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*
"I know your name," she says to him the first time she sees him, and he's already looking at her but he tilts his head back a little, idly turning the glass between his hands, leaving dark rings on the table. "Winchester," she says, and Bill laughs, looks from her back to him.
"Like the rifle?" Bill asks.
"Like the rifle," the man says, ducking his head to hide a grin. Then not hiding it as he looks back up at her, but hiding something else; not so much wariness of even suspicion in his eyes as just plain knowing.
Bill's still looking at her too, appraising like she's gone and done something unexpected again. She flips him a grin. "Heard you were coming."
*
Third time she sees him he comes during the day, afternoon when Jo's just come in from school, scowling up a storm. Her face clears when she sees him, she's not as shy as she should be, not as careful. She sits right up next to him and stares, her expression so like Bill's that Ellen has to stop and watch from the other side of the bar.
"Who're you?" she asks, and he returns her gaze, blinks slowly.
"John."
"I'm Joanna Beth Harvelle." Jo sticks her hand out but instead of shaking it, he slaps something into it. A piece of candy.
Jo only gapes for a moment before closing her mouth. "For me?" she says, but she's already unwrapping it.
"Well," he says, like he's thinking on it, scratching at the stubble on his chin. "I was saving it, but I guess you'll have to do."
Jo chews with her mouth open, and loudly. Toffee, Ellen figures. "Any of that left for me?" Ellen asks him, moving closer at last.
*
Ninth time he's real beat up and Bill's been seeing some folks off outside, bar mostly empty in these small hours, and Bill stumbles back inside with John half-over his shoulder.
They've got a room for this out back, sheets always kept clean and first aid always stocked. It's hurting him a lot, she can tell, but he's not moaning or screaming like some who've been in here. Just giving these regular, sharp gasps. There's blood all over but she's seen worse, and tears at the ruins of John's shirt while Bill cuts John's jeans up to above the knee, peeling it away from the damaged tissue. "I have to�"" he gasps as she prepares the shot of morphine. "I have to get back."
"Hell, Winchester," she says, sliding the hypodermic into his arm smooth as you please. "How in the hell did you even get here?"
He's going spacey already, blood loss more than the morphine probably, but somehow he's still got energy to be waving his arms around. Bill's wedging a pillow under his neck and John's hand somehow lands on his head, then stays there. Bill looks at her and smirks. "Just followed the path," John slurs, his breathing calming at last, and then Bill's passing over the peroxide and holy water, tearing open the plastic wrap on a packet of gauze.
*
Twelfth time he spends the night in the corner of the bar with Bill, crammed into a table two small for the both of them. Their heads are bent over sheets of paper that they're flicking through, writing on, and though it's dim enough that she's left wondering how in hell they can even see any of it, Bill's hair still gleams dully.
John's still there next morning, and Jo's overjoyed to see him though his smile looks like it's seen better days. He pulls something out of his pocket for her, a short black thread of something he ties around her wrist.
Jo comes to show her proudly once he's done, and when she's hugged her Dad behind and run off outside to catch the school bus Ellen lifts her eyebrows at John. "You've got her expecting it, now," she says. "Every time she sees you."
"Little girls," Bill says, "are born to be spoilt."
"So says you," Ellen scoffs. "I sure as hell weren't."
Bill raises an eyebrow, mouth twitching. "Doesn't show," he says.
"Shutup," she says to him, scowling, and he laughs outright, hoarse from a night in the smoky bar but still rich, and he grabs her about the waist, hauls her closer. "You complaining?"
"Wouldn't dream of it," he says and pulls her hips in until her ass is snug against his groin, his knees spread wide, sitting at the perfect height on the bar stool.
"And you," she says, pointing her dishcloth at John. "Can shut the hell up too."
John lifts his hands up, holding them out as if to placate her, but his mouth's twisted up in a smirk as well. "Wouldn't dream of it," he says, not parroting, just different inflection.
Bill bites the back of her neck, mouthful of hair, and mock-growls. John's laugh is soft and rough, like walking across spilled salt in her bare feet.
*
Twenty-first and he sure as hell isn't moving stiff any more, wounds all healed up but his body getting smoother with each drink he takes anyhow. She thinks it's the twenty-first. She's starting to lose count.
Bill's always been better at that than her, keeping track of things. She keeps the books at the Roadhouse, sure, but keeping a watch on something once it's set its own pattern, not so much. She's more likely to look round one day, see the path that she's woven up behind her, not remember each stitch.
Bill's good at keeping count. Keeping track, he always corrects her with, when she suggests he's keeping score.
"C'mon," he says to John when John finishes another glass, when the sound of their laughter has bled out into the warm, comfortable air of the bar. It's late, real late, and Ellen's throat hurts from the smoke and from talking, laughing. "Any more of them and we'll have to carry you to bed."
John ducks his head at that and she might think he's a little bashful, but the chuckle that bubbles up in her throat at that thought turns into something else when he tilts his gaze up again, looking through dark eyelashes, just a brief glance. Bill's arm slings easily over her shoulder and she slips closer to his side. John's tongue darts out, wets his bottom lip. "C'mon," she says. "That's enough."
She feels tired and wide awake all at once, a night on her feet but energy buzzing through her limbs, tingling extremities awake when she sits back on the bed, half-reclining against the headboard. John stands by the door, chin still dipped a little, and Bill pads to the edge of the bed, sits on a corner.
"Heal up all right?" Bill asks, voice soft, leaning forward a little and watching John. John's eyelids lower, head dips in a single, slow nod and his hands come up, unbuttoning his shirt with easy, assured moves of his fingers. He pulls the sides open, revealing the darker undershirt beneath, pulling to untuck it from his waistband. Bill leans forward a little more. "Let's see, then."
John just stares at him, expression still and gaze unbroken and his hands rest unmoving on his belly. Then Bill's up and off the bed, movement sudden and almost violent and he grips John's head between his hands, pushing his mouth against John's.
She can hear the sharp intake of breath, John's, and hear the wet sound of their mouths as they push against each other. Bill's hands drop, shove John's shirt off his shoulders, using the cuffs to trap John's hands at his back and the loose ends of it to haul John to the bed.
They butt heads like rams, John's as dark as Bill's is fair, John's locks winding round her fingers a little even as she scritches her nails through the shorn gold at the back of Bill's skull. He turns his head for a moment, sucking her thumb into his mouth and tonguing it briefly as he makes short work of John's belt, indignant whine of John's zipper as he yanks John's fly apart.
John doesn't make a sound when Bill's hand wraps around his dick but Bill hums, low and happy and she knows it. She pops the buttons on her own fly, sliding her hand between her legs, fingers slipping through heat and wet already and pressing up again against the tight little knot of flesh. The sound of their breathing is loud, three heavy and out of sync and the muscles in her legs seize, tense at Bill's soft noises, the roll of her fingers.
She watches them, shoving down and off her own jeans when they strip out of theirs, Bill pulling her tee-shirt up and off, licking her fingers and grinning again, slow flush of it down her chest. Bill pushes John down into the bed and she draws her knees up, sliding her fingers lower to push into her cunt and John's gasping again, sharp and irregular with his mouth open, pressed into the pillow.
She has to stop then, has to kneel, splaying one hand on John's back, feeling the tense and shift of muscle under his hot skin and her other hand gripping the back of Bill's neck, biting the low groan out of his mouth.
She draws Bill’s hand off John's hip, presses it between her own legs and his fingers push into her without hesitation. It's too much concentration to kiss, then, so they clash teeth a little awkwardly and she drops the hand from the back of his neck to tug at her own nipple. He laughs breathlessly, a little mindlessly, his whole body pushing, thrusting, and she knows the moment he comes from the way his fingers curl hard, the way his chest swells and muscles in his buttocks, thighs, back seize tight.
When he drops his back down onto the mattress she shakes her head, tutting until his eyes focus again, smile becoming less liquid, hand settling again on her hip as she helps John over then straddles his hips, sinks down.
She wants to make him make noise, now. Used to Bill's sounds of pleasure, easily and eagerly given when her body draws them out of him. John just squeezes his eyes closed, hands resting on top of her thighs like he's not sure what to do with them even as his hips push up urgently. Bill doesn't have to be guided this time, hand sliding between their bodies to find her clit, pinching and pressing.
She shudders, rides harder; John's chest heaves and the tension of his brows eases, eyes slitting open and glittering up at her. Bill's head rests on the pillow beside his and fair and dark or not they're both flushed and damp staring up at her, mouths open, half-awed but expressions slack enough that she has to laugh. It comes out as another gasp, the shocks of it tightening in her belly and she tips forward to brace her hands against John's shoulders.
The angle shifts and suddenly she can only breathe in, Bill's hand sliding down to stroke fingers where John's dick is sliding into her, heel of Bill's palm grinding against her clit. She's coming abruptly, unravelling as her cunt clutches at John uncontrollably, at Bill's fingers. The sudden dizzying rush makes her head ring like a struck bell and she almost misses the sound John makes as he snaps his hips up one last time, but then Bill's licking it from his mouth anyway, like it's something he’s holding for her to enjoy later.
*
Next time she doesn't see him because her eyes are still closed when he stirs under her arm.
"Daddy?" Jo's voice from the doorway, not much louder than a whisper and miserable, hopeful.
John moves again, his body struggling out of sleep and she cracks her eyes open. "Sammy?" John croaks, and she shifts her grip to the side of his ribs, presses him back down.
Bill's moving on her other side, brief burst of cold air as he sits up, yanking his pants on before standing, tucking the blankets back down against her. "Yeah, sweetheart," he says softly. "I'm coming."
John's still barely awake, she can tell from the slow rise and fall of his ribcage against the inside of her forearm, and the room's getting gradually paler, now, dawn soaking in. His whole body jerks abruptly when he wakes, and he turns his head on the pillow to face her.
"Who's Sammy?" she asks in a whisper. The room's still enough, quiet enough that it doesn't feel right to speak it any louder, like a secret. His eyes dip closed again, throat working briefly as he swallows.
"My boy," he says, voice still rough but less harsh now that he's wet it.
"You got a boy?" she says.
"Two of 'em." He pauses, blinks again, gaze searching her face. "Sammy's only a couple years older than Joanna." He's always called her Joanna, since she introduced herself as such. It's become a private joke between the two of them, though Jo slipped into the habit of 'Uncle John' quickly enough.
She wonders what happens to them while he's here, where they are. Wonders how he can leave them. "They safe?" she asks before she's even thought about it.
He doesn't frown, doesn't seem puzzled by the question at all. His eyes search her face for a brief moment. "Every second of every day," he says, and it sounds like a threat and like a vow, all stitched up together, and it pierces the drum-taut ache that'd pulled tight in her chest at the sound of Jo's voice.
They stare at each other, silent, until Bill slips back in through the doorway, cussing as he hurries across the cold floor and back into the bed. He presses his icy feet against Ellen's ankles and she kicks them away.
John rolls over, rolls out of the bed, searching briefly for his jeans before stepping into them, hitching them up. "Nightmare?" he asks, deadpan. "Monsters?"
"Nah," Bill says. "Spelling bee. Kids, huh?"
John drops his head again, nods as if as an afterthought, leaning down to pick his shirt off the floor. "I gotta go," he says.
"She'll be heartbroken," Bill says. "What'll she eat for breakfast?"
"Shutup," John says, beginning of a smile again, and digs in his pocket, tosses something at Bill.
Bill catches it, holds it up. Another candy. "Bribery will get you everywhere," he says.
"Bring more when you come back," Ellen says, and John's gaze shifts to her.
"Sure," he says, not breaking their gaze until he turns to step out the door, and then she can't ignore Bill's creeping fingers, digging abruptly into her belly, Bill's whiskers on her breast.
She laughs, mostly in surprise, a giggle made husky by late night and little sleep, her limbs still liquid and relaxed. "Promise!" she calls after John, but if there's an answer then she doesn't hear it because Bill's ducking under the covers, prickling his face up along the inside of her thigh.
*
Last time, she sees him.