A/n: Another Supernatural story from me.

Warnings: Contains mention of self harm.

He hates this feeling. It reminds him of when he was thirteen and he hated everything. It reminds him of when he hated his father for dragging him and Sam around the country, having them living in one seedy motel after the next, leaving them alone for undetermined periods of time. It reminds him of when he hated Sam for being his responsibility, for needing him so much. It reminds him of when he hated Bobby for not stopping any of it and just letting John do what he did rather than encourage him to stop and take care of his boys or maybe even take them in so they would have a stable place to live and they could go to school. It reminded him of when he hated every hunt and every person that was connected to it because they took his father way from him.

When he was thirteen he really hated everything.

He hated the fact that he couldn't go out and play like normal kids or make friends and hang out with them like a normal child.

He hated that he knew how to handle any weapon thrust into his hands by his father.

He hated that he knew about what went bump in the dark and that he knew exactly how to kill it.

He hated that he slept with a gun under his pillow and carried a knife on him at all times.

He hated that he had pretty much been Sam's father for a majority of his life.

He hated that his father sometimes came home from hunts drunk and he had to guide the man into bed.

He hated having to make up lies to pacify Sam when he asked where their father was.

He hated feeling like he had to take care of everyone.

He hated everything.

But at the same time… He loved his family… He couldn't take out his anger on them. He was supposed to take care of Sam, not hurt him. Then his father had already had his wife taken away from him. The last thing he needed was for his son to turn against him and run off.

He found a way to deal with it all and make all the frustration and anger go away completely by accident.

It happened when he waiting outside of Sam's current elementary school. He was there to pick up his brother and take him back to the motel they were staying in. Dean was, as usual at the time, angry and frustrated with everything.

He still doesn't know why he did it but he started rubbing his knuckles against the wall, right between the dark red bricks.

His knuckles scraped against the cement keeping the rectangular blocks together until his skin broke. Then he gasped and looked down at his hand, at the now red and bleeding flesh there. He just kept staring at it until Sammy's little hands and his little voice broke him out of his trance.

"What happened, Dean? Are you okay?"

He just told Sam that everything was fine and that he had gotten into a fight at school. Sam seemed alright with this answer but he then lectured his brother on why he shouldn't be getting into fights.

That was the beginning of it all for Dean. After that he started rubbing his knuckles against the bricks on purpose when he was at school. He always gave the same excuses. He fell. He got into a fight…

Then when they read a book called Cut in another school things changed.

He realized there was a name for what he was doing. He realized he wasn't alone. He felt like there was something a little less wrong with him for doing it. He probably should have felt differently.

He started rubbing the skin on his arms raw with safety pins, staples, paperclips, anything he could get his hands on.

Then someone at school found out. They told the guidance counselor. The counselor told his father. He was a disappointment to the oldest Winchester and they moved on, away from the school. All of his long sleeved shirts were taken away and every night his father would check his forearms to make sure there was nothing new there. He wasn't allowed to use or care for the knives unless his father was there to supervise.

But he never checked his shoulders or his hips or thighs and Dean found out how to take apart a disposable razor with a thumbtack and Sammy never found out.

He has never really stopped, just slowed down quite a bit. He lightly traces his finger over a thin white scar on the inside of his left forearm near his elbow. That is the only evidence left on his forearms. It is only an inch long, maybe shorter. The cuts on his hips and thighs healed up well as well and they left next to no marks.

His shoulder, though. He reaches up and runs his fingers over it, feeling one particularly nasty scar. It is raised up on his shoulder and there are much finer, scars that surround it, a mass of white lines crossing and overlapping each other. When Sam saw them the first time he lied and said they were from wounds during a hunt.

There is a scar on his chest and if you squint you can see it. It is an X over his heart. He rubs the place where the scar is with the tips of his fingers. He can't even feel it anymore.

He shivers a little at the fuzzy feeling that has blanketed itself over him. It is that feeling he hates because it makes him think of when he was thirteen.

It is a fuzzy, nostalgic feeling and he wants to hurt himself again to make it stop creeping over his skin. He doesn't, though. He just lets out a shuddering breath and pulls on his shirt. He has been sitting up in the room he used to share with his brother when they were little and would stay at Bobby's.

When he leaves the room he lets out another breath at the top of the stairs and then he clops down them. He plasters a smile on his face and stalks into the kitchen, taking a beer out of the fridge and hopping up onto the counter, swinging his legs like a big child as he nurses his new drink after popping the cap off.

His brother is there, pouring over books. Sam looks up at his brother and cocks his head to the side.

"Hey, man, you feeling alright? You've been up upstairs for hours now. I didn't think you were ever coming down."

"I don't know. I feel off. It's an odd feeling. Not bad, not good. I think I should be careful with it," he says with a laugh.

It isn't often that Dean says something that confuses him but Sam can honestly say that his brother has managed it this time. He just stares at his big brother while the man smiles like a loon and nurses his beer, staring out the window while he occasionally runs a finger over his arm.

A/n: TBC

Also, just in case it was confusing, Italics indicate past events and that is why I started writing in past tense there. This rule will follow through any chapters that come after this.