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“Dean? What did…” Benny tried to touch Dean, but his hand went right through him. “What’d you do, Dean? Am I really here, or will I wake up back up in Purgatory? Did I die back there, and this is the temporary afterlife until they bring me back?”
Dean gestured at the table with the spell components. “Sam spun this incredible story of he wanted to bring you back with him but you wouldn’t come. You belong up here, Benny, you know you do.”
“No, Chief, I don’t.” Benny drew away from Dean, hands shoved into the pocket of his leather coat. Dean wanted so badly to grab them, but for right now, that wasn’t possible. “I told Sam. I belong in Purgatory. The thirst was… it was so much worse than I remembered, probably because before I got sent to Purgatory I never bothered tryin’ to fight it or slake it with something other than fresh human blood straight from the vein, y’know? Got to where blood was all I could think about, and I got hurt pretty bad, and…”
Dean closed his eyes and shook his head. He did not want to hear this. “C’mon man, that’s because I was an idiot. When you got hurt real bad before, you could call me and I would come get you back on your feet.”
“Yeah, no offense, but you made it pretty clear you were always gonna choose Sam, and Sam…”
“Did I mention the part where I was an idiot? Me and Sam, some shit went down out here that led to him telling me off a lot, and it made me realize something. I never gave him enough credit. His problems with you were never about you being a vampire, it was about me hiding you and giving him hell for a lot of stuff I shouldn’t’ve given him hell over.” The month or so after Dean talked Sam down from completing the third trial hadn’t been comfortable for either of them, or fun, or easy. Sam, of course, was repairing himself from damage on a cellular level that even Castiel could only ease and speed up a tiny amount. But Dean…
He’d never really stopped to think about just how much he’d reverted to the big brother who had to keep his little brother on the straight and narrow. He’d promised to let that go, to let Sam grow up and be an equal. And sure, he could make excuse after excuse about how the soulless shit he’d been needed Dean to watch over him like that, or how when Sam’s head was broken he needed Dean to be stone number one… but what was his excuse for this past year? For constantly throwing Sam’s mistakes in his face until it got to the point where Sam was literally willing to kill himself if it meant not letting Dean down again?
The worst of it all was when Sam brought up Benny. Pointed out the obvious – Sam was always the shades of grey guy, the one who judged people on what they did instead of what they were. Always. Even as a teenager, even before teenage rebellion had wormed its way through John’s teachings, Sam questioned the idea that killing a werewolf who was careful about locking himself up during a full moon was a good thing. Dean not trusting him to give Benny a chance was one of the things that had broken Sam’s heart worse than anything else.
“So? You’d still choose him, no matter what,” Benny pointed out in his gentle but firm way. “I’m dead, I’m in Purgatory, and now I know I belong there. I don’t mind it anymore. I’m where I belong.”
“What if I don’t have to choose?” Dean folded his arms and glared at Benny. “What if we do it right this time, Benny? I bring you back, you come live in this Bunker with me and Sam. Sam’s even looking into some research on the cure our asshole grandfather gave us, seeing if there’s a way we could cure you.”
Benny shook his head. “Wouldn’t work, I’ve had human blood, chief. You know that. We talked about it before.”
“Yeah, which is why Sam’s doing some research. See if he can come up with a workaround for that, and for your sire being dead so we can’t get the blood. If it ain’t possible, it ain’t possible but if it is, I’d put Sammy up against anyone on figuring it out.” Dean walked over to stand in front of Benny. “For right now, you’re a ghost. You can hang here, have a rest from Purgatory, talk things over with me and Sam and make a call on me restoring you to your body whenever you’re ready.”
“Don’t ghosts go crazy, trapped between worlds like this?” Benny reached out, and to both his and Dean’s surprise, this time when Benny put a hand on Dean’s shoulder it landed. It didn’t go through. “Huh. You sure I’m a ghost?”
“I’m… wait.” Dean’s hand hit his face. “Sam told me this spell could have some different effects. One of the biggest is the stronger your tie to your tether, the less spirit you’d be. The more you want to be here, with me, the more you can be.”
“So you’re the only thing I can touch? I can’t really do much else?”
Dean shrugged. He was still reeling a little from just how solid Benny’s hand on his shoulder felt. “I don’t know, man. I just know Sam said you’d be more real if you wanted to be here. Test it? See what else you can do?”
Benny walked over to the door. He thrust his arm through it and it went straight through, but when he pulled back and reached for the doorknob, he could turn it normally as well. He looked over to Dean. “Seems like it’s a matter of intent. If I want to interact with something, I can, and if I want to not interact, it’s like it’s not there. Not sure how to test if I’m unaware something’s there.”
“Turn around.” Benny obliged, and Dean picked up a piece of paper to fold into a hastily-constructed airplane. It sailed right through Benny. He could hear Benny laughing as he walked up behind him. Dean held his breath as he reached out to touch Benny, letting it out as he made contact with solid flesh. “Wow.”
“Dean?” Benny’s voice sounded worried, and Dean leaned up against him. “You said this was because of how strongly I’m tied to my tether. That mean that if I don’t wanna stay, you have to kill yourself to send me back?”
“No, no, no. No, that’s… that’s not what I meant. You don’t wanna stay, all I have to do to send you back is end the spell.” He couldn’t blame Benny for worrying, but thankfully, that’s not how the spell worked. “It’s not like when Bobby was haunting his flask or anything, you’re not haunting me, exactly, you’re… get Sam to explain the spellcraft theory, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about other than you’re tied to me but we can break that without killing me.”
“Fair enough. And other people can see me? Even if you’re only able to touch me because of the tether thing, I can talk to Sam or anyone you bring in here?”
“Far as I know. That mean you’ll stay here? Give me a chance to make this right?”
Benny nodded. “Got one more question, but it’s a big one. Dean, you an’ me, in Purgatory, we kept dancing around the issue, but long as we’re putting things right… can we put this one right too?”
Dean’s initial instinct was to deflect, to pretend that he had no idea what Benny was talking about. Benny was in love with him, and Dean… even in Purgatory, he’d never believed he’d be stuck there forever, he’d get back to his real life someday. His real life where he wasn’t gay. “Benny, this spell, the one making you a ghost? There’s only a few ways it works.”
“Figure one of which is for a brother, which is what you’ve always seen me as.”
“Well, yeah, but no. I brother zoned you so I didn’t have to deal with any other feelings.” Dean had run this part of the conversation a million times in his head, but none of them quite fit the way things had actually gone. It made this part nervewracking, but Dean could do this. “If you want out of the brother zone, then we’ve dealt with the issues about Sam, and I’ve had time to think it over and realize that it doesn’t matter that I never thought of myself as swinging that way. It’s you.”
“Yeah? You talk to Sam about it?”
Dean snorted. Couldn’t help it. “I talked to Sam. He thinks I’m an idiot for questioning happiness no matter how unexpected the place I found it. And we already know what Cas thinks of it.” Cas had spent quite a bit of their time together in Purgatory trying to get Dean and Benny together. He was a terrible matchmaker, but looking back, Dean could see the sweet earnestness in it.
“All right. I’ll stick around. As much as I wanna be here, I should be able to do whatever I want, right? So we can let Sam have his time to research before you do whatever you need to do to reembody me?”
“You sure, dude?”
Benny nodded. “If we run into something that just don’t work if I don’t have a body, we can do the spell then, right? Until then, I’m not thirsty, you might wanna have some blood on hand just in case we need to do the spell so I can feed ASAP, but getting an emergency ration won’t take near as much work as keeping me fully stocked.” Music started playing, a song Dean didn’t recognize, and he turned just in time to see a flash of tan as the door closed again. Benny let out a soft chuckle. “Seems Cas is still a terrible matchmaker, but what the hell. Dance with me?”
“I don’t dance,” Dean protested as he found his way into something resembling a proper slow dance hold. Even when Benny started to lead, he didn’t bother to fight. What the hell, right? He had Benny back. No one was watching. He couldn’t tell Benny wasn’t a ghost, not by the way he felt or looked. There was no way he’d be dreaming that they were dancing.