A Familiar Place to Rest [Jo/John, table #1: elemental]
Title: A Familiar Place to Rest
Author: highlandemma
Character(s)/Pairing: Jo/John
Theme: Prompt Table Theme 1: Elemental
Prompt: #03: touch
Rating: PG-13 (this chapter)
Disclaimer: I do not, nor have I ever, nor will I ever (most likely) own anything that is related to Supernatural. The storyline is mine, but that's it. Even this computer isn't mine. *sigh*
Summary: John Winchester comes back from the dead. Jo doesn't know what to make of that.
Warnings/Author Notes: None for this chapter. This would be set sometime before S5 (since I haven't seen any of it) so there may be spoilers up to the end of S4.
Several hours later, John saw the beginning of the first sunrise he'd seen in...well, a damn long time. There were a few clouds on the eastern horizon, and he gazed toward them as the sky went from black to blue to grey, pink, and orange. Then the approaching city cut off his view, buildings and light posts and telephone wires stretching across his field of vision for as far as he could see.
"Where are we?" he asked Jo.
Jo was getting better about not looking at him. "Almost there."
"Almost where?"
"Where we're staying tonight."
Cryptic sentences were quite a change from the verbose little blonde girl all those years ago back at the Roadhouse. John was pretty sure he wasn't liking the difference, but for the moment there was nothing he could do about it. He decided not to pursue more conversation, and instead concentrated on figuring out where they were--and where they were going.
Open prairie changed abruptly to houses with yards, gas stations, grocery stores, and strip malls. There wasn't anything to identify the town, not even a "Welcome to..." sign, or overly specific signs on the stores that might have been a town name. John looked over at Jo a couple of times, but she sat and drove stony-faced.
They kept driving along the main highway through town, and within about fifteen minutes, they'd come out the other side. Jo drove another full hour, from what John could estimate given the position of the sun, until John spotted a beaten-down motel on the side of the highway. There weren't any other structures close to it, and as they approached, John saw that it wasn't in use anymore--and hadn't been for a good many years. Some of the windows and doors to the rooms were still intact, but most of them had been broken or removed a long time ago.
Jo pulled the truck up to one of the rooms that had both its window and its doors and got out of the truck. She quickly picked the lock on the door and disappeared inside for a few minutes. When she came back out, she walked past John to the back of the truck and grabbed a duffel bag. Once she'd dumped that inside the door, she came back and opened John's door carefully, so he wouldn't fall out still attached to it. Jo unlocked him from the frame just long enough to reattach the cuffs to his wrists in front of him, and then she steered him into the room ahead of her.
John barely made it to the bed closest to the door before he collapsed onto it, almost falling on his face. He had a vague recollection of Jo managing to attach one of his hands to the headboard before he fell into an exhausted sleep.
When he opened his eyes some time later, Jo was asleep in the next bed, bundled up under the blankets. At some point she'd covered him as well; he was still a little chilly since there was obviously no electricity and therefore no heat, but it was better than being outside. He looked around the room with his practiced (out of practice) eye, and saw the usual protections he used to use in rooms like this one: salt in front of the doors, windows, and vents; hex bags hanging in the corners; a devil's trap drawn on the ceiling above the door that covered any entrance through the window beside it as well. A piece of worn yellow ribbon was tied around the doorknob; that was the only thing he couldn't place as familiar to defense, but he'd been out of the game a while.
John could see most of Jo's face, relaxed in sleep and looking like she might be about twelve. He didn't know how long he'd been dead, but the way she'd treated him, professionally and as though he might be dangerous, gave him an idea that he'd been gone a long while. Hunters were only that careful after a few years of the job showing them the harsh reality of life--and the afterlife.
He shifted slightly, trying to get some blood flow to the arm connected to the headboard. Jo stirred awake instantly, a knife in her hand ready to throw or defend herself. Her eyes focused on his, completely aware of her surroundings and the situation in a split second.
"What?" she asked, snapping the word out quickly. "Did you hear something? Are you okay?"
John shook his head. "I didn't hear anything. But I really need to take a piss."
Jo put her knife down slowly and went for the key to the cuffs, which she'd hidden in her bra. Under the t-shirt she wore. John watched her slide her hand swiftly up her shirt, exposing an expanse of soft white skin to his observing eyes. She slid the shirt back down quickly and slid off her bed. Instead of re-locking the cuffs around his wrists, she took them off entirely and dropped them into her duffel. John pulled himself to a sitting position, feeling a little less like death warmed over (literally) than he had when they came in.
"Go ahead. There's running water if you want to clean up, too, but I don't have any extra clothes that would fit you. There's no electricity, so it's not particularly warm, but it's better than nothing."
John rubbed his wrists and just looked at her.
Jo sighed a little. "The only window in the bathroom is too small for ME to fit through, so you're not escaping that way. If you try when you come back out, I can take you down before you've gone two steps."
John heaved himself to his feet and plodded across the room to the bathroom. "Need me to leave the door open so the prisoner doesn't do anything stupid when you take your eyes off him?" he growled, his face set in a fierce scowl.
Jo sighed again as she settled back against the headboard. "You're not a prisoner, John--not exactly. This is all as much for your own good as it is for mine."
The glare John shot over his shoulder would probably have taken down many a lesser demon, no physical weapon needed. He slammed the door and leaned against the wall, catching a quick spiderwebbed glimpse of himself in the cracked mirror for the first time since...well, the last time he'd been alive. Not much to look at, as usual. He sighed and turned away from the mirror, stripping to get into the shower.
Even with the touch of the cold water against his skin, John took his time under the spray. There wasn't any soap or shampoo, so he used his hands to scrub his skin as clean as he could. When he closed his eyes, he saw the flash of Jo's bare skin when she reached for the key to his cuffs; his eyes flew open immediately, and he quickly tried to catalogue every disgusting demon he'd ever seen to set his mind in a different (more appropriate?) direction.