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“Fine.” Dean backed away from me to grab his knife from his duffel. “You want to cut yourself? Purge your demons?” He rolled up his left sleeve and dragged the knife’s blade cleanly across the inner meat of his forearm, a thick, sharp line of red appearing on his gorgeous skin. “Then I’ll purge mine too.” The blade came to rest against his arm, the tip still dug into his skin. His eyes burned into mine, and my mouth fell open in shock.
“Yeah.” Dean said softly. “That look? That’s the way I felt when I found out what was really causing all those marks on your arms.” Dean walked towards me and held out the arm he has just sliced through, making a fist so the blood rose over his skin. “You bleed, I’ll bleed. You cut, I’ll cut.”
I swallowed hard, unable to speak.
His eyes were watery when he looked back up at me. “Everytime. Because I will not, I cannot, keep watching you do that to yourself.”
“Dean,” I whispered. “Why would you-“
“Why would I cut myself?” Dean’s voice rose, the anger that had been simmering these last few weeks finally rising to the surface. “Why would you? What makes you think that breaking your skin does anything to help anything?”
I looked away, unable to face the hurt and pain in those emerald eyes. I wrapped my arms around myself and hunched away from him, but I could still feel Dean just inches away, emotion radiating from him like heat from a furnace. “I don’t…I can’t explain it.” I choked out.
“Try.” Dean’s voice was both gentle and commanding.
I bit my lip and indulged in a glimpse of my recently cut wrist; one precise line of dried blood just an inch from the back of my hand. I wasn’t suicidal. I was just coping. “It hurts, Dean.” I held up my hand to stop him when he started to reach for my wrist. “Not the cut. Everything else.”
I twisted and squeezed my fingers with the energy from nerves that had nowhere to go, the comforting burn of my fresh slice emitting swollen heat from my arm. “Everything else. It’s like I have all these feelings inside my body, inside my brain, and the rush of anguish washes over me so hard sometimes it feels like it’s going to bring me to my knees, and I can’t fight it, I can’t stop it. I need something, anything, to distract me from how helpless and hurt I feel. All the pain, all the emotions are trying to burst from my body, but there is nowhere for them to go.” I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to look at him without breaking. He had asked, so he was going to hear the answer. I was terrified to speak the words out loud, but even if Dean couldn’t understand than at least he would no longer wonder.
I continued, my hands forming into fists. “They swirl and brew inside me until I feel like I’m about to explode.” I swallowed, hard. “So I take control the only way I can. Otherwise I’m helpless, Dean, helpless against the pain and anxiety on the inside. So I cause pain that at least I have a say in. If I can focus on the burn of a fresh cut, then I don’t get so lost in the uncontrollable agony that threatens to break me from within.”
Dean made a choked sound.
I opened my teary eyes and risked a glance in his direction.
Dean grabbed my wrist and yanked my body against his own, words still falling from my lips, dying to get out now that I’ve finally released them. “If I can cause myself pain, then at least I have some semblance of control, and the rest slowly fades away and doesn’t seem so bad.”
I was flush up against his chest, one of his arms wrapped around my lower back, the other pinning my left wrist between our bodies, his fingers gripping my arm just above my cut.
He ran his tongue along the seam, the wet heat of it making my cut burn even more for a hot second before soothing the pain. “No, Dean, don’t. Don’t take it away!” I needed the burn, needed the hurt. It was the only thing that kept me grounded through the waves of pain that twisted inside my body like a sheet of weak metal. “Dean,” I cried, my voice breaking.
He continued to glide his tongue over my cut, his eyes never leaving mine. “Look at me,” he commanded.
I kept my head turned and I tugged against his grip, tears falling down my cheeks. “No. Dean. Stop. Let me go, let me-“
“Look at me,” he growled.
I did.
“I am the last one that’s gonna judge anyone’s demons.” Dean said firmly. “You hear me? I know how much life can take out of you, how much it can steal, how much it can downright suck. But I’ll be damned if I stand around and watch you hurt yourself. You got me?” His hold gentled, and he released my wrist. He lowered my arm to my side but not before making me wrap it around his sturdy body.
His arms fully encircled my waist and slowly crept up my back to hold me close. I could feel his breath against my cheek as he said, “You cut, I cut. You hurt, I hurt.” His eyes searched mine. “I won’t stop you. I won’t tell you to stop, or keep you away from sharp objects, or demand you give up all your razors.” His mouth turned up briefly before his eyes shuttered serious once more. “But I will be here. I will be here every damn day, and every damn night, and on the phone when I’m away on hunts. I will scan your body, your eyes, your heart. I will check for new marks, old cuts, new pain and old hurt. And when you feel like it’s too much, and that reaching out to me, or Sam, or Cas, won’t help? And you think the only way to fight your demons is to cause yourself pain? Well then sweetheart, I will strip you naked and copy every damn cut on your body onto my own.”
I sobbed his name. “Dean. Dean, you can’t.”
“Damn right I can. And I will. Because this pain you feel, thinking about me hurting myself? Darlin’, multiply it by a hundred.” Dean held my body tight. “Because that’s how I feel every damn time I see that you’ve done this.”
My tears flowed freely now, and I cried while Dean held me. I drained my body, long, wracking sobs that felt like they would tear me apart. I heaved and shook with the force of them, and Dean held strong against me the entire time. Every time I tried to pull away, even just to wipe my eyes or my nose, he only held on tighter. I grabbed onto him anywhere I could reach, my hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt, trying to dig into his skin, grasping for an anchor.
The shower that Dean helped me into was a blur of hot water, soapy hands, and soft murmurs. Dean didn’t stop whispering to me the whole time, soft platitudes and understanding commiseration that yeah, life just sucked sometimes but things would be different now, because he had me and I had him. And anytime our demons became too much to handle, we had each other; we had Sam, we had Cas; we had family. He lovingly washed my cut and dropped kisses onto it again.
And as he lay down beside me on soft sheets that night, matching cuts on our arms to mark our shared pain, our tears and whispers and words mingled over the pillows and floated out the windows, carried away by the night wind to dissipate among the stars.
We wouldn’t stop hurting.
But together, we also wouldn’t stop healing.