Chapter Text
He vaguely remembers meeting you for the first time, like looking through foggy glass. Your outline is blurry, your form different in a detached sort of way because his mind doesn’t filter the past quite right while you’re in the room.
You’re wearing a night shirt, two-sizes too big, and that’s basically it. You’re barefoot, and bare-legged, nothing covering you except for Dean’s AC/DC t-shirt, worn soft through many washes and years of use.
In his mind’s eye, he doesn’t see them clearly, they’re distorted, twisted shapes of stark black and mismatched bright spots on your skin.
You’ve got your hair piled up in a messy bun, strands escaping in the back to tickle your neck and around your ears in a pleasant display of unruliness.
He knows that the longer you’re exposed to something, you eventually build a resistance to it. Or if you see something often enough, it kind of just disappears, like his freckles. He doesn’t see those anymore when he looks in the mirror. He honestly forgets he has them. But that’s not the case with you.
You hum a little under your breath, lick across your morning-dry lips and almost blink when your tongue rolls over metal near the corner of your lower lip. The things you forget you have when you just wake up…you breathe in the bitter aroma of coffee and curl your hands tighter around the mug, missing the drop of Dean’s eyelids when you do.
But with you, he sees everything, and it drives him goddamn nuts. Those little studs in your ears, round silver, and jet black on your lobes, both pairs catching the overhead light in a way that seems to say ‘look at me!’.
You had a bit of a late start this morning, and would’ve already been dressed, but you refused to drop your ritual of coffee and bagels, and sacrificed modesty to do it. Typically, you wouldn’t leave your room less than ¾ dressed, but you weren’t no quitter. You were going to have coffee and bagels, even if you had to deal with Dean staring at you in your peripherals.
As if that wasn’t enough, the cord of a necklace around your throat demanded his gaze, and he followed it to your collar-bone. The collar of the shirt you stole from him dipped a little lower, and he could sweep his eyes along the entire length of your collar-bone, mouth drying when he peeked a few letters clinging to a space he just couldn’t focus on with purpose.
You hadn’t spoken since you mumbled a good morning at him, and neither he to you, which was uncommon. You and Dean could talk easier than old ladies given the topics of coupons and knitting, so the silence that followed made you curious, but not enough to break it.
He wasn’t even sure why, maybe it was because it was you. He’d seen them before on other women, and he had shrugged them off, not finding them sexy or repulsive. He was just unaffected by them, no affinity or disposition to them. So, he was driven half up a wall by how hooked he was because of the ones on you.
You tap your fingers on the rim of your mug, rings clinking quietly; thin, simple bands of silver and gold shining on your middle and ring fingers. They weren’t expensive, or overly fancy, or clunky, and that was exactly what you wanted from them. You like jewelry, but not anything that went higher than 8 dollars.
And they were everywhere on you. Garnering his attention like a moth to flame. On the back of one of your hands is a dark purple tiger lily, edges of a couple of petals sliding between your knuckles to taper off into the webbing of your fingers. Smaller, flowers pop up around the web near your thumb, and then twist down to trickle under your wrist. He isn’t a botanist, but he thinks the black flowers are hibiscus. On your other hand…
The coffee’s too hot, and you hiss in irritation. You place the mug next to you on the counter, and tap your fingers on the metal, silently begging your bagels to hurry up.
Is a bright, gold-orange bohemian style sun, thin chains, and beaded strings wrapping around rays and draping over the main body of the tattoo. The color of the beads varies in color, but stay true to the primaries. On the underside of that wrist you have the compass, primary intercardinal directions pointed out by two small knives. They aren’t big, but the blades were big enough that the tattoo artist could detail in enochian symbols.
It’s like he’s staring through you he’s looking at you so hard, and you force your muscles lax against the spiral of worry working its way up your spine like a creeping snake. You wonder if you had done something to irritate him as you peer at your grey painted nails in fake interest.
He can’t remember the last time he saw your hair up…maybe it was when you first met. He didn’t notice it then, perhaps because he wasn’t obsessed with finding them like he was now. On the back of your neck you’ve got the Greek symbol for Mother-Maiden-Crone, just below your hairline, the bold black ink standing out against the tone of your skin. Eye candy, that’s what your tattoos are to him and he’s half-starved. He resists the urge to tug at the collar of his grey t-shirt, and continues his visual conquest…
Had you done something that put him on edge? Maybe you’d over-stepped a line last week when you borrowed one of his shirts without asking. Coincidentally, it happened to be the one you were wearing, and you shift a little in discomfort.
There’s one on your right thigh, and he can’t see all of it because his shirt falls right on the middle, but he can see enough to know what it is. A couple of dice, red, in mid-roll and behind them are thin lines of the beginning of letters or perhaps numbers, he doesn’t know. They disappear under the hem of your shirt (he’s just decided you can keep his shirt, because it looks better on you than it ever has on him.) like a subtle tease, and this time he scratches at his collar bone.
The coffee has cooled down enough for you to take little sips and you do, anything to take off your peripheral awareness of Dean. He hasn’t stopped staring at you, it’s like you can feel his eyes as they roam over you, imprint and press sharply like the needle of a tattoo gun, and you aha in realization.
You turn, and Dean’s gaze drops to the backs of your thighs where words are swirled in delicate scrawl. One of them says Fate, the other says Coincidence. What he wouldn’t give to nibble on those words, suck the skin red around them…
You wonder if he’s got a thing for tattoos, he didn’t seem to be over-interested in them. You can’t remember him ever asking about yours since you started hunting with him and Sam. Then again, your wardrobe consisted of jeans and leather jackets, and you hardly ever wore your hair down, so maybe he’d always been curious but hadn’t been given enough to become boldly inquisitive.
When you first walked in ten minutes ago, he had caught a glimpse of words on the inside of your thighs, but it was so fleeting, he couldn’t read them. He only caught the direction in which they ran. Up. He coughed a little with the knowledge, it broke the silence with abruptness, put his tactless desire on display.
“You alright?” you ask, peeking over your shoulder at him, and he manages a tight smile in your direction, intent on keeping his eyes above your collar-bone. Any lower and he’d be leaving stiff-paced and pissed.
He had to make conversation, change the atmosphere because it seemed too humid and electric for a quiet morning sit-down. “So, you enjoy your coma, Sleeping Beauty?”
You hum in mild amusement but nod all the same. “You should try taking one some time. Maybe you wouldn’t space out so much,” you suggest limply, no intention or direction behind your words, but he tilts, face a hard mask for a comment so dismissive…
“I don’t space out.” He protests, too quick, too sharp, and you swivel to lean back against the counter so you can stare at him.
“Then you were staring at me if you weren’t spacing out,” you challenge, eyebrow arched in silent question. Seconds tick by as he looks at you and you look back, nothing in the air except for things he won’t admit, things you don’t need to hear to understand. His hesitation is enough, and you smile, cheeks pinched high with something tight, and you think it’s victory.
His gaze shifts, toward the coffee maker as he ponders, weighs options and consequences while you grin from across the room, tattoos winking and laughing at him. His peripherals tell him you don’t hold all the cards however, and he relaxes with the knowledge.
“I was,” he says, with a shrug, and meets your eyes again. Your grin has slipped to a lesser degree though your eyes still sparkle at him, boastfulness deepening the color of your irises. But your expression jumps when he stands, and he stands slow, which makes your lapse in smugness all the sweeter for him.
“What?” you ask, genuinely curious, not surprised, because he half-answered. “Staring or spacing out?” you clarify, while simultaneously forcing him to claim responsibility, step into the line of fire. Your simple lining of words an attempt to gain an upper-hand again, because you somehow feel like your grip is slipping.
He pads across the room, worn soles of his work boots thumping lowly, and your stomach muscles tighten with each step. He’s almost chest to chest with you, and you crane your neck to look at him, finding those pretty greens steady and sure on you.
“I was staring.” He says and it doesn’t sound like admittance, it sounds like a declaration, like a claim, and your bravado stutters under the strength of his sudden swagger, because you know that look. You’d seen it a million times at bars when he would charm women into his bed for the night. He was hitting on you.
And it makes your bones vibrate to realize that he isn’t feeding you some lines. He’s being honest, not for the effect of getting you flustered, but just because he wants you to know. And that has you flustered, the irony not lost on you.
“And you know something?” he asks, but his tone suggests he doesn’t need an answer, because he knows you don’t know this something. Your eyes scream a question at him, a question he can feel because of your proximity, and he’s the smug one now because he realizes the attraction is mutual. And not just that, but curiosity as well, it’s heavy and loud in your dilated pupils. You want to know about him, even though he doesn’t have tattoos to peak your interest, you still want to know.
Instead of talking, telling you what you don’t know, he shows you. He leans forward, a large wiry arm reaching past your slender form. The sound you hear behind you dislodges the axis your cockiness spun on.
Springs grind and squeak, and catch, and a click tells you all you need to know. There’s a buzz as wires heat up, and he grins at you, emerald eyes glinting.
And then he turns on his heel and marches out like a proud lion, leaving you gaping and embarrassed, and confused. How he managed to turn the tables with a kitchen appliance is beyond you.
But you’re determined to win this game, after all, you have things he likes to stare at. And he hasn’t seen them all yet. You pick up your coffee, stare at the doors he left through and think about the rest of your day.
Your bagels pop behind you, but you don’t hear them.
You’re not hungry anymore.
They sit in the toaster for the rest of the day, forgotten, until a puppy-eyed moose decides he’s in the mood for peanut butter toast, and has to throw them away with a disapproving frown.