Wild is the Wind 1/9 (John/OFC Adult)
Title: Wild is the Wind
Author: Slaysvamps
Pairing: John/OFC
Characters: John, Dean, Sam, OC
Warnings: Angst, Adult Situations & Language
Stats: 9 chapters, 10,642 words total, 1416 this chapter
Spoilers: IMTOD.
Complete: Yes, posted one chapter at a time.
Disclaimer: If John Winchester belonged to me, I think my husband would be mighty upset. Of course, if I owned the rights to Supernatural, we’d have lots more money so he might not care…
Summary: The Winchester brothers go looking for answers to questions about their father’s past.
Notes: Beta’d by my best friend lenastockton who so far refuses to revel in the world that is LJ. Text for cut is from Bon Jovi: Wild is the Wind.
Chapters ~ One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine ~
~ Opal’s Bar, August 2007 ~
Josh Reardon was sitting at the bar, nursing a tall bottle of cheap beer. He’d been drinking the same bottle for an hour now, watching the rest of the barroom through the mirror on the wall in front of him. He ignored his own reflection, his blonde hair and blue eyes, tall frame that usually made him the tallest man in the room, but not tonight.
Tonight the tallest man was sitting in a booth along the wall, knocking them back with a man who looked enough like him to be his brother. They’d only been in the bar a few minutes when the older and shorter of the two walked up to the bar.
“Hey, don’t I know you?” the man said with a smile. “Didn’t you used to work at that motel just out of town?”
Josh smiled a little. “The Tumbleweed. My family owned it until a couple of months ago.”
“My friend and me, we stayed there a few times.”
Josh looked at the man directly for the first time, taking in the green eyes and short brown hair. “Yeah, I guess I’ve seen you before.”
“Hey, why don’t you come have a drink with us?” the man suggested. “Talk about old times. I’ll buy you a beer.”
With a shrug Josh drained his bottle and gestured to the bartender for another. He followed the man back to his table and sat down to talk. It was a few minutes into the conversation when the taller, younger man spoke.
“Hey, don’t you have a sister or something?” he asked in an offhanded fashion. “Where’s she living now that the motel sold?”
“Couldn’t say,” Josh murmured, gazing into his beer. “She got it in her head that she wanted out and as soon as the papers were signed, she went. Haven’t seen her since. Couldn’t believe she wanted to sell it, really, considering how bad she wanted to stay all those years.”
“I guess we didn’t know her all that well,” the older man replied. “What can you tell us about her?”
~ Tumbleweed Motel, December, 1982 ~
The first time Emma saw her dark stranger was the day she’d saved a young boy’s life. Her parents owned a motel just outside of Redding, Iowa, just off I-169. The tourist trade wasn’t enough to make them rich, but it was a living, and in the late months of 1982 it was more than most people in the area had. At seven-years-old she wasn’t much aware of the economy or politics, but she knew that her family was better off than a lot of her friends.
The boy had dirty blonde hair and was wearing footed Spiderman pajamas. He’d gotten away from his parents somehow, and there was no adult in sight as he made his way along the side of a black 1967 Impala that was parked in front of room 17.
Emma saw the boy and was looking around for his parents when she heard the truck approaching. She knew from experience that many guests didn’t pay much attention to the 10 mph sign her dad had posted and this truck was no exception. As the boy stepped away from the back end of the Impala she started running, hoping to reach him before the truck did. She barely got to him in time.
Afterward she would never remember the moment she reached the boy, never remember grabbing him around the waist and throwing her weight to one side. She did remember, however, the bite of gravel into her elbow and leg and the impact with the ground that forced the air from her lungs.
The boy started crying and tried to wriggle from her arms, but Emma held on to him tightly. Though she was fairly certain the danger was passed, she needed a moment for her brain to tell her arms it was okay to let him go.
“Dean!”
She looked up at the deep sound into the face of the man who would later haunt her dreams. Dean’s daddy was tall and handsome, with dark hair and eyes that were filled with worry. The boy wriggled from her arms and ran to his father, who scooped him up and hugged him fiercely.
“You okay, son?” the man asked.
Dean threw his arms around his father’s neck and nodded against his skin while Emma concentrated on learning how to breathe again.
“John, did you find him?” A beautiful woman with long blond hair walked out of room number 17. When she saw the man holding the boy, she smiled in relief. “Dean, how in the world did you get out here?”
John handed his son to the woman, who cradled him against the side of her slightly protruding belly. Emma knew the belly meant a baby, because her mom had one just like it.
“I think he’s had a bit of a scare, Mary,” John told the woman. “Take him inside.”
Mary glanced at Emma, who was still lying on the ground, but nodded and took her son inside the motel room.
John crouched beside the young girl. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
Emma looked up into his dark eyes, not sure if she should be afraid him or not. Her parents had told her again and again not to talk to any of the guests unless one of them were around too, but John’s gentle smile and dark eyes were enough to ease her fears. “Yeah,” she gasped breathily.
“Just try to breathe,” he soothed as he reached out to brush the long blond hair from her blue eyes. “Can you tell me if you hurt anywhere?”
“My arm,” she replied a voice that was barely over a whisper. The tightness in her chest was easing up now and she was beginning to breathe normally. “And my leg, I think.”
“I don’t think it’s too bad,” he told her with a smile as he pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his worn jeans and bent his dark head to dab at the blood on her wounds. “We’ll get you cleaned up here, all right?”
Ignoring the sting of the cotton on her injuries, Emma studied the stranger’s face. He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen, even more handsome than her daddy. “You’ve got holes in your face,” she whispered, reaching up to touch the deep indentation on his cheek. She was surprised at the warmth of his skin, the feel of his whiskers beneath her finger.
“I suppose I do,” he replied with a smile that deepened his dimples. “I think you’ll be all right now. Are you staying here with your parents?”
“No, I live here.” She scrambled carefully to her feet, her face now level with his.
“You’ve got quick reflexes, sweetheart,” he told her. “You saved my son’s life.”
Blushing, Emma looked down and ran the toe of her shoe through the gravel at her feet. “I just saw him, is all,” she murmured.
“I appreciate you looking out for the boy. He’s quite a handful sometimes.”
She nodded, looking up into his dark eyes. “You’re welcome.”
“Emma!”
The girl turned to see her mom bearing down on them, a worried look on her face. “I gotta go,” she told the dark stranger. “Maybe I’ll see you later.” She hurried to meet her mom, telling her quickly what had happened.
When she turned to look back John had gone back into his room. The next morning when she went outside to look the Impala was gone, and so was John Winchester.
~ Opal’s Bar, August 2007 ~
Josh paused long enough to finish off his beer, prompting the younger man to gesture for the waitress to bring another round.
“I remember that,” the older man murmured. When the younger man gave him a sharp look, he added, “I mean, I had something like that happen to me too, when I was three or four.”
“Dad always said that Emma watched out for that black car for years,” Josh continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I remember when that car came back, a few years after we remodeled and a couple of months after our mom died. Played some with the boys if I remember right, but it wasn’t much fun. The older boy was real protective of the other one, Sammy, I think his name was.”
The men across from him exchanged glances, but didn’t say a word.
TBC