A/N: Because I always wondered why Cas grew a beard in Purgatory and Dean didn't.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or Supernatural. I'm just using them for fun.

Razor's Edge

The blade rasped against Dean's skin: harsh, dry, and approaching the point of painful as he dragged the edge repeatedly down his face. It wasn't having much effect, but he continued anyway, using the ritual more as a means to keep himself occupied than to achieve any actual results.

Benny, meanwhile, sat watching, much to Dean's irritation.

This was the second day he and the vampire had spent together in Purgatory. Night had begun to fall, and they'd settled down to set up camp with Dean taking first watch. He was perched on a log that had fallen near a dense patch of trees, sitting upright and attempting to shave himself with his penknife. The blade wasn't designed for this and without anything to lubricate its motion he'd pushed his skin to the point of soreness, but he kept going.

Nearby, Benny had propped himself up against a tree and folded his hands in his lap. He was supposed to be sleeping, but instead, it seemed he preferred to watch Dean. "You'll blunt the blade doing that," the vampire remarked drily. "Better to save it for something you need it for."

Dean shot him a scowl. "This is something I need it for. Just because you're down for the scruffy look doesn't mean I am."

Benny settled himself more comfortably against the tree he was leaning on, not reacting much to Dean's aggression. If anything, he seemed mildly amused. "I don't think anything down here cares how much scruff you have, Dean. But they might care if you have a knife sharp enough to harm them."

Dean's scowl didn't let up. He'd been doing this regularly ever since he ended up in Purgatory, and he wasn't about to stop on the say-so of a vampire he barely knew and even more barely trusted. "Just because I'm in a land of monsters doesn't mean I have to give up everything human. This is one thing I did Topside I'm going to keep doing. I'm not feral."

Benny cocked an eyebrow at him. "There's some things down here that would disagree with that."

Dean ignored him, turning away again and carrying on. He saw Benny's point, but the blade was blunt already. Despite his attempts to resharpen it, he'd pretty much ruined the knife hacking up the wood for the handle of his makeshift hatchet. But even so, he still attempted to use it now. The ritual had become as routine for him as his nightly prayers to Cas: one lingering remnant of his life Topside that he clung to try to keep himself sane. Even when the blade was so useless that he had to push dangerously hard into his skin to achieve anything, just going through the motions helped keep him grounded. Among all the fighting and torturing and slaughtering he'd done since he was down here, a task so ordinary, so mundane and so human allowed him to differentiate himself from every other monster in Purgatory. He wasn't one of them and he didn't belong here.

He didn't expect Benny to understand, but he didn't owe the vampire an explanation for anything. Their arrangement was just a means to an end.

While Dean carried on, the vampire had shut his eyes and was attempting to get the sleep he needed. It wasn't easy. The dull, relentless scatching of the blade aggravated his senses and was annoyingly loud in his ears. Right now, he was finding a lot about Dean annoying. His attitude was too abrasive, his heartbeat too loud, and his blood was too warm and too pungent and too close. Even though Benny felt hunger differently down here, he wasn't finding it easy to be this close to a human for the first time in decades and not be able to feed. And when said human stubbornly refused to listen to him, it didn't make the situation any easier.

It didn't surprise him when, a short while later, he heard a sharp hiss of pain and the sweet, metallic scent of blood hit his nose in a fresh wave of intensity. Benny's eyes flickered open to fix on the hunter nearby. He'd been half expecting Dean to cut himself, if the man stubbornly insisted on using a dull penknife for that purpose, but he'd hoped that he wouldn't. "I told you it was a bad idea," Benny commented in a tone more regretful than critical.

Dean glared at him, but Benny didn't react. The vampire's gaze had been drawn to the nick on Dean's throat: a vibrant smear of crimson against otherwise dull and grimy skin. It was tempting, the enticing trickle of red just begging to be tasted, but Benny fought back hard against his instincts screaming at him to go in for the kill. He needed to prove to Dean he could be trusted. It was the only way either of them were getting out of here, but damn it, this wasn't helping.

At first Dean glared in response to Benny's seemingly smug comment, but then he saw where Benny was looking and his gaze became more wary. Benny heard his heartbeat quicken as he began to inch a hand steadily towards the hatchet resting at his side.

"Look, I've bled a lot since I've been down here, and I guarantee you I'm gonna bleed some more," Dean said in a voice carrying a heavy note of warning. "If that's going to be a problem, I don't think our arrangement is going to work out."

His fingers had closed around the handle of the weapon, but Benny gave a pacifying shake of his head. "Relax, brother. I'm not gunna drink you. Despite what you may believe, I'm not feral either."

It took a moment or two for Dean to become convinced there was no threat, but then his grip slackened again. "It's more that you're thinking about it at all," he commented cautiously, before bringing up a hand to wipe away the blood on his neck with a dirt-caked sleeve. Topside, that would have been a sure way to give himself tetanus, but the one plus side to Purgatory was that bacteria or infections didn't seem to exist here.

"I'm a vampire who hasn't been near a human in over five decades, Dean," Benny responded calmly, masking his annoyance. "Of course I'm thinking about it. Same as you think about putting that hatchet through my neck every time you remember you're a hunter who's supposed to kill things like me. Trust goes both ways, brother. That's why I'm trusting you to take first watch and I'll still have my head gone midnight."

Dean kept his gaze locked on the vampire a short while longer, taking in his words, considering, assessing, then turned his head away again. He shifted the blade to the other side of his face and resumed stubbornly scraping at his chin. "Alright then," he grunted. "You going to sleep or not?"

Benny scowled in irritation. "It'd be easier if you stopped scratching that thing on your face so loudly."

Dean's motions stilled then, and a scowl flickered across his features as he pursed his lips. "Fine," he said at length, lowering the blade from his face. "I'll stop. Happy now?"

Benny just shut his eyes again, not having the energy to argue any longer. "Yes," he answered bluntly, turning his face away as he tried to ignore the scent of Dean's blood. "Wake me up again in a couple hours." Then he settled himself back down and resumed trying to sleep.

While the vampire slept, Dean sat in silent stillness, growing restless as the menacing darkness closed in quickly around him. His fingers twitched and reached for the reassuring feel of the hatchet in his hand, but it was small comfort. His knife may be blunt, but the edge laying into his nerves was still razor sharp.

"Cas," he murmured softly, long after he was sure Benny had gone to sleep. "Please, man, if you can hear me, I need you to come back. I'm making deals with vampires, here; that's how desperate I am. You gotta at least come back and tell me how stupid that is." Fornlornly, Dean glanced around the shadows surrounding him. He couldn't see much, but he almost dared hope that this time he'd hear the sound of fluttering wingbeats and that gravelly voice greeting him like it hadn't for so long. But, as always, there was nothing.

Just as his knife had long since passed the point of usefulness, his prayers, it seemed, were falling on deaf ears.

Dean let out a sigh. "Look, if you can't come in, at least stay safe, okay? I know you're alive, Cas. Please, just...keep it that way, until I find you."

That was the last thing he said to the darkness before he went to wake Benny, so that he himself could get some much needed but uneasy sleep.