Mary Winchester (Jr) (marygoround) wrote in lost_world, @ 2013-02-11 22:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | !status: complete, johnny outlaw, mary winchester |
Memories of future past (Johnny/Mary, Flashback/log)
Being around Johnny was always a strange experience. Lately it seemed to be bringing up a lot of memories. It was hard not to think about the way things had been in her time, especially now that she was starting to suspect that 'her time' didn't exist anymore and wouldn't exist.
There were good memories, mostly, and Mary was determined that she wasn't going to brood over them. Mostly, she found that she couldn't help but smile a little when she thought about things like the first time she'd met the Johnny of her time.
----
Mary had been tracking something. The trouble was, she didn’t know what she was tracking until it was too late. Arachnes weren’t commonplace, but she still could have kicked herself when the creature swooped down and grabbed her just as she was getting close to pinning down the pattern in his victims.
The trouble was, she’d fallen directly into that ‘female in her mid-20s with blonde hair’ cross-section that he seemed to be after.
Mary grimaced when she woke up wrapped in thick fiber. It took a little bit of attempted movement before she realized that it was not, in fact, fabric. It was sticky and impossible to just break through.
The only saving grace was that she didn’t feel like she’d been bitten anywhere. For whatever that was worth. As long as the creature that was now clicking around somewhere nearby didn’t bite her, there was still hope. Once he bit her, then it was all over and she would become like him.
That thought had Mary renew her struggles to find a way out. Her parents or her sister would no doubt have to be the ones to find a way to put her down. She didn’t know what that would do to them-to any of them. She had to get out before that became an issue. She wasn’t going to go out like this.
----
Johnny was tracking the same thing, though he had no idea that anybody else was on it. It wasn’t his first arachne, but every time he saw one, he hoped it would be the last. They were particularly gruesome creatures, and he never felt very good about having to put down the victims. But there wasn’t a way to save them.
Hunting was old hat to him now, thanks to all of Jo’s teachings. He’d long since disappeared from her life, not wanting her to see what he was. He still didn’t really know what he was, and the chance that Jo or anybody else might see him as something that needed to be hunted was high. If he couldn’t explain his condition, what was the hope that anybody else would be able to.
He entered the … well, nest, he supposed. The webbing was everywhere. There was no way to know if there was anybody else inside the place, he just had to go in and keep his eyes peeled. His ears open.
When he was paying attention to it, Johnny could walk silently, even with the spurs on. And he never didn’t have them. They were too important. The tricks in them too convenient to risk leaving them behind. He figured that the one time he didn’t wear them would be the one time he needed to make a spark the most.
His guns weren’t drawn, as they would do him no good here. The arachne just laughed off bullets as if they were Skittles thrown vaguely in their direction. Instead, his hand held a machete. A tool he had picked up from his time with Jo. Sure, it could have been any bladed weapon, but the machete felt comfortable.
Johnny stopped and listened, trying to pinpoint the monster.
---
Mary didn’t get much wiggle room, but she did manage to slide the knife that she had up her sleeve out enough that she could start sawing away at the webbing. She had slowed her movements down and was now trying not to draw attention to herself. She heard the spider-like creature moving around somewhere nearby and just hoped that it wasn’t too close. If it decided that she would make a good snack before she got free, then there was nothing that would help her save for a blade to chop off her head.
Damnit. This wasn’t looking good.
Mary didn’t hear the stranger who’d entered the room, so she still didn’t realize that the situation wasn’t quite as hopeless as it seemed.
It was then that the arachne made its presence fully known. Whether it had noticed the movements or had simply decided it was time to poison his victim, the creature was suddenly inches from the cocoon of webbing. Mary sucked in a breath and held it as if playing dead would somehow convince it to move on.
----
Johnny found the monster as it leaned over to, he could only assume, dine on whatever victim it had bound up in the webbing. Johnny hadn’t been able to get a good look, he just saw a person-shaped lump. Could have been anyone, male or female, bitten or not, alive or not. But he wouldn’t get another chance as good as this one to put an end to the problem.
He stepped forward and swung the machete at the same time, watching the head as it lobbed off onto the floor. It always seemed too easy with the arachne. Once you knew that their heads had to come off, you stopped trying to shoot them or set fire to their hidey holes, and all it was was you walking in to remove the head. Bam. That quick.
The man dressed as a cowboy took a few steps forward and had a look at the victim. Woman. Probably not dinner, then, but a potential mate. She was so wrapped up that he had no idea if she was still whole.
He knelt down in front of her, putting the edge of the blade to her throat.
“Tell me honestly now. Did it bite you?”
---
Mary’s first clue that she wasn’t the only human in the nest was the sound of an arachne head hitting the floor. The second was, of course, the cold bite of a steel blade resting at her neck. She didn’t recognize the voice, though she didn’t know why anyone who wasn’t a hunter would know what this was and be after it.
“No. I’m not going to turn into one of them. Cut me out and you can check for bite marks yourself.”
That wasn’t a trap. She knew that any hunter worth his salt would do that whether it was offered or not. She supposed she was lucky that he hadn’t simply chosen to behead first, ask questions later. There were some that would do that rather than take the chance of letting a monster go free. Mary wasn’t one of those, but she knew what this life could do to people and knew that sometimes it was easier to simply not take chances.
----
He wasn’t choosing to believe the woman blindly, but she had a point. He could check her out to make sure that there wasn’t anything so much as a scratch on her, and it would be the better way to go about things. If he just ended her now and discovered that she was fine, he’d never forgive himself. But if he let her go and found out later that she’d been bitten, he’d be pissed.
Johnny carefully cut away most of the webbing, leaving just a tiny strand to hold her down. The fact that she knew why he was asking clued him in that she might be trying to do the same job that he’d just done. Which meant that she’d have her own blade. She could finish the job of freeing herself.
In the meantime, he backed up and drew one of his guns. Shooting her might not kill her if she’d been bitten, but it would slow her down long enough for him to remove her head.
“When you’re free, stand slowly.”
If he hadn’t spent so long doing this, Johnny might have been concerned that he sounded like a prick. As it was, he didn’t give the indication that he cared either way.
---
He might have sounded like a prick to anyone who didn’t know why he was doing it. Mary simply appreciated that he knew enough to do the job properly. Carelessness was a good way to either get dead or get people killed. Usually both.
She noted the guns, but didn’t blink while under their sights. She couldn’t say that she’d been on this end of a gun very often, but she had been around weapons and hunters her whole life. Long enough to know that panicking would in no way help the situation. Instead, she focused on sawing away at the last strand of webbing.
She didn’t speak as she did so. She would wait for him to confirm that she wasn’t a monster-to-be. After all, talking too much might make him twitchy. There were some that struggled with the idea that these creatures used to be human, and so that sort might get angry if a potential threat tried to humanize themselves at all. So she didn’t tempt fate and risk that he wasn’t that sort. Instead, she just kept her movements slow and deliberate. She was careful to telegraph what she was doing so it didn’t seem like she was trying to pull one over on him. That was the quickest way to give someone a case of itchy trigger finger.
Once she’d freed herself, she kept her hands in plain sight and slowly straightened up. She didn’t drop the knife, however. That was something that she wouldn’t give up unless she had to.
----
He felt more comfortable that she was doing just what he told her, though it didn’t mean she wasn’t bitten. She might not know, or she might think she could cure it with enough time. Or she might just value her own life above any of those that she might feed on or try to turn.
“So far so good. Just turn yourself in a small circle, I can see by your clothes that you’ve not been bitten anywhere that might be hidden.” He wanted to see other places, though. Arms, neck. Bare skin. A bite would mean blood, and the blood would have soaked through cloth. Even jeans.
Johnny kept the gun trained on her steadily, tucking the machete away in the sling he’d made for it on his back.
---
Mary did as she was told, turning slowly. She stayed there and waited for him to get the chance to check over as much as he might need to before speaking. After she’d given it the amount of time that she might have needed, she couldn’t help but smirk and make a comment.
“If I find out that this is an excuse to check out my ass, you’re going to be sorry.”
Mary had grown up in a family of smartasses so she couldn’t help the need to lighten a tense moment like this one. She might have been flirting just a tiny amount, because really, who couldn’t appreciate a guy who knew how to do the job right?
----
“Seeing your ass is just a bonus.” Johnny said it automatically and almost off-handedly as his eyes scanned over her skin, looking for any little break. Just to be sure that he didn’t miss out, he took a moment to appreciate the posterior in question.
Satisfied that she was unharmed by the arachne, Johnny holstered his weapon. He had that much confidence that if she decided to draw on him, he’d be able to get his gun back out and fire a round before she even knew what was happening.
“Free and clear.” He said, looking around at the webbing. “There was only the one?”
He’d only heard about one, but of course that could be old news. The arachne might have already found itself one suitable mate, she could be lurking in here anywhere. There was no reason to risk more problems by leaving without checking first.
---
Mary smirked at the response.
“And they say hunting has no perks.”
She breathed out a sigh of relief when he pronounced her clear. The fear that she’d been bitten while unconscious had been lurking in the back of her mind, so she was glad to hear that she hadn’t been. She turned around and attempted to catch the guy’s eye. Now that he wasn’t pointing a gun at her, it was easy to see that he was a good looking guy. Even with half his face hidden under that bandana, she could still see blue eyes, broad shoulders, chiseled cheekbones. She couldn’t help but wonder who he was trying to hide from by hiding part of his face, but that wasn’t the important thing right now.
She shook her head in response to the question.
“I didn’t see a second one and from the profiles of previous victims, he was looking for a potential mate. Which means no Arachne children.” She did know what she was talking about and what she’d been nabbed by, after all. In spite of the situation he’d found her in, she was usually a competent hunter.
She made a face at the thought of what the creature had been seeking her for.
“Thank you, by the way, for the rescue. I wasn’t looking forward to becoming an Arachne bride.”
She did her best not to shudder. She’d been in tight spots before, though maybe not quite like this. All the same, that didn’t mean that she wanted to let it show.
“I’m Mary,” she offered. “And if you’re thirsty, I’d like to buy you a drink or two as thanks.”
Alcohol. That was the hunter’s language, after all. It worked well as a thank you, an apology, a gesture of friendship, and just about everything in between. Mary didn’t know a hunter who didn’t need to self medicate sometimes as a result of the things they’d seen.
----
No second one. That was good. Johnny looked around the place and considered what they should do with it. Leaving it as it was seemed like a fairly bad idea. Anybody could wander in and hurt themselves. His instinct said that they should burn it, he typically listened to his instincts.
“I was just here at the right time. I don’t think you should look at me as a rescuer. I didn’t even know you were inside.”
After so many years, Johnny knew that alcohol did very little for him, but he still drew comfort from the act of drinking it. Besides, it would look strange to her if he said no.
“Johnny. I’d love a drink.” He looked around again. “Just let me take care of this place, and we can get going.”
---
“No, but you were still the guy who went in after a creature that would send most running,” Mary said with a smile.
“I’ll help with the clean-up,” she offered, looking around at the mass of webs. She didn’t want to stay here for any longer than necessary, but she’d set out to do this job and she was going to at least help with this part of it.
She started to move through the nest, hacking away at webs as she did so, sweeping the room for any signs of other potential victims or threats.
----
“Ah...” Johnny smiled a bit through the bandana as he watched her move. “The idea I had for the place goes much faster than that.”
He briefly left the building and returned with two gas cans. He waved Mary to his side, unscrewing the cap from each. He put one on its side and scooted it with a heavy push with his foot across the floor to one side of the room, then followed suit with the second.
“Stand by the door.” His tone gave no room for arguments or questions. Johnny waited until the gas cans had both glugged out as much of the fluid as they could without being tipped over or dumped out. He then waited for a few more beats while the fumes filled the place.
He glanced back to make sure that the girl was out of the way. Last thing he needed was for her to get caught up in a fire after he’d saved her life. He placed a spur against the floor and pulled it forward. The resulting spark caught the gasoline on fire quickly. He didn’t even pause to watch it spread, just turned and motioned for Mary to go. There wouldn’t be any explosion, he didn’t think. There weren’t any hidden pockets of combustibles. His exit from the building was really more of a saunter because of that. No rush. The thing would burn.
---
Mary did as she was told and followed Johnny out. She grinned over at the cowboy.
“I like your style.”
She looked for any sign of a vehicle for him and started to head toward her car.
“There’s a bar down the street that’s decent, unless you have a preference.”
She was looking forward to a celebratory drink herself. After all, it wasn’t everyday that a person survived this sort of thing.
----
Johnny grinned at her statement, and pulled his hat a bit lower to shade out the dying sun. He hadn’t been inside for very long. It always felt like longer.
He gestured to his motorcycle as she made her way to her car. There was no way he was leaving that thing behind. He’d spent too many years with it to let it sit anywhere shady that he couldn’t watch over it.
“A bar’s a bar.” He hadn’t been to enough of them in the area to have any kind of preference. “I’ll follow you.”
The bike started on the first try. As it always did. Part flawless construction by the Inventor, part all the care that Johnny had put into it over the years, and continued to lavish upon it.
---
Mary took a moment to look over the bike with appreciation. She could definitely spot craftsmanship when she saw it. If she could have lugged all her gear around in a motorcycle, she might have considered driving that instead of the old car that she’d driven way past the expected mileage thanks to a whole lot of TLC.
She pulled out in front of the motorcycle and waited to make sure that the man on the bike was following before driving to the bar down the street. It was a dive, but she didn’t think either of them would complain about that. Dive bars made it a whole lot easier to blend in. She parked the car and stepped out, waiting by the entrance.
----
As he parked, Johnny also pulled the bandana from around his face. He couldn’t very well drink with it on, and the barkeep might think that he was there to rob the joint. Especially given the way it looked from the outside.
He wasn’t going to worry about the guns or the rest of it, though. Fuck it.
Now that he had a chance to get a look at Mary without the imminent danger, he could appreciate that she was a good looking woman. Johnny tucked the bandana into his coat pocket. It was too warm to be wearing the overcoat he had to add to this ensemble, so that was back in his hotel room. But he was still sporting essentially a three-piece suit. The vest fit snug to his body and from it dangled the chain of a pocket watch. The coat he wore over it was longer than a regular suit would have, brushing about mid thigh. And his shirt was a crisp whiteness that defied logic.
Johnny tipped off the rounded-top hat he always wore and leaned against the door, opening it, and let Mary slide through first. The maneuver wouldn’t make it totally easy for her to pass him by without physical contact, and he may have done it on purpose. She’d flirted first, after all, and there wasn’t ever any harm in flirting.
---
Without the bandana, Mary was happy to see that Johnny was a very good looking man. While she might have been a little surprised at the outfit, she didn’t have any complaints about it. She’d certainly seen people in weirder garb.
She did smile her thanks as he held the door open for her and had no qualms about brushing past him. The physical contact wasn’t a bother. She was single, he was attractive, and he knew the lifestyle. To say that she was intrigued would be an understatement.
On the other hand, she also realized that most hunters weren’t exactly the settle-down sort. Her parents might have broken the mold, but from the stories she’d heard about her dad before they’d gotten together, even he wasn’t exactly the exception to the rule.
Once inside, Mary approached the bar without hesitation and assumed that he’d be right behind her.
----
He did follow and stood right behind Mary as she approached the bar. Then slid to the side and found a stool. He’d used the moment to get more information about her. Her height, the way she moved. She knew herself, that much was obvious. In a way that only hunters did.
“Whiskey.” He said when time came for him to order. “Just a splash of coke in it.”
While he waited, Johnny turned in his seat to look at Mary a little more closely, resting his arm on the bar, and his hat on one knee. He ran a hand through hair that hadn’t exactly been washed in a few days, trying to make it lay flat after mussing it up some.
“Obviously you’re not new to this lifestyle. I have a feeling that if things hadn’t gone sideways for you back there, I wouldn’t have been needed at all.”
---
“A Jack and Coke and a Whiskey Sour with Jack,” Mary ordered decisively. She would drink the cheap stuff, but she preferred Jack and would order that whenever it was an option. Since Johnny hadn’t specified, she assumed that he wouldn’t mind her making that distinction.
She smiled as the bartender moved away to mix their drinks.
“You’re not wrong about that. Hunting’s in my blood. Goes back to at least my great grandparents, though I’m pretty sure it goes back further than that on my Dad’s side. What about you? I think it’s safe to assume that you’ve been in the life awhile.”
After all, newbies didn’t exactly ride in and just lop off Arachne heads. Not like that.
----
“Not that long into it.” He raised an eyebrow and shook his head at her description. “It’s just been a few years for me. Ended up inadvertently helping a hunter out, and was rewarded with the information on how to kill shit.”
Johnny smiled.
“Before that, I didn’t even know half the shit out there existed.”
It seemed to him that a lot of hunters came from families that had done it for a long while. There was rarely anybody like him, who had picked it up on the fly. And of course, his description of a few years was more along the lines of a lot of years, but he wasn’t about to reveal that.
---
A few years. Mary processed that and filed it away. She had a feeling that it might be more than that because no one was that much of a natural. It took years to pick it up. But then again, she had seen stranger things. Whatever the case, she let that one slide without question. There were hunters she’d met who valued their privacy and she could respect that. This was the sort of business that you didn’t ask too many questions.
“Nice reward,” Mary said with a smile.
As the glasses were set in front of them, she picked up her glass and tipped it toward her drinking partner.
“You’ve got a knack for it, so I suppose it’s lucky for me that you found your way into the life.”
Mary knew others still who weren’t legacies, like Bobby. Those who had found their way into hunting because some creature had killed someone they loved. She didn’t bring that up. If for some reason it was the case for him and the story about the hunter was just a story, she wasn’t going to rub salt in that wound.
“So are you still in touch with that hunter? Or do you have many resources who can help you out if you need it?”
Everyone needed someone to call if they got into something that they didn’t recognize. At least, that was how Mary saw it. Her dad and uncle had always had Bobby, among others. Her mom had had a few contacts as well. Mary had her parents, Garth, and a few psychics along the way. She was getting a loner vibe of Johnny, but she was ready to offer if he wanted another contact. It was only slightly a sly way to give him her number. Mostly it was about offering the help to someone who had saved her ass.
----
“I can’t honestly say that I thought that way at first.” He grinned. “Finding out about all the stuff that lives in this world... well. I’d had an idea of some of it. I didn’t just walk in off the streets not knowing how to hold a gun. But usually the things I dealt with were human. Which, funny enough, is what I helped that hunter out with, humans.”
Johnny knew that most hunters out there thought that humans were the most vile creatures of them all. Craziest. Most unpredictable. And having seen the other bumps for himself, he had to agree. Just when you thought a human was going in one direction, they’d up and switch everything around.
He was thankful that he had a lot of experience with them.
“Lost touch. I generally just float around on my own. I run into others from time to time, but I’ve never really worked with anybody else. Not many out there are willing to work with a guy who prances around in a cowboy getup. Why, are you offering to be my backup?”
His smile had turned sly.
Johnny really hadn’t worked with anybody after Jo. It hadn’t seemed right, and it seemed too risky to him. It still felt that way, though he was sure that she wasn’t really in the life anymore. He would have heard her name floating around. Plus, she was bound to be a bit too old by now. Something he should have been, himself.
---
Mary returned the smile. At least he hadn’t said ‘sidekick.’ She would take issue with that. Backup was a term she could handle though. She fumbled in her pockets before coming up with a pen. She grabbed a bar napkin and scrawled out the number that she only gave out to a select few-to those that she could trust to save it for emergencies. She slid the number over to Johnny.
“If you need it, yes. There’s also a chance that if you ever run into something that you haven’t seen before that someone in my family might have seen it or know about it.”
She shrugged, trying to downplay the act of handing over her number.
“It can’t hurt to have resources.”
She believed that, even if she knew the flip side. It could hurt to have people that you trusted as resources. The more people you had in your life, the more you had to lose. The Winchesters had that in spades and her dad, her mom, and her Uncle Sam had all seen exactly what could happen to the people you cared about.
That sort of thing might have broken each of them a little, in their own way. But it didn’t stop them from caring about each other, from loving each other. And that was exactly what had shaped Mary. That was the reason why she was still willing to put herself out there and have a drink with a stranger, even if that might lead to another connection, even if it might just mean another person to risk losing when the monsters came for revenge.
----
Johnny glanced at the napkin briefly before he slipped it into an inner pocket of his coat. He didn’t doubt that she’d given him a real number, though he wasn’t entirely sure if she meant he should use it or not. He supposed he’d find out, wouldn’t he?
“Luckily, the hunter who taught me seemed to have a vast and unending knowledge of the shit that roams the earth, I have yet to run into anything that I haven’t known how to kill. But I suppose you can’t be too careful, can you.”
Upon looking at Mary, he didn’t see the same kind of hardness that he’d seen in Jo. Not to say that there hadn’t been pain in her life, but she seemed to wear a bit of hope on her, and when he’d last seen Jo, she’d been pretty thick into the hunting. Keeping herself free of too much attachment. The job was her life.
He’d often suspected that she was a bit closer to somebody than she ever wanted to admit, but had never pried. Theirs was not a friendship of vast personal information, though it had been an easy one. They got along well, but they didn’t share intimate secrets.
Johnny hadn’t shared intimate secrets with anybody for a long time before she ever appeared in his life, so it wasn’t any big change.
“So you never thought of not hunting.” He took a sip of the drink and leaned back, one arm resting on the bar to hold him up. “You just went with what the family did.”
---
Mary was still green to hunting in many ways. She’d grown up around it and she knew her way around the life, but she hadn’t suffered the loss that her mother had back then. She still had that freshness and optimism about her, even if she’d seen things that would have killed those things in others. So far, her family was whole and living. That went a long way toward insulating her against the things that she fought on a day to day basis.
She laughed a little bit at the question, because it was a little ironic in its own way.
“You could say that. If my dad and older sister had had their way, I would have gone to school to get my MRS degree or something like that. They didn’t want me in the life.”
She took a drink from her glass, considering just how much to share. Right now, this wasn’t bordering on too personal as far as she was concerned. There were other things about her family that she would guard with her life, but this wasn’t one of them.
“But really, I don’t know what they expected. You don’t just turn your back and pretend that there aren’t monsters hiding under beds and closets, killing people while you try to play at being normal.”
Maybe she was giving a little bit too much insight into what made her tick, but for now she was okay with that. Perhaps it was the brush with death or maybe it was just meeting someone who wasn’t family but who seemed to get this life all the same.
----
“Well, no. Once you know, you know.” Johnny agreed. “But that doesn’t mean you have to roam around the country hunting down the bad things and ending them.”
He wasn’t going to argue though, he was sure that her family had done much to try to convince her to do something else, and it wasn’t his place. Mary was an adult and could make her own decisions. He found it curious, though, that every member of her family seemed to be involved. That made it more than just tradition. It was like some kind of twisted family outing.
“You come here for the arachne, or just happen to find out about it once you hit town?”
It was the kind of hunter smalltalk that Johnny had gotten used to.
---
“Well, I guess we all have our hang-ups,” Mary said with a little shrug. There were some who could-and had-turn their back on the things that were out there, but she wasn’t one of them. and judging from the way they’d met, neither was Johnny.
“I came here for the raging nightlife actually,” she quipped, gesturing around the half-empty bar.
Those that were here almost all seemed to be locals who had that look of those who would have slept here if allowed to. It wasn’t exactly a club atmosphere.
After another drink, she did nod.
“I was tracking the disappearances. Just didn’t realize what exactly I was tracking until it grabbed me. I guess that’s what I get for chasing something with a penchant for blondes on my own.”
Mary didn’t mind working on her own, but she also recognized that there were some cases that needed a partnership. She just hadn’t found someone that she liked working with enough on a regular basis. There was Ellen, of course, but the sisters didn’t always hunt together. And there were times when Mary wanted to prove to her sister and her dad that she could handle things without them, especially since they’d tried to talk her out of this particular lifestyle choice. The hypocrites.
“What about you?”
She was curious about how he worked-had he put together the same pieces she had? Was that why he was here? Or was it simply luck that he’d blown into town and latched onto the scent of the monster plaguing the locals?
----
“I roam.” He said honestly. “Ride into town and listen. See if I pick up on anything that might be causing problems. End it if I do, move on if I don’t. Though, it’s actually pretty rare to not. Sometimes people don’t know what it is that they’re talking about when they talk, but after a while of living the life, you get to know the signs pretty well.”
Johnny glanced around the bar with a bit of a smile. He liked Mary’s sense of humor.
“But, then, I don’t have anybody to answer to. Nobody’s out there worrying about me. Or trying to convince me to go to college instead of killing things. You ask me, I got the better end of the deal.”
He’d never been able to reconcile the idea of having a family and living the way that he did. He couldn’t even, really, accept the idea of having another family ever again. Losing one was bad enough.
“They don’t always go after blondes.” He smiled, trying to make her feel better. “One in Maine liked redheads.”
---
Mary appreciated the effort, but she shrugged it off. She could be hard on herself, especially with this business. She had a long legacy to live up to and doing a careless job with this sort of thing was literally the difference between life and death.
“This one did. That’s how I got onto it. There were a bunch of local women disappearing. All blonde, all in their twenties. I think this is one case where being someone’s type isn’t a good thing,” she said with a wry smile.
She privately disagreed that Johnny had gotten the better deal. Maybe the easier deal, but she wouldn’t have traded her family for anything. Of course, there was no use in pointing that out to someone who seemed happy with his lot in life.
“So, there isn’t anyone else? Or is there a girl at every usual stop?”
She was nowhere near drunk, but the whiskey was emboldening her line of questioning just a bit. Not that it was that far of a stretch from the light flirting she’d done earlier.
----
He nodded. He’d heard about the trend, too. Just the whispers of a few missing girls, he’d had to piece the rest together himself. But he’d ended in the same place that Mary had, even if not in the same situation. In the end, he counted it as a good thing he had, since she would have been one more on the plate of an arachne, food - or more likely - mamma to lots of little monsters.
“I don’t really have usual stops.” He laughed. “And no, no girls out there waiting on me. I tend to stray away from human life and those that inhabit it. Easier that way. When I look for company, it’s generally the sort of hanging out in a bar and having a drink like we’re doing now.”
It, again, went back to the family he’d lost. Since Katie, Johnny’d never really been interested in another woman. Plus, it was all kinds of a mess trying to not compare others to his dead wife. It would have been unfair. Especially considering that any new woman would be highly temporary for more than one reason.
“I’m not the type to have my fun and wander on. I know that makes me the odd man out in the hunter game. I can live with that.”
---
The answer was noted, as was the fact that it felt a little bit like the equivalent of a ‘closed’ sign, though Mary could appreciate simply having the company in a platonic way as well. There might have been interest on her part, but she wasn’t exactly pining away over here.
“They’re not all like that. Most are, but not all,” she pointed out.
There were even the rare couples who hunted together, though the sort of transient lifestyle without attachments was pretty much the norm. Mary wasn’t all that opposed to it herself, and she certainly hadn’t met any guys that had been able to hold her attention for all that long. There was a part of her that wanted what her parents had found in each other, but for the most part she was okay with her life exactly as it was. It was easier to not have to answer to anyone about the sorts of risks that she took on a regular basis.
She finished her glass and nudged it aside, catching the bartender’s eye and gesturing for another.
“Well, I appreciate you stopping long enough to have a drink with me. It’s always good to have company while celebrating escaping a gruesome fate,” Mary said with a half smile.
----
“We’re like unicorns.” It was easier to make light of the things that he did instead of having to explain why he did them. He was thankful to Mary that she didn’t pry into his reasons. He wouldn’t have told her anyway, would have likely come up with some half assed remark about not wanting to bother. It wouldn’t have been a complete lie, just nothing close to what the truth really was.
“You save a lady’s life, and she offers to buy you a drink, you don’t say no. Especially not when she comes out with great one liners about her own ass.”
Johnny tipped his glass in her direction, as she’d done earlier to him, and then downed the rest of the drink. He knew that if they kept on like this, he’d have to at least pretend to be feeling it. It was, unfortunately, a ruse that he’d learned to perfect early on. People just didn’t trust a man who didn’t drink at all, or could hold his liquor so well that five deep seemed like he’d been sucking back nothing more than water.
---
Mary returned the toast with a grin.
“I’ll drink to that,” she said, touching the glass to her lips.
She was still trying to get a feel for the man sitting at the bar with her, though he seemed to have a pretty good poker face. The fact that he was an enigma simply intrigued her more. Mary did have a penchant for mysteries. That was one of the things that made her a good hunter.
Then again, she didn’t know if he’d use that number or if this was just going to be one of those one-time drinks-in-a-bar encounters that he’d mentioned. She might end up simply wondering, but she was okay with that too. There were some mysteries that she’d never solve. That didn’t mean that she would turn off her curiosity, but she wasn’t going to let it drive her nuts.