Counting Scars:
"Damn it Damien, you're cheating!" Dean yelled throwing his cards down on the table.
"I am not cheating, I am using my God given gift at poker to kick your ass." Caleb replied.
"Bullshit, reading minds is illegal and you know it."
"Give me one rule book that states that and I will give you all of your money back." Dean scoffed.
"Yeah, I'll just have to find The Poker Handbook for Annoying Psycho Psychics." Caleb laughed, and began to shuffle the deck of cards again. Sam came out of the bathroom a few minutes later wearing a pair of jeans and threw a tshirt at Dean's head.
"This is yours, must have gotten mixed in with my stuff the last time I did laundry."
"This is my AC/DC shirt, I've been looking for this for weeks." Dean said eyeing his brother.
"Well then, try doing your own laundry for a change." Sam walked over to his own duffle bag and began rifling through it for something to wear. Caleb watched Sam; sometimes it was hard to believe that the man in front of him was the same baby he had met at the farm so many years ago. Now Sam was a force to be reckoned with, solid muscle and new how to kill most monsters that roamed the country. He saw the top of three jagged scars poking out over the waistband of Sam's jeans. Caleb knew it extended down onto Sam's thigh, three long jagged claw marks. He remembered how that had happened, Sam was sixteen and was attacked by a Wendigo trying to protect Caleb, who he saw die in a vision, not that he knew that's what is was at the time. He had ended up with a pretty bad infection, so Mackland didn't leave the stitches in, and although it saved his life it left him with one of the more obvious scars that Sam had. Sam had lots of scars, they all did, they were like a hunters badge of honor, but that one in particular tore at Caleb's heart, because he always felt he should have been able to stop it, Sam should never have taken that attack.
"You know Damien, if you would like me to leave you and Samantha alone, just let me know, and leave a sock on the door knob or something… or you could just stop checking out my little brother, he is barely out of the jailbait phase." Dean said. Caleb reached over and punched him in the shoulder.
"I wasn't checking him out you ass, I was checking out Mac's handy work."
"What are you talking about?" Sam asked, finally picking out a tshirt.
"The souvenir from the Wendigo attack seven years ago." Sam looked down at the marks and quickly put on his tshirt.
"Oh, that yeah good times." Sam ground out and grabbed three beers from the fridge sitting down across from Caleb.
"Which brings up a question." Caleb said opening his beer, Sam quirked his eyebrow at him and Dean seemed to be listening intently.
"What did you tell Jess about all those scars?" Sam seemed to tense, but at the same time smiled, like he didn't know if he really wanted to talk about Jess or not. It had been over a year, but Dean rarely asked about the four years they were apart, so Sam never talked about it either. Dean didn't like to think about the fact that Sam left him because what they had wasn't enough, and Sam didn't like to think about the four years that almost gave him a new life.
"You've got more miles on you then I do Reaves, you tell me." Sam replied.
"That may be true kid, but my relationships consist of one night stands, and relationships that don't last longer then a Mento, not to mention when you are meeting girls in sketchy back road bars, they would be more freaked out if I wasn't covered in scars. You lived with a girl for two years, acted all domestic and shit, she must of asked you at least once where they all came from. Normal people don't have as many scars as you did at twenty, and some of them couldn't of been easy to explain away." Sam seemed to think on that for a minute, it was true compared to the rest of his friends at Stanford he covered in scars, and most of them were hunting injuries from creatures that were supposed to be myths. Dean was sitting back watching Sam out of the corner of his eye, waiting to get some kind of insight into how Sam managed to fit in with main stream society, Sam and Caleb had both left and went to college, got their taste of normal, but Dean had always stayed behind.
"She didn't ask at first, didn't make a big deal out of them when she saw them, or touched them. Honestly I think I was more freaked out then her, but every once in a while I saw her looking at them when she thought I wasn't looking, almost like she was studying them. About a year after we met she asked what the bite marks on my shoulder were from and I told her I got bit by a dog as a kid." Dean snorted.
"Did she actually buy that?" Sam laughed softly; he seemed to be someplace else, sucked into the memories of being a quiet student and of being with the girl he loved.
"Not even a little bit, she told me I was an idiot for actually believing she would buy that." Caleb smirked, he had met Jess once in a coffee shop in San Francisco, and he really had liked her. "She didn't buy that I was just a clumsy kid either." Dean frowned and narrowed his eyes.
"What did she think exactly?"
"What everyone seemed to think when we were growing up and we had injuries that we had no explanation for."
"She thought someone beat the shit out of you growing up." Caleb said. Social Services had been called on the Winchesters more then once over the years, because Sam or Dean had been seen with bruises or cuts and were tight lipped about how it had happened.
"Yeah, she dropped a bunch of abuse hotline pamphlets on my desk one day and told me I needed to deal with my childhood trauma. Unfortunately this time, she thought she had someone to pin it on."
"Please don't tell me she thought Dad did it." Sam looked up guiltily.
"I didn't talk about him, and she knew I didn't talk to him, isn't that hard to figure out how she would have drawn that conclusion."
"And you let her believe that? Jesus Christ Sam, I know you and Dad didn't get along but that isn't an excuse to let your girlfriend keep thinking that he beat the shit out of you, that he hurt you enough to leave scars like that." Sam looked at Dean hard and shook his head.
"If you honestly think I would do that, you don't know me nearly as well as you think you do." Dean flinched, he knew somewhere in the back of his mind Sam would never say that about their father, but his first response to jump to Johns defense.
"You're right, I'm sorry." Sam nodded.
"Honestly, that was the first time me and her really talked about Dad. I told her he was just a guy who lost his wife and did the best he could to raise his kids. I told her, he gave us everything he had, taught us everything we know, and he gave a family, even if it was a little unorthodox. I told her about Mom, and you, and pretty much everybody, and then she asked why if we were so close I didn't talk to you guys anymore, and I told her that me and Dad had a fight and I told him I was never coming back." Caleb frowned.
"You took the blame? Why?" Caleb asked.
"Give me some credit Caleb, at eighteen I was stubborn but I wasn't stupid. I knew my Dad said it out of anger, and I also knew that I had family to go back to if I would just pick up the phone and call, I made the choice to leave."
"What you said was out of anger to Sammy…" Dean said.
"Doesn't matter, anyway after that mishap, she never asked about them again, so either she still secretly thought it was Dad, or maybe she just didn't want to know, she knew I was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, maybe that was enough for her." The three sat in silence for awhile each caught up in memories, before Dean spoke.
"I'm sorry Sam, I think I really would have liked her." Sam smiled and finished the rest of his beer.
"Yeah, she would have liked you guys too."