Little Tattoos
Summary: Sam and Dean take a look at Dean's scars, and see them differently. Or, maybe not so differently. Sam and Dean POV, one shot.
Set sometime in Season 1 so spoilers for Pilot.
A/N: Also, just for some timing clarity, I am a firm believer in the theory that Sam was a senior in college when the show began. So, in my mind, he had been in college for three full years and away from his family for slightly longer to that (explaining the 'four years away' bit, in between three and four years). As for the 'two year' bit mentioned in the show, I like to think Sam didn't completely cut ties with his brother when he left and they spoke for a bit, ending in two years of silence.
Kay, that's it!
Disclaimer: Looked out my window to wish on a star for the boys as a present, but it's too damn cloudy out. Not mine, no profit, no infringement intended. Boo.
Dean's got more scars than I remember him having before I left.
I shouldn't be surprised. After all, it's not like he went into stasis or anything while I was gone, and came back into the world just in time to scoop me up from Stanford. He was still hunting then, I'm sure, with Dad.
I shouldn't feel guilty about the new additions to my brother's collections. The job is dangerous, and he knows that just as much as I do. Injuries happen, quite often actually.
And yet…I can't help but wonder.
There's an angry jagged one across his left forearm. It's faded, a faint gray that's difficult to see unless the light hits it correctly, but I can still see it. I wonder how he got it. It looks kind of like a bite mark, since it runs around his arm a bit. It's almost patterned, like a faded gray tattoo.
I want to ask him about it, but I don't. That period of our lives is very taboo, a time brought up in passing jokes and hurried explanations. Like we can only glance at it, never put it under too much scrutiny. Those three, almost four years have torn one hell of a rift between us, and I for one am not looking to poke at the wounds we've just started to stitch back together again.
It still bugs me, though, seeing those marks on him. I want to know the story behind them, want to know how they happened. What bastard did that to him. How Dad managed to patch him up, how well he was taken care of.
Or if he was alone.
He's mentioned hunting on his own, so I can imagine what he might have gotten himself into. Still, the thought of Dean sitting alone in a hotel room with a bottle of jack in one hand and a bandage soaked with holy water in the other is more than enough to turn my stomach.
There's a huge one running the length of his back. The scar's relatively skinny for such a large injury, though, so someone had to have stitched it up well. Was it Dad? A doctor, a nurse? Another hunter? I'll never know, I guess.
Then there's the one over his shoulder. It cuts down across his chest, and it's an ugly mark. Raised and white and stands out like a sore thumb whenever Dean has his shirt off. How old is it? How did it happen? Dammit, the words are so often right on the tip of my tongue, and I'm too afraid to let them out.
I try not to make it obvious that I'm staring, but it's Dean, so he probably knows. I wonder if he knows how curious I am about them. I think about figuring out what I was doing when he got them, where I was at the time. Maybe he thought about me then; Dad's a great hunter and can patch a wound up like nobody's business, but Dean tends to calm down the most when I'm fixing him up. It's always been that way with us.
I wonder if he knows that his scars make me cringe sometimes, thinking about the insanity of the life we lead and how badly I want us both to get away with it.
Most of all, I wonder if he knows how guilty I feel, that I wasn't there to watch his back when the monster came after it.
Would it have mattered? Would things have been different if I was there, could I have stopped it? Those are the questions I want to ask the most. But I don't, because there's no way to know the answer.
Or maybe I don't want to know the answer.
Every once in a while he opens his mouth when he catches me staring, like he wants to just get it over with and talk about it, but he never has. Who knows, maybe one day we'll be able to finally lay it all out on the table, to look back at those wounds and scars and try our best to make them fade.
I hope so.
I know Sammy sees them. It's not like I'm shy around my brother, so he gets a pretty good view of the new group of scars I support. I'm not ashamed of them, though. The job's dangerous, he knows that as much as I do. Shit happens.
In a way, they're a bit like proud battle scars. Testaments to the war my family's been fighting, to the battles we've won and lost. Yeah, scars of warriors. I like the sound of that.
Chicks dig scars, anyway, so I've got stories to tell. All my little tattoos etched across my skin. They never hear the real stories, but still, it's a conversation piece to die for.
Sam's got them to, though I sure as hell tried my hardest to make sure he didn't. It's not the old ones he looks at though, the ones I got when the three of us were hunting. No, it's the other ones, the ones with the stories he doesn't know. And over three years is a long time to gather up a new collection.
I know he wants to ask about them, but he doesn't. That's good, because I don't want to talk about them. Talking about them means talking about those years gone by, the ones we don't bring up. It's taken a lot to bury that hatchet, so I for one have no desire to dig the damn thing back up again.
I think about them sometimes, though. There's this one, on my left forearm…nasty little bastard. Took over forty stitches to close it up, and the little bugger still stings if I pull a punch the wrong way. Courtesy of a keelut's maw…friggen thing latched on and shook me like a chew toy.
That bastard was strong. It took out Dad after flinging me into a tree and almost got Caleb by the throat before we managed to take it out. We needed a little down time to recuperate after that one.
I'm glad Sammy wasn't around for that hunt.
The one on my back was pretty awful. That was a solo hunt, but it's pretty tough to patch up a wound you can't see, so I had to head in for backup. That sweet girl from the clinic managed a pretty decent repair job, but the damn thing got infected on me and what should have been a little nothing turned into four days at a hospital under a paper-thin fake insurance card.
Phew, Dad was pissed when he got that call.
Then there's the one on my right shoulder, cutting down over my chest. It's still got a pretty sharp outline even after all these years, but I guess something like that takes longer to fade.
That's one I try not to think about. It was my first solo hunt after Sam left, when Dad kind of lost it and just took off, leaving me with a case and a cache of weapons. It involves one very pissed off spirit, a careless mistake on my part, a messy salt and burn and a ton of blood, a stumble back to the hotel room, and from there it's a little fuzzy. Waking up at Bobby's house is the next clear memory.
When it does come up, though, that hunt makes me think of Sam. Maybe it's because the kids that thing was taking were all about Sam's age at the time. Maybe it's because when I got to confronting the son of a bitch, it was standing over its latest victim, and that one had Sammy's hair, and his eyes.
Maybe it's because Bobby told me I was screaming for my little brother for two days, out of my head with fever and fear. Like I said, I try not to think about that one so often.
I can feel his eyes on them a lot of the time. I wonder what he's thinking, other than curiosity over how I managed to get them.
I wonder if he knows that every stitch that was laid into me made me think of him a bit. Sammy's got unique stitches, and who figured those big ape hands would be able to make them so small and neat. Anyone else, even Dad…they can't really compare, I guess.
We're hanging out in the motel room, and I can feel the exact moment when his eyes lift from his book to stare at me. There's at least one scar I know he can't see and can't ask about; the dark one on the top left side of my head. Split open against a tree during a wendigo hunt with Dad. One of the rare times he's taken me to a hospital, but completely unconscious and unresponsive, and blood leaking out of one's ears usually constitutes a trip for us.
I was pretty delirious during that little escapade. Kept calling out for Sam to bring me waffles, for some odd reason. Cried into Dad's shoulder when he told me that Sam was gone, friggen head injuries and messing with people's emotions.
Alright, so maybe there are two scars he can't see. Not all scars are on the outside, after all.
Maybe one day we'll bring it up, hash it out finally over the time we spent apart. I can hear about his life and he can hear about mine, for the most part; there are a few things a guy just needs to keep private, after all. Until then, well, these guys get to stay silent, my proud little tattoos.