title: The Mark
pairing: Sam/Dean
rating: NC-17
summary: Sam has a hard time seeing someone else’s mark on Dean. This one’s for rozabellalove who’s enjoying S4 and has Castiel’s handprint on her mind.
Getting his brother back after thinking he’d lost him forever to Hell was a miracle. A real live actual miracle, involving a real live actual Angel of the Lord. Sam and Dean had started to develop a close relationship with Castiel, and both considered him a true friend.
The ups and downs of their sexual relationship were as turbulent as the rest of their lives. There had been times when the feeling was romantic and sweet, then times when it was almost brutal. They’d had grudge-fucks, makeup sex, all night marathons, quick and dirty handjobs in the car. And then sometimes they’d had nothing. They slept in separate beds and touched each other only in anger or by accident. Things changed between them all the time, but there was one thing that would not ever change - Sam was one seriously possessive lover. If he had to pick one word that passed his lips more often than any other when he and Dean were in their most intimate moments, that word would be mine .
Sam loved leaving marks on Dean, bite marks on his chest, bruises shaped like his fingers on his thighs, fingernail scratches across his back. But they all faded over time, some more slowly than others. The only person who’d made a mark on Dean that was permanent was Castiel. That handprint on Dean’s shoulder made Sam crazy sometimes.
He was grateful to Castiel for everything he’d done, most grateful for him having done what left the handprint in the first place, pulling Dean out of Hell and bringing him back to Sam, back where Dean belonged. But looking at the mark left behind, as irrational as it may sound, made Sam feel like he was sharing Dean. Like someone else had given him something that Sam himself never could.
Some nights Sam stared at that handprint while Dean slept, trying to think of ways he could cover it up. Get rid of it. Never have to fucking look at it again. He mulled over every scenario he could come up with, several times over, but it couldn’t be covered and it couldn’t be destroyed. Sam was smart, analytical and exceptionally creative, but after turning the possibilities over in his jealous brain countless times, he came to the undeniable conclusion that the mark was there to stay. He wasn’t sure if even Castiel had the ability to remove it, but he’d never ask, because his sense of gratitude (and the fact that he was still more than a little bit in awe any time he was in Castiel’s presence) toward the angel overpowered even his almost obsessive need to see that print disappear. Just barely. Still, the last thing Sam wanted to do was insult one of God’s own angels.
Never one to give up easily (Sam called it “determined”, John and Dean had always called it “stubborn”, and Bobby generally used terms like “thickheaded”), he started planning a way to have his own permanent mark etched into Dean’s skin. If he couldn’t get rid of Castiel’s handprint, he’d have to live with this instead. He spent hours looking over possibilities on his laptop until he finally found the perfect image.
Honestly, he’d expected more of a fight from Dean when he brought it up, even though he’d strategically waited until Dean was half-comatose from having been fucked into a wall and then getting most of his brain sucked out through his cock. He had always been able to read Sam like a book, and he knew what was lurking underneath the surface whenever his brother’s eyes rested on his shoulder where the handprint was left behind. To Dean, the mark was a comfort, but he understood Sam’s nature better than anyone and knew there was no way for it not to bother Sam. Dean teased him about being jealous and possessive but underneath it all, he loved it and there was never anything he wanted more than to make his baby brother happy.
Token resistance was required, however, after all, Dean liked to make it fun, liked to make Sam feel like he’d won something, even if it was something he would have given freely without any negotiations or arguments.
So, the next time they were in a town big enough to have a decent tattoo studio, the two of them walked through the doors hand in hand with the little picture ready for the artist to copy onto Dean’s skin. Sam sat next to Dean as the ink bled through the spot he’d chosen, just inside the sharp jut of his brother’s right hipbone.
He decided that it was the most wonderful sight he’d ever seen in his life. It would be there forever in a place where no else would ever see, the perfect little hiragana さ, the sound of the letter “S”.