A/N:
The dialogue in this first chapter is taken straight from season 8 episode 1. The chapter titles are all songs that were used in episodes during season 8 that featured Benny. "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" is what Benny whistled while he and Dean were slaughtering monsters in one of my favorite scenes.
To those of you have been following "Breathe" and "Forty Years": I apologize for breaking from them to get this earworm of my head. Most of you have written some yourselves, so I'm sure you know what I mean when I say that this one just got in there burned. I had to get it out, to cool that flame, before I could go back to our broken and tormented hero.
I hope it burns you, too.
Rumors had come to them of a man. A real man, flesh and blood and soul, here, in Purgatory.
With an angel.
The angel was off limits: the Leviathan had laid claim to that particular treat.
But the human? That tender morsel was up for grabs.
And Lucifer help the monster that dared try.
It didn't pay to rush things in Purgatory. Not when it was every monster for itself, when night and day blended into one, when terrain could change right under your feet and friend was only a friend as long as he needed you.
No, it didn't pay to rush things here.
The vampire held to the shadows, one eye to his back, the other on the man.
The human.
He focused so intently that he memorized the way the hunter moved, could recognize his walk, his run, the swing of his arm and the turn of his head from fifty yards through deep forest in perpetual twilight.
He read the ferocious rage in every kill, the unflagging determination in his search for his friend, the keen intelligence in the lines of his face as he sought shelter or food or simply read a trail.
Benny had known to expect a human, but this? This was a man.
Something long neglected stirred in his chest.
The vampire was done being patient.
He stood across the clearing, high on the adrenaline coursing through his veins, feeling a rush of something akin to bloodlust as he and the hunter circled each other warily.
"What, no thanks for savin' your hide?"
"Sure. I won't shove this up your ass."
An electric thrill shot down Benny's spine. "Ung. Awful strange way of punchin' a meal ticket, friend." The tilt of the hunter's head, the intensity in the grass-green eyes, the coiled grace in his movements: none of it escaped the vampire's attention.
A cold burn smoldered deep in his gut.
"I got somethin' you need," and that cold ember pulsed.
"Yeah? What's that?" The low rasp of the man's voice was like the sharp scrape of manicured nails over bare flesh.
"A way out."
An honest chuckle and a smile that was not meant to be seductive changed everything, opening a door to a world that Benny had not witnessed from his sniper's vantage point.
The ember sparked into a full flame, and Benny swallowed back the saliva that flooded his mouth.
He wanted this man. Wanted him badly.
"Even a dental apocalypse like you knows there's no such thing." Dean's intelligence shown in his easy wit.
Benny resisted the urge to run his tongue over his fangs. "There is if you're human." They circled in their erotically deadly dance. "'God has made it so', at least, that's the rumor."
"Bull."
"Suit yourself. Maybe you don't need it. Maybe you like being man-meat for every Tom, Dick...and Harry." He felt the smile soften his face, lust pounding in his ears.
He watched the emotions flicker across the hunter's face, finally settling. "Prove it," came the low growl, and Benny smiled.
"Nah. Hm. You're either in or you're out."
"So you just wanna guide me out of Purgatory out of the goodness of your undead heart."
The man's cautious nature was part of his appeal. "More or less," Benny drawled, and his mind conjured an image of 'more' that left him needing to adjust himself in his trousers.
"What's in it for you?"
Green eyes pierced him. "I'm hoppin' a ride," and Benny's voice had dropped to a seductive purr.
"What?" Irritation and distrust colored that single word with so much more.
"It's a human portal, jackass. Only humans can pass through." He let the fire in his groin burn, feeding it with his words, with the sound of the human's voice, with the intoxicating aroma of his hot, sweet blood, so close under tender skin. "I show you the door, you hump my soul to the other side."
The man's voice was sardonic. "So you're lookin' for a soul train."
"Sure," and Benny smiled, visualizing them nude, on their hands and knees, connected end-to-end like railroad cars, "if that's what you're into."
"And how do I know this isn't a set-up? How do I know I ain't gonna end up like your friend over here?"
Benny's smile was almost coy. "He was my friend. Now you are." Filled with heat after decades of undead chill. He nearly gave himself away with a low groan at the thought. "First rule of Purgatory, kid: you can't trust nobody."
"You just asked me to trust you!" The alpha reared its head, and Benny shivered in some deep, primal place.
"Ya see! You're gettin' it now!"
"Hm." He raised his obsidian blade, pointing the monstrosity at the vampire as he stalked with deliberation across the clearing, each stride emphasizing a word. "First we find the angel."
"Mmmm. Three's a crowd, Chief." He knew this one would be hard enough to crack without the physical embodiment of the man's Puritanical conscience looming over them.
"Well, hey: either you're in. Or your out." The way the hunter threw Benny's own words at him brooked no argument.
Benny let a smile spread across his face. I'm in, Chief. I am definitely in.
Dean gripped a tree branch, face pale in the colorless twilight, breath coming in controlled pants.
Benny knelt, easing denim down over long, hard-muscled thighs.
He'd fought the hunter long and hard to get here, but in the end, pain and blood loss had won out over modesty, and Dean had given the vampire permission to attend to his wound.
The thick smell of the man's blood was an aphrodesiac to the vampire who had subsited for far too long on the life fluid of monsters. His hands trembled as he worked the denim down to the hunter's knees.
"If this is too much -" Dean began, but Benny cut off him, pressing a cloth against the thickest hemorrhage, earning a startled hiss of pain before the hunter brought himself back under control.
"I need to take these down, too, Chief," Benny explained, tugging lightly at the boxer briefs his friend wore.
The touch on raw flesh had pulled Dean's mind away, focus entirely on beating the agony down, on controlling his breathing, on not allowing his pain to show. Not putting his vulnerability on display. "Do what you gotta do. Just hurry it up, will ya? We could get jumped at any time out here."
Benny's too keen senses had already swept the area, and he knew that they were safe, undetected in their protected copse, at least for the moment.
Slowly, reverently, he drew tattered black cotton down blood-stained thighs, nails scraping lightly over the skin of the hunter's flesh as they passed.
Dean's brain latched onto the sensation, searching for an amplifying any signal to focus on that would distract from the constant cry of 'pain'.
Benny's eyes followed cloth until it met the rough brake of denim.
With his hands still near the hunter's knees, he raised his eyes slowly.
Blood had soaked into the man's clothing, spreading out across his groin and down the inside of his thigh. It glistened in the course hair over his pubis. Colored pale skin with a sweet syrup that raised a nearly overwhelming pressure in Benny. He watched, mesmerized, as a droplet formed on the tip of the man's thick, flaccid penis, gathering weight there, quavering in the firelight, suspended through each deep thrust of the hunter's pulse until it fell, dragging the vampire's resolve with it.
He drew in a shaking breath. His hands moved to retrieve a bowl of astringent derived from boiling tree bark and an improvised cloth made of more of the same.
He couldn't look the man in the eye as he raised the poultice to mangled flesh, afraid of what his astute friend would read there. "This is gonna sting a mite, Chief."
Dean's knees buckled as the compressed met the flayed skin at the crease of his thigh, and only his grip on the tree branch and the hard press of his fingertips into the willing strength kept him upright.
Benny looked up, eyes hooded with redirected bloodlest to find the hunter's squeezed tightly shut, jaw clenched, eyes straining.
Almost as if...
The image of this man hovering on the brink of orgasm hit him hard, and it was all Benny could do not to moan.
Benny looked up through a forest of lashes, drinking in the man's expression. Dean's eyes were closed, chin against the heavy rise and fall of his chest, brow furrowed in way that could signal pleasure or pain.
The vampire wet a scrap of cloth. He worked slowly, reverently, to remove every trace of crimson from the hunter's skin, lips clamped tightly over the press of his fangs, a craven desire to replace the rag with his tongue creating a roaring in his ears that made his entire body shake.
Dean watched through hooded eyes, and the hand on Benny's shoulder trembled.
Benny held the hunter's gaze as he pulled his lips back, fangs revealed, and touched the tip of his tongue to the blood-soaked rag.
Dean trembled, his gasped "Benny" equal parts fear and need. The hand that had been on Benny's shoulder jumped to his head, fingers burying themselves in the vampire's hair, ready to pull him away or draw him in, whichever need seemed more urgent.
The vampire flattened his tongue against the rag, heady ambrosia of fresh, hot blood flooding his senses. He pulled back slowly, coating his fangs with the hunter's spent blood in a long, lazy glide, lust-blown pupils locked on Dean's in a both a challenge and a promise.
Dean inhaled sharply, fingers tightening in a grip designed to hold his place in this reality, to ground him against the insane impulse that threatened to unhinge him.
Benny knew what the man was thinking. It is what Benny wanted. What he needed. What he'd been imagining since the first time he saw the man jogging after a monster, shoulders square and tall, improbably confident in the face of so much danger. He wanted that unconscious authority directed at him. Longed to have hard fingers grip his flesh, have that symbol of masculine superiority forced on him, taste the man's power and lust even as the hunter came apart in his hands, giving himself over to his pleasure, deliberately baring his weakness to the vampire this one time.
And Dean was close.
Benny felt it in the hard planes of the man's abdomen each time he ran the cloth over it. Smelled it in the thunder of blood and the flow beaded sweat. Sensed it in the trembling thigh beneath the compress pressed there by one forgotten hand.
It was an effort to force his eyes away. He raked his forearm over the lower half of his face, drying it, then gently peeled the corner of the compress away. He cleared his throat, tasting Dean's blood mixed with lust-thick saliva one last time. "Looks like the bleeding's stopped, Chief."
"Yeah." Dean's voice was ground glass layered over gravel. "F-feels better."
Benny hid his smile as he replaced the astringent pad with a soft cloth, taping it into place. "I know we heal faster down here, Hoss, but you best try to keep anything from rubbin' on that for a day or two." He turned away, allowing the hunter some semblance of privacy as the man redressed himself.
Knowing his hunter well, the vampire crossed to the fire, ladelling stew into a battered mug, stirring and blowing on it, taking more time than needed. When the faint rustling had given way to slow, still uncertain breaths, he turned.
Dean was sitting, ankles drawn in close and crossed, knees wide and relaxed, staring down at his hands.
Soft, blood-soiled cotton once again provided modesty, though his long limbs remained bare.
Benny squatted down beside him, food proffered as a customary offering.
"Thanks, Benny." His voice was rough with self-recrimination as he accepted the gift.
But when the vampire reached up to gently card his fingers through the man's hair, Dean did not flinch away. "My pleasure, Chief. Truly: it was my pleasure."