![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosTitle: In The Border Fires
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural/Terminator series
Rating: R
Pairing: John Winchester/Sarah Connor
Spoilers for: "Shadows"/"Terminator 2: Judgment Day"
Warnings: Sexual situations, bad language
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine, wheeee!
Summary: Who needs flowers and candy when you can have guns and ammo?
Author's note: In my continuing quest to hook up Sarah Connor with every "good soldier" in fandom, I bring you this sick, sad abomination. ;)
*****
In The Border Fires
*****
The drink Enrique passes him, whatever the hell it is, reeks like gasoline and tastes even worse. John's almost a fucking professional when it comes to liquor at this point, because "connisseur" sounds a hell of a lot better than "alcoholic" any day of the week, but the stuff Enrique's apparently been brewing all on his own sets fire to John's sinuses and scorches his throat to embarrassing extremes.
Arson in a shot glass, he thinks, and he's so busy trying to recover without looking like a goddamn co-ed on holiday that he barely registers Enrique's comment until the man's slapping him on the shoulder and laughing like he's just said the wittiest thing ever.
"What's that?" John says.
His words come out like they've been scored with razor blades, and Enrique's grin spreads further. He doesn't repeat himself, but John's positive he said something about a woman.
He feels it then, the ghostly trail of small familiar fingers through his hair, and John steels himself as he downs another shot of liquid brimstone.
*****
Enrique's compound is like a world outside of the one John knows, one where the monsters can't live because the weapons are plentiful, everyone's aim is honed within an inch of perfection and no one's afraid to pull a trigger. The desert burns away any interlopers in the day and freezes them into submission at night, and Dean and Sam get a heady thrill as they race between the shacks and trailers that make up the place with guns in their hands and no one to be properly shocked by it.
John hates it here. Too normal for us, he thinks, because there's something far too wrong about a place where the Winchester family still left behind can feel anything remotely like normal.
They're there on their third visit, the boys taunting each other through a practice with targets that hiss and rattle in the sand, when John notices the woman.
It's hearing his name that makes him perk up at first, his own name on a whiskey-thick voice that hits him right where it counts. And it takes him longer than it should to realize she's not talking about him, but giving pointers to the boy at her side as he fires off rounds at a paper target on the far side of the compound.
The kid can't be more than five years old, and John fights off an icy chill at the appreciative, Starting 'em young, that darts through his mind at that.
His sons' taunts rise up in the air like the crackle of lightning, and John shakes the image of the woman from his mind before calling out to his boys.
Dean and Sam stop arguing and turn to race to his side, but Dean pauses just so, raises his gun with a steady hand and fires off a round into the desert that strikes another rattlesnake and sends it flying. A second later, he's himself again, jogging to catch up with Sam, and at the display that his eleven-year-old's training's paying off, John chokes back something that shouldn't be pride but can't be anything else.
John glances over at the other side of the compound and freezes at what he sees.
The woman -- the one with the whiskey voice and long brown hair -- is staring at him. Staring at him like a warrior or like a man, John can't be sure, but one thing he is positive about is that he's not sure he's comfortable with either one.
*****
During the day the children infest the camp with reckless abandon, welcome to go anywhere they like as long at they're not dumb enough to play with the wrong things. But at night, they all bunk out in the same trailer like normal kids at a sleepaway camp, laughing and cracking jokes until they all fall asleep in one great big pile as if they were a litter of puppies.
John's grateful for the lack of company that night when she shows up at the door of the trailer he's camped out in, carrying a bottle of real tequila that hasn't made its way through whatever car engine Enrique's been using as a still for his special brew.
"Care to help me make a dent in this?" she says, a smooth smile that hints at better things playing at the corners of her lips.
Just the sound of her teases at him in slow dark strokes, and he's half-tempted to ask if she's hiding a bottle of whiskey on her.
Her name is Sarah Connor, and when he tells her his name she gets that twinkle of amusement in her eyes that anyone who's ever handled a weapon tends to get. But instead of asking, "Like the gun?", she leans back on the small couch as her long light brown hair spills over her shoulder, then says, "Same name as my kid. Must be a sign."
John highly doubts that, because he believes in a lot of signs but not the kind that lead to this.
*****
It's not like there hasn't been anyone since Mary, not really, because he'll love her until the day he dies, until the day he stands before her killer and takes it down into the depths of hell with him, but he's never claimed to be a goddamn saint. There's such a thing as a love so strong it tears a hole out of your chest when it leaves, and you either numb it with whatever crosses your path and throw yourself off a fucking cliff.
John's got two boys to raise, damn it, and he might not be looking for a replacement for Mary, but sometimes when you're on fire, you have to let the flames take you until there's nothing left.
Sarah's like that, it turns out, like falling into novocaine, like not feeling anything and feeling everything all at once. It's like an argument spelled out in kisses and touches, bites and tastes, Sarah's fingers twining through his hair while her other hand trails over his arm as if testing the muscles to make sure he's just qualified enough. There's this look in her eyes as their clothes vanish, dark and dazed and calculating all at once, and when he ticks off the ways she's not Mary in his head -- all muscle, too wild, not halfway sane enough -- he'd feel guilty if she weren't making a mental checklist of ways he's not like somebody else in return.
When John fucks her, he's pretty sure neither one of them are really there, and maybe it's better that way in the long run.
*****
"So, what's your story?"
She says it the next day, after the two of them have both met with Enrique to broker for weapons and the boys have run off so Dean and Sam can teach little John how to pick locks (or at least try to), and then it just hangs out there like a wet sheet on a clothesline.
John's silent for a long moment, because everyone at Enrique's has a story but it's the ones with a mission like John's that you have to watch for. Enrique knows why John is there, knows what his guns are being used for and revels in John's tales of what he's fought with a sick air of twisted amusement. But he's the only one John's trusted with that secret, and suddenly he takes in Sarah's gorgeous body chiseled into a hard, angry weapon and realizes that you don't ask for someone else's story unless you've got one of your own to hide.
"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," he says.
She takes a long drag off her cigarette, keeping her gaze fixed on the small brown-haired boy playing Cops and Robbers -- or more aptly, just Robbers -- with Dean and Sam, then nods and says, "That's fair."
Sarah gets up and walks away before John can say anything. He figures that's fair, too.
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Supernatural/Terminator series
Rating: R
Pairing: John Winchester/Sarah Connor
Spoilers for: "Shadows"/"Terminator 2: Judgment Day"
Warnings: Sexual situations, bad language
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine, wheeee!
Summary: Who needs flowers and candy when you can have guns and ammo?
Author's note: In my continuing quest to hook up Sarah Connor with every "good soldier" in fandom, I bring you this sick, sad abomination. ;)
In The Border Fires
*****
The drink Enrique passes him, whatever the hell it is, reeks like gasoline and tastes even worse. John's almost a fucking professional when it comes to liquor at this point, because "connisseur" sounds a hell of a lot better than "alcoholic" any day of the week, but the stuff Enrique's apparently been brewing all on his own sets fire to John's sinuses and scorches his throat to embarrassing extremes.
Arson in a shot glass, he thinks, and he's so busy trying to recover without looking like a goddamn co-ed on holiday that he barely registers Enrique's comment until the man's slapping him on the shoulder and laughing like he's just said the wittiest thing ever.
"What's that?" John says.
His words come out like they've been scored with razor blades, and Enrique's grin spreads further. He doesn't repeat himself, but John's positive he said something about a woman.
He feels it then, the ghostly trail of small familiar fingers through his hair, and John steels himself as he downs another shot of liquid brimstone.
Enrique's compound is like a world outside of the one John knows, one where the monsters can't live because the weapons are plentiful, everyone's aim is honed within an inch of perfection and no one's afraid to pull a trigger. The desert burns away any interlopers in the day and freezes them into submission at night, and Dean and Sam get a heady thrill as they race between the shacks and trailers that make up the place with guns in their hands and no one to be properly shocked by it.
John hates it here. Too normal for us, he thinks, because there's something far too wrong about a place where the Winchester family still left behind can feel anything remotely like normal.
They're there on their third visit, the boys taunting each other through a practice with targets that hiss and rattle in the sand, when John notices the woman.
It's hearing his name that makes him perk up at first, his own name on a whiskey-thick voice that hits him right where it counts. And it takes him longer than it should to realize she's not talking about him, but giving pointers to the boy at her side as he fires off rounds at a paper target on the far side of the compound.
The kid can't be more than five years old, and John fights off an icy chill at the appreciative, Starting 'em young, that darts through his mind at that.
His sons' taunts rise up in the air like the crackle of lightning, and John shakes the image of the woman from his mind before calling out to his boys.
Dean and Sam stop arguing and turn to race to his side, but Dean pauses just so, raises his gun with a steady hand and fires off a round into the desert that strikes another rattlesnake and sends it flying. A second later, he's himself again, jogging to catch up with Sam, and at the display that his eleven-year-old's training's paying off, John chokes back something that shouldn't be pride but can't be anything else.
John glances over at the other side of the compound and freezes at what he sees.
The woman -- the one with the whiskey voice and long brown hair -- is staring at him. Staring at him like a warrior or like a man, John can't be sure, but one thing he is positive about is that he's not sure he's comfortable with either one.
During the day the children infest the camp with reckless abandon, welcome to go anywhere they like as long at they're not dumb enough to play with the wrong things. But at night, they all bunk out in the same trailer like normal kids at a sleepaway camp, laughing and cracking jokes until they all fall asleep in one great big pile as if they were a litter of puppies.
John's grateful for the lack of company that night when she shows up at the door of the trailer he's camped out in, carrying a bottle of real tequila that hasn't made its way through whatever car engine Enrique's been using as a still for his special brew.
"Care to help me make a dent in this?" she says, a smooth smile that hints at better things playing at the corners of her lips.
Just the sound of her teases at him in slow dark strokes, and he's half-tempted to ask if she's hiding a bottle of whiskey on her.
Her name is Sarah Connor, and when he tells her his name she gets that twinkle of amusement in her eyes that anyone who's ever handled a weapon tends to get. But instead of asking, "Like the gun?", she leans back on the small couch as her long light brown hair spills over her shoulder, then says, "Same name as my kid. Must be a sign."
John highly doubts that, because he believes in a lot of signs but not the kind that lead to this.
It's not like there hasn't been anyone since Mary, not really, because he'll love her until the day he dies, until the day he stands before her killer and takes it down into the depths of hell with him, but he's never claimed to be a goddamn saint. There's such a thing as a love so strong it tears a hole out of your chest when it leaves, and you either numb it with whatever crosses your path and throw yourself off a fucking cliff.
John's got two boys to raise, damn it, and he might not be looking for a replacement for Mary, but sometimes when you're on fire, you have to let the flames take you until there's nothing left.
Sarah's like that, it turns out, like falling into novocaine, like not feeling anything and feeling everything all at once. It's like an argument spelled out in kisses and touches, bites and tastes, Sarah's fingers twining through his hair while her other hand trails over his arm as if testing the muscles to make sure he's just qualified enough. There's this look in her eyes as their clothes vanish, dark and dazed and calculating all at once, and when he ticks off the ways she's not Mary in his head -- all muscle, too wild, not halfway sane enough -- he'd feel guilty if she weren't making a mental checklist of ways he's not like somebody else in return.
When John fucks her, he's pretty sure neither one of them are really there, and maybe it's better that way in the long run.
"So, what's your story?"
She says it the next day, after the two of them have both met with Enrique to broker for weapons and the boys have run off so Dean and Sam can teach little John how to pick locks (or at least try to), and then it just hangs out there like a wet sheet on a clothesline.
John's silent for a long moment, because everyone at Enrique's has a story but it's the ones with a mission like John's that you have to watch for. Enrique knows why John is there, knows what his guns are being used for and revels in John's tales of what he's fought with a sick air of twisted amusement. But he's the only one John's trusted with that secret, and suddenly he takes in Sarah's gorgeous body chiseled into a hard, angry weapon and realizes that you don't ask for someone else's story unless you've got one of your own to hide.
"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," he says.
She takes a long drag off her cigarette, keeping her gaze fixed on the small brown-haired boy playing Cops and Robbers -- or more aptly, just Robbers -- with Dean and Sam, then nods and says, "That's fair."
Sarah gets up and walks away before John can say anything. He figures that's fair, too.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:14 pm (UTC)that's wot i'm talkin about, baby.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:16 pm (UTC)Being a Terminator geek I was of course trying to work out dates and thinking Judgement Day's happened already then I told myself to shut the hell up because - this is great. Really great. He's EXACTLY the type Sarah would pick as able to teach things to her John, and her JOhn/Dean/Sam must have had very similar childhoods.
Because specific is our friend:
'falling into novocaine' - great description
'what's your story' - great use of the T2 line.
Both of them ticking off how they are not like Mary/Reese - great. (Though John probably is quite Reese like).
Loved the ending, she's not prepared to tell him, and that's fine. Very real.
Loved it. Might have to friend you if you're a Terminator fan and write lots of cool stuff like this!!
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:35 pm (UTC)Writing Terminator fic's harder than it should be. James Cameron's grasp on basic math's so fuzzy, you have to fudge the timeline a lot more than you should for a series with time travel as a major plot point.
Heh. John should have never said that thing about Sarah hooking up with guys who could train him to be a great military leader in T2. This is the third fucking-a-good-soldier crossover I've written for her. ;)
And thanks! *g*
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:39 pm (UTC)Ah I love that line 'great military leader', Eddie does fun delivery with it. I love Terminator, literally, T2 is probably one of my fave films.
Third crossover? Must go hunt down your others!
It's cool if I friend then? :)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:32 pm (UTC)Seriously, I love how you made it work. Great picture of Sarah as seen through John's eyes. You really captured how the two of them are similar enough to get together, and too similar to stay together. And I love the image of Sam and Dean finding a playmate in John Connor.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:49 pm (UTC)GAH! Yes, you must write that, so it can become official. Dean and Faith, John and Sarah, and Sam and River from Firefly.
Oh, God, now that right there? That's a crossover from hell that's entirely too tempting to write.
And thanks! :)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 10:55 pm (UTC)*nods*
no subject
Date: 2006-03-15 11:03 pm (UTC)I think I love you.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 02:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 04:30 am (UTC)Maybe it's time I rented the Terminators.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 04:54 am (UTC)Lovely. John is just... yeah.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-17 03:22 am (UTC)This is absolutely gorgeous and gritty and just... guh.
God, I *still don't have a Supernatural icon... Must fix this...
no subject
Date: 2006-03-20 03:18 am (UTC)John hates it here. Too normal for us, he thinks, because there's something far too wrong about a place where the Winchester family still left behind can feel anything remotely like normal.
---
The kid can't be more than five years old, and John fights off an icy chill at the appreciative, Starting 'em young, that darts through his mind at that.
---
John chokes back something that shouldn't be pride but can't be anything else.
Oh, John.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 08:12 pm (UTC)One tiny typo, I think:
and you either numb it with whatever crosses your path and [or?] throw yourself off a fucking cliff.
Wonderful story!
no subject
Date: 2006-09-04 05:07 am (UTC)I love how harsh and full of grit their world is, how not-many people could fit in at all, and how too-normal it still is for John and the boys.
Love the descriptions of Enrique's alcohol and Sarah's voice.
Nice job of meshing the worlds.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-14 02:46 pm (UTC)I read this a long time ago, and since I'm now making a point of NOT LURKING, I thought I'd start by feedback for some of my favorite stories. :D
Thanks for sharing this.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-07 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 03:25 am (UTC)All I can say is ... oh, wow!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-10 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-29 06:08 pm (UTC)More still, I love the way John and Sarah come together, taking a moment in each other, saying it all without really saying a damn thing. You really managed to give us a clear peek into Sarah's mind too, even while keeping John firmly in the POV driver's seat, and that's not easy to do, especially in such a short fic.
Brilliantly done. Thank you!