[h3] Dean [/h3]

Dean turned his eyes from the bottle of whiskey, as Lexi’s hand came forward and she moved it away from him. He had to admit that the temptation was there to fight her over the bottle. It was his fall back to wash the emotions back down that he didn’t want to deal with. But then she began to speak, and he looked up, catching her eyes. If it was Sam telling him this, he would have already rolled his eyes, scoffed, grabbed the bottle and disappeared into his room, but he pressed his lips together and nodded at her words. Obviously, she had some experience with those same habits. Maybe her advice was exactly what he needed…

Her words about them having a lot in common rang true. She understood a lot of what he was going through, but there was still a huge secret lingering in the air that he didn’t even know how to bring up. He was swimming in grief, but he was also dealing with a constant rage that he struggled to swallow down. Mix that with a self sacrificial death wish that tugged at his chest every single time he left the bunker…he was a wreck. 

He squeezed Lexi’s hand, matching her soft smile with his own and he nodded, “You’re right. There’s plenty of crap to dwell on. The past isn’t exactly something we can afford to get lost in, these days…don’t I know that…”

Dean’s brain flinched, and his ears rang a bit when she brought up the mark on his arm. He hadn’t exactly hidden it, choosing to ignore it and not bring it up, in hopes that she would just think it was some kind of weird remnant of a hunt from days long past. He thought about it for a moment, and he sighed, “Well…that story might sour any hopes of a good moment we might be having here.”, he finished his words with an incredulous chuckle, turning his arm over while still holding her hand. He looked over the mark and took a deep breath.

“But…if you’re going to stick around, now would be the time to scare you off.” He started, looking back up at her face. He scanned between her eyes, trying to decide how to tell her, and finally settled on just telling her straight out, “It’s the Mark of Cain. Like…THE Cain. There’s no good explanation for how I got it, other than I needed a means to an end for a really REALLY bad demon problem. So, I let a demon…”

Dean paused, as the words made him feel a little like an idiot, “I let a demon manipulate me into taking the damn thing. Now, the big bad demon is dead, the tool I killed her with is locked in the trunk of my car, and I’m stuck with the mark and all the crap that comes with it. I should have told you earlier…things are bad, Lexi. I wanted a normal few days. I wanted to feel human for a bit. But things are really bad.”