Supernatural smut!fic: Five Ways John Winchester Didn't Get Laid, part two (2/5)
Five Ways John Winchester Didn’t Get Laid (2/5)
Author:
starhawk2005
Date: August 2006
Pairing: John Winchester/OFC
Rating: Adult (18+), for sex. Duh.
Summary: John stumbles onto a new hunting job, and gets a little more ‘action’ than he bargained for. Hee.
Disclaimer: I’d love to own John, but I suspect I can’t afford him on my own. Anyone want to pool their funds with me?
Please note that “
starhawk2005 cannot be held responsible for any brain melting, spontaneous combusting, or ovary exploding that occurs before/during/after reading this fanfiction. Thank you.” (credit to
_vicodin for the detailed legal disclaimer. *snerk*).
Beta: Many thanks and inappropriate touching to
medicinal_mirth for her beta services.
Author’s Notes: Not spoilery.
Missed chapter 1 (Vampire!John)? Click here.
Feedback is appreciated and encourages me to write more for this fandom.
“Didja hear the latest?” one patron jokes to another at the bar behind John. “About that crazy Smith broad, and her ‘haunted house’?”
John pauses in the act of raising a beer bottle to his lips. He’s just come from finishing a job. He’d found an isolated pocket of hillbillies, who were actually werewolves, and it had taken two whole weeks of concentrated effort to wipe out every last one of them. Deliverance, with fangs. After all that, he knows he needs a rest. But it’s tempting to listen in. See if there might be anything to this.
The other patron laughs raucously. “That Casey, she just needs to get laid. Then she’d stop fantasizing about ghostly dudes in her house, wanting to rape her.”
That got John Winchester’s back up. He doesn’t hold with mistreating a lady. Even the craziest woman on the planet doesn’t deserve that.
He turns around to face them, taking another deep swig. “Crazy bitch, huh?” he asks, pretending to be eager to join in on the fun.
The two of them, buzzed on beer, seem happy to have a new audience. “Hell yeah. You should hear the stories she tells, stranger. About lights flickering, scratching noises in the dark, ooooohhh-woooooohhhhh.” The guy makes what he probably thinks is a creepy ghost noise.
“It’s an old house,” the other guy adds. “Shit happens. You get electrical shortages, vermin infecting the cellar…me, I had rats the size of freakin’ puppies take over my barn last year. You don’t see me crying to anyone who’d listen about how the freakin’ place was haunted.”
John nods and grins along, but inside his tired mind, gears are clicking and winding, putting things together. Yeah, those signs could be ghost activity, but it could be an old house thing, too.
“She’s just crazy,” the first guy expounds, gesturing with his beer stein and slopping amber liquid everywhere. “Her husband dies two years ago. She moves into that new place six months later, and since then, totally batshit crazy. Make up any story, just to get someone’s attention. Like I said, she just needs to get laid. She’s not bad-looking. Hell, I’d do her.”
“Get enough beer in you, Bert, and you’d do the Pope,” his slightly less-drunk companion observes.
John finishes his beer, mulling things over. Although they seem convinced, John knows he’ll check it out. He feels a bit of kinship with this woman already. He knows what it’s like to be widowed. He also knows what it’s like to be labeled as ‘crazy’, too. He’d gotten plenty of that in the early months after Mary passed.
He’ll go and see what’s up - if anything - with this Casey Smith. No harm in checking. After a good night’s rest.
*~*~*
It takes a few tries - there’s five ‘C. Smiths’ in the phonebook, even in this two-bit town - but he finds her at the third place he visits.
“Miss Smith? Casey Smith?” he asks the woman who opens the door. Mid-forties, he’d guess. Brunette, brown eyes. Slender, takes care of herself. Not typical of a ‘crazy’ person, he thinks.
“Yes?” she asks, looking him up and down.
“I work for a local fumigator. We have a promotion running at the moment, where we do an assessment of homes for free. Forgive my presumption, but I heard in town you might be having some rat problems?”
“Um, no, thank you very much,” she starts to close the door in his face. Damn.
“Please, Miss Smith,” he says, putting his hand out and stopping her before she can close the door all the way. He tries his best to come across as non-threatening. “It won’t take very long. It’s free, after all. When are you going to get another chance like this again?”
But she just shakes her head and continues to push the door closed, and John isn’t going to force the issue.
He saunters back to his truck, considering. He should probably not waste any further time here. Bobby has some leads for him - probable poltergeist six hours’ drive away, a possible witch nine hours in another direction. Why not just get a move on? He doesn’t even know if there’s anything other than a widow’s psychotic grief at work here.
But he can’t make himself leave. Something about the situation. He considers himself a good judge of people, and she didn’t seem crazy at all. He can stake out her place, wait until she leaves, then break in and sweep it. Satisfy himself there’s nothing supernatural going on, and if he’s careful, she’ll never even know he was there.
*~*~*
He parks around the corner, then waits until dark.
He gets lucky. It’s nearly midnight, and he’s just about decided to walk back and find someplace to hide himself - there’s a small vacant lot a few doors down from her place, and there’s still enough cover there (trees, bushes) to hide in - when her car comes roaring around the bend. He ducks down, waits for her to drive past and disappear.
He grabs his flashlight, his EMF detector, and a couple of safeguards - shotgun with rock-salt, a vial of holy water, a gun with regular bullets - and gets out of the truck, walking swiftly back towards her place.
John glances around when he gets to her door, but the neighbours all seem to be in bed or not home. Good. He picks the lock, and slips inside.
He whips out the flashlight and EMF detector. He’ll start in the basement.
*~*~*
The EMF stays silent. Nothing in the cellar. Nothing on the ground floor.
He’s wasting his time.
Still, he’s been taught to be thorough. So he pauses on the ground floor, stretching his arms and cracking his neck, and then heads up the stairwell to the upper floor. This last floor, and an attic if he can get to it easily. If he still reads nothing on the EMF, he’s going to head back to the motel and flip a coin in the morning - heads poltergeist, tails witch - and get the heck out of Dodge.
He starts down the hallway. Nothing. He steps into the first room on his left. Looks like it’s probably Casey’s bedroom. Floral bedding, faint scent of her perfume in the room.
The covers are rumpled, like she had a bad nightmare before peeling out of here. It makes him wonder…
That’s when the EMF starts screaming at him. Oh, Hell, he thinks, grabbing for the shotgun.
Too late.
Something grabs him, flings him bodily out of the room. He crashes headlong into the wall opposite the doorway, but the thing isn’t done playing ‘catch’. It picks him up again, then hurls him ass-over-teakettle down the stairs. A stair slams into his right shoulder, knocking the breath out of him, and he smashes his left knee into another stair on the next revolution, before ending up flat on his back on the floor, smacking his head in the process.
The flashlight has clattered to the floor next to him, its bulb flickering. Or maybe it’s his consciousness that’s guttering, he’s not sure. By some miracle, he still has his grip on the shotgun.
In the stuttering light of the flashlight, he can see the thing coming for him. Darkness, boiling languidly down the stairs. He struggles to stay conscious, ignoring the screaming in his shoulder, the angry throbbing in his head and knee, as he draws a bead on the thing and fires.
The roar follows him down into blackness. He hopes he got it, or he’s probably dead meat.
*~*~*
When he comes to, she’s kneeling over him, shaking him. Casey Smith.
She’s on the verge of tears. “Please, wake up. Wake up, before he kills you. Please.”
Groaning, he sits up, and takes stock of himself. He’s bleeding - he can feel the stickiness in the hair on the back of his head. His shoulder and knee are aching in sharp pulses, begging him to lie down and take a load off. But he can’t. He takes a quick look around. Locate your weapons and tools first, that’s the rule. Somewhat hysterical women come second.
His flashlight is there, its light burning steadily now, but he’s only partially reassured. His EMF is smashed to bits on the floor. Dammit. His shotgun is still in his hand, though. If he can walk half-decently, he figures he made out OK, all things considered.
Now that he has his bearings, he turns his attention to Casey. She’s still upset. “Oh God, he hurt you. We have to get you out of here. I don’t know why you’re in my house, but he’ll kill you. You have to leave, now.” She tugs at his arm.
He lets her help him to his feet, if only to see how bad the damage really is. Pretty bad, he decides after a moment on his feet, but it could be worse. His knee hurts bad and is probably purple under the denim, but he can stand on it. Kind of. Same deal with the shoulder. He won’t be playing any tennis matches with his right arm, but he thinks it’s nothing a little ice and aspirin won’t cure. His head’s the key area of concern. It’s gashed, but not bad enough for stitches, he decides once he’s felt around the area a bit. Now, as to whether he has a concussion or not…
Throughout his self examination, she stands there, wringing her hands and looking nervously over her shoulder. Up the stairs, he notices.
“Please,” she begs again, once she sees she has his full attention. “You have to go.”
“No,” he answers firmly. “I have to kill this damned thing, so it doesn’t throw any more of your houseguests down the stairs. Helluva watch-dog, it is.”
She stares at him, wide-eyed. Probably not used to anyone actually believing her. Actually taking this seriously. “Who are you?”
“Winchester. John Winchester.” He’d shake hands, but instead he reloads the shotgun. Priorities.
“You’re…not a fumigator,” she says, still watching him. She looks more afraid of him than the ghost, now. He supposes the ghost is, at least, a known quantity. A known danger. While he’s a stranger who randomly turned up in her home. Armed.
“Well, technically I am, but…I’m more in the business of exterminating just the sort of thing that threw me down your stairs,” John explains.
She looks like she doesn’t know whether to believe him or not. He can’t blame her. “That’s why you broke in?”
“Yep. I figured if those jerks in town were right and you were making it all up for some reason, I’d just sneak in, scan for signs of a ghost-“ he paused and nodded at the sad remains of the EMF detector, “and if none were to be found, I’d leave and you’d be none the wiser. I did try and talk my way in, before,” He smiles at her now, and lowers the shotgun when he belatedly realizes that it’s probably scaring her.
“But you found something,” she says. She relaxes, just slightly. She’s not alone with this any more. John understands that feeling, too.
“Boy, I’ll say,” John presses his hand to the back of his head, then shows her the bloody palm to underscore the fact.
“Is it dead- um, I mean, gone?” she asks, looking up the stairs again. She must think the fact he’s still standing is a good sign.
“No. I only drove it away temporarily. Rock-salt,” he gestures with the shotgun. “It could be back at any moment. Or, it may leave us alone for the rest of the night. They’re fickle like that, ghosts.”
She nods and starts to move towards the kitchen. “I’ll get some ice.”
He’s soon trying not to bleed on one of the floral couches in her sitting room, ice wrapped around his knee and shoulder with towels. He lets her clean the worst of the blood from his head-wound. “Is it deep?” he asks her, his eyes still trained on the stairs. He wishes he still had his EMF. And he wishes he could send her away, but with his head injury, he knows he needs someone here to make sure he stays conscious, in case he’s got a concussion and doesn’t know it. He knows he could - should - go to the hospital and get checked out, but now that the ghost has shown itself, he’s too stubborn to just come back and try again later. Something tells him, besides, that even if he tried to send Casey away, she wouldn’t go.
“I…don’t think so. But I’m no doctor.” She presses ice against that wound, too, and John hides his wince.
“Tell me about this ghost of yours. The more I know, the better chance I’ll have of sending it packing.”
Another nervous glance up the stairs. “It started soon after I moved in. And only at night. At first, there were scratching noises in the hallway. I called the exterminator, and they found nothing. Later on, the lights started flickering, and I smelled ozone, so I called an electrician. More nothing.”
“I didn’t think anything of it at first. Old homes are like that. But then weirder things started to happen. Objects disappearing and reappearing. And I started having the…dreams.”
“Dreams?” John prods after a few long moments of silence.
“About a man. But I couldn’t see his face. He’d speak to me, but when I woke up, I never remembered what he said.”
She pauses, takes a deep, shaky breath. “At first, I had the dream once, maybe twice a month. But then things got much worse. The noises got louder, the electrical problems worse. And then objects actually started floating off shelves and tables, right in front of me. Finally, I was dreaming of that man every night!”
Another long pause, and she looks back up the stairwell again, and John knows she’s afraid. “Finally, four months ago, I had another dream of him. But it wasn’t like the other dreams. I dreamed of him….forcing himself on me. And when I woke up, my bed was shaking and my nightgown was tearing itself to pieces and there was this weight on me, pressing me down on the bed, and I could feel him, trying to get inside me-.”
A sob escapes her throat, and John takes his eyes off the stairwell long enough to give her a reassuring look. “It’s OK,” he says. “I’m going to see to it that it- he - doesn’t bother you any more.”
She nods. Gathering herself, she goes on, “When the pressure eased up, I bolted out of there. Right out of my home. I didn’t want to come back, either.”
“But you did,” John fills in, returning his watchful gaze to the stairwell.
“Yes, I did,” she sighs. “It’s my home! It was supposed to be a new beginning for me, after Grant died. I didn’t want to admit to myself that this could be going bad, that everything in my life was falling apart again.” Another sob starting in her voice, but she fights it back this time.
More softly, she goes on, “I did stay out, though, the first week after that dream. I told a few people I trusted what had happened, and word got out. Small towns, you know.”
John nods. He does know.
“Well, soon everyone is saying ‘Casey’s nuts, too scared to sleep overnight in her own house’. Calling me crazy. After enough of that, even I started to doubt what had happened to me. I went to see a doctor, he tells me it’s a hypnagogic hallucination, and that I probably tore those holes in my clothes myself.” She shakes her head in disgust.
John nods again. He remembers some of the things people had said to him after the fire. Explanations they tried to offer, trying to get him to ‘substitute’ the craziness he’d seen with his own eyes with something which made more sense to them. Half the time, their theories’d been even crazier than what had actually happened.
“So finally, I returned home. I was scared, but…nothing happened. There were no noises, no electrical surges, no dreams, no attacks. I thought that whatever it was, it was over.”
She pauses again, and John looks over at her. “Obviously, it wasn’t,” he comments dryly.
“No,” she agrees, “it wasn’t. He attacks me again. And again. After enough of them, I see there’s a pattern to it.”
John doesn’t let his eyes leave the stairs, but tilts his head towards her, shows her he’s listening.
“Every seventeen days. Like clockwork. That’s when the…rape attempts happen. So, I learned to stay away on those nights. And usually a couple nights before and after, too, because he’ll do other things around those times. Like throw objects around, or shove me.”
“That why you took off tonight?” John asks.
“Yes,” she says, taking another deep breath. “But I forgot my wallet. I came back, thinking I’d just run in and grab it off the table…but I saw your flashlight moving around in here, and after it threw you down the stairs, I just couldn’t…I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if someone got seriously hurt by him. I’d feel it’s somehow my fault.”
John can understand that. It’s her home, her turf. Like having a vicious pet, one that hurts a neighbourhood kid. Not that she has any control over this thing, but he understands the sentiment.
She’s silent now, her story told, and John starts to plan his attack. He’s seen no further sign of the thing, and now that he’s calmed down, he thinks again that he should probably get them both out of here. Yeah, he’s got the shotgun, but he’s also hurt. Besides, if it’s your standard haunting, he just needs to find the names of men who’ve lived in this house, probably some rape stats and the like, and then find the guy’s grave and salt and burn the corpse. After which, Casey can go back to sleeping soundly in her own home, and can get on with her life.
Which also means there’s nothing else he can actually do, here. This asshole’s grave is where he needs to be. Decision made, he stands awkwardly up from the couch. “C’mon, ma’am. We’re going to put you up in a motel” - he wishes he could spring for a hotel, but he has to watch his cash flow until the next credit card application comes in - “for the next day or so. I’ll likely need a day or two to do what I have to do. And then it should be safe for you to come home.”
“OK,” she says, standing up and offering him her arm for support. “You’re the expert on this, I hop-“
It’s in front of them both, suddenly. Whirling blackness, in which John only gets impressions of body parts. Enraged eyes, fisted hands curled into claws, mouth twisted in a snarl…and Casey torn violently away from his side. Right before John gets himself forcibly reacquainted with the wall again, ice spraying in every direction.
He slides down the wall, landing on his knee - the wounded one - trying to get his breath back into cramped lungs. She’s across the room, lying on the floor on her back, and John can hear the loud rasping purr of cloth being torn, her gasps and cries of protest. Damned thing’s trying to take her right in front of him, for God’s sake.
He struggles to his feet, cocking the shotgun. He’ll have to fire at it and risk hitting her. The rock salt will sting, but it won’t kill her. John doesn’t always understand the minds of women, but he’s fairly sure that if he’d had a chance to pull her aside and ask her, she’d take rock-salt spraying over rape by a supernatural assailant any day.
“Casey, stay low!” he shouts, and then fires at the thing. A roar, and it dissolves once again, and then John is limping towards her as quickly as his damaged body will let him.
She scrambles out the door ahead of him, and they keep going, slowed only by his knee. He directs them both to his truck, waiting until they’re both in the cab to take stock of any new injuries. He checks her first. She didn’t get hit by any rock-salt, thankfully. Her clothes are history, though. “Are you hurt? Did it get a chance to-?” he doesn’t know how to phrase it delicately.
“No. But…” she looks down at herself, embarrassed. Her clothes have been reduced to long rags, and John can see entirely too much pale, soft skin. He jerks his eyes away, remembering belatedly that there’s an old blanket stuffed behind the driver’s seat. He grabs it and shakes the grit and dust off, before handing it to Casey. It’s a garment hardly befitting a lady, but at least it’ll protect her modesty.
He turns his attention to checking himself out. His knee and shoulder have already reported in, and they ain’t happy. More bruises and abrasions from his high-speed introduction to the wall the second time. And his head still aches. It’s a trip to the hospital for him, he reluctantly decides
At least he’ll be telling the truth, partially, this time - he fell down some stairs.
“I’ll find you a place to stay,” he tells her, “And once I get these wounds looked after, I’ll find a way to get rid of it for good. I give you my word on that.”
*~*~*
The next night, he’s standing in a graveyard, watching the asshole’s bones burn. It was hard work, digging up the grave with a busted shoulder and knee, but he prefers this kind of thing to sitting in dusty libraries trying to dig up intell. He’s good at it, good at putting things together, but he’s always been more of a man of action.
Not that he’d been in the library for long. He’d looked up rapists who attacked women every seventeen days, and only gotten one hit, as he’d expected. Young guy, in his thirties, liked to follow women home. If they were alone, he’d get them to open the door, overpower them, hurt them. He was caught, and then raped and killed by his fellow inmates in prison. Poetic justice, John thinks. Except for the haunting, of course.
The one surprise had been finding out the bastard’s turf - and indeed, his grave - hadn’t been in Casey’s town at all. A couple hours’ drive away, in fact.
It’s an oddity. He would’ve expected the crimes to have happened locally, but he supposes now that the body’s been salted and burned, this anomaly doesn’t matter. He’s too drained and achy to care. He just wants to swallow some painkillers, take a scalding hot shower, and crawl into bed. And sleep for at least two weeks straight.
Instead, he waits until the body is nothing but warm ashes, and then he fills in the hole again. Tamps everything down as best he can.
He drives back into town, rock and roll blasting on the stereo to help him stay awake. No concussion, the hospital said, but he’s bone-weary and ready to keel over. He’ll grab some shut-eye, and then take Casey back to the home that now belongs only to her.
*~*~*
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she says. They’re back in her sitting room, but this time instead of ice and shotguns and rock-salt, they’re having tea and cookies. It’s not really John’s thing - he thinks he was actually more comfortable with the prior arrangement, really - but it seemed rude to just drop her at her place, give her a wave, and take off. He’s been where she is. There’s questions, and while he doesn’t know all the answers, he knows from his own early days in Lawrence, and finding Missouri, that talking it out often helps just as much as having answers.
“It’s what I do,” he says with a shrug. “Someone’s got to.”
“You actually go all over the country, doing things like this?” she asks.
“Yep,” he takes a sip of his tea, trying not to notice that Casey looks pretty damned good. Nothing like a release from stress to bring out the inner supermodel.
“A dirty job, but someone’s got to do it?” she asks wryly.
“Something like tha-“
The world suddenly goes sideways, and next thing he knows, he’s been reintroduced to the wall. Again.
Christ, it’s still here.
He feels something rake down his back like claws, and he curses himself for his overconfidence. He left nearly all his weapons in the truck. All he’s got is a pocket-knife and a lighter. And a panicked female calling his name.
The thing has faded away again, for the moment, and Casey grabs his arm, trying to pull him towards the front door. But things start to launch themselves off the coffee table, hurtling towards them, and John reverses their direction, instead hauling them both up the stairs. Teacups shatter against the stairs and walls around them.
They both pause at the top of the stairs, gasping. John can feel slow trails of blood inching down his back. Casey’s dress has a few rips in it already. They wait, bracing themselves for the next attack.
It doesn’t come, though, and John thinks he knows why. It’s got them trapped in the house. It has the leisure to toy with them now.
He wracks his brain. There were no other rapists who fit the profile. And he definitely burned the remains to ashes. There’s something else.
He pulls Casey closer, speaking low and fast into her ear. “There must be something belonging to him, in this house. Something the ghost has latched onto. Is there anything - anything at all - in this house that was here when you moved in, that you kept? Pictures, furniture, toys, anything?”
“There’s…there’s a painting. I found it in the basement after I moved in, and it was pretty, so I kept it. It’s just a landscape. I don’t see how-“
“Where is it?” John asks harshly. They don’t have time to play art critics. That’s got to be it. The source. If he can destroy it, game over.
“My bedroom,” she says. Makes sense. Explains why his EMF went crazy, why the ghost first attacked him there.
John stumbles into her bedroom, spotting the painting immediately. He yanks it from the wall, fumbling in his pocket for his knife. Something whips from the top of the vanity across the way, smashing into the wall next to his head, and the room fills with an overpowering floral scent. Damned thing’s hurling perfume bottles at his head.
He tries to duck under the side of the bed for cover, starting to cut the painting from the frame.
“What are you doing?” In his haste to get the painting, he’s forgotten about Casey. She’s crouched on the ground beside him, terrified.
He doesn’t have time to explain. Four sharp movements, and the painting is free of the frame. His lighter’s still in his other pocket, and he gropes for it, hoping the old canvas will catch quickly.
A shriek, and Casey’s been torn away from him for the second time in as many days. But this time, as much as he wants to, he stops himself from going to her aid. Attacking her will keep the thing distracted, and if he’s quick, it won’t have a chance to do much.
That’s when he sees it. It must have been hidden between the canvas and the backing of the painting. A Polaroid photo. A shot of a young man. He doesn’t look dangerous or evil, he looks like the kind of guy daughters bring home to meet their parents. A guy that Dean or Sammy, if they’d had normal lives, would’ve gone drinking with and shot hoops with. But John’s seen this face before. He saw it in the newspaper articles he’d read at the library.
He tosses the canvas aside and grabs the photo, trying to ignore Casey’s screams behind him. A few seconds more, and she’ll be safe. He sets the photo alight.
Another flung object misses his face by inches, but he barely notices. The photo is burning energetically, half-consumed already, and he drops it on the floor.
Something smashes into him, shoves him back against the wall, and darkness smothers him, stealing his breath. He has just enough time to hope he wasn’t wrong, or he’s dead and Casey will pay dearly for his mistake.
He feels claws start to puncture his shoulders.
Then, nothing. He can see again, the darkness shredding away. No more weight against him, no more knifelike talons against his flesh. Just him and the stink of smoke and ozone and Casey sobbing against the other wall, bruised and disheveled and shaking with fear. Dammit to Hell, whatever was he thinking, using her to distract the thing?
He groans and gets to his feet, stumbling over to her. “I’m so sorry,” he says, helping her to her feet. “But it’s gone for good. It was connected to a photo hidden in the painting all along. Now that I’ve burned it, you’re safe.”
She takes a deep breath and nods, and lets him lead her out of the room. There’s bruises on her face, and a small, deep cut on her forehead, and John’s guilt pricks him harder than any ghostly claws. “Here, let me see to that cut.” It’s the least he can do.
They wind up in her kitchen. She doesn’t seem to want to be anywhere on the upstairs floor right now, which is entirely understandable. He cleans the cut, trying not to notice how close he is to her now. She smells good under the reek of fear-sweat, and her hair is soft, and once again there’s entirely too much smooth flesh on display through the holes the greedy thing has torn in her clothing.
Despite himself, he’s turned on. Sex and death are intertwined, and he came pretty close to buying the farm up there in her bedroom. She’s alive and vital under his hands, and it’s tempting to forget the promise he made to himself, to be celibate. Mary’s been dead for years, and he knows deep down it wouldn’t be the betrayal he often convinces himself it would be, but…
He closes up the cut, not deep enough to need stitches, and then shuts the first-aid kit. “You’re not bleeding anywhere else? No broken bones or anything?” He won’t look her in the eyes. He’s going to make sure she’s OK, and then he’s out of here. Safer to go back to his motel, take care of his own wounds. And then, make use of his hand. Casey doesn’t owe him anything, least of all her body. Especially after what that ghost has been trying to do to her.
She shakes her head, then catches his rough chin in one firm hand. Makes him look her straight in the eyes. “I’m free?” she asks softly.
“Yes.”
She’s still holding his chin, and he shifts uncomfortably. “Thank you,” she continues. “Not just for getting rid of him, either. For believing me, for letting me know I wasn’t….crazy.”
He understands her feelings perfectly. If only someone had believed him in those early days. At first, when he’d babbled about what he’d seen - Mary on the ceiling, bleeding, burning - his friends had chalked it up to stress. Losing your wife in a freak accident, being left with two young children, and the police looking at you as if you were guilty of murder…who wouldn’t be talking crazy?
But when some time had passed and he hadn’t changed his mind about what he’d seen, his friends had started to look at him sideways, and he’d finally realized it was best to shut up, especially if he wanted to keep his boys. So he’d tried his best to collect his books in secret. Practically sneaking around like a thief while visiting those psychics. Wondering the whole time whether he really was losing it or not. Thank God for Missouri.
So he knows exactly what this nightmare has been like for Casey. But he still has to get out of here befo-
She kisses him.
John freezes. He wants to kiss her back. Too many lonely nights on the road, with only his fading memories of Mary’s face and body for company. Too much isolation. Too little reward for what he’s been doing.
He wants to give in to this. He needs it, badly. Mary would understand, he knows that. But he still has to mount his token resistance. He edges back slightly. “You don’t have to do this.”
Casey’s holding onto his shoulders - he ignores the mild ache in the still-bruised one - and now she leans in, whispering against his lips. “I know. All this time, he- that thing- was trying to force itself on me. I never had a choice. Now, I have one.” And she kisses him again.
All thought, all hesitation melts away. When’s the last time a woman wanted him like this?
He kisses her back, tries to slip her the tongue. Tries, and succeeds. She’s gripping his torn shirt with both hands, and she startles him by suddenly getting up off the kitchen chair, their lips still locked together, and seating herself on his lap. He’d be embarrassed by the raging bulge in his jeans if she wasn’t so obviously as eager as he is.
She tastes so good. Tea and sweetness. There’s a rip in her dress, strategically placed under his hand, and he trails his fingers lightly across her skin. Warm silk under his fingertips, and she doesn’t stop kissing him, not even when he dares to invade the tear, slipping in to curl his hand gently around the soft weight of one breast, still clad in slightly rough-textured lace.
Casey’s trying to get his shirt off now, so he lets her. Pulls his hand out of her ruined dress, then helps her strip him to the waist. He has to close his eyes and lean back as she explores his skin, cool fingertips tracing down the long scar on his right cheekbone. Exploring the shrapnel wounds at the top of his left shoulder. Tracing along the bite-mark on his right forearm. Discovering the old scars from claw-marks on his left side. She asks about each mark, and he explains. “Knife attack in ‘Nam. Exploded mine in ‘Nam. Possessed human in Ohio. Really ticked-off ghost in New York.”
He opens his eyes and looks up at her. Twines his fingers in her hair and pulls her in for another series of kisses. Until she surprises him again by pulling free and shifting downwards, and he feels her warm tongue lapping at one of his nipples. He’s definitely not used to women being sexual initiators, but he’s pretty sure he could get used to it.
He wants to even the score. As soon as he can, he’s reaching for the buttons at the front of her dress. More soft, pale skin, and he tugs her closer so he can press kisses against her cleavage, and a pleasurable tingle goes up his spine as her fingers slide through his hair, encouraging him to linger. His stubble doesn’t seem to bother her, which is a good thing. Shaving’s not exactly high on the priority list when you’re busy hunting down evil.
Her bra comes off at some point, and he shifts objectives, using his mouth and hands to make those pretty nipples stiffen, to make her moan softly and press against him. He’s almost forgotten what it sounds like, when a woman’s happy with what you’re doing to her. John loves that noise.
He’s a hungry man, and he doesn’t want pizza (or so Dean’s Alice Cooper albums would put it). That’s when he stands up, holding onto Casey, and lifts her onto the kitchen table. They should be on a bed, but he’s not really thinking that far ahead, she’s wrapping her legs tightly around his hips and he’s got other things to think about.
Casey’s hands slide over his shoulders, across his back…and then he remembers. She gasps and pulls a little away from him, and shows him her hand. It’s bloody. “Your back!” she says, looking apologetic.
He doesn’t care. A couple of scratches, whatever. He’s had worse. “Later. Lay back,” he orders her.
Her dress comes off easily - especially when one of the rents in it tears completely when he’s trying to draw it down over her hips - and he tosses it away. He pauses, however, in his attempt to make her surrender her remaining clothing, when she mutters, “Oh, crap.”
She’s blushing, and he can’t figure out why. She’s looking at her own legs, and he finally notices the small hairs. Apparently, she hasn’t been shaving her legs. Probably wasn’t expecting to be having sex in her kitchen with a relative stranger when she got up this morning.
“Sorry,” she says, misinterpreting his scrutiny.
He doesn’t care. He was married, once, he knows the drill. “Nothing to feel sorry about,” he rumbles, and he shows her how little it bothers him by pulling his chair closer to the table, lowering himself into it, and then running his tongue teasingly up the lightly furred skin of her left calf.
She doesn’t protest any further, just closes her eyes and lays back onto the table. She still doesn’t protest when he hooks his fingers in the waistband of her panties and makes them amscray. She helps, instead, pulling herself closer as he guides her, drawing her to the edge of the table.
It’s been awhile, and John supposes he might be a little rusty. Best to take his time, not rush things along, no matter how much his aching balls demand otherwise. A single long, leisurely caress of his tongue between her folds, however, and she’s clutching at his head again. Directing him right to the throbbing node at the top of her slick centre.
Well, as long as that’s what she wants, he’s not going to argue. He suckles gently, reaching underneath her to grip the generous curves of her ass. Despite the needy ache inside him, he’s going to stay at this as long as she wants him to. This is for them both.
She arches, and she tastes suddenly different on his tongue. Richer, thicker. Oh yes, definitely worth the near-pain of waiting.
But it looks like he’s not going to have to wait any longer, because she’s suddenly sitting up and working at the fly of his jeans.
He struggles to keep the logical side of his brain going, just for a few more seconds. “Protection?” he asks. Two rebellious adult sons are enough.
Casey’s cheeks turn pink again. “Um, there might be a condom in my nighttable upstairs. If it hasn’t expired yet.”
Mentally crossing his fingers, John picks Casey up. And then carries her carefully up the stairs to the bedroom. His shoulder and knee don’t like it much, but screw them. When’s the next time he’ll get to be all Neanderthal with a beautiful woman? Likely not for awhile.
The bedroom’s little more than a war zone - it still smells of perfume, and there’s glass all over the place, a scorched mark on the floor that was the final resting place of the ghost’s source - but the bed is intact and miraculously clear of debris. So once Casey finds the little packet jammed in the back of the top drawer and confirms (also miraculously) it hasn’t expired yet, they both climb on the bed and get to it.
His jeans and shoes wind up shoved to the foot of the bed, and once he’s properly clothed in latex, he gets on top of her, and then inside her.
It’s been too long since he’s immersed himself in the sweetness of a woman’s body. He keeps having to stop, to catch his breath. And so he won’t come in under five seconds flat. He kisses Casey, strokes her soft hair and skin, breathing her in, holding her close. Hot, slippery limbs wrapped tightly around him, and she gets his blood moving even faster, saying his name in a gasping little voice whenever he starts to move inside her again.
He can’t hold back any longer. He thrusts, rough and deep, and empties himself into her. It’s OK, though. She’s apparently been waiting for his surrender, because even as the last of his climax shudders through him, she’s going over the edge.
It’s over, and they’re lying there, limbs still locked together. He’s going to have trouble saying good-bye.
*~*~*
It’s bothering him, the fact that Casey’s house seems like such an unlikely site for this ghost to have haunted, so he hits the books one last time before going to see Casey.
After a couple hours’ work, he finds it. The connection. The mother of the rapist had once lived in Casey’s home. Apparently, she’d wanted a fresh start, much like Casey herself once had.
It had gone bad for the asshole rapist’s mother, too. She must’ve gotten some of his personal effects after his murder, including the photo the bastard was using as its source. They’d found her one day, dead, and there were signs she’d been raped. No suspect was ever questioned. What a sick freak, to violate and kill his own mother…
The home had stood empty for years. Until Casey had come along. The realtor must’ve neglected to mention the house’s history. Typical.
He thinks about Casey as he drives back to her place to say goodbye. He’s got those two possible leads from Bobby to follow up on. He can’t linger. Much as he wants to.
She’s sitting on the porch when he pulls up. She gets up to hug him as he makes his limping way up the stairs. Damn knee’s going to make a real bitch of itself on the next job, he knows, and it’s almost enough to convince him to stay awhile, rest up. But he doesn’t know how many innocent people might be hurt or even killed while he’s sitting around playing house with Casey Smith. So he’ll resist. He has to.
“You’re leaving,” she whispers against his ear, arms wound around him. “You’ve got other people to help.”
“Yes,” he squeezes her a little tighter. He shouldn’t; shouldn’t feel this affection for her, but can’t help himself. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this conflicted about leaving a job before.
“Promise me you’ll come back and see me, John,” she says. It’s almost an order, and he grins, even though she’s still got her mouth to his ear and she can’t see it. Tough broad.
“I promise.”
He’s made a lot of promises over the years. To himself. To Mary. To Dean and Sam. To his fellow hunters.
He hopes this is one he can actually keep.
FIN
Liked it? My previous SPN efforts are all listed here.
Crossposted to AO3
Author:
starhawk2005
Date: August 2006
Pairing: John Winchester/OFC
Rating: Adult (18+), for sex. Duh.
Summary: John stumbles onto a new hunting job, and gets a little more ‘action’ than he bargained for. Hee.
Disclaimer: I’d love to own John, but I suspect I can’t afford him on my own. Anyone want to pool their funds with me?
Please note that “
starhawk2005 cannot be held responsible for any brain melting, spontaneous combusting, or ovary exploding that occurs before/during/after reading this fanfiction. Thank you.” (credit to
_vicodin for the detailed legal disclaimer. *snerk*).
Beta: Many thanks and inappropriate touching to
medicinal_mirth for her beta services.
Author’s Notes: Not spoilery.
Missed chapter 1 (Vampire!John)? Click here.
Feedback is appreciated and encourages me to write more for this fandom.
“Didja hear the latest?” one patron jokes to another at the bar behind John. “About that crazy Smith broad, and her ‘haunted house’?”
John pauses in the act of raising a beer bottle to his lips. He’s just come from finishing a job. He’d found an isolated pocket of hillbillies, who were actually werewolves, and it had taken two whole weeks of concentrated effort to wipe out every last one of them. Deliverance, with fangs. After all that, he knows he needs a rest. But it’s tempting to listen in. See if there might be anything to this.
The other patron laughs raucously. “That Casey, she just needs to get laid. Then she’d stop fantasizing about ghostly dudes in her house, wanting to rape her.”
That got John Winchester’s back up. He doesn’t hold with mistreating a lady. Even the craziest woman on the planet doesn’t deserve that.
He turns around to face them, taking another deep swig. “Crazy bitch, huh?” he asks, pretending to be eager to join in on the fun.
The two of them, buzzed on beer, seem happy to have a new audience. “Hell yeah. You should hear the stories she tells, stranger. About lights flickering, scratching noises in the dark, ooooohhh-woooooohhhhh.” The guy makes what he probably thinks is a creepy ghost noise.
“It’s an old house,” the other guy adds. “Shit happens. You get electrical shortages, vermin infecting the cellar…me, I had rats the size of freakin’ puppies take over my barn last year. You don’t see me crying to anyone who’d listen about how the freakin’ place was haunted.”
John nods and grins along, but inside his tired mind, gears are clicking and winding, putting things together. Yeah, those signs could be ghost activity, but it could be an old house thing, too.
“She’s just crazy,” the first guy expounds, gesturing with his beer stein and slopping amber liquid everywhere. “Her husband dies two years ago. She moves into that new place six months later, and since then, totally batshit crazy. Make up any story, just to get someone’s attention. Like I said, she just needs to get laid. She’s not bad-looking. Hell, I’d do her.”
“Get enough beer in you, Bert, and you’d do the Pope,” his slightly less-drunk companion observes.
John finishes his beer, mulling things over. Although they seem convinced, John knows he’ll check it out. He feels a bit of kinship with this woman already. He knows what it’s like to be widowed. He also knows what it’s like to be labeled as ‘crazy’, too. He’d gotten plenty of that in the early months after Mary passed.
He’ll go and see what’s up - if anything - with this Casey Smith. No harm in checking. After a good night’s rest.
*~*~*
It takes a few tries - there’s five ‘C. Smiths’ in the phonebook, even in this two-bit town - but he finds her at the third place he visits.
“Miss Smith? Casey Smith?” he asks the woman who opens the door. Mid-forties, he’d guess. Brunette, brown eyes. Slender, takes care of herself. Not typical of a ‘crazy’ person, he thinks.
“Yes?” she asks, looking him up and down.
“I work for a local fumigator. We have a promotion running at the moment, where we do an assessment of homes for free. Forgive my presumption, but I heard in town you might be having some rat problems?”
“Um, no, thank you very much,” she starts to close the door in his face. Damn.
“Please, Miss Smith,” he says, putting his hand out and stopping her before she can close the door all the way. He tries his best to come across as non-threatening. “It won’t take very long. It’s free, after all. When are you going to get another chance like this again?”
But she just shakes her head and continues to push the door closed, and John isn’t going to force the issue.
He saunters back to his truck, considering. He should probably not waste any further time here. Bobby has some leads for him - probable poltergeist six hours’ drive away, a possible witch nine hours in another direction. Why not just get a move on? He doesn’t even know if there’s anything other than a widow’s psychotic grief at work here.
But he can’t make himself leave. Something about the situation. He considers himself a good judge of people, and she didn’t seem crazy at all. He can stake out her place, wait until she leaves, then break in and sweep it. Satisfy himself there’s nothing supernatural going on, and if he’s careful, she’ll never even know he was there.
*~*~*
He parks around the corner, then waits until dark.
He gets lucky. It’s nearly midnight, and he’s just about decided to walk back and find someplace to hide himself - there’s a small vacant lot a few doors down from her place, and there’s still enough cover there (trees, bushes) to hide in - when her car comes roaring around the bend. He ducks down, waits for her to drive past and disappear.
He grabs his flashlight, his EMF detector, and a couple of safeguards - shotgun with rock-salt, a vial of holy water, a gun with regular bullets - and gets out of the truck, walking swiftly back towards her place.
John glances around when he gets to her door, but the neighbours all seem to be in bed or not home. Good. He picks the lock, and slips inside.
He whips out the flashlight and EMF detector. He’ll start in the basement.
*~*~*
The EMF stays silent. Nothing in the cellar. Nothing on the ground floor.
He’s wasting his time.
Still, he’s been taught to be thorough. So he pauses on the ground floor, stretching his arms and cracking his neck, and then heads up the stairwell to the upper floor. This last floor, and an attic if he can get to it easily. If he still reads nothing on the EMF, he’s going to head back to the motel and flip a coin in the morning - heads poltergeist, tails witch - and get the heck out of Dodge.
He starts down the hallway. Nothing. He steps into the first room on his left. Looks like it’s probably Casey’s bedroom. Floral bedding, faint scent of her perfume in the room.
The covers are rumpled, like she had a bad nightmare before peeling out of here. It makes him wonder…
That’s when the EMF starts screaming at him. Oh, Hell, he thinks, grabbing for the shotgun.
Too late.
Something grabs him, flings him bodily out of the room. He crashes headlong into the wall opposite the doorway, but the thing isn’t done playing ‘catch’. It picks him up again, then hurls him ass-over-teakettle down the stairs. A stair slams into his right shoulder, knocking the breath out of him, and he smashes his left knee into another stair on the next revolution, before ending up flat on his back on the floor, smacking his head in the process.
The flashlight has clattered to the floor next to him, its bulb flickering. Or maybe it’s his consciousness that’s guttering, he’s not sure. By some miracle, he still has his grip on the shotgun.
In the stuttering light of the flashlight, he can see the thing coming for him. Darkness, boiling languidly down the stairs. He struggles to stay conscious, ignoring the screaming in his shoulder, the angry throbbing in his head and knee, as he draws a bead on the thing and fires.
The roar follows him down into blackness. He hopes he got it, or he’s probably dead meat.
*~*~*
When he comes to, she’s kneeling over him, shaking him. Casey Smith.
She’s on the verge of tears. “Please, wake up. Wake up, before he kills you. Please.”
Groaning, he sits up, and takes stock of himself. He’s bleeding - he can feel the stickiness in the hair on the back of his head. His shoulder and knee are aching in sharp pulses, begging him to lie down and take a load off. But he can’t. He takes a quick look around. Locate your weapons and tools first, that’s the rule. Somewhat hysterical women come second.
His flashlight is there, its light burning steadily now, but he’s only partially reassured. His EMF is smashed to bits on the floor. Dammit. His shotgun is still in his hand, though. If he can walk half-decently, he figures he made out OK, all things considered.
Now that he has his bearings, he turns his attention to Casey. She’s still upset. “Oh God, he hurt you. We have to get you out of here. I don’t know why you’re in my house, but he’ll kill you. You have to leave, now.” She tugs at his arm.
He lets her help him to his feet, if only to see how bad the damage really is. Pretty bad, he decides after a moment on his feet, but it could be worse. His knee hurts bad and is probably purple under the denim, but he can stand on it. Kind of. Same deal with the shoulder. He won’t be playing any tennis matches with his right arm, but he thinks it’s nothing a little ice and aspirin won’t cure. His head’s the key area of concern. It’s gashed, but not bad enough for stitches, he decides once he’s felt around the area a bit. Now, as to whether he has a concussion or not…
Throughout his self examination, she stands there, wringing her hands and looking nervously over her shoulder. Up the stairs, he notices.
“Please,” she begs again, once she sees she has his full attention. “You have to go.”
“No,” he answers firmly. “I have to kill this damned thing, so it doesn’t throw any more of your houseguests down the stairs. Helluva watch-dog, it is.”
She stares at him, wide-eyed. Probably not used to anyone actually believing her. Actually taking this seriously. “Who are you?”
“Winchester. John Winchester.” He’d shake hands, but instead he reloads the shotgun. Priorities.
“You’re…not a fumigator,” she says, still watching him. She looks more afraid of him than the ghost, now. He supposes the ghost is, at least, a known quantity. A known danger. While he’s a stranger who randomly turned up in her home. Armed.
“Well, technically I am, but…I’m more in the business of exterminating just the sort of thing that threw me down your stairs,” John explains.
She looks like she doesn’t know whether to believe him or not. He can’t blame her. “That’s why you broke in?”
“Yep. I figured if those jerks in town were right and you were making it all up for some reason, I’d just sneak in, scan for signs of a ghost-“ he paused and nodded at the sad remains of the EMF detector, “and if none were to be found, I’d leave and you’d be none the wiser. I did try and talk my way in, before,” He smiles at her now, and lowers the shotgun when he belatedly realizes that it’s probably scaring her.
“But you found something,” she says. She relaxes, just slightly. She’s not alone with this any more. John understands that feeling, too.
“Boy, I’ll say,” John presses his hand to the back of his head, then shows her the bloody palm to underscore the fact.
“Is it dead- um, I mean, gone?” she asks, looking up the stairs again. She must think the fact he’s still standing is a good sign.
“No. I only drove it away temporarily. Rock-salt,” he gestures with the shotgun. “It could be back at any moment. Or, it may leave us alone for the rest of the night. They’re fickle like that, ghosts.”
She nods and starts to move towards the kitchen. “I’ll get some ice.”
He’s soon trying not to bleed on one of the floral couches in her sitting room, ice wrapped around his knee and shoulder with towels. He lets her clean the worst of the blood from his head-wound. “Is it deep?” he asks her, his eyes still trained on the stairs. He wishes he still had his EMF. And he wishes he could send her away, but with his head injury, he knows he needs someone here to make sure he stays conscious, in case he’s got a concussion and doesn’t know it. He knows he could - should - go to the hospital and get checked out, but now that the ghost has shown itself, he’s too stubborn to just come back and try again later. Something tells him, besides, that even if he tried to send Casey away, she wouldn’t go.
“I…don’t think so. But I’m no doctor.” She presses ice against that wound, too, and John hides his wince.
“Tell me about this ghost of yours. The more I know, the better chance I’ll have of sending it packing.”
Another nervous glance up the stairs. “It started soon after I moved in. And only at night. At first, there were scratching noises in the hallway. I called the exterminator, and they found nothing. Later on, the lights started flickering, and I smelled ozone, so I called an electrician. More nothing.”
“I didn’t think anything of it at first. Old homes are like that. But then weirder things started to happen. Objects disappearing and reappearing. And I started having the…dreams.”
“Dreams?” John prods after a few long moments of silence.
“About a man. But I couldn’t see his face. He’d speak to me, but when I woke up, I never remembered what he said.”
She pauses, takes a deep, shaky breath. “At first, I had the dream once, maybe twice a month. But then things got much worse. The noises got louder, the electrical problems worse. And then objects actually started floating off shelves and tables, right in front of me. Finally, I was dreaming of that man every night!”
Another long pause, and she looks back up the stairwell again, and John knows she’s afraid. “Finally, four months ago, I had another dream of him. But it wasn’t like the other dreams. I dreamed of him….forcing himself on me. And when I woke up, my bed was shaking and my nightgown was tearing itself to pieces and there was this weight on me, pressing me down on the bed, and I could feel him, trying to get inside me-.”
A sob escapes her throat, and John takes his eyes off the stairwell long enough to give her a reassuring look. “It’s OK,” he says. “I’m going to see to it that it- he - doesn’t bother you any more.”
She nods. Gathering herself, she goes on, “When the pressure eased up, I bolted out of there. Right out of my home. I didn’t want to come back, either.”
“But you did,” John fills in, returning his watchful gaze to the stairwell.
“Yes, I did,” she sighs. “It’s my home! It was supposed to be a new beginning for me, after Grant died. I didn’t want to admit to myself that this could be going bad, that everything in my life was falling apart again.” Another sob starting in her voice, but she fights it back this time.
More softly, she goes on, “I did stay out, though, the first week after that dream. I told a few people I trusted what had happened, and word got out. Small towns, you know.”
John nods. He does know.
“Well, soon everyone is saying ‘Casey’s nuts, too scared to sleep overnight in her own house’. Calling me crazy. After enough of that, even I started to doubt what had happened to me. I went to see a doctor, he tells me it’s a hypnagogic hallucination, and that I probably tore those holes in my clothes myself.” She shakes her head in disgust.
John nods again. He remembers some of the things people had said to him after the fire. Explanations they tried to offer, trying to get him to ‘substitute’ the craziness he’d seen with his own eyes with something which made more sense to them. Half the time, their theories’d been even crazier than what had actually happened.
“So finally, I returned home. I was scared, but…nothing happened. There were no noises, no electrical surges, no dreams, no attacks. I thought that whatever it was, it was over.”
She pauses again, and John looks over at her. “Obviously, it wasn’t,” he comments dryly.
“No,” she agrees, “it wasn’t. He attacks me again. And again. After enough of them, I see there’s a pattern to it.”
John doesn’t let his eyes leave the stairs, but tilts his head towards her, shows her he’s listening.
“Every seventeen days. Like clockwork. That’s when the…rape attempts happen. So, I learned to stay away on those nights. And usually a couple nights before and after, too, because he’ll do other things around those times. Like throw objects around, or shove me.”
“That why you took off tonight?” John asks.
“Yes,” she says, taking another deep breath. “But I forgot my wallet. I came back, thinking I’d just run in and grab it off the table…but I saw your flashlight moving around in here, and after it threw you down the stairs, I just couldn’t…I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if someone got seriously hurt by him. I’d feel it’s somehow my fault.”
John can understand that. It’s her home, her turf. Like having a vicious pet, one that hurts a neighbourhood kid. Not that she has any control over this thing, but he understands the sentiment.
She’s silent now, her story told, and John starts to plan his attack. He’s seen no further sign of the thing, and now that he’s calmed down, he thinks again that he should probably get them both out of here. Yeah, he’s got the shotgun, but he’s also hurt. Besides, if it’s your standard haunting, he just needs to find the names of men who’ve lived in this house, probably some rape stats and the like, and then find the guy’s grave and salt and burn the corpse. After which, Casey can go back to sleeping soundly in her own home, and can get on with her life.
Which also means there’s nothing else he can actually do, here. This asshole’s grave is where he needs to be. Decision made, he stands awkwardly up from the couch. “C’mon, ma’am. We’re going to put you up in a motel” - he wishes he could spring for a hotel, but he has to watch his cash flow until the next credit card application comes in - “for the next day or so. I’ll likely need a day or two to do what I have to do. And then it should be safe for you to come home.”
“OK,” she says, standing up and offering him her arm for support. “You’re the expert on this, I hop-“
It’s in front of them both, suddenly. Whirling blackness, in which John only gets impressions of body parts. Enraged eyes, fisted hands curled into claws, mouth twisted in a snarl…and Casey torn violently away from his side. Right before John gets himself forcibly reacquainted with the wall again, ice spraying in every direction.
He slides down the wall, landing on his knee - the wounded one - trying to get his breath back into cramped lungs. She’s across the room, lying on the floor on her back, and John can hear the loud rasping purr of cloth being torn, her gasps and cries of protest. Damned thing’s trying to take her right in front of him, for God’s sake.
He struggles to his feet, cocking the shotgun. He’ll have to fire at it and risk hitting her. The rock salt will sting, but it won’t kill her. John doesn’t always understand the minds of women, but he’s fairly sure that if he’d had a chance to pull her aside and ask her, she’d take rock-salt spraying over rape by a supernatural assailant any day.
“Casey, stay low!” he shouts, and then fires at the thing. A roar, and it dissolves once again, and then John is limping towards her as quickly as his damaged body will let him.
She scrambles out the door ahead of him, and they keep going, slowed only by his knee. He directs them both to his truck, waiting until they’re both in the cab to take stock of any new injuries. He checks her first. She didn’t get hit by any rock-salt, thankfully. Her clothes are history, though. “Are you hurt? Did it get a chance to-?” he doesn’t know how to phrase it delicately.
“No. But…” she looks down at herself, embarrassed. Her clothes have been reduced to long rags, and John can see entirely too much pale, soft skin. He jerks his eyes away, remembering belatedly that there’s an old blanket stuffed behind the driver’s seat. He grabs it and shakes the grit and dust off, before handing it to Casey. It’s a garment hardly befitting a lady, but at least it’ll protect her modesty.
He turns his attention to checking himself out. His knee and shoulder have already reported in, and they ain’t happy. More bruises and abrasions from his high-speed introduction to the wall the second time. And his head still aches. It’s a trip to the hospital for him, he reluctantly decides
At least he’ll be telling the truth, partially, this time - he fell down some stairs.
“I’ll find you a place to stay,” he tells her, “And once I get these wounds looked after, I’ll find a way to get rid of it for good. I give you my word on that.”
*~*~*
The next night, he’s standing in a graveyard, watching the asshole’s bones burn. It was hard work, digging up the grave with a busted shoulder and knee, but he prefers this kind of thing to sitting in dusty libraries trying to dig up intell. He’s good at it, good at putting things together, but he’s always been more of a man of action.
Not that he’d been in the library for long. He’d looked up rapists who attacked women every seventeen days, and only gotten one hit, as he’d expected. Young guy, in his thirties, liked to follow women home. If they were alone, he’d get them to open the door, overpower them, hurt them. He was caught, and then raped and killed by his fellow inmates in prison. Poetic justice, John thinks. Except for the haunting, of course.
The one surprise had been finding out the bastard’s turf - and indeed, his grave - hadn’t been in Casey’s town at all. A couple hours’ drive away, in fact.
It’s an oddity. He would’ve expected the crimes to have happened locally, but he supposes now that the body’s been salted and burned, this anomaly doesn’t matter. He’s too drained and achy to care. He just wants to swallow some painkillers, take a scalding hot shower, and crawl into bed. And sleep for at least two weeks straight.
Instead, he waits until the body is nothing but warm ashes, and then he fills in the hole again. Tamps everything down as best he can.
He drives back into town, rock and roll blasting on the stereo to help him stay awake. No concussion, the hospital said, but he’s bone-weary and ready to keel over. He’ll grab some shut-eye, and then take Casey back to the home that now belongs only to her.
*~*~*
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she says. They’re back in her sitting room, but this time instead of ice and shotguns and rock-salt, they’re having tea and cookies. It’s not really John’s thing - he thinks he was actually more comfortable with the prior arrangement, really - but it seemed rude to just drop her at her place, give her a wave, and take off. He’s been where she is. There’s questions, and while he doesn’t know all the answers, he knows from his own early days in Lawrence, and finding Missouri, that talking it out often helps just as much as having answers.
“It’s what I do,” he says with a shrug. “Someone’s got to.”
“You actually go all over the country, doing things like this?” she asks.
“Yep,” he takes a sip of his tea, trying not to notice that Casey looks pretty damned good. Nothing like a release from stress to bring out the inner supermodel.
“A dirty job, but someone’s got to do it?” she asks wryly.
“Something like tha-“
The world suddenly goes sideways, and next thing he knows, he’s been reintroduced to the wall. Again.
Christ, it’s still here.
He feels something rake down his back like claws, and he curses himself for his overconfidence. He left nearly all his weapons in the truck. All he’s got is a pocket-knife and a lighter. And a panicked female calling his name.
The thing has faded away again, for the moment, and Casey grabs his arm, trying to pull him towards the front door. But things start to launch themselves off the coffee table, hurtling towards them, and John reverses their direction, instead hauling them both up the stairs. Teacups shatter against the stairs and walls around them.
They both pause at the top of the stairs, gasping. John can feel slow trails of blood inching down his back. Casey’s dress has a few rips in it already. They wait, bracing themselves for the next attack.
It doesn’t come, though, and John thinks he knows why. It’s got them trapped in the house. It has the leisure to toy with them now.
He wracks his brain. There were no other rapists who fit the profile. And he definitely burned the remains to ashes. There’s something else.
He pulls Casey closer, speaking low and fast into her ear. “There must be something belonging to him, in this house. Something the ghost has latched onto. Is there anything - anything at all - in this house that was here when you moved in, that you kept? Pictures, furniture, toys, anything?”
“There’s…there’s a painting. I found it in the basement after I moved in, and it was pretty, so I kept it. It’s just a landscape. I don’t see how-“
“Where is it?” John asks harshly. They don’t have time to play art critics. That’s got to be it. The source. If he can destroy it, game over.
“My bedroom,” she says. Makes sense. Explains why his EMF went crazy, why the ghost first attacked him there.
John stumbles into her bedroom, spotting the painting immediately. He yanks it from the wall, fumbling in his pocket for his knife. Something whips from the top of the vanity across the way, smashing into the wall next to his head, and the room fills with an overpowering floral scent. Damned thing’s hurling perfume bottles at his head.
He tries to duck under the side of the bed for cover, starting to cut the painting from the frame.
“What are you doing?” In his haste to get the painting, he’s forgotten about Casey. She’s crouched on the ground beside him, terrified.
He doesn’t have time to explain. Four sharp movements, and the painting is free of the frame. His lighter’s still in his other pocket, and he gropes for it, hoping the old canvas will catch quickly.
A shriek, and Casey’s been torn away from him for the second time in as many days. But this time, as much as he wants to, he stops himself from going to her aid. Attacking her will keep the thing distracted, and if he’s quick, it won’t have a chance to do much.
That’s when he sees it. It must have been hidden between the canvas and the backing of the painting. A Polaroid photo. A shot of a young man. He doesn’t look dangerous or evil, he looks like the kind of guy daughters bring home to meet their parents. A guy that Dean or Sammy, if they’d had normal lives, would’ve gone drinking with and shot hoops with. But John’s seen this face before. He saw it in the newspaper articles he’d read at the library.
He tosses the canvas aside and grabs the photo, trying to ignore Casey’s screams behind him. A few seconds more, and she’ll be safe. He sets the photo alight.
Another flung object misses his face by inches, but he barely notices. The photo is burning energetically, half-consumed already, and he drops it on the floor.
Something smashes into him, shoves him back against the wall, and darkness smothers him, stealing his breath. He has just enough time to hope he wasn’t wrong, or he’s dead and Casey will pay dearly for his mistake.
He feels claws start to puncture his shoulders.
Then, nothing. He can see again, the darkness shredding away. No more weight against him, no more knifelike talons against his flesh. Just him and the stink of smoke and ozone and Casey sobbing against the other wall, bruised and disheveled and shaking with fear. Dammit to Hell, whatever was he thinking, using her to distract the thing?
He groans and gets to his feet, stumbling over to her. “I’m so sorry,” he says, helping her to her feet. “But it’s gone for good. It was connected to a photo hidden in the painting all along. Now that I’ve burned it, you’re safe.”
She takes a deep breath and nods, and lets him lead her out of the room. There’s bruises on her face, and a small, deep cut on her forehead, and John’s guilt pricks him harder than any ghostly claws. “Here, let me see to that cut.” It’s the least he can do.
They wind up in her kitchen. She doesn’t seem to want to be anywhere on the upstairs floor right now, which is entirely understandable. He cleans the cut, trying not to notice how close he is to her now. She smells good under the reek of fear-sweat, and her hair is soft, and once again there’s entirely too much smooth flesh on display through the holes the greedy thing has torn in her clothing.
Despite himself, he’s turned on. Sex and death are intertwined, and he came pretty close to buying the farm up there in her bedroom. She’s alive and vital under his hands, and it’s tempting to forget the promise he made to himself, to be celibate. Mary’s been dead for years, and he knows deep down it wouldn’t be the betrayal he often convinces himself it would be, but…
He closes up the cut, not deep enough to need stitches, and then shuts the first-aid kit. “You’re not bleeding anywhere else? No broken bones or anything?” He won’t look her in the eyes. He’s going to make sure she’s OK, and then he’s out of here. Safer to go back to his motel, take care of his own wounds. And then, make use of his hand. Casey doesn’t owe him anything, least of all her body. Especially after what that ghost has been trying to do to her.
She shakes her head, then catches his rough chin in one firm hand. Makes him look her straight in the eyes. “I’m free?” she asks softly.
“Yes.”
She’s still holding his chin, and he shifts uncomfortably. “Thank you,” she continues. “Not just for getting rid of him, either. For believing me, for letting me know I wasn’t….crazy.”
He understands her feelings perfectly. If only someone had believed him in those early days. At first, when he’d babbled about what he’d seen - Mary on the ceiling, bleeding, burning - his friends had chalked it up to stress. Losing your wife in a freak accident, being left with two young children, and the police looking at you as if you were guilty of murder…who wouldn’t be talking crazy?
But when some time had passed and he hadn’t changed his mind about what he’d seen, his friends had started to look at him sideways, and he’d finally realized it was best to shut up, especially if he wanted to keep his boys. So he’d tried his best to collect his books in secret. Practically sneaking around like a thief while visiting those psychics. Wondering the whole time whether he really was losing it or not. Thank God for Missouri.
So he knows exactly what this nightmare has been like for Casey. But he still has to get out of here befo-
She kisses him.
John freezes. He wants to kiss her back. Too many lonely nights on the road, with only his fading memories of Mary’s face and body for company. Too much isolation. Too little reward for what he’s been doing.
He wants to give in to this. He needs it, badly. Mary would understand, he knows that. But he still has to mount his token resistance. He edges back slightly. “You don’t have to do this.”
Casey’s holding onto his shoulders - he ignores the mild ache in the still-bruised one - and now she leans in, whispering against his lips. “I know. All this time, he- that thing- was trying to force itself on me. I never had a choice. Now, I have one.” And she kisses him again.
All thought, all hesitation melts away. When’s the last time a woman wanted him like this?
He kisses her back, tries to slip her the tongue. Tries, and succeeds. She’s gripping his torn shirt with both hands, and she startles him by suddenly getting up off the kitchen chair, their lips still locked together, and seating herself on his lap. He’d be embarrassed by the raging bulge in his jeans if she wasn’t so obviously as eager as he is.
She tastes so good. Tea and sweetness. There’s a rip in her dress, strategically placed under his hand, and he trails his fingers lightly across her skin. Warm silk under his fingertips, and she doesn’t stop kissing him, not even when he dares to invade the tear, slipping in to curl his hand gently around the soft weight of one breast, still clad in slightly rough-textured lace.
Casey’s trying to get his shirt off now, so he lets her. Pulls his hand out of her ruined dress, then helps her strip him to the waist. He has to close his eyes and lean back as she explores his skin, cool fingertips tracing down the long scar on his right cheekbone. Exploring the shrapnel wounds at the top of his left shoulder. Tracing along the bite-mark on his right forearm. Discovering the old scars from claw-marks on his left side. She asks about each mark, and he explains. “Knife attack in ‘Nam. Exploded mine in ‘Nam. Possessed human in Ohio. Really ticked-off ghost in New York.”
He opens his eyes and looks up at her. Twines his fingers in her hair and pulls her in for another series of kisses. Until she surprises him again by pulling free and shifting downwards, and he feels her warm tongue lapping at one of his nipples. He’s definitely not used to women being sexual initiators, but he’s pretty sure he could get used to it.
He wants to even the score. As soon as he can, he’s reaching for the buttons at the front of her dress. More soft, pale skin, and he tugs her closer so he can press kisses against her cleavage, and a pleasurable tingle goes up his spine as her fingers slide through his hair, encouraging him to linger. His stubble doesn’t seem to bother her, which is a good thing. Shaving’s not exactly high on the priority list when you’re busy hunting down evil.
Her bra comes off at some point, and he shifts objectives, using his mouth and hands to make those pretty nipples stiffen, to make her moan softly and press against him. He’s almost forgotten what it sounds like, when a woman’s happy with what you’re doing to her. John loves that noise.
He’s a hungry man, and he doesn’t want pizza (or so Dean’s Alice Cooper albums would put it). That’s when he stands up, holding onto Casey, and lifts her onto the kitchen table. They should be on a bed, but he’s not really thinking that far ahead, she’s wrapping her legs tightly around his hips and he’s got other things to think about.
Casey’s hands slide over his shoulders, across his back…and then he remembers. She gasps and pulls a little away from him, and shows him her hand. It’s bloody. “Your back!” she says, looking apologetic.
He doesn’t care. A couple of scratches, whatever. He’s had worse. “Later. Lay back,” he orders her.
Her dress comes off easily - especially when one of the rents in it tears completely when he’s trying to draw it down over her hips - and he tosses it away. He pauses, however, in his attempt to make her surrender her remaining clothing, when she mutters, “Oh, crap.”
She’s blushing, and he can’t figure out why. She’s looking at her own legs, and he finally notices the small hairs. Apparently, she hasn’t been shaving her legs. Probably wasn’t expecting to be having sex in her kitchen with a relative stranger when she got up this morning.
“Sorry,” she says, misinterpreting his scrutiny.
He doesn’t care. He was married, once, he knows the drill. “Nothing to feel sorry about,” he rumbles, and he shows her how little it bothers him by pulling his chair closer to the table, lowering himself into it, and then running his tongue teasingly up the lightly furred skin of her left calf.
She doesn’t protest any further, just closes her eyes and lays back onto the table. She still doesn’t protest when he hooks his fingers in the waistband of her panties and makes them amscray. She helps, instead, pulling herself closer as he guides her, drawing her to the edge of the table.
It’s been awhile, and John supposes he might be a little rusty. Best to take his time, not rush things along, no matter how much his aching balls demand otherwise. A single long, leisurely caress of his tongue between her folds, however, and she’s clutching at his head again. Directing him right to the throbbing node at the top of her slick centre.
Well, as long as that’s what she wants, he’s not going to argue. He suckles gently, reaching underneath her to grip the generous curves of her ass. Despite the needy ache inside him, he’s going to stay at this as long as she wants him to. This is for them both.
She arches, and she tastes suddenly different on his tongue. Richer, thicker. Oh yes, definitely worth the near-pain of waiting.
But it looks like he’s not going to have to wait any longer, because she’s suddenly sitting up and working at the fly of his jeans.
He struggles to keep the logical side of his brain going, just for a few more seconds. “Protection?” he asks. Two rebellious adult sons are enough.
Casey’s cheeks turn pink again. “Um, there might be a condom in my nighttable upstairs. If it hasn’t expired yet.”
Mentally crossing his fingers, John picks Casey up. And then carries her carefully up the stairs to the bedroom. His shoulder and knee don’t like it much, but screw them. When’s the next time he’ll get to be all Neanderthal with a beautiful woman? Likely not for awhile.
The bedroom’s little more than a war zone - it still smells of perfume, and there’s glass all over the place, a scorched mark on the floor that was the final resting place of the ghost’s source - but the bed is intact and miraculously clear of debris. So once Casey finds the little packet jammed in the back of the top drawer and confirms (also miraculously) it hasn’t expired yet, they both climb on the bed and get to it.
His jeans and shoes wind up shoved to the foot of the bed, and once he’s properly clothed in latex, he gets on top of her, and then inside her.
It’s been too long since he’s immersed himself in the sweetness of a woman’s body. He keeps having to stop, to catch his breath. And so he won’t come in under five seconds flat. He kisses Casey, strokes her soft hair and skin, breathing her in, holding her close. Hot, slippery limbs wrapped tightly around him, and she gets his blood moving even faster, saying his name in a gasping little voice whenever he starts to move inside her again.
He can’t hold back any longer. He thrusts, rough and deep, and empties himself into her. It’s OK, though. She’s apparently been waiting for his surrender, because even as the last of his climax shudders through him, she’s going over the edge.
It’s over, and they’re lying there, limbs still locked together. He’s going to have trouble saying good-bye.
*~*~*
It’s bothering him, the fact that Casey’s house seems like such an unlikely site for this ghost to have haunted, so he hits the books one last time before going to see Casey.
After a couple hours’ work, he finds it. The connection. The mother of the rapist had once lived in Casey’s home. Apparently, she’d wanted a fresh start, much like Casey herself once had.
It had gone bad for the asshole rapist’s mother, too. She must’ve gotten some of his personal effects after his murder, including the photo the bastard was using as its source. They’d found her one day, dead, and there were signs she’d been raped. No suspect was ever questioned. What a sick freak, to violate and kill his own mother…
The home had stood empty for years. Until Casey had come along. The realtor must’ve neglected to mention the house’s history. Typical.
He thinks about Casey as he drives back to her place to say goodbye. He’s got those two possible leads from Bobby to follow up on. He can’t linger. Much as he wants to.
She’s sitting on the porch when he pulls up. She gets up to hug him as he makes his limping way up the stairs. Damn knee’s going to make a real bitch of itself on the next job, he knows, and it’s almost enough to convince him to stay awhile, rest up. But he doesn’t know how many innocent people might be hurt or even killed while he’s sitting around playing house with Casey Smith. So he’ll resist. He has to.
“You’re leaving,” she whispers against his ear, arms wound around him. “You’ve got other people to help.”
“Yes,” he squeezes her a little tighter. He shouldn’t; shouldn’t feel this affection for her, but can’t help himself. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this conflicted about leaving a job before.
“Promise me you’ll come back and see me, John,” she says. It’s almost an order, and he grins, even though she’s still got her mouth to his ear and she can’t see it. Tough broad.
“I promise.”
He’s made a lot of promises over the years. To himself. To Mary. To Dean and Sam. To his fellow hunters.
He hopes this is one he can actually keep.
FIN
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Crossposted to AO3