.”

“You cool with splittin’ up while I pick out my new duds?”

God, Dean could just fall in love from the way Benny talked. “Yeah, I don’t have to pick them for you, you’ll look good in anything.”

“I’m getting a new hat, too.”

Dean smiled as he meandered off, hands in his pockets.

Sam found a place which actually served korean barbecue, and despite how good Dean’s burger was, he was actually kinda jealous of the way the veggie and beef noodles smelled.

“How’s the thing with the book, Sam?” Dean tried to keep the edge out of his voice, but it was clear by the flicker of a crease between Sam’s brows that his brother still heard it.

“Cas is camped with them, pretty much to keep them from killing each other.”

“How come Rowena’s helping? Why would she?”

He chewed thoughtfully. “She wants the mark off you, probably so you won’t be such a threat to her.”

“Yeah, but she usually runs away anyhow.”

“Well… I did also chain her up.”

Dean had to swallow his bite before he choked. “Jesus christ, Sammy, that’s kinky even for you.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Anyway, she’s not short on motivation, if only so she can get away from me.”

“Charlie ain’t a witch. I mean, she knows stuff, but she’s not a witch,” Dean munched on a few fries, which Sam looked at wistfully. Dean pushed them closer to tempt him.

“But she’s a decent code-breaker, and a different perspective on the book than Rowena.”

“Fair enough. If Rowena kills her, I might try to skin you alive. Just saying.”

Sam made a face. Dean inwardly cringed- the amount of nightmares he’d had about being black-eyed and chasing his brother through the bunker was something he’d never talk about. Torturing Sam wasn’t entirely out of the realm of realistic possibility as the mark sank its hooks in deeper. Maybe they both knew that.

“Think we’ll find the Stynes still in town?” Sam eventually said.

“No idea. They stole some girl’s eyes, that’s just fucking weird. Why do they need her eyes? Probably witches,” Dean mumbled into his burger and frowned at his milkshake.

“Yeah, but it’s them… tattoo on the wrist usually means gang, looks like it might be a russian prison thing.”

“Southern accent, Sammy, not a whole lot of Russian prison witches from Alabama.” Dean quipped and looked down the hall, in the direction of the Macy’s. “Think he’s done yet?”

“You want to jump him in the dressing room, don’t you?” Sam crossed his arms.

“Maybe,” Dean grinned, nose wrinkling. Sam looked suitably embarrassed.

“Fine, go on and get him, tiger.”

“Ugh, I wouldn’t really. In a Macy’s? No class, Sam.” He got up anyway. “Meet you at the car in a bit.”

Sam shrugged as Dean walked off, strolling towards the department store, sidestepping a guy who wanted to rub a hot rice bag on his shoulders, trying not to over-react, or to react at all, really.

As soon as he got in to the men’s department, he could hear Benny’s voice above the soft music they played to lull customers into staying as long as possible.

“I don’t need an I.D. to buy things, just take the damn card,” Benny spoke with a menacing edge, and maybe other folks wouldn’t have picked up on it, but the threat of violence rang loud in Dean’s ears. He hurried between the racks of suits.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but we have to verify that you’re the owner of this card.”

“It’s mine!” Dean quickly rounded a coatrack just next to the checkout. “Hey, sorry, it’s mine.”

Benny blinked several times, calming down rapidly. The cashier, a slim guy that was leaning back, hand subconsciously on the edge of his phone and eyes wary, gulped and looked to Dean. “Sir?”

“I loaned him my card, sorry.” Dean said with a cocky smirk, hoping to diffuse things further. He dug through his wallet, watching Benny out of the corner of his eye. The dude looked tense, like he was about to run off.

“That’s fine, sorry, it was my mistake,” the cashier apologized while Benny cringed off to the side, looking away, fidgeting with his hands at his thighs.

Dean presented the ID that matched the card, hiding the three or four others that were also in his wallet. The cashier barely looked before stripping the card through the scanner and printing the receipt so fast that it was being passed to Dean within moments.

“Ah, thanks. Thank you.” Dean tried to make up for Benny’s short fuse.

The cashier gave a wan smile and nudged the bag until Dean took it off the counter and walked away, Benny trailing in his wake, holding his ghoul cowboy hat close to his chest.

“Sorry, Dean,” He said, when they were out of the damn store.

“No, sorry… I mean, I shoulda thought they’d want ID for it.”

Benny nodded. “Yeah, but I was rude to that fella and he’s just doin’ his job.”

“Well, you didn’t flip out on him, don’t worry.”

Benny was quiet most of the way to the car. “I got real close, Dean. And I ain’t even hungry.”

Dean didn’t know what to say to that. He unlocked the car and got inside, touched the steering wheel, rolled the window down in his door, and settled his hands in his lap. “Sorry, Benny — it’s just how the mark works. One minute you’re fine, the next, you have your hands on somebody’s neck.”

Sam was walking towards them. If they wanted to have a private conversation, they’d have to be quick.

Benny just said, after a long pause; “We’re headed back to the bunker tonight, right?”

Dean looked at him in the rearview mirror. It was hard to see what he was thinking- he had the cowboy hat on with sunglasses, like some kind of celebrity.

“Yeah, Benny. This is a milk run. The Stynes ain’t shit.” Dean turned the key in the ignition, and baby growled awake, reliable as anything.

They ended up interviewing the janitor in a bar. Dean was letting Sam take the lead on this one, while he watched the flickering neon lights and sat with his knuckles brushing on Benny’s thigh. The vampire had seemed quiet and withdrawn since the whole incident at the mall, but he’d dressed in his new duds, complete with pinstripes, suspenders, and a boldly patterned tie. It was all that Dean could do to keep his hands off of Benny, with the way he looked. He touched his thigh, and his fingers under the table.

Conrad, the Janitor, was leaning in to talk to Sam, but drunk enough that he wasn’t keeping his voice low at all. “It was the middle of the night and she was there for an interview. And god, then she started screaming.”

Sam was leaning in, helping the guy maintain a sense of discretion. “How long of a time was it between you seeing her go into the room, and her screaming?”

“Couldn’t have been more than a minute. I was in an office, vacuuming, but I could still hear. She was pretty loud, and scared.”

The guy’s hands were shaking, eyes filled with tears about to spill. All Dean wanted to do was run his hand further up Benny’s thigh. The mark ignored everything he couldn’t eat, kill, or fuck. He wondered if it was the same yet for Benny. Or if it was worse.

Conrad Meeks was still talking. “He went out the window. Had a proper lease, he only had the office for the month. It’s not… you know they found the building manager today? Dead in the dumpster. It’s a damn coverup.”

“What, today?” Sam asked.

That set off alarm bells in Dean’s head. The Stynes might still be in town. He let go of Benny’s hand and leaned across the table. “Did he know more than you did, Conrad?”

Conrad shook his head, downed the rest of his beer, and looked at the exit. “I got a few weeks of vacation. I called in already. And I found another job. It’s further away but —”

Dean’s attention waned. “Yeah, probably a good idea to get away for a while. Did the guy who rented that office have any distinct characteristics? Besides jumping out the window, I mean.”

Sam’s mouth looked like he’d eaten a lemon. Maybe it was obvious that Dean had had his hand under the table, in Benny’s space. Let him wonder.

“Uh, um.. He had an accent. Texan, maybe? Southern for sure.”

Dean smirked a little. He spotted a guy by the back of the bar, near the exits. Too fancy for a bar like this, dressed in a suit, like Sam, Benny, and himself. Young, and watching their booth. Dean broke out into a full grin. “Okay. Allright, groovy.”

Sam looked scandalized as Dean got up, migrating away from the table while meeting the stranger’s eyes. He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink as he walked by, into the back and past the bathrooms, out the exit door that was already propped open.

He took a deep breath in the alley behind the bar, saw a shiny new Cadillac Escalade parked a few yards down, at the corner, lights on and motor running. Everything pointed to the fact that they’d been made, and tailed. Or these fellas were cleaning up, and going to hit the janitor next.

Whoever these fucks were, they’d been tailing them. Dean squared his shoulders and stepped under the alley’s light, pulling his gun as a blond man stepped out of the passenger seat of the Escalade. The engine quit, and the driver’s side opened.

Two against one. It wasn’t a fair fight yet. The door creaked behind Dean, and the guy from inside the bar stepped out into the moonlight, smirking like an asshole that was about to get killed.

Dean squinted at a flashlight shone at his eyes by the car’s driver. He felt like he could rise up like black smoke, fill the entire alley, suffocate them where they stood. He refrained.

“You’re the Winchester I’ve been looking for. Which one, Sam, or Dean?”

“Dean. And you are?”

“Eldon.”

“What do you dumb fucks want?”

“Well, we want you.” He smirked like a jackal. “And that little redhead bitch, whenever she turns up.”

Dean aimed his gun towards the source of the irritating light in his eyes, and fired. The flashlight died with a satisfying rain of plastic shards on the asphalt. “That ain’t happening.” Dean pointed the gun high at the streetlight, and shot that too.

The door creaked again and Benny stepped into the alleyway, hands on his sides and hat on to shade his eyes, despite the total darkness.

His presence didn’t stop Eldon’s goon from the bar from pulling a gun on Dean. The driver clearly thought that he could take advantage and pulled a blade.

He hardly saw Benny move, it was that fast. The man with the gun was flung hard against a dumpster which was more than a dozen feet away, and Dean turned away to aim at the driver, who was darting in with his knife out.

Eldon’s attention went to Benny, who was, by the sound of it, beating the everloving hell out of the man that had followed Dean out of the bar.

Dean spun, letting the man with the knife pass him by. “Kay, let me guess. Second heart. Couple spare kidneys. Additional muscles in legs, back, and arms.”

Eldon pulled out his pistol.

“One brain, though, can’t solve that one.” Dean shot the driver in the side of his head as he spun to come back at him again. Before the dead man dropped to the pavement, Dean leveled his gun at Eldon.

Eldon’s gun was wavering towards him. Dean pointed his Colt at his eye, sorely tempted to turn this into a triple homicide.

Dean grit his teeth and waited for Eldon to get the picture, watched him slowly lower his gun and put up his hands in surrender. “Now what were you saying, about goin’ for a ride?”

Chapter Text

Benny got to sit in the front seat, next to Dean, while Sam sat in the back— one foot resting on the hogtied, gagged man that had accosted Dean in the alley. They’d stuck a jacket over his head. Benny wasn’t sure what kind of monster he was. Smelled like a man. Talked like an asshole frat boy. Fought like a caged animal.

He’d fought the henchman from the alley with his bare hands, and even without popping out his fangs, it felt incredible to break his neck. A brutal, but bloodless death.

He was certain it hadn’t really been a man— he was too quick, too strong, and took far too long to die. He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask, at this moment, what exactly these Stynes were. Southern folk, for sure, but not his kin nor anybody he’d heard of.

He looked at the side of Dean’s face and wondered if he had felt the rush of killing the other man in the alley. Maybe it was like that for Benny because of the mark, and it was just hitting him harder on account of his nature.

It had been like drinking someone dry, in the early days of being a vamp. Just like it was— before Benny had re-grown his moral compass from the vestigial burnt-out stump that his master had made of him.

He hadn’t had a drop to drink, but he felt utterly, totally sated. Filled and completed.

Benny worried about that and fidgeted with his jacket’s lapels. It had been a good long time since he’d worn such a thing, and he hoped it looked good— at least, he hoped it looked good to Dean.

They couldn’t get out of Omaha fast enough for his tastes. He didn’t want to leave the bunker until they had this mark mess handled. He wasn’t sure he could trust himself outside.

Dean had the music on loud and the windows down in the chill night, and Sam was glowering behind them. He clearly wanted to say something, to talk to them about the bodies that he’d seen them shoving into the dumpster, but he kept his lips pursed shut, sat straight upright, and balanced his pistol on his thigh.

Nobody said anything until they pulled into the bunker’s garage, almost three hours after taking off.

Dean killed the engine and looked back at Sam. “Let’s take him to the dungeon.”

Benny did a double-take. “You have a dungeon?”

The muffled man under Sam’s boot in the backseat echoed the sentiment, terribly muffled through his gag; “ooh haav a ungun?”

Dean made a face that twitched between amused and furious restraint. He yanked open the door and reached in to pull their monstrous captive out.

Benny got out while Sam helped Dean with their captive Styne— when he struggled, he could nearly throw them off, even cuffed and blinded by the coat wrapped around his head. Benny took a couple steps forward to help, but Dean waved him off, yanking this new monster by the arms.

Dean winked at him, when Sam wasn’t looking. Benny smiled back and turned to the car, pulling out their bags to help the Winchesters unpack.

He felt better, being in the bunker, knowing it was safe. The outside world was fine, really— but full of risks, and none were bigger than the danger he posed to everyone else.

He set Sam’s bag on the library table. He went to Dean’s room next, and sat on the bed, loosening his tie as an afterthought. He felt like he was dressed to go door-to-door, selling vacuum cleaners or life insurance.

Finally Dean came into the room, nearly throwing the door in, bottle of whiskey in his hand, tie askew. He slapped it shut behind him and then set the bottle down next to the turntable with uncharacteristic care. Maybe he knew that he looked unhinged, or maybe he was extremely sentimental about the record player.

It wasn’t easy to tell exactly what he was thinking, but Benny could tell from the set of his jaw that he’d somehow managed to get his feelings hurt between the garage and the dungeon.

Dean met him as he got up out of the chair, grabbed his lapels, and kissed him just about as hard as he could, teeth pinching Benny’s lip hard enough to make him flinch and pull away— for a moment he thought he was bleeding.

“Dean— careful, you almost cut me.”

“Sorry, I just…” Dean trailed off and started stripping down. “Sam’s still lying to me. He knows why they’re after the book, and won’t spill.”

“The good-ol-boy you got in the dungeon? Can they even read it?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know.” Dean replied sourly.

Benny touched his shoulder while Dean eyed the whiskey. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Sam’s just… I guess he has to keep something secret from me, you know?”

He slid his hand down to Dean’s waist. “You gonna go and interrogate the Styne guy?” he was more than a little worried that Dean would nod.

“Not now. Letting him stew… Sam’s fuckin’ talking to him. That’ll break him.”

Benny chuckled at the joke, even though he didn’t really think Dean was joking. He knew how Dean could get when he was torturing information out of a monster, and that was before the mark. If Dean was scary before, he would be a downright nightmare now.

Dean turned and kissed him again, this time a little softer, not quite so manic or aggressive. Benny smiled into it and then turned his back towards the bed, pushing him gently until his knees buckled and Dean went down onto his mattress with a grunt.

The lights stayed on for a purpose, so Dean’s eyes could see, and flicker up to Benny’s face when he simply yanked Dean’s belt and trousers open.

“You look good, sweetheart,” Benny breathed, taking in the sight of him debauched for a few moments. He unzipped himself carefully, perfectly aware that he needed to keep this suit nice.

“That’s my line, Benny.” Dean licked his lips and spread his legs a little, fidgeting with pushing his boxers down so he was free of them enough to run his hand over himself from base to tip.

“I can tell you like the suit. Do you think I look as sharp as you do?”

Dean nodded and gave his cock a good long squeeze. “You look like the bees fuckin’ knees, man.”

“I think I look like a damn traveling salesman,” he laughed a little and unzipped himself, and pushed the underwear down where it bunched oddly around his hips.

Dean snorted. “I’d buy whatever you’re selling.”

“Hmmn, bourbon and bad decisions,” Benny chuckled. He draped over him to kiss Dean’s chest, then slid down to his stomach, hand brushing over Dean’s on his groin, holding it there until he could dip and kiss the knuckles, and feel them brush softly over his lips.

He let Dean feel his mouth for a moment and then licked at his fingers, purposefully avoiding the head of his cock, playing his tongue lightly in the valley between his digits.

Dean groaned shallowly. “Jesus, Benny.”

“Let me take care of you, cheré,” he purred.

Dean’s hand uncurled to touch his cheek, and Benny took his cock into his mouth with practiced ease, lapping at the underside and groaning at the taste of salt on the softest skin on Dean’s entire body. He sucked him in quick after that and swallowed.

Dean gripped his hair and scratched at his scalp and Benny took it as encouragement to take him deeper, and bury his nose in the curls around the base. Dean’s moaning was like a narcotic, warmth flowed down his spine like a coiling snake. He thought about how he’d listen to it all day, how Dean still made noise even when they had to be quiet, doing this in the neverending woods of Purgatory.

Dean’s hips bucked— Benny put his hands on his hips to keep him still and he pulled back. He looked up at the hunter and rasped, “not yet, Dean. Wait for me.”

Dean nodded and threw his arm over his eyes, shivering. Benny drank in his flushed skin, the pulse shuddering under the skin of his belly, and grinned as he straddled him. He pushed his cock against Dean’s and sighed at the slick, warm hardness that throbbed gently with his heartbeat.

Dean’s fingers dug into Benny’s thighs, pulling at the smooth gray fabric of the suit, and Benny wrapped both their cocks in his hand and squeezed. The hunter bit his lip and whimpered, opening his eyes to slits, begging him wordlessly to stroke them together.

Benny nodded and flashed him a grin. He had plans to fuck him when he was all relaxed and basking in the post-orgasmic glow. They were quite lurid, and making him hard enough to burst. He pulled gently, squeezing the tips, keeping them tight without going too hard.

Then Dean’s expression changed—he grimaced at Benny, and pulled back as much as he was able, reaching back and dragging himself across the bed.

Benny’s mouth was full of needle-teeth. He gasped unevenly and shut his mouth, let him go, and turned away, immediately sitting on the floor by the bed as Dean sat up.

“Benny?”

“Just gimme a minute,” Benny touched his teeth and closed his eyes, willing them to recede with a pitiful ache that sank into his jaw. He sighed, looking down at his lap and the disarray of his rumpled suit. His cock was still stubbornly jutting out, oblivious to the shift of mood.

“Are you hungry? We got the cooler.”

“No, I’m not hungry, it just… I’m sorry Dean, I should have said something.”

“Dude, I know you’re a vampire,” Dean remarked, and slowly slid closer.

Benny looked up at the guns on the wall, how they framed Dean’s Purgatory blade like an altar. “I can’t control it,” he gulped. “I popped fangs last time too, I just.. I’m all scrambled up with it.”

“With the mark?” Dean shifted off the bed and paced the room.

“I think so, yeah,” Benny looked at Dean, the flush still in his cheeks, and couldn’t help it. He still wanted him like crazy. “I can just bite the pillow or something. I won’t lose it… biting you’s the last thing I want.”

“You don’t want any of my blood?”

Benny shook his head, and heard Dean opening his dresser somewhere behind him.

“But you can’t stop those things from popping out, so…” There was a soft metallic sound, too delicate to be a gun— something more like a piece of jewelry. Benny looked around. In Dean’s hands there was a thick leather strap, like a very short belt, and in the middle of it there was a red rubber ball.

Dean saw the appraising look Benny was giving the thing, and scoffed. “It’s a ball gag, dude.”

“Dean, I know what it is, I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“Want to try it?” Dean crawled towards him over the bed. “It’ll keep you from biting, if it comes to that.”

Benny nodded unevenly and got up off the ground, shedding his pants and suit jacket so they wouldn’t wrinkle any more than they already were.

Dean patiently, tenderly, helped him get the gag into his mouth. He smirked and remarked “I kinda want to know how you know what this is, but then you might ask why I have it and… well, we can talk that out later.”

He threaded the buckle behind Benny’s head, and Benny closed his eyes, pulled Dean close against him, and nuzzled his cheek. The strap locked with a click.

Benny would miss kissing him and mouthing off while they messed around, but he’d be damned if he’d hurt a hair on his freckled head. Dean interrupted his train of thought by urging him to lie down with his head propped on the headboard.

Benny gasped when Dean went straight to his dick with his mouth and nibbled the underside. He threaded his hands through Dean’s hair, looking at his eyes to make sure it was fine. After Dean had him in his mouth and went to the base, swallowing the tip and bobbing, Benny thrust up while holding his head and was rewarded with a gurgling moan.

Benny missed talking, sure, but Dean was amazing at making it so that he didn’t have to. The man stayed on him, pulling up to breathe occasionally, while he worked his hand behind himself. It was crazy to Benny that Dean could lube himself while having his throat fucked, but also hot as hell.

Benny pulled him up off his cock by his hair, felt his lips with his fingers, playing softly on the tender swell of his tongue. Dean sucked them and shifted up, crawling over Benny while he kept at the fingers in his mouth.

When Benny’s hand finally slipped from his lips, wet and slick, Dean was straddling his stomach and said, voice low and raspy- “Fuck me, Benny.”

Benny would have asked if he was ready if he wasn’t gagged, but Benny had to trust that Dean knew his limits. He held Dean’s hip with one hand while he used the spit-slicked digits to press against his lubed entrance.

Dean dropped his head to his chest and pushed back. He was tight, but lubed and willing, so Benny steered his cock into him and savored the hitch of Dean’s breath and the near-sob that came out of him as he rocked down on it.

“Fuck, fuck, oh damn,” Dean chanted and put his arms up on Benny’s shoulders.

Benny stayed slow, digging his heels into the foot of the bed and pushing up in steady, restrained movements, keeping his hands on Dean’s hips and watching the shivering movements of Dean’s face. It was weird to be gagged, when his hands could roam freely.

He wanted to get Dean worked up and blushing again. The hunter was curled over on top of him, keening and nipping at his chest. He wanted to hit that spot inside him that would make him go boneless and needy. Benny nuzzled the top of his head and pushed all the way into him finally.

Dean moaned and ground his hips down on his dick. Benny felt him shuddering and squeezing, splaying his knees wide as they could go.

Benny sat up a little, frankly startled at how strongly and aggressively Dean fucked himself, even though he knew and trusted that he wouldn’t hurt himself. Dean just squeezed his eyes shut and slapped his cock against Benny’s belly as he moved urgently.

His teeth were in the gag, which barely stifled the moan in his throat. Dean was the kind of man that could have modeled for marble statues of Eros or Adonis.

“You gonna come?” Dean’s tone was almost taunting.

Benny nodded, hand finding Dean’s erection and giving it a few strokes.

Dean leaned back on him, squeezing tight and shivering. “Okay, c’mon man, fuck me,” he commanded.

Dean clearly wanted a little of the beast in him, from the way he was looking at his vamp teeth and licking his lips. Benny moved quickly, pulled up Dean’s legs and turned them both over so Dean’s upper body was nearly falling off the bed-- he grabbed onto Benny’s shoulders and gasped as Benny fucked into him roughly, shoving air from his lungs to punctuate his moans.

Dean was struggling to take it, Benny could tell, but he was also lifting his hips to meet each thrust and clawing at his back and arms. He suddenly cried out, sounding desperate, and when Benny sank into him, Dean clenched hard and came between them, body going rigid.

He was coming before he knew what was happening, hips stuttering and locked in by Dean’s strong thighs wrapped around his waist.

Benny whimpered and dropped his head to Dean’s chest.

Dean’s eyes were a little glassy, just slightly wet at the edges. He took a few slow, heaving breaths, hands now gentle and combing at Benny’s hair. He touched the ball gag, but didn’t undo it right away, instead playing at the buckle and smiling.

“I love you.” He declared softly, squeezing Benny with his legs.

Benny nuzzled his chest and nodded. He wanted to say it back, but he also thought that Dean already knew, and was just saying it to hear it from his own lips.

After a moment, Benny undid the buckle on the gag and shifted to pull it out all the way. “Love you. You make me happier than I thought I could be.”

“Never thought I’d feel this way again,” Dean’s throat sounded tight.

Benny kissed his jaw. “Shh, don’t. We’re both feeling that way. It’s not… It don’t have to make sense, for this to be a good thing. You deserve it.”

Dean probably wanted to argue, to throw up some self-effacing wall to keep this syrupy moment at bay, but he just nodded and kissed Benny instead. It was good.

Chapter Text

Charlie had been looking at the solution for the past twenty minutes, and the goosebumps were just now starting to leave her. She picked up her latte, tried to sip through the plastic lid, and found it empty— it had probably been hours since she’d finished it—  hours since Castiel had given it to her; as an apology for having to work under these conditions, and then fucked off to snoop on the boys.

She’d figured out how to cure vampirism. Charlie shut the book, looked at the gorgon’s head on the cover, and allowed herself a small smile.  She’d done it. It was good to know that now and then she could run circles around the best hunters she knew when it came to research.

The abandoned bank that Sam had converted into Rowena’s laboratory smelled like burning hair, cardamom, and gasoline. The witch, who was probably five hundred years old at least, was fidgeting like a penned-up toddler, scribbling things on scraps of loose paper and burning them in her cauldron. Simple hexes— Charlie knew that her name was probably in there.

Initially, the book that Dean had handed her had been an escape. While her computer compiled scans of weird hieroglyphics, she’d tried to look busy and just… started browsing.  She loved the tactile feel of old books, their thirsty paper rasping at her fingertips. Sure, the ancient Greek was kinda tricky to read: It was a copy of an even older text, done by someone with a smudgy hand who probably didn’t understand the words they were transcribing.

But now that the research was done, Charlie had to get to work on actually curing Benny’s vampirism. She decided then and there to get out before the spell to remove the mark was completely deciphered. She would disappoint and worry Sam, but The Mark of Cain was too dangerous. It was also foolhardy as heck to sit in one place while on the edge of curing it, an eternal curse served with a side of sarcasm, and skank magic.

Not that Charlie had anything against skanks. She loved a good skank now and then. Just not Rowena.

Now, to put theory into practice, she had to find the oldest cypress tree in the continent. Charlie had her browser tabs out, watching the hieroglyphs on the left side of the screen while she googled in the right. Two problems at once, and maybe the dead ends would work themselves out- the Mark of Cain was in a damn stalemate, but that was just fine, because she didn’t have to work on it.  If her algorithm could ferret out the solution to the mark via scans of the codex for the book of the damned, then she could get to work with curing vampires.

After ten minutes of work, it looked like the biggest cypress in the continent was in Florida, east of Orlando by fifty miles in a town called Lutz.

Charlie looked at a flight and booked it out of Houston, a two-hour puddle jumper that left in ten hours.

She closed her eyes for a moment, relaxing in her chair and letting her head rest easy on her shoulder— Charlie could totally do this. And get away from the witch, too.

Rowena was almost the kind of woman she would ordinarily be attracted to, but Charlie was repulsed. For one, the witch was intentionally insulting as an overblown defense mechanism, like a porcupine or a skunk. Secondly, despite the powerful nature of her work, she seemed only to chatter about men with large bank accounts.

Charlie, for the fortieth time, debated telling Rowena about her own amount of discretionary spending. She’d had access to the corporate account of Dick Roman for about 12 hours before anybody realized that he had exploded, so she was still set and didn’t have to get a real job for a long, long while. Just how much she’d spent on the trip through Europe that had brought her to the monastery where she’d found the Book of the Damned was certainly cringeworthy, but worth it. At least that’s what Charlie told herself.

She snapped her laptop shut and stood up, packing her messenger bag in less than a minute.

Rowena was just smirking, as though she was waiting for something.

“Well, it’s been real,” Charlie quipped and tossed her ex-latte into the trash.

“You’re quitting?” Castiel spoke, shattering the weird tension in the abandoned bank.

Charlie’s spun to find him in the doorway. He looked deflated in his rumpled coat. She’d hoped that he wouldn’t be back for a while.

“What? No,” she scoffed, “I’m just getting out of here for some air.”

His eyes narrowed for a second, sensing the lie.

She pointed to the janitor’s closet. “Can we have a sidebar, Cas?”

Rowena scoffed, huffed and made a little impish snort.

He ignored their audience and nodded, opening the door for Charlie, who stepped into the confined little space and leaned on the sink. “Look, dude,” she whispered as he shut the door, “I cannot fucking deal with her right now. Or ever . I know she needs my help, but even when she’s being quiet, she’s doing stuff to drive me nuts . She hates me, she’s like the sorority mother I never had, and even when she’s talking about me like I can’t hear her, she’s a giant pain in the ass.”

After a moment of staring at Charlie, Castiel responded to her rant. “I acknowledge that Rowena is adept at trying the patience of others, but you shouldn’t be out on your own. I can’t protect you elsewhere.”

Charlie nodded. “I know. That’s fine. I know you have to stay with the book, except for wherever you went just now, but I only need a few hours out of here.”

He blinked three times precisely. “I was only outside on the phone. Nothing odd is going on.”

It dawned on her that the angel was lying to her, being so deliberate in his denial. “What… well anyway, I’ll leave the book with you, I have all the scans on my laptop anyway.”

Castiel blinked. “Then we cannot allow your laptop to fall into the wrong hands.”

“Dude, no worries, I have the files password protected and if they try to get around my security, it’ll wipe the drive.”

“You’re lying.” Cas stated flatly.

She was. Her files were not password protected in the least, it was a fresh-off the shelf tablet running Windows Vista, and thus a piece of disposable crap. Charlie smirked. “So are you.”

“I am not lying, I am very good at being earnest.”

“No, something weird is going on, why did you sneak out?” Charlie interrogated.

Castiel looked down, frowning. For a second, Charlie thought he might stonewall and insist he wasn’t acting fishy. Eventually, he softly replied, “I went to the bunker to check on their mission. Sam hadn’t answered the phone while they were supposed to be headed back.”

Her stomach lurched. “Is everything okay? What was going on?”

Castiel nodded. “Everything is fine. They’re safe.”

“But what’s going on?”

Cas looked to the side and shrugged. “I didn’t ask.”

She just stared at him for a few seconds, trying to interpret his shiftiness. “... did they know you went to check on them?”

Cas sighed. “No.”

Her eyes got wide. “Whoa, okay. I got it, it’s none of my business, just… feelings and interpersonal relationships. Awesome.”

“You’re doing a remarkable impression of Dean.”

“Sure,” she shrugged. “Well, I’ll be going. You really don’t have to worry about me. I was on my own in Europe for months and got by without any big, angelic bodyguards.”

Cas looked extremely human when he was conflicted. Charlie sighed heavily. “You’re going to let me go, Castiel.”

He eventually acquiesced, “Yes, I am.”

She nodded. “And I’ll be back. The decryption is running. I don’t need to stick in one place for it. And I literally will pull my hair out if I stay.”

“I understand.” He looked at the door. Charlie could feel him dreading his next verbal sparring session with the witch.

“I’m sorry about this, Cas. Try talking to him, when this is all over.” She actually wasn’t sure which him she was referring to, and she didn’t want to spend any time or brain cells speculating— she’d save that for later, when she got back.

Castiel simply nodded, and so she left, ignoring Rowena’s snort. When she slumped into her dusty car and pulled away with a soft repetitive belt squeak, it finally started to feel real.

She was on at the airport when she had the first little hiccup of bad feelings and anxiety. It was hard to tell exactly why she felt that way- airports were places designed to induce a mild sense of paranoia. And she’d already checked in her sword (in a box) and abandoned her pistol, sadly neither would ever pass as a carryon.

Charlie sat down at the gate with her back to the giant, yawning window that showed the busy tarmac, and watched the people traveling over the top of her book. It calmed her, a little. A prayer wheel of revolving, anonymous travelers.

The announcement for her flight came, and she waited until they were actually boarding to stand, then milled around the gate, and got on the plane.

It wasn’t until she passed by first class that she saw a face that lodged in her memory. A man who was wearing a tailored pin-striped suit was seated, drink in his hand, looking away from the aisle, out the window.

Charlie was sure she’d seen him in Verona, or Lisbon, on a train. She felt chills as she sat in her seat, and considered texting Sam before they took off.

Before she put her phone into Airplane mode, she texted him the information and password for her secure server, then followed it with “I’ll be fine. There’s a thing I have to take care of… I wish I could give you more information. I mean, I could, but you know… secrets. Love you, bye.”

It hurt to delete her message history, but she did.

Charlie closed her eyes and bit her lip. Two hours until she touched down, and started watching her back for that pinstriped-suit guy.

There was no way she was sleeping.

The slip away from the baggage claim was easy enough, she just ducked into the taxi at the head and had him take her to a bar next to a rental car lot, where she checked her boxed sword in the bathroom before asking the bartender for a shot of tequila and sitting for a good hour to make sure nobody odd came in. She turned on her phone, watched an avalanche of messages come in, and returned none.

Poor Sam. She felt pretty terrible, but there was no point in talking with him  about her hail-mary of a plan.

She rented a Kia after dusk, when she was the only one in the rental office besides the two older black men manning the desk. They could have been brothers. They both looked at the sword that was sticking out of the opened box with mildly raised eyebrows, and didn’t mention it.

“Visiting the parks this trip, miss?”

“Oh, no, just my Grandma,” she hated to say it, but the lies got easier as her hunting career went on.

He nodded and smiled, handing over the keys with a packet of papers. “Have a wonderful trip, Ms. Gordon.”

She grinned her thanks. Sam and Dean had their classic rock legends, Charlie had her comic book characters. Barbara Gordon was a favorite.

Charlie found the car clean and gassed up. She tossed her bag in the back and put her sword in the passenger seat, hilt towards the center console.

She should have packed CD’s. The satellite radio was pulling in a Canadian Punk station with some decent girl bands, so that was all right. She watched the rear-view, fully aware that spotting a tail would be hard on a highway in this area unless they were super obvious.

The little town of Lutz was very flat, if one ignored the verdant greenery set all around in the swamps- there were in fact so many trees that Charlie started thinking of needles and haystacks. A little lost, she pulled over and risked turning on the GPS for a few minutes. It was just on the other side of the rail tracks, north of the boat yards. Charlie licked her lips and put her phone on mute for the rest of the long, quiet ride. The sun was coming up again, and she squinted as she drove East.

If there had been a car tailing her, she believed she would have seen it.

The tree was waiting for her, behind a rusting wrought iron fence, with a plaque advertising its venerable nature and three-thousand year history. She sighed and looked at the roiling sky, dark and spattering the leaves around her with noisy drops of rain here and there.

The old giant was dead, struck by lightning in 2012. But that shouldn’t matter; it was still standing, a tower against the sky, preposterous in its’ girth. Filed internally under “phrases that Dean would think were hilarious,” Charlie smiled wistfully and stepped over the fence, backpack nearly causing her to overbalance.  

She was courting a god older than ten thousand years. Goddess, actually. The Cypress was her best chance of communing. Charlie pulled out her sword and stabbed it into the tree, sinking it in as hard as she could.

A singular, high whistle from somewhere in the treeline, and her heart skipped. They were here. This was too early, and she wasn’t prepared. She had to act now.

Athena wouldn’t accept anything other than her best. “ἀνερρίφθω κύβος,” she uttered and bowed to the tree. Charlie knew she was turning her back to the men who’d hunted her throughout Europe, their sharp knives and polished guns were probably trained on her back even now.

She cut her hand and put it on the tree, hoping to feel something, some electrical contact to tell her the magic was working.

Nothing, not even a little rush of adrenaline; just the sinking sensation of failure.

“No, no, come on. ἀνερρίφθω κύβος, already!”

The first of her pursuers showed himself, walking calmly down the path towards the copse of trees, armed with a confident smirk and a simple switchblade, which he flicked open casually. Charlie dropped her backpack.

The sword in her hand shouldn’t be shaking. She took a deep breath and stilled it.

His accent was slick, and he was dressed in a suit, looking every part the businessman. “Morning, darlin. Where’s that book you stole?”

“I sent it to the illuminati.” She squared her shoulders. The fence should slow him down. Maybe he’d slip and impale himself on it.

He clicked his tongue. “That’s fair enough. We’ll find it sooner or later.”

Her eyes flicked to the sky and the desolate horizon. There were others following him down the path, like the southern gentlemen version of the Men in Black.

“You never managed to translate it, did you?” She paced inside the small arena of the fence around the tree, even stretching her achilles before the battle. “I mean, obviously.”

“The book is dangerous, even to those who hold power over it.”

Charlie sighed. “But you’re using a spell to track me, somehow. There’s no way you’d be able to find me by chance.”

He gave a thumbs-up and hopped the fence gracefully, springing over like a gymnast. His wingtips splashed in the mud. “Got it in one.”  

She wished that she felt ready for this. Charlie blew her bangs out of the way and raised her blade. “So what’s your name?” she asked, nervous. Maybe she’d need to know it for some reason.

“Eric Blanton-Styne.” He gestured to the treeline. “Over there is Robbie Styne, and my brother, Kirk Blanton-Styne. They should be properly introduced. Not that it really matters, but they will be helping to bag your organs for transport.”

Charlie knew her eyes widened at that, and he darted forward speedily, knife flashing at her middle and forcing a parry that made her blade ring like a bell.

A half-breath, and he came in again. She spun aside and slammed the pommel of her sword into the side of his head.

Eric went to his knees and she didn’t hesitate. Charlie would have, five years ago; freaked out and ran. Instead, she stabbed down through Eric’s ribcage and into his heart. There were times where Bad Charlie came out as hard as nails. She smirked.

He should have simply fallen but instead he twisted and rolled on the ground, got onto his knees, and cackled.

Charlie blinked in disbelief. “Eric, you should be fucking dead,” she flicked her blade to clean it, splashing red on the tree roots.

“That’ll buff right out, girl,” he growled, blood flecking his lips. It sounded like his lung was collapsing.

Charlie wondered if she needed to take his head off. It was probably the only way to be sure. The blood on her hand from the stinging cut she’d inflicted made a two-handed grip hard, but she lined it up anyway and took her swing as he shoved close and--

She had miscalculated. The goddamn switchblade was already in her side, twisting, punching the air out of her along with any clever thoughts about surviving.

It was shocking, like a flood of ice water. She threw her hand out and caught the air, the horizon tilting suddenly downward as she stumbled.

The world was turning, and her with it. Her legs were tangling with the mud around the base of the tree, wavering and trembling.

“You’re gonna die bloody,” she croaked weakly. She fell, then, shoulders against the tree trunk.

He sat down in front of her, then reached out to brush the blood from her chin.

Charlie flinched a little, and regretted it instantly, the wound in her side twinging.

He didn’t look especially triumphant. “You’ll die here, and your body will never be found.”

Everything felt cold. She was short of breath, her legs were wet and the smell of blood was simply everywhere. Charlie looked at her backpack, longing for an extra handful of seconds so she could smash the laptop, so they wouldn’t have a chance to hack it. “ἀνερρίφθω κύβος,” she muttered.

Eric shrugged in response and looked back over his shoulder. “Get the tarp and the bags, we can harvest her here.”

The sun was burning Charlie’s eyes, the rain pattering her face, her lips- the sky was opening up. Things were blurry and soft-edged, and impossibly cold. The shivering wouldn’t stop.

“Yessir. We found her car, would you like to search it?”

“No, you do that while I get the organs underway,” Eric replied.

It sounded like he was speaking in another room, far away. Charlie was hearing other, more important voices, asking something indistinct.

She thought that maybe she had said yes. Lightning struck the tree. Her eyes went blind at the flash. Charlie thought of Sam, regretful that he might never understand what had happened to her. Charlie was dying, she was dead, and the power churned through her.

Her hands moved and grabbed Eric Blanton-Styne by the skull, and squeezed. The crunch that followed reminded Charlie of cracking a crab’s carapace with her bare hands, of laughing as the hot butter cascading down her wrists hit her bib, smiling at her ex that summer when they went to New England. She tore his face in two with her thumb shoved into his eye socket, and stood up.

Charlie felt dizzy and disoriented. The thing that she’d summoned was fortunately far more aware of what was happening.

I am here.

Hallucinations, yay. She gasped and touched the stab wound in her side. It just felt numb, and strangely warm. “I don’t know what happened, please.” She looked at the man whose head she had crushed, and gulped.

I am Athena. You summoned me.

“Okay. Okay. Cool,” Charlie sucked in a breath and looked away from the corpse just in front of her. She could see Eric’s brains, and he was twitching.  

Meanwhile, the other men, Robbie Styne and Kirk Blanton-Styne, came in quick, with guns drawn.

They are at war. So am I.  

Charlie blinked at the gunshot as one of the men (she wasn’t at all sure which one was Robbie, and which was Kirk) shot at her. The world blurred a little and she watched him struggle with the fact that he’d just somehow missed her at point-blank range.

The goddess inside her punched him in the neck- it felt like smacking a cardboard box. He fell and gurgled, head at an odd angle.

The last of them slowly lowered his gun. To his credit, he didn’t empty his bladder as she stepped forward, but he opened his mouth and began to speak. His words, begging and pleading, made her furious.

Ordinarily she might have hesitated. Bad Charlie would have made his death quick. Athena picked him up like a twisting branch and threw him down over the top of the wrought-iron fence.

He screamed. Athena took his gun, considered it, and tucked it behind her into Charlie’s waistband.

She picked up her backpack and stood for a minute, watching the last man try to disentangle himself. It didn’t work, his blood was dripping down the fence, soaking into the roots of the cypress. About one-third of her was happy about that.

Good Charlie was horrified, but clung to the knowledge that she was safe and she was going to be able to help Dean’s boyfriend.

Another third of her thought it was a suitable sacrifice. They walked, unhurried, back to the car.

Chapter Text

It was the fifth hour of Eldon dangling in the cuffs. Sam left him to stew and took a long, slow walk to the kitchen.  He slowly walked by Dean's door, and despite himself, listened in.

There was a thumping noise, slow, steady, and obscene. Sam’s jaw clenched and he hurried on down the hallway. He didn’t want hear what Dean and Benny were doing in Dean’s room, he honestly thought maybe they’d give it a rest, but really it wasn’t surprising that they acted like they intended to use each others’ asses as flotation devices. He took refuge in the kitchen, bitterness clouding his mind. Sitting down, he stared at the refrigerator. There was a mantra he recited– he wasn’t losing Dean.

This whole situation had him so spooked. There were layers to it and he needed to stop for a moment and have a good think. Was it weird to be nostalgic for nicotine-stained motel rooms and the drone of televisions through paper-thin walls? Things seemed lighter on the road, impermanent and routine.

He looked at his phone and contemplated calling Castiel, wondering if it would help to talk over the weirdness of the last week. He thought about it, and eventually decided against it, making himself a cup of coffee. Later, he would call to check in on Charlie’s and Rowena’s progress, after it was at least ten in the morning.

Eldon– the man in their dungeon–was something different. Nothing that matched any monster on the books, testing as human in every regard. No sensitivity to silver, holy water had no effect, and no problem with cold iron.

Sam figured it was witchcraft– why else would they be after the Book of the Damned? It must be a spell, and maybe it would wear off and the guy would stop being so fucking strong.

He closed his eyes, calmed by the sound of percolation, weighing his need for sleep against his anxiety yet again.

He wasn’t all that tired. Just under a lot of strain from playing the peacemaker and worrying about Dean and his… his vampire boyfriend. Sam exhaled slowly and vowed to sleep by three.

Coffee smelled good, creamer would have been better, but it was miles better than the gas station brand that Dean favored.

Everything was measured by Dean. His influence, his shadow, touched the entirety of Sam’s life. He used to resent it, deeply, and rebel with every breath he had.

Now he was his brother’s keeper, pretty much.

Sam picked up his cup of coffee and returned to find Eldon still smirking with his unending bravado.   

“Let’s get back to it,” Sam sighed.

“I think I could almost sleep like this, if you’d just shut up,” He retorted.

Sam hid his smirk in a sip of his coffee, then asked, “So, you killed that girl in Omaha.”

“Sure. Yeah. Your brother has the mark of Cain. Of course that’s why you wanted the book so bad.”

“You sure think you know a lot.”

Eldon grinned. The busted lip that Dean had given him was still bleeding a little. Sam crossed all the monsters with healing traits off of his mental list of possible monsters. Nothing. He had nothing. Sam sipped his coffee and sat down in his chair.

“You stumbled into this place, you didn’t build it,” Eldon licked his bloody lip again, swaying a little in the manacles as he turned, hanging by his arms. “I wonder whose it really is.”

“I wonder why your name turns up nothing on the searches.”

“Your google-fu is weak,” he smirked, no small feat with a bloody lip.

Sam’s phone buzzed. He ignored it.

“If you ever want to see daylight again, Styne, I’d start talking.”

“Fair enough. I have a deal for you. You slip the key to these shackles in my hand, and I’ll take that curse off your brother. Never gonna see me again, after that.”

Sam sighed, sipped his coffee, and opened a drawer of razor-sharp implements. It was easily the nastiest of the dungeon’s collections, at least as far as appearances went. “Why can’t we find your name? Your I.D. in your wallet is real enough. I’m curious what will happen when we visit your sleepy little corner of Louisiana.”  

“Could be a mighty fine shindig, I’ll be sad to miss it.” Eldon rolled his head back, cuffed with just one arm. In a couple of hours, when Sam finally needed to sleep, he’d shackle him fully. And strip him, which was honestly the part that bothered him the most. But it was worse to think he’d get loose while Sam was sleeping, and find the armory.

“I’ll eventually find that tattoo of yours in a book somewhere. Or I’ll find someone more cooperative before their eyelids are sliced off.” Sam deadpanned. He hated to make threats. He wasn’t sure that Dean wouldn’t carry through with them. Strike that– he was sure that Dean wouldn’t. Dean no longer had the temperment for planning. He’d just outright murder Eldon Styne.

“Mmm, maybe.”

“Your family name isn’t in any kind of database, either. Nothing from any region of europe.”

“It’s Nigerian. Send me your bank info and I’ll send you a hundred thousand dollars.”

Sam actually laughed. In his defense, he was tired. He picked up the hook in his hand and carefully cleaned underneath his nails with the razor-sharp tool. “And fellas like you are just a part of some kind of fraternity of tough assholes.”

Eldon touched the split on his bottom lip with his free hand. “That’s so unfortunate. You should really know who’s killing you, when it finally happens. Maybe it won’t be me. That’s the beauty of family.”

Sam continued to pick his nails, recognizing that Eldon wanted to tell him something, even if it was with a threat.

“We take care of our own, Sam. And we do it at a steep profit.”

He rolled his eyes and turned his back, feigning disinterest.

“Shreveport, way down south? We own it. We’ve always owned it. And we work for whoever’s paying the best.”

“So who’s paying you the best? Maybe we can compete,” Sam sat down at the small table bolted to the floor, and pretended to give a damn about the files in front of him.

“Well, couple hundred years ago, it was Napoleon. Just up until his checks didn’t clear, and we left him high and dry.”

Sam snickered. He couldn’t really help it. The scope of their discussion was now well into the 19th century, it was past two in the morning, and his prisoner had just invoked Napoleon.

Eldon tossed his head and pushed his hair back, continuing as though Sam hadn’t just laughed at his tale. “See, friend, sometimes history just needs a nudge. That war of Northern Aggression wouldn’t have taken nearly the shape that it did if we hadn’t had a few key players at the helm of the Confederacy.”

“You’re less than thirty, Eldon. Even without your ID, there’s all the music on your phone that dates you as a nineties kid.”

“I ain’t taking credit for the deeds of those who came before me. But I come from a long line of people who know how to properly put someone in the ground, Sammy. We date back to the Black Plague. ”

“It’s just Sam,” he replied reflexively. “How does this… family line of yours make you so goddamn strong, Eldon?”

Eldon rolled his eyes. “If you’d really searched me you would see. Care to give it a go?”

Sam’s jaw clenched. “Allright, fine.” He stood up and brought the torture implement with him, casually slicing open the buttons on Eldon’s shirt. “Is this what you want, Eldon? Instead of explaining simply, ask the sleep-deprived hunter to get near you with a knife?”

The man hanging in the shackle laughed. “You sound like my father. “Use your words,” he’d say. Hilarious.”

Sam exposed Eldon’s torso and pulled his shirt down his free arm. His eyes went to the scar running up his chest. The one along his liver. The ones running the length of his trapezius and shoulder. Almost as though he’d been dissected. “Holy shit,” he murmured.

“Spare set of kidneys, lungs. The pulmonary system is most important. I have two hearts. One’s mine, and one belonged to a twelve-year-old who died in a car wreck. Corneas are perfect, from a donor too,” his tone was light, jovially southern. He could have been discussing the weather. “The extra muscles, though… most of those were involuntary. People just don’t donate their calves. Way back in the nineteenth century, if that bitch Mary Shelly had kept her mouth shut about what she saw, we wouldn’t have had to change the family name.”

Sam blinked, eyes dry from staring wide-eyed at the careful surgical marks. “From what … Frankenstein?”

“Precisely,” Eldon grinned.

Sam had to consider the implications– an entire family of people who, through a combination of medical practices and magic, were able to push their bodies beyond the peak of performance. And from there, insinuate themselves into a vast net of shadowy conspiracies.

“You believe me. Good.” His grin was like a shark, teeth glinting bright. Eldon slammed his forehead into Sam’s cheekbone with a crunch.  

He was flat on his back and the knife had fallen away. The stinging in his face made it hard to breathe, and blood was already pouring out of his nose.

Hot and warm liquid rained down on him.

It was Eldon, bleeding profusely, and ripping his hand off just above the wrist.

Sam shielded his face and rolled away. He wasn’t prepared for the kick to the ribs, or the next one that sent him rolling into the table.

Eldon huffed as he walked around the room– Sam tried to keep track of where he was while he counted broken ribs, and crawled towards the knife he’d dropped.

He looked up to see his former prisoner wrapping the stump of his arm in part of his cut-open suit. Sam clutched the blade and scrambled to his knees, wave of adrenaline carrying him past the pain. “This is disappointing, Eldon,” Sam bluffed, trying his damndest to sound intimidating while he wheezed and pushed himself to standing. “I wish you’d given more information before this, but I guess we’re done now.”

Eldon wasn’t running off adrenaline, and his hands weren’t shaking. Sam could feel his own cheek swelling so fast that his eye was throbbing, and he couldn’t taste anything but blood.

There was a crushing silence while Eldon stared at Sam, waiting for him to make a move. But then he just threw his head back and laughed, walked over, and picked up a chair, hoisting it over his head before he threw it at Sam.

Sam spun out of the way, and Eldon tackled him while he was off-balance, slammed him down to the floor, and shoved his stump of a forearm under his jaw. He pressed his windpipe, leaning over him, watching Sam’s face with rapt glee.

For his part, Sam fought the panic rising in him and kneed Eldon in the side. It should have knocked him off. It would have sent anybody else sprawling, but the man just grunted, pressed down harder, and wove his remaining hand into Sam’s hair.

He couldn’t put into words how violently angry it made him to have his hair yanked on, but his vision was blurring and going dark at the edges, and he couldn’t hear Eldon gloating above the murmur of his straining heart. Compressed Cartoid Artery, his brain supplied, like an error message.

Sam blacked out. The big nothing welcomed him back home again, and he wondered what his heaven would hold for him this time around.

The smell of gasoline was a surprise.  Eldon was pouring it all over the dungeon’s floor, and Sam woke fully when it hit his face and hair. He jerked away and curled his arm over his eyes, coughing and sputtering. There were files scattered around him, books, and cardboard boxes. More fuel for the fire.

Eldon just laughed and kicked his arm, thumping Sam against the wall. He did it again a few times until Sam stopped thrashing around.

“I’m gonna find me some matches, then it’ll be a real party, Sammy.”

The next kick was to Sam’s temple, and it threw him back down into the big, dark, emptiness.

Chapter Text

In a simple dream about Purgatory, sometime during their year there— he was fighting back-to-back with Dean again, trying his damndest not to care too much about the man that meant his only chance at freedom. In truth, Dean meant far more than that, even before his hand brushed Benny’s thigh and he met his eyes in the dark.  It was simple and pure. There was nothing but endless monsters and camaraderie of the tenuous bond between survivors. Benny wondered, not for the first time, if he had lost his mind when he first set eyes on Dean.

They were always moving, avoiding the packs of creatures they couldn’t take while tearing their way through smaller ones. He grabbed a monster by the throat and ripped it open, sending the haggard thing sprawling.

He woke, sitting in the armchair beside Dean’s bed, to the sharp smell of gasoline. Benny got to his feet silently, clad in his bathrobe and pair of Dean’s boxers.

Dean was just snoring, exhausted and probably sore. He’d said he hardly felt human, sometimes, his appetites were so raw.

Benny thought he understood, but couldn’t do anything but fulfill his desires, even if that had been a subtle plea for Benny to stop indulging him.  It wasn’t as though they didn’t both enjoy what they were doing. It really was the best way to pass the days.

He took a deep breath through his nose, and left the room quietly. The smell wasn’t in their room, or in the hall, but somewhere else inside the Bunker. He stood for a moment and let the sounds filter through, the heartbeats of the men, one of them more familiar to him than the backs of his own hands. But the smell of gasoline interfered with that sentimentality, and ignited his impatience, his will to murder.

Lower, in the sub-basement. He didn’t like the lack of noise, the near-silence that resonated through the walls. Benny ran, bare feet quietly slapping at the marble stairs, the cement of the basement floor, the metal of the dungeon’s door track.

He rushed into the room, blood filling his nostrils, hands savagely curled into claws. Sam lay crumpled in the corner, his hair black with blood. Benny moved towards him, nearly skidding on wet spots the slick floor.

Sam’s eyelids fluttered. His clothes were bloodied, torn a little, clinging to him, wet and saturated with gasoline. He was partially buried in old files, books, torn cardboard. Benny licked his lips at the sight of blood, swallowed dry, and turned away from Dean’s unconscious brother with a herculean effort. The mark on his arm was aching and wanted to tear someone open. He needed to kill Eldon, and get away from Sam, who was helpless as a baby— and whose blood promised a sweet supper. He had to shut out that scent with the smell of something far more guilty than Sam. The gasoline drenching the room wasn't cutting it.

Benny stood in the empty area beneath the dungeon’s dangling chain, bare feet tracing the streaks of cold blood on the floor. Eldon’s hand and most of his forearm dangled in the lone manacle, just below chin height, and Benny stared at it, mesmerised for a moment, before he remembered to listen.

Eldon had two heartbeats, or there were two men coming towards him with one set of feet. His eyes narrowed, Benny moved to the side of the doorway, hoping that the young man would be too brash to notice his bloody footprints among the spatter and puddles of fuel.

The intruder spoke to Sam, missing Benny entirely— “You know where there’s any matches in this fucking place? Had to find a lighter in an old locker. Jesus wept,” Eldon huffed, pacing with a limp throughout the room, shirtless.

He headed towards Sam, and Benny crouched. He had to find the space to think between his vampiric impulses and the mark, urging him to murder.  Eldon had a shirt wrapped around the bloody stump of his severed arm, and seemed to want something from Sam. He poked at him, and he groaned and turned his face so that his hair fell in front of his eyes.

Benny took a deep breath and stood all the way up. He couldn’t let Eldon prod Dean’s brother. “Let him rest, boy,” he growled.

Eldon actually jumped: It was supremely satisfying. He spun a little on his knee and looked up at Benny, scoffed, and uncoiled to his full height. “They let you off the leash at home, huh?” he sneered.

Benny couldn’t not want to kill him. He bared his teeth in what might be generously described as a smile, and let his fangs slide down.

Eldon, despite his incredible bravado, faltered and looked at the exit. “Time to burn this place down. My boys are on the way, and they’ll get here damn soon.” His fingers on the lighter twitched, Eldon’s thumb turned to the flint wheel and sparked it. It didn’t light.

And Benny just jumped on him, smashing him into the wall and digging his hands into his flesh, tearing his sides with his nails. Maybe Eldon was being truthful about what would happen with his boys on the way, but thinking about that was like shouting Socratic philosophy down a well to a trapped dog— it didn't make a bit of difference.

Eldon shoved his hand under Benny’s chin, trying to crush his esophagus, and Benny almost laughed, taking a little joy in his pain-crossed expression and frantic lashing out.

“You’re never leaving here alive,” Benny licked his sharp teeth and lunged to bite his shoulder, sinking in deep with an utterly satisfying crunch.

He didn’t think twice before he started chewing, separating the meat from the skin and sinew. Eldon simply screamed.

Benny clamped his hand over the boy’s mouth and swallowed the mouthful of warm meat, not nearly sated. The kid had two hearts. It was the damndest thing. He decided then and there to see how much blood there was in him, and sate his hunger in ways he hadn’t sunk to since he’d been newly made and abandoned by his maker on the banks of the big river.

Back then, it was genuine hunger, not this… invasive rage. He felt the throb of the mark up his arm and dug his nails into Eldon’s skin. The next sudden shriek was like a splash of icewater, a sharp shock that this was so totally wrong. But there was red on his tongue again, and rage holding his hand.

He ate Eldon slow, taking flesh into his mouth and tearing the skin and muscle from his bones, filling his belly and listening for the point when both the man’s hearts would finally give up.

Eldon was speaking, pleading, still trying to grab at Benny even though his grip was weak. Benny gave him a sharp slap across the face to shut him up and kept on chewing, gouging his hands into the meat of his stomach and licking a bleeding wound in the hollow of his elbow that was pooling nicely.

Sam had moved, he noticed. That was good— Benny couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t want to move on from Eldon, and attack Sam too— the mark wanted something more, and his meal wasn’t fighting him at all any longer.

When Eldon’s hearts finally both ceased (one was in his hand, absently bitten), Benny just sat in the puddle of red-tinged gasoline on the floor and closed his eyes.

In the quiet he could hear the mark.  It was strangely soothing, a window to a peaceful plane of existence he hadn’t ever experienced. He rocked slowly back and forth, eyes squeezed shut and riding that wave, feeling a hollow space encircling his heart that had been filled, for a few quick moments, by Eldon’s death.

A startled gasp from Dean broke the mark loose, and all that was left was that terrible emptiness that had seemingly engulfed him forever.

Benny cleared his throat and put his hand to his face. It was red.

“Benny, are you okay?” Dean had walked in to this scene, his socks were soaking in it. His voice was quiet, almost at a whisper.  

The scope of what Benny had done was what hit him. He hadn’t killed a person in… quite a long while. Eldon might have been a monster in some way, what with too many hearts and all, but he tasted human. He screamed like one.

He closed his eyes and turned away from Dean. Finding words wasn’t easy, so he scrambled away from the body and sat in the corner, covering his face.

The noise Dean made was slight, as though he was swallowing a sob.  

Benny felt like he should offer some kind of excuse for what had just happened. “He… had a lighter and…”

Dean touched his shoulder and Benny pulled away. He felt like he was covered in gore and when he looked down at himself, it was plain that he had ruined Dean’s robe.

Benny stood up and looked at the man strewn dead on the floor. He’d done this, and it had been so damn easy, like slipping on an old suit and finding that it still fit. Of course, Dean had to know he was capable of this level of violence. But it was a whole other thing to allow him to see it. “I’m sorry,” he rasped.

Dean ran his fingers through his hair, scraping his scalp with his blunt nails. “What happened to Sam?”

He honestly didn’t know. Benny was unmoored, exhausted, and filled with shame. He licked his lips, found blood there, and wished it wasn’t still appetizing as heck.  

“Benny, where the hell is Sam?”

Anger in Dean’s voice snapped him out of it. “I don’t know. He was… there,” he gestured vaguely to the rear wall where Sam had been crumpled on the floor. The place was littered with the men of letters files; they were scattered clumsily, boxes dumped everywhere. Benny’s eyes kept going back to the mess he’d made of Eldon.

Dean gulped and bit his lip. “Is he hurt? Did you…”

“No, no. He got away, Dean. He was hurt,” he swallowed around a lump in his throat. “I swear it wasn’t me.”

He was treated to the sight of Dean rolling his shoulders under his thin t-shirt, and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to reach for him. But then he saw his darkened expression, the brittleness in Dean’s hazel eyes. He was looking right at Benny, cold as ice, as though he could shoot him between the eyes or take his head off without feeling damn thing about it.

They were over, Dean and him. The mark had seen to it.

Dean left the room fast, feet picking up speed as he went down the hallway. As he called to his brother, his voice echoed harshly through the stone and concrete halls.

Benny looked at his fingers, and to the floor where the corpse lay. He had to get away from here; he couldn’t bear the thought that he might do something like this again, to someone that Dean cared for, or to Dean himself.  

As soon as he thought of abandoning the bunker, the urge to leave became something he couldn’t avoid. He walked slowly up the hall, to the stairs, and set his hand on the bannister. Dean was in the kitchen, he could hear him and Sam together, talking in hushed tones.

Of course Benny could hear what they were saying. That didn’t mean he wanted to know. He stood on the stairs a moment before going to the kitchen entryway, unsure of how to announce himself.

“Sam, we need to get you to a doctor. Let me see your side.”

Sam huffed. Benny could see his feet through the doorway, he’d peeled off his socks. They were twitching as he took a few audibly deep breaths.

Dean was out of his view, somewhere behind Sam, who winced suddenly and said “Don’t touch it, christ.”

“Shit,” Dean whispered, “Who did this? Was it all Eldon?”

Benny felt the floor begin to drop out from under him. Sam grunted, “Yeah, all Eldon. He said his family’s coming. It was probably a bluff.”

“Gonna get the first aid kit. Keep ice on that.”

“I know,” replied Sam, irritated.

Benny stepped back when Dean came out of the kitchen to let him pass, but he stopped like he’d hit a wall anyway.

“Hey,” Dean paused, obviously searching for the words he needed. “Are you okay?”

Benny licked his lips and nodded.

Dean looked away, bit his tongue a moment, and left down the hallway.

After Dean had gone, Benny stepped into to the kitchen.

Sam recoiled before he could compose himself, but after a breath, he just settled and smelled like fear. Something had been broken beyond the obvious… Sam’s trust in him had always been tenuous, and now it was just gone.

Dean didn’t trust him either. He knew he shouldn’t take it as a betrayal, not after what Benny had done.  If anything, he’d betrayed Dean. Hell, he hadn’t even been hungry, and here he was, belly full, standing in his kitchen, staring at Sam, coated in cooling, sticky, red.

“What is it?” Sam asked, still obviously nervous, and in pain.

He wished he could vanish, just fade out like an old receipt. “Nothing,” Benny replied. “Do you think there’s a chance that Eldon’s folks are coming?”

Sam took a ragged breath. “Maybe,” he looked at Benny, seeming to consider a long moment. Eventually, he said, simply; “They’re in Shreveport.”

He could hear Dean somewhere down in the halls. It was okay, the hunter needed to look after his brother without Benny being underfoot. And Benny could do what he was good at, without letting it land on anybody else’s conscience. The best gift he could give the Winchesters was in being absent, his violence gone.

“Don’t look for me,” Benny backed away, leaving the kitchen as quietly as possible.

He left the bunker with the soft click of the door.

Chapter Text

Benny stopped at the driveway outside the bunker, craning his neck to look up at the sky as it lightened. His hands were filthy, the robe he wore (it was Dean’s—) was stained impossibly red, and his belly was full.

God, he’d eaten Styne. And Dean had seen the worst of it.

He ached to hear the sound of his lover following him. But Benny hadn’t told him, and he knew that while Dean might have tried to make him stay, everyone in Dean’s life was in jeopardy due to the marks they bore. The line he’d crossed, without even resisting… what if next time he couldn’t stop himself from attacking Sam?

He hadn’t though. Only nearly. Which wasn’t anything to congratulate himself on.

There wasn’t any coming back from what he’d just done, and he’d been fooling himself about being anything more than a monster. His most recent meal wasn’t the first time he’d sunk to such depraved depths. It was just the worst that Dean had had to see.

With Dean Winchester, he’d been able to play the hero.

The taste of regret was bitter, and familiar. Benny turned away from the memories of how many things he’d never be clean of. Devouring a man alive wasn’t even the worst; at least Eldon had deserved it.  

He heard nothing from the bunker. The outdoor sounds of birds announcing the coming dawn almost cut him, and sung with the chirp of crickets and the distant rumble of the road.  

There was about an hour before the sun was up enough to hurt. Benny shed the bathrobe, and set it in the cold water of the ditch by the side of the road. He considered getting the boxers and thin t-shirt off too, but going to town buck naked was maybe worse than the red mess on his borrowed underwear.

He walked straight south, hopping the low barb wire fences. An abandoned farmhouse supplied a shredded tarp hung over the door— he used it to cover himself against the sunlight. Nothing else was usable— the family was long gone and a calendar tacked to the kitchen wall said “2002.” It was so strange that he’d come this far into the future that even that date was now was more than a dozen years past. He stood in the living room a long time, holding the blue tarp around himself like a shield, clutching both ends to his chest. After a songbird nesting on an old bookshelf was startled and flew against the window and fell to the floor, twitching, Benny left quietly.

If he was lucky, anybody who saw him walking through the town would think that he was homeless. If he was even luckier, nobody would see him at all. A uniform store on Station street wasn’t due to open until an hour later- Benny broke the lock on the back door and slipped inside. He found a thermal shirt, caramel pants, and a work jacket. He took a cap with a flap that covered the back of his neck, and found boots with steel toes.

Did he need to steal a car? No, probably not. But smashing the window of an ‘87 Ford felt good in a way that it really shouldn’t have, the mark curled up his arm and thrummed warmly, like it cared enough to soothe his troubled mind. Jump-starting it was also considerably less trouble than hitchhiking. He tucked the loose wiring back up under the dashboard as much as he could.

Benny crossed the Kansas river, and headed down highway 59 towards Oklahoma, thankful for the spotty cloud cover and the long-sleeved work coat he’d selected for the boxy cut and waterproof waxed cotton. He could get to Shreveport by the evening. There was an radio station on the AM band that was playing songs from the 30's, and he kept it on for hours, grateful his era hadn't been entirely forgotten.

It had been a powerful long time since he’d been to war.

Sam hadn’t wanted to talk about what had happened— and as much as it made the mark boil, Dean let it go, knowing that his brother needed rest, and then maybe an urgent care visit in the morning. Dean got Sammy to take a vicodin and helped him lay down in his room. Benny had made himself scarce, and it was worrying— He thought he’d heard the front door, maybe. But he wasn’t sure. Dean half-expected to find the vampire down in the dungeon staring at the body, or worse, lapping at what remained on the floor.

The smell of gasoline downstairs was terribly pungent, and Benny was nowhere to be seen. Dean managed to find a plug-in fan to help clear the fumes, and got to work with the body first, wearing dish gloves and rain boots to stay as clean as he could. He’d have to burn the remains later, just in case Eldon decided to stick around as a ghost… he had to just go ahead and finish the job of severing the torso at the bottom of the ribcage. There wasn’t a whole lot of flesh there to stop him, but the sinews were still stubbornly attached, and the jerking around as Eldon’s legs flopped while being moved was almost enough to make him puke. The janitorial sink helped with the cleaning, and a few garbage bags hid what remained of the corpse.

He was white-knuckled on the mop handle as he sterilized the floor. It was a long process.

This was all his own damn fault. From the mistake of being too distracted by the  mark to help with Eldon’s interrogation, to getting so damn tired that he didn’t wake up until things had gone entirely sideways. The teeth-marks on Eldon’s heart might as well have been from his own incisors.

It took hours to get the basement clean; his hands were cracking and dry from the cleansers he’d used to expunge the odor of death from the bunker. Now it just smelled vaguely hospital-like, somewhere between that and a library.

Dean went walking through the bunker, feeling the sort of anxiety that didn’t just lay down and let him sleep— he kept cleaning, and moved onto the kitchen.

He saw Sam’s phone spinning as it vibrated on the counter, ringing on silent.

The screen said Charlie. He flicked it with his rubber-gloved finger insistently until it picked up on his swiping.

“Hey Charlie, what’s up? Kinda early for you, isn’t it?”

The line crackled, distorted with a thin, stretched sound. “Dean?”

“Yeah, it’s me. What’s up, doc?”

“I… deleted all my messages, I’m sorry. I couldn’t risk the Stynes getting their hands on my phone. And I broke my laptop. Or it was struck by lightning. That part was an accident.”

“Charlie— what happened, did Rowena tip them off?”

“No, no. I’m nowhere near her… I think I’m still in Florida.”

It took a minute to process what that implied. “You’re not sure if you’re in Florida? Jesus Charlie, what’s going on?”

“I… kind of think I might be a god, Dean. And it’s like… it’s like… I close my eyes and I’m twenty miles down the road and I might have been walking, but my feet don’t hurt, and nothing hurts and she’s so fucking strong.”

The hint of panic in Charlie’s voice made Dean’s chest ache. “It’s okay. We’ll come get you.”

There was static on the line, but it ceased as soon as she started talking, still sounding a little frantic. “No, no. Don’t. I’ll be there soon. We’re coming to the bunker.”

“We?”

“Sorry, Dean, I’m just… I’m all scrambled up. Tell Sam I said hi.”

The call cut out with a flat beep. Dean gulped and thought about waking up Sam, treating him to a round of “what the fuck, Sammy,” but it wouldn’t end well. For a long while, Dean thought about what he might do, if Sam had anything to do with Charlie getting herself into a tight spot— or if she’d done something foolish on Sam’s account. He set the phone down so slowly that it hardly made a sound on the metal counter.

He didn’t really know what to do with himself besides keep cleaning. Dean had to eventually acknowledge that he should probably talk to Benny. The look he’d seen on Benny’s face was just so lost, and he saw himself in it, a reflection of what he’d done to those men when they’d had Claire. He wished he had Cas here to be a voice of reason, but he didn’t know what to say to him either.

Sorry, maybe.

In the meantime, he could try to fix what he had in front of him, instead of letting it fester like an open wound. There wasn’t any getting around it. He had to face what he’d done to Benny when he gave him the mark, and that included dealing with the fallout. He had to talk to him, or failing that… just be with him. Even if that meant wallowing in his misery.

Dean left his gloves by the sink and went to look. Eventually, he circled back and picked up the phone, eying the screen suspiciously. He’d been through the bunker and found neither hide nor hair of Benny— he hadn’t taken anything with him, just the old bathrobe… it was like he’d vanished into thin air.

Sam was woken out of a deep sleep by Dean prodding his shoulder.

“Ow, Dean, what is it?” He put his hand over his ribs— moving at all hurt terribly.

“I can’t find Benny.” Dean looked tired, but was flexing his hands near the edge of the bed, like he was restless. His phone was sitting there, accusing. “And Charlie called. She’s in trouble, maybe. She wouldn’t say.”

Sam remembered the messages he’d gotten from Cas, the ones he’d left for her, and bit his tongue. “...Bring me my laptop. She might have emailed.”

Dean’s brow creased in doubt. “Okay. You left it in the library?”

Sam nodded in response, and watched Dean go. The clock said it was mid-morning, and Benny had left the bunker hours ago… he didn’t know exactly what would happen when Dean realized that. It was worrying.

He picked up the phone and called Castiel.

The phone rang, and rang, and went to voicemail. “Hello. This is only my telephone. Uh, my cell phone. These are words that I have recorded, and are not spoken by me when you will be hearing them. Um. Speak after the beep. And tell me what you want. Thank you.”

Sam sighed softly. “Cas, it’s Sam… call me when you can.”

Dean walked in while Sam was staring at the phone in his hand, and set the laptop down on the bed.

Sam opened it, trying not to move too fast. If he didn’t shift quickly, it didn’t hurt quite as badly.  

“Sam… did Benny… did he say anything to you?”

He glanced up over the laptop and gulped. “Uh… I… he didn’t say anything to you?”

“No. Not really, I… maybe I wasn’t in a listening mood.”

Sam had to admit he wasn’t exactly comforted by the situation of being alone in a room with Dean, especially with what he was about to tell him. He licked his lips, winced at the split in them. “I’m pretty sure he went after Eldon’s family, Dean.”

Dean spent a few seconds rapidly blinking, mouth set in a firm line. “Shit,” He eventually said.

“Are you going to go after him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Charlie’s on her way here. From Florida.” Dean’s voice had dropped, and he sounded angry, but the way he stared at the wall told Sam he didn’t know where to direct it.  He took a deep breath of air. “She might be possessed by something, and she’s scared, and… Sam, I gotta do something.”

Sam opened his email and stared. He had an email from Charlie, sent automatically sometime the night before. It contained her server’s access information, and nothing else. Sam closed his eyes— the only reason this would show up is if she hadn’t been able to stop her dead-man switch from activating.

“Is she alone?” Sam eventually asked.

“Fuck, Sam… I don’t know.”

Sam gulped and tried to sit up in bed a little more, and instantly regretted it. He took a few shaky breaths. “I need Cas if I’m gonna be of any use to anybody.”

Dean paced the room, even though it was only a few steps. “Call him. I don’t care if he’s minding the witch. We’re gonna need him.”

“Already did. He didn’t pick up” Sam wiped his eyes, frustrated at the swollen skin around his left eyebrow when he forgot his injury there and touched it.

Dean sighed in exasperation. “I’m gonna try him on my phone. And I’m calling Benny. He needs to get his ass back here.”

Sam almost told him that he had left wearing the bloody bathrobe he’d killed Eldon in, and probably didn’t have his cell. Almost. He knew that opening that particular vein of conversation wouldn’t lead anywhere productive, and might even be dangerous. Better to let sleeping dogs lie. “Okay,” Sam said, “I’ll get up and try to shower in a minute.”

Dean left his room and Sam immediately started digging into Charlie’s server.

There, in the files, was a new encoded document, one that had been uploaded at around 2am.

The file name, which made goosebumps rise on his arms, was DamnedBook.pdf.

Sam took a shallow breath and opened it.

The file had everything. He would need to search through it to find the spell to remove the curse, but it was there.

He shivered involuntarily and snapped the laptop closed. Gulping at the pain, he slowly maneuvered out of his bed and hobbled to the shower— It was time to get on with finding the cure for the mark, no matter what the consequences.

Chapter Text

The road spun out before him, and he drove until the sun’s intensity made him pull over and duck his head down under the shelter his coat. His head was throbbing with an oncoming migraine from the glint of sunlight hitting the white hood of the pickup. It might go away for a little while if he could just rest his eyes.

Of course, he dreamed.

The distinguishing marks of his house were faded— but he knew some of them with impeccable detail. The white curtain in the window had once been a sack of flour, and then a dress, and now there were moth-eaten holes at the edge. The precise number of dishes they had was unclear, but it wasn’t many, and he was sure they’d had some mismatched pattern. In the dream, there was just a blue smear around the rim.  He wanted to see his wife, Cordelia, there, in their bedroom, but he knew this memory— she was hours gone. Perhaps his mind was sparing him the pain of seeing her features fade from existence- at least he remembered the brown of her eyes, almost red in the sunlight. Benny paced the kitchen, looked at the empty bed of his child, in the corner next to the pantry.

This was their routine. Benny worked until late at night, came to the house after midnight, drunk, ate a cold supper, and laid down to sleep next to his wife, who usually didn’t wake up. He longed to lay next to her again, put a hand on her belly, and play at the hem of her pajamas, but there was no way to turn back the clock, even here.

She woke early with their son, Charles, and saw him to school. The boy was almost thirteen, and was doing better than Benny ever had in school.

Dreams in this period were always tricky— there was so little left of his memory, the textures were all washed out. He had to trust that he was being shown something true, because his mortal memories were... maybe unreliable, or rose-tinted.

For instance, he knew rationally that their shack didn’t smell all that good, he knew their chickens should be noisier at this hour. He knew the ceiling should have been closer to the top of his head.

Time slipped by. Benny didn’t dream the part where he had cold coffee and biscuits, and got dressed in his overalls.

He was standing in his yard, at the edge of the grass, feet strangely bare.

On the other side of the dirt road, Cain stood waiting. The reeds behind him rustled uniformly, pushed by the wind.

Benny wasn’t sure why he was freed from the constraints of memory entirely. This dream wasn’t like his usual ones, there was no script, no words that he felt his own mouth forming— and he’d certainly never met Cain here outside his house.

“What are you doing here?” he said, weirdly free.

“We are waiting for you to let us out, to devour the world.”

Benny gulped, shook his head. His feet were in the dirt in 1937 even as he was forced to think about the incomprehensible new world he’d woken to— and consider it burning to the foundations.  He wanted to deny everything, but he thought of Eldon’s heart in his mouth, and the words dried on his tongue.

Benny would do it; he would falter eventually.

How many people could someone like Benny murder a day? Hundreds. He was certain, that with the mark fueling his hunger, he might reach a thousand… or two. And that was if he stayed away from cities, far from population centers.

In a blink, he was back on his porch, and he could smell death inside his house.

His hand fumbled the cheap latch. On his floor, there were dead men piled up like dirty laundry— he was relieved to find that he didn’t know them. They’d been torn into pieces, smashed into the floor, and they were rotting so fast that as he watched, maggots erupted, churned, and blossomed into flies.

Their skulls split and their brains blossomed dirt and mushrooms.

He choked on the smell, and woke in the cab of the truck, huddled under his stolen coat.

Benny didn’t like the way his dreams were reaching so far back. Maybe he’d never be able to think about the home he’d made with Cordelia without thinking of Cain, standing across the road, waiting for him to erupt into the world and devour it.

Or the dead men, anonymous in their rot, sinking into the kitchen floor.

He stared at the clouds in the sky for a time, saw them drifting east in a tranquil, smooth line. At his right side, to the west, there was a darkened cloud and the promise of coming rain.

He muttered a curse and sat up in the driver’s seat. Time to move on.

His gas gauge dinged softly, and if it wasn’t for his keen ears, he might have missed it over the sound of the rain. The good thing was that he was already in Louisiana, and only a couple dozen miles from Shreveport.

His foot had felt leaden since the sun went away, and he half-agreed with his possessed limb that he needed to get to the city before sunset, to have as much time as he needed to find the Stynes.  However, he saw headlights in the rearview mirror— the only car he’d seen in probably a full minute, and made sure his speed was conservative.

It wouldn’t do to be pulled over with an out-of-state, stolen vehicle.

The car gained on him, went to pass, suddenly cut the headlights, and smacked the left rear of the truck, sending it into a spiral that careened on two wheels, left across the oncoming lane, and into a steep ditch.

The truck turned on the right side, and the engine moaned, wheels spinning on air. Benny was still clinging to the wheel when it came to a stop, his middle held by the stubborn strap of the seatbelt.

Clearly, they knew what they were after. Benny’s fangs prodded out of his gums and sleeved over his teeth, and he kicked out the remains of the cracked windshield.

“Yes, it’s definitely him,” He heard someone say, up on the road, out of his view.

“Save the parts you can, you know what to do,” another voice ordered.  

The truck’s engine finally sputtered to a halt— the headlights were stubborn, and continued to illuminate the ditch beside the road. If he wanted to, he could skip over a low barbed wire fence, and disappear into the trees.

It would only take a moment to disappear, but he rolled his shoulders and climbed out of the muddy embankment, grabbing fistfulls of grassy soil for purchase.

He stood up at the edge of the pavement, noticed his shoes were missing, and looked at the four men that had gotten out of the low-slung dodge sedan sitting sideways across the southbound lane. Two on each side, and all the doors open.

He saw that they had scalpels, and one held a cooler. As soon as they’d seen him standing, they’d begun to fumble with handguns.

Even back in his youth, when he had been newly-formed and desperate, Benny might have run from such a challenge. He would ordinarily never engage with this many armed men, at least not without strategy, without drawing them into some sort of ambush, killing them in stealth as they pursued him through the woods.

There was no retreat, not now.

“Try to incapacitate, so we can use the leg muscles.”

Benny hesitated, feet rooted to the dirt.  As much as he could kill them all, he didn’t really want to. These fellows on either side of the car might not even be old enough to drink, let alone butcher.

While he stood there like an idiot, they fired at him. Four of the six bullets hit, his stomach, lungs, and intestines punctured neatly.  

The mark showed Benny’s second set of teeth, took his tired bones and propped them up, with shoulders squared. He listened to them murmur with fear, and withstood the bullets that tore through his chest and stomach.

He moved forward, the holes in him suddenly cold from the air pushing in.

In these moments he wanted to say that he wasn’t himself, he felt possessed, vicious and merciless, uncaring whether the flesh he tore at belonged to a man who knew what he was getting into, or a simple boy, not yet twenty. It was a cop-out. The mark demanded these actions, and it was able to get what it wanted because his will was too weak, and killing was always on the tip of his tongue.

He ripped one of their throats out with his teeth, paused to savor the taste of life in his mouth, and one of the others got a lucky shot— and it went right through his brain.

It stung horribly, and he nearly forgot what he was doing. What he was.

Benny collapsed to the pavement and twitched, his own skull fragments dancing before his eyes. Nothing hurt at all— it was as though he no longer had a body.

In the yawning silence that followed, someone said “Is he still moving?”

“More like twitching.”

“Get him in the car, hurry.”

He would have been too slow if he hadn’t fed so deeply in the last day. Benny couldn’t remember who he’d eaten or why.

They were about to put him in a black bag. Benny twisted, pulled the closest one down on top of himself, and tore into the skin on the side of his neck, biting so hard that the man only shrieked and went limp almost immediately.

Benny’s clothes were ruined. He couldn’t really figure out why that should upset him. There were two other men shouting as he stood, and they raised guns at him again. One of them was young, and the barrel of his gun wavered and trembled.

If Benny had been capable, he would have taken the more experienced one first, and left the terrified one alone.

The fear was too savory, and Benny launched at him like a wave, slamming his body against their idling car and ripping into his skin with his teeth and nails.

He could hear a voice, so close that they might as well be echoing in through the bullet-hole that stole his words and memories.

He wasn’t sure what they were saying, or who—

More bullets in his back.

Benny yanked himself away, turned, and was rewarded with a shot that pierced his cheek. He pounced on the last man, and pushed his gun hand down until his assailant fired into his own side and dropped, gasping, to the pavement.

Everything smelled like blood— he couldn't turn away. He wasn’t sure why he felt he should loathe it, hate himself for licking it from the pavement.

He was queasy and starving, all at once. Benny devoured the scene— well, the living parts of it, anyway. Men that were stone dead held nothing for him.

He felt a bit mad, looking over his handiwork, knowing that he would feel something about it later. He lowered his head and licked the twitching fingers of a bloody hand.

Blue and red lights reflected on the scene, blinking, turning the shadows darker.

The siren took considerably longer to register, and then there was shouting, and Benny looked straight into a pair of bright headlights.

“ON THE GROUND, NOW. HANDS UP.”

Benny could actually comprehend the words. His brain had healed just enough to put the pieces together. He looked around to what he had done, again, and shivered.

“Take my head off,” he mumbled, and then repeated it, louder. “Take my head off.”

These men were police. Their badges gleamed. They would shoot him, and if they did, he would kill them too. He raised his hands and fell to his knees.

“Lay down on your stomach,” one ordered, keeping his gun pointed straight at Benny’s chest as he approached.

“Jesus Christ,” said the other, head turning as he looked around.

Benny laid down, and stretched out his arms, crucified on the pavement. Purgatory would welcome him. “Please, take my head off.”

They ignored his plea. That would have been too kind and quick, considering all that he had to answer for.

He allowed them to move his arms to cross behind his back, and felt handcufffs cinch his wrists cruelly. “Dave, we need to call this in.”

“You keep your mouth shut, and we’ll be just fine.”

Darkness, in the form of a black bodybag, swallowed him up.

Everything was existential.

Charlie felt as though her body was insulated, hard, moving towards a singular, focused goal. Her feet kept moving, and she walked like a line on a map, passing through fences with the ease. The wire twisted, unfurled, and popped as her body pushed forward.

Athena had given up on the car when the thing died, and Charlie had tried to tell her that the rental agency had probably frozen it when her card had turned up declined after midnight on the second day in Jonesboro, Arkansas. They were in Baxter County now, and would perhaps soon reach the boundary of Missouri.

She walked into the water, mud parting around her feet, herons crying as she trod forward, lily pads barely binding her legs.

Her brain cycled through the last day. She had the backpack on her still, even though she knew that the laptop was useless— maybe the hard drive was intact, but Athena didn’t seem to care.  Charlie could spin it up later. By now, her server would be open to Sam, and he would have access to all of her files.

If she knew him, (and at this point, she thought she did,) he would be able to access everything— her bank accounts, her personal history, her SIM data— all flowed along the river of nothingness and light.

Charlie cried out under the water, bubbles bursting from her lungs, rupturing the surface with the impurities of her flesh.

She would have wept, but instead the water carried her tears away before they gathered on her lashes, and her open eyes saw nothing but vague points of light, filtering through the sludge.

When she erupted into the air, Charlie gasped, more as a vestige of mortality than a genuine plea for breath. Her feet carried on.

Every now and then, her mind thirsted for sleep, and drifted. Charlie imagined Dean, worrying about her— as one of several beings constantly in his orbit, and therefore in danger.

She was the danger, now. Athena seemed to want to reassure her, fill her with notions of power, invulnerability. She saw the fight between her bad half and Dean replayed, his hand breaking on her marble cheek.

It wasn’t that Charlie didn’t believe the goddess inside her, it was more that she couldn’t. Couldn’t get it out of her head that she had died, back there at the tree when she summoned her.

Whatever it took to survive, she told herself.

Sam looked at himself in the mirror, evaluated the bruises, scrapes, nail gouges. The shower had hurt in several places, but also helped the muscle aches. And the smell.

The towel was around his waist, so he wasn’t naked, but he heard Dean trying the door and his hand jerked to a bathrobe like it was possessed.

He wrapped it around before Dean knocked, and opened the door.

“Sorry,” his brother shrugged. “I can’t find him. He didn’t take a phone. Could be anywhere.”

There wasn’t much in his statement or even his tone of voice that told Sam how deep this hurt Dean. It was the way that he wouldn’t look him in the eyes, how his shoulders slumped in the liminal space of the door.  

“Dean, I’m sorry. He’ll be back. I’ll start looking into the Stynes and see what I can turn up.”

Dean didn’t have enough room to pace. He gulped and sullenly cracked his knuckles.

Sam felt the hair on his arms try to stand up, and licked his lips, picking up his razor. It would have seemed defensive if it wasn’t a regular old safety razor.

“Your face is too swollen. Don’t shave for now.” Dean commented, fog of fear and jealousy lifted for a moment.

He backed away from the bathroom, turned and walked away. Sam blinked several times and put the razor down.

Later, he saw Dean through the crack in his door, with his headphones on, laying on his bed, eyes closed. He wouldn’t run off for at least a few hours.

Sam went to the library, poured himself a scotch, and opened Charlie’s server again.

Time to get some answers. The book’s secrets opened to him, all he had to do was find the right passage. He squinted at the screen and sipped his drink, readying himself to pull another all-nighter.

Chapter Text

A spark flew into Castiel’s eyes and everything went red.  A deep, terrible wrongness twisted his vessel, made him feel both mighty and weak; confined while his fingers twisted into claws and blood boiled out of the capillaries in his eyes, leaving wet tracks down his cheeks.

Rowena’s mirthful laughter rang in his ears, and then she was gone, the chain around her waist falling limp on the floor.

A car pulled up outside. He could understand what was happening, even if he couldn’t behave like anything but a rabid dog. Castiel paced and grit his teeth until they creaked.

When the door opened it was jarring, invasive. He turned his vessel towards the sound and growled as a shadow stepped inside.  

“Mother? I’ve arrived.” Crowley stood straight, a hand in his coat. He surveyed the room and his smirk faded. His eyes fell to the angel in the trenchcoat and he sighed.

Castiel just stood there, fighting to keep himself still.

“Bloody hell, are you just hanging about here, like the butler that Dean forgot?”

Every word made him more and more unable to contain himself. It wasn’t that he was angry— far from it. Castiel was terrified, out of control in his body, his vessel, disconnected from his actions.

He lunged and Crowley sidestepped him, and he stumbled to his knees.

Castiel looked at his twisted reflection in the leather of Crowley’s shoes, and stood up with a great effort. He rolled his head on his shoulders and stared at the demon before him.

“She set you as a trap, Castiel,” He drew his coat around him, sighing in exasperation. “Rowena summoned me so she could have me killed.”

“You should run, salesman—” Castiel would have said, if he’d had full possession of his tongue. A wordless growl forced past his lips. He’d never thought much of Crowley. Too much a pragmatist, never a fighter, never one to show courage in the face of a direct threat.

But Crowley wasn’t leaving, wasn’t even trying. His knowing smile was mocking Castiel, but then it slipped off like water on a duck, and Crowley backed into the table, and Rowena’s discarded spell components went rattling around.

“Snap out of it, angel. Your boys need you.”

Castiel, despite his lack of higher faculties, summoned his angel blade. For a moment, he contemplated the edge that could divorce molecules, and part the pattern of the universe into concise, small pieces.

He cut Crowley’s cheek and the demon flinched, looking away from him and glancing to the floor. Cas grabbed him by his impeccably tailored suit’s lapel and slammed him into the table, bending him backwards. He leveled the blade at Crowley’s neck.

Crowley showed little hesitation— his tattered soul erupted as a red a cloud of smoke, insubstantial, and swirled around Castiel’s blade— a coward in the end.

His skinsuit slumped, pulse quiet, body limp. He let it drop to the floor.

Castiel was lucky; the door out of the abandoned bank was a simple push-bar, and he could escape with ease. He staggered out into the daylight.

Terrible, yawning, horrifying freedom. He walked across the road, into the woods, and away.

Sam caught himself doing it again. The desire for a breakthrough on the spell to remove the mark was so great that he was latching on to every single new turn of phrase, every ingredient in the massive book of the damned, as though each singular hint were the one.

Hanging his hopes so high was as useful as praying. He still did it, and still talked to Chuck as though he were listening, but he couldn’t rely on it. He still hung on to the hope that things would work out all right between him and his brother, after the Mark was over and done with.

He knew that sullen resentment, Sam’s meddling— would cloud their relationship for years.

If Dean didn’t kill him. Now there was always that threat.

Sam had looked at the last holder of the Mark, and what had become of him. He still couldn’t really work out how the Mark had come into the world, but he suspected it was God himself. He had seen fit to punish Cain, after all.

He wasn’t sure of the history of the thing. Had Cain taken the mark after killing his brother, as part of his penance, to make sure that his anger, loneliness, and suffering went on forever, or had it come as soon as he spilt Abel's blood? Was there some way that he had gotten the mark from somewhere before the moment when he fitted a rock into his hand and brought it down on his brother’s head.

Maybe it had driven Cain nuts, in the end, when he still felt the same hollow rage burning in his bones, a year after he gave it to Dean. Maybe the need to kill had been in Dean all along, and when he was clean of it, he’d still feel the stain on his bones.

Sam shut the laptop and saw Dean staring at him from the doorway. There was no clue to tell him how long his big brother had been standing there. He was dressed, eyes puffy but sharp, frowning just slightly in the way that let Sam know that it wasn’t really him that Dean was preoccupied with.

“Shouldn’t you be getting some rest, Sam?” His eyes slid off his brother’s face, and Dean rubbed his face tiredly.

He wanted to take a deep breath, but thought better of it— his ribs were still broken, and staying perfectly still was pretty much the only respite from the constant throbs and complaints of his body. “No, I just… I couldn’t sleep. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, just don’t… Don’t run yourself down on my account.”

“Dean… it’s not on your account. It’s… this thing is a liability, to everyone. And I know you can handle it better than anyone.”

“You don’t think Benny can handle it?”

That hadn’t been where Sam had thought the conversation was going at all, but now he was thinking about the smell of gasoline in his hair, and the sting of it in his cuts. “No, that’s not what I… Dean, he scared the hell out of me, but he didn’t attack me. I think— I don’t think he should be out there on his own, but I don’t believe he’ll go mad. He’s not like Cain.”

There was a muscle on the side of Dean’s face that pulsed when he clenched his jaw— it was his biggest tell. Dean paced on the other side of the table down the length of the library. “We need to go after him.”

Sam sighed. “I agree. But we need a lead. And I… I need to go talk to Rowena… and Cas.”

Dean gulped. “Charlie’s coming.”

Sam’s lips narrowed. “Yeah. She’s in trouble, you said?”

“She didn’t make any sense. Might be possessed by something.”

“A demon?” He frowned and it hurt his face a little.  

“I don’t think so. She’s the one talking on the phone.”

Sam weighed his next words carefully.  “She’s got a key to get into the bunker, but the Stynes might be coming.”

Dean’s eye twitched.

Sam continued. “I don’t want to go after Benny without you. I want to get Cas here, to help defend the place.”

“But Cas hasn’t called. Something happened,” Dean stated, shoulders slumping in defeat.

“Maybe. Listen, you have to stay here. In case the Stynes come before Charlie, or get here right after.”

“But Benny… he’s not good on his own.” Dean had his back to him, and the resignation and blame in his voice wasn’t directed at Sam.

Sam sighed a little, bit his lower lip, and nodded. “I know. I think he’ll call, or come home. Maybe it’ll be a couple of days. All we can really do is watch for news reports.”

“So… I’ve got to hunt my boyfriend like he’s a job.”

Sam gulped, taking a moment to process the entirety of Dean’s statement. Of course he knew that Benny was Dean’s boyfriend. It was entirely something else to hear it out loud, and then register the self-loathing in his brother’s tone. “It’s not… Dean, I don’t think he’ll go bad. I think he just… wanted to get away from what happened,” he said, feeling defeated. Sam’s total foolishness when it came to allowing Eldon to get the upper hand— to, in fact, tear his hand off his arm, had lead them directly here. “He’s a good guy. I get it.”

Dean nodded, pacing again. “I know I’m being melodramatic, okay? I know. But he was just right here, and now he’s… just gone. And I… I should have said something when I saw him in the hallway, but I just… I didn’t.”

Sam didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”

Dean’s sardonic laugh was short-lived. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Lend me the keys, I’ll go find Cas.”

It was a true mark of Dean’s defeat that he didn't protest, just reached into his pocket and tossed the keyring at him.

It landed in Sam’s hand, heavy and warm. He looked up at his brother as he leaned on the doorway. “Thank you, Dean,” he said, dumbfounded.  

Dean just nodded, turned, and walked away.

There were moments when Sam almost understood Dean’s fixation with the car. The Impala purred around corners, her suspension soft and certain, and on straightaways, the engine roared open and ate the miles eagerly between the bunker and the abandoned bank. As he pulled into the dusty parking lot, he saw new tire tracks, the evidence of several vehicles having pulled in and out off the abandoned bank lot.

Sam gulped and got out of the car, holding his aching ribs as he stood up. The problem wasn’t the pain, it was how it would steal his breath, make his vision black at the edges.

Sam pulled out his gun, and walked to the front of the bank slowly. He listened at the silence at the door, hesitated, and pulled it open.

He was greeted with total silence.  And some clues.

A bloodstain, soaking into the scraped concrete floor. An empty chain, and a doused fire on the table. Sam put his hand on the pillar where he’d chained Rowena, and holstered his pistol slowly.

His face ached, and it would be hours before he was supposed to take any more of the pills that made it mostly bearable.

The phone in his pocket buzzed and thankfully, Sam didn’t jump. Carefully, he reached into his pocket, pulled it out, and swiped the screen.

“ you there yet?” it was followed by two skull emojis and a picture off a car. He pictured Dean, picking the keys to the ‘52 Ford and throwing at least four guns in along with his Colt.

He replied. “ Yeah. Rowena skipped. Everything’s fine. ”

“ She’s on the loose? Fuck. ”

“I’m not worried, she’s long gone.”

“Ok I’ll hang in, 20 minute check” Dean replied.

Sam nodded, cursed his own awkwardness internally, and put the phone back in his pocket. He looked around the corners of the bank again, found them desolate and empty, and discerned quickly that nothing of value had been stolen by the witch.

The blood on the floor forced his thoughts back to Cas. Charlie was long gone, and Rowena was a force of nature,  but Castiel…

Cas was an angel, and that meant he should have been fine. But he was the only person that was unaccounted for— it wasn’t surprising that Rowena would run, or that Charlie was missing, wherever she’d gone to— but Cas.

He was just gone .

Sam moved slowly, and walked back to the car, blinking at the Impala glinting in the sunlight. He was glad that she could be garaged in the bunker, out of the elements for a while.

Sam paced around her, squinting at gravel of the lot— inspecting the strange tire tracks he’d seen earlier, hoping for a lead. Maybe they parked for a little while… at least they peeled out in a j-turn, with a relatively shallow wheel-base.

He’d seen how Castiel and Charlie drove, and doubted Rowena drove her own car. His jaw clenched, he paced the parking lot. Far too many tracks for just the three off them.

Sam touched his phone, and sighed. Someone had been here. He leaned on the car and sighed while he texted Dean: “Looking for Cas. Rowena’s gone.”

“Ok. Coming home?”

It was the first time that Dean had actually referred to the Bunker as home, maybe, and it struck him for a second.

He looked over the roof of the Impala and to the woods across the road,and noticed the crumpled underbrush and broken branches showing a clear-trod path into the forest.

Someone had crashed into the overgrown area, not even trying to hide their path. Sam blinked and put the phone in his pocket.

He limped across the road after looking both ways and finding no cars; in fact none had passed in the past eight minutes. Sam moved slowly, limping down the embankment and over the plain footprints in the dirt, overlaying deer tracks and exposed roots of bent blackberries and oak saplings.

Sam put his hand on the butt of his gun and followed the hard heeled shoes in the dirt. They probably belonged to Cas… they definitely weren’t Rowena’s. Maybe another man, by the shape of the footprint, a smooth-soled loafer.

The tracks were plain, undisguised, snapped twigs in the wake of the angel’s passage. At least he hoped it was Castiel that had passed through here. He moved slowly, listening, making sure he wasn’t missing any additional prints.  

It didn’t look like anyone but Cas— or the wearer of his old loafers—  had been through here. He didn’t see any blood on the ground or on the leaves, so maybe he wasn’t hurt too badly.

Sam had no idea what to expect when he finally found him in the clearing, standing in waist-high mustard blossoms.

Cas was turned away, swaying, and his head was tilted back as though the angel was staring at the sun.

It was so strange, and so quiet, that Sam’s body broke out in goosebumps. He took a deep breath and shuddered a little at the pain on his ribs.

Castiel slowly spun, coat whispering as it brushed the yellow flowers. There was blood running down his cheeks, from his eyes, which looked tortured, wild and brimming with red.

Sam recognized Rowena’s curse, the one she’d used to make people berzerk and murder everything in their path.

“Sam, please… run,” Cas rasped, sounding like he’d been screaming for days.

“Cas, you’ve been cursed, right? Rowena?”

Castiel lurched. His angel blade was in his hand and he lifted it just enough to show the glint of silver on top of the flowers. He took another half-step towards Sam and looked up at the sky, murmuring “please not him. Please. ”

Sam stepped back, gulping.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Sam.” Castiel licked his chapped lips and stepped forward. His irises looked huge, swimming in tears and traces of blood.

“Cas, I can help you. We’ll figure out a way.” Sam retreated to the treeline, leaning on a trunk when his breath stuttered and his insides pained him.

Sam was hoping that Cas would follow, but at the same time, his heart was in his throat with the fear that he might charge his back and cut him down. Sam didn’t think he could take another hit to his ribs without passing out.

The crashing of underbrush behind him told him all he needed to know. He ran recklessly, favoring speed over care, stars swimming before his eyes at the stabs of pain from his injured body.

Cas chased him all the way to the car. He wrenched the door open and dove in, slamming it behind him. Sam sat up and locked the door, then sat askew, panting.

The damn keys were stabbing into his hand. He could see Cas stumbling on the edge of the road, each footstep he took labored, his hand clutching his angel blade next to his chest, like he was wounded.

Sam couldn’t just leave. He opened the glove box.

Cas’s fingers touched the window, nails curled against the glass.

Sam licked his split lip, said a silent prayer, and readied the handcuffs with enochian runes ringing them. The sound of the ratcheting lock was strangely soothing. He balanced the cuffs on his thigh.

He waited until Castiel started circling the car to start the engine and roll down the passenger window. Then Sam gunned the engine to agitate Cas, taunting him like a wild animal.

The scratch of the angel blade on her paint made Sam’s teeth ache, but then Cas was leaning in the window, free hand outstretched.  Sam snapped the handcuff around his wrist and yanked him in, crying out as he crushed his ribs with the angel’s shoulder.

Cas lashed out with his blade and Sam ducked, hearing a blunted thud as it glanced off the steering wheel and tangled when Cas tried to yank it back. Sam held onto the chain between the cuffs and pushed against him, leveraging his weight against the wheel.

The horn went off and the car’s springs creaked as their weight rocked it. Sam clenched his jaw and wrenched the angel’s arm around his back, throwing his weight on him and pulling Cas’s cuffed hand close enough to the other one to snap it shut— the tip of the blade slashed the upholstery as it wound perilously close to his inner thigh.  

Sam put his arm around Castiel’s neck and kept his other hand on the butt of his dagger. “Come on, Cas… drop it. Let it go, buddy.”

Castiel heaved and fucking sobbed, drew in a breath, and tried to spin around.

Sam managed to get the blade in his hand, and he threw it onto the floor of the back of the car.

The exhaustion that shot through him as soon as Castiel stilled was worrying, and for just a moment, he rested his forehead on his back.

Cas was trembling, and breathing hard. “Sam,” he gulped. “Sam, you’re already hurt, you have to let me go.”

Sam had his eyes closed and shook his head. “You can control it,” he insisted. “I have faith in you. I’m taking you home. ”

He waited to see if Castiel was going to start struggling again, but after a handful of seconds, he was still sitting in the embrace of Sam’s arms. Sam wanted to keep him like this, if only until he stopped trembling. He slowly, very carefully, let Cas go.

Cas scooted immediately back into the passenger door, hands still cuffed behind him. His eyes rolled around the car briefly and then he licked his chapped lips and nodded. “The Bunker. Keep me locked up, before I hurt anyone else.”

Sam almost asked whom it was that Castiel had hurt, but he could see that he needed to be left alone to be quiet. He very carefully put the Impala into gear and pulled out onto the road, and turned the car towards the bunker.

Chapter Text

Dean was alone, and he bunker kept him company like any old house. Probably cursed and definitely haunted; more than just a few leaky pipes and stubborn sticking doors. Considering how the last residents had died, he was vaguely impressed that it wasn’t much worse. He chose to think of the lingering spirits as benevolent, passive, and sleeping. The sounds of moving air and brief gasps of pipe smoke could almost be soothing for Dean, like the hollow muttering of a TV through thin roadside motel walls. He couldn’t name a lot of the tells the Bunker had, but he had learned them deep in his bones. There was the siren whine of the boiler’s temperature gauge, just loud enough to hear when he was near the garage, and the way the power could flicker and brown out when he used the microwave.

He wished he could relax, sit, and wait. But instead, Dean paced the rooms, touched door handles, and opened the fridge four times, stared at the contents, and closed it again without finding what he wanted.

It was tempting to start drinking all the whiskey he had, but he needed to stay sharp for whatever was going to come for him next.

His ears ached to hear the phone ring. Benny knew his number by heart, he had to be able to call. It was just that… he wasn’t going to, unless it got really, really bad. But maybe Benny wouldn’t call him, if he fell off the wagon.

Dean didn’t want to think about it.

The bunker was starting to feel small, too quiet and full of sour air. Of course the mark wanted to leave, and tear out into the world to purge it of life.

At the exact moment that he was cursing the mark for the fourth or maybe fifth time that day, he heard the upstairs door creak open and the air shifted.

It was the wrong entrance for Sam and Cas and the car; the entire opposite end of the bunker from the garage. Maybe it was Benny, or maybe it was another one of those Styne fucks. He touched the butt of his gun, where it was stuck in the holster inside the back of his waistband, mostly just to reassure himself that it was there— but in the end, Dean was not at all afraid of what was coming in through the door, just worried about what he would do to them. He had to hold onto his calm, try to stay as mellow as he could, and so he dropped his hand with a practiced nihilism. He doubted that whatever was coming was going to be able to kill him.

Charlie’s reddish hair appeared over the bannister, and she closed the door behind her. When he saw the rest of her, she looked bedraggled and dirty, clothing muddy and torn, bag hanging from one shoulder.

“Charlie, are you okay?”

She spun, looked at him, and cracked a smile before it was abruptly cancelled and she stood stock straight. “Dean.”

He felt his skin crawl. She looked at him so very coldly, calculating. He licked his lips and replied to her, “Yeah. Are you okay?”

She descended the staircase, shoulders back, chin high. “I was summoned by her, and from what I gather, she acted on your prompting.”

“I didn’t… I thought you would just do the research.”

Charlie’s face smirked at him. “Her sacrifice was enough.”

His blood turned to ice, and Dean rocked back on his heels. “What was the sacrifice? What did she give up?”

She reached down to the hem of her shirt and lifted it to show a wound in Charlie’s side that was gaping and black; deep like a cave under her ribs. The wave of panic hit him square in the chest: If she was still alive, she would have been bleeding.

His mouth couldn’t find any words for a moment. “She’s dead?”

“It’s not really… important, now, Dean. Would it make you feel better if you could speak to her? She’s here,” the thing possessing Charlie offered.

“Yes, I’d like to talk to her.” He was eerily reminded of those times when Gadreel had possessed Sam, and how different he could act  in his brother’s skin. If it could have, Dean’s own skin would have crawled away.

Charlie’s head nodded slightly. “In a moment. You needed the blood of a god, is that right?”

“I do?”

“If you wish to cure your vampire friend, yes.”

Dean gulped. He wasn’t even sure where Benny was at the moment. “Ah, okay. But…” he licked his lips, mind wandering instantly to the worst case scenario, “like.. how much blood?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she raised Charlie’s hand high up on a column to the side of the map table, just below where the wards were carved. “This place is quite defensible. Good. I am Athena. Serve me, and bring me your vampire. I am eager to be finished with my part of the bargain.”

He gulped and shifted his weight, feeling a witty reply rising in his throat. “Yeah… well, I’ll make sure you don’t have to unpack. Don’t you settle in there, hear me? She’s my sister.”

Maybe his voice cracked near the end. The god inhabiting Charlie smirked, and then slid out of her eyes like a fleeting expression.

Charlie rocked on her heels and Dean moved to catch her— she recovered, though, and he was left with his hand on her backpack.

“Dean? Okay. Okay. I’m here,” she breathed raggedly and put her hands to her face, dirty fingers wiping at sudden tears sprouting from her eyes.

“Shhh, it’s okay.” Dean didn’t really believe it. He folded his arms around her and tried to feel protective instead of panicked.

Athena. Something else to worry about. Dean pet Charlie’s head softly, and shut his eyes for a moment.

She sniffled a little bit and wiped her face on his shirt. “Oh shit,” she said, rocking back on her heels and staring at his shoulder. “I’ve gunked up your shirt, Dean.”

He smiled ruefully. “Shower, then stitches?”

“Okay. Make me breakfast? Whatever time of day it is, I don’t care. I want breakfast,” her face split in a smile, and she managed a little laugh that Dean would cling to for hours.

“You got it, kiddo.” He watched her walk away down the hall and stood still, waiting until he heard the sound of the shower turning on before he moved. She was going to be fine. Everything was under control.

Whenever Sam looked, Castiel had his eyes closed, and his mouth was moving slightly, as though he was praying, or saying the rosary.

He wanted to get him to the bunker fast, but at the same time, the car was quiet, and he wasn’t sure what would happen with Cas once he got him back home. Sam almost asked how Castiel was feeling, but discarded the notion before he could voice the question. Cas was barely holding it together, and Sam was honestly the same. He could feel his ribs with each breath, and his hands shook if he wasn’t holding tight to the steering wheel. Adrenaline could only carry him so far.

The Impala purred into the garage— Sam was still proud of the installation of the automatic opener that he’d done by himself— and he steered it down to the end, where he stopped it without bothering to pull it into a stall.

“Okay.” Sam said dumbly, and cut the engine. “I’m going to come around and help you out.”

Cas silently nodded, then jerked a little when the car shifted with Sam’s exit.

Sam, kept afloat by painkillers, took a moment to pray, again. He just needed a couple breaths to get his knees to stop shaking. When he finally opened the car door, Cas looked at him from beneath his furrowed brow and slowly got up, hunching with effort.

“Let’s get you comfortable,” Sam offered, putting his hand on his forearm.

“Sam, you’re injured.”

“I noticed,” he tried to not sound sarcastic. “Let’s go inside.”

Castiel shuffled beside Sam, groaning now and then. “There’s so much I want to tell you.”

“What do you mean?”

Cas shut his eyes. “It’s best if I don’t right now, not until you get me restrained…”

Sam watched his fingers curling into claws, twisting in the cuffs. “You mean more than these?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. I mean, I know you can keep this…” he gestured vaguely to Cas’s entire person, “under wraps. You’re in control.”

“For the moment. Please, promise not to let me loose, Sam.”

“I promise. As long as you need, Cas.” He almost reached out to pat him on the shoulder, but it seemed weird and too risky. Sam opened the door for him, and stood out of the way until he shuffled past. “I don’t want to take you to the dungeon, though… so, the library. We can anchor the chair if we have to.”  It wasn’t anything he wanted to think about, or mention to Cas, but he was pretty sure that that the dungeon would raise goosebumps on his skin for at least a couple of months. There wasn’t enough sage and holy water to purify that area in the whole hemisphere.

Cas was quiet, but his pace was uneven, and Sam worried a little about Dean emerging just to set him off… or make things not go smoothly.

There was a shower running downstairs, he was fairly sure. Maybe a sound from the kitchens, which raised Sam’s hackles. Sam put his hand on his gun and pursed his lips, worried that Castiel would realize that someone other than Dean was in the bunker.

Sam was terribly relieved when they made it into the library without incident.

Cas rolled his eyes up into his head, clenched his jaw, and sat down on a wooden chair with hand rails.After a couple moments, Sam slowly knelt all the way down on the floor and zip-tied Cas’ leg to the chair.

Cas made a little noise and twisted his wrists like he was testing the cuffs. Sam placed his hand on top of his forearm as he secured his elbow to the rail. Then the other, his hands stuttering when the angel growled, jaw clenched so tight that his teeth creaked.

“It’s okay, Cas, please. Settle down, nobody’s trying to hurt you here.”

Cas screwed his eyes shut and nodded. Once Sam was away a few feet, he exhaled and relaxed, settling against the aged wood of the chair, head nodding forward, chin on his chest.

Like his strings had been cut. Sam bit his lip, regretted it instantly, and thought of the cluster of pain pills in his pocket, and the bigger bottle by his bedside table. He slowly backed away. “Get some rest, Cas. Please.”

“You too,” the angel muttered, eyelids fluttering.

Sam touched the doorframe and steadied himself, then left quietly. He regretted not staying, to try to soothe Cas, but it wasn’t enough to make him turn back. He felt like if he didn’t lay down soon, he’d end up fainting.

The back of the police vehicle was distressing, and the feeling was compounded by the handcuffs digging into Benny’s wrists.

There wasn’t anything they could do to Benny that was any worse than the things he’d done all on his own. And whatever it would be, he knew he had it coming. Fear didn’t make it easy, though. He closed his eyes and saw twitching, dying men gazing at him in abject horror.

He hoped Dean never found out where he’d gone, but if he did, he hoped he had enough sense to put him down if these men wouldn’t. If they put him in a cage with other men, if they even came near him when he was hungry… even though Benny’s head was in a bag, he closed his eyes at the thought of the depths he could sink to in a time of desperation.

The police cruiser was weirdly quiet. Once he’d settled against the unpleasantly hard bench seat, adjusted to the smell of misery that permeated the bag around his head, the cops in the front seat had settled into a tense silence. It seemed as though their radio was turned off, or on an empty channel.

Benny put his head down on the bench and closed his eyes. They turned right, at enough speed that Benny slid down into the door. He didn’t know why he was bothering to remember directions, but then they turned left, and he found himself noting that too, trying to judge the speed of the old Ford as it hit potholes and rocked back and forth.

After a long, long time, they pulled onto pavement again, and then went through a sequence of twists and turns in the road, he presumed winding through trees. Then there was a straightaway, and a quick turn that made the tires squeal, and the whole thing shuddered to a halt.

There was a conversation outside of the car, then the window cracked open, and one of the cops up front said “One of the ones you wanted… He’s cuffed in the back.”

“Any cleanup?”

“A bunch, our boys are on it. They’ll call your pop.”

“Alright, get him out.”

Benny braced himself and felt their hands, grasping, pulling him from the car and onto the earth. He bit his lip and stayed still in the bag. Yes, he could have broken through the blackened canvas, twisted the handcuffs to the front of his body, and grabbed one to fill his belly, and open the way for the beast that the mark throbbed for.

So he lay still, as they dragged him up a stone staircase, jarring him with each step, until the floor was slick with polish and squeaked softly under the bag. The little air that Benny could smell was strangely sterile, incredibly clean, and tinted with ammonia. He was taken down into a basement, tumbled down the steps blindly, bashing his temple into the hard floor , the conversations above him furtive and incomplete.

“Into the freezer?”

“No, the cage.”

“Cool.”

Benny was pulled into a cage, bars grating along his back. The zipper of the bag was opened a handful of inches, and then his imprisoners retreated and the door shut, lock clapping into place like a bell.

Benny still had his hands bound, but could slowly squirm his way out of the bag. There was a pale light filtering through the bars, a cold fluorescence that lit a short tile corridor in a greenish light.  There were several metal doors in the corridor to one side; small, square… this was a morgue.

It was plain they planned to leave him in the cage for a little while, perhaps to consider what they next planned to do. The place was quiet and dark, he could hear people in the upper floors, some pacing.

Hours later, he smelled death as a door opened upstairs— then footsteps followed, and a body in a bag was brought in, followed by another, and another. The morgue boxes were opened, metal platforms rolled out like flat tongues, the bags were unzipped, and the corpses were laid on the metal tables; all men that Benny had killed on the road where they’d run his pickup down the embankment.

The pallbearers ignored him where he laid, peering at them sideways, face surely darkened by dried blood. They turned on a bright light down the hall and, in a matter of moments, a high whirring noise began.

Benny was trying not to wonder too much. He told himself that it would be best if these men dissolved him in acid, or took the cage out to bake in the sunshine until he fell apart and descended into purgatory again. Try as he might, though, every detail made him more and more curious.

“Go wake up Cyrus,” said a voice, obviously belonging to an older man.

“It’s a school night, Uncle Monroe,” a woman’s voice answered softly.

“Girl, I didn’t pay for your medical school for you to tell me things I already know. Go get him.”

Benny could hear her clicking heels leave out through another door. The whirring noise began again, a buzzing continuous whine. He closed his eyes and worried about what it was, and why, even with the morgue lockers closed, he could still smell a dead man, fresh, the odor not diminishing in his nostrils.

All he could do was wait.