Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
A/N: Might be OOC, but I've fallen in love with this pairing.
Title: King of Hearts
Summary: He leaves his humanity stained on the floors of Purgatory.
Dean goes off; Sam doesn't question.
Dean speaks around a bottle of cold beer that he can no longer taste:
"I can still feel his fingers around mine."
Benny nods slowly because heartache feels the same to any being—monster or human.
The city is a jagged collage of dark shapes that have been illuminated with fluorescent lights; somewhere in the soft darkness, a dog howls at the dangling moon, and a car slides over wet pavement. It's been raining for three days. Dean and Benny are damp with rain water, and they both sniff at the smell of dead plants and rotting water. Neither of them can feel the cold, not really, and they sit side by side dressed in their skins, washing in moonlight and sipping tasteless beer because, hell, why not?
Dean asks with the hesitance of a child, "Is it lonely?"
Benny ponders this and remembers Andrea and her soft dark skin, her perfumed hair in a tight braid, the naked curve of her shoulder underneath the colorless light of the morning sun. He tilts his head and says:
"At first, yeah, but it fades away eventually, like everythin' I suppose."
Dean laughs, "Everything but us."
Benny shakes his head and drains the bottle, "No; we all end; some of us sooner than later."
xxxx
Dean doesn't remember much about the actual turning. He remembers Benny holding him really close, the rancid stench of Purgatory, monsters growling in the humid darkness; remembers drowning on blood, tasting it on the back of his tongue, feeling Benny's body against his.
"Ya won't die," Benny speaks firmly, like it's a promise. "Ya won't die."
The next thing Dean remembers is hot blood in his mouth and the distinct feeling that something inside him died.
xxxx
Benny brings him donation blood because Dean doesn't know the tools of the trade yet. Vampires, werewolves, Wendigo, demons, Shojo, Okami, vengeful spirits—he knows how to hunt these things, and the instincts have never really gone away, but the act of becoming a thief—a silent creature that has to have patience and tact—is new to him, and Benny doesn't trust him enough to go off by himself.
Dean tears into blood, and Sam looks away. Benny's fingers rake through his hair, calloused fingers brushing at his scalp. He speaks softly:
"I'll feed ya for now, but ya'll have to come with me on a run sometime. I gotta teach ya how to live, brother."
Dean nods, and the blood in his mouth is laced with a lifetime of memories: soccer games in a grassy space underneath unforgiving summer sun, romantic nights perfumed with the promise of sex, fights that have used words sharp as any knife, the bitterness of heartbreak, the sour tang of jealousy, the sugary sweetness of love. Dean's eyes slip shut, and Benny's fingers start to feel like the gentle pull of a brush against his scalp. With blood in his mouth and a vampire's words purring in his ear, Dean remembers his mother and her golden hair, remembers the brush she used to gently remove tangles: lacquered handle, colorful butterflies scrawled across the smooth surface.
Dean opens his eyes, and his mouth is stained a deep shade of red. The phantom images and smells fade away, and the hunger that had clawed at his belly only moments ago subsides to a dull throb. The empty bag falls into the trashcan like a discarded rag, collapsing on top of beer bottles and newspapers with nothing but dead-ends.
Benny hasn't stopped brushing Dean's hair and Dean isn't going to stop him. Instead, he leans and rests his cheek on Benny's ribs. There's no breath, no gentle filling of lungs, no exhale of breath; if there is, it's just a reflex, an involuntary movement of organs functioning solely on the memory of the need for oxygen. The flesh beneath the shirt is warm from a recent feeding, and Dean fights the urge to slide his hands beneath the fabric and steal the warmth with his chilled fingers.
Benny laughs, and the sound vibrates his chest, "Ya look good with all that red on ya."
Sam chokes on his drink, and his neck turns a soft shade of red.
Beneath Benny's baby-blue gaze, Dean wants to paint his lips, but he harshly reminds himself that he is still a man and angrily wipes at the blood on his lips with the back of his hand like a child angrily wipes at a colorful Kool-Aid stain.
xxxx
Sleeping during the day is not as strange as Dean thought it would be. A hunter's life calls for bouts of insomnia and late-nights that bleed into pale-blue mornings. Sometimes, nights turned into days, and sleep was a fleeting dream disappearing with the moon and stars. The road was an endless serpent of black asphalt, weaving into the horizon line that was almost nonexistent, and the world was a vast expanse of darkness that promised creatures of varying manifestations.
Now, as a vampire, Dean feels he almost needs sleep. When the sun slowly begins its ascension into the sky, Dean feels sleep calling to him with a soft voice, urging him to and slip into a dreamless darkness. If he's driving, he'll pull the car over and have Sam take the wheel while he stretches out in the back, joints throbbing with the memory of uncomfortable nights. Dean obeys the command (like any good soldier), but the part of him that used to be human fights tooth and nail. It takes him thirty minutes to close his eyes, despite the fact that his eyelids are lead curtains draped above his eyes, and it takes him another thirty to fall completely asleep because the world is full of sounds and smells that seep through hotel room walls and sturdy Impala metal. During those moments on the teetering edge of dreaming and wakefulness, Dean's mind grabs hold of the sensory details and creates grotesque creatures that would find a perfect home in Purgatory.
He sleeps until the room is cool and the sun creates bloody smears on the sky. When he wakes, the hunger is nothing more than the occasional growl of his stomach, a slight thirst and a dry tongue. He stretches slowly, feeling rested for the first time in years with each round of sleep. The heavy weight of exhaustion is completely gone, as if it never existed in the first place.
xxxx
Dean knows Sam watches him. Even the heavy embrace of sleep, Sam's eyes are always on him.
One day, Dean asks him:
"What are you looking at?"
"You're different," Sam says and Dean raises an incredulous brow.
"I'm a vampire, Sam."
Sam shakes his head, "No. You're different . . . happier."
"I am?'
Sam nods, "Much happier."
"I see."
Dean looks outside and the world is bathed in red. The hunger is working up to a deep roar in his belly, and the thirst that claws at his throat is becoming unbearable. The phone in his pocket is like a heavy comfort, and he withdraws it and quickly dials the number he seeks.
xxxx
"I can't leave ya alone anymore," Benny's whispers, and his breath is sweet with a fresh kill. "I have to keep ya close to me."
They are pressed close together, and the darkness around them smells like cheap hotel room, cigarettes, spilt beer and stale sex. The sheets whisper the story of their union, and the darkness speaks in hushed voices, swallowing their moans and hitching breath.
"I can't leave ya alone," Benny says again and his lips and tongue leaves flower petals of deep burgundy on Dean's neck and collar. "I have to keep ya close."
"Then keep me," Dean says.
Benny's teeth are stained with twisting rivers of crimson, and Dean licks them away with an eager tongue. The blood was still warm and as the remnants slid down his throat, the memories that came with it were lost, buried by the sensation of Benny's hands in his hair, Benny's lips on his throat, Benny's voice—humming with his Cajun accent—filling his ear with pretty phrases that he'll never remember later.
"Keep me, keep me, keep me," Dean says the words like they're a holy mantra, like they have power.
Benny kisses him, softly and slowly, like Dean's a precious thing that needs tender loving care, and Dean thinks that, yes, some part of him (the part that's vulnerable and scared and still a quivering child) needs this security.
"Keep me, please keep me."
xxxx
"Promise me something."
Sam has the face of a king—strong jaw, high forehead, crescent-shaped cheekbones, eyes set back into his head. He stares at Benny without fear or rage. Instead, it's a soft look that reaches his eyes.
Benny says, "I'll do what I can."
"Take care of him."
". . . You know I will."