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He figured out early that he doesn't do so well indoors. Fifty years of the closest thing to “inside” being damp caves that smelled of rot and hunger and were almost certainly occupied, he guesses, will do that to you. He managed about fifteen minutes in his first post-Purgatory motel room before the air got stale and the walls started inching closer, and his ears started ringing from the stark nothing where Dean’s heartbeat was supposed to be. It was get out or eat himself alive.
He’s considering a boat. An investment, sure, but he does better with waves under his feet than on solid ground. It’s a thought. Meantime, he’s been doing a lot of camping.
Benny decides two minutes after setting up camp that he’s not much for the desert, but that doesn't mean he’s not looking around him and counting miracles. It’s what he’s been doing since he made it topside, since he looked back at Dean with his own, real eyes and said, We made it.
(The first miracle was Dean. Not looking so different than he did in Purgatory, filthy with sweat and mud from digging up Benny’s grave, muscles damn near ready to give out on him and not afraid to show it. Blood darkening up his sleeve.
A miracle, because one human in all the universe made it into Purgatory and out again, and it was this one.)
Lying back in the bed of his truck, Benny takes some time to appreciate the miracle stretched out in all directions up above. The desert’s barren and too dry, but it gives the night sky the stage it deserves. The spread of stars, the clusters of light and swirls of dark, constellations as unchanging as himself, fill him up. He breathes them in.
“You’d almost think Heaven ain’t so bad,” he murmurs to the empty air at his side.
He lies there and watches them for a while, taking a break for a blood bag when he feels it. He doesn't pour any out for lost angels - supplies are limited, and somehow he doesn't think Cas would appreciate the sentiment - but he does take a second of more deliberate silence, thinking of him.
Nothing but trouble, complication, and a means to make Dean or break him. But not all bad. If Benny’s honest with himself, Dean’s angel was growing on him by the end. He wouldn't have minded meeting Cas up here in the world, all cleaned up and deadly and ridiculous like Dean described him first.
(And Dean, poor bastard. By the end, he’d given up on pretending he was anything he wasn't. He slept nights with his head pillowed in his angel's lap, and after fights he would grip his angel's shoulder like it would keep him from fading into the air, and from his temporary home underneath Dean's skin, Benny could feel Dean crack down the middle the second his angel broke his heart.)
Raising his blood bag in lieu of a glass, Benny sips on AB-negative and lets go of what's lost.
Eventually, Benny is going to have to get practical. It's been good, taking some time to figure out the strange, strange world that is America in 2012, but he came back for a reason. He's just been stalling on it, because he's got a world to take in and there's no rush. He's had fifty years to plan the bloody part. It's not going anywhere.
He's just leaning back again when a low buzz interrupts the quiet. He frowns at the sky for a second before remembering that buzzing is what phones do now.
Only one person knows how to reach him, but he warned Benny that it might not always be from the same number. Benny, still tickled at the whole see-who’s-calling-but-answer-like-you-don’t-know thing, shrugged because it wouldn't make much difference. This time, at least, it’s the number Benny knows, but it doesn't look like it’s a call. He doesn't think.
After fiddling with the little heap of so-called technology for five minutes, Benny figures out that Dean's sent him a text message. He's heard about those. He didn't know his phone got them. Opening it, he blinks a few times when he finds that Dean is breaking their self-imposed radio silence with just one word.
rain
Benny contemplates that for a second, but he's already smiling slowly, because this here. This is worth breaking silence for.
He hasn't seen rain again yet, but he misses it like he’s missed everything for the last half-century, dully and steadily with the occasional sharp spike. He just smiles at that little word for a while, because it feels good, for some reason or another, knowing that somewhere out there Dean is counting miracles, too. The connection doesn't hurt, either. It's a comfort, like Dean’s hand is landing on his shoulder from miles and miles away.
Taking a minute to juggle his thumbs, Benny manages to tap out one word back.
stars
Still lying on his back, he fiddles with the phone until he finds the camera, then points it directly up, trying to capture as much of the galaxy above him as possible, so clear out here away from the too-bright city. It takes a couple of tries, but he gets one that satisfies and sends it along.
Nothing for a little while, and Benny stretches an arm behind his head, counting constellations, taking comfort in something that, through his long life and afterlife and second-life, has remained constant. Even as a child in Louisiana, he'd liked lying flat in the grass and watching the stars, holding one hand out to the fireflies.
His phone buzzes again, but this time, it's a call. Benny’s eyebrows go up, but he answers. Doesn't say anything.
Dean doesn't, either. There’s only some shifting, and then the sound of rain.
Benny exhales on a smile and closes his eyes, just listening. His mind can paint a picture to go with the sound, strung together by a hundred half-stories Dean’s told him about the way he and his brother live. Some Midwest town, not a big one, and a flickering motel sign. That black beast of a car Dean’s so proud of sitting in the lot, getting the travel-grime pounded off of it by the rain. Room doors that lead right outside, probably an awning over the top to keep it dry, and Dean, cleaned up and quiet, leaning on the wall and holding his phone out in front of him to catch the sound. To send it across the miles so Benny can have it, too.
Right now, he thinks it might be the prettiest sound he's ever heard.
He loses track of time, drinking it in, and doesn't open his eyes until there’s another shift. A beat of silence, and then Dean, his voice soft, like sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the hidden places and talking about the afters of escaping Purgatory, of what they hoped the world would be. “You get that?”
Benny murmurs back, “Yeah.”
Just Dean’s breath for a second. “You holding up?”
“No more dead than usual. Yourself?”
Dean huffs something like a laugh, half real and half bitter. “Same.”
Benny smiles, shakes his head, understands. He itches up here, even when things are sweet-smelling and peaceful, especially when they’re that. Doesn't sleep so well without the pound of Dean’s distracting, demanding heartbeat, or the rustle of him fiddling with his knife while he keeps watch. Neither of them have brought up Cas since the night Dean brought Benny back.
(We made it, brother. I can’t believe it. He could feel Dean smiling by his shoulder, and he felt it the second the smile wasn’t a smile anymore, and he tightened his grip to let Dean know he could break if he had to, wouldn’t be judged. Dean didn’t, never did, but he squeezed back, bowed his head a little, and breathed slow and ragged into Benny's shoulder for a little bit while Benny clapped him on the back and lowered his voice. Yeah, I know. I felt it.
You’re gonna be all right. You’re gonna make it.
They parted ways soon after.)
Softly, honestly, Benny says, “Hang in there.”
Dean pauses, quiets down a little himself. “Yeah. Likewise.”
For a little while, nothing, and if Benny closes his eyes they’re back in those hidden places, when they stopped talking and there was nothing but stillness and a forever of gray sky.
But they've had plenty of that already, so Benny coaxes it aside. “Brother, if you’re missing my pretty fangs that much, all you got to do is say so.”
Dean snorts, and Benny can picture the eye-roll like Dean's right next to him. “Shut up.” Benny chuckles, and Dean takes a breath in his ear, pauses, then lets it out quick, and Benny imagines him shaking his head the way he does when he gives up on saying what's in his head. “Nice stars.”
“Thanks. Made ‘em myself.”
“You’re an ass.”
“Give me that rain back. It was more polite.”
“Aw, am I offending your delicate undead sensibilities, princess?”
“Beyond belief. Got my petticoats all in a twist, now.”
Dean cracks first, letting out a laugh that feels a little like the rush of the rain. Benny’s grin grows.
(Even the angel would smile a little when Dean laughed like that, real and rare.)
He can still hear the grin in Dean’s, “Screw you, man.”
“Really ought to buy me dinner first. AB-negative, in case you were wondering.”
“Dude,” Dean groans.
“What, did you forget?” Benny asks, amused, then tones down the fooling for a minute. “Why’re you really calling me out of the blue, Dean?”
Dean is quiet for a stretch, and Benny waits, because of course he knows why. It’s the same reason he didn't just thank Dean and hang up, the same reason they were sending each other miracles in the first place.
Instead of turning on the bluster and bullshit like he does, or joking it away like he also does, Dean says, “What were you holding out for, down there?” A pause, like he’s chewing on words. “What did you think was gonna happen when you got out?”
Benny lifts his eyebrows and gives that one a minute. The stars don’t have any words for him, but the darkness helps him think. They've almost had this conversation before. Almost.
“Honestly? Something like this,” he admits. “You know I didn't come into this with any illusions. The world I left is gone, along with most of the folks in it, for better or worse. Getting them back ain’t the miracle I was hoping for. But I've got a future, or something like it. More than I ever had down below.” Dean hums low, and Benny can see his eyes dropping down just from the tone. “What were you holding out for, brother?”
Dean exhales a leaden breath in Benny’s ear. Answering seems to take a few tries, and Benny strains his ears when it comes through.
“For someone to give a crap that I was gone.”
Benny presses his lips together, sitting up and leaning against the cab. “Hold on, now,” he says slowly, gently, because when Dean gets like this he needs gentle handling first, and the kick in the ass later. “What about that little brother of yours, who fought off the Devil himself for you? That’s not nothing.”
“No. No, it's not.” A beat, no breathing on Dean’s end. “He didn't look.”
Benny closes his eyes for a second, because part of him was hoping against this. Not that he's met Kid Brother Winchester outside of Dean’s stories, but he knows how Dean sees their relationship on good days, and he knows how Dean sees it on bad days. On good days, the two of them together can fight off Heaven, Hell, and evil-ass clowns to boot. On bad days, well.
“He just...moved on with his life,” Dean says. “Like people do. Normal people. Same way he did before, when I was alive and kicking. And without Cas--” Dean abruptly cuts off and blows out a breath, and Benny pictures the hand Dean scrubs over his face. “Shit, breaking your friggin’ heart, right? Sorry, man. You don’t have to listen to this.”
“I don't mind,” Benny says, and means it. “You need to talk, you talk. I got nothing but time.”
Dean hesitates, then talks. “I don’t know. I guess...I guess that’s the miracle I was hoping for. That just this once, we could be okay. Just for a minute. We’d get out, and then me and Sam and Cas, we’d...we’d all be the good versions of ourselves at the same time, for once. No one getting used, no big secrets, no goddamn holy wars, all souls intact. Guess for some reason I figured they were holding out for that, too. ‘Cause, you know, I’m a jackass.”
“Not in the way you think. But you do wear the title well.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Dean mutters. “I don't know. Just...my brother was happy. He could still be happy.” Benny frowns, not liking the sound of this, but keeps quiet. Softly, Dean says, “Guess I'm not sure what I came back for anymore.”
For an empty, foolish second, Benny wants nothing more than to get in the truck and drive until he’s right next to Dean like he was just about every second for the last year, close enough to grip his shoulder or ruffle his hair. Might even be a hug in the cards if this is already where Dean’s head is.
But that would be a touch impractical, so instead he says, “How about that rain?”
Dean is silent for a stretch before admitting, “Stopped the car on the side of the road when it started. Got out and just let it hit me for a while, got soaked. Probably got pneumonia cooking in here somewhere now. Sammy was looking about ready to give me the shifter test.”
Benny smiles, almost able to smell the ozone, even in the dry desert air. “Sounds like a slice of heaven to me.”
“Better,” Dean says with flat certainty. “Definitely better.”
“And that’s what I’m saying,” Benny says, holding on to that spark that’s sneaking back into Dean’s voice. “You've got to choose your miracles, Dean. Otherwise all this world can do is disappoint you. It ain’t right how it's laid out for you, I hear you. But all you can do is pick a miracle, any one, and you've got a start.”
“That what you did?”
“You bet your sweet behind I did.”
Dean snorts, nice and ugly, the way he does whenever Benny teases him over his pretty self. “So where’d you start, huh? What’s your Miracle Number One?”
Sweat and mud and trust, muscles that withstand and a pulse that dares, and a heart that breaks and scabs and breaks again. Of all the humans in all the universe, this one.
Benny shakes his head. “Never mind that. And by the by, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you made it out.”
“You freaking better be. Damn hitchhiker.”
“I admit I may be slightly biased in this opinion.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut your pie-hole.” A pause, and then a groan. “Oh, God, pie. I need to get some freaking pie.”
Benny coughs out a laugh. “Dean, Dean. You’re telling me you spent an entire damn year making me listen to a human I can’t eat waxing tragic about pie I can’t eat, and after two months topside you still haven’t gone to get yourself a damned slice?”
“Dude, I’m telling you, the second I stepped out of that damn graveyard, shit started happening. You don’t even want to know. Shit, that’s it, breakfast tomorrow Sam is buying me pie.”
“He know that’s how he's spending his morning?”
“Don’t care. Everyone who didn't get me out of Purgatory owes me pie. Mazel tov, you’re off the hook.”
Benny's grinning like a fool and doesn't care, because Dean is back and ridiculous as ever. “You've got it back to front, brother. I’m not the one who got you out.”
“Bullshit,” Dean says, and it would be easy to quip something back. But Dean's voice is decisive and alive and, more importantly, slipping out of its Midwestern proper and into Benny’s slower southern pace - just like down below, where Dean didn't even notice the change until his angel was there to point it out and hilariously ruin Dean’s day - and Benny’s so damn fond of him right now that it could kill him. He huffs a breath and lets the feeling happen.
“What the hell are you doing in Nowhere-town USA, anyway?” Dean drawls after a second. “Thought you had business.”
“I do. All in good time. Landed here tonight, land somewhere else tomorrow.”
“God, you sound like me.”
“You sure that’s how it is?” Benny says, smirking. “Your Louisiana is showing, brother.”
A beat. “...Son of a bitch.”
Benny can sort of hear Dean’s groan under his own cackling. “Damnit, Benny, you know Sam asked me why I was doing accents the first time we talked after getting back? Jesus. This is all on you, man.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
“Yeah, like I friggin’ could.”
“You ask me, it’s an improvement.” Benny settles in again on his back, feeling warmer than air-temperature now even though he’s not. Dean will sneak up on you like that.
(He’d approached Purgatory’s lone human ready to bargain or terrify, depending on exactly what kind of human it was. He got Dean. With every step and swing and splatter of wasted blood, a layer of Dean peeled away and showed more of him. His foolishness and his pride, his fears and his anger and his stubborn love, a soldier’s loyalty and a pauper’s faith.
Benny realized early on that he’d have to be careful, because men like Dean had no idea how powerful they were, how little they’d have to do to draw people into their orbit, just by being who they were. He kept his distance, made sure not to like this human any more than he had to.
It worked, until it didn't.)
“Yo. Earth to Benny.”
Apparently Dean has been talking. “What’s that?”
“Were you zoning or what? Thought ass-o'clock in the morning was your go-time.”
“I didn't want to like you, you know.”
A pause on Dean’s end, probably to shake off some whiplash. “What, now?”
No reason to lie. “Down below. I was banking on running into some desperate piss-ant of a human who’d beg me to show ‘em the way out. Most of them would. But you're not them. You're something better, brother.”
Dean sucks in his breath, but doesn't seem to know what to say, so Benny stays with it. “Dean, you're just a hell of a thing, and if your brother doesn't see that, then one day he's gonna have some real regrets weighing him down. That’s his business. But the situation we were in, you could've gone a whole other way. You could have left your Cas right after he turned tail. Could have dumped out my soul in the nearest trash bin and walked on back to your life. Hell, you could have taken that brother of yours to task in an ugly way for what he did. No one could lay the blame on you for any of it, because you’d have had a right. Lot of things you could have done.”
“The fuck I could,” Dean says, soft and ragged.
“Now you’re gettin’ it,” Benny replies, grinning a little when Dean puffs out something vaguely smile-shaped, remembering. “A human could. You didn't, because that ain't the kind of human you are. I met you expecting a piss-ant. Instead, I met a good man.” And because the stars are everywhere and he can still faintly hear the rain, he names Dean for what he is. “Miracle Number One.”
Dean lets out his breath fast. “Jesus, Benny.” He’s sounding a little shaky again, but not like he’s about to fade away. “Warn a guy. Fuck.” Another breath, and a piss-poor attempt to sound like Benny didn't just knock him flat. “Would have brought along a spare tampon.”
Benny lifts a brow. “That in Europe?”
“Forget it. Just...fuck,” he exhales, and his voice shrinks two sizes in the space of a breath. “Benny, I'm not good.”
Benny sighs. “You’re gonna believe what you're gonna believe. But I don’t speak for anyone but me. And you've done right by me, brother.”
Dean’s still quiet, but the layers are peeled down, the way they get sometimes, just for a second.
“Same,” he says in his awkward way, barely there, but real. “Same, okay?”
Benny nods to the stars. “I hear you.”
For a good few breaths, there's nothing but the rain while Dean likely figures out whether the topic has scared him off the call. When Benny closes his eyes, he can almost hear Dean's heartbeat, and it feels a little like a homecoming.
(When they fought, Dean’s pulse was hard and fast, but steady. When Dean slept, it pounded slow and even until it didn't, and Benny learned that if he didn't wake him up right at the start, Dean would gasp awake like he’d clawed his way out of something. When Dean went off on his own for a little while each night, his heartbeat would accelerate a little and stay there, and Benny would listen to it to keep from eavesdropping too badly on the private, aching prayers he couldn't help but overhear.
Benny learned to live to the beat of Dean's heart, falling asleep to it in the mornings, battling to its war drums each night, learning the rhythms of Dean's happiness and loneliness and stubbornness and hope.)
Dean clears his throat and seems to make an executive decision.
“So what was Miracle Number Two?”
Benny smiles, because right now, Dean sounds like hope.