RBB Fic: brought my heart to feed, but my mouth was fire
Title: brought my heart to feed, but my mouth was fire
Author: Miss ‘Drea/placeofinsanity
Rating: Explicit
Pairing: Established Sam/Dean, Sam/Jo/Dean
Summary: Set in an anomalous season (somewhere between 1, 2, or 3) where the world as we know it ends and demons are set free on the world. Jo is a hunter left alone (by fate or by design). She begins hunting with Sam - a powerful clairvoyant and telekinetic - and his brother Dean. Things are good between the three of them, saving what people they can while hunting demons. Only... the Demon with Yellow Eyes is hunting them back.
Warnings: Major character deaths.
Notes: ALL of the thanks to selecasharp and pixymisa for their endless support and beta-ing, and all sorts of other craziness. I couldn't have done it without either of you. Special thanks to lightthesparks for the peer pressure. And thanks to the mods of spn_reversebang, I love this challenge so much.
AND ALL OF THE LOVE TO MY ARTIST: marciaelena because it was gorgeous, and you were amazing and so easy to work with. Thank you for putting up with my long absences and not killing me when I didn't finish the fic until the day before posting. :\ <3 BB.
ART LINK: Here!! (Go check it out, it's amazing.)
*
It’s demons again. It’s always demons. There aren’t a lot of communities left in the world comprising of only humans, so when Jo finds them, she marks them on her map, helps out where she can, and moves on.
She’s done it since Ash and her mother blew up the Roadhouse to take out a pack of skinwalkers.
“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus...” she chants over the demon’s screaming. She’s done these enough times to know it by heart. “Omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio.”
The demon writhes in the blonde body it’s inhabiting. “No!” it shrieks, back arching in an almost spine-cracking shape. “I can bring you back your mother!”
Jo rolls her eyes. “Infernalis adversarii, omnis legio,” she continues calmly. “Omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.”
Its screaming drowns her out, black smoke curling around its lips. It screams wordlessly, fingers digging dents in the metal chair. “I’m speaking the truth!” it sobs. “She’s in Hell! I can bring her back to you!”
For one endless, faltering second, Jo pauses. “Ergo draco maledicte, et omnis legio diablolica adjuramus te. Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare.”
The demon screams one last time before black smoke plumes out of her host, when the sound cuts out suddenly.
The girl is dead. As usual.
Jo sighs, kicking over one of the candles. “Why do I even bother?” she asks the empty air. It’s a rhetorical question; she knows the answer to it. It’s been her answer for most of her life. To save people, and hunt things.
Jo grew up amongst the hunting community. She knew their faces, knew their MOs, could recall the numbers of over half, not that any of that helps her now. Cell towers were destroyed a long time ago, and phone lines have degraded to the point of being obsolete anyway. There isn’t a single way to remotely get hold of anyone in the world.
So after the Roadhouse, the first place she went was Bobby Singer’s, but it was a burned-out husk of a house. She couldn’t tell if he’d escaped or died within, but it hits her where it hurts to think of another one of hers dying in a fire.
She tried Rufus next, but no one answered his door. Jo supposes it’s possible that when the power went out, Rufus moved on because his cameras stopped picking up on intruders. He’s just paranoid enough for that sort of logic.
Jo spent months moving down the list of people she can remember from the Roadhouse, checking houses, trailer parks, anywhere a hunter would hide during the dark days. They’re all either dead, missing, or possessed.
She’s managing to cobble things together, from most of the things she could get from Bobby’s library before she burned what was left of the place to the ground. Paper is scarce, but she makes do with what she can, making her own Hunter’s journal. Something for anyone who wants to pick up her mantle after she’s dead.
And it’s only a matter of time before that happens.
Because they’re hunting her now.
*
Jo’s used to being in this business alone. Before the world ended, she’d fancied the thought of joining other hunters, but most of them are men, older, and the surly sort who wanted no partners - especially not her. So she doesn’t react well when she gets interrupted on her latest hunt.
She nearly takes the girl’s head off with her shotgun. “Who the fuck are you?” she demands, finger on the trigger.
“I’m Ruby,” the girl says, tucking blonde hair behind her ear. “Are you a hunter too?”
There’s something about her that rubs Jo the wrong way, but she nods once anyway. “Yeah. I’ve been hunting this demon for a week.” She turns her gaze to the bound Rufus, his eyes black on black from lid to lid. “The man he’s possessing is a friend of mine.”
Thank God she’d gagged him first thing, because she’s learned after several of these things that she can’t stomach listening to their vitriol. Especially not when it comes out of the mouths of people her mother called friend.
“You still haven’t told me your name, pretty.”
Jo regards her for a long moment, before sticking her hand out to shake Ruby’s. “Jo.”
Ruby’s lips split in a wide smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Just as pretty as you.”
Quirking an eyebrow, Jo snorts. “You’re so unsubtle that it’s actually kind of sad.” She turns her attention to the struggling demon.
When she starts the usual exorcism, though, everything goes completely batshit and Jo ends up flying across the room to smash into a window. When Jo’s gaze clears, Ruby is inside the Devil’s Trap with Rufus and before Jo can shout, Ruby slides a knife into Rufus’s chest.
Yellow and red crackling spirals out from the wound, and the demon inside Rufus shrieks, twisting in its bonds before it dies. The power holding Jo against the wall drops her and she lands strangely, twisting her knee. “What the fuck was that?” she snaps, righting herself.
“Dunno, found it on a demon a few months back. It’s like, it kills the demon so it can’t come back.” Ruby grins and wiggles the bloody knife around, showing it off. “Comes in handy sometimes.”
Jo has seen more than her fair share of possessed people become corpses. “But it kills the body,” she says numbly.
As though sensing her mood, Ruby’s smile fades and she nods solemnly. “Yes. It’s the price you have to pay.” Ruby cleans the knife off on Rufus’ t-shirt and points down with the blade. “Didn’t you notice? He broke the trap.”
Sure enough, there’s a crack in the ground that severs the outside line of the seal. “Not many demons can do that,” Jo says softly. “May I see that knife?”
Ruby tosses it to her, and Jo runs her fingers across the blade. There are strange runes carved into it, and she likes knives, used to collect them back before the world exploded. She steps in close to Ruby, like she’s going to hand it back. “Thanks,” she says shortly. “Christo.”
Gasping in shock, Ruby’s eyes go black and before she can open her mouth to flee, or speak, Jo uses the knife in her hand to kill her.
“No hard feelings,” Jo tells her as the crackling appears underneath Ruby’s pale skin. “It’s the price you have to pay.”
She burns the house. Just in case.
*
It’s another few months of soul-crushing loneliness before she runs into trouble again. Jo’s hunting a skinwalker in a large system of caves when it rushes past her, knocking her into the rough wall. She spares half a thought for why it’s running, for what could be chasing it and how powerful it would have to be to make something like a skinwalker run away, before going after it.
There’s a small town near here, full of humans, and Jo has to kill the skinwalker before it kills any more of their teenagers.
It’s not until what’s chasing the skinwalker catches up to her that she sees what’s making it run. It’s a man, tall, with longish dark hair. And he knocks her aside without ever lifting a hand.
Demon. Of course it’s a demon. It’s always a demon.
She pulls out Ruby’s knife, readying herself. Jo knows she only has one chance, and she throws herself around the corner. If it kills the skinwalker, that’s perfect, but she’ll have to kill it right after, and there are no Devil’s Traps around for her to use to her advantage.
Just ahead of her, the demon pulls out a gun, and isn’t that strange? She’s never seen a demon use a gun before. Jo runs faster and then-
“He’s not a demon!” a voice shouts, and she’s tackled to the stony ground.
“What the fu...” she starts to say, and twists in the grasp of whoever’s hit her. Her flashlight catches him in the face and she almost drops it in surprise. She’s only seen him once, when she was much younger, but he’s undeniably: “Dean Winchester?” she shrieks, on the tail end of a shot blast.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks her, pulling up to look her in the eye.
“Jo Harvelle,” she says, a little breathless. “Your father knew my mother.”
The not-a-demon comes back towards them, hazel eyes clearly worried. “Dean? What’s going on?”
Dean doesn’t quite look like he believes she’s who she says she is, but he lets her go and gets to his feet. “You remember Ellen Harvelle, right, Sammy?”
“Holy shit, Sam Winchester?” she says, struggling to stand. “You were... like, half my height when your father brought you to the Roadhouse.”
Sam still looks confused. “You’re not Ellen Harvelle,” he says unnecessarily.
“No, I’m Jo, her daughter.”
Though Dean still looks suspicious, Sam smiles and he suddenly looks years younger, less imposing and powerful. “Is Ellen here?” he asks, and she can hear the note of excitement in his voice.
Jo’s face goes still, and she looks down. “She died. Everyone in the Roadhouse did.”
Both the brothers are silent, neither offering platitudes or condolences or pity, which Jo is grateful for. “If we’re going to continue this conversation, maybe we should leave the cave? It’s getting dark and there are worse things out here than skinwalkers,” Sam finally says.
They troop out to where the brothers left their car, and if Jo wasn’t already certain that they were the real deal, the car would have clinched it. It’s parked next to her motorcycle, and she turns to the brothers, keeping her bike at her back. “So how do I know neither of you are possessed, or skinwalkers yourselves?”
They walk her through a strange set of tests, shots of holy water that taste like plastic and a small cut on their arms from a silver knife. “Now what?” Dean asks, and Jo shrugs one shoulder.
“Maybe you should come with us,” Sam suggests.
Jo thinks of the way his eyes had bored into her back in the cave, how she’d felt like a rag doll when she’d been thrown to the side. She hadn’t been hurt by it, despite how far she’d been flung; she’d landed more or less gently on the ground. “Um,” she says.
“Yeah, sure,” Dean says, eyes locked on Sam’s. “Why not?”
Why not indeed.
*
It’s surprisingly easy to fall into a routine with the brothers. They spend a lot of time just going from place to place, helping out people who ask. It’s not an easy life, with the loss of most motels and many of the gas stations. Sam has an air compressor and a large tent so they spend long nights in the midwest, under the stars. There’s an underlying tension sometimes, and Jo can never quite put her finger on what it is.
A) It starts out like this: Jo wakes up in the middle of the night and Sam and Dean aren’t in the tent, and she can hear them outside, quiet like they’re hiding. Everything is zipped up and she can’t open the door or the window flaps without alerting them, so she lies in the dark, watching the shadows on the tent wall and listening as Sam whimpers and skin slaps quietly on skin. She keeps her mouth shut because what do you even say to that and it’s not her business anyway. And sometimes it’s when
B) They stop in a town for the night and they split a room and give her one to herself because doesn’t she want some privacy to bathe all the dirt from the road off her, come on Dean, leave her be, and she can hear them through the wall, or outside the door when she goes to knock before thinking better of it. The best times are when
C) They find a river or a lake or a stream that hasn’t been contaminated by some evil water creature (they fought a naga once, and wasn’t that fun) and they strip down to the bare minimum and play in the water like they’re kids again and nothing is wrong in the world. It’s when she notices that Dean watches her, eyes accessing her breasts in their plain sports bra, or when Sam’s hands linger too long on her legs as they play one-sided chicken with Dean shouting about being double teamed. Of course it’s also when
D) Sam and Dean can’t stop arguing and ask her for her opinion, and she doesn’t want to get in between them, doesn’t want to be involved at all, but sometimes she can’t help it and then one sulks at her and the other gloats and she ends up punching them both because they’re being stupid and unfair. But then there are the times when
E) She wakes up and she’s pressed between them, Sam behind her, one arm around her waist, Dean facing her, nose in her hair. On those days, even if she has to use the bathroom or just can’t sleep anymore or her arm is asleep, she lies there and basks because it’s rare, and it’s warm and she can touch it. Which is how it ends up that
F) They go to a community that’s stocked up on alcohol and Dean gets beyond trashed, and Jo and Sam have to scramble to keep up with him, both drink-number-wise and making sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, and Jo drinks two shots too many and kisses Dean, because it’s Dean and his mouth is begging for it and his eyes are too hot on her skin and even though Sam could kill her with his brain, she has to do it at least once.
Dean looks adorably confused when she lets go of his face, backing up quickly. Sam is right there, mouth set in a thin line, not nearly as drunk as the rest of them. “I...” she starts to say but her voice cracks. “I’m sorry. I just...” She tries to make her escape but the door behind her swings closed even though no one is touching it.
She glances at the other door, the one behind Sam, and that one swings closed too. She wants to call a do-over because Sam is cheating, but she can’t get her voice to work. “Sit,” he offers, voice neutral.
She sits. “Sammy!” Dean cheers, holding up the bottle. “Where’d you go?”
Sam doesn’t answer him, staring Jo down. “Sam...” she murmurs, biting her lip. Sam advances on her, and she wants to run away, to hide and hope that Sam is drunk enough and won’t remember in the morning. He steps into her space and she leans back to look up at him. He bends down, and she swallows hard.
“Sam, I’m sorry, it was a mistake. I’ve been drinking and it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I know about you two, I’ve heard it and I knew better than to kiss him and I did it anyway and...”
Sam crushes their mouths together, blessedly cutting off her rambling. She gasps, lips parting for his tongue, and Dean makes a low, punched-out noise from somewhere behind Sam.
He drags her close, pulling her out of the chair, slotting her front against his. Through the thin veil of her jeans she can feel him start to get hard, and she’s faintly surprised at the speed of it. Sam chuckles against her mouth. “You should hear what Dean is thinking right now,” he confides.
“Give me a demonstration,” she murmurs back, and gasps in surprise when Sam hoists her up against the wall suddenly. There’s a hollow click that she can feel through the small of her back - the door locking - and then Sam is kissing her again.
He bites at her lips as she tightens her legs around his waist, and when he starts kissing down the side of her neck, he leaves marks whenever he stops for longer than half a second. “Dean...” Sam says to her against her skin, vibrating against her bones, “really likes to watch.”
Jo makes a noise that is definitely not a whimper and Sam laughs, pulling her white t-shirt over her head to toss it off to the side somewhere. Dean makes another punched-out grunt, and then Jo can’t focus on him at all because Sam’s mouth is on her nipple.
Maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s Sam, maybe it’s Dean’s heated gaze, but Jo has never felt so ready so quickly before. It’s been too long to even count since the last time she’d had sex. So she scrambles at Sam’s shirt in return, sinking her fingers into his skin, leaving half-moons in her wake.
Whenever she scratches at his back, he groans and grinds his hips into hers, making her dig her nails in harder. She hears Dean say, very faintly, “Oh fuck” and she pushes Sam’s head out of the way to glance at him.
He’s still sitting at the table, but he’s pushed away from it to make some room, one hand cupped over his erection. She grins at him, wild and edgy because this was not what she was expecting when she kissed him.
Then Sam is working his way into her jeans and she spares a thought to be thankful for not wearing underwear. When he touches her, she has to clap a hand over her mouth to stop from shouting. He slides two fingers down inside of her, twitching them a little just to make her jerk against him.
He drags his mouth from her neck back to her nipple, using just the right amount of teeth while he slides his fingers slowly in and out of her. His range of motion is slightly impaired, both by her jeans and how hard he’s pressing her into the wall, but Jo can feel her orgasm building steadily.
She digs her fingers into the small of his back and drags them up, breaking skin with her nails, and he howls against her breast, jerking against her. “Sam,” she gasps, and arches her hips as best as she can. “Please.”
Sam balances her with one hand as he undoes his own jeans, freeing himself from them. Jo doesn’t have much time to look at him, but holy shit. “You sure?” he asks, even as he’s pushing her jeans off her ass.
“Shut up,” she says, and tilts her hips invitingly.
He takes it in the spirit she intended and slides inside her. He’s big and she’s tighter than she thinks she’s ever been, but he rubs against her in all the right places. Jo bites her lip as Dean swears loudly behind Sam. He’s pressing against his groin, erection still in his jeans, even as he pumps his hips into his hand.
Jo scratches Sam’s back again, just to feel him thrust against her hard. Holding her up with one hand, he works the other between them to press his thumb against her clit.
“Sam!” she gasps, “Sam I’m gonna...” He cuts her off with a kiss as she comes, shaking, wrecked. But Sam keeps rubbing at her clit, just dry enough to give the pleasure an edge, just wet enough to keep it smooth, and Jo can’t handle it, she’s so sensitive, and Sam’s so big and she’s barely done with her first orgasm when she’s thrown into her second.
Sam keeps thrusting against her, his body tight and firm, and he sucks her nipple into his mouth again. She bites her own knuckle to keep quiet as the pleasure blurs out of control again and she comes for the third time.
“Fuck!” Dean says, and with a muffled groan against Jo’s skin, Sam comes.
Jo isn’t sure her legs will work but when Sam lowers her to the ground she makes a really good effort at trying to get to Dean. He’s still hard in his jeans, and she unzips them as soon as he moves his hand. “Jo,” he says raggedly, “you don’t have to. It’s okay.”
She shoots him a look through her lashes, pressing the tip of her tongue to her top lip. “Dean,” she says, with half a laugh, “shut up.”
“Make m- nngh!” She’s out of practice with this too, but Dean’s close anyway. She can’t quite get her mouth all the way around him, and she’s about to wrap her hand around the part she can’t get to, but then Sam’s lips are in the way.
Dean makes a sound like a squeak, and his hands slam down on the table top. “Shit! he breathes, hips jerking.
Jo pulls off of Dean to push her hair out of the way and Sam leans in to take her place. It doesn’t take much longer than that for Dean to come, swearing and jerking against their lips.
He drops his head back over the edge of the chair and Jo turns to face Sam. “You sharing a room with us tonight?” he asks, not quite succeeding in sounding nonchalant.
She lets her face soften in a smile. “Why would I want to be anywhere else?”
It’s the right answer.
*
Things are even better once the tension is gone. Sam suggests they take a break from the constant hunting, which surprises Jo because Sam seems to get antsy after even a few hours of inactivity.
But he pushes Dean out of the way and takes the wheel of the Impala and drives them to the nearest ocean. They end up in Myrtle Beach, or what was once Myrtle Beach. It’s still gorgeous when the sun shines, which is rare, but even the smoky haze from the fires can’t dim the shine of the water.
Jo races along the shore edge because she can, because there isn’t a naga or a giant alligator or something that will try to drown her lurking in the shallow depths.
There is, however, a Dean waiting on the shore for her to get close so he can tackle her into the waves. That’s one attack she’s all right with.
They lie together as the tide comes in, water rushing around her head as she sinks into the sand. Dean rests gently on top of her, most of his weight on the ground on either side of her. “Hey Sam!” he calls over to where his brother is lying in the sun. “Come join us!”
Sam groans loud enough that they can both hear him, climbing to his feet and ambling over to join them at the water. “You know,” he says conversationally, “you’re both going to be really annoyed when you dry and all your clothes stick to you because of the salt.”
In answer, Jo and Dean exchange a look and yank him into the waves.
*
Jo looks at the calendar on the wall of the motel they’re squatting in, counting the days mentally. “What’s wrong?” Sam asks, curiously.
“Um,” Jo says. “We didn’t use a condom.”
Sam blinks at her stupidly for a long second before the window she’s next to shatters outward. “Shit!” he swears, covering his eyes with one hand. “Sorry! I really didn’t mean for that to happen. Shit!”
Maybe it’s hysteria that makes her laugh, but once she starts, she can’t stop. Sam folds her up in his arms when she cries because it’s been a week too long since her last period and this world is no place to raise a baby.
When Dean walks into the room, Jo feigns sleep in Sam’s arms on the bed, letting Sam tell him in hushed tones what had happened.
“Pregnant?” Dean whispers, and Jo can feel Sam nod. “Shit, are we sure?”
Sam hesitates, air escaping between his teeth in a hiss. “No,” Jo says, stuffed up and muffled from crying. “I’m a week late though.”
Dean worms his way under Sam’s arm, pressing close to the front of Jo’s body. “Whatever happens,” he says, half a promise, half a threat.
She nods against his chest.
They sleep that way, Dean pressed tightly to her stomach, and Sam a solid presence behind her.
When she wakes up in the morning, her thighs are sticky with blood and she hides her disappointment behind a show of relief.
She wouldn’t make a very good mother anyway.
*
Jo should have known things were too good. She wakes up in the morning, two days after the pregnancy scare, and she and Dean are alone in the bed. That’s not too surprising in and of itself, except that everything is too quiet.
Sam is physically incapable of being quiet in the mornings, especially if he tries, and the entire room is quiet with the stillness of the predawn. And she’s getting a sick feeling in her stomach, the one that tells her when something is wrong.
“Dean,” she whispers, shaking his shoulder. “Dean, wake up.”
“Mmph,” he groans, burying his head under the pillow. “Don’ wanna.”
She shakes him harder. “Dean, seriously, get up.”
Dean flops over onto his back, one arm tossed over his eyes. “Why? It’s fuckin’ early, Jo.”
Levering herself up onto her elbows, Jo murmurs, “Dean... Dean, Sam is gone.”
He’s up and out of bed before she can finish the thought. It’s instantly obvious that she’s right. His shoes are gone, but his duffel remains, and his pajamas are in a puddle on the floor.
The keys are still by the door and the Impala is still out there.
Sam is just gone.
*
Jo’s back hits the wall of their latest stopping place, this time an old house that still has a door on it. Dean yanks off her t-shirt - it’s Sam’s - and gets to work on her jeans even before she can get her fingers around his own clothes. She’s naked in less than ten seconds, while Dean is still fully dressed.
She’s pretty sure he’s angry, not aroused, but he still drops to his knees before her, hooking her left leg over his shoulder to give him more room to maneuver. “Dean,” she says quietly, running a hand through his hair. “It’s okay.”
“No,” he says harshly. “It’s not okay.”
“We don’t,” she starts to say and then groans and throws her head back to smack against the wall when Dean seals his lips over her clit. He’s frighteningly good at this; before Sam went missing, when things were still good, he could get her to come in under five minutes just by doing this.
It only ever took longer when Sam was fucking him.
She grips his hair, her free hand reaching up to grab at the curtain hook to hold herself steady. The perfect pressure of Dean’s lips around her is broken only by his flicking tongue. “Fuck,” she says softly, body growing hot. “Dean...”
He pushes her leg out of the way, holding her open with one hand, flicking his tongue rapidly over her as she swears. His free hand breaches her, wet with saliva, and she groans, thrusting against his face before she can stop herself. He fucks her with his fingers and his tongue until she’s muffling screams against her arm, biting into her wrist.
“Dean, Dean, Dean!” she chants, squirming.
He stops just before she comes and she swears violently as he works himself out of his jeans.
He practically throws her on the creaky bed and slides on top of her. Jo spreads her legs and tugs him closer, and if they both cry Sam’s name when they come, neither of them mentions it later.
*
It’s not them who finds Sam; instead, Sam finds them. He’s bloody, streaked with it, red dripping down the sides of his face, his arms, his fingers. “Dean?” he says in relief. “Jo!” They’re moving to his side as soon as he speaks, but Sam falls to his knees before they can reach him. “Dean, I don’t remember anything.”
They make him go through the tests, and he passes every one. It’s only after they’ve cleaned him up and put him in bed that Jo really starts to breathe again.
Dean pulls her into his arms, holding tightly. “He’s back,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her hair.
They stand there watching Sam sleep for long enough that Jo starts getting tired herself, yawning and snuggling back into Dean. “Tired?” Dean asks her, and she nods against the side of his arm.
“Go to sleep,” he suggests. “I’m going to stay up a bit longer.”
“’Kay,” she says, and climbs into bed next to Sam, who opens one eye blearily and drops an arm over her waist, just like he used to before everything went horribly wrong. “Night, Sam,” she whispers, kissing his shoulder.
He snuffles some sort of response into her hair and drops instantly off to sleep again. Sam has always been able to sleep no matter where they’ve ended up for the night, and she almost envies him the ability. But his heartbeat is steady under her ear and she falls asleep quickly while listening to it thud a reassuring beat.
She only wakes again when Dean climbs in on her other side, fitting himself against her front, sliding one leg between hers and covering Sam’s arm with his. She grumbles at him, vague displeasure at being woken up, and drops off again to his soft laughter.
She likes it when he laughs. It doesn’t happen nearly enough.
*
She should have known it wasn’t going to last.
Jo wakes up to Dean screaming something, adrenaline jolting her to her feet and reaching for her gun - the gun that isn’t under her pillow. Her sleep-bleary eyes take in Dean, pressed against the opposite wall and bleeding from a cut over his eye.
Her gaze flickers over to Sam. His back is to her and he’s putting on his shoes without reacting to the curses that Dean is spitting in his direction. “Sam?” she whispers, feeling suddenly cold.
He turns and smiles at her. “Jo! Finally awake, are we?” he asks, voice cheerful.
His eyes are yellow.
“Sam...” she says, her voice low and cautious, “what’s going on?”
The smile widens. “Come on girl, you’re not that stupid.”
She licks her lips and says, “Let’s not do anything hasty, okay? What do you want?”
Not-Sam pats his chest. “I’ve already got what I wanted.”
Jo opens her mouth, searching for something else to say, something to make it leave, maybe an exorcism, maybe a plea, but then not-Sam raises one hand and Jo hits the opposite wall hard enough to bring colored bursts to her eyes.
Dean is screaming again, but Jo can’t focus; everything hurts and something sticky is trailing down her cheek.
Something fills her line of vision, a shoe, and then everything goes dark.
*
Dean is shaking her and her face is wet with water, and Jo comes awake with a gasp and another burst of teeth-clenching pain. “Jo!”
“Ow,” she says pathetically.
“Jo,” he says insistently. “Come on, I know where he’s going.”
He helps her struggle to her feet, and she feels along the back of her head to find dried blood tangling her hair. “Where? And how?”
“I told him where the Colt was,” Dean admits lowly. “I told him where I’d hidden it, all those years ago, before the world ended.”
She gapes at him. “You had the Colt all this time?”
He shakes his head. “I went and got it when Sam went missing, but he won’t know that. So he’s going to where Sam and I hid it, four years ago.”
“I didn’t even think the Colt actually existed!” she says, shutting her eyes against some dizziness. “I can’t believe you’ve had it all this time.”
Dean shrugs one shoulder. “It only has so many bullets, and we’re down to two left, so it’s not like I can use it all the time anyway.” He holds her steady while she dresses and rushes her out to the car. “He’s got a head start on us.”
“He didn’t take the Impala?” she asks, a little incredulous.
“Hid the keys,” Dean says shortly.
Her mind still feels sluggish but it suddenly hits her, like a lightning strike. “You knew.”
Dean digs up the keys with the toe of his boot, scooping them out of the can he’d left them in. “No,” he corrects shortly, “I suspected.”
“But the tests,” Jo protests, even though Dean had been right. “He passed all the tests.”
He nods. “Yeah, well. Even tests aren’t foolproof.”
They get in the car, Dean checks the gas gauge, and then he’s tearing out of the abandoned lot. If Jo cries for half the drive, he doesn’t say anything.
*
They get to the abandoned carnival at noon. There’s another car there, and when Dean drops his hand on the hood of it, it’s still warm. Sam - or the Yellow-Eyed Demon inside Sam - has only beaten them by less than an hour.
He’s stuck in the middle of the control room for the Ferris wheel, face twisted in an ugly expression of hate. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Dean, I didn’t expect this.” Dean doesn’t respond, walking into the room, keeping Jo just behind him. He pulls out his gun, checking the bullets.
“Aw, Dean,” the Yellow-Eyed Demon says. “You don’t want to shoot me. You’ll kill poor little Sammy.” Dean’s gaze flickers up from his gun, but he doesn’t respond until the Yellow-Eyed Demon pulls out Sam’s large hunting knife. “Maybe I should take care of that for you, hmm?” he asks, and before Dean or Jo can move, he stabs himself in the gut.
When Dean shoots him half a beat later, with the tranquilizer rather than a bullet, Jo already knows it’s too late. Sam will lose too much blood before they can exorcize him.
But she helps him tie up Sam’s inert body, and plans quietly for a worst case scenario.
*
The way the Yellow-Eyed-Demon grins makes Sam’s face look... wrong. It’s twisted and sadistic, and his dimples aren’t showing. They’ve painted the Devil’s Trap on both the ceiling and the floor, wrapping salt-doused chains around Sam’s wrists, ankles, and neck. Though he struggles, he isn’t going anywhere.
And the exorcism isn’t working.
“What do we do?” Jo murmurs quietly in Dean’s ear. Dean shrugs helplessly, skin shivering under her hand.
She obviously isn’t quiet enough because the Yellow-Eyed-Demon drawls, “Sweetheart, if you want me gone... you’re going to have to kill me.” He spreads his hands as best he can while shackled to the chair. “Quite the Catch-22 isn’t it?” He laughs, voice high-pitched and grating.
It’s not Sam’s laugh at all.
Jo thinks that Dean will break before long: not enough sleep, too much caffeine, and they’ve been listening to the thing in Sam’s body for far too long. So when the laugh suddenly cuts off with a choke, it’s actually a surprise. Sam’s body chokes and coughs so hard, he almost heaves himself sideways, and Dean and Jo can only stare as his blood-streaked head comes up and it’s Sam looking through his eyes.
“Sammy,” Dean breathes. Neither of them moves; it’s too likely a trap, probably just the demon fucking with their heads.
“Dean,” he says, his voice achingly tender. “Dean, you have to kill me.”
Literally all the fight goes out of Dean as he slumps against her. “Sammy, you can’t ask me to do that.”
Sam smiles and that’s when Jo knows it’s not a trick, not a ploy. Not the demon. She knows that smile. It’s been aimed at her in the dark inside of the Impala over Dean’s snoring head. It’s been captured in her sketch pad too many times to count. It’s been etched into Dean’s skin, with teeth and tongue and lips. And now it’s asking Dean to kill it. “Dean, please,” Sam says, tears rolling down his cheeks despite the smile. “Please, I don’t want to kill anyone else.”
The Colt has been in Dean’s hand since they tied up Sam’s body. Dean’s arms are shaking; she can feel it where they’re pressed shoulder to shoulder. “Sammy, I can’t.”
Jo looks up to find Sam’s eyes on her. “Jo...” he says, and the tears flow harder. “Jo, please.”
She turns her back on him, hears him sob as she runs her hands down Dean’s arms. Dean looks startled, turning tear-damp eyes to hers. “Close your eyes,” she whispers, and he does. Jo lifts the Colt out of his unresisting hand and turns to face Sam.
“Thank you,” Sam says, and she can see the fear in his face.
I’m sorry, she thinks. And I don’t want to do this I can’t do this why am I doing this and goodbye Sam and I think I loved you.
Dean howls when she pulls the trigger.
She knows it worked when blue and yellow lightning spreads out from the small hole in Sam’s forehead. The yellow fades from his eyes and she steps into the Devil’s Trap to close them.
When Jo turns back around, Dean is on his knees. He’s crying but his lips are turned up in an empty smirk. “My turn, sweetheart.” Her eyes flash to his, but they’re still green, and he laughs hollowly. “There was never any other way, Jo. Here.” He holds something out to her.
The Impala’s keys.
“Dean,” she gasps. “You can’t!”
“I can,” he interrupts. “Do it, Jo.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t,” she whispers. “I love you.” The confession is ripped from her and Dean catches her hand, pressing the keys into it and pulling her close.
“I know,” he answers her. “That’s why you’re going to do it.”
She kisses him, their mouths wet with tears. Dean tastes like salt and regret, and Jo hates him with a vicious passion for asking this of her. She pulls away, curling the keys into her left hand until the grooves make impressions on the skin.
Jo stands, and Dean moves around her legs to lean against Sam’s body. “Do it,” Dean says.
Her finger pulls the trigger almost without her permission, but she knows better than anyone else in this God-forsaken world that there is no Dean without Sam at his side.
She leaves the abandoned carnival as soon as their bodies are buried. She buried them under the Ferris wheel, the only patch of undisturbed earth she could find. She marks them with metal crowbars, and cries empty tears on the long walk back to the Impala.
There’s the scent of fire on the wind, and Jo can just see the place in the distance where the flames are leaping up.
The Winchesters are dead, but there are still people out there who need saving.
Jo gets into the Impala and drives.
*end
Author: Miss ‘Drea/placeofinsanity
Rating: Explicit
Pairing: Established Sam/Dean, Sam/Jo/Dean
Summary: Set in an anomalous season (somewhere between 1, 2, or 3) where the world as we know it ends and demons are set free on the world. Jo is a hunter left alone (by fate or by design). She begins hunting with Sam - a powerful clairvoyant and telekinetic - and his brother Dean. Things are good between the three of them, saving what people they can while hunting demons. Only... the Demon with Yellow Eyes is hunting them back.
Warnings: Major character deaths.
Notes: ALL of the thanks to selecasharp and pixymisa for their endless support and beta-ing, and all sorts of other craziness. I couldn't have done it without either of you. Special thanks to lightthesparks for the peer pressure. And thanks to the mods of spn_reversebang, I love this challenge so much.
AND ALL OF THE LOVE TO MY ARTIST: marciaelena because it was gorgeous, and you were amazing and so easy to work with. Thank you for putting up with my long absences and not killing me when I didn't finish the fic until the day before posting. :\ <3 BB.
ART LINK: Here!! (Go check it out, it's amazing.)
*
It’s demons again. It’s always demons. There aren’t a lot of communities left in the world comprising of only humans, so when Jo finds them, she marks them on her map, helps out where she can, and moves on.
She’s done it since Ash and her mother blew up the Roadhouse to take out a pack of skinwalkers.
“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus...” she chants over the demon’s screaming. She’s done these enough times to know it by heart. “Omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio.”
The demon writhes in the blonde body it’s inhabiting. “No!” it shrieks, back arching in an almost spine-cracking shape. “I can bring you back your mother!”
Jo rolls her eyes. “Infernalis adversarii, omnis legio,” she continues calmly. “Omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.”
Its screaming drowns her out, black smoke curling around its lips. It screams wordlessly, fingers digging dents in the metal chair. “I’m speaking the truth!” it sobs. “She’s in Hell! I can bring her back to you!”
For one endless, faltering second, Jo pauses. “Ergo draco maledicte, et omnis legio diablolica adjuramus te. Cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare.”
The demon screams one last time before black smoke plumes out of her host, when the sound cuts out suddenly.
The girl is dead. As usual.
Jo sighs, kicking over one of the candles. “Why do I even bother?” she asks the empty air. It’s a rhetorical question; she knows the answer to it. It’s been her answer for most of her life. To save people, and hunt things.
Jo grew up amongst the hunting community. She knew their faces, knew their MOs, could recall the numbers of over half, not that any of that helps her now. Cell towers were destroyed a long time ago, and phone lines have degraded to the point of being obsolete anyway. There isn’t a single way to remotely get hold of anyone in the world.
So after the Roadhouse, the first place she went was Bobby Singer’s, but it was a burned-out husk of a house. She couldn’t tell if he’d escaped or died within, but it hits her where it hurts to think of another one of hers dying in a fire.
She tried Rufus next, but no one answered his door. Jo supposes it’s possible that when the power went out, Rufus moved on because his cameras stopped picking up on intruders. He’s just paranoid enough for that sort of logic.
Jo spent months moving down the list of people she can remember from the Roadhouse, checking houses, trailer parks, anywhere a hunter would hide during the dark days. They’re all either dead, missing, or possessed.
She’s managing to cobble things together, from most of the things she could get from Bobby’s library before she burned what was left of the place to the ground. Paper is scarce, but she makes do with what she can, making her own Hunter’s journal. Something for anyone who wants to pick up her mantle after she’s dead.
And it’s only a matter of time before that happens.
Because they’re hunting her now.
*
Jo’s used to being in this business alone. Before the world ended, she’d fancied the thought of joining other hunters, but most of them are men, older, and the surly sort who wanted no partners - especially not her. So she doesn’t react well when she gets interrupted on her latest hunt.
She nearly takes the girl’s head off with her shotgun. “Who the fuck are you?” she demands, finger on the trigger.
“I’m Ruby,” the girl says, tucking blonde hair behind her ear. “Are you a hunter too?”
There’s something about her that rubs Jo the wrong way, but she nods once anyway. “Yeah. I’ve been hunting this demon for a week.” She turns her gaze to the bound Rufus, his eyes black on black from lid to lid. “The man he’s possessing is a friend of mine.”
Thank God she’d gagged him first thing, because she’s learned after several of these things that she can’t stomach listening to their vitriol. Especially not when it comes out of the mouths of people her mother called friend.
“You still haven’t told me your name, pretty.”
Jo regards her for a long moment, before sticking her hand out to shake Ruby’s. “Jo.”
Ruby’s lips split in a wide smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Just as pretty as you.”
Quirking an eyebrow, Jo snorts. “You’re so unsubtle that it’s actually kind of sad.” She turns her attention to the struggling demon.
When she starts the usual exorcism, though, everything goes completely batshit and Jo ends up flying across the room to smash into a window. When Jo’s gaze clears, Ruby is inside the Devil’s Trap with Rufus and before Jo can shout, Ruby slides a knife into Rufus’s chest.
Yellow and red crackling spirals out from the wound, and the demon inside Rufus shrieks, twisting in its bonds before it dies. The power holding Jo against the wall drops her and she lands strangely, twisting her knee. “What the fuck was that?” she snaps, righting herself.
“Dunno, found it on a demon a few months back. It’s like, it kills the demon so it can’t come back.” Ruby grins and wiggles the bloody knife around, showing it off. “Comes in handy sometimes.”
Jo has seen more than her fair share of possessed people become corpses. “But it kills the body,” she says numbly.
As though sensing her mood, Ruby’s smile fades and she nods solemnly. “Yes. It’s the price you have to pay.” Ruby cleans the knife off on Rufus’ t-shirt and points down with the blade. “Didn’t you notice? He broke the trap.”
Sure enough, there’s a crack in the ground that severs the outside line of the seal. “Not many demons can do that,” Jo says softly. “May I see that knife?”
Ruby tosses it to her, and Jo runs her fingers across the blade. There are strange runes carved into it, and she likes knives, used to collect them back before the world exploded. She steps in close to Ruby, like she’s going to hand it back. “Thanks,” she says shortly. “Christo.”
Gasping in shock, Ruby’s eyes go black and before she can open her mouth to flee, or speak, Jo uses the knife in her hand to kill her.
“No hard feelings,” Jo tells her as the crackling appears underneath Ruby’s pale skin. “It’s the price you have to pay.”
She burns the house. Just in case.
*
It’s another few months of soul-crushing loneliness before she runs into trouble again. Jo’s hunting a skinwalker in a large system of caves when it rushes past her, knocking her into the rough wall. She spares half a thought for why it’s running, for what could be chasing it and how powerful it would have to be to make something like a skinwalker run away, before going after it.
There’s a small town near here, full of humans, and Jo has to kill the skinwalker before it kills any more of their teenagers.
It’s not until what’s chasing the skinwalker catches up to her that she sees what’s making it run. It’s a man, tall, with longish dark hair. And he knocks her aside without ever lifting a hand.
Demon. Of course it’s a demon. It’s always a demon.
She pulls out Ruby’s knife, readying herself. Jo knows she only has one chance, and she throws herself around the corner. If it kills the skinwalker, that’s perfect, but she’ll have to kill it right after, and there are no Devil’s Traps around for her to use to her advantage.
Just ahead of her, the demon pulls out a gun, and isn’t that strange? She’s never seen a demon use a gun before. Jo runs faster and then-
“He’s not a demon!” a voice shouts, and she’s tackled to the stony ground.
“What the fu...” she starts to say, and twists in the grasp of whoever’s hit her. Her flashlight catches him in the face and she almost drops it in surprise. She’s only seen him once, when she was much younger, but he’s undeniably: “Dean Winchester?” she shrieks, on the tail end of a shot blast.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks her, pulling up to look her in the eye.
“Jo Harvelle,” she says, a little breathless. “Your father knew my mother.”
The not-a-demon comes back towards them, hazel eyes clearly worried. “Dean? What’s going on?”
Dean doesn’t quite look like he believes she’s who she says she is, but he lets her go and gets to his feet. “You remember Ellen Harvelle, right, Sammy?”
“Holy shit, Sam Winchester?” she says, struggling to stand. “You were... like, half my height when your father brought you to the Roadhouse.”
Sam still looks confused. “You’re not Ellen Harvelle,” he says unnecessarily.
“No, I’m Jo, her daughter.”
Though Dean still looks suspicious, Sam smiles and he suddenly looks years younger, less imposing and powerful. “Is Ellen here?” he asks, and she can hear the note of excitement in his voice.
Jo’s face goes still, and she looks down. “She died. Everyone in the Roadhouse did.”
Both the brothers are silent, neither offering platitudes or condolences or pity, which Jo is grateful for. “If we’re going to continue this conversation, maybe we should leave the cave? It’s getting dark and there are worse things out here than skinwalkers,” Sam finally says.
They troop out to where the brothers left their car, and if Jo wasn’t already certain that they were the real deal, the car would have clinched it. It’s parked next to her motorcycle, and she turns to the brothers, keeping her bike at her back. “So how do I know neither of you are possessed, or skinwalkers yourselves?”
They walk her through a strange set of tests, shots of holy water that taste like plastic and a small cut on their arms from a silver knife. “Now what?” Dean asks, and Jo shrugs one shoulder.
“Maybe you should come with us,” Sam suggests.
Jo thinks of the way his eyes had bored into her back in the cave, how she’d felt like a rag doll when she’d been thrown to the side. She hadn’t been hurt by it, despite how far she’d been flung; she’d landed more or less gently on the ground. “Um,” she says.
“Yeah, sure,” Dean says, eyes locked on Sam’s. “Why not?”
Why not indeed.
*
It’s surprisingly easy to fall into a routine with the brothers. They spend a lot of time just going from place to place, helping out people who ask. It’s not an easy life, with the loss of most motels and many of the gas stations. Sam has an air compressor and a large tent so they spend long nights in the midwest, under the stars. There’s an underlying tension sometimes, and Jo can never quite put her finger on what it is.
A) It starts out like this: Jo wakes up in the middle of the night and Sam and Dean aren’t in the tent, and she can hear them outside, quiet like they’re hiding. Everything is zipped up and she can’t open the door or the window flaps without alerting them, so she lies in the dark, watching the shadows on the tent wall and listening as Sam whimpers and skin slaps quietly on skin. She keeps her mouth shut because what do you even say to that and it’s not her business anyway. And sometimes it’s when
B) They stop in a town for the night and they split a room and give her one to herself because doesn’t she want some privacy to bathe all the dirt from the road off her, come on Dean, leave her be, and she can hear them through the wall, or outside the door when she goes to knock before thinking better of it. The best times are when
C) They find a river or a lake or a stream that hasn’t been contaminated by some evil water creature (they fought a naga once, and wasn’t that fun) and they strip down to the bare minimum and play in the water like they’re kids again and nothing is wrong in the world. It’s when she notices that Dean watches her, eyes accessing her breasts in their plain sports bra, or when Sam’s hands linger too long on her legs as they play one-sided chicken with Dean shouting about being double teamed. Of course it’s also when
D) Sam and Dean can’t stop arguing and ask her for her opinion, and she doesn’t want to get in between them, doesn’t want to be involved at all, but sometimes she can’t help it and then one sulks at her and the other gloats and she ends up punching them both because they’re being stupid and unfair. But then there are the times when
E) She wakes up and she’s pressed between them, Sam behind her, one arm around her waist, Dean facing her, nose in her hair. On those days, even if she has to use the bathroom or just can’t sleep anymore or her arm is asleep, she lies there and basks because it’s rare, and it’s warm and she can touch it. Which is how it ends up that
F) They go to a community that’s stocked up on alcohol and Dean gets beyond trashed, and Jo and Sam have to scramble to keep up with him, both drink-number-wise and making sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, and Jo drinks two shots too many and kisses Dean, because it’s Dean and his mouth is begging for it and his eyes are too hot on her skin and even though Sam could kill her with his brain, she has to do it at least once.
Dean looks adorably confused when she lets go of his face, backing up quickly. Sam is right there, mouth set in a thin line, not nearly as drunk as the rest of them. “I...” she starts to say but her voice cracks. “I’m sorry. I just...” She tries to make her escape but the door behind her swings closed even though no one is touching it.
She glances at the other door, the one behind Sam, and that one swings closed too. She wants to call a do-over because Sam is cheating, but she can’t get her voice to work. “Sit,” he offers, voice neutral.
She sits. “Sammy!” Dean cheers, holding up the bottle. “Where’d you go?”
Sam doesn’t answer him, staring Jo down. “Sam...” she murmurs, biting her lip. Sam advances on her, and she wants to run away, to hide and hope that Sam is drunk enough and won’t remember in the morning. He steps into her space and she leans back to look up at him. He bends down, and she swallows hard.
“Sam, I’m sorry, it was a mistake. I’ve been drinking and it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I know about you two, I’ve heard it and I knew better than to kiss him and I did it anyway and...”
Sam crushes their mouths together, blessedly cutting off her rambling. She gasps, lips parting for his tongue, and Dean makes a low, punched-out noise from somewhere behind Sam.
He drags her close, pulling her out of the chair, slotting her front against his. Through the thin veil of her jeans she can feel him start to get hard, and she’s faintly surprised at the speed of it. Sam chuckles against her mouth. “You should hear what Dean is thinking right now,” he confides.
“Give me a demonstration,” she murmurs back, and gasps in surprise when Sam hoists her up against the wall suddenly. There’s a hollow click that she can feel through the small of her back - the door locking - and then Sam is kissing her again.
He bites at her lips as she tightens her legs around his waist, and when he starts kissing down the side of her neck, he leaves marks whenever he stops for longer than half a second. “Dean...” Sam says to her against her skin, vibrating against her bones, “really likes to watch.”
Jo makes a noise that is definitely not a whimper and Sam laughs, pulling her white t-shirt over her head to toss it off to the side somewhere. Dean makes another punched-out grunt, and then Jo can’t focus on him at all because Sam’s mouth is on her nipple.
Maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s Sam, maybe it’s Dean’s heated gaze, but Jo has never felt so ready so quickly before. It’s been too long to even count since the last time she’d had sex. So she scrambles at Sam’s shirt in return, sinking her fingers into his skin, leaving half-moons in her wake.
Whenever she scratches at his back, he groans and grinds his hips into hers, making her dig her nails in harder. She hears Dean say, very faintly, “Oh fuck” and she pushes Sam’s head out of the way to glance at him.
He’s still sitting at the table, but he’s pushed away from it to make some room, one hand cupped over his erection. She grins at him, wild and edgy because this was not what she was expecting when she kissed him.
Then Sam is working his way into her jeans and she spares a thought to be thankful for not wearing underwear. When he touches her, she has to clap a hand over her mouth to stop from shouting. He slides two fingers down inside of her, twitching them a little just to make her jerk against him.
He drags his mouth from her neck back to her nipple, using just the right amount of teeth while he slides his fingers slowly in and out of her. His range of motion is slightly impaired, both by her jeans and how hard he’s pressing her into the wall, but Jo can feel her orgasm building steadily.
She digs her fingers into the small of his back and drags them up, breaking skin with her nails, and he howls against her breast, jerking against her. “Sam,” she gasps, and arches her hips as best as she can. “Please.”
Sam balances her with one hand as he undoes his own jeans, freeing himself from them. Jo doesn’t have much time to look at him, but holy shit. “You sure?” he asks, even as he’s pushing her jeans off her ass.
“Shut up,” she says, and tilts her hips invitingly.
He takes it in the spirit she intended and slides inside her. He’s big and she’s tighter than she thinks she’s ever been, but he rubs against her in all the right places. Jo bites her lip as Dean swears loudly behind Sam. He’s pressing against his groin, erection still in his jeans, even as he pumps his hips into his hand.
Jo scratches Sam’s back again, just to feel him thrust against her hard. Holding her up with one hand, he works the other between them to press his thumb against her clit.
“Sam!” she gasps, “Sam I’m gonna...” He cuts her off with a kiss as she comes, shaking, wrecked. But Sam keeps rubbing at her clit, just dry enough to give the pleasure an edge, just wet enough to keep it smooth, and Jo can’t handle it, she’s so sensitive, and Sam’s so big and she’s barely done with her first orgasm when she’s thrown into her second.
Sam keeps thrusting against her, his body tight and firm, and he sucks her nipple into his mouth again. She bites her own knuckle to keep quiet as the pleasure blurs out of control again and she comes for the third time.
“Fuck!” Dean says, and with a muffled groan against Jo’s skin, Sam comes.
Jo isn’t sure her legs will work but when Sam lowers her to the ground she makes a really good effort at trying to get to Dean. He’s still hard in his jeans, and she unzips them as soon as he moves his hand. “Jo,” he says raggedly, “you don’t have to. It’s okay.”
She shoots him a look through her lashes, pressing the tip of her tongue to her top lip. “Dean,” she says, with half a laugh, “shut up.”
“Make m- nngh!” She’s out of practice with this too, but Dean’s close anyway. She can’t quite get her mouth all the way around him, and she’s about to wrap her hand around the part she can’t get to, but then Sam’s lips are in the way.
Dean makes a sound like a squeak, and his hands slam down on the table top. “Shit! he breathes, hips jerking.
Jo pulls off of Dean to push her hair out of the way and Sam leans in to take her place. It doesn’t take much longer than that for Dean to come, swearing and jerking against their lips.
He drops his head back over the edge of the chair and Jo turns to face Sam. “You sharing a room with us tonight?” he asks, not quite succeeding in sounding nonchalant.
She lets her face soften in a smile. “Why would I want to be anywhere else?”
It’s the right answer.
*
Things are even better once the tension is gone. Sam suggests they take a break from the constant hunting, which surprises Jo because Sam seems to get antsy after even a few hours of inactivity.
But he pushes Dean out of the way and takes the wheel of the Impala and drives them to the nearest ocean. They end up in Myrtle Beach, or what was once Myrtle Beach. It’s still gorgeous when the sun shines, which is rare, but even the smoky haze from the fires can’t dim the shine of the water.
Jo races along the shore edge because she can, because there isn’t a naga or a giant alligator or something that will try to drown her lurking in the shallow depths.
There is, however, a Dean waiting on the shore for her to get close so he can tackle her into the waves. That’s one attack she’s all right with.
They lie together as the tide comes in, water rushing around her head as she sinks into the sand. Dean rests gently on top of her, most of his weight on the ground on either side of her. “Hey Sam!” he calls over to where his brother is lying in the sun. “Come join us!”
Sam groans loud enough that they can both hear him, climbing to his feet and ambling over to join them at the water. “You know,” he says conversationally, “you’re both going to be really annoyed when you dry and all your clothes stick to you because of the salt.”
In answer, Jo and Dean exchange a look and yank him into the waves.
*
Jo looks at the calendar on the wall of the motel they’re squatting in, counting the days mentally. “What’s wrong?” Sam asks, curiously.
“Um,” Jo says. “We didn’t use a condom.”
Sam blinks at her stupidly for a long second before the window she’s next to shatters outward. “Shit!” he swears, covering his eyes with one hand. “Sorry! I really didn’t mean for that to happen. Shit!”
Maybe it’s hysteria that makes her laugh, but once she starts, she can’t stop. Sam folds her up in his arms when she cries because it’s been a week too long since her last period and this world is no place to raise a baby.
When Dean walks into the room, Jo feigns sleep in Sam’s arms on the bed, letting Sam tell him in hushed tones what had happened.
“Pregnant?” Dean whispers, and Jo can feel Sam nod. “Shit, are we sure?”
Sam hesitates, air escaping between his teeth in a hiss. “No,” Jo says, stuffed up and muffled from crying. “I’m a week late though.”
Dean worms his way under Sam’s arm, pressing close to the front of Jo’s body. “Whatever happens,” he says, half a promise, half a threat.
She nods against his chest.
They sleep that way, Dean pressed tightly to her stomach, and Sam a solid presence behind her.
When she wakes up in the morning, her thighs are sticky with blood and she hides her disappointment behind a show of relief.
She wouldn’t make a very good mother anyway.
*
Jo should have known things were too good. She wakes up in the morning, two days after the pregnancy scare, and she and Dean are alone in the bed. That’s not too surprising in and of itself, except that everything is too quiet.
Sam is physically incapable of being quiet in the mornings, especially if he tries, and the entire room is quiet with the stillness of the predawn. And she’s getting a sick feeling in her stomach, the one that tells her when something is wrong.
“Dean,” she whispers, shaking his shoulder. “Dean, wake up.”
“Mmph,” he groans, burying his head under the pillow. “Don’ wanna.”
She shakes him harder. “Dean, seriously, get up.”
Dean flops over onto his back, one arm tossed over his eyes. “Why? It’s fuckin’ early, Jo.”
Levering herself up onto her elbows, Jo murmurs, “Dean... Dean, Sam is gone.”
He’s up and out of bed before she can finish the thought. It’s instantly obvious that she’s right. His shoes are gone, but his duffel remains, and his pajamas are in a puddle on the floor.
The keys are still by the door and the Impala is still out there.
Sam is just gone.
*
Jo’s back hits the wall of their latest stopping place, this time an old house that still has a door on it. Dean yanks off her t-shirt - it’s Sam’s - and gets to work on her jeans even before she can get her fingers around his own clothes. She’s naked in less than ten seconds, while Dean is still fully dressed.
She’s pretty sure he’s angry, not aroused, but he still drops to his knees before her, hooking her left leg over his shoulder to give him more room to maneuver. “Dean,” she says quietly, running a hand through his hair. “It’s okay.”
“No,” he says harshly. “It’s not okay.”
“We don’t,” she starts to say and then groans and throws her head back to smack against the wall when Dean seals his lips over her clit. He’s frighteningly good at this; before Sam went missing, when things were still good, he could get her to come in under five minutes just by doing this.
It only ever took longer when Sam was fucking him.
She grips his hair, her free hand reaching up to grab at the curtain hook to hold herself steady. The perfect pressure of Dean’s lips around her is broken only by his flicking tongue. “Fuck,” she says softly, body growing hot. “Dean...”
He pushes her leg out of the way, holding her open with one hand, flicking his tongue rapidly over her as she swears. His free hand breaches her, wet with saliva, and she groans, thrusting against his face before she can stop herself. He fucks her with his fingers and his tongue until she’s muffling screams against her arm, biting into her wrist.
“Dean, Dean, Dean!” she chants, squirming.
He stops just before she comes and she swears violently as he works himself out of his jeans.
He practically throws her on the creaky bed and slides on top of her. Jo spreads her legs and tugs him closer, and if they both cry Sam’s name when they come, neither of them mentions it later.
*
It’s not them who finds Sam; instead, Sam finds them. He’s bloody, streaked with it, red dripping down the sides of his face, his arms, his fingers. “Dean?” he says in relief. “Jo!” They’re moving to his side as soon as he speaks, but Sam falls to his knees before they can reach him. “Dean, I don’t remember anything.”
They make him go through the tests, and he passes every one. It’s only after they’ve cleaned him up and put him in bed that Jo really starts to breathe again.
Dean pulls her into his arms, holding tightly. “He’s back,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her hair.
They stand there watching Sam sleep for long enough that Jo starts getting tired herself, yawning and snuggling back into Dean. “Tired?” Dean asks her, and she nods against the side of his arm.
“Go to sleep,” he suggests. “I’m going to stay up a bit longer.”
“’Kay,” she says, and climbs into bed next to Sam, who opens one eye blearily and drops an arm over her waist, just like he used to before everything went horribly wrong. “Night, Sam,” she whispers, kissing his shoulder.
He snuffles some sort of response into her hair and drops instantly off to sleep again. Sam has always been able to sleep no matter where they’ve ended up for the night, and she almost envies him the ability. But his heartbeat is steady under her ear and she falls asleep quickly while listening to it thud a reassuring beat.
She only wakes again when Dean climbs in on her other side, fitting himself against her front, sliding one leg between hers and covering Sam’s arm with his. She grumbles at him, vague displeasure at being woken up, and drops off again to his soft laughter.
She likes it when he laughs. It doesn’t happen nearly enough.
*
She should have known it wasn’t going to last.
Jo wakes up to Dean screaming something, adrenaline jolting her to her feet and reaching for her gun - the gun that isn’t under her pillow. Her sleep-bleary eyes take in Dean, pressed against the opposite wall and bleeding from a cut over his eye.
Her gaze flickers over to Sam. His back is to her and he’s putting on his shoes without reacting to the curses that Dean is spitting in his direction. “Sam?” she whispers, feeling suddenly cold.
He turns and smiles at her. “Jo! Finally awake, are we?” he asks, voice cheerful.
His eyes are yellow.
“Sam...” she says, her voice low and cautious, “what’s going on?”
The smile widens. “Come on girl, you’re not that stupid.”
She licks her lips and says, “Let’s not do anything hasty, okay? What do you want?”
Not-Sam pats his chest. “I’ve already got what I wanted.”
Jo opens her mouth, searching for something else to say, something to make it leave, maybe an exorcism, maybe a plea, but then not-Sam raises one hand and Jo hits the opposite wall hard enough to bring colored bursts to her eyes.
Dean is screaming again, but Jo can’t focus; everything hurts and something sticky is trailing down her cheek.
Something fills her line of vision, a shoe, and then everything goes dark.
*
Dean is shaking her and her face is wet with water, and Jo comes awake with a gasp and another burst of teeth-clenching pain. “Jo!”
“Ow,” she says pathetically.
“Jo,” he says insistently. “Come on, I know where he’s going.”
He helps her struggle to her feet, and she feels along the back of her head to find dried blood tangling her hair. “Where? And how?”
“I told him where the Colt was,” Dean admits lowly. “I told him where I’d hidden it, all those years ago, before the world ended.”
She gapes at him. “You had the Colt all this time?”
He shakes his head. “I went and got it when Sam went missing, but he won’t know that. So he’s going to where Sam and I hid it, four years ago.”
“I didn’t even think the Colt actually existed!” she says, shutting her eyes against some dizziness. “I can’t believe you’ve had it all this time.”
Dean shrugs one shoulder. “It only has so many bullets, and we’re down to two left, so it’s not like I can use it all the time anyway.” He holds her steady while she dresses and rushes her out to the car. “He’s got a head start on us.”
“He didn’t take the Impala?” she asks, a little incredulous.
“Hid the keys,” Dean says shortly.
Her mind still feels sluggish but it suddenly hits her, like a lightning strike. “You knew.”
Dean digs up the keys with the toe of his boot, scooping them out of the can he’d left them in. “No,” he corrects shortly, “I suspected.”
“But the tests,” Jo protests, even though Dean had been right. “He passed all the tests.”
He nods. “Yeah, well. Even tests aren’t foolproof.”
They get in the car, Dean checks the gas gauge, and then he’s tearing out of the abandoned lot. If Jo cries for half the drive, he doesn’t say anything.
*
They get to the abandoned carnival at noon. There’s another car there, and when Dean drops his hand on the hood of it, it’s still warm. Sam - or the Yellow-Eyed Demon inside Sam - has only beaten them by less than an hour.
He’s stuck in the middle of the control room for the Ferris wheel, face twisted in an ugly expression of hate. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Dean, I didn’t expect this.” Dean doesn’t respond, walking into the room, keeping Jo just behind him. He pulls out his gun, checking the bullets.
“Aw, Dean,” the Yellow-Eyed Demon says. “You don’t want to shoot me. You’ll kill poor little Sammy.” Dean’s gaze flickers up from his gun, but he doesn’t respond until the Yellow-Eyed Demon pulls out Sam’s large hunting knife. “Maybe I should take care of that for you, hmm?” he asks, and before Dean or Jo can move, he stabs himself in the gut.
When Dean shoots him half a beat later, with the tranquilizer rather than a bullet, Jo already knows it’s too late. Sam will lose too much blood before they can exorcize him.
But she helps him tie up Sam’s inert body, and plans quietly for a worst case scenario.
*
The way the Yellow-Eyed-Demon grins makes Sam’s face look... wrong. It’s twisted and sadistic, and his dimples aren’t showing. They’ve painted the Devil’s Trap on both the ceiling and the floor, wrapping salt-doused chains around Sam’s wrists, ankles, and neck. Though he struggles, he isn’t going anywhere.
And the exorcism isn’t working.
“What do we do?” Jo murmurs quietly in Dean’s ear. Dean shrugs helplessly, skin shivering under her hand.
She obviously isn’t quiet enough because the Yellow-Eyed-Demon drawls, “Sweetheart, if you want me gone... you’re going to have to kill me.” He spreads his hands as best he can while shackled to the chair. “Quite the Catch-22 isn’t it?” He laughs, voice high-pitched and grating.
It’s not Sam’s laugh at all.
Jo thinks that Dean will break before long: not enough sleep, too much caffeine, and they’ve been listening to the thing in Sam’s body for far too long. So when the laugh suddenly cuts off with a choke, it’s actually a surprise. Sam’s body chokes and coughs so hard, he almost heaves himself sideways, and Dean and Jo can only stare as his blood-streaked head comes up and it’s Sam looking through his eyes.
“Sammy,” Dean breathes. Neither of them moves; it’s too likely a trap, probably just the demon fucking with their heads.
“Dean,” he says, his voice achingly tender. “Dean, you have to kill me.”
Literally all the fight goes out of Dean as he slumps against her. “Sammy, you can’t ask me to do that.”
Sam smiles and that’s when Jo knows it’s not a trick, not a ploy. Not the demon. She knows that smile. It’s been aimed at her in the dark inside of the Impala over Dean’s snoring head. It’s been captured in her sketch pad too many times to count. It’s been etched into Dean’s skin, with teeth and tongue and lips. And now it’s asking Dean to kill it. “Dean, please,” Sam says, tears rolling down his cheeks despite the smile. “Please, I don’t want to kill anyone else.”
The Colt has been in Dean’s hand since they tied up Sam’s body. Dean’s arms are shaking; she can feel it where they’re pressed shoulder to shoulder. “Sammy, I can’t.”
Jo looks up to find Sam’s eyes on her. “Jo...” he says, and the tears flow harder. “Jo, please.”
She turns her back on him, hears him sob as she runs her hands down Dean’s arms. Dean looks startled, turning tear-damp eyes to hers. “Close your eyes,” she whispers, and he does. Jo lifts the Colt out of his unresisting hand and turns to face Sam.
“Thank you,” Sam says, and she can see the fear in his face.
I’m sorry, she thinks. And I don’t want to do this I can’t do this why am I doing this and goodbye Sam and I think I loved you.
Dean howls when she pulls the trigger.
She knows it worked when blue and yellow lightning spreads out from the small hole in Sam’s forehead. The yellow fades from his eyes and she steps into the Devil’s Trap to close them.
When Jo turns back around, Dean is on his knees. He’s crying but his lips are turned up in an empty smirk. “My turn, sweetheart.” Her eyes flash to his, but they’re still green, and he laughs hollowly. “There was never any other way, Jo. Here.” He holds something out to her.
The Impala’s keys.
“Dean,” she gasps. “You can’t!”
“I can,” he interrupts. “Do it, Jo.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t,” she whispers. “I love you.” The confession is ripped from her and Dean catches her hand, pressing the keys into it and pulling her close.
“I know,” he answers her. “That’s why you’re going to do it.”
She kisses him, their mouths wet with tears. Dean tastes like salt and regret, and Jo hates him with a vicious passion for asking this of her. She pulls away, curling the keys into her left hand until the grooves make impressions on the skin.
Jo stands, and Dean moves around her legs to lean against Sam’s body. “Do it,” Dean says.
Her finger pulls the trigger almost without her permission, but she knows better than anyone else in this God-forsaken world that there is no Dean without Sam at his side.
She leaves the abandoned carnival as soon as their bodies are buried. She buried them under the Ferris wheel, the only patch of undisturbed earth she could find. She marks them with metal crowbars, and cries empty tears on the long walk back to the Impala.
There’s the scent of fire on the wind, and Jo can just see the place in the distance where the flames are leaping up.
The Winchesters are dead, but there are still people out there who need saving.
Jo gets into the Impala and drives.
*end