His first thought was that he was dead; and this time, for good. Smeared across several of places of his body was blood—his blood, rich and granulated within the few short minutes that he used for bellowing to the nonexistent Heaven. A searing pain shot through his abdomen and he did everything in his power not to apply pressure to said wound, or worse: waste his energy yelling when he could be trying—albeit hopelessly—to save himself. His head thrashed in sync with his heart, aping every word that escaped his bleeding mouth…. bleeding… so much blood… as if regurgitating the copper wasn't enough.

His retinas relayed the episode, but like a cracked CD, it came to him in fragments and without the visual. He shuddered at the recollection of Cas's hysterical tone—Where's Dean?—and Benny's footsteps resounding through the forest like a wild man—Brother! Brother, don't die on me now… ain't nobody goin' to die, not today.

But the physical pain was a measly scrape compared to the psychological pain barraging his mental state. He was waging a war with himself and he was definitely not winning.

No matter what circumstances he was confronted with, he always found himself inexplicably drawn to Cas. Late at night—on the nights he would actually sleep—he would dream of spreading the angel open with his calloused digits and thrusting his bare self into said angel. And every night, the thirst in his soul would only seethe brighter and scald him for his indecency. Regardless of the consequences, he didn't even try to sieve the thoughts or impede them from coming to mind in the first place. He lusted for Cas. He wanted Cas in ways that he couldn't explain. And yeah: that was somehow worse than dying.

What the hunter didn't know, however, was that his comrade Benny was having the same thoughts about him.

Approximately twenty three hours earlier….

"Dean." The angel's voice incited his musings. He wasn't sure how long he'd been trying to get his attention, but he'd lost the willpower to care somewhere around the time he'd gotten both of them into Purgatory. Cas shifted his stilled gaze on the hunter.

"Yeah?"

Communication was at a minimal, and the tension between Benny and Cas wasn't helping. Cas didn't have to know much about Benny to know what he was, and vice verses. That was the biggest problem in this newfound clique, the simple fact that an angel would not work with a vampire, no matter how high the stakes were. He refused to reside in the middle of the argument; he would sacrifice his soul for the both of them, and they would just have to understand that.

"—and I should have taken the fall for you and I'm sorry."

Dean's emerald eyes widened despite having not hearing the first half of the sentence. He wanted to reach out, seize Castiel's hand in his and pacify his waning hope with his lips. He coveted the warmth of someone else—but not just anyone else, he coveted Cas. Cas, who had relentlessly sacrificed himself for Dean more times than he could finger count. Cas, the one person who, despite his own doubts and insecurities, has physically been there for him when he needed it, and times that he wasn't were the times that he realized in his solace that he was indefinitely falling in love with him.

"Cas…" He did his best to sit up straight to place a reassuring hand on his knee. "It wasn't your fault. If it was anyone's fault it was mine. I should have been looking out for my own ass instead of yours… I mean, goddammit, I know you can handle yourself; I was stupid."

Cas smiled even in the slightest and rested his hand on top of Dean's, smoothing out the wrinkles that were aging his calloused hands. "You were stupid for the right reasons."

The hunter's heart accelerated in his damned chest just as quick as he slipped his hand out from underneath Cas's. He wasn't there long enough to see the disheartened expression painted on the angel's face. Though it was a struggle to heave his stature, it would have been even more so hanging around long enough to explain his actions.

Benny was a few yards away, sitting cross-legged and engraving something into the gravel. Dean sat down next to him, a small moan eliciting from the strain. Benny loosened his fix on the ground and looked to his best friend, blue eyes gleaming with curiosity. "Is everything okay, brother?"

"Yeah, just a little sore, that's all." Usually if it was Cas, Dean would immediately take to a passive response or write off his inquiry with a crude remark, but somehow, Benny was different. Benny didn't exactly use his every being of him to strip the very core of his soul.

Benny chuckled. "You sore from the injuries or lack of better reason?"

"Benny—"

"Don't you 'Benny' me. My eyesight is ten times stronger than it once was—"

"It's not like that," Dean argued, "I swear."

Benny whistled to the vast and arid nothingness ahead of them. Forlornly he traced his forefinger in the earth, a symbol that Dean didn't recognize. Though his back was turned to the southern man, he could sense a yearning inside him too, like a fire waning after years of burning blue.

Benny pulled down the collar of his white button-up shirt behind his black trench coat to reveal a necklace with a charm. At closer look, it was the same symbol that he was carving into the mud. "It's a pendant. My girlfriend promised to look after it with my own life and that if I ever got lost," he referenced to drawing on the ground, "it would guide me back home to her."

Dean exhaled sharply, feeling like more of a douchebag by the second. "I'm sorry, man."

"It's not your fault, brother," the vampire said earnestly. But no matter how much convincing, Dean would never see that it wasn't his fault, because as far as he could see, everything was a byproduct of his own actions. Demolishing Leviathans was his sole objective upon his arrival into the underworld, and even killing the ringleader couldn't have stopped them from reigning in Purgatory. Yeah, maybe he couldn't save everyone—Benny was in Purgatory long before he was—but Cas, Cas didn't have to come along on the quest. He could have done it without him. That would have definitely lessened the chance of risking his life yet again. Instead the angel is ensnared in the second worse place next to Hell with a man who couldn't even save his own ass.

Dean Winchester, some hero. Fucking cowardwas more appropriate.

But for Benny, he was determined to give him back the life that he should have had; the life that Dean knew he couldn't have. Benny was kind, Benny was pure, and Benny deserved it.

After killing so many, I need to save at least this one.

Darkness prevailed, and for once, the forest was silent. Apprehension settled deep within him. The forest was never silent; in fact, the forest was quite the opposite: the dense timberland held many secrets. Secreted behind the darkness were monsters, real flesh-eating monsters that attacked around the clock. Some of these were monsters he spent his whole life hunting and most were monsters he'd never seen and ten times as potent, monsters that lurked in not even the darkest of incubi.

A howl absconded into the stratosphere, but none a monster would make. The howl was detrimental to human perception, even the skies crumbled around him. Around the cascading debris, the only illuminating figure among the wreckage was a man, body crippled. He ran to him for what felt like decades. At closer examination, the man was Cas, and woven in the gravel surrounding him were the jarred fragments of the fallen sky. The iridescent pieces congregated around him as the light emanating his stature faded. It was almost as if the fragments were imbibing in his life force. The last light to go out was his blue eyes, the sapphires turning into charcoal stones.

Dean pounded his fists into the dry atmosphere as the lights began to fade, signaling a waning life. He felt the angel's heart beneath his other fist; he was dying. He was dying and there was nothing he could do, no God he could pray to, no sacrifice he could make, nothing…

It wasn't until he felt him in his arms that he realized the howl that broke through the sky was his own. But the hands gripping his shoulders weren't Cas's, Cas was dead—

"Dean! Wake up!"

The hunter stirred to the hands of Benny Lafitte shaking him madly. His indigo eyes were eclectic, looking down on Dean with a curious expression. Dean lifted his head only to surrender to his lethargy, head hitting the hard earth in frustration.

"You wanna talk 'bout it, brother?"

It was hard to determine the exposition when you were lost somewhere in transition.

He combed through the words engraved in his mind multiple times before having them formulated. He was reluctant in his doing so—conveying his thoughts. Benny was a good friend, and that was the fault in his stars. Every levee was about to be broken between them, every barrier that he had built prior to meeting him; they embodied him as a man of strength, a man of power. He burnt bridges only to build up new ones, bridges that divided him from the people he truly cared about most. Without these walls, he felt naked to the uncertainties that lay behind the barricades. And that's what scared him the most.

"It's okay, brother, we literally have all day," Benny said, extending with his arms to the vast field surrounding them. It was lighter than most occasions outside; granted that the sun was probably nonexistent in the wasteland. He didn't like to believe that they had time on their side with the said monsters prowling the forest. His faith was dwindling; they needed to find the portal, they just had to. He missed the grass beneath his feet, the warm sun spilling on his skin, the smell of the earth after it rained, and showers…. God, he missed showers.

He paused to muster his thoughts. "Have you ever been in love?"

Benny chuckled softly. That was a stupid question. Had the vampire not just spilled to him about his love life? "Well, more than once, actually. I've had a few women in my lifetime, but I think the whole fangs thing isn't as attractive as its painted t'be in the story books."

Before the hunter could properly react to the comment, Benny was full-fledged with another vampire, who had seized his throat from behind. His greasy blonde bang had fallen over his shoulder, and he grinned from ear to ear at his price. Dean's eyes darted from the vampire to Benny, unsheathing his sword. In one swift move, Benny ducked below his frame and elbowed the monster in the stomach. The thing's eyes flew open and his fangs revealed with a shrill hissing noise. He lashed out to punch Benny in the face but Benny was quicker, grabbing its arm and winding it behind its head. Despite the crackling of its bones, the beast fought back, using its other hand to seize Benny's throat again, only this time pinning him to one of the hemlocks behind him. The monster was grinning ear to ear, a sloshing noise gurgling in the back of his throat.

Dean took the blade to its neck, catching the demon by surprise. The body fell to the earth with a thump. Dean helped his friend reclaim his balance.

"See," Benny said, craning his head toward the battered body, "that ain't attractive."

Dean smiled as best he could, albeit the concept still being foreign to him. Benny spoke on his behalf when he saw the smile fade. He knew something was wrong when even a good kill couldn't lighten Dean's mood.

"What's wrong, brother?"

Benny's stare was hard to avert. Benny couldn't understand. Benny liked women. Benny didn't have these feelings for his best friend—

His heart leaped to his throat. He found said angel less than a mile away, stripping his shirt and cleansing his crusted torso. He had his head bent to the water, overgrown hair falling gracefully over his face. He only wondered how long he had been hanging around to see him talking with the vampire, and how much he had overheard. He didn't grasp a notion of how long he had been raking over his stature, how every broad muscle conformed flawlessly to his motions and how the sun stressed the curvatures on his bronze skin.

Another small chuckle elicited from the bearded man. "I see now," he said, following his gaze to the stream, "you're having feelin's for the angel."

"His name is Cas." Dean's jaw tightened as he heaved a sigh. He didn't mean to sound harsh with the vampire. Feelings weren't exactly a Winchester's strongest suit.

"Brother, it ain't a cryin' shame when a man's in love…" He shifted his gaze from the distant figure to meet Dean's brooding face, and softer, said, "it's a cryin' shame when he doesn't do anything about it."

"What if he doesn't understand—what if—?"

"What if you never find out?" he said dourly.

Dean couldn't deny his surprise at how tolerable Benny was with him. He was almost acutely certain that he would have disowned him in some way like most people would. But then again, Dean had to remember that Benny wasn't most people. Benny wasn't people, period; he was a social leopard to society, and a monster to anyone who had eyes. Benny didn't chose to be what he was; he still knew what it felt to breathe air and walk among humans, even though he wasn't one. Although Benny knew in his heart he would never be remotely human, he had instilled within him emotions and mannerisms of a man who was.

"I have't admit though, I never took you for a queer," Benny drawled smartly, lips turning up in a cheeky smile.

"I'm not gay." His emerald eyes almost fell on Cas's faraway sapphires, but before Benny could detect his contradiction—and the tent rising in his pants—he turned swiftly away. Benny was smirking.

"Brother, you've got lust written across that sweet face of yours. Do's both a favor and just tell him."

He knew Benny was right, but he could also feel a strangely ominous entity mirroring behind him. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but something in the way that Benny was so compliant, so willing to agree with him on the subject matter... like he was suppressing his own thoughts unsaid. There was something in his tone too. What if you never find out?

Dean and Benny may have been good partners, but there were things that even he never told Dean, things that could be detrimental to their friendship. His words echoed across his congested skull long after he had pushed them aside… the same phrase, once, thrice, like a ruthless headache….

It ain't a cryin' shame when a man's in love… it's a cryin' shame when he doesn't do anything about it.

Dean must have looked like hell by the time he met Cas; the angel regarded him with a stern expression, restless eyes unwavering. His shoulders and biceps tensed, and Dean had to do everything in his power not to gawk at the way his chiseled torso reflected the bayou—or rather the way the bayou reflected Cas's torso. It was beyond his comprehension how he hadn't noticed how perfect he was before.

"Dean, what's wrong?" he asked, eyes narrowing pensively. "Are we being watched?" Dean was right in teaching him not to crane his head a whole ninety degrees when under siege; the risk of being made—and literally made when Leviathans were the supernatural Messiah of Purgatory—was incredibly high. Although they weren't under any real physical threat at the moment, it never hurt to be too careful.

Even though he couldn't see himself, minus a murky replication painted in the water underneath his battered boots, Dean looked awful. His face was as white as his knuckles that he had been clenching for what felt like an eternity, and his irises were almost entirely dilated, engulfing the once-vivid emeralds in a sea of obscurity.

The words coasted through the air like a cannonball. "No, that's not it," he said quickly, trying his best to alleviate some of the anxiety. Cas didn't falter. In fact, Dean worried he made the son of a bitch even more on-edge than he already was.

"What is it, Dean?" he reiterated, left breast convulsing in unison with his words. All he wanted to do was reach out and pull the angel into his arms, tell him that everything was going to be okay even if that meant he had to lie. The other fault in doing this was that if the demons were to see the embrace, they would use it against them. Next to his brother, Cas was family, and family meant weakness. They would use this weakness as a gateway to destroying them both.

So he couldn't tell him. He couldn't jeopardize Cas's life just because he wanted some satisfaction out of his.

It didn't matter by the time he got around to it anyway, because Dean spotted a jaw-snapping Leviathan on their tail, and it certainly wasn't a lone wolf. Out from the wetland appeared two more Leviathan, mouths gleaming with foam at their prey. In seconds, the monsters were on top of the two men, one bashing the wind out of Cas. As if Dean wasn't enraged enough, he did the same to another Leviathan, only this time after kneeing him in the crotch and striking his face, he pinned him to the ground and severed its head. Eyeing Dean with a forged smile, the last Leviathan was prepared to take him down. A stake drove through its chest impeding these motives, twisting and shaking, spawning the worst flesh-rotting noise that any of them had ever heard. The Leviathan moaned and craned its head in a one-eighty. Dean seized his opportunity, and in one swift move, retrieving his ax from the other Leviathan, disengaged the thing's head. Dean saw after the vessel fell that behind the stake was Benny, whose face was frantic: there was still one more Leviathan, the same one that launched itself at Cas, but it had disappeared and was lurking somewhere deep in the woods.

"You go take care of Cas," Dean yelled over the wind pounding through his ears, "I'll go after the son of a bitch."

Benny laughed incredulously, "You fuckin' insane? We just risked our goddamn lives and now you want to hunt the bastard?"

If he was in a different situation, he would have derided the irony that he spent his whole life hunting down evil entities only to be on the other side of the fence, the hunted. "Benny, this thing could make us," he said hastily, "I can't take the risk of having the other Leviathan knowing that Dean Winchester and his angel boyfriend are running around Purgatory. Take Cas somewhere secluded, keep him safe."

Before Benny could protest, Dean was running in the direction of the monster, boots wallowing across the sand being the last sound until he faded from view.

Present time

There was not one voice yelling in his ear, but two, both once, twice, three times. His name came off more foreign than anything, like the way a werewolf would sing forlornly for his remote lover, the moon, across the universe. Towering over him were two worried comrades: a flustered vampire and a vexed angel, both trying immensely hard not to imbibe in the possibility that their best friend could be dead.

"You're the angel, do somethin'!" Benny barked, receiving him nothing more than an agitated glare from Castiel.

"It's not that easy," Cas explained crossly, "my powers are not something I can control. Purgatory weakens my abilities to heal."

Benny carded a hand through his balding scalp; for the first time he met the angel's cobalt eyes. "But you're positive that he's still alive?"

"Well it doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduce a beating heart," Cas countered, unconscious that his hand was still resting firmly over his stilled heart. Benny wasn't physically there to see Dean awaken from his comatose because he was too preoccupied with keeping his distance from Cas. He found a tree nearby—just in case Dean did wake up and he needed something that a real man could give him—and lit a cigarette. Typically the smoke that would emit from the folded paper would be perceivable, but for one reason or another, it wasn't in Purgatory. He had grown accustomed to a regime, fighting monsters residing in the wasteland, sleeping a maximum of four hours a night, but that was just one of those anonymities that he couldn't explain.

Dean awoke gasping for air pugnaciously, as if he had forgot the concept altogether. Cas steadied him with the same hand, deactivating his use of strength. He even went so far as to prop him up against the trunk of the tree they were under albeit Dean was protesting the whole time, claiming that he could manage his own physique. Cas gave him space for a few seconds—knowing perfectly what Dean was capable of doing to him now that his powers were rendered practically useless—until proceeding to cleanse the wounds around his chest.

Dean looked down, more than surprised to find that he was half naked.

"Clothes would have been… restricting," Cas tested the word before completely settling on it, "you have serious abrasions to your torso and lower stomach… but I imagine you can take care of those…"

Dean would have laughed at his indirectness had he not been in so much pain. He winced as Cas migrated the cloth-like object to his ribcage, fingers ghostly tracing across the fractured bones.

"Am I hurting you?" he asked, hands coming to an unceremonious halt, blue eyes overwrought.

"No, you're fine," Dean said in a whisper. He couldn't help but notice that Cas was using his name less frequently. The name Dean for Cas was like double-glazing a doughnut: it isn't done out of necessity, but somehow it makes it seem more reassuring.

Food analogies; he was definitely going insane.

Cas was less than an inch away from dabbing at his waistline when Dean intervened "Actually, I think I'm okay, really… I just… need some air…" He staggered off hastily in the opposite direction, passing a familiar vampire on the way. Benny craned his head and took another drag from his cigarette before stomping it irately to the ground, crunching it with his boots. He sent a cold glare in Cas's direction, who was too consumed in his own musings to notice. How high would the mattress of lies have to pile for the Princess to be satisfied?

"Y'fuckin' prick," he spat resentfully, looking down on the smaller man, because yes, he was filled with resentment. He was resenting the small datum that Dean Winchester was in love with an angel who didn't even know the definition of love if it hit him in the face. If he didn't know any better, he would think that Castiel kept Dean on close tabs because he admired his loyalty—and boy, was he loyal. For all he could see, Cas was as disposable as broken glass, when really Dean was the one broken. Dean was the one sifting through emotional turmoil because of him.

He shifted his crouched position to exchange a hard glower with the vampire. "What's your problem, Benny?" he asked exasperatingly, as if he was the one who endured the beating.

"My problem? You have got some nerve askin' me what my problem is, angel boy. Your friend's dyin' and all you've got t'show for is preservin' your own goddamn vanity. He's sufferin' more than you'll ever know."

Cas narrowed his features. "With what?"

Benny looked as though he was going to explode any second. "'With what'? Open up those goddamn eyes of yours, he's in love with you. He's just been too fuckin' afraid to say anything because maybe..."

Cas nodded, waiting for the momentary pause to subside, "What?"

"Maybe you wouldn't feel the same," he finished roughly. He held back the stinging sensation in his throat. No matter how strongly he felt about Castiel as a hunting partner, he couldn't be angry with him. Cas didn't do anything personally to make him feel uncomfortable other than just being what he was. And wasn't that exactly what caused Benny to wind up in Purgatory in the first place; struggling with acceptance in society, and facing myriad judgments based solely off of what he was? Whether he realized it or not, he and Cas shared a lot of commonalities. He exhaled sharply.

It was then he also realized that he was yelling at a cold reflection of himself.

"Why are you trying to help me?" he asked quietly, his eyes coming to a complete rest on Benny's. Benny's jaw tightened in a mannerism, ironically, a lot like Dean's.

"Because I don't want you making the same mistake I did."

Benny couldn't tell if he was talking about Andrea or Dean, but either way, it drove Cas to the other side of the forest in pursuit of his hunter. Benny upheld himself on a hemlock, his leaning stature wanting nothing more than to sink into the earth below. He just gave away his universe for someone else's.

He really wished right about now that he hadn't pissed away his last cigarette.

"I can't believe you, Dean Winchester," was not the initial approach he had in mind, but it certainly caught the emerald-eyed boy's attention. Dean swiveled his head to find the angel glaring at him coldly; not even an ounce of empathy was poking its way to the surface. "What kind of man would choose to get himself killed over telling the damn truth?"

Dean stepped an inch closer to Cas, bracing him with his hands. "Cas, listen—"

"No, you have done quite enough talking solely on the sacrificial acts that you committed today—"

"Cas—"

"If you think that I'm going to salvage your soul from perdition again, you've got another thing coming—"

Dean bonded the proximity between them, pressing his mouth crudely against Cas's. The transition would have been much smoother had Cas not been so Chatty Cathy. But Cas didn't seem to care; his body quickly acclimated with the hunter's, the current of his heartbeat, the adrenaline pumping through his veins and into the hands that were now buckling around his hips, everything. He returned the embrace by slipping one hand around Dean's neck, trying his very best not to dig into the maltreated skin as Dean's tongue swiped across the ceiling of his mouth, while the other rested firmly over his chest.

Cas was reluctant when Dean pulled away, if only to stare at him with the same awe-stricken expression as the angel. He slithered one hand to lightly cup his chin. "Me too."

It's not often that you see a vampire risking his life for an angel, but in Purgatory, he supposed anything could happen.

But that's the thing: this wasn't just anything, this was self-sacrifice. Benny was the one who took on the Leviathan with a clear conscious—or so he thought. Benny jumped through the ring of fire and all for a man who so much as condoned his presence. When he severed the beast's head and pulled him to his feet, he was soundlessly vouching—to Dean and to Cas—that he wouldn't let anything happen to him. And Dean of all people was well acquainted with the price that came along with promises.

He never told his brother but sometimes, late at night when the world was asleep, Dean would dream of that day that he sold his soul at the crossroads, the deal that would change the fate of their lives forever. If Dean had never sold himself, he and Sam wouldn't be where they are now. Dean wouldn't be lost in Middle Earth and Sam wouldn't be going out of his mind trying to find him. But then he would always fall asleep remembering that he didn't forfeit his soul so that Sam could carry out a normal life; he did it so that he could preserve the one that they have now, the one that they built together. And he wouldn't trade that for all of the souls in Purgatory.

So he could only guess that Benny saw the same in Cas, the same perseverance that's kept him alive from day one. Or maybe it was the simple fact that Dean cared about him, and if Dean cared about him, then Benny would naturally accept that—especially now that he knows his true feelings for him—along with the consequences that came with a sacrifice.

But what Dean didn't know was that he was only half right; the other half of his selfless act derived from the fact that Benny came to the realization that although he didn't like Cas, he wanted to give him the benefit of a doubt to fulfill Dean's personal desires.

"I'll see you on the other side, brother," Benny had whispered in a moment's embrace. Dean almost refused to let go despite their limited timeframe. They found the portal that they spent months—or was it years? Dean couldn't remember—searching for the damn thing. And now, splayed out before them in vibrant hues of indigo and white—was the gateway to the real world. He sucked in a deep breath.

"Listen, man, I—"

Benny gave him a curt movement of his hand, relinquishing him from the embrace. "I know." He paused to smile. "And me too."

After performing the ritual and tucking his jacket sleeve over the crusted scab, Dean turned to Cas, and enveloping him in his arms, whispered delicately in his ear, "Let's go home."

But Cas hadn't made it to the other side. His hand somehow slipped while intertwined with his and he vanished without a trace. Dean wouldn't realize until he stepped foot on solid ground.

The last thing on his mind as he stepped through was Benny.

After saving this one, I want to save more.

He held his breath and stepped into the vast oblivion.