AN: There is a lot of very rude language toward drug users in this story. No offense is meant; I am using drug addiction as a parallel to vampirism, and cops as a parallel to hunters, so the police officers are very anti-'junkie' like hunters could be expected to be very anti-vampire. Also, Sam doesn't come off very well in the first chapter, but this is not an anti-Sam story at all and he gets more likeable in later chapters. Warnings for mentions of past suicidal thoughts, drug addiction, and brief mentions of the death of a neglected child during a police case (nothing particularly graphic but could be disturbing). Also, Dean is bisexual in this story and there is eventual Benny/Dean.

Sam didn't usually judge.

Scratch that. Sam didn't usually judge anyone but Dean. But he just knew Dean so well that he couldn't help but put his two cents in when he saw his older brother doing something that would lead to him getting hurt down the line. It's not like Dean would be quiet about it if he thought Sam was making a mistake.

Last year when Dean had been disciplined at his job with the city police, where they both worked, Sam had thought the anger management counseling might actually be a good thing for him. Dean had been put on suspension without pay and been forced to go to counseling and do community service with junkies-because he'd beat up a junkie, Sam guessed. The community service and therapy had kept Dean out of jail, paved the way for him to one day come back to the police department, and had been supposed to instill compassion for addiction in his brother.

Maybe it had worked too well.

Dean had actually started to be bizarrely close to one of the junkies-a guy called Benny. They'd been seen out in public, hanging out playing pool in bars, buying parts for the crappy car Benny was apparently fixing up with Dean's help. Eating meals together.

A known junkie. A guy who'd been in the station for possession, theft, and god knows what else over the years. And Dean was hanging out with him and didn't seem to care who knew about it.

No other cops had judged Dean for beating up a junkie. It had been an especially gruesome call. A bad smell reported by the neighbors almost always meant a DB, but the dead body in question had been a little girl, hardly older than a baby, who the junkie, a man named Earl Leeds, had let starve to death. He'd gone out and got more meth a dozen times, but must have forgotten that his daughter was staying with him so didn't get anything for her, like food or water. Dean had seen the little girl's body and lost control, and done the man irreparable damage, though he hadn't killed him.

But while cops could understand Dean's anger toward Earl Leeds, they were judging Dean for spending time with Benny. Not that he'd ever done anything as terrible as Earl Leeds, but he was a junkie. Undependable as shit, liable to do anything. Junkies could seem to be awesome people, but they turned on you and they hurt people if it meant getting drugs. And God help you if somehow got between them and drugs.

When Sam pulled his Sonata into Dean's driveway, he was annoyed to see that Benny was actually there already, standing in the driveway doing maintenance on the Impala with Dean. The Impala was the only car Sam had ever worked on, and he used to be the one Dean called if he ever needed a pair of hands when he was switching things out.

Sam huffed at the thought that he'd been replaced.

He got out of the car and shut the door loudly, causing both men to look up from their position close together, speaking quietly at the hood of the car. Sam shook his head at the disturbing thought that his brother had never really had a friend before. He'd been friends with Garth and Cas, and with Charlie, of course, but that was for work. It was weird to see the kind of guy who Dean would be friends with just because he liked him. What was it about this freak that made him capable of drawing Dean in?

"I need to talk to you, Dean," Sam said without preamble.

"Sorry, Sam, I've got company at the moment," Dean said.

"It's alright, brother. I'll head out," Benny said.

He nodded at Sam and walked down the road, and Sam grudgingly admitted to himself that at least the guy was polite and seemed to know his place.

Dean sighed. "So do I even have to ask what you're doing here?"

"That guy. Benny Lafitte? Really?"

"You know me. I don't make friends that easy. But when I do...they're family. I can't just stop being his friend because other cops don't approve."

"He's a junkie, Dean! You of all people know what junkies are capable of," Sam said.

"He was volunteering at the treatment center. He's a recovering addict. He's been clean for a really long time. People like that, who actually resist the urge to use? We should be supporting them. He's a good guy, who took a few really bad missteps in life. Shit, Sam, you think it couldn't have been me? You know when I was a teenager I tried some of that stuff. I had people like you and dad and Bobby to keep me from going all the way into that dark world, but that doesn't make me any better than Benny."

"It's not that I think Benny's a bad guy. I just think, why set yourself up? If something bad happens, or he gets bored, or he just feels like it, he'll use again. Junkies are never really clean, Dean. You know this. And if you're close to him when he goes off, you're the one he's going to hurt."

"He's my friend, Sam. You don't even know what it was like, this past year. I was drunk every night, thinking my career was over, thinking I couldn't ever be the kind of guy who would be cleared for duty again. I thought I'd never be strong enough again. Cops would talk to me and hang out with me, but they always talked about work, and all I heard when they talked was that I'd never be like them again. You think I didn't almost swallow my gun some of those nights? And where the fuck were you? You were deciding whether or not to go back to law school. You didn't give a shit, or you just didn't notice. Benny was there. He saved my life."

"Dean, why didn't you come to me?" Sam asked.

"Oh, come off it. You loved that I was gone, that you could finally live your life without your annoying big brother looking over your shoulder. You thought anger management was good for me and that I needed counseling," Dean said.

"Well, apparently you did, if you thought about killing yourself!"

Dean sighed. "I'm not blaming you. I guess you thought I should work through my issues on my own. Maybe you were right. But that means you can't blame me for the way I dealt with everything. You weren't there, so you don't get to tell me that I handled everything wrong."

"That's not what I'm saying, Dean. I'm just saying, maybe you needed that relationship at the time, but you're coming back to work in a week. You can't be hanging out with a guy like him. What are the guys going to think?"

"Maybe they'll think I'm not a disloyal prick," Dean said.

"Benny seems like...like a good guy. He'd understand why you have to keep your distance."

"He's not hurting anyone. He's not using. Don't you believe in second chances anymore?"

"But I don't get it. This isn't like you. We always had this argument, with you on the other side. I don't get how suddenly you're all for second chances," Sam said.

"Just be happy that I finally see things from your perspective, then. And I'm not exactly going to be bringing him to the policeman's ball. We're cooling it, at bit. I mean, I'm not going to have as much time now that I'm back at work. He's not happy about it because he could use the support. He doesn't have a lot of friends around here who are clean, so, I really should be there for him. But he understands that I have to do what's best for me, too."

"You promise me that you won't let this guy drag you down?"

"He won't be a problem. Cops and guys like him don't mix, not really. I mean, outside of places like New Path," Dean said.

"Why'd you argue with me then?"

"Why do I ever argue with you, Sammy?" Dean asked evasively.

Sam suspected that Dean wished he'd been able to think of arguments that held up, because he didn't want to abandon his friend. Maybe he'd even hoped Sam would argue with him that he should stay loyal to Benny. Sam sympathized, but it really was unwise to hang on to friendships like that.

He'd learned that the hard way with Ruby.

They both had.

Dean had been back on the job for a few weeks when Sam got the call to the diner. It was a really bad scene. Messy, loud, filled with cops and technicians. There was blood everywhere, and glass and grease from the fryers on the ground. Benny had worked there for a while, or so Sam understood.

Martin Creaser had been unsteady for a long time. He'd been working without a partner or on desk duty for a while because the chief couldn't get anyone to ride along with him. Sam had vouched for him on this job, sure that the increase in drug activity around that neighborhood had to do with Benny working at the diner.

Dean had an arm around his friend's shoulder. Benny looked shell-shocked and angry, and was wearing scrubs because his clothes had been taken as evidence.

Gordon bumped Sam hard as he walked in and Gordon walked out. "Tell your brother that cops ain't supposed to hug cop-killers."

Sam ignored him and walked over to where Dean and Benny were standing.

"Dean, can I talk to you?" Sam said.

"I ain't leaving him alone. You think if I wasn't here the rest of these guys wouldn't kick the shit out of Benny?"

"He killed a cop!"

"It wasn't like that," Dean said. "He's not under arrest. Thank Christ they have cameras in this joint because he was cleared after I investigated for like a minute."

"What the hell happened?"

"If Dean hadn't come when I called and made sure the cops investigating checked the cameras and didn't just kill me on sight, your friend Gordon would have killed me," Benny said.

"I told you Martin wasn't ready for all this," Dean said. He got up and moved over to the side of the room, folding his arms defensively and waiting for Sam to walk up and join him.

"What the hell happened?"

"Martin came in here in the middle of the night and threatened to cut up Benny's daughter if he didn't admit to being involved with the drug activity. Benny isn't involved, though. He only took the job in this shitty drug-infested neighborhood because he wanted to make sure Izzy was safe now that the dealers all moved in. A guy approached him to deal, but he shot him down. I went with him to the meet when he told him to leave him alone. I swear, that's what happened."

"Martin wouldn't do that."

"Well, he did," Dean said. "There's goddamned video evidence that he did. He wasn't ready for this kind of assignment, and he ended up dead."

"Benny has a daughter?"

"Yeah, but she doesn't know he's her dad. He was just a teenager when she was conceived and she was raised by the mother's older sister and her husband. It's probably going to come out now...and the fact that he was involved with drugs, before. This wasn't how he wanted things to go down when Izzy found out about him," Dean said.

"So what am I doing here?" Sam said. "You seem to have everything handled. Why call me at all?"

"This investigation is your baby. I want you to clean this shit up. I'm only here to make sure the police give Benny a fair shake. I didn't even take the call-he called me before he called the police."

"You should get out of here, then, I guess," Sam said.

"Everyone already knows I stuck my neck out for him," Dean said.

"Even though Martin was in the wrong and Benny was in the right, no one will thank you for sticking your neck out. You know that, right?"

"No cops will thank me," Dean said, "But Benny seemed to appreciated it. Although I wonder if I should be apologizing to him. How much of Martin's investigation was all about you proving that Benny was bad news? Martin was supposed to be on light duties. He was supposed to be behind a desk."

"The psychiatrist cleared him. I know you thought he was shaky, but not everyone felt that way," Sam said.

Dean looked at the ground. "You asked me to stay away from Benny and then you interfered with his life. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking the guy was using you," Sam said. "And just because Martin went nuts doesn't mean the investigation wasn't on the right track."

"Are you kidding? Martin went nuts because he was trying to prove something that wasn't true. The only way he could think to find evidence that didn't exist was by holding a teenager hostage at knifepoint. Jesus, Sam, you asked me to stay away and I did. How could Benny be using me when we hadn't spoken in weeks?"

Sam's heart beat rapidly. He didn't want to admit what he'd done with Martin was wrong, not because he didn't want to admit a fault, but because he didn't want Dean to take this as an indication that he should go hang out with Benny again. "All the arguments against you spending time with the guy are still the same as before," he finally said.

Dean shook his head in disbelief. "Yeah, the difference is that now everyone knows how far I'm willing to go to protect him. I'm willing to protect a cop-killing ex-junkie because he's my friend and he's innocent. So whatever arguments you had against Benny? They're pretty much moot."

"Except for the one where when something bad happens junkies always go back to using," Sam said.

"Which reminds me, I'm Benny's ride. He's going to stay with me for a while, so I can make sure he's doing alright, even after all this."

"Dean-"

"-I don't care, Sammy. Right now I got nothing to say to you."