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The months away from the compound have led to Brock being irritatingly out of sync with everybody else when he’s spending some time off there. At Sphinx HQ, everything is bunk beds and cafeterias. You never need to worry about walking in on somebody in the bathroom because there’s twenty other stalls and the showers are communal, anyways.
This is why when he has to take a leak in the middle of the night, it doesn’t give him pause at all that the door is closed and the light on. He opens the door, walks in and oh shit, Dean is in there. He startles, hard.
“Ah, sorry, kid, I’ll just--” he starts to exit and then stops, because something isn’t right. Dean is sitting on the toilet, but the lid is closed, he isn’t using it. And he does have a sort of perpetually guilty face, but this one is the one that Brock has learned to watch out for. He shuts the door behind him instead, and watches as Dean relaxes a fraction of a percent. “Dean, what’s in your hand?”
Dean doesn’t say anything. His hand only clenches harder around whatever it is.
Brock is well and truly worried now, not in an abstract way anymore, in an alarm bells are screaming in his brain and something is wrong with one of his boys way. He walks over and kneels in front of him, slowly, watching the panic in Dean’s eyes grow the whole time. “I’m not angry, okay? I just wanna see.”
Dean looks from Brock’s face to his own hand and nods, dropping the object into Brock’s palm. For a second, Brock doesn’t even look at it, his eyes caught only on the thin line of crimson welling up on Dean’s palm, but then he glances down and--
It’s a razorblade. One of the ones that you could scavenge from a plastic razor, if you wanted to. Brock stares down at it and tries to come up with a way that could make this be alright, that could make this mean anything but what it has to mean.
“Were you,” he tries, and can’t get any further with that one. “Have you been...?” If he says the words out loud, that means that they’re real. That one of his boys has been hurting this fucking badly and he didn’t notice.
“Are you still not mad?” Brock hasn’t heard his voice tremble like that in a long time.
“I’m still not mad.” Just very, very sad.
Hands shaking, Dean pulls up the leg of his Spiderman pajamas to about his mid-thigh. There are several neat rows of thin white scars visible, and Brock can see the ends of others peeking out from under the edge of the pajama pants. At the very bottom, there is the beginning of another row, hastily abandoned and starting to scab over. He’s sure there are more scars on the other leg, but he doesn’t want to see them. This is making him sick enough.
While he tries to think of what he’s supposed to do, Brock buys himself some time by rummaging around in the cabinets for the neosporin and the bandaids. He hands them to Dean, who gives them back and rolls his pant leg down when he’s done.
“Kiddo, why is that the best option here?”
“I’m not brave, like Hank and you. I’m scared, all the time, and there’s these times when I can’t stop being afraid and this works. I’m supposed to be tough but I’m not any good at that, or-or anything else Pop wants me to be and you were gone and I was scared.”
Dean doesn’t hesitate at all when Brock pulls him and wraps his arms around him, hand running up and down his back the way that has always soothed him since he was small until his breath has stopped hitching.
“Are you gonna tell Pop?” His voice is all froggy.
Rusty would not handle this well. He would throw a screaming fit and make it all about himself and he knows that is the exact opposite of what is needed here. “No. But look at me. This is no good, kid. This isn’t a solution to anything. It’s just gonna make things worse, okay? If you get freaked out, you can come tell me.”
“Okay.” Dean wipes his face off with his sleeve.
“Do you have any more of these?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you go get them for me?”
There are four in his hand a minute later, and he sticks them in the pocket of his shorts for now. “It’s late, Dean. Time for bed.”
“Goodnight, Brock.”
“Night, Dean.” He wavers for a second. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Brock ends up putting them in the outside garbage can, in a bag that’s empty besides them. And he lays awake in the guest bedroom until the sun comes up and wonders what else he has missed.