Despite the bruises covering her whole body, waking up was still a pleasant experience for Mary. Pleasant, because Ellen was there kissing her into consciousness, and it felt as though she was pressing her lips down on every single mark the ghost had left Mary with the night before.
“Not again, honey,” she heard Ellen sigh, but when her eyes looked up they were bright with affection along with concern. “Thought you promised me and the kids you’d be careful this time.”
“Yeah, well, the spirit of Edward B. Powell did not cut in on our deal.”
Ellen sat up, straddling Mary while still being fully clothed herself.
Clothes. Right. It was bright outside, which meant that Ellen must have been up for hours already, handling Harvelle’s and the kids alone.
“So it was a spirit,” Ellen said, hissing out in obvious relief.
“Yeah. It looked as though what it was doing might be demonic, but…”
“But another dead end.”
Mary winced at the tone in a way she wasn’t for the feeling of Ellen’s weight pressing down on her bruises. “Well. People got saved, so… not for someone.”
Ellen kept on staring her down. Mary had always been hopeless under the force of that steely gaze, There was a reason the endless stream of hunters tramping through the Roadhouse assumed that, of the two of them, it would be Ellen out hunting, considering the fact that the shorter woman had a stare which could probably force a rabid werewolf to start sitting to heel.
“It’s not a revenge thing. Not anymore, babe. You know that,” Mary murmured, lightly clasping one of Ellen’s hands in her own. “I need to know because if this is about Sam, and I was the cause of all this -”
“Hey,” Ellen stopped her sharply as she held up two fingers. “One, I get that if there’s anything out there gunning for our son, I want it dead, and I wouldn’t want to love anyone who didn’t want to be the one to see ‘em dead. And two, what were we gonna stop along with the vengeance talk?”
Mary rolled her eyes, feeling very like her eldest child all of a sudden as she sulkily replied, “… the self-hating thing.”
“That’s right. And I need you to one day start believing that for me. But for now…” Ellen smiled wickedly. “I snatched us a good twenty minutes of alone time and I know what you need. Along with the coffee I just brought in for you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mmm,” Ellen hummed as she leaned down to begin her kissing ministrations again, slowly moving her mouth further down her lover’s body.
When Ellen finally moved off of her and under their bedsheets, it wasn’t long until Mary felt the comforting lick of Ellen’s tongue circling her clit, then felt her own back arch up, bringing her further into the hot wet feel of her lover as her hand desperately hung in mid-air until it found Ellen’s hair to cling onto, to ground her –
She never would stop believing that what had happened with John was her fault – she had let the demon into their lives, even if she had tried her best to put the event out of her mind. But she was even more certain that she would never start deserving this woman, this incredible woman who got her off in the sweetest way imaginable when Mary had done nothing but hurt her. Because even after getting Ellen’s husband killed she still compulsively couldn’t give up the life she’d once sworn she’d never return to.
The first time they were alone together after Bill Ellen had very much had that same frustration with the hypocrisy of Mary Winchester on her mind: there’d been no softness to her touch then, only heat, and rage. Rage at Mary for blazing into their lives and robbing her of her child’s father; at herself for letting them go out alone; at Bill for going; at the world for continuing to be cruel and unknowable. But there’d been relief there in her kisses too along with the rage, Mary had realised at the time with shock, because for her own unfathomable reasons, Ellen had needed Mary to come home safely too.
Having come home safely to her once again, Mary came that morning on her lover’s fingers, Ellen’s name bursting softly from her lips, and hoped Ellen knew it for the plea for forgiveness it was meant as.
Mary thought she did. As a woman who spent far too many hours a week tending a bar, Ellen understood a lot, which she proved again by handing Mary her coffee after she’d climbed out from under the covers. It hadn’t even gotten cold yet.
“C’mon,” she said, with a little smirk, despite her hair being all mussed about and her face all red from arousal. “The kids still need to see you.”
Mary groaned as she moved from the bed, but without putting any feeling behind the noise. She always needed to see of them – all three of them – still certain after all this time that if she looked away for longer than a moment then another piece of her family would be snatched from her.
Mary still felt a clawing ache whenever she remembered the first night the Yellow Eyed Demon had hurt her in the worst way possible. In moments she always hated herself for, Mary remembered with a twisted kind of gratitude that at least her entire family had not been ripped from her, the second time the demon had killed John. She remembered how desperate she’d been that first time, how stupid, and it terrified her.
Hunting, bringing down everything out there within her reach that might ever cause her family more harm, that was something Mary needed now to scratch that itch inside of her, and, saint that she was much as she’d deny it, Ellen understood that too.
They found Dean first, perched on his favourite spot on the bar, looking down with obvious derision at the large men, one a hunter Mary recognised, playing each other at pool. “Aw, now that was a lousy shot,” he shouted with vicious glee to groaning and muttering from the men.
“What have I told you about insulting my customers, little man?” Ellen asked as Mary plucked her seven year old off of the bar and set him down on the floor with a smile. He was already getting so tall, Mary reflected with something like panic. By the time she’d been Dean’s age she’d known how to reload a shotgun.
Fiercely, Mary repeated the iron-clad promises that she would never break to herself. Her kids would not be hunters. That would not be how they were raised, however weak their mother had eventually proved in escaping the life, Mary thought as she watched her son look down at his scuffed shoes and sing grumpily, “Not to.”
Ellen gave Mary a sidelong glance. “Just like your mother,” she muttered with a long-suffering eye-roll.
“I hope there wasn’t too much of that while I was away,” Mary said, ignoring her partner as she knelt down to look her son in the eye.
“You were away longer than you said you’d be,” he said nonchalantly, but Mary heard the bitter accusation buried in there and it sent splinters hurtling into her heart. Unlike Sam, she knew that Dean remembered far too much of their last night in Kansas, and she feared that his fear of losing any more of his family was one that would never leave him.
Gently, Mary raised a hand to stroke her son’s cheek, and smiled slightly as she felt him lean into the tough. “You know I was gone longer than I wanted to be, right?” she reminded him. “That I never want to be away from you.”
He nodded, just enough for her to see it. “Sure,” he said grumpily. “But y’know other parents bring back presents when they go away,” he said, eyes lighting up impishly now.
“Cheek,” Ellen laughed. “Now where’s Jo and your brother gotten to?”
Dean shrugged. “Outside, I think…”
As though they could hear themselves being mentioned, Sam rushed in, with Jo toddling stoutly behind him. “Mom!” Sam shouted, and launched himself into Mary’s waiting arms. “You’re back!”
“Yes, I am, sweetheart,” she told him before starting to laugh again. Being surrounded by her children again after a difficult hunt made her feel almost giddy.
“Good, ‘cause we made you a welcome home present,” Sam asserted proudly as Mary set him down again.
“See, kid, presents are for giving too,” Ellen remarked pointedly at Dean, who snorted loudly.
“Yeah, if you’re a cissy,” he said, earning himself matching glares from Sam and Jo, who Mary now noticed was indeed clutching at something.
“Is that for me, sweetheart?” Mary asked her youngest, the child that she feared with near hysteria that would one day know to hate her, nodded at her shyly and held out the daisy crown.
“Sam showed me how,” she explained, as Mary placed the chain of flowers gently down on her own head.
“How do I look?” Mary asked, then let the laughter of her family soothe her like a balm. Yeah. This had been exactly what she’d needed.
*