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His only warning of unexpected company is the brief flutter of wings before the deck creaks under heavy boots. He knows that sound, but even more he knows that scent.
Truly, Benny never really expected to see Castiel again. And certainly not standing on the deck of his boat covered in blood.
He sniffs, lips curling when he realizes why it smells familiar.
“Somethin’ happen to Dean?”
Cas looks down at his hands in a way that makes Benny’s gums ache, teeth a second away from erupting. His knuckles are flecked with blood. Dean’s blood.
“Where is he?” Benny demands, rising to his feet in an instant. To his credit, Castiel has the decency to look ashamed.
“Safe,” the angel says quietly. “I healed him.”
The words pull a snarl from his throat, one he only barely manages to contain long enough to ask, “And what exactly did he need healin’ from?”
The tang of Dean’s blood is so strong he can practically taste it. It’s fresh. Concentrated on the lower half of Castiel’s clothing. Caking every inch of his right hand apart from a palm that is far too clean. He can’t meet Benny’s eyes.
“From…” Cas shakes his head, trailing off. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, his face is blank. He looks out over the horizon, his clean hand pressed against something bulky in his inner pocket. “I need to go. There’s something I need to protect.”
“And Dean?” Benny prompts, eyes narrowed. He’s never really understood what Dean sees in the angel. Never needed to, either. Just had to accept it. Dean’s loyalty doesn’t expire. Doesn’t go brittle with age. Not even when it should.
“He’ll be fine,” Cas says. Benny remembers Dean’s grimy, blood-splattered face by that stream. Hacking through a forest of monsters looking for the angel, reluctantly pulled in by the gravity of Dean’s determination. I’m not leaving without you. He doesn’t ask the angel what’s happened since they left Purgatory. Dean cut him off. End of the line. Because whatever swamp he’s wading into, he isn’t going to drag Benny into it too. He knows why Dean said goodbye.
“And if he’s not?” Benny’s mouth tastes sour. Like Dean’s blood has infected the sea air. Or maybe it’s the angel with one clean hand.
“Just make sure your phone is on,” Cas says. He finally looks at Benny, but it doesn’t soothe any of the worry filling him like bile. His eyes are haunted. Guilt drapes over him like seaweed. There’s a bloody handprint on the hem of his jacket, just a few fingers smeared over the surface. Like someone tried to grab him when he stepped over them. Tried to stop him, and Benny’s next breath feels more like a noose. Castiel sighs.
Then he’s gone. Vanished in the wind before Benny can tell him that he never actually turned his phone off.
He tries not to think about Dean on the ground or his handprint on the bottom of Castiel’s coat. Just keeps his head down and his ringer at full volume.
Two weeks later, Dean calls.
“Turn me.”
Benny blinks.
“What now?”
Dean’s face is taut, that little quiver from his pulse visible on his throat.
“I need your blood,” Dean explains dryly, as if he doesn’t recognize the irony in that statement.
“Now hold on there, brother. You wanna explain what this is all about?”
Dean looks at him, unraveling at the seams. There’s a machete behind his back. For the first time, Benny worries it’s not meant for him.
“Purgatory, Benny,” Dean murmurs. “Sam is trapped in Purgatory. I can’t—”
His head drops, eyes clenched shut around the tears he won’t let fall. His voice holds the same tremor it did on their phone call all those months ago. End of the line.
“N’ you need someone who’s got access to the place to get him,” Benny concludes. Dean nods solemnly, still not meeting his eyes. Helpless is not a good look for Dean Winchester. His gaze drops to the machete point peeking out from behind his hip. He knows how lethal the hunter can be, the skill and speed with which he can sever spinal columns. “Well, then best make it quick.”
Dean’s head shoots up. That watery stare and perplexed expression give way to something else. Softer, a subtle unclenching of the jaw. One tear drips onto his cheek. It smells different than his blood. Different than the sweat-soaked terror of his dreams.
“How much do I need?” Dean asks.
“One swing oughta do it,” Benny replies easily. He knows that ain’t what Dean was asking. Doesn’t care.
“Benny, no.” Dean’s voice is horrified, his heart pattering in his chest like a hummingbird. Benny’s glad he ate on the way here. One blood bag ain’t enough to really satisfy him, but it makes it easier to be around people. He can hear the blood flowing through his friend’s body. Over the year in Purgatory, he got real familiar with the sounds Dean’s body makes. Heart pumping fast in the minutes before being ambushed, only to slow to a measured pace when it came down to doing the actual killing. He knows the sound of air flowing through the hunter’s lungs when he calms himself. The way his breath catches when he’s biting back a pained groan. The tang of his blood. “I’m not…I’m not asking that.”
All these things he knows, but he’s never seen Dean Winchester shed a tear. Not till today, and he doesn’t like it.
“The way I see it, we ain’t got time to waste. What’s the sense in making a whole new monster when you got a perfectly good one laying around? ‘S not like anyone is waitin’ for me back home.” Benny thinks of the houseboat he’s got in Louisiana. Thinks Dean might’ve liked to see it.
“It’s too much,” Dean protests. His arms drift to his sides, uncertainty forcing his clenched muscles to relax.
“He’s your brother,” Benny says. The secret weapon. Sammy. One mention of him, and Dean is the kinda man who gets things done. Doesn’t matter what that is. What it costs. He sees it in the way his knuckles tighten over the handle of his blade.
“Just turn me, Benny. There’s a cure, I can—”
“No time, chief. And no tellin’ if that cure a’yours will work once you’re brought back.” Benny shakes his head, plowing ahead before Dean can argue more. “Nah, let’s keep it simple. I could use the break.”
Dean looks at his machete. It glints in the dim alley light. Cleaner than they ever got their weapons in Purgatory. Up here, Dean is different. Unsure, unfocused. Messy in the way only humans get to be.
“It’s been rough for you,” Dean guesses, jaw clenched. His words are tight. Clipped with what Benny knows is guilt.
“I don’t belong. Not with the vampires, certainly not with the humans.” Benny sighs, scuffing at the pavement with his boots. The words taste like murky water when he speaks them. “After a while, that starts to wear on you.”
He glances back up with a quip on his tongue about choosing now to unload this, but stops when he sees Dean’s face. It ain’t pity residing there. His friend looks like another weight has been added to the yoke he carries. Ever since they got topside, Dean’s looked more and more burdened every time he’s seen him.
“When you get back, we’ll fix all of that,” Dean promises. One look in his eyes, and Benny knows he means it. Wonders if he is telling a lie when he agrees. Topside. Riding out in Dean’s baby brother just to start it all over again.
“I’m going to hightail it to Maine. When you get topside, I’ll be there waiting.”
It’s those words that Benny clings to when the blade arcs towards him. When he closes his eyes and feels the kiss of metal against his exposed neck.
He never intended to go back.
Purgatory the second-time around is like a vacation. There’s no morality to grapple with. No coups or schemes or life-altering decisions to make. No hunger. Just survival. Pure and uncomplicated.
Bobby and Sam are chatty. His first time here, Dean, Benny, and Cas had been too battleweary to really talk much. A year of scouring a monster-infested forest for a mystical portal will do that. Their days were spent the same as their nights, back-to-back with a blade in their hand. Dean always dozed off first, his head lolling onto Benny’s shoulder while the angel kept watch behind them.
The old guy and the pup aren’t anything like Dean. Bobby’s concern over Dean’s slipping moral code comes out in quips and half-cocked insults. The kid doesn’t defend him. Doesn’t defend Dean much either. He sees bits of his friend in both of them. The way Bobby swallows his feelings and funnels them into matching Sam’s stride. How Sam favors one arm and hides the way his other shakes when they hack through too many monsters in one go. That closed off, grit-your-teeth-and -bear-it Winchester way.
He thinks of Dean’s smile on their first day topside. The first one Benny ever saw that wasn’t a mask or pulled taut with tension. He looked so much younger. Lighter.
That wasn’t the same Dean he’d met in that alley. No, his Dean didn’t give failure the time of day. He’d looked at Benny like he’d spoken a different language when he asked why he didn’t just dump him into a culvert. Like not following through on something didn’t even cross his mind.
The man that killed Benny the second time was some pleading thing in his friend’s skin. Something is wrong. Something is wrong with Sam. And it seems like something is always wrong with Cas. And that means something is wrong with Dean.
When Sam offers him the knife, Benny hesitates only a second. One second too long for the vamps to catch up with them. There are only three. Enough to slow him down, if he wants the excuse. Then he remembers Dean’s voice. The wetness in his eyes. Only three vamps between him and his friend. He’s taken worse odds.
He doesn’t hesitate when Sam offers him the knife a second time.
He comes to feeling like he’s been slow-roasted. Whatever is in Sam’s veins, it’s not very homey.
“Benny.” He doesn’t need to look to know who’s leaning over him. It’s night, but his eyes adjust quick. Quick enough to see the tremble in Dean’s smile when he takes his hand. Benny’s blood is still flecked on his wrist.
Dean hauls him up by his arm, using the leverage to pull him into a hug that’s a bit too tight to be casual. Benny palms the back of his neck and presses him closer. Over Dean’s shoulder, he sees Sam leaning against the Impala. The kid looks worse than he did in Purgatory.
“Did I miss anything?” Based on Sam’s wince, he missed a whole lot. Dean, however, just pulls away. He looks exhausted. Benny thinks of Dean’s blood on Castiel’s coat. Of Sam’s brief mention to Bobby of some sort of trial.
“Just Crowley,” Dean replies, and Benny gets the sense he’s lucky the name is unfamiliar.
“Well, there’ll be more chances to get acquainted,” he teases, eyeing Dean with distaste. “But first, you’d best be gettin’ acquainted with the nearest bed, brother. You look bout as dead as I was twenty minutes ago.”
Dean’s smile drops, eyes going glassy for a second before he scrubs a hand over his face. When he looks back, his expression is carefully blank.
“There’s a motel up the road,” he says, throwing an arm around Benny’s shoulders. He can feel the tension in his forearm, the muscles coiled like an overtight spring. He knows without asking that Dean won’t be getting any sleep tonight.
He expected the trip to be awkward. With his rustbucket somewhere down south, he’s relegated to the back seat for the forty minute drive to the nearest hotel. He watches the trees as they pass, thinking of Dean’s own trek through these woods after their first escape. He wasn’t conscious in the way he is now, but they seem familiar somehow. His body may not know this road, but his soul does. He walked it with Dean once before.
Sam and Benny wait in the car while Dean goes to the front counter. It’s an older hotel, with flickering neon lights and a parking lot full of potholes. In the front seat, Sam waits until Dean goes inside before he turns to Benny. There isn’t enough of a resemblance between the Winchester brothers for Benny to read him as easily as he can Dean, but he thinks there is something heavy in the way he purses his lips.
“I never thanked you,” Sam says. “For what you did for me and Bobby. What you did for Dean.”
“No need,” Benny assures him, plastering on a smile. “Dean’s done more for me than just about anyone. Gettin’ you out’s just a drop in the barrel.”
Sam hesitates, turning more in the seat so he can look at Benny head on. His eyes squint enough to know he’s scrutinizing the vampire. Searching for something.
“For a minute there, I thought…I thought you weren’t going to leave.” The kid’s tone is probing. Digging in a way his older brother never does. Never needed to.
“Just some cold feet. Comes with the territory,” Benny replied, gesturing to his hidden set of fangs.
“Yeah, sure,” Sam shrugs, not sounding believing at all. His head swivels to the windshield, where Dean is leaning against the counter grinning at the middle-aged woman swiping his card. “I just–I haven’t always done right by him. And with the trials, and Cas, and everything, he needs a friend. Someone he can trust.”
The questions stick in his teeth like toffee, but Benny’s never been one for sweets. He doesn’t try to fish out more details. There are a lot of things he’s sure he doesn’t want to know. Dean’ll tell him what he needs to, and anything beyond that isn’t his concern. He’s always known that Dean’s relationship with his brother is a minefield, and he’s not the most sure-footed guy around.
“If Dean needs me, I’ll be around,” he promises. Sam’s face scrunches, coughing hard enough to make Benny’s own throat ache. When he pulls his hand away from his lips, the coppery tang of blood is in the air.
“Good,” Sam replies, and Benny hears the words he doesn’t say. Because I might not be.
Benny has his own room.
He’s a bit disappointed when Dean passes him the keys and half-carries Sam into the adjacent room, but it’s not like he didn’t expect it. Sam looks like shit. If it were his brother, Benny’d be counting his breaths too.
It’s around midnight when he hears something thump against the shared wall between their rooms. It rips him from his dozing, on his feet before he really knows what’s coming. In the next room, there’s a heart beating much too fast. A shuddering breath that he recognizes before he’s fully conscious.
Purgatory didn’t exactly allow for beauty sleep, but Benny and Cas made sure to find safe places for Dean to close his eyes for a few hours. Even when they weren’t interrupted by some wandering fang, the nights were far from restful. Too often, Benny would be jerked awake by panicked breathing and a delirious hunter at his neck. He never asked what the nightmares were about. Whatever lives inside Dean’s head is something Benny never wants to meet.
He falls back onto the bed and leans his head against the wall, closing his eyes to count Dean’s breathing with him. Slowing his exhales is always the hardest for him, it seems, like his lungs are scared to let it go. Exhaustion drags Benny’s awareness back down, and he manages to doze off again.
Dean greets him in the morning with a coffee mug full of room-temperature blood and darkness under his eyes. If he did manage to get any sleep, it doesn’t show.
“Mornin’ chief,” Benny says. “That for me?”
“Figured it’d be easier this way,” Dean shrugs, passing him the cup. The styrofoam is stamped with the hotel logo, and Benny wonders if camouflaging his meal is easier for Benny or for Sam. Still, blood is blood. He sips at it while the brothers load up the car, watching the way Dean hovers. Sam’s weaker than he should be.
“Take shotgun,” Dean tells him when he slams the trunk closed. “Sammy’s gonna lay his ass down and take a nap for the rest of the drive.”
Sam doesn’t argue, and Benny ain’t about to start, so they take up their assigned seats and hit the road again.
After a few hours, Dean’s eyes flick to the rear view mirror a few times. He angles it downwards, well below anything on the road. Watching Sam sleeping the sleep of the dead, sprawled across the back seat like some undersized toddler bed.
“He gonna be a’ight?” Benny asks, because Dean is gonna give himself whiplash focusing on so many things at once.
“I dunno,” Dean says quietly, eyeing the reflection one more time before his gaze slides to Benny. “What about you? You good?”
A few days ago, Benny’s answer would have been that he’s fine. Stop mother henning him already, Winchester. Today, though, he sees the way Dean clenches the wheel with white-knuckled ferocity. The way his eyes dart here and there looking for threats. The way his jaw works itself anytime the silence presses in just a bit too loud. He recognizes the spiral before it happens. Hears his Mama’s voice, “Watch them eddies. The current’s twice as strong when it folds.”
“Could use some more blood,” he replies. “Been runnin’ low. C’n only ration so much.”
He’s sailed enough times to know the careful equilibrium it takes to keep something afloat. Too heavy, and the ship sinks right to the bottom. But he doesn’t think there’s anything in creation too heavy for Dean. It’s the other side of the equation they gotta watch out for. Make a craft too light, and it’ll tip. There’s a balance to it.
He can see the moment the weight hits. Dean nods, his fingers loosening a fraction. He gives Benny a little smile that almost looks grateful and merges into the exit lane.
“Now that is a problem I can solve.”
By nightfall, Benny has a room and a cooler stuffed to bursting with AB negative. It’s shoved into the corner of his room, looking a little out of place in a way he can relate to. Dean said the bunker was made during Benny’s time, but the place looks more like the set of some sci-fi flick. Whoever built it wasn’t in the same tax bracket as his crew, that much is for sure. If not for the sound of Dean’s heartbeat in the next room over, muffled as it was by the thick walls, he would’ve been flying for the hills already.
Still, he settles in with the intent on getting gone by morning. He can deal with the concrete and claustrophobia for one night if it helps Dean feel better. The hunter wouldn’t even go to his damn bed until Benny picked a room for himself. It’s harder than at the hotel, though. He can’t hear Dean’s breathing, but his heartbeat’s picked up four times already since they parted and there’s no way Benny can sleep with that ruckus in his ears. Not while he’s picturing Dean jolting awake alone in a dark room. In Purgatory, Benny’d been there to pull him from his dreams before they even started. When the angel came and he’d finally been able to get some shut eye of his own, the first thing greeting Dean every time his eyes snapped open was two friendly faces and a forest of monsters to take his pent-up emotions out on.
It’s the fifth or sixth time he’s heard Dean’s pulse skitter like a rabbit when Benny decides he can’t take it anymore. He misses Purgatory. Misses Dean drifting off on his shoulder and snoring in his ear. Misses the nights he quieted the hunter with a few murmured words. Misses when they kept each other safe from more than just things going bump in the night.
He doesn’t knock. With only the wood of the door between them, Dean’s hitched breaths are enough to shoo away any worries about overstepping. He eases the door open and takes a moment to assess the damage. Dean’s writhing in the sheets, fisting the blanket with something like desperation, panting into his pillow. The smell of sweat and adrenaline permeates the air, making Benny’s nose wrinkle on reflex. It ain’t right. He’s never seen his friend trapped in the throes like this, like a damn ant under a magnifying glass.
With a soft snick, the door closing cuts off the shaft of light from the hallway. Dean’s exhale tightens to a low whine and Benny is at his side before he knows his feet’ve moved. He doesn’t waste time easing him back into the waking world. A quick shake of his shoulder is all it takes to rip Dean from the nightmare’s grip. The knife arcs wide on instinct, clutched in the hunter’s fist like always. Benny ducks his head and lays a hand on Dean’s thigh over the covers.
“Nice to see some things ain’t changed a lick,” he teases. “You’re still meaner than a wet cat in a tote sack when you’re wakin’ up, chief.”
He’ll never get tired of seeing the way Dean’s body relaxes at the sound of his voice. It makes his ribs feel like they’re actually protecting something with the way his heart warms at that trust. Before his mind is even conscious, Dean knows he’s safe. If that kinda trust don’t make him feel some type of way, then Benny’d worry he only has one oar in the water.
“Benny?” Dean mumbles, blinking up at him with one half of his face still buried in the pillow. “You need somethin’?”
“Just for you t’scoot over,” Benny says, sliding a little higher onto the bed to make his point. Dean grumbles something about vampires and invitations and moves his ass over to the far side of the bed, throwing back the covers in spite of his complaining.
Benny kicks off his shoes before he plops down beside Dean. The hunter tugs the blanket up over them both, still curled with his back to the vampire. Benny stretches out until his hip presses into Dean’s backside and sighs contentedly, folding his arms behind his head. There’s no stars here, but the sigils painted across the ceiling are close enough to constellations if he squints.
Dean wriggles a bit before he finally turns over, relaxing into the mattress at Benny’s side. They never shared a bed before this, but Benny can’t ignore how natural it feels. Right, somehow. With his bulk between Dean and the door, the hunter’s warmth radiating from the places their bodies brush, it’s better than he’s felt in a long while.
“It was supposed to be me,” Dean says after a time. Benny doesn’t know how much Dean can see in the dark, but he doesn’t risk looking anywhere but the ceiling. He thinks of all the messages he typed out and never sent to the only contact in his phone. Thinks of a year spent at Dean’s side where Andrea’s name never once came up. The sound of her head falling to the floor with each shift of Dean’s arms as he rowed them away from the island. The way silence can isolate and insulate. It’s easier to talk when you can pretend no one’s listening.
“I was gonna be the one t’do the trials. But Sam…he just–” A weight settles more fully against Benny’s side, and he doesn’t dare to move. Breathe. “He did it, and there wasn’t any point arguing about it. It’s doin’ something to him, and Cas. He’s different.”
He remembers the angel’s blood-stained coat and bites his tongue to keep the words from spilling out. The memory of it draws the tips of his fangs out enough to make him wince when they sink into his cheeks.
“He…he almost killed me, Benny,” Dean says, and there’s a thickness to his words that sounds wet. Sounds like he did in that alley. “Some bitch fucked with his head and he went all Terminator 3 on me. Bashed my face in with his angel blade. Broke my arm n’ just kept going until I finally got through to him.”
“I healed him,” Cas says in his memories, and Benny would give anything to go back and hand the angel his ass. Patching a hole doesn’t do shit when the water’s already wrecked the hull.
“I’m glad you’re back. I don’t–don’t think I could’ve handled failin’ you more than I already have.” Dean’s voice cracks like a split mast and Benny doesn’t think. He shifts his arm out from behind his head and lays it over Dean’s, lacing their fingers together. He hears a tremulous little breath from beside him and then Dean’s squeezing him like he had his steering wheel. Like it was the only thing keeping him from veering off the road.
“I’m here, cherie,” Benny promises. He doesn’t tell Dean he wasn’t planning on coming back. Doesn’t tell him that everything will be alright. Can’t promise anything but the things he can control. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
He doesn’t allow himself to look down until he feels Dean curl into him, laying his head on Benny’s shoulder while that heartbeat hammers like a hummingbird. Wetness from Dean’s cheek pools onto the collar of his shirt, and Benny glances down only to be pressed back into the bed by Dean’s weight. He lets himself be pinned, lets the hunter straddle his hips and press his lips to the corner of Benny’s mouth like testing the waters. Like there is a universe in which Benny is anything but his.
Capturing his face between gentle palms, Benny pulls him into a kiss that says everything Dean could never accept in words. I’m here. I’m yours. You don’t have to do this alone. You’re safe. I love you. I love you. I love you.
“Benny,” Dean whispers into his mouth, and the taste of his name on Dean’s breath is more addicting than any drop of blood that’s ever passed his lips. He surges up, meeting that unspoken question with all of the devotion this man deserves. Someone moans into the kiss, and he has no idea who it was but there is no time to care. Not with Dean’s hands fumbling for Benny’s belt. He slips the notch and his buttons without allowing their lips to part, feeling hands groping through his pants while he slips Dean’s boxers down with a whole new kind of hunger.
The hunter’s hand closes around his cock, and Benny arches into the touch. The warmth of his palm is overwhelming, coaxing him to hardness so fast it makes his head spin. If they keep going like this, the fun will be over before it’s started. His fingers slide into the cleft of Dean’s ass, prodding at him in teasing circles.
Dean breaks their kiss with a gasp, gripping Benny’s wrist with hesitant fingers. Benny fishes one hand out to blindly switch on the lamp on the nightstand, flooding the room with warm golden light to combat whatever has Dean frozen in place. There’s an urgency to his words, like whatever spell has befallen them will break if he doesn’t get his thoughts out quickly enough. “I…I haven’t…not with a man. ‘S been like twenty years since—I’ve never…”
There’s a haze to Dean’s eyes that makes him look far away, and Benny is far too selfish to share his hunter with whatever memories are plaguing him. He doesn’t want to think about how old Dean was twenty years ago, about the way he says man like he wasn’t one the last time he was with one. Doesn’t want to make this about endurance.
“‘S a’right, cher. Got lotsa time to mosey on back to that bridge when we’re ready. I don’t need nothin’ but you n’me tonight,” he assures him, sliding his hand from Dean’s boxers to stroke over his thigh instead. His other hand cups the side of his face, dragging him back down for a much slower, softer kiss. If he's lucky enough to get Dean Winchester into his bed, he’s going to do it right. His mama didn’t raise him to be anything less than a gentleman.
“Okay,” Dean murmurs against his lips, stroking him like an apology. “Just lemme–”
He drags himself away from Benny with a cocky grin, face flushed and pupils dilated. Benny’s hand falls to his upper arm as Dean kisses his way down every exposed part of Benny’s body. The center of his chest, bared by the buttons Dean pulled open on his shirt. The apex of his hip, just over his pants. The strip of stomach just below his belly button. And then–
“Dean,” Benny groans when those lips close over the head of his cock. Dean’s hands frame his thighs, pressing him down into the mattress when he tries to buck up automatically. “Sweet Mary n’ Joseph, the mouth o’ you.”
His ill-formed compliment is rewarded with a little chuckle that vibrates directly up his shaft, pulling noises from his throat that he didn’t know he could make while Dean swallows him to the hilt. Benny feels his nose nuzzle into his pelvis, hears the slow inhale through his nostrils when Dean’s head starts bobbing. He threads his fingers through the hunter’s hair, letting him take the lead but needing to hold him somehow.
“Still got it,” Dean grins, all puffed up like a Sunday rooster. Benny’s cock doesn’t even have time to do more than twitch in anticipation before it’s gobbled up again. The muscles of Dean’s throat work in tandem with his hand at the base of his shaft, kneading and swallowing him down with all the skill of a debauched fille de joie.
“Gettin’ close, chief,” Benny warns after an embarrassingly short time. If Dean minds, he doesn’t say. He reaches back to lay his hand over Benny’s in his hair, clenching his fingers around the short strands in a clear command to take over. Stroking a thumb over the side of his head, Benny uses the leverage to still his frantic motions and change up the rhythm. He rolls his hips in slow, easy circles while Dean’s tongue glides over the underside of his cock, seeking the heat of that perfect mouth and watching Dean’s face go lax. He closes his eyes, content to let Benny take his pleasure. Something about it makes the coil in him clench up, and his hips still until Dean glances up at him in question.
“Viens ici, toi,” Benny drawls, using the grip he has on Dean to pull him off entirely. The hunter releases his length with an obscene pop and allows himself to be led back up the bed, draping his long body over Benny in all the right ways.
“Did I do somethin’ you didn’t like?” Dean asks quietly, relaxing into Benny’s chest when he strokes his fingers through his hair.
“Was perfect, sucre. I jus’ wanna see you,” Benny says. He presses a tender kiss to Dean’s forehead, slotting their lengths together with his other hand. Dean shudders at the sensation of Benny’s wet cock sliding over his. The friction is just right. Another hand wraps around Benny’s, providing another layer of warmth that makes Dean push into him, eyes fluttering shut with pleasure. It takes a while before they find the right pace for the two of them, since Dean seems to rush everything while Benny prefers savoring the moment. He tangles their legs together and wishes they’d shed their clothes first, but he can’t bring himself to stop now that Dean is panting into the hairs covering his chest.
“Benny,” Dean murmurs when they find a rhythm. His hips are bucking in time with Benny’s, fucking into their caloused palms with stuttering whines and half-swallowed gasps. He tilts his head up, finding Benny’s lips without opening his eyes for a wet, messy kiss that leaves them sharing a breath. Benny can’t get enough of the taste, the way Dean feels against him, the blissful weightlessness that’s come over them both.
He slots his tongue with Dean’s, coaxing more sweet sounds from the hunter that he can’t bite down with his mouth occupied. A tongue tentatively explores the ridges of Benny’s fangs until his grip on them loosens. His gums relax, the tips of his fangs resting just outside their sockets, enough for Dean to feel them. He expects the hunter to recoil, an apology already forming in his throat, but Dean just moans when he pulls Benny closer. He breaks their kiss and kisses up the side of Benny’s jaw, pressing the vampire’s face directly into the crook of his neck.
“Bite me,” Dean pleads, breathless. “Want you to–need you, Benny.”
His name is little more than a low moan. Almost a prayer, pressed into the shell of his ear like an offering. Gently, Benny grazes his canines over the underside of Dean’s jaw and earns a tiny shiver. His cock twitches in their grip and it’s all the encouragement Benny needs. He lets his fangs descend, nipping over the vulnerable length of Dean’s jugular with delicate strokes that barely snag the skin.
Dean pistons into his fist, cocks grinding to the point of overstimulation. He whines, hot breath pouring over Benny’s face while they chase their peaks together.
“Please,” Dean begs shamelessly, pressing Benny’s face into him, not caring when his fangs nick his Adam’s apple. He swallows, arching into the sensation. “Need you, please.”
“I got you, mon coeur, just let go. Let me take care a’you,” Benny says in between kisses, laving his tongue over the curve of Dean’s pulsepoint. The hunter whines in protest when he retracts his fangs, but Benny doesn’t let him feel the loss. He sinks his blunt teeth into the point where neck meets shoulder, pressing bruising bites that are just enough to send Dean over the edge. He feels his cock spasm, bringing Benny’s own climax to fruition.
“That’s it, just like that,” Benny croons, layering gentle kisses over the bruises he left behind. He knows why Dean wanted him to bite, but Benny refuses to be just another transaction. He wants Dean to have this, to know that he can experience pleasure without having to pay for it in blood or tears. Needs him to know that he can just be, for once. “It’s perfect, you’re perfect, just like this, cher.”
Warmth floods over their fingers from the tip of Dean’s cock, spurting rivulets as his hips piston wildly, seeking the last of that sensation. Benny’s own climax joins the mess a few seconds later, but he holds their lengths together until he feels Dean’s erection soften. The man melts into him, warm and sated. His head drops down to the pillow, pressing close enough for Benny to feel his eyelashes flutter against his collarbone.
Careful not to disturb Dean, Benny feels around on the nightstand for the box of tissue he saw earlier. He takes a handful, snaking a hand down between them to wipe up the worst of the mess. Dean whines, the sensation no doubt overwhelming on his spent cock. Benny shushes him, pressing a kiss to his temple when he pulls away. Gingerly, he kicks off his stained pants and tucks himself back into his underwear.
“Fais dodo, cherie.” Benny murmurs as he slides Dean’s boxers back over his hips. “I’ll be right here when y’wake up.”
“‘Kay,” Dean sighs sleepily, already nuzzling into his shoulder. Benny pulls him close, wrapping an arm around his waist to trail up and down the arch of his back. He feels Dean’s jaw move, chewing over something for a minute before he finally asks, “Benny?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks,” he says, “for being here. For coming back.”
Benny holds him closer, a wash of sorrow urging him to cling on to the one good thing he has left. He doesn’t want to think about how close he came to being just another person that abandoned Dean. Left him with nothing but a memory and more guilt to carry. He can’t promise forever. Not with Dean’s instinct to protect poised like an ax overhead. He could push him away any minute, and Benny knows he won’t survive it this time. But he needs to give him something, anything, to allay the fear he knows is coiling around Dean’s heart.
“Thanks for givin’ me somethin’ to come back to,” he murmurs.
It isn’t enough for either of them, he knows that. Knows it the way he knows Dean will be gone when he wakes. Some patterns are too ingrained to be broken in a night, and neither of them are very good at holding onto anything worth having. It’d be funny if it weren’t heartbreaking, how the fear of ruining a good thing soils it faster than anything else.
He thinks of Dean’s blood on a trenchcoat, his voice begging Benny to feed directly from his veins despite the cooler full of blood still in the room next door, the way his brain shut down when he had Benny grip his hair like he was just a body to be used.
“No matter wha’ happens, I’ll always come back t’you,” he says, even though Dean’s breathing has long since evened out. As though sensing his resolve, the hunter presses himself closer, throwing a leg over his thighs with a little grumble. Benny cards his fingers through his hair until he settles again, heartbeat low and slow in a way Benny has never heard. He can’t give Dean Winchester a future he doesn’t want, isn’t sure what the hunter will need from him tomorrow. All he knows is, for tonight, he can keep him safe. And for now, that’s enough for him.
“I promise.”