(no subject)
Steal the Matches
by whereupon
Sam/Jo, Dean/Jo, Sam/Dean, Sam/Dean/Jo. NC-17. AU after 'What Is and What Should Never Be.' 4,268 words.
For vinylroad.
Like falling in slow motion.
It's the worst kind of hunt, not counting the ones that end with one of them bleeding, with something irrevocably lost. It's a nothing hunt, something to do to kill time, wait for the war to begin, and it's too fucking hot for this. This thick heat like the air itself is swollen and the black-brown branches Dean keeps snapping back at his face and the almost unbelievably blue snatches of sky.
Jeans and t-shirts and too hot for anything else, the 9mm heavy and sliding stickily against the small of Sam's back and he's thinking about cold showers and ice machines and beer bottles damp with condensation. Thinking about the black seats of the car and how the ride back to the motel is going to be hell and his eyes sting, salt-sweat dripping down his face until he wipes it away with the back of his hand.
This noise ahead of them, branches crunching as though underfoot, and Dean glances back at him, eyes narrowed and spring-bright. It's not the thing they're hunting, that black shadow the witnesses claim slipped from tree to tree as easy as light, but Sam draws his gun all the same. So many ways to die on a dreadful-hot day like this and none of them pleasant. Copper-wire blood sinking deep into the earth, roots running deep, and no hospital for miles.
This clearing a few feet away, patch of sunlight, and Jo blinks at them, says, "Sam? Dean?"
"Jo?" Dean says, stopping so quickly that Sam almost runs into him, and he doesn't put his gun away. Neither does Sam, and neither does Jo, and Sam remembers the last time he saw her. Images like frames from a forgotten movie, fragments of conversation like something he overheard on the edge of sleep, and she has every reason in the world to shoot him, he thinks, but she doesn't, only looks at him, slow once-over like she'd be able to tell if it weren't really him. "Small world."
"Yeah," she says. Her hair pulled back and her legs bare, denim cut-offs and boots and god, she looks so much older than he remembers. "You hunting the same thing?"
"Maybe," Dean says. "What are you hunting?"
Sam rolls his eyes, even though Dean's not looking at him, Dean's shoulders rigid and tense like Jo's a threat. "We're thinking it's maybe some kind of forest demon," he says to Jo, because it's not her fault that Dean's so defensive, so stubborn. It might be Sam's fault, though, if it's anyone's. "A tree spirit or something."
"Yeah," she says. "That's about all I found, too."
"Well, I'm glad we had this moment," Dean says. "See you around."
She narrows her eyes at him. "You said you were gonna call me, asshole. Good thing I didn't believe you."
"Yeah," Dean says. "About that, I."
"I'm sorry," Sam says. Dean doesn't turn around but Sam thinks he flinches. It could be his imagination, though.
Jo doesn't move. "Yeah," she says. "I figured you would be."
"Okay," Dean says, almost sharply. "Now that we've bared our souls and shit, we got a demon to find," and this shadow just then at the corner of Sam's vision like a cloud sliding across the sun, an eclipse, the sky breaking open and they all turn, fire at once.
Black shadow melting into the ground, black like the opposite of sunlight, deeper than shadow, lost to the undergrowth in a matter of seconds.
"You think that killed it?" Jo asks after a moment. Maybe a little too loudly but Sam can't be sure because his ears are still ringing. "Mine were blessed."
"Ours were salt and silver. It'd have to be pretty damn strong to shrug that off," Dean says. "Guess we'll find out."
Jo slides her gun back into her belt. "Nice seeing you," she says.
"Same here," Dean says.
"Where are you parked?" Sam asks. "We're a couple miles that way."
"Opposite direction," Jo says.
"We could give you a ride to your car," Sam says. Dean turns, raises his eyebrows at Sam. The complete opposite of subtlety, but Sam's used to that.
"I get that you're sorry, Sam," Jo says. "You don't need to apologize again."
"I wasn't going to," Sam says. "I just thought, I mean, we haven't seen you in a long time and it'd be good to catch up."
She stares at him. Long moment and then she tilts her head and sighs. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, okay. Sorry, it's been a rough week."
Sam nods. "Yeah. Tell me about it."
Dean rolls his eyes, turns on his heel and heads back the way they came. Sam glances at Jo and she's grinning a little, half-smirk that gets wider after he catches her eye, and he feels a burn of something that might be nostalgia. Nostalgia or something like it, nostalgia for something that never happened, something that never was.
The way back to the car and Jo's telling them about this werewolf she was hunting, how it all almost went to hell but in the end she got the civilians out and lived to tell about it, and then Sam gives her the sanitized version of everything that's happened since he last saw her, since the last time he saw her as himself. Dean provides commentary after a little while, correcting everything Sam gets wrong, critiquing Sam's storytelling skills, his memory, you missed the part where I saved the girl, don't forget that.
And it feels weirdly familiar, it feels like family, but Jo moves wrong, moves differently than she used to, and maybe so does Sam. Maybe they all do. This reminder of something that could have happened, this chance for some other road, some other future if things had gone differently, but they didn't, and now they're too old for that, Jo's wry words tinged with weariness, bitter underneath, and Dean's commentary ringing hollow, not ringing funny at all.
Sam doesn't mention the djinn at all, doesn't say anything about Dean's perfect hallucinated-life and how Sam almost lost him to that illusion. This idea that it might be betrayal, something traitorous and shameful, and Dean might never forgive him, and that's something Sam could never risk.
It's more than love, what Sam feels for his brother. It's worse. It might destroy the world. His world, at least, and that's what matters.
Sometimes he thinks that if he lost his memory, he'd remember Dean before he remembered his own name, that's how deeply Dean is burned into him.
When they get back to the road, the car gleaming wicked black in the sunlight, Sam thinks for a moment that Jo's not going to accept the ride, that she'll walk the whole way back to her own car rather than go with them.
And then Dean looks at them over the roof of the car, Sam with his door open and Jo standing on the side of the road with her hands on her hips, and he says, "You coming or what," and gets in without waiting for a response, and Jo rolls her eyes, takes a step forward.
Sam gets in, slams his door harder than he meant to as Jo slides into the backseat.
Jo leans forward, rests her arms on the back of their seat as she gives Dean directions. Three miles down the county road with the cracked asphalt and the sign pocked with bullet scars and weathered graffiti, this road identified with a number instead of a name, and the dusty blue of her truck parked on the side of the road.
Dean parks in front of her truck and they get out of the car when she does. No wind, this heat-sodden quiet settling in for miles. Jo's truck groans when she opens the door.
"Thanks for the ride," she says over her shoulder. Sam glances back at Dean, who's watching Jo. Watching as Jo starts the engine, or tries to, and it doesn't turn over. She tries it again, and again, and then stops. She's fragmented through the windshield, the glass cracked and bug-splattered, but Sam can tell that she's biting her lip, that she's not looking at them. And then Dean's going around the car, going over to her, and she opens her door, gets back out. Awkward stance, her head tilted defiantly up at Dean.
"It does this sometimes," she says, her cheeks flushed. "It'll be fine."
"You want me to take a look?" Dean says, casual and easy, unexpectedly kind, Sam thinks, and she swallows.
"Yeah," she says. "If you don't have anywhere else to be right away."
"Get the toolbox, Sammy," Dean says, not looking at him. "And the cooler. It's a fuckin' oven out here."
And Sam does. Puts the toolbox at Dean's feet in front of Jo's truck and the ice in the cooler has melted, lukewarm water sloshing around as he grabs a beer and hands it to his brother. Their fingers brush and Dean swallows and Sam looks away, fishes another beer out for himself and then one for Jo, who's still standing next to the driver's side door, one hand in her pocket.
"And don't stand so close," Dean snaps. "Give me some air, okay."
Jo bites her lip and Sam takes a step back, raises his eyebrows at her. They retreat back around the Impala, lean against the hood. Clatter of the toolbox, distant metal noises, and Dean muttering under his breath.
The beer is warm and the label is waterlogged, clinging to Sam's hand. He wipes his palm on his jeans and Jo says, "It's okay." He looks over at her, a little startled, a little confused. "Don't look so freaked," she says. "I meant it, you don't have to apologize again. It wasn't you."
"Yeah, I know," Sam says. "I just, I'm really fucking sorry."
"I got that," Jo says, bumping his arm. "You look like you shot my dog or something. It was lying, you know. I asked my mom."
"Yeah?" Sam says, and he doesn't say that maybe Ellen was the one who was lying, because maybe Jo's lying to him about asking her. "That's, um. I'm glad."
"Yeah," Jo says. "Me, too."
"So you've been okay," Sam says. "I mean, since."
"I didn't sleep for about a month after," Jo says, sliding her beer from hand to hand. "But yeah, since then. You?"
"About the same," Sam says. "It. Sometimes I still have nightmares."
"Yeah," Jo says, and he's not sure if she's acknowledging him or agreeing with him.
"How's your mom?" Sam says. It's been ages since he's talked to Ellen, ages since he and Dean stopped by the Roadhouse. Ages since they could look her in the eye.
"Okay," Jo says. "I haven't talked to her since I asked."
"Oh," Sam says, wishing he hadn't asked. She shrugs, looking up at him, her eyes a little wet, but maybe that's just the heat, the sunlight. Her elbow bumping up against his, the briefest touch of skin, and then an instant of not-thinking as he leans down, his mouth against hers, before he pulls back.
"I'm sorry," he says.
"No," she says. "No, it's, it's okay." And she reaches down to put her beer on the asphalt, and then she kisses him. She doesn't taste sweet like he expected, not like lemonade or lipgloss, just like beer and road-dust and heat, and he has to set his own bottle down to curve a hand around the back of her neck, sweat-damp skin, to curl a hand around her hip, lift her up on to the hood. She kisses him hard and she's stronger than he would have thought, fragile bird bones buried deep beneath muscle and tough skin. Scar tissue. Her mouth open, her arms around his neck, as he tilts her back, feels her slouch forward against him. He has to brace one hand on the hood to keep them from falling, the metal hot against his palm as her small hands edge beneath his shirt, slip against his skin.
Vaguely, he wonders if Dean's watching them. If Dean's even noticed. It seems like such a small thing right now, so unimportant, almost blotted out entirely by the heat and the salt of Jo's skin, her tongue against Sam's teeth until both of them are breathless.
And then the sharp noise of Dean slamming the hood of her truck, of Dean saying, "Shit, I don't know," and they break apart.
Jo wipes a hand across her face, pushes down off of the hood. Sam bites his lip. She glances back at him as she walks around the side of the car, walks over to Dean, and Sam watches her, the curve of her thighs, the fraying hems of her shorts.
"Your truck's fucked," Dean is saying when Sam finally makes it over to them. Dean's face is grease-smeared, heat-flushed, and his arms are crossed. "What the hell'd you do to it?"
"Used it," Jo says. "Rode it rough, took care of it the best I could. Fuck. You're sure?"
"Pretty damn," Dean says. "Sorry. You can, uh. If you wanna come with us, you can. For the night, see if there's something else in the morning. A goddamn miracle worker or something."
"Yeah," she says. "Thanks." She retrieves her bag from her truck, locks the doors. Sam watches her in the sideview mirror for a little while, the way she doesn't once look back.
An hour's drive to civilization and Sam unrolls his window and closes his eyes and tries to let the wind wash everything away. Dean plays music, loud and angry, but it only sounds desperate, futile, like screaming up at the sky. Jo doesn't say anything.
One vacancy at the motel by the time they arrive and Sam is too tired to argue with the clerk. Through the lobby windows, he can see Dean and Jo waiting out by the Impala.
One vacancy, one king-sized bed, and that might be hilarious on any other day.
When he tells Dean, Dean sighs, runs a hand across his face and then heads for the room like he's too tired to even make a joke, and Jo only shoulders her bag and follows them.
The room is grey and dark and sparse. Jo drops her bag by the door, disappears into the bathroom, and Dean switches on the lights. The sky turning red out the window, slow syrup of the day bleeding into coal night, and Sam yanks the curtains shut against the sirens in the distance and the flourescent yellow floodlights of the gas station across the street.
He turns around and Dean says, "Look, man, I don't," and then stops, scratches the back of his neck.
"Are you coming or what," Jo says, poking her head out of the bathroom. Showerspray noise behind her. She looks at both of them, fixes them with this hot, half-angry gaze that latches into Sam like teeth or claws or Dean's fading flickering pulse, and then disappears from view.
They both follow her. Dean first, but Sam's already moving, too. And that's not something Sam wants to think about just then, how easily he follows his brother into the bathroom where Jo is already in the shower, where the water is running. Bright white lights illuminating every corner of the cramped little room, the way Dean is watching Sam in the mirror, his reflection already blurred with steam.
Their eyes meet and Dean looks away first.
He lifts his shirt and Sam catches a glimpse of the black ink on his chest, mathematical precision of those lines, and the scars across his ribs, scars some of which match Sam's own, and then Sam looks away, too, wonders if he should be more embarrassed. Undressing this close to Dean and it's not the first time he's seen his brother, that his brother's seen him, impossible for it to be, their one-room motel life, the cramped lines of the Impala, but it's the first time he's actually felt naked, vulnerable and exposed.
And nervous. Scared, like maybe he should do something other than follow Dean into the shower, like maybe this is something that shouldn't happen, maybe this is something that he should not do, some line he'll regret crossing, but he's already moving.
They don't fit, not really, all three of them together, hot water-spray only glancing off of him, making him shiver. Line of them, Sam and Dean and Jo. The lost generation, Sam thinks, but that's something else entirely.
There's a bruise on Jo's arm, dark mark like a fingerpaint smear, in the same place as the one on Dean, the track mark from the djinn's needle. Jo's hair tangling down past her shoulders and the pale curve of her breasts and the fading line of scar tissue across her stomach. Parentheses of her hips and the waterdark shadow between her thighs, and Sam swallows.
He looks up, afraid suddenly that she caught him staring, and her eyes are closed. He looks up further and Dean meets his eyes again, Dean looks at him and Dean's eyes are dark, dark like wet moss or damp leaves, his jaw tight. His hands come around to clasp Jo's, to pull her back, to pull her closer, her ass against him and his back to the shower wall, and Sam swallows.
Heatstroke, he thinks, flushing, this stupid burn all down his body. Heatstroke, heat exhaustion, and maybe it's just him, or maybe it's all of them. Delirious and dizzy and he takes a step back, the shower door slipping against his palm, grimy linoleum cold against his feet. Threadbare towel and he shivers, and neither of them come after him.
The motel room is cool. He gets dressed, shorts and a clean shirt, and turns on the television, like that will drown out the water, drown out Jo and his brother.
Soft yellow glow of the bedside lamp and he's watching M*A*S*H, watching it but not really, trying not to think about anything at all. Trying not to think about Jo's mouth on his and Dean's wicked dark eyes, but he does all the same, and he's not, he's not, he's not. Hard off those images, his imagination filling in the rest, deceptively blank places opening up into an entire world of images, Dean's back and Jo's hands and he squeezes his eyes shut tight.
The water turns off. A few minutes later, the door opens.
"Sammy," Dean says, and he's dressed, he's in his pajamas and there's a mark on his neck like a bruise, a bruise Jo sucked there, and Sam's not jealous, not of either of them. He's just.
It's just so hot. It's just been a rough couple of months, an even rougher year. He's just so tired.
People go crazy in the heat. It happens all the time. Tempers flare, violent crimes increase. It's nothing.
"It's okay," Sam says. He just wants to sleep, wants to close his eyes and not be miserable for a little while.
Jo's wearing one of Dean's shirts, he thinks. One of Dean's shirts when she comes over to him, padding on bare feet, when she looks at him, almost at eye level because he's sitting on the edge of the bed, when she slips between his legs and kisses him. Hard and true, her fingers threading through his hair as his hands come up to grip her hips, to pull her close, and he wonders if Dean is watching.
He pulls away. His mouth feels swollen and bruised and he doesn't see Dean, doesn't see anything past Jo, her mouth and her dark, dark eyes and her clavicles sharp beneath her skin, her narrow shoulders swallowed by the stupidly large shirt.
"What are you, what--" he says, his thoughts stuttering, stammering, half-wrecked.
"We all grow up, Sam, it's okay," Jo says, which he thinks is more like a riddle than an answer, but he kisses her again anyway, grabs her wrists and pulls her into his lap, helps her lift the shirt over her head. Her summer-tan thighs against his legs as she pushes him back, pushes him back flat onto the bed and shoves up his shirt, her hands skipping up his chest to slide his shirt off before she cups a hand behind his head and presses his face against her breasts.
The hot clean taste of her skin, the line of her throat, and her nipples, right and then left, faint lingering salt against his tongue. His hands skim down her ribs like touching beads on a rosary. She sighs and shivers against him, her hair falling against his shoulder, and then she dips her hands beneath the band of his shorts as he slides her underwear down, nudges his knuckles into the heat between her legs.
And Sam looks up, one last time, looks over and Dean is watching them, Dean is sprawled in the chair by the television and he has one hand down the front of his pants. His face is flushed, red across his cheeks, and Sam buries his own face in the hollow of Jo's shoulder, shoves himself in as she grips at his arms, as she gasps and whimpers and his breath catches tight.
After, it takes Sam a moment to realize that it's Dean's ragged breath, not his own, that he's hearing, the noise shivering against his skin as he waits for his heart to slow and Jo pushes her hair back out of her face, curls away from him. But she's only reaching over to turn off the lamp, and then she crawls back to lie in the middle of the bed.
After a minute, Dean gets in on the other side, and Sam rolls over, slides beneath the blankets. Muddy river-floor smell all over and Sam doesn't look, doesn't look over to see if Dean's watching him again, doesn't look over to see what Jo's doing.
Grey morning when Sam opens his eyes, when he opens his eyes to Dean opening the motel room door, coming back from somewhere, cardboard carrier in hand, three white paper cups. Jo's still asleep, her hair tangled across her pillow, the rise and fall of her chest, and Sam gets out of bed without waking her, reaches for a pair of jeans from his bag. Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam and goes back outside, and a moment later, Sam grabs a cup of coffee and follows him.
Dean's standing next to the door, all faux-casual, glancing at Sam when he comes out and then glancing away too quickly.
It's raining, cool-damp. The clouds are the color of seagull feathers and the gas station sign across the street glows bright green in the drizzling grey. Dean's hair is wet, but there's an overhang in front of the room, the path from the car to the room is relatively sheltered, and Sam thinks that maybe he walked to get coffee, walked instead of drove, walked to clear his head.
Sam takes a sip of coffee. It's sweet and perfect and when he lowers the cup, Dean's watching him. "Thanks," Sam says.
"Yeah," Dean says. He rubs a hand across his eyes and then looks away.
"I," Sam says, and then he stops, unsure of what he's going to say. What he wants to say. After a few seconds, Dean turns to look at him again, his eyes defensive and scared, and Sam leans down, leans in and kisses him. He's doing that a lot these days, acting before he thinks, and Dean tastes like bitter black coffee and like rain. He doesn't kiss like Jo does, kisses rougher, more violent, somehow more intimate, like he already knows everything beneath Sam's skin, all the secrets locked tight behind Sam's eyes. Apology or affirmation, his tongue in Sam's mouth, Sam's hand curving around his neck, and the coffee in Sam's other hand is burning his palm, but he thinks it's Dean's skin that will leave a mark.
Dean's fingers brush across the small of Sam's back, grip tight, and then Sam pulls back. Dean's eyes are unreadable in the rainy light.
"Maybe we should ask if she wants to stay for awhile," Sam says. "Until she finds another car."
"Sure, Sammy," Dean says, and he kisses Sam again, quick brush of his mouth against Sam's before he goes back inside. Before Sam is left alone, left wondering if this is what it feels like to fall, wondering if he'll wake up before he hits the ground, before it's too late. Wondering if maybe it's merely inevitable, this restructuring, tectonic plate shift.
He thinks it might not matter. He goes after Dean.
In the room, Jo's awake, sitting in the middle of the bed, wearing Dean's shirt again, the blankets drawn up around her lap. Dean hands her a cup of coffee. She takes a sip, wrinkles her nose and takes another, her eyes still sleep-fogged and narrowed.
"It might be awhile before you find another car," Sam says. "If you wanna stay with us until then, there's room."
"Just until I find another car, though," Jo says. "Just for a little while."
"Yeah," Dean says. Sam nods.
"Okay," she says, and this time they go to her together. Dean on one side and Sam on the other and the rain battering at the glass on the other side of the curtains, like the world might wash away as Jo arches her back and sighs.
--
end
by whereupon
Sam/Jo, Dean/Jo, Sam/Dean, Sam/Dean/Jo. NC-17. AU after 'What Is and What Should Never Be.' 4,268 words.
For vinylroad.
Like falling in slow motion.
It's the worst kind of hunt, not counting the ones that end with one of them bleeding, with something irrevocably lost. It's a nothing hunt, something to do to kill time, wait for the war to begin, and it's too fucking hot for this. This thick heat like the air itself is swollen and the black-brown branches Dean keeps snapping back at his face and the almost unbelievably blue snatches of sky.
Jeans and t-shirts and too hot for anything else, the 9mm heavy and sliding stickily against the small of Sam's back and he's thinking about cold showers and ice machines and beer bottles damp with condensation. Thinking about the black seats of the car and how the ride back to the motel is going to be hell and his eyes sting, salt-sweat dripping down his face until he wipes it away with the back of his hand.
This noise ahead of them, branches crunching as though underfoot, and Dean glances back at him, eyes narrowed and spring-bright. It's not the thing they're hunting, that black shadow the witnesses claim slipped from tree to tree as easy as light, but Sam draws his gun all the same. So many ways to die on a dreadful-hot day like this and none of them pleasant. Copper-wire blood sinking deep into the earth, roots running deep, and no hospital for miles.
This clearing a few feet away, patch of sunlight, and Jo blinks at them, says, "Sam? Dean?"
"Jo?" Dean says, stopping so quickly that Sam almost runs into him, and he doesn't put his gun away. Neither does Sam, and neither does Jo, and Sam remembers the last time he saw her. Images like frames from a forgotten movie, fragments of conversation like something he overheard on the edge of sleep, and she has every reason in the world to shoot him, he thinks, but she doesn't, only looks at him, slow once-over like she'd be able to tell if it weren't really him. "Small world."
"Yeah," she says. Her hair pulled back and her legs bare, denim cut-offs and boots and god, she looks so much older than he remembers. "You hunting the same thing?"
"Maybe," Dean says. "What are you hunting?"
Sam rolls his eyes, even though Dean's not looking at him, Dean's shoulders rigid and tense like Jo's a threat. "We're thinking it's maybe some kind of forest demon," he says to Jo, because it's not her fault that Dean's so defensive, so stubborn. It might be Sam's fault, though, if it's anyone's. "A tree spirit or something."
"Yeah," she says. "That's about all I found, too."
"Well, I'm glad we had this moment," Dean says. "See you around."
She narrows her eyes at him. "You said you were gonna call me, asshole. Good thing I didn't believe you."
"Yeah," Dean says. "About that, I."
"I'm sorry," Sam says. Dean doesn't turn around but Sam thinks he flinches. It could be his imagination, though.
Jo doesn't move. "Yeah," she says. "I figured you would be."
"Okay," Dean says, almost sharply. "Now that we've bared our souls and shit, we got a demon to find," and this shadow just then at the corner of Sam's vision like a cloud sliding across the sun, an eclipse, the sky breaking open and they all turn, fire at once.
Black shadow melting into the ground, black like the opposite of sunlight, deeper than shadow, lost to the undergrowth in a matter of seconds.
"You think that killed it?" Jo asks after a moment. Maybe a little too loudly but Sam can't be sure because his ears are still ringing. "Mine were blessed."
"Ours were salt and silver. It'd have to be pretty damn strong to shrug that off," Dean says. "Guess we'll find out."
Jo slides her gun back into her belt. "Nice seeing you," she says.
"Same here," Dean says.
"Where are you parked?" Sam asks. "We're a couple miles that way."
"Opposite direction," Jo says.
"We could give you a ride to your car," Sam says. Dean turns, raises his eyebrows at Sam. The complete opposite of subtlety, but Sam's used to that.
"I get that you're sorry, Sam," Jo says. "You don't need to apologize again."
"I wasn't going to," Sam says. "I just thought, I mean, we haven't seen you in a long time and it'd be good to catch up."
She stares at him. Long moment and then she tilts her head and sighs. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, okay. Sorry, it's been a rough week."
Sam nods. "Yeah. Tell me about it."
Dean rolls his eyes, turns on his heel and heads back the way they came. Sam glances at Jo and she's grinning a little, half-smirk that gets wider after he catches her eye, and he feels a burn of something that might be nostalgia. Nostalgia or something like it, nostalgia for something that never happened, something that never was.
The way back to the car and Jo's telling them about this werewolf she was hunting, how it all almost went to hell but in the end she got the civilians out and lived to tell about it, and then Sam gives her the sanitized version of everything that's happened since he last saw her, since the last time he saw her as himself. Dean provides commentary after a little while, correcting everything Sam gets wrong, critiquing Sam's storytelling skills, his memory, you missed the part where I saved the girl, don't forget that.
And it feels weirdly familiar, it feels like family, but Jo moves wrong, moves differently than she used to, and maybe so does Sam. Maybe they all do. This reminder of something that could have happened, this chance for some other road, some other future if things had gone differently, but they didn't, and now they're too old for that, Jo's wry words tinged with weariness, bitter underneath, and Dean's commentary ringing hollow, not ringing funny at all.
Sam doesn't mention the djinn at all, doesn't say anything about Dean's perfect hallucinated-life and how Sam almost lost him to that illusion. This idea that it might be betrayal, something traitorous and shameful, and Dean might never forgive him, and that's something Sam could never risk.
It's more than love, what Sam feels for his brother. It's worse. It might destroy the world. His world, at least, and that's what matters.
Sometimes he thinks that if he lost his memory, he'd remember Dean before he remembered his own name, that's how deeply Dean is burned into him.
When they get back to the road, the car gleaming wicked black in the sunlight, Sam thinks for a moment that Jo's not going to accept the ride, that she'll walk the whole way back to her own car rather than go with them.
And then Dean looks at them over the roof of the car, Sam with his door open and Jo standing on the side of the road with her hands on her hips, and he says, "You coming or what," and gets in without waiting for a response, and Jo rolls her eyes, takes a step forward.
Sam gets in, slams his door harder than he meant to as Jo slides into the backseat.
Jo leans forward, rests her arms on the back of their seat as she gives Dean directions. Three miles down the county road with the cracked asphalt and the sign pocked with bullet scars and weathered graffiti, this road identified with a number instead of a name, and the dusty blue of her truck parked on the side of the road.
Dean parks in front of her truck and they get out of the car when she does. No wind, this heat-sodden quiet settling in for miles. Jo's truck groans when she opens the door.
"Thanks for the ride," she says over her shoulder. Sam glances back at Dean, who's watching Jo. Watching as Jo starts the engine, or tries to, and it doesn't turn over. She tries it again, and again, and then stops. She's fragmented through the windshield, the glass cracked and bug-splattered, but Sam can tell that she's biting her lip, that she's not looking at them. And then Dean's going around the car, going over to her, and she opens her door, gets back out. Awkward stance, her head tilted defiantly up at Dean.
"It does this sometimes," she says, her cheeks flushed. "It'll be fine."
"You want me to take a look?" Dean says, casual and easy, unexpectedly kind, Sam thinks, and she swallows.
"Yeah," she says. "If you don't have anywhere else to be right away."
"Get the toolbox, Sammy," Dean says, not looking at him. "And the cooler. It's a fuckin' oven out here."
And Sam does. Puts the toolbox at Dean's feet in front of Jo's truck and the ice in the cooler has melted, lukewarm water sloshing around as he grabs a beer and hands it to his brother. Their fingers brush and Dean swallows and Sam looks away, fishes another beer out for himself and then one for Jo, who's still standing next to the driver's side door, one hand in her pocket.
"And don't stand so close," Dean snaps. "Give me some air, okay."
Jo bites her lip and Sam takes a step back, raises his eyebrows at her. They retreat back around the Impala, lean against the hood. Clatter of the toolbox, distant metal noises, and Dean muttering under his breath.
The beer is warm and the label is waterlogged, clinging to Sam's hand. He wipes his palm on his jeans and Jo says, "It's okay." He looks over at her, a little startled, a little confused. "Don't look so freaked," she says. "I meant it, you don't have to apologize again. It wasn't you."
"Yeah, I know," Sam says. "I just, I'm really fucking sorry."
"I got that," Jo says, bumping his arm. "You look like you shot my dog or something. It was lying, you know. I asked my mom."
"Yeah?" Sam says, and he doesn't say that maybe Ellen was the one who was lying, because maybe Jo's lying to him about asking her. "That's, um. I'm glad."
"Yeah," Jo says. "Me, too."
"So you've been okay," Sam says. "I mean, since."
"I didn't sleep for about a month after," Jo says, sliding her beer from hand to hand. "But yeah, since then. You?"
"About the same," Sam says. "It. Sometimes I still have nightmares."
"Yeah," Jo says, and he's not sure if she's acknowledging him or agreeing with him.
"How's your mom?" Sam says. It's been ages since he's talked to Ellen, ages since he and Dean stopped by the Roadhouse. Ages since they could look her in the eye.
"Okay," Jo says. "I haven't talked to her since I asked."
"Oh," Sam says, wishing he hadn't asked. She shrugs, looking up at him, her eyes a little wet, but maybe that's just the heat, the sunlight. Her elbow bumping up against his, the briefest touch of skin, and then an instant of not-thinking as he leans down, his mouth against hers, before he pulls back.
"I'm sorry," he says.
"No," she says. "No, it's, it's okay." And she reaches down to put her beer on the asphalt, and then she kisses him. She doesn't taste sweet like he expected, not like lemonade or lipgloss, just like beer and road-dust and heat, and he has to set his own bottle down to curve a hand around the back of her neck, sweat-damp skin, to curl a hand around her hip, lift her up on to the hood. She kisses him hard and she's stronger than he would have thought, fragile bird bones buried deep beneath muscle and tough skin. Scar tissue. Her mouth open, her arms around his neck, as he tilts her back, feels her slouch forward against him. He has to brace one hand on the hood to keep them from falling, the metal hot against his palm as her small hands edge beneath his shirt, slip against his skin.
Vaguely, he wonders if Dean's watching them. If Dean's even noticed. It seems like such a small thing right now, so unimportant, almost blotted out entirely by the heat and the salt of Jo's skin, her tongue against Sam's teeth until both of them are breathless.
And then the sharp noise of Dean slamming the hood of her truck, of Dean saying, "Shit, I don't know," and they break apart.
Jo wipes a hand across her face, pushes down off of the hood. Sam bites his lip. She glances back at him as she walks around the side of the car, walks over to Dean, and Sam watches her, the curve of her thighs, the fraying hems of her shorts.
"Your truck's fucked," Dean is saying when Sam finally makes it over to them. Dean's face is grease-smeared, heat-flushed, and his arms are crossed. "What the hell'd you do to it?"
"Used it," Jo says. "Rode it rough, took care of it the best I could. Fuck. You're sure?"
"Pretty damn," Dean says. "Sorry. You can, uh. If you wanna come with us, you can. For the night, see if there's something else in the morning. A goddamn miracle worker or something."
"Yeah," she says. "Thanks." She retrieves her bag from her truck, locks the doors. Sam watches her in the sideview mirror for a little while, the way she doesn't once look back.
An hour's drive to civilization and Sam unrolls his window and closes his eyes and tries to let the wind wash everything away. Dean plays music, loud and angry, but it only sounds desperate, futile, like screaming up at the sky. Jo doesn't say anything.
One vacancy at the motel by the time they arrive and Sam is too tired to argue with the clerk. Through the lobby windows, he can see Dean and Jo waiting out by the Impala.
One vacancy, one king-sized bed, and that might be hilarious on any other day.
When he tells Dean, Dean sighs, runs a hand across his face and then heads for the room like he's too tired to even make a joke, and Jo only shoulders her bag and follows them.
The room is grey and dark and sparse. Jo drops her bag by the door, disappears into the bathroom, and Dean switches on the lights. The sky turning red out the window, slow syrup of the day bleeding into coal night, and Sam yanks the curtains shut against the sirens in the distance and the flourescent yellow floodlights of the gas station across the street.
He turns around and Dean says, "Look, man, I don't," and then stops, scratches the back of his neck.
"Are you coming or what," Jo says, poking her head out of the bathroom. Showerspray noise behind her. She looks at both of them, fixes them with this hot, half-angry gaze that latches into Sam like teeth or claws or Dean's fading flickering pulse, and then disappears from view.
They both follow her. Dean first, but Sam's already moving, too. And that's not something Sam wants to think about just then, how easily he follows his brother into the bathroom where Jo is already in the shower, where the water is running. Bright white lights illuminating every corner of the cramped little room, the way Dean is watching Sam in the mirror, his reflection already blurred with steam.
Their eyes meet and Dean looks away first.
He lifts his shirt and Sam catches a glimpse of the black ink on his chest, mathematical precision of those lines, and the scars across his ribs, scars some of which match Sam's own, and then Sam looks away, too, wonders if he should be more embarrassed. Undressing this close to Dean and it's not the first time he's seen his brother, that his brother's seen him, impossible for it to be, their one-room motel life, the cramped lines of the Impala, but it's the first time he's actually felt naked, vulnerable and exposed.
And nervous. Scared, like maybe he should do something other than follow Dean into the shower, like maybe this is something that shouldn't happen, maybe this is something that he should not do, some line he'll regret crossing, but he's already moving.
They don't fit, not really, all three of them together, hot water-spray only glancing off of him, making him shiver. Line of them, Sam and Dean and Jo. The lost generation, Sam thinks, but that's something else entirely.
There's a bruise on Jo's arm, dark mark like a fingerpaint smear, in the same place as the one on Dean, the track mark from the djinn's needle. Jo's hair tangling down past her shoulders and the pale curve of her breasts and the fading line of scar tissue across her stomach. Parentheses of her hips and the waterdark shadow between her thighs, and Sam swallows.
He looks up, afraid suddenly that she caught him staring, and her eyes are closed. He looks up further and Dean meets his eyes again, Dean looks at him and Dean's eyes are dark, dark like wet moss or damp leaves, his jaw tight. His hands come around to clasp Jo's, to pull her back, to pull her closer, her ass against him and his back to the shower wall, and Sam swallows.
Heatstroke, he thinks, flushing, this stupid burn all down his body. Heatstroke, heat exhaustion, and maybe it's just him, or maybe it's all of them. Delirious and dizzy and he takes a step back, the shower door slipping against his palm, grimy linoleum cold against his feet. Threadbare towel and he shivers, and neither of them come after him.
The motel room is cool. He gets dressed, shorts and a clean shirt, and turns on the television, like that will drown out the water, drown out Jo and his brother.
Soft yellow glow of the bedside lamp and he's watching M*A*S*H, watching it but not really, trying not to think about anything at all. Trying not to think about Jo's mouth on his and Dean's wicked dark eyes, but he does all the same, and he's not, he's not, he's not. Hard off those images, his imagination filling in the rest, deceptively blank places opening up into an entire world of images, Dean's back and Jo's hands and he squeezes his eyes shut tight.
The water turns off. A few minutes later, the door opens.
"Sammy," Dean says, and he's dressed, he's in his pajamas and there's a mark on his neck like a bruise, a bruise Jo sucked there, and Sam's not jealous, not of either of them. He's just.
It's just so hot. It's just been a rough couple of months, an even rougher year. He's just so tired.
People go crazy in the heat. It happens all the time. Tempers flare, violent crimes increase. It's nothing.
"It's okay," Sam says. He just wants to sleep, wants to close his eyes and not be miserable for a little while.
Jo's wearing one of Dean's shirts, he thinks. One of Dean's shirts when she comes over to him, padding on bare feet, when she looks at him, almost at eye level because he's sitting on the edge of the bed, when she slips between his legs and kisses him. Hard and true, her fingers threading through his hair as his hands come up to grip her hips, to pull her close, and he wonders if Dean is watching.
He pulls away. His mouth feels swollen and bruised and he doesn't see Dean, doesn't see anything past Jo, her mouth and her dark, dark eyes and her clavicles sharp beneath her skin, her narrow shoulders swallowed by the stupidly large shirt.
"What are you, what--" he says, his thoughts stuttering, stammering, half-wrecked.
"We all grow up, Sam, it's okay," Jo says, which he thinks is more like a riddle than an answer, but he kisses her again anyway, grabs her wrists and pulls her into his lap, helps her lift the shirt over her head. Her summer-tan thighs against his legs as she pushes him back, pushes him back flat onto the bed and shoves up his shirt, her hands skipping up his chest to slide his shirt off before she cups a hand behind his head and presses his face against her breasts.
The hot clean taste of her skin, the line of her throat, and her nipples, right and then left, faint lingering salt against his tongue. His hands skim down her ribs like touching beads on a rosary. She sighs and shivers against him, her hair falling against his shoulder, and then she dips her hands beneath the band of his shorts as he slides her underwear down, nudges his knuckles into the heat between her legs.
And Sam looks up, one last time, looks over and Dean is watching them, Dean is sprawled in the chair by the television and he has one hand down the front of his pants. His face is flushed, red across his cheeks, and Sam buries his own face in the hollow of Jo's shoulder, shoves himself in as she grips at his arms, as she gasps and whimpers and his breath catches tight.
After, it takes Sam a moment to realize that it's Dean's ragged breath, not his own, that he's hearing, the noise shivering against his skin as he waits for his heart to slow and Jo pushes her hair back out of her face, curls away from him. But she's only reaching over to turn off the lamp, and then she crawls back to lie in the middle of the bed.
After a minute, Dean gets in on the other side, and Sam rolls over, slides beneath the blankets. Muddy river-floor smell all over and Sam doesn't look, doesn't look over to see if Dean's watching him again, doesn't look over to see what Jo's doing.
Grey morning when Sam opens his eyes, when he opens his eyes to Dean opening the motel room door, coming back from somewhere, cardboard carrier in hand, three white paper cups. Jo's still asleep, her hair tangled across her pillow, the rise and fall of her chest, and Sam gets out of bed without waking her, reaches for a pair of jeans from his bag. Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam and goes back outside, and a moment later, Sam grabs a cup of coffee and follows him.
Dean's standing next to the door, all faux-casual, glancing at Sam when he comes out and then glancing away too quickly.
It's raining, cool-damp. The clouds are the color of seagull feathers and the gas station sign across the street glows bright green in the drizzling grey. Dean's hair is wet, but there's an overhang in front of the room, the path from the car to the room is relatively sheltered, and Sam thinks that maybe he walked to get coffee, walked instead of drove, walked to clear his head.
Sam takes a sip of coffee. It's sweet and perfect and when he lowers the cup, Dean's watching him. "Thanks," Sam says.
"Yeah," Dean says. He rubs a hand across his eyes and then looks away.
"I," Sam says, and then he stops, unsure of what he's going to say. What he wants to say. After a few seconds, Dean turns to look at him again, his eyes defensive and scared, and Sam leans down, leans in and kisses him. He's doing that a lot these days, acting before he thinks, and Dean tastes like bitter black coffee and like rain. He doesn't kiss like Jo does, kisses rougher, more violent, somehow more intimate, like he already knows everything beneath Sam's skin, all the secrets locked tight behind Sam's eyes. Apology or affirmation, his tongue in Sam's mouth, Sam's hand curving around his neck, and the coffee in Sam's other hand is burning his palm, but he thinks it's Dean's skin that will leave a mark.
Dean's fingers brush across the small of Sam's back, grip tight, and then Sam pulls back. Dean's eyes are unreadable in the rainy light.
"Maybe we should ask if she wants to stay for awhile," Sam says. "Until she finds another car."
"Sure, Sammy," Dean says, and he kisses Sam again, quick brush of his mouth against Sam's before he goes back inside. Before Sam is left alone, left wondering if this is what it feels like to fall, wondering if he'll wake up before he hits the ground, before it's too late. Wondering if maybe it's merely inevitable, this restructuring, tectonic plate shift.
He thinks it might not matter. He goes after Dean.
In the room, Jo's awake, sitting in the middle of the bed, wearing Dean's shirt again, the blankets drawn up around her lap. Dean hands her a cup of coffee. She takes a sip, wrinkles her nose and takes another, her eyes still sleep-fogged and narrowed.
"It might be awhile before you find another car," Sam says. "If you wanna stay with us until then, there's room."
"Just until I find another car, though," Jo says. "Just for a little while."
"Yeah," Dean says. Sam nods.
"Okay," she says, and this time they go to her together. Dean on one side and Sam on the other and the rain battering at the glass on the other side of the curtains, like the world might wash away as Jo arches her back and sighs.
--
end