The motel room smelled of whiskey and gunpowder, the remnants of another night spent fighting things that shouldn’t exist. The neon sign outside flickered against the thin curtains, bathing everything in pulses of blue and red, like a failing heartbeat. The bed creaked beneath Dean’s weight as he sat, his head low, his hands resting on his knees, the bruises along his knuckles already beginning to darken.

The night had been long. Too long. The kind of night that left ghosts in his ribs, clawing their way up into his throat. He wasn’t sure if the ache in his chest was from the fight or from something else—something older, something he had never really let himself name.

And then—her fingers.

He flinched before he could stop himself. The touch was light, hesitant, brushing against the tender skin of his shoulder where a gash had only just begun to heal. He wasn’t used to this, to hands that didn’t take, didn’t demand.

Dean had felt plenty of hands on him before. Hands gripping, pulling, dragging him under for a night before letting him resurface alone. Hands that burned as much as they comforted, that reminded him he was alive but never let him forget how temporary it all was.

But this—this was different.

She wasn’t asking for anything. She wasn’t trying to fix him, wasn’t trying to take from him. It wasn’t about the scars, wasn’t about the blood. It was just… a touch. Gentle. Real.

His throat tightened, and he forced himself to breathe through it, to let himself have this, just for a moment. He didn’t deserve it—he knew that much—but God, he wanted it anyway.

His shoulders sagged beneath the weight of it, beneath the quiet way she simply stayed, fingers tracing over the places he had forgotten were still capable of feeling anything other than pain.

And for the first time in longer than he could remember, Dean Winchester didn’t feel like a weapon, or a soldier, or a man running out of time.

He felt like he belonged.