Scars
Disclaimer: Supernatural is the property of Mr. Kripke and his associated TV network. I'm simply borrowing the characters for my own entertainment and will put them back when I'm done with them in more or less the same condition in which I found them. Promise.
Notes: I'm a latecomer to the Supernatural fandom, have only seen bits, and I've yet to see any of season Five. I just couldn't resist playing anyway. Consider this my first tentative toe-dipping into writing in this fandom.
Spoilers for, uh, seasons one through three?
Comments and criticism much appreciated.
The slashes across his face, a souvenir from a rather typical Winchester reunion, have healed completely, and amazingly enough without scarring. That's probably due to the plastic surgeon's work, though hauling him there was all thanks to Dean's insistence, couched as it was in the usual brotherly ribbing; not the face, dude. The face we get help on. I'm already the handsome one and you need all the help you can get. Privately, when he saw the surgeon loading suture material almost too fine to see into some very fancy needle-holders, Sam had had to grant his brother was right; they couldn't have done this in a dingy hotel room.
The healed shotgun scatter marks over his hip are older, and much more prosaic in origin, if no less painful in acquisition. Rock salt hurts like a bitch, and on some level he'd known that when he'd decorated his brother with a similar pattern in the asylum, he just hadn't cared, thanks to Ellicot. Still, they've grown with him, a series of white splotchy stars that actually look substantially worse than they did when they - and he - were smaller. A growth spurt will do that to you, stretching out keratin and splaying white dots of collagenous scar tissue into smears. He doesn't like to think about that hunt; he was twelve, and reedy, and in the way. They're useful, though, those marks; a physical reminder of the exact point at which he decided he wanted out. No more hunting, no more hurting things, no more trying to protect things that were simply wrong-place, wrong-time.
There's a scar that runs down the middle-left of his chest. It's a leftover from an attempt by an enraged would-be Mayan deity to carve out his heart. Sam likes to think Dean doesn't know about that one, but personally? he wouldn't take that bet. He hadn't taken off his top in front of his brother for exactly that reason since Stanford, but you can't get inked through a T shirt. Especially after the tattoo artist grumbled about trying to fit the anti-possession talisman around it. Still, his big brother hasn't asked - or at least, not with words - and for that he's grateful. In the face of Dean's pervasive older brother concern, he can maintain it's fine, he's fine, and that there's nothing to worry about.
And there isn't, not really.
Perhaps Dean thinks it's a souvenir from one of the times Sam had to hunt solo. He was on his own for four months when the Trickster killed Dean on a Wednesday, and it wasn't like self-preservation was particularly high on his list of priorities. He still hasn't told Dean everything about that time, and doesn't know if he ever can. Between the Mayan and the Trickster - twice - Sam figures he's just about got a hat-trick on ticking off minor deities, and he really doesn't want to move into the major leagues.
The chest scar actually predates that. He's not sure if Dean realises that either, but he wouldn't put it past the older man; Dean has always been perceptive, and particularly so when it concerns his kid brother.
Sam's just lucky Dean gave him space after the bloody Mary job, took him at face value and left it more or less alone when he said "You're my brother, and I'd die for you, but some things I have to keep to myself."
Dean probably figured it'd all come out in the end, and it did, mostly. The development of psychic abilities and a demon taking an unhealthy interest in your kid brother does tend to trump the circumstances surrounding an old, completely healed, injury in the importance stakes, and Dean's always lived more in the here-and-now.
So it takes Sam completely by surprise when he comes out of the only somewhat dingy bathroom of yet another eminently forgettable hotel to see his brother sitting on the bed, idly sharpening the machete, and covertly watching him like he's going to vanish.
"What?" totally attuned to the elder's moods, the tension thrumming through Dean's shoulders has him on an automatic high alert. Something's wrong, he thinks, something bad. Because hunting relaxes his big brother, drops him into a loose-limbed flexibility that just makes him look like the supreme predator - hunter - he can be. Dean only ever tightens up when he's worried about family, and he only ever tenses that much when it's Sam.
Dean's tone is deceptively light, easy. "Sammy," He starts, ever so gently, and Sam knows by his tone, by the way he uses the nickname, that this is going to be bad. "I just got an email from Ash. Seems he managed to crack the security on Gordon's laptop." Inwardly, Sam grimaces. He'd been the one to insist that they take the computer, that the cops could make a case without whatever files were on it, and Dean had agreed; the last thing they needed was documentation of Gordon's research on Sam wending its way into the hands of the feds. There were too many flags in too many systems for the Winchester boys as it was.
"He sent me a couple of glamour shots. Film clip, too." Dean pauses, then spins the laptop around so the screen faces his kid brother. The images are several years old going by the date-time imprints in the bottom corner, and grainy, probably from a security camera. One of those cheap ones that the higher-end businesses who fancy they have nothing to hide - or police holding cells where they know they have plenty to cover up - tend to install. The tall, lanky man with the floppy dark hair could be anyone; even without the poor quality of the film, there are no clear face shots, and hunting knives like the one the figure is toting are hardly unique. The second man, equally long-haired though obviously fairer in colouring, is just as indistinguishable.
The woman slinging the rifle with the comfortable competence of years of experience is tall and willowy, and an obvious knockout as she turns to the camera. Blond hair spills from a high ponytail to swirl around a cherubic face, an ever so slightly feral grin distorting lush lips.
Jess.
Unconsciously, Sam's hand reaches up to his chest, fingers running across the scar there. It hurts so much that for a minute he wonders if he can't feel the stone knife carving him up again.
"So," Dean continues in that disturbingly gentle tone, "you wanna tell me what you did on your summer vacation?"