ultraviolet9a | Close your eyes and think of summer

ultraviolet9a

>> Close your eyes and think of summer

TITLE: Close your eyes and think of summer

AUTHOR:

ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: none really.

GENRE: Het. Partly though. There is a whole story behind it and het is just one aspect.

CHARACTERS: John/Mary, John/OC, Bobby, mentions of Sam and Dean and Pastor Jim.
RATING: PG13

FEEDBACK: Dude…duh.

SUMMARY: John in a graveyard. Past and present and stuff I can’t say cuz it’d screw up plot.
DISCLAIMER: If I owned the Winchesters, I wouldn’t know what to do with them anyway. (You know I’m lying to comfort myself, right?)

NOTE: for

spn_het_love 's "Beginnings" challenge. You'll have more understanding of certain details if you read Snow’s just frozen water (doesn't matter if it's before or after), but it’s not a prerequisite.

It was difficult doing this alone; gave a man too much time to think about things when all he wanted to do was forget.

The shovel hit the ground in a steady quick rhythm, the handle smoothed out by his own palm, the familiar weight in his hand not a burden but an extension of him.

He hated hours like these, too late to call them night, too early to call them day. Stars still hanging overhead, small whiffs of breeze surprising him, cooling the sweat clinging on his skin and him thinking, thinking, brain unravelling as his body moved to its own silent pace.

Shovel, pant, shovel, grunt, shovel, hum.

It was still summer, but the early rains had already started and the ground under him was like a woman in love, soft and yielding.

He kept on. If the boys were there, Dean would have insisted he take the shovel and dig, and he would have too, holding it the way his father did, one foot pressing the blade in the ground, the other heel keeping balance. Same kind of grunts and sighs from a son just starting puberty, muscles already swelling on a tight, solid frame.

He briefly wondered if the boys were alright, safe under Jim’s roof, sleeping, no doubt dreaming of a nightless, fireless life.

Shovel in, out.

He hated hours like these, hated to be digging up graves in deep, deep summer, unable to appreciate how sweet the ground smelt, how soft the trees murmured, how birds would start singing soon.

He hated summers. Hated the memories. Wished his boys were there, Sammy starting his endless question crusade and Dean watching with alert eyes, so much like his own.

The shovel stood still.

He leaned on it, closed his eyes and thought of summer.

Mary.

Getaway. Car drives. Lakes, rivers, oceans. Swimming. Her hair one shade darker wet, like molten gold, soft halo of sun trapped around her head and smile.

“John,” she said on the pier and his eyes were caught in her ponytail bouncing and dripping, patches of wet swimsuit peeking through her soft yellow summer dress, eyes moving to the way she licked ice cream already melting. She tasted of vanilla and chocolate when he kissed her, and when she deepened it his body followed its own arc to hers, slow, steady rhythm of holding her, finding her, always discovering something new, till she broke it off with laughter and a flush on her cheekbones, because John, we’re not alone. He couldn’t care less, not for the kids running across with bikes, the balloon vendors, the old lady steadying herself on her old man’s arm, smiling benevolently at them. All John could think of was that this was them, him and Mary, in forty years time, bodies still in the same trajectory, smoothed from love and years together because there was grace in old age, and he realized he wanted to grow old with her, the certainty wrapping around him like the sea after a dive.

“Marry me,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Hey, John,” Sara said. She had big faded eyes that would have looked golden in sunlight (the faded yellow of summer dresses and butterfly wings, not fireloving bastards) and when he opened his own eyes, torn away from a perfect summer lifetimes away, hers were focused on him.

He smiled. She had come.

“Hey yourself.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“You know I would.”

He started shovelling again.

He wanted to say that they really had to stop meeting like that, that graveyards were not fun places, even when they came with the job prescription. That she looked good, all things considered. That he’d like her to hum another Jingle Bell song under her breath like the last time they met, when the world was caught up in snow and Nathaniel Northam the soul that had to be pushed away from the living.

“Must be pretty deep,” she said again. She had a school teacher’s voice, pleasant, soothing, easy, laziness and energy wrapped under a neutral layer.

“You could help,” he muttered. His own grumpy veneer covered sorrow.

He was glad she had shown up. She shook her head.

“Not on this one.”

“Not like you were any help before,” he said. His voice came strained, pants in sync with the shovel. “Holding the flashlight, and singing.”

John’s voice rose in the night. Her laughter felt like a breeze.

“John Winchester, I was never that off-key! Nor loud!”

“You kidding me? I thought you’d raise the dead and we’d end up neck high in zombies!”

There was a thud as the shovel hit solid wood.

“Well, we didn’t,” she said quietly.

“No. We didn’t.”

She was still standing above ground, now crouched over the edge of the rectangular hole he had dug up, dark hair streaming loose as she looked at the coffin bellow. He didn’t reach out.

The coffin gave after little struggle. He poured gasoline, started with the salt.

“You missed that bit,” she said solemnly, finger pointing somewhere towards the dark tresses resting on silky white lining.

His laugh came out strangled.

She didn’t return it.

He threw the shovel over the side, the small bag with the salt and the gasoline beside it. Hauled himself out of the hole and sat on the rim, feet dangling.

“I’m scared,” Sara said. He let his eyes sweep over her. Then looked somewhere in the distance.

“There’s no rush.”

The matchbox moved in his fingers. Sara drew herself up, walked towards him, sat near. Close enough for comfort, not close enough for touch.

His sweat started to cool. Peaceful night, pretty woman by his side. His eyes rested against her seeking refuge from the opened grave.

“Why?” he asked.

“Tell me something you’ve never told me before. And I’ll tell you. Fair trade, John.”

He laughed. Closed his eyes. He thought of summer.

Chores done, Mary in the porch. Lazy, languid, hot, heatwave coming through the house with the hot gusts of wind. Sweat trickling down her neck, between her breasts, icy lemonade on the table turning warm, dress riding high up her thighs and when he got back he pulled her to her feet and shoved her in the house, scattering the few clothes they had on everywhere and then came inside her as if they were in competition with the heatwave, no longer knowing what scorched more, the lethargic summer barging through their windows or her body against his, moaning, pleading, calling his name again and again.

Years later, Mary claimed by a different sort of fire, he had almost died on a hunt. He had been slipping in and out of consciousness as Bobby patched him up because they were too high up in the mountain and Bobby had to do something before John died in his arms. Carried him slung over his shoulder back to the car, drove to hospital all the while cursing and telling him dammit John, live, you got Dean and Sam, you bastard. John didn’t remember any of it, Bobby told him later. He had been out for three days in hospital and that prolonged sleep hadn’t been dreamless.

“Jesus, John,” Bobby had said, relief coming from every pore of his body. “Doc said you must have been hurtin’ like hell.”

“Yeah?” he had rasped, and the weakness in his voice had terrified him.

“You were smiling like a goddamn loon. What the hell were you thinking?”

John had closed his eyes, remembered how when pain came he went back to that room, soaked sheets, naked wife, heat building inside and out.

“Summer,” he had said, then had fallen asleep again.

So he told Sara, sitting side by side over an open grave. Not how the thoughts of summer kept the gun away from his head even as the sorrow always claimed him. Not how he hated summers. Or how he loved them. How time hadn’t smoothed that out, unlike the handle of the shovel in his palm.

Just how he often closed his eyes and thought of it. Of summer.

“Summer’s good,” Sara singsonged softly. “It’s a good time.”

John looked at her. Nodded. She nodded back.

“You didn’t tell me why,” John said, opening the matchbox. “Fair trade.”

She smiled and leaned in to him and he didn’t pull back. Her mouth was cold. Tasted of winter, of snow and layers that held no promise of life.

“Got no family. Wouldn’t want anyone else to lay me to rest. Keep me safe. You promised, remember?”

“I remember. You still scared?”

The trees rustled. Summer drifted a bit further. John looked at her, thinking of snow and hunts and the way she never called out his name when they shared the same bed. The way she never called for a favour if it wasn’t fair trade. Save now. The last favour.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m still scared.”

“Don’t be.” His voice was hoarse. He looked away. The match flared in the dark, set the matchbox on fire, awakened the shadows. She cast no shadow at all.

“I’m here, Sara. Close your eyes and think of summer.”

A flick of his fingers. Fire flared into her grave.

John closed his eyes.

-The End.

SIDENOTE: Yes, I tend to kill off lately. *facepalm* I know I got to stop. At some point. Write a fic WHERE NOBODY DIES AND THERE IS A HAPPY LALA LAND. Yeah. That’d be the day. Spring is apparently the best season for angsting.

SIDENOTE2: I love the kind of John (in writing) where he is not defined in relation to others, like a father to his boys, a husband to Mary and a hunter after the YED. Where he is simply defined as him, John, a separate identity that can stand on his own. If that was achieved in this fic, that’s a different question. All I’m saying is I love John Winchester, cuz there are way more layers than Kripke had ever time to reveal.