"Well, ain't this cozy?" Benny remarked as they squirmed to find a comfortable position on the twig strewn ground. The overhang was cramped but serviceable. It managed to keep off the worst of the drizzling rain. Dusk had fallen quickly and brought with it a chill, and the two men were long past the point of being shy about settling in firmly shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip in some stony nook when a fire was too dangerous but the night too cold. Sometimes they took it in turns to watch, but usually, Benny and Dean sat up at night and talked, their voices low to avoid drawing attention. At least until the adrenaline wore off and they could catch some sleep, but such a thing wasn't allowed to happen often or for long in Purgatory.
"What'd you used to do before I showed up?" Dean grunted, shifting to take his weight off a fresh bruise on his thigh, "Spoon a tree root?"
"Somethin' like," Benny chuckled. "Blanket of moldy leaves. Rock for a pillow. Weren't too comfortable. Believe it or not, snuggling up next to your bony butt is, in fact, an improvement. Even with these bow legs takin' up all the space," he grinned, giving them a nudge with his knee.
"Hey, you're broader than I am, pal."
"Now, can I help it if monster killin' builds muscle? I've just been here longer than you. You are right about one thing, though. Purgatory can get mighty lonely," Benny reflected, his smile fading. "Even when you manage to team up with another soul for whatever reason, the alliance is a fragile thing. Temporary at best. Trust is hard found in these parts. Most would rather freeze to death than sleep this close to somebody else." Dean glanced over at his companion, but Benny considered the shadows around them with a frown, and Dean knew he wasn't just looking for threats. "Seems like everyone's forgotten that - up top - we used to be brothers and sisters. Here, it's like we're all just...appetites."
Benny's sedate cajun drawl faded to almost a whisper, and it seemed they both felt the chill more strongly just then, but Dean wasn't sure Benny's shiver could be attributed to the weather. Like Dean, he didn't often admit to these paler moods, but what the elder Winchester tended to translate into anger and action, Benny usually spun into good humor, even if it was sometimes a little dark. This open melancholy was a rarity. As he considered what Benny had said, Dean picked up a stick laying beside him and poked absently at the leaves piled at their feet in lieu of the fire he wished they had.
"Maybe you're right," he conceded after a silent moment. "But to tell the truth, I've never been a whole lot more than my appetites myself. Up top, down here…" He shrugged. "Purgatory hasn't made my appetites worse," he admitted, "it's just sort of given me permission to indulge. Hell wasn't much different," he added, almost inaudibly, "it was just...dirtier." It was an ironic statement, considering they were covered head to toe in various kinds of grime, but they both knew the filth Dean was referring to wasn't physical.
Dean had never spoken much about Hell. Not aloud. Not to anyone. Not to anyone, that is, except for Benny, and Dean had told Benny quite a lot; especially at times like this, when the day had been particularly violent, and the horror he was actively living made the horror of his memories of the Pit less frightening by proximity. Benny had been navigating the bloody wilds of Purgatory for as long as Dean had been Downstairs, and he understood what Dean shared with him about that place in a way none of the others ever could.
He understood it better even than Sammy. Though his little brother had spent longer in Hell than Dean had, he'd been locked in the Cage. He'd been tortured - in ways far worse than Dean could imagine - but the one pain he was unfamiliar with was that of being induced to willingly do things that offended the soul. Sam didn't know the guilt of excelling at those things. He didn't know the shame of enjoying that prowess. Unlike Dean, Sam had never thrilled in bloodshed. Not in quite the same way. But Benny...he understood.
"But you can have appetites for things besides killing," Dean murmured, shifting uncomfortably and not because of his bruise.
"Appetites such as?"
"Like you said. Family. You know, companionship. I assume you want the same kinds things, since you're the one who brought it up."
"Just maybe," said Benny quietly, looking at Dean from the corner of his eye. "Somethin' like," he added, even more softly, looking away again. Dean waited for an elaboration that never came.
"I mean, I get what you're saying, though," he went on, assuming he was expected to fill the ensuing silence. "And hey, I enjoy killing as much as anyone here. I just enjoy other things, too. You and me can't be the only ones."
"Yeah, but you're human," Benny argued. "Just sayin'," he added when Dean scowled.
"Yeah? And you're a fang, but you're the one pining for warm and fuzzies. Just sayin'," Dean mimicked. Despite his bum mood, Benny cracked a smile.
"Maybe we aren't so different, after all. Maybe we never were," he added philosophically. He didn't seem to expect a response, but Dean chafed at the comparison between himself and the things he'd spent his life hunting.
"Maybe you and me aren't so different," he countered. "But I think we might both be oddballs." Benny raised an eyebrow as if tempted to be affronted himself.
"Are you sayin' you think monsters can't care about other people?"
"Oh, I know they can. Just not usually about humans."
Benny narrowed his eyes at Dean. "You think you're better than us."
Dean knew the accusation wasn't meant to be particularly scathing. It was merely an observation, a variation on a conversation they'd had often over the previous weeks and one that had opened Dean to a certain amount of introspection. With anyone else, Dean might have bristled at the comment, been contentious out of reflex. Instead, Dean paused to consider if Benny might not be right.
"Y'know, I used to." There was a quiet self-acceptance in the confession. "But now?" Dean shrugged. "I'm a human, and I fight for my own kind. I suppose, if I were a monster, I'd do the same thing," he said as if absolving Benny and his kin for their crimes against him and his. As if Benny were asking for Dean's pardon. Which he was not, and the tilt of his head seemed to argue that point. As with most things subtle, Dean failed to appreciate it.
"There was a time I'd kill a monster just for being what it was," he went on. "But, hell, I've set vamps free before. Werewolves, too. Way I see it, long as you aren't a threat to me and mine, we are not enemies," he concluded sagely. "What we are puts us at odds a lot of the time, but it doesn't have to. Not automatically."
Both of Benny's eyebrows rose at that. Not in a way that suggested disagreement, he just seemed to wonder if the hunter expected a medal for his magnanimity. This, too, was lost on Dean, and Benny shook his head at the man at his side, nudging his shoulder with a small smile.
"Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we-"
Benny's impromptu serenade was interrupted when a piece of the stick Dean had been using to stir their imaginary fire struck him in the chest. The lyrics tapered off into Benny's characteristic mirth.
"We are, though, aren't we, Dean?" he asked when his chuckles subsided. Dean was too relieved that Benny's heavy mood seemed to have lifted to catch his meaning.
"Are what?"
"Friends."
Dean raised a wide-eyed look to his companion, shocked it even needed to be said aloud. The shadow of uncertainty that pinched the smile in Benny's eyes was blatant enough to compel Dean to say it anyway.
"Hell, Benny." Dean shook his head, a bit overcome by the sudden affection he felt seeing his fond expression reflected on the vampire's face as they considered one another. "You're practically like a brother to me."
Saying it seemed to do Dean as much good as Benny. He hadn't spent much time reflecting on their relationship, especially as he was so often preoccupied with more immediate matters of survival, and the pure and simple truth of the statement surprised him.
"In fact," he muttered, his excess of emotion taking an unexpected dive toward despondency, "why...you might be more of one than Sammy is." He'd said it with a small laugh but tossed the remains of his stick to the ground as if it offended him. Benny gave him a pained look, but Dean refused to turn to see it.
"Now. You don't mean that," Benny chided. "You worship that boy."
"That I do," Dean readily agreed. "But he sure doesn't seem worship me," he added more reticently.
"You so sure about that?"
Benny's skeptical expression shook Dean's conviction in the statement, but it did not dispel it entirely. It did, however, seem to invite the man voice his doubts. Dean sighed.
"All our life, I've done nothin but try to take care of that kid, Benny. Keep him safe. 'Look after Sammy,'" Dean said in imitation of John Winchester's gruff and oft repeated command. "I thought, when he finally got old enough that I didn't have to look out for him anymore, that he'd return the favor. You know, I thought that we could look out for each other. But...Well, he's always jumped at every opportunity he could to get away from me."
Because it hadn't just been Stanford, Dean knew now. Their traipse through Heaven had revealed to Dean all the many times and ways Sam had tried to escape him. Like Thanksgiving with a girl Dean had never even met, or the two weeks Sam had spent on his own while Dean had been losing his mind after having lost the boy. Sam had prefered a stray dog and a steady diet of stolen junk food in an abandoned trailer to Dean's company.
"'Sorry, Dean. I've gotta go have a life now.' Like I never wanted one of those," Dean grumbled, remembering what he'd given up in order to be there for his little brother: school dances and first love, wrestling tournaments and a stationary home with a supportive and present father figure. "I don't know. I guess family just doesn't mean quite the same thing to my brother as it does to me. Obviously, it doesn't mean enough to him to pull me and Cas out of this hellhole."
Benny let Dean brood for a moment but didn't hold his tongue for long.
"Just how long did you say Crowley'd been trying to get into Purgatory?" he asked. Dean gave the vampire a consternated glance but didn't respond, and Benny shook his head at him as if his idiocy was endearing.
"And you think your brother is gonna succeed alone where the King of Hell, with the help of all of damnation - not to mention a handy rogue angel - failed?" Benny challenged. "In what? Six months? Besides," he said, nudging Dean with his elbow, "what's to say he hasn't already broke in? Maybe Sammy's here right now, lookin' for his big brother. Fightin' off fangs and shifters and mutts. To get to you."
Dean knew they'd have heard rumors of such a thing, but he understood Benny's point and he was tempted to be abashed. "You really believe that?" he asked, allowing himself to be cajoled.
"Don't you? Hell, Dean, you told me yourself Sammy jumped headlong into the Pit with Satan himself to save your ass. Sure, he saved all the rest of the world, too. But you know that's not why he did it. Not really." Benny seemed confident enough in the assertion for the both of them, and it finally dispelled Dean's doubt.
"You know what, Benny, you're right. I bet he is working on it," he said, deciding to believe it. "Which means you and me need to nab Cas and get the hell out of Dodge before Sammy wriggles his way in. I mean, I've got enough on my plate looking after the two of us," he teased, "I can't be saving all our hides."
Benny was tickled by that but let the jest stand. "I am lookin' forward to it, brother," was all he said. Dean liked the sound of the word from Benny's mouth and how naturally it was spoken. It made him smile.
"Yeah," Dean nodded. "Yeah, me, too."
"Now, why don't you sound like it?" Benny needled. Dean heaved another sigh.
As hard as Benny had worked to cheer Dean up, his gloom would not leave him entirely. Dean realized suddenly it was very likely because Benny'd worked so hard - and been so successful. After they were free of Purgatory, Dean and Benny would have to go their separate ways, and Dean had only very recently been made aware of how hard that parting would be. Once they escaped, there would be no more conversations in the twilight like this one.
"I don't know," Dean lied. "Things here are just…simple. Y'know? Pure. Out there…"
"I understand," said Benny quietly, slipping his arm around Dean's shoulders to give the far one a reassuring squeeze. "I like simple things, too."
"This place just makes sense to me, you know?" said Dean, relaxing into the quasi-embrace. The vampire was warm beside him, keeping away the worst of the chill; as he had since they'd met, and in more ways than one.
"I do know."
"Like you said, we're all just our appetites here, and I don't have to feel bad about mine," Dean went on, defensive, though Benny was being anything but disagreeing. "I'm afraid, when I get out, I'll have to regret some of the things I did here," Dean fretted, "like when I got back from the Pit, and-"
"Hey," said Benny, his voice stern but gently so. He gave Dean a small shake to interrupt those thoughts before they could take hold. He'd seen what happened when they were allowed their head. "Now, we've had this conversation already. We do what we have to do," he said adamantly, "and if it just so happens that we don't hate doing it, there's still no shame in any of it. There's enough here trying to drag us down. No sense in us makin' ourselves miserable when we don't have to." He fixed Dean with a persuasive look until the other man nodded.
"What happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory, huh?" Dean smirked.
"If you want," Benny said, his hushed voice almost as calming as his gentle presence. They sat like that in companionable silence for so long, Dean should have drifted off, but he was too at ease in such an uneasy place to waste the sense in sleep.
"I think it says something about my life that being best buds with a fang in the bowels of Purgatory is the simplest relationship I've ever had," he remarked, as much to keep himself awake as anything. He was confused when Benny stiffened.
"Well. I reckon we shouldn't go complicating it, then," he said. His voice had been warm as ever, but he carefully withdrew his arm, to Dean's chagrin. Before Dean could ask when he'd meant, Benny continued, though he wasn't looking at the hunter.
"Why don't you get some shuteye, brother. I'll keep a lookout. Don't you worry 'bout a thing till dawn, alright?"
Despite the generous directive, it took Dean long moments more to obey, discomfited as he was by Benny's sudden distance and a coolness that could not be attributed to the weather.