He remembers this from long before. The waiting, being poised. Breathing there on that edge, feeling how little it would take to tip. Red and black memory. Death lurching in the dark and in the bright places.

Dean exhales and he picks that moment to inhale and imagines it passing from one set of lungs to the other, fixated on the way Dean's eyes are glistening, wet.

"What you said before, about no permanent scars," he murmurs. So calm. "Yeah, I don't know about that." He lifts his free hand and cups Dean's face, thumb smudging tears away from under his eye with idle fascination. "Do you want me to let up?"