ultraviolet9a | Senses

>> Senses

TITLE: Senses

AUTHOR:

ultraviolet9a
SPOILER: none. It’s pre-series, really. (maybe mild ones for Skin)

GENRE: Het. Gen-ish at some parts too.

CHARACTERS: John/OC

RATING: NC17. Because of some paragraphs/units, esp Nr4.

FEEDBACK: Dude…duh.
DISCLAIMER: I wish I owned John. Or he owned me. You know. I can compromise. I’m not unreasonable. :)

SUMMARY: Skinwalker hunt. Blindfolds. Tying up. Force of wills. Hunting tutorials. John. All around the senses. That sort of thing. The order goes as Scent, Touch, Sight, Sound, Taste, and no, the themes will probably not be connected to the senses you expected.

NOTE: for

spn_het_love 's surprise challenge “Connect” where one must select one of the senses and use it as a starting point for a less than 500 words fic.The thing is, I wrote 500 word fics on each one of the senses, which can be independent but actually make up one whole story, so I’m posting it as one fic. I hope that’s alright.

NOTE2: Dear

phantomas, this fic is for your birthday. The fic actually requested is currently uncooperative, but I hope that you find this to your liking too. Till I beat that other plot bunny into submission. Preferably with a sledgehammer. Or a chainsaw. Or something of the sort. :)

1. Scent

The sewer smells of blood and shit, as if everything revolves around this slaughterhouse/outhouse combo. John knows that smell, because this isn’t the first skinwalker he’s hunted down. Almost all of them burrow underground and he makes sure that they stay that way. Permanently.

John finds it easy to track them down. It’s as if the smoke and ashes in a nursery room years ago marked his sense of smell and now he can scent what shouldn’t be there, what must be taken out.

It takes one silver bullet to get rid of the bastard and three more to make sure it stays down.

Blood and shit and decaying flesh. Evil has got its own special scent, but that’s not the only whiff John gets.

There’s fear permeating everything, the musky texture going deeper than death.

She’s crouched against a wall, breathing as quietly as possible, gun still in hand. He guesses the shots got her here, like the cavalry in old cowboy gigs that shows up when it’s no longer needed.

He throws the beam of the flashlight at her. She’s a mess of sweat and dirt and tangles of hair and her hand is unresisting when he takes the gun away. He uncocks it, looks inside. Silver bullets.

He can almost scent the wetness behind her ears.

“You hurt?” he asks. She shakes her head. “Good. Now get back home and have a normal life. You ain’t got what it takes for this.”

Her mouth stiffens.

“You know shit about me. Now give me back my goddamn gun.”

He looks at her for a long time before he does. Because fuck-ups are part of the game; and underneath her fear and bravado, the wetness and the blood and the shit, he thinks he can also catch the scent of steel and darkness; the scent of a hunter.

He lets her help him get rid of the body.

2. Touch

She makes fine, even stitches and knows how to wrap a bandage the right way. She’s got a light touch, lighter than Bobby’s or Jim’s and she’s damn easier on the eyes too, that much John’s gotta admit.

Should have been a nurse, not a hunter. Tells her so. Expects some sort of fuck you from her.

She shakes her head instead.

“Wasn’t my first hunt, you know.”

“Really?” He cocks his eyebrow. “Could have fooled me.”

“Nearly died by a skinwalker some years ago,” she says, taking off the surgical gloves. “That’s why I froze.”

John lets the full weight of his gaze fall on her. She looks away.

“Some months ago,” she amends.

“How’d you know to use silver bullets?”

“I researched.”

He nods.

“It’s a good start.”

He moves to his bag, takes out his journal. The solid feel in his hands is comforting.

“You got to keep a journal,” he says. “Write down what you find out. Organize your knowledge.”

He puts it in her hands, moves pages around.

Shortnailed fingers tap at photographs.

“Who’re they?”

“My boys.”

“They look good.”

“They do.”

He leafs through.

“Organize,” he says. “The world’s a chaos but you got to keep some order if you want to stay alive.”

It’s her turn to raise her eyebrows.

“You call that order?”

He shrugs.

“It’s my order. Makes sense to me.”

“Any other words of wisdom?”

“Never let a stranger take the gun from your hand. And when you’re hunting, hunt. You can freeze and get scared shitless later. Or you’ll get yourself and anyone else around you killed.”

Now she’s putting away bandages, needles, hypoderms, antibiotics, back turned to him, and John sees a tension built up on her spine. Her shoulders begin to shake.

She closes the bag, then sits beside him. There are streaks of tears she rubs away with tight fists, like a child. His hand moves to her back by instinct, stroking in the lazy circles that always soothed his boys.

Ah, shit.

“Wasn’t hunting alone,” she says. Her voice isn’t steady. “Been chasing this son of a bitch for months. It knew. It took the shape…” She breaks off. She needs to say no more, John’s already put the pieces together.

“It took the shape of your partner to throw you off, didn’t it?” he asks. Her body radiates warmth against his palm. “That’s why you froze.”

She nods. He wants to tell her how she should back out while there’s still time. That death is always close at heel to both hunted and hunters, and it’s not just a brush or a mere touch. Sooner or later (and somehow it’s always sooner) it catches up with them. He doesn’t say anything.

They stay silent for a long time. John doesn’t take his hand away. She doesn’t move.

3. Sight

The blindfold feels wrong on her, she can’t see anything, it’s freaking her out. She tells him so in her most reasonable, scared voice, but he pulls her hands down when she tries to take it off.

“You got to trust me, Sara,” he says patiently. “If you want this to work, you gotta trust me.”

“Am I supposed to say yessir now?”

“That’d be optimum, yes.”

“John…”

“You asked for it.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“Not going to disagree with you on that one.”

“Fuck you, John.”

He slaps the back of her head.

“Mouth,” he warns.

“Sorry.”

“Good girl.”

He cradles her face between his palms. Thinks he can see her looking at him despite the blindfold.

“You know what you got to do, yeah?”

She nods between his fingers.

“Good girl.”

“Two times in a row,” she says. “You’re beginning to freak me out.”

“Trust me,” he says.

He helps her in the car, drives for a few miles. Then they pull over. They get out.

There’s an old warehouse there. John leads her inside, finding the way through the darkness with his flashlight, down to a small room, probably used as an office. Ties her up nice and tight.

“Free yourself,” he says. “And come and find me.”

“What if I don’t make it?”

“Make it.”

“What if I need to pee?”

“Then you’d better work fast.”

He locks the door behind him.

Gets outside, leans on the hood of the Impala, basks in the sunlight. It’s soft against him. He closes his eyes, the light etching strange patterns on his eyelids.

He hears before he actually sees her, because she’s grunting and swearing and cursing at him with his goddamned idea of keeping up shape and Zen bullshit exercising and how the hell had he convinced her to do that was beyond her. He is laughing hard as he walks to the door the minute she comes out. She’s got the blindfold in her hand. There are bruises where she stumbled and cuts on her hands as she tried to undo the rope first with a pocket knife she kept in her boots, then the shards of glass she felt beside her.

John cradles her face, pushes the hair back as she blinks in the sunlight, irises trying to adjust to sight after the self imposed darkness of the blindfold, then the darkness of the old edifice.

“Took you long enough,” he says. “I got bored.”

She punches him in the arm, winces at her own cuts.

“Shut up,” she says. “Those were the longest minutes of my life.”

“You did alright.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t?”

“I would have left you there.”

She looks at him. He doesn’t move a muscle.

“No matter how hard I look, John, sometimes I still have no idea if you’re messing with me or not.”

“Part of my charm.”

She snorts. “Yeah, right.”

She stomps to the car, blindfold still in hand and doesn’t talk all the drive back to the motel. Not after the shower, not during their silent dinner. Only when they’re lying side by side in bed does she straddle him, tells him that payback’s a bitch and ties the blindfold around his eyes, but John is laughing too hard to complain about the lack of visual, and besides, he doesn’t really need to see in order to do what she wants done.

4. Sound

“Say my name,” John says. His fingers burrow in her mouth. She bites them, teeth hard, drawing pain, hot breath and saliva as she gasps, pants, breathes around him.

“Say my name,” he insists between his own gasps, pressing her down. He needs that anchor, can’t afford to fool himself with memories of a dead wife, lost in a body that moulds to his wishes and doesn’t demand recognition. He’s got to hear her, know that the voice is Sara’s, lie with her and not a ghost.

His fingers find her soft spot as he moves inside her, presses hard against her.

“Say my name, Sara.”

There’s hardness in his voice, and pleading, but she only pants and closes her eyes. He pushes harder. There’s a gasp of pain as her eyes open, widen in surprise and pain, but she refuses to give in. He thrusts harder and harder, small oh sounds of pain the only things she is willing to give, mouth red and flushed, heavy-lidded eyes watching him unguarded.

The sight of her eyes welled up, the flushed skin, open mouth, the small kernel of resistance in her only moments of utter abandon, his own power over her, send John over the edge.

He pins her wrists down biting hard on her shoulder and pumps harder, calling her name over and over again, till he can no longer hold it. He comes in one big wave of release and shudders against her.

He rolls off her immediately, turns on his side facing a paisley decorated wall, leaves her with the bite marks and the bruises around her wrists and her mouth and her cunt, doesn’t touch her, doesn’t care if she came, the drill sergeant part of him wanting to punish her for not. obeying.

“Goddammit,” he mutters. It stuns him that he is the one feeling hurt and defeated. “Goddammit.”

She spoons him. Wraps herself around him, breasts against his back, legs over his, arms moving from chest to shoulders. He can feel her breath on his neck, her palm on his shoulder.

Can feel her voice thrumming softly through him as she speaks.

“Mine’s not the voice you wanted to hear,” she says. “It’s ok. It’s ok if you think about her when we… It’s alright. I don’t mind. It doesn’t hurt me. You didn’t hurt me. We all carry ghosts.”

He closes his eyes. He’s tired. Feels like a bastard. Doesn’t know how to take it back.

“Sara,” he says. Doesn’t finish the plead.

“John,” she whispers and kisses the nape of his neck. “JohnJohnJohn.”

He reaches out and covers her hand with his palm drawing it to him. Kisses it gently before cradling it to his chest.

His hand is warm. His ring isn’t, and feels as heavy as memories.

5. Taste

He’s grown used to her taste. Not that he lingers or remembers it when he’s getting on with his life, boys, hunting. It’s just that whenever their paths cross, despite the long, long span in between, despite the women he’s bedded and the men she’s undoubtedly lain with (because a hunter’s life is so lonely flesh is the only comfort), when his mouth is on her the taste is familiar, unchanged. Taste of Sara. He thinks that he could recognize it even if he was blindfolded, and the thought makes him chuckle at the memory.

Her eyelids taste salty when he kisses them. Sweat or tears, he can’t tell, but that too is part of her taste.

They’ve shared some hunts. Some talking. Some time. She never asks for more than he can give. He never gives more than she asks for. It’s a good balance.

Separation ends always with the same goodbye dialogue.

“If you need help, you call me.”

“I will, you too. Fair trade, right?”

“You take care, Sara, alright?”

Nod, car, drive, miles.

Her taste lingers in his mouth long after their goodbyes. He never admits it.

-The End.

SIDENOTE: Sara is one of the few OFC I have written (gen girl here, thank you. :) ) and for some reason I really like her. She’s used in two more stories, though with less background on her and John’s presence way more dominant and a writing style/direction that is totally different. Stories are Close your eyes and think of summer and Snow’s just frozen water. Senses is a prequel to those, with Close your eyes being the final (and my favourite) thing.

Also, hiyacynth? You were right. Two words. Pre. Quel. Bliss. Heh.