Work Text:
Dean sat at the bunker table with a beer bottle in his right hand and he was scrolling through a page on Sam's laptop with his left. He heard the front door open and he looked over to greet you and Sam from the hunt you'd come from but you both weren't in the mood for any talking.
He saw you shove the door open and cover your mouth with your hand and walk up the stairs, not even paying him a glance as you opened your bedroom door and went inside. He turned back to the front door to see Sam slamming it and calling after you, and Dean meant to ask him what the hell was going on but couldn't find his voice, he was so confused. Sam followed you into your room and slammed the door once again, and Dean sat in utter confusion before finally getting up and going to your door, activating his ninja powers and pressing his ear to the door.
"-you know, you slap on this big, fake smile, but I can see right through it." Sam snapped. That caught Dean's attention, and he decided to listen some more, since he'd heard Sam say that to him before.
"How am I supposed to explain to you how I feel, even if its just a quarter of yourself, you still accept your life and why you live. I can't, I don't want to." You said.
"How come you never say anything about it though? Why don't you ever do anything?" Sam said. Dean listened harder.
"Because I hate how I think, and I hate how I decide things, and I just hate me, period. I hate myself so much I wonder why you two don't." That hit Dean hard. He was taken aback and stared at the door before taking a step away from it.
"Dean could never hate you, and neither could I." Sam said.
"Good for you two, because I wonder sometimes how I can even stay here with this constant guilt on me that I'm this huge burden on you guys." Dean stared at your bedroom door in horror asking himself why, why do you hate yourself so much?
"Why would you think of yourself as a burden?" Sam said.
"Because you guys have zero reason for keeping me here! We ran into each other on a hunt, that's all it was. We talked at a bar, we became friends. But then you offered to let me stay with you, and I was so persistent that I didn't want to, because I didn't want to become you two's responsibility, and I didn't want to be your guys' demise." You said. "If one of you gets killed on a hunt, do you realize how much I'm going to blame myself for it? Do you realize how many deaths I already blame myself for? If you two had just continued your lives without me in it, I wouldn't have to worry about ruining them."
Dean was almost in tears.
"You aren't going to ruin our lives!" Sam yelled and Dean definitely heard him. "If anything, you make our lives better, especially Dean. You know how much he hates himself?"
"What does Dean have to hate himself for?"
"He blames himself for deaths too!"
"None of its his fault!"
"Oh, wow, he fails to realize that peoples' deaths is not his fault? I wonder where I've heard that before," Sam said. Dean could almost hear the sass in his voice.
"You know there's a reason you guys found me hunting alone, because I was afraid if I hunted with another person that I would fuck up whatever we were working on and get them killed! I can't be responsible for anyone dying-" you sucked in a sharp breath and Dean could hear your voice break and he could definitely hear you start to cry. It was a noise that pained even him, your voice fell piece by piece when you sobbed in the way you were sobbing now. "And I ca-can't be responsible for one of you dying. I love you both, you've become my family, and if one of you were to die because I can't do anything right-"
"Stop blaming yourself for everything, (Y/N), please, none of it is your fault!" Dean could hear Sam stomp closer to you. Sam put his arms on your shoulders. "You're our family too, and I hate to see you hate yourself this much."
"I don't just hate myself," You said, "I fucking despise myself. Every time we go on a hunt, sometimes I wish that it would be my last. That I could finally be done with everything, and let go of becoming such a-" there was a loud smash, sounded like you threw something at the wall, "-fucking burden!"
Dean was on the verge of tears, and he burst into the room. "Stop!" He shouted and it even sounded like he'd start crying. Your hand was bleeding, and "thing you threw at the wall" was really just a glass bowl that held your keys, that you smashed on its table with your fist, and the glass cut pretty deep. "Sam, please get out so I can talk to (Y/N)."
You had a look of horror on your face when you put the pieces together that Dean had been listening. Sam looked at the both of you before giving Dean of look of "I don't think I should leave, but I'll do so, and we're talking about this together later" and he left. Dean closed the door behind him and waited ten seconds, you staying silent, and he opened the door again to see Sam just close his door. He was making sure Sam wasn't going to eavesdrop like he himself just was.
"(Y/N)," Dean said to you, and he turned around to face you, "You wanna say something to me?"
"No, not really."
"You wanna tell me why you hate yourself like that?"
"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you've been listening long enough to answer your own question."
"Alright," He said, and he took a deep breath. "Do you wanna, oh I don't know, stop thinking of yourself as our burden and start thinking of yourself as our family?"
"Name one time I've done anything that actually helped the two of you!" You screamed at him as blood continued to pour like a river from your palm and onto the hardwood floor.
"Okay, those times when we were on a hunt you took down a son of a bitch coming for one of us," Dean held up seven fingers, "and what about those times where Sam was knocked out and I was beat to a pulp? You were no better than Sam and you still drove us both home." Dean held up his remaining three fingers. "I've named ten in less than a minute, wanna keep going?"
You looked at him coldly. You don't see it that way. "Fine. Then name the times where I never helped at all and you two almost got killed."
Dean put down his fingers and looked at the ceiling as he began to think.
"Can't think of anything?" You said it immediately and held up your hands. "Let me try. There's those times where you were thrown across the room and Sam was almost shot and I was shaking so much I couldn't even point a gun," You held up three fingers. "Then there's that time we were about to gank that nest of vamps when I knocked over a glass and woke them all up and you almost got bit and Sam had to go to the hospital," you help up another finger. "What about that one time we were taking down a shifter and I burned it with silver and I was definitely able to shoot it but I couldn't because my gun jammed, because I overloaded it?" You held up another finger and Dean stopped you.
"But that wasn't your fault, you didn't know you overloaded it, I've made that mistake before," He said.
"Oh really?" You scoffed. "Because I remember quite clearly you yelling at me for it and refusing to talk to me for the rest of the day."
Dean's face went blank and he started to remember.
"My gun jammed," you looked down at your gun, and you held a single bullet in your hand. "I overloaded it. I-I'm sorry."
Dean looked at the bullet that made your gun jam and then at you, bruises on your face from your fight with the shifter. "You're sorry?" He scoffed and looked around, seeing that no body was watching them or even around. "You're sorry?!"
You jumped at the sudden raise of his voice.
"We've been tracking this thing for a week and a half and you have the perfect shot at it. But you overloaded your gun, didn't you? And now it knows we're onto it, and you're sor-" Dean stopped and kicked the fence he was standing next to.
"You're a fucking idiot! How the fuck do you even overload your gun, its nine bullets, can you fucking count to nine?!" His voice was almost too high, he was screaming so loud that you were scared and shaking. You didn't dare speak in fear of him calling you out of crying over something that was all your fault.
"I'm sorry, okay?" You said not too loudly, so your voice cracking couldn't be detected. "I made a mistake, am I not allowed to do that?"
Dean didn't respond, his face was red with rage. "Get in the fucking car. We're going home." He opened the driver's side door and you put the extra bullet in your pocket, turning the safety of your gun on before sticking it in the back of your pants and fixing your shirt over it and going over to the Impala, getting in the passenger and not saying anything the entire ride back to the bunker.
Dean said nothing to you once you got there. The two of you went inside and he started to head to him room.
"Dean," You called after him.
"Just don't fucking talk to me, (Y/N), not now." He slammed his bedroom door. You started to tear up again and you were thankful that Sam was still asleep as you ran to your room and closed the door quietly.
"(Y/N)-"
"And that djinn we were supposed to take down, I said it would be easy enough, and I went alone. I was caught within thirty minutes, almost dead when you guys found me. I spend three weeks in the hospital, letting the djinn pack up it's shit and get away," you held up another finger. You had six fingers up. You planned to keep going. "And that werewolf back in Maine, I thought it wasn't a werewolf and I persisted you guys about it until you finally agreed with me that it was a rogue witch, and we went ahead after it with the wrong stuff, and if it wasn't for the other hunters after it too, we three would have been dead," you held up the seventh finger. "The three different times we went after witches and didn't notice them put hex bags in my bag and I almost cost us those three cases with whatever the fuck they put on me," you held up the last three fingers.
"I just named ten reasons in less than three minutes, want me to keep going?" You put your hands down and Dean finally put his attention on your wound.
"You're gonna fucking bleed out." Dean said and he took a step toward you.
"I don't care, Dean."
"I do." Dean took the first aid kit from your wall and took your arm and dragged you to your bed where you both sat down. He opened the first aid and looked into it with a look of confusion slowly spreading across his face. He whispered, "What the fuck?"
"What's wrong?"
"The gauze and rubbing alcohol and," he picked up and dropped a small roll of tape, "the tape, is almost completely gone." Dean dug through the kit and pulled out a 16 ounce plastic bottle supposed to be filled with rubbing alcohol and it was 3/4 empty. The plastic blue pencil box that was supposed to have 50 gauze in it had four left. The roll of tape that was supposed to be two inches thick was a centimeter thick.
You hung your head low and your eyes drifted to your legs. "I haven't been using them, I don't know what to tell you."
Dean looked at you. "Look at me in the eyes and say that."
You hesitated but looked up and looked at the bridge of his nose. "I haven't been using the stuff in the first aid kit."
"Show me your arms." He looked at your wrist. You gladly lifted your arms and turned your wrists to him.
"Don't worry, Dean, I don't cut my wrists," you said.
"Then show me your legs," he said. You hesitated again and he dropped the kit on the bed, putting his face in his hand. "Oh, my God, (Y/N), please tell me you don-"
You immediately stood up and kicked off your shoes, taking your pants on and throwing them on the ground. He looked at your thighs and his eyes started to become wet with tears. Rows and rows of scars littered the outsides of your thighs and some overlapped others. He looked up at you and started shaking his head.
"You don't have to start the sob story. I've heard it before," you said.
"Then tell me how long its been going on."
"I started when I was eleven, stopped, started back up again when I was thirteen, and I've been doing it since."
"You're twenty-six, (Y/N)." Dean put the heels of his hands into his eyes to stop his crying, and suddenly hugged you. "Please stop. You're so important to me and Sam, and if we lost you...," Dean breathed in, his crying could definitely be heard. You hugged him back and he held you tighter. You stayed like that for a while before he pulled away and wiped his eyes.
"I'm gonna go order pizza for dinner. Pretzel crust because... I know you love that. Okay?" He stepped away, wiping his cheeks, and you suddenly felt very embarrassed that you whipped off your pants so quickly. At least your button-up shirt covered your waist. Dean didn't seem to care, though. He walked out of the room and shut the door, leaving you to think.
