He comes to you in the dead of night. Calls at dusk to ask for directions, nose sounding either stuffed or broken over the tinny speakers, and with all the fake cheer he's putting on, you place your bets on the latter.
When Dean spills out of his car onto the hardened patch of soil you call your porch, the smell of blood hits you hard. It's not just his nose; it's his cheek and his brow and the corners of his mouth, all beaten black and blue, one arm in a cast, but he says it's okay. Not so bad anymore, he says, and you're lost on how exactly that makes any of this okay. Maybe he too isn't quite sure because once you invite him in, he stands there and turns, lost in the middle of this piss poor cabin you picked for a home, and he laughs a little, says, "Benny," with his stuffed nose, his broken lip, his breaking voice. "You got a beer?"
No, you laugh. No, all you got is the drained corpse of a cat out in the back. Poor thing came strolling down the meadow when you kept calling, tame and gullible and too small to still your hunger.
"Nevermind."
He's produced a flask from his pocket, takes a liberal gulp, and you stare until eventually you find your voice.
"What the hell's happened to you?"
He shrugs. Looks around until he decides to pick the bed to sit, the lonely wooden chair not appealing. To be frank, the way he drops his weight, you're not sure it would withstand. Instead of an answer, he gives the cheap, worn-through mattress a sorrowful look, says, "Got my own bed now," like that's supposed to explain something, and he keeps drinking in long, greedy gulps until the flask is empty.
"You can smell it, right?" he says, gesturing at his face.
The bruises sit under the skin, but there are cuts too, blood both dried and welling, and yeah, there's a reason you're white-knuckling the edge of the countertop behind you, the same reason you've locked yourself away out here in the first place, confined yourself to solitude.
He glares. Oh, you hear his heartbeat alright, loud and tempting. The tight nod you give him doesn't satisfy.
With a slur to his voice, he laughs and says, "What, that's all? Am I not your type?" Spits out the words with a bitterness you haven't heard from him in a long time - not since he'd been sleeping one eye open and a knife in hand, blood-smeared from hair to boots. Not since he'd insisted on searching for that damn angel that you only believed to exist because of Dean. What are the chances that anything but monsters venture down to Purgatory?
And yet it happened. There he was, a fully human soul sitting by your fireside, promising you a way out. And each time Dean relaxed a little more in your presence, each time he slept rather than dozed, each time he fought with you back to back, that's when you told yourself with a rare certainty that good things do happen. Every once in a while the gods look kindly your way.
Make the best of it. Don't think it means you get to demand more.
"You look like shit," Dean says, so hard and matter of fact, with an upwards cant of his chin like it's on purpose, the way he bares his throat.
Your fangs pierce your gums. You don't answer.
What you do is what you should have done from the start: you get the hell out. Three steps and you slam the door shut behind you, thin board bouncing off the frames, creaking and splintering, as you rush forward into the chill night air.
For days and days you've told yourself that the vastness of the sky and the light of the sun and the green of the world, that not killing and not dying are worth the hunger, even if there's no easing it. It's only temporary, until you can afford to live and feed again, until you're able to figure out how a monster might make itself fit.
But the truth is that you don't belong. There's no changing that. You're out of funds and out of luck and this little goodwill the gods have thrown your way feels like more a cruel joke these days.
You breathe through your open mouth until the taste of blood has been washed from your tongue and your hunger settles, coiling defiantly in your stomach.
Above you, the leaves in the black crown tremble. Pale grey clouds drift across the sky. You take a seat on the small bench in front of the cabin, and you knot your fingers in your lap, and you blink up at the patches of stars shimmering here and there. Until Dean's up and sober and the both of you can think clearly again, you're staying out here.
Only problem is, Dean thinks otherwise.
Comes out with a tilt towards the wall, shoulder dragging around the door frame, boots scraping through the dirt. You shake your head, send him right back. "Go inside, Dean, sleep it off."
Like he hasn't even heard you, he comes closer until you give him a warning shove, yet he just stumbles to the ground instead, lands on his knees.
"Benny," he says, like he wants something, holding on to your wrist with his good hand, says your name like the world's been smashed to pieces and you're the one to find him some ground to stand.
You're as clueless as before.
"Who did that to you?" you ask again.
"What's it matter?"
"You-" You laugh and look up at the sky like you might find some guidance there. "Don't hear from you in weeks, Dean, and then you turn up all beaten to hell, you don't think a man might wanna know how that came to be?"
But he's already ducked his head, says, "I'm sorry, man, it's been - I know I should have, should have called, but what it's like with Sam right now, I can't-"
He stutters his nonsense until you put a hand in the nape of his neck and say, "It's ok, don't need to explain nothing."
He's warm under your palm, he's so damn warm. All you got to do is move your hand a little for your fingers to lie near the pulse point, to feel the beat of his heart in your fingertips, all the way up to your teeth, its sound louder than thunder.
He says something that you can't hear. The siren song of blood is blocking all your senses, and he's pulling himself up between your legs, like a fucking cliff to sink you, and you're lost in his warmth, his scent, too overwhelmed to get out much more than a, "Dean, sugar," of the warning on your mind. Then his mouth is on yours, his lip. His split lip and one drop of blood.
For a whole second you manage to stay still.
You hurt him. You know it, in the back of your head. You hold him too hard; you're biting and sucking, all but tearing at his mouth. The blood swells like a fucking tease, single drop by drop, and you grab him by the hair and pulls his head back and reveal that jugular that's been winding you up with its beat all night, and you bite it open, through the thin skin and its sheen of sour sweat that washes out fast once the blood flows.
It fills you, like fire. Through each dead vein it flows and revives you, a heat bristling with pure life. You're drunk, scorched; nothing's ever felt so good.
How long you've been drinking you can't say. Not enough, still not enough, but through the mind-dulling haze you hear the noises, the whimpers and the greedy moans. Like animals, the both of you stripped down to shameful instinct, and you're sorry, you're so fucking sorry, yet your mouth won't leave the wound. One more swallow and one more, and you suck it clean and lick up every drop while Dean in your arms shakes like a leaf.
When you manage to push him back at arm's length, your fingers still clutch his hair, his shoulders; you can't let go of him, his taste coating the inside of your mouth. His shirt's soaked, stained black at the collar.
"Jesus. Dean, I could have - I could have killed you."
He sits there, sunk in, face in the shadow and mumbles, "S'alright, Benny," like he hasn't even heard you. The fingers of his good arm remain cramped around a handful of your shirt. "It's alright." Like this too isn't so bad.
You stare at the lazy passing of the clouds. The owls hoot in the trees. The air is thick with a coppery scent. You don't dare close your eyes for fear of losing yourself in your hunger again, or for fear of giving in to swelling relief of sated needs. You're ashamed. "Come on, don't you sit in the dirt like that," you say, and pull him forward until he skids up on the bench.
Silently he hands you the keys when you ask for his first aid kit, and he readily follows you inside, leaning a little against you as he walks. The way he sits down on the bed, with his dirty knees and those glassy eyes, your heart aches. There's something so lonely and lost about it, the single light bulb, the shabby quilt, all that drying blood.
"So you're gonna tell me who I gotta jazz up?" you ask, nodding at his broken wrist.
He doesn't laugh and neither do you, and you busy yourself dressing the messy wound that you ripped open on his throat. He doesn't so much as flinch.
When you tape down the last corner of the gauze, you add quietly, "I know what I've done, Dean. I'm not going to fight you. If you want to go outside and get the machete - "
He looks at you, then. Hurt maybe; you're not sure how to read that pained, quick glance. He hurries to shake his head like there's no meaning to it and then lies down on your bed.
"It's not your fault, Benny."
There's something wrong, something upside down. His dusty boots come to lie on top of the quilt. You put them, one after the other, onto your lap and untie them and pull them off.
"Was it Sam who beat you?"
He laughs, once, hard. "No."
"Was it the angel?"
No laughter. He turns his face away, to the side, then says like an apology, "He wasn't himself. He was, uh, sort of possessed."
You wait for something else, some explanation, but he says no more. In sudden need of air, you pack up and walk outside. You return the first aid kit to the trunk, then pick up some logs from the stack at the back of the cabin. When you kneel in front of the small fireplace, holding a match to the kindling, you look over at Dean, how he lies half curled on top of the quilt, in his clothes still, skin raw and red.
It's more than you had in Purgatory, this cabin with its bed and warmth and running water. Yet neither is it a place to stay nor do you know where to go from here, expect back. It's less an option; rather what these long days move to, inevitably. Whatever did the both of you run to? Some family business, some unsettled score - right back to what you could have left behind.
You turn off the light. Through the opening in the lid, a wild red glow dances into the cabin, not yet warming it. Carefully, you pull the quilt over Dean's body and then sit down beside him.
"It was going to happen anyway," Dean mumbles into the still night. You put a hand on his shoulder and he leans his head towards you. "Always does, sooner or later. It's alright, Benny. I know the tune."