fic: wish you were here
Title: Wish you Were Here pt. 1/2
Characters/Pairing: Jo, Sam, Dean, Bobby / Eventually Dean/Jo
Rating: pg13-ish
Word Count: 1,998
Notes: AU fic that picks up sometime after the end of season 3 (yeah I'm really late to the game, I know, ha).
Disclaimer: As much as I wish, so not mine, belongs to Kripke etc.
Jo finds him bruised and beaten down in a dive bar just outside Topeka. She doesn't think she's ever seen someone look so lost. Biting her lip for courage she walks up and slides onto the stool next to his. With a nod she silently orders another round from the bartender and swivels to look at Sam.
"If I wanted company I wouldn't have told everyone to leave me alone," he states, not even glancing up from his beer.
Jo nods, taking her own from the bartender. She takes in a long drink. "Wasn't looking for you, not really," she said. It was mostly true. She'd been hunting, tracking word of one of the last demons responsible for the Roadhouse fire (hunting was no longer about feeling close to a father long gone but rather a mission of revenge and solitude) and saw a familiar black Impala parked between beat up pickup trucks and Harleys.
"Don't say you're sorry, okay," he says quietly before downing half the beer handed to him in half a gulp.
"Wouldn't dream of it," she says just as quietly. Even though she was, sorry. Sam didn't deserve the hand he had been given. None of them did.
So instead she sits quietly with her thoughts and he drinks. She knows he only agrees because he's two sheets to the wind and needs someone to haul his sorry ass back to the motel, Dean would never forgive him if he bent the Impala around a tree because he was stubborn. Jo throws her things (exactly three duffel bags, and only one of them is clothes) in the backseat and never comes back for the red pickup truck that had been her home for over a year.
He blames it on his loneliness; hers too, as the days stretch into weeks and the blonde girl (you're too skinny, he says to her one day over bacon and eggs as she pushes her own food around the plate) keeps her spot riding shotgun. She doesn't make him talk (she smirks and tells him he acts like her mother before swallowing a generous forkful of grease filled hash browns) and he appreciates that.
And she still hasn't said she's sorry.
She never thought she could hunt with someone. That one time with Sam and him (she still has trouble even thinking the name, not like she loved him or anything but it was just another person dead and buried another loss to clamp around her heart) had been fun but they had their own war and she was thrust out on her own. Their first hunt, a house in Nowhereville, Utah with a spirit problem, was almost disastrous. She almost left that night but couldn't bear the thought of leaving Sam alone. A few hunts in they got it together, moving seamlessly around each other. It was nice she decided, having someone to watch your back, having someone to stitch up those spots that were just awkward to try to reach yourself (he makes fun of the jagged scar of such an endeavor on the underside of her upper right arm to which she merely smacks him across the chest and tells him to shut it.)
There are moments she reminds him so clearly of Dean. Moments when he catches her throwing her head back and forth to one of the many tapes left in the Impala, singing along like she's a rock star when she thinks he's sleeping. The way her eyes flash with excitement at the prospect of a hunt (Sam still views it more of a job, a resentment at what it cost him), her quick jabs and easy pop culture references. But there's something about her that's so like himself he comes to realize. They talk about books they read as kids (I was a reader, she confides, not much else to do when you're the town freak with no friends), she tells him that she actually liked college and maybe if they had been in the same school she could have handled it. Sam finds himself sad to realize that she would have fit so well if they had let her. Just another regret to add to his list.
The guilt that Sam carries scares her. She imagines she can see it actually weighing on him and she swears he's a few inches shorter from it than she remembered. She can't even wrap her head around that, how it must feel for him. Sure she knew guilt (you ever going to call your mom, he asks one day early in and she shakes her head and drops another postcard in the mail, we don't talk well anymore). But his is beyond that. His isn't a burned bridge that she knows she could mend simply by showing up one day, his is hellfire and brimstone.
He starts to learn her moods by music. She's Beach Boys when she's happy, all good vibrations and summer sounds. She tells Sam about Pet Sounds and Brian's piano in the sand in the living room (How the hell do you know this stuff he asks and she shrugs, the internet). She's Beatles mostly, and as the long winter nights shift into the prospect of long summer days she's Abbey Road and Here Comes the Sun over and over. Its hard rock when she wants to feel cool, sunglasses hiding her brown eyes as they coast down the highway. But it's never REO Speedwagon and Sam doesn't dare to ask. When she thinks of Dean it's always the AC/DC tape and she argues with a ghost that If You Want Blood could kick Highway to Hell's ass any day of the week.
They're not quite happy but some days it's really close. She makes it a little bit better he starts to realize as the weeks pass. It doesn't fill that hole, it doesn't make everything all sunshine and roses but it makes bearable. And when they take the day off to hit up Magic Mountain and ride the coasters till they nearly puke it's almost even good. He can forget for a few hours, forget the guilt and the image of the hellhounds tearing his brother apart. They sit on the hood of the Impala watching lighting skip across the sky and he asks her about growing up in one place instead of crisscrossing the country (it's not as awesome as you think it might be, I lived in a bar, all the other girls danced and fawned over the football players, I learned how to clean guns and had a knife collection).
She doesn't tell him she's sorry so he doesn't press the issue of why she hasn't called her Mom in the entire time she's been with him. He figures it's a fair trade even though the wanting to know burns at him. But he's got his secrets so she should be allowed to have hers, held behind wide dark eyes that can turn sadder than he ever thought possible without a moment's notice.
He crawls into her bed one night when he can hear her crying softly, she was sure he had been asleep. She doesn't say anything just shifts to press her face into his chest and he wraps his arms around her thin frame. He's not sure why but he thinks of Pink Floyd (we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same old ground, what have we found, the same old fears, wish you were here) and hums it softly as her body shakes with silent sobs. He realizes she hurts just as much as him and he wishes it was Dean here because he would have been good for her, she would have been good for him.
"Hey Jo..." he says quietly when she's calmed down and they're still laying there in her bed.
"Yeah..." she says back.
"My arm's asleep," he confides with a small chuckle that she returns as she moves to lie on her back beside him.
She stares up at the ceiling and is quiet for a minute, that heavy and charged silence he remembers Dean used to fall into before he said something important, like they had to think it through and put it all in order before they said it. So he waits.
"Dean wasn't the first Hunter I liked," she shifts, lacing her hands behind her head, "I dated one once, for a while actually and then he was just..." she shrugs, "gone. No one knew anything, and it was the hardest thing because gone was different than dead, dead you at least knew what happened, gone and missing left all this room for questions and for my mind to fill in blanks in the worst way possible."
He doesn't say anything when she pauses again.
"And it always hurt but it got better, little by little. And then everything just fell apart, my Mom had lied to me for years about Dad, that whole mess in Duluth, I was already so lost when they got the Roadhouse and it was only another kick while I was down, another thing to be angry at, another thing to keep me running. And then I found him." She lets her head fall to the side, biting her lip and avoiding Sam's eyes. "I... I got the demon out, damn thing nearly killed me, but it was too late. I watched him die and he actually thanked me, I'd pulled the only thing keeping him alive and he thanked me." Her voice breaks on that and she curls to her side in a ball facing him.
"It wasn't living.. Being like that," he points out to her and she nods because she knows that but it still doesn't make it hurt any less. He rests a hand on the side of her face and looks her dead in the eye. "You didn't kill him, Jo, the demon did. You saved him."
She's quiet again and when she speaks it's quiet and half mumbled as she slips into sleep. "Hey Sam...”
"Yeah, Jo"
"I'm glad you let me stay with you."
"Me too."
They don't talk to anyone else, not really. Sometimes they'll need Bobby for help, sometimes they'll run into another Hunter, but mostly it's just them. She knows what it must look like from the outside but she honestly doesn't care, they help each other. They pick away a little at each other's loneliness and try to make it all a little bit better. She loves him but it's not in the way she figures some people assume. She loves him like the sibling she had always wanted during her lonely childhood years when all she had were rough Hunters and an even rougher Mother. And the weeks and months start to bleed together, they see thunderstorms and the leaves change color, they stick to the south as much as possible as the weather cools into winter and she almost feels hopeful for the first time in a while as the days get longer and the world gets a little greener.
It's the long days of summer again and they're holed up in a motel in the middle of Texas. It's still hot as all hell and she sends Sam to go find them food and sits on the bed near the AC in a tank top and a pair of khaki shorts when she hears the knock on the door. She rolls her eyes and goes to answer it. "I swear to God Sam if you forget your key one more time...”
The sight of him drops her heart to her stomach and she knows she only manages to stay upright from her death grip on the door.
He says something but she has entirely no idea what, because it's him and he can't be there, he's dead, buried, gone. She grabs the gun and moves.
Characters/Pairing: Jo, Sam, Dean, Bobby / Eventually Dean/Jo
Rating: pg13-ish
Word Count: 1,998
Notes: AU fic that picks up sometime after the end of season 3 (yeah I'm really late to the game, I know, ha).
Disclaimer: As much as I wish, so not mine, belongs to Kripke etc.
Jo finds him bruised and beaten down in a dive bar just outside Topeka. She doesn't think she's ever seen someone look so lost. Biting her lip for courage she walks up and slides onto the stool next to his. With a nod she silently orders another round from the bartender and swivels to look at Sam.
"If I wanted company I wouldn't have told everyone to leave me alone," he states, not even glancing up from his beer.
Jo nods, taking her own from the bartender. She takes in a long drink. "Wasn't looking for you, not really," she said. It was mostly true. She'd been hunting, tracking word of one of the last demons responsible for the Roadhouse fire (hunting was no longer about feeling close to a father long gone but rather a mission of revenge and solitude) and saw a familiar black Impala parked between beat up pickup trucks and Harleys.
"Don't say you're sorry, okay," he says quietly before downing half the beer handed to him in half a gulp.
"Wouldn't dream of it," she says just as quietly. Even though she was, sorry. Sam didn't deserve the hand he had been given. None of them did.
So instead she sits quietly with her thoughts and he drinks. She knows he only agrees because he's two sheets to the wind and needs someone to haul his sorry ass back to the motel, Dean would never forgive him if he bent the Impala around a tree because he was stubborn. Jo throws her things (exactly three duffel bags, and only one of them is clothes) in the backseat and never comes back for the red pickup truck that had been her home for over a year.
He blames it on his loneliness; hers too, as the days stretch into weeks and the blonde girl (you're too skinny, he says to her one day over bacon and eggs as she pushes her own food around the plate) keeps her spot riding shotgun. She doesn't make him talk (she smirks and tells him he acts like her mother before swallowing a generous forkful of grease filled hash browns) and he appreciates that.
And she still hasn't said she's sorry.
She never thought she could hunt with someone. That one time with Sam and him (she still has trouble even thinking the name, not like she loved him or anything but it was just another person dead and buried another loss to clamp around her heart) had been fun but they had their own war and she was thrust out on her own. Their first hunt, a house in Nowhereville, Utah with a spirit problem, was almost disastrous. She almost left that night but couldn't bear the thought of leaving Sam alone. A few hunts in they got it together, moving seamlessly around each other. It was nice she decided, having someone to watch your back, having someone to stitch up those spots that were just awkward to try to reach yourself (he makes fun of the jagged scar of such an endeavor on the underside of her upper right arm to which she merely smacks him across the chest and tells him to shut it.)
There are moments she reminds him so clearly of Dean. Moments when he catches her throwing her head back and forth to one of the many tapes left in the Impala, singing along like she's a rock star when she thinks he's sleeping. The way her eyes flash with excitement at the prospect of a hunt (Sam still views it more of a job, a resentment at what it cost him), her quick jabs and easy pop culture references. But there's something about her that's so like himself he comes to realize. They talk about books they read as kids (I was a reader, she confides, not much else to do when you're the town freak with no friends), she tells him that she actually liked college and maybe if they had been in the same school she could have handled it. Sam finds himself sad to realize that she would have fit so well if they had let her. Just another regret to add to his list.
The guilt that Sam carries scares her. She imagines she can see it actually weighing on him and she swears he's a few inches shorter from it than she remembered. She can't even wrap her head around that, how it must feel for him. Sure she knew guilt (you ever going to call your mom, he asks one day early in and she shakes her head and drops another postcard in the mail, we don't talk well anymore). But his is beyond that. His isn't a burned bridge that she knows she could mend simply by showing up one day, his is hellfire and brimstone.
He starts to learn her moods by music. She's Beach Boys when she's happy, all good vibrations and summer sounds. She tells Sam about Pet Sounds and Brian's piano in the sand in the living room (How the hell do you know this stuff he asks and she shrugs, the internet). She's Beatles mostly, and as the long winter nights shift into the prospect of long summer days she's Abbey Road and Here Comes the Sun over and over. Its hard rock when she wants to feel cool, sunglasses hiding her brown eyes as they coast down the highway. But it's never REO Speedwagon and Sam doesn't dare to ask. When she thinks of Dean it's always the AC/DC tape and she argues with a ghost that If You Want Blood could kick Highway to Hell's ass any day of the week.
They're not quite happy but some days it's really close. She makes it a little bit better he starts to realize as the weeks pass. It doesn't fill that hole, it doesn't make everything all sunshine and roses but it makes bearable. And when they take the day off to hit up Magic Mountain and ride the coasters till they nearly puke it's almost even good. He can forget for a few hours, forget the guilt and the image of the hellhounds tearing his brother apart. They sit on the hood of the Impala watching lighting skip across the sky and he asks her about growing up in one place instead of crisscrossing the country (it's not as awesome as you think it might be, I lived in a bar, all the other girls danced and fawned over the football players, I learned how to clean guns and had a knife collection).
She doesn't tell him she's sorry so he doesn't press the issue of why she hasn't called her Mom in the entire time she's been with him. He figures it's a fair trade even though the wanting to know burns at him. But he's got his secrets so she should be allowed to have hers, held behind wide dark eyes that can turn sadder than he ever thought possible without a moment's notice.
He crawls into her bed one night when he can hear her crying softly, she was sure he had been asleep. She doesn't say anything just shifts to press her face into his chest and he wraps his arms around her thin frame. He's not sure why but he thinks of Pink Floyd (we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same old ground, what have we found, the same old fears, wish you were here) and hums it softly as her body shakes with silent sobs. He realizes she hurts just as much as him and he wishes it was Dean here because he would have been good for her, she would have been good for him.
"Hey Jo..." he says quietly when she's calmed down and they're still laying there in her bed.
"Yeah..." she says back.
"My arm's asleep," he confides with a small chuckle that she returns as she moves to lie on her back beside him.
She stares up at the ceiling and is quiet for a minute, that heavy and charged silence he remembers Dean used to fall into before he said something important, like they had to think it through and put it all in order before they said it. So he waits.
"Dean wasn't the first Hunter I liked," she shifts, lacing her hands behind her head, "I dated one once, for a while actually and then he was just..." she shrugs, "gone. No one knew anything, and it was the hardest thing because gone was different than dead, dead you at least knew what happened, gone and missing left all this room for questions and for my mind to fill in blanks in the worst way possible."
He doesn't say anything when she pauses again.
"And it always hurt but it got better, little by little. And then everything just fell apart, my Mom had lied to me for years about Dad, that whole mess in Duluth, I was already so lost when they got the Roadhouse and it was only another kick while I was down, another thing to be angry at, another thing to keep me running. And then I found him." She lets her head fall to the side, biting her lip and avoiding Sam's eyes. "I... I got the demon out, damn thing nearly killed me, but it was too late. I watched him die and he actually thanked me, I'd pulled the only thing keeping him alive and he thanked me." Her voice breaks on that and she curls to her side in a ball facing him.
"It wasn't living.. Being like that," he points out to her and she nods because she knows that but it still doesn't make it hurt any less. He rests a hand on the side of her face and looks her dead in the eye. "You didn't kill him, Jo, the demon did. You saved him."
She's quiet again and when she speaks it's quiet and half mumbled as she slips into sleep. "Hey Sam...”
"Yeah, Jo"
"I'm glad you let me stay with you."
"Me too."
They don't talk to anyone else, not really. Sometimes they'll need Bobby for help, sometimes they'll run into another Hunter, but mostly it's just them. She knows what it must look like from the outside but she honestly doesn't care, they help each other. They pick away a little at each other's loneliness and try to make it all a little bit better. She loves him but it's not in the way she figures some people assume. She loves him like the sibling she had always wanted during her lonely childhood years when all she had were rough Hunters and an even rougher Mother. And the weeks and months start to bleed together, they see thunderstorms and the leaves change color, they stick to the south as much as possible as the weather cools into winter and she almost feels hopeful for the first time in a while as the days get longer and the world gets a little greener.
It's the long days of summer again and they're holed up in a motel in the middle of Texas. It's still hot as all hell and she sends Sam to go find them food and sits on the bed near the AC in a tank top and a pair of khaki shorts when she hears the knock on the door. She rolls her eyes and goes to answer it. "I swear to God Sam if you forget your key one more time...”
The sight of him drops her heart to her stomach and she knows she only manages to stay upright from her death grip on the door.
He says something but she has entirely no idea what, because it's him and he can't be there, he's dead, buried, gone. She grabs the gun and moves.