"Blood brothers!"

"Huh?"

Dean waved his recently obtained pen knife in my face. We sat cross-legged on the pirate ship deck. I didn't know how he'd gotten the knife, we were only nine, but I suspected that was the fight he'd gotten in at school the other day. He'd probably nicked it from some boyscout type. Dean's face was lit up happily as he repeated, "Blood brothers!"

"Dean, you repeating the same phrase won't make me understand it all of a sudden."

Dean laughed and before I could say a word he slicked his palm open and held it out to me.

"Dean!" I leaned backward and fell onto my back to get away from his hand which was now bleeding steadily. "What the fuck?"

"It's a best friend thing Lion! We give ourselves cuts and then mix our blood together! Hold hands so that some of my blood gets into your body and yours in mine, so that it's like we're blood related! That way we're like real siblings. And that means we'll always be family." Dean's voice rose as he spoke and his eyes grew more urgent. He wanted this connection badly, a need he couldn't quite understand. "Come on Lion! You and me!"

I grimaced at the sight of the blood pooling in his palm. "Sounds unsanitary," I said stiffly, unwilling to let him know that what it actually sounded like was painful more than anything. He'd cut open his hand.

"Please Franks?" Dean's lip wobbled the tiniest bit and his eyes flashed hurt before he tried to hide it with a bigger and harder grin. He was so terrified I would refuse him too.

"…ok," I said, because honestly there was never any way I'd have said anything else. This was Dean who was asking after all.

Dean nodded and I held out my trembling left hand. Dean took it lightly with his already bleeding hand and held the pen knife an inch above my skin. I clenched my teeth and watched the pen knife's blade glint in the sun.

"Lion." I kept staring at the blade. "Franky."

I looked up. Dean's hazel eyes locked on mine. "Franks. Look at me." I gulped and nodded. Dean gave me a look of concentration. "Only at me."

The knife bit into my palm and I scrunched up my face in pain. Immediately Dean grasped my bleeding hand with his. I felt my heartbeat in my palm. And suddenly I felt as if a second heartbeat accompanied mine, pumping new blood into my system. After a few seconds our hearts synced. I looked at our joined hands in wonderment, then up at Dean.

His eyes were on my face and it was the first time I ever saw that look. Like I was the only thing in his world. Like I was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. My eyes misted and sudden warmth radiated from my heart to the tips of my fingers and toes. Dean's blood had hit my system and was warming me from the inside out.

Dean brought our clasped hands to his lips and kissed my knuckles. "Now you're mine. And I'm yours. We're part of one another. Blood related."

Family. He didn't say it. He didn't have to.

We didn't let go of each others hands for a long while. When we finally tried our hands stuck together painfully, then finally we were able to detach. The fosters saw our self inflicted wounds as we started to head home from our day in the park. They screamed at us all the way back to the house and when we got back Dean and I were grabbed by our collars and dragged upstairs. The woman scrubbed at our cuts with bars of soap and it stung, but I barely noticed as Dean and I made faces at each other behind her back. Because it didn't change anything. She couldn't scrub Dean's blood from out of my veins.

Soon the cut scabbed over, then eventually became a white scar slashed across my palm. Often when one of us would get upset the other would reach out their left hand. We would lock fingers and our scars would touch, and it would make all the bad drop away for a bit. I was irrevocably bonded to Dean and it meant that I would always have someone to tether me back down.

The scar is mostly faded now but I can see it as clear as day whenever I look at it. It means I'll always have Dean.