(Fringe/SPN) you disappear with all your good intentions for norgbelulah
Title: you disappear with all your good intentions
Author: angeldylan628
Fandoms: Fringe/Supernatural
Characters: Jo Harvelle, Ellen Harvelle; Lincoln Lee, Olivia Dunham
Pairings: Lincoln/Jo, implied Lincoln/Olivia & the slightest hint of Dean/Jo
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5,384
Spoilers: Through S2 of Supernatural, none for Fringe
Warnings: Nope.
Disclaimer: Fringe and Supernatural belong to their respective creators
A/N: Title taken from “Flowers for a Ghost” by Thriving Ivory.
Summary: She doesn’t want it to stop. She knows when it does there’s a whole other chapter to come - a twist like the one that kept them from exchanging words for seven years.
It’s just another day in Thedford. Maybe. It’s easy to assume when all the days bleed the same. The sun is too bright and still not hot enough and the air is so dry, Jo’s tongue feels like sandpaper. That feels like Nebraska, but it’s been a week since the bar burned down and it’s too quiet now, staring at piles of ashes and cinder. The insurance company is dragging its feet. Once they cut the check, it’ll take her mother less than a week to get the place back on its feet. It helps to have as many friends as Ellen Harvelle does.
Jo will help too once that money’s there. She’ll cut and measure and read blueprints or if there’s enough help, she’ll just stick to pouring beers. No matter what she’ll be there.
Jo would like to be out hunting, but family comes first. It’s rule number one of the business. This is because most people start hunting because they’ve lost someone to the supernatural or because their whole family tree is immersed in it. The point is Jo has to stay here at least until her mother gets the bar back up and running and then she can hit the road again, head South or West - never East and find another mystery to solve.
Until then, she’ll stay because it’s the right thing to do - something Jo rarely does and this town always reminds her of that.
She stays because she has to, because she needs to prove someone wrong.
---
Thedford, Nebraska has a population of just over two-hundred people. Back when Jo was a kid, it was closer to three-hundred, but one of the first things you learn about a place like Thedford is that it’s a dying breed. More people want to get out than in.
Hunting is the first option. College is the second. Most choose the first.
Jo chose hunting because she had to. It was in her blood the minute her daddy died. That didn’t mean the second hadn’t crossed her mind.
In Jo's line of work, regrets usually weigh heavier on the conscience than a normal person's because they involve a body count. How many lives saved versus how many lost. It's the same with doctors and cops and soldiers. Of course, a hunter's enemy is a little more abstract, always changing, never surrendering - harder to kill with each passing day. Most hunters' last words before they bite the inevitable bullet are it wasn't enough.
Jo has a lot of regrets. Most of them are about hunting. Things along the line of should have packed more rock salt or could have ganked that demon before it got the kid and most importantly Jericho, North Carolina
Above them all is a hunter's biggest regret, and it’s always something along the same line - Jo’s being:
I should have stayed in New York
---
She met Lincoln when she was five. He was the only kid her age in Thedford, but if it hadn’t been for the two hour round trip bus ride to school, Jo probably wouldn’t have ever met him. Jo’s mom was a bartender, whose bar was frequented by shifty conmen and hunters alike. Her dad had earned the reputation of a mean, spiteful drunk before he died and the people in Thedford had long memories.
Lincoln’s parents were farmers. Smart people, who kept salt by their windows and holy water and rosaries in the closet, but who still thought hunters were more trouble than they were worth, and hated that Thedford had become a haven for that kind. It was like inviting evil into your backyard, they’d say.
The town was always divided over the issue of hunters. Harvelles on one side, Lees on the other.
Of course, when you’re five, those sort of grown-up arguments mean nothing to you. Jo liked Lincoln’s Spiderman backpack and Lincoln, having grown up on an all-farmed diet was fascinated by the Oreos in Jo’s lunchbox. That was all it took to make them immediate best friends.
---
She never did believe much in fate, but she’s been home a week and two days when someone mentions Lincoln’s working a case in Omaha. She knows that working a case doesn’t mean the same to him as it does to her. It will take longer because of all that red tape she gets to just skip over with a fake badge that shines just as well as his. According to her mother’s grapevine, Lincoln’s working on cases that are more convoluted than your standard FBI stuff.
Still she knows he’ll come home anyways, even if he hasn’t called this place home in years. His folks still live here, and he likes to pop in and visit Jo’s mom too - something Jo never hears the end of. He always stops by when he’s in the Midwest.
Jo knows Lincoln will come home in his own time, and yet she still can’t sit still to wait for him.
He used to say this was always her problem.
---
They were inseparable for most of their lives: partners for every school project, study buddies after school, best friends on weekends. Always walking around town hand in hand, hip attached to hip. The shop owners would smile big whenever they saw them. Jo was pretty observant from day one, so she knew there was something the townspeople were seeing that she and Lincoln weren’t.
She tugged him closer, on instinct. He never said a thing.
---
She drives 230 miles to see him.
The pick-up truck she uses needs work. She borrowed it off of one of the regulars because she’s sure her truck he’d recognize - it had spent enough time in his older brother’s shop. This one needs new brakes at least. They whine every time Jo starts to ease off them. She thinks he’ll hear her coming a mile away in this thing anyways.
Omaha is big compared to most of Nebraska, which isn’t really saying much. She calls a few contacts, gets an idea where he might be, and it feels good. Almost like working a case - something she’s been itching to do since she came home.
---
From the beginning it became clear that he was the yin to her yang. He was polite and quiet and happy where she was a loud and angry hurricane of bad attitude. He used to tell people she was just misunderstood. He’d say it right in front of her, ignoring the way she’d huff indignantly when he said it. He had this smile that made her think maybe it was okay to be misunderstood.
Lincoln never lied. If he saw something there, underneath the mess, it must be true.
That was something she never got used to.
---
He is exactly where she expects him to be.
It’s been years and she still knows him well enough to know that when he’s not working, he’s in a bar. Today he has files spread out over his table in the corner. Before, when she knew him, it was schoolbooks and notes. There’s rarely a drink in his hand, which means he almost always looks out of place, but it feels like home to him. He grew up with her in that bar they’re rebuilding. The atmosphere helps him think.
She thinks maybe he’s losing his touch and the FBI has made him soft, because she approaches him and he doesn’t even move from the folder he’s buried his attention in. She gets all the way to the edge of his booth before she realizes he actually does know she’s there.
“I heard about the Roadhouse,” he says, not bothering to look up, “I’ll probably swing by once this is over with and help rebuild.”
Seven years since they last met, and Lincoln decides to skip the formalities. Jo thinks he might have learned a thing or two from her. She takes a seat across from him. Catalogues the abandoned half drunk beer in front of her and decides not to ask. “They’ll let you do that?”
This time Lincoln looks up and his grin is so familiar it makes her heart ache. “You’d be surprised what I can get away with when I ask nicely.”
---
At sixteen, Jo started dating a boy named Ritchie Wyatt. He lived a town over and he had dropped out of school, but he was just as passionate about hunting as Jo was. They’d stay up all night talking on the phone about devil’s traps and exorcisms and practicing their Latin. They dated for six months.
Like all hunters, Ritchie left.
Lincoln got distant when Jo started seeing Ritchie and maybe she always knew why, but it was much nicer for both of them to pretend otherwise. The night Ritchie dumped her, Jo showed up on Lincoln’s doorstep crying like a baby. He let her in that night - despite the fact that it was after midnight and they had SATs the next day. He let her crawl into bed with him, cry herself to sleep on his shoulder, and not once did he make her talk about her feelings.
In the morning, she promised herself that maybe she’d give a good guy like Lincoln a chance someday.
---
It turns out beneath all those file folders there was some alcohol that belonged to Lincoln.
She finds out immediately that he drinks more than before but as he explains the things he sees are pretty terrifying. Jo tells him straight out she’s not sure anything’s worse than the things she’s seen as a hunter, but then Lincoln starts to explain what Fringe Division is and Jo decides they may have to call it even. He can’t say much about what he does, but the basic details are enough to make her head spin.
“You think you’ve seen it all,” Jo says quietly. Lincoln might not deal with straight up monsters, but he has to cope with humans trying to play god. Jo guesses something always has to create Frankenstein. It’s better to deal with the monster instead of the scientist behind it.
“But you never have,” Lincoln finishes, signaling the bartender to bring them another round. “What a world we live in, huh? Alternate universes, ghosts, gray matter, demons - all of them working together to make life extra complicated.”
“Let’s hope they don’t start teaming up,” Jo says. “Mad scientists and evil supernatural creatures setting out to rule the world.”
Lincoln sighs, leaning back in his side of the booth. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
There’s tension in every bone in his body. Jo’s not use to that. Her Lincoln was carefree and laid back, lazy grin and soft eyes. She never wanted a life like this for him - one filled with the dark side of humanity. She lost her chance to have a say.
“I know,” Jo says, and than trying to lighten the mood, she adds, “But, it seems to me that we, Thedfordians, can’t escape the weird and wacky.”
Lincoln quirks an eyebrow. “Is Thedfordian a word?”
“You’re the college graduate. You tell me.”
Mentioning college makes Lincoln get that far away look in his eyes, and he starts staring at his beer bottle, peeling at the label. Jo feels awkward, laughs a little because that’s what she does when awkwardness creeps in. Lincoln’s smile shows up without his permission, slipping onto his face at the sound of that nervous laugh of hers. He knows her too well.
“I’ve missed you, Jo,” he says quietly. He raises his eyes to meet hers and Jo feels a little lost. She opens her mouth to return the sentiment - at least that’s what she thinks is the plan, her mouth and brain don’t always work in tandem. Before she can say anything there’s a voice behind her.
“I’m sorry I forgot my coat.”
Jo looks up and there’s a woman standing beside their table. Jo recognizes her from the tabs she’s been keeping on Lincoln and the research she had done today to find him. She tries to act surprised.
The woman takes stock of Jo and then smiles, the kind of smile that’s too polite to be real although Jo can’t tell if that’s the whole story, and then turns to Lincoln again. “Who’s your friend?”
Lincoln looks a little stunned, mouth gaping like a fish stuck on land. Jo puts him out of his misery.
“Jo Harvelle,” Jo explains, extending a hand. The woman shakes it without hesitation. Jo gestures between herself and Lincoln. “We grew up together.”
“Really?” The woman’s smile turns into a grin. “You never mentioned you were from around here.
“Thedford, Nebraska,” Lincoln says and he somehow manages to sound proud of that. Jo will never understand it. “Don’t worry. No one’s heard of it.”
“I always pegged you as a city boy.”
Jo almost laughs when she hears that but refrains for Lincoln’s sake. She’s not surprised. Lincoln had always been good at adapting. He probably had no trouble adjusting to city life - made himself seem like it was always home.
Lincoln smiles then. “Jo, this is my partner, Olivia Dunham.”
“Nice to meet you, Agent Dunham,” Jo says politely and then scoots in further in the booth. “Want to join us for a drink?”
Olivia looks between the two of them and shakes her head. “Sorry. I’ve got to make some calls back to D.C.”
“Too bad,” Jo says, trying to sound sincere as she hands Olivia her forgotten coat. Olivia nods at the both of them.
“See you back-” Lincoln starts and then suddenly stops, trying again. “See you tomorrow.”
Olivia raises an eyebrow and pats him on the shoulder. “Tomorrow.”
Jo pushes down the irrational feeling of jealousy. It’s stupid to feel that way about someone she hadn’t seen in seven years, even if that someone is Lincoln. It’s none of her business how Lincoln spends his free time these days.
Lincoln looks nervous - not blatantly so, he is too good of an agent now, but his tells are something Jo would never be able to forget. This is how she knows he’s about five seconds away from blushing bright red. As his best friend, Jo feels it’s still necessary to tease him even after all these years so she waits until Olivia is completely out the door before she smirks at him. “Tomorrow, huh?”
Sure enough he turns as red as a ruby, flush spreading from his neck up onto his cheeks. “Shut up, Jo.”
---
Lincoln got into Cornell and the whole town put aside their petty squabbles to celebrate. Lincoln’s parents threw a party in one their barns. They even invited Jo’s mom whose first thought was to decline and then after the gentle prodding of her daughter, she shut down the Road House for one night to attend. She and Mrs. Lee even shook hands and Lincoln took a picture of it because they both needed proof it had happened.
Not long into the party, Jo convinced Lincoln to sneak away. They found a spot in one of the smaller barns, climbed up onto the loft and sat side by side sharing headphones while listening to music on Jo’s CD player.
Eventually Jo couldn’t bare the secret lingering there between them and she reached into her back pocket and handed him the crinkled envelope she had been carrying with her for a week. She had opened it, thrown it out, reopened it and thrown it out a million times now.
She had applied on a whim, somewhere during the beginning of senior year when she realized that if Lincoln went to college out East she would lose him. She never thought she’d get in.
“I got accepted,” Jo whispered. Lincoln stared at the letter and Jo could see he was deciding whether to be excited or worried.
“Are you going?” Lincoln asked.
Jo didn’t know how to explain that she didn’t want to go to NYU. She didn’t know how to explain she applied to college so she could hold off thinking about their inevitable separation. So she could pretend they were normal. That she was normal.
She didn’t know if Lincoln maybe had his answer already and just needed her to say it so instead she just shrugged and hoped it was enough.
---
And here’s the thing: Jo shot her first person at the age of sixteen. She was on a hunt with Ritchie and they couldn’t exorcise the demon in time. That demon had its hands wrapped around a little boy’s neck and what choice did Jo have. She aimed and fired and didn’t miss - just like her daddy taught her.
They buried the body in the back yard. Ritchie broke up with her when they got home.
She came home to Lincoln who accepted her with open arms, who knew it wasn’t just about a boy, who didn’t ask any questions.
Since then Jo has even more blood on her hands and Lincoln will still love her despite it.
Jo doesn’t know what to do with that.
---
After Olivia leaves, her presence still hangs between them, even after Lincoln tries to change the conversation at least four times. Jo’s never been one for talking about things but sometimes they just have to be mentioned in passing or they’ll never get past them.
“A blonde huh?”
Lincoln blushes a little again, but he doesn’t say anything. Just tips the shot glass back and lets the scotch slide right down his throat.
“She’s got quite the track record,” Jo continues, and she realizes this is the jealousy babbling on, not the sane girl Jo usually is.
“Don’t,” Lincoln says harshly, and either he’s heard it all before or he just can’t bear to have Jo shatter the illusion he’s made Olivia out to be. “Just don’t.”
Jo doesn’t.
She owes him that much.
---
Jo didn’t enroll in college.
She did help Lincoln pack though, and she even sent him his first two care packages. The first two years he was at college he wrote and called constantly. He came home for summers, but never during the year because he thought it was a waste of money. Jo saved up enough money to visit him once he’d started his third year. This was a week or so after Dean Winchester showed up and Jo decided it was time to start hunting for real.
Lincoln looked older which seems strange. It had only been a few months since she had last him. She decided he had probably grown a little and that was what she was noticing, not the way he dressed now, the fine cut of his scarf or the sharp fit of his pea coat - clothes he never brought home because Thedford always swelled with heat in the summer.
Jo had never been to a big city and New York felt like it would swallow her whole at any minute. She kept her arm wound tightly around his, and her neck was sore from all the staring up at the skyline she did. She felt out of her element and hated it. He promised her that it was a normal reaction. Eventually she warmed up to it - whether it was the way Lincoln’s eyes lit up at all the things he wanted to show her or the actual sights themselves, she’d never know.
Later that night, they went back to his dorm. He had his own room now and every boy who saw them pass through the winding halls gave her an appreciative glance. She never looked twice at any of them but she did bump shoulders with Lincoln to point it out. He rolled his eyes but Jo saw the hint of a blush right underneath his collar.
In his room, they watched a few movies - horror flicks because Lincoln loved to mock their methods as much Jo did. Afterwards, they lay side by side on the tiny mattress and talked. Jo asked about school and Lincoln mentioned that the FBI recruiters had visited this week. He said he was thinking about signing up. Jo nodded, trying to picture Lincoln as an agent and failing miserably.
Lincoln asked her about home, about what’s on her mind because he always knew when she was avoiding something. At that moment, she could not bring herself to tell him she’d decided to start hunting, so she told him something close enough to it.
“There’s this guy,” Jo said, eventually, keeping her eyes focused up and away from him. “John Winchester’s son. He showed up a few weeks ago.”
“Yeah?” Lincoln said, glancing over at her.
“Yeah.” Jo saw Lincoln smirk out of the corner of her eye and she slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Lincoln turned back towards the ceiling. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I’m not going to be like my mother. Chase after some hunter.”
“I’d want better for you,” Lincoln said quietly.
Jo felt something strange settle in her chest. She ignored it, but she couldn’t help thinking that Lincoln was giving himself his own pep talk. Jo sighed. “I don’t need a man.”
There was a long, pregnant pause. “No. You don’t.”
“I had a lot of fun today,” Jo said, “This place is kind of amazing.”
“It is,” Lincoln said, brightly, and Jo realized now why he looked so different when she arrived. It wasn’t that he looked older. It was that he looked more content. Thedford might have been his home, but New York was a part of him that had been missing all these years - something she couldn’t ignore.
“I’m happy for you,” Jo said.
“You should stay,” Lincoln said, “You’d make this place perfect.”
Jo didn’t know what to say so instead she did what felt right at the moment. She leant over and kissed him.
---
It happens because it has to. Because if there’s one thing Jo’s learned you can only run for things for so long. If something’s meant to happen, you can’t avoid it. And everything, even running, comes to an end.
It happens because Lincoln is distracted by her presence and he forgets how much of an enemy Jack Daniels can be. He drinks past his limit, leans over when she’s in the middle of telling her favorite hunting story and presses his hand against her cheek.
It’s a silent way for asking for more, and the thing is Jo never learned how to say no to him. Usually, Lincoln never asks for anything, but this is one of those times he doesn’t have the better reasoning not to.
She leads him to her truck, drives them down the block to a motel the other blonde and he weren’t sharing a room in. She books a room and when the doors are shut and the room is dark she lets him take what he’s always wanted, what she was always been afraid to give.
He never stops smiling. It’s that same smile he had at thirteen when he was telling everyone there was more to her, the one that told her it was okay to be heartbroken at sixteen, the one that’s haunted her dreams and left her aching every minute he was away.
She doesn’t know how to smile back - the swell of emotions she’s feeling at that instant scare her more than anything. She clings on tightly to him, buries her face in the crook of his neck - presses her lips to the pulse there, and when she can bare to she presses her lips against his, feels that smile of his burned into her.
She doesn’t want it to stop. She knows when it does there’s a whole other chapter to come - a twist like the one that kept them from exchanging words for seven years.
She knows this ending - it’s a bad one for both of them. They’ve hit it before and this time the stakes are higher, but that doesn’t stop her from holding on tightly and letting it all happen.
Again, some things are unavoidable.
---
That day in New York, they fell asleep wrapped up in each other. It had been just a kiss. Lincoln was too much of a gentleman for that. Jo woke up early, when the sun wasn’t up yet. She stared at the ceiling thinking of what it would be like to spend every day like this.
Jo left before he woke up, pressed one kiss to his forehead. Changed phones and headed out on the road. Picked up hunting job after hunting job. Her mother never forgave her for making her break the news to Lincoln.
Jo never went back to New York, never called him. She knew she needed a clean break to keep him from ending up as one of the hazards of the job.
She still missed him every day after she left.
---
She leaves again before he wakes up.
History always repeats itself. She didn’t need hunting to teach her that.
This time she’s not more than ten miles down the road when her phone’s ringing. She answers it without looking and regrets it immediately. She doesn’t even bother guessing how he found out her number.
“I thought we were past this, Jo.”
Her heart sinks a little because beneath all that anger in his voice, she can hear the sadness. It crushes her to know she put it there. “I’m sorry.”
Lincoln’s laugh is less bitter than it should be. “No you’re not.”
“I wish I was,” Jo says. She doesn’t know if that even makes a difference.
“I waited for you all this time,” Lincoln admits, “And then I met Olivia and I thought, ‘maybe this is someone who can make me forget’ but the second you showed up I realized that’s not possible because I’ve only ever loved one woman my entire life and I don’t know how to do any of it differently.”
“I don’t know how to stop,” Jo says, and it applies to everything - to hunting, to leaving, to breaking his heart. She feels the tears start to spill at the corner of her eyes. “That woman will take really good care of you.”
“Jo…”
“I should have stayed in New York with you.” The words are said before Jo even realizes she feels that way, but as soon as they’re out there she realizes it’s the truth. “Maybe I would have left after a few days. Maybe I would have lasted a few years. Maybe I’d still have been with you. It would have been nice to have tried.”
Lincoln’s sigh is too heavy. Jo can almost picture him rubbing his eye, smoothing the skin over his brow. “I’m going to be coming home to Thedford in a few days. Let’s talk about this then.”
“Okay,” Jo says and then she shuts he phone before he can ask her to promise.
Jo doesn’t go home.
---
A week later she’s in Missouri fighting off shape shifters when she gets a text.
Come home. It’s from her mother. She thinks she should ignore it, but when she calls and there’s no answer and the texts back remain unopened, she tries some other people in town but gets the same thing. She even sends a text to Lincoln against her better judgment and when he doesn’t respond, she panics. She decides she better head home to be sure it’s not serious.
It’s not - well at least not in the way she’s used to. When she pulls up to the house, Lincoln’s waiting outside with her mother in tow.
“Sorry,” Ellen says, though she looks nothing of the sort, “It was the only way.”
She leaves them alone and before Jo can jump back in her truck and run away, Lincoln grabs her hand and tugs her towards the back of the house. The swing set is pretty much rusted through and completely unsafe for occupancy, but they sit on it anyways.
“I should have expected it,” Lincoln says, eventually, when their silence combined with the creakiness of the swings becomes too much. “You avoid these conversations like the plague.”
“I’m sorry,” Jo says and she realizes she’s been saying that a lot, but this time she means it.
“Before New York, I thought it was always going to be a one sided thing - at least romantically. I was okay with it.” Lincoln paused. “But I can’t handle knowing that these feelings are mutual and you’re holding back for reasons you think you’re hiding but aren’t.”
Before Jo loved how easy it had been for Lincoln to read her, now it was frightening.
“You once said that people deserved better than to be chasing after hunters,” Jo says, and then waits because she’s afraid to admit anything out loud. She pulls her lip in between her teeth. “You deserve better.”
Lincoln groans, the kind of exaggerated long suffering sound that makes Jo wants to laugh even though the conversation is serious. She’s reminded of the beginning, of the children they were before things got so complicated. Lincoln must see her smile because his mood lightens immediately.
“You know what? I do deserve someone good. I deserve a smart, funny, good woman who loves me. I deserve a woman with a good heart who takes every decision she makes seriously, who doesn’t let the world jade her no matter how hard it tries. I just wish you saw yourself the way I see you because if I’m the man you think I am then I deserve someone like you, Jo.”
Jo will admit she’s become a cynic. Growing up in a bar will do that to a girl. All she heard was sweet talk, sugary words that were meant to make her week in the knees. She could see right through it. But Lincoln is not a bar fly and he’s not a hunter either. When he speaks, Jo can feel the words resonate in her bones. It makes her heart beat just a shade faster and her breath catch in her throat.
After all, Lincoln always tells the truth.
“They’ll come after you,” Jo says finally, but it’s a half-hearted attempt to find a reason not to say yes to whatever it is he’s proposing. “I’ll piss someone or some thing off and it will hunt you because you matter to me.”
She always did want to save him from the usual fate of a hunter’s family, but the more she thinks about the more she realizes that Lincoln has a boatload of tricks up his sleeve to deal with the supernatural. Not to mention demons were the only things that really held grudges and they tended to steer clear of big law enforcement like the FBI.
Lincoln grins, realizing that he’s winning. “I can handle it. I know monsters just as well as you.”
“This is stupid,” Jo says, but her sudden grin says otherwise. “I travel all the time. We’d never see each other.”
“You take a job. You come home to New York for a few days and I’ll be there. Then you head off again.”
Jo sighs, still plagued by uncertainty. “Lincoln.”
Lincoln ducks down and kisses her before she can say anything else. It’s the barest press of lips, and it’s difficult to maintain contact with both of them on swings.
“Please,” he whispers against her lips as they pull back.
She never could say no to him.
---
Lincoln’s case ends, and he heads back to New York.
The check comes in and Jo helps her mom rebuild the bar. She takes a job a few states over. It lasts a week and a half.
Afterwards, she catches a plane to New York. Lincoln’s waiting for her at the terminal, arms open and even though it’s incredibly cheesy she lets him pull her into a gigantic hug and spin her around in the middle of the airport. When he sets her down, she smiles.
“Welcome home,” he says. It’s not Thedford and it’s not some seedy motel or the driver’s seat of her pick-up but with Lincoln by her side it sounds like the truth.
It feels like she never left.
-END-
Prompts:
-meeting in bars
-drunken conversation goes interesting places or doesn’t
-old friends reunite after a long separation
Author: angeldylan628
Fandoms: Fringe/Supernatural
Characters: Jo Harvelle, Ellen Harvelle; Lincoln Lee, Olivia Dunham
Pairings: Lincoln/Jo, implied Lincoln/Olivia & the slightest hint of Dean/Jo
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5,384
Spoilers: Through S2 of Supernatural, none for Fringe
Warnings: Nope.
Disclaimer: Fringe and Supernatural belong to their respective creators
A/N: Title taken from “Flowers for a Ghost” by Thriving Ivory.
Summary: She doesn’t want it to stop. She knows when it does there’s a whole other chapter to come - a twist like the one that kept them from exchanging words for seven years.
It’s just another day in Thedford. Maybe. It’s easy to assume when all the days bleed the same. The sun is too bright and still not hot enough and the air is so dry, Jo’s tongue feels like sandpaper. That feels like Nebraska, but it’s been a week since the bar burned down and it’s too quiet now, staring at piles of ashes and cinder. The insurance company is dragging its feet. Once they cut the check, it’ll take her mother less than a week to get the place back on its feet. It helps to have as many friends as Ellen Harvelle does.
Jo will help too once that money’s there. She’ll cut and measure and read blueprints or if there’s enough help, she’ll just stick to pouring beers. No matter what she’ll be there.
Jo would like to be out hunting, but family comes first. It’s rule number one of the business. This is because most people start hunting because they’ve lost someone to the supernatural or because their whole family tree is immersed in it. The point is Jo has to stay here at least until her mother gets the bar back up and running and then she can hit the road again, head South or West - never East and find another mystery to solve.
Until then, she’ll stay because it’s the right thing to do - something Jo rarely does and this town always reminds her of that.
She stays because she has to, because she needs to prove someone wrong.
---
Thedford, Nebraska has a population of just over two-hundred people. Back when Jo was a kid, it was closer to three-hundred, but one of the first things you learn about a place like Thedford is that it’s a dying breed. More people want to get out than in.
Hunting is the first option. College is the second. Most choose the first.
Jo chose hunting because she had to. It was in her blood the minute her daddy died. That didn’t mean the second hadn’t crossed her mind.
In Jo's line of work, regrets usually weigh heavier on the conscience than a normal person's because they involve a body count. How many lives saved versus how many lost. It's the same with doctors and cops and soldiers. Of course, a hunter's enemy is a little more abstract, always changing, never surrendering - harder to kill with each passing day. Most hunters' last words before they bite the inevitable bullet are it wasn't enough.
Jo has a lot of regrets. Most of them are about hunting. Things along the line of should have packed more rock salt or could have ganked that demon before it got the kid and most importantly Jericho, North Carolina
Above them all is a hunter's biggest regret, and it’s always something along the same line - Jo’s being:
I should have stayed in New York
---
She met Lincoln when she was five. He was the only kid her age in Thedford, but if it hadn’t been for the two hour round trip bus ride to school, Jo probably wouldn’t have ever met him. Jo’s mom was a bartender, whose bar was frequented by shifty conmen and hunters alike. Her dad had earned the reputation of a mean, spiteful drunk before he died and the people in Thedford had long memories.
Lincoln’s parents were farmers. Smart people, who kept salt by their windows and holy water and rosaries in the closet, but who still thought hunters were more trouble than they were worth, and hated that Thedford had become a haven for that kind. It was like inviting evil into your backyard, they’d say.
The town was always divided over the issue of hunters. Harvelles on one side, Lees on the other.
Of course, when you’re five, those sort of grown-up arguments mean nothing to you. Jo liked Lincoln’s Spiderman backpack and Lincoln, having grown up on an all-farmed diet was fascinated by the Oreos in Jo’s lunchbox. That was all it took to make them immediate best friends.
---
She never did believe much in fate, but she’s been home a week and two days when someone mentions Lincoln’s working a case in Omaha. She knows that working a case doesn’t mean the same to him as it does to her. It will take longer because of all that red tape she gets to just skip over with a fake badge that shines just as well as his. According to her mother’s grapevine, Lincoln’s working on cases that are more convoluted than your standard FBI stuff.
Still she knows he’ll come home anyways, even if he hasn’t called this place home in years. His folks still live here, and he likes to pop in and visit Jo’s mom too - something Jo never hears the end of. He always stops by when he’s in the Midwest.
Jo knows Lincoln will come home in his own time, and yet she still can’t sit still to wait for him.
He used to say this was always her problem.
---
They were inseparable for most of their lives: partners for every school project, study buddies after school, best friends on weekends. Always walking around town hand in hand, hip attached to hip. The shop owners would smile big whenever they saw them. Jo was pretty observant from day one, so she knew there was something the townspeople were seeing that she and Lincoln weren’t.
She tugged him closer, on instinct. He never said a thing.
---
She drives 230 miles to see him.
The pick-up truck she uses needs work. She borrowed it off of one of the regulars because she’s sure her truck he’d recognize - it had spent enough time in his older brother’s shop. This one needs new brakes at least. They whine every time Jo starts to ease off them. She thinks he’ll hear her coming a mile away in this thing anyways.
Omaha is big compared to most of Nebraska, which isn’t really saying much. She calls a few contacts, gets an idea where he might be, and it feels good. Almost like working a case - something she’s been itching to do since she came home.
---
From the beginning it became clear that he was the yin to her yang. He was polite and quiet and happy where she was a loud and angry hurricane of bad attitude. He used to tell people she was just misunderstood. He’d say it right in front of her, ignoring the way she’d huff indignantly when he said it. He had this smile that made her think maybe it was okay to be misunderstood.
Lincoln never lied. If he saw something there, underneath the mess, it must be true.
That was something she never got used to.
---
He is exactly where she expects him to be.
It’s been years and she still knows him well enough to know that when he’s not working, he’s in a bar. Today he has files spread out over his table in the corner. Before, when she knew him, it was schoolbooks and notes. There’s rarely a drink in his hand, which means he almost always looks out of place, but it feels like home to him. He grew up with her in that bar they’re rebuilding. The atmosphere helps him think.
She thinks maybe he’s losing his touch and the FBI has made him soft, because she approaches him and he doesn’t even move from the folder he’s buried his attention in. She gets all the way to the edge of his booth before she realizes he actually does know she’s there.
“I heard about the Roadhouse,” he says, not bothering to look up, “I’ll probably swing by once this is over with and help rebuild.”
Seven years since they last met, and Lincoln decides to skip the formalities. Jo thinks he might have learned a thing or two from her. She takes a seat across from him. Catalogues the abandoned half drunk beer in front of her and decides not to ask. “They’ll let you do that?”
This time Lincoln looks up and his grin is so familiar it makes her heart ache. “You’d be surprised what I can get away with when I ask nicely.”
---
At sixteen, Jo started dating a boy named Ritchie Wyatt. He lived a town over and he had dropped out of school, but he was just as passionate about hunting as Jo was. They’d stay up all night talking on the phone about devil’s traps and exorcisms and practicing their Latin. They dated for six months.
Like all hunters, Ritchie left.
Lincoln got distant when Jo started seeing Ritchie and maybe she always knew why, but it was much nicer for both of them to pretend otherwise. The night Ritchie dumped her, Jo showed up on Lincoln’s doorstep crying like a baby. He let her in that night - despite the fact that it was after midnight and they had SATs the next day. He let her crawl into bed with him, cry herself to sleep on his shoulder, and not once did he make her talk about her feelings.
In the morning, she promised herself that maybe she’d give a good guy like Lincoln a chance someday.
---
It turns out beneath all those file folders there was some alcohol that belonged to Lincoln.
She finds out immediately that he drinks more than before but as he explains the things he sees are pretty terrifying. Jo tells him straight out she’s not sure anything’s worse than the things she’s seen as a hunter, but then Lincoln starts to explain what Fringe Division is and Jo decides they may have to call it even. He can’t say much about what he does, but the basic details are enough to make her head spin.
“You think you’ve seen it all,” Jo says quietly. Lincoln might not deal with straight up monsters, but he has to cope with humans trying to play god. Jo guesses something always has to create Frankenstein. It’s better to deal with the monster instead of the scientist behind it.
“But you never have,” Lincoln finishes, signaling the bartender to bring them another round. “What a world we live in, huh? Alternate universes, ghosts, gray matter, demons - all of them working together to make life extra complicated.”
“Let’s hope they don’t start teaming up,” Jo says. “Mad scientists and evil supernatural creatures setting out to rule the world.”
Lincoln sighs, leaning back in his side of the booth. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
There’s tension in every bone in his body. Jo’s not use to that. Her Lincoln was carefree and laid back, lazy grin and soft eyes. She never wanted a life like this for him - one filled with the dark side of humanity. She lost her chance to have a say.
“I know,” Jo says, and than trying to lighten the mood, she adds, “But, it seems to me that we, Thedfordians, can’t escape the weird and wacky.”
Lincoln quirks an eyebrow. “Is Thedfordian a word?”
“You’re the college graduate. You tell me.”
Mentioning college makes Lincoln get that far away look in his eyes, and he starts staring at his beer bottle, peeling at the label. Jo feels awkward, laughs a little because that’s what she does when awkwardness creeps in. Lincoln’s smile shows up without his permission, slipping onto his face at the sound of that nervous laugh of hers. He knows her too well.
“I’ve missed you, Jo,” he says quietly. He raises his eyes to meet hers and Jo feels a little lost. She opens her mouth to return the sentiment - at least that’s what she thinks is the plan, her mouth and brain don’t always work in tandem. Before she can say anything there’s a voice behind her.
“I’m sorry I forgot my coat.”
Jo looks up and there’s a woman standing beside their table. Jo recognizes her from the tabs she’s been keeping on Lincoln and the research she had done today to find him. She tries to act surprised.
The woman takes stock of Jo and then smiles, the kind of smile that’s too polite to be real although Jo can’t tell if that’s the whole story, and then turns to Lincoln again. “Who’s your friend?”
Lincoln looks a little stunned, mouth gaping like a fish stuck on land. Jo puts him out of his misery.
“Jo Harvelle,” Jo explains, extending a hand. The woman shakes it without hesitation. Jo gestures between herself and Lincoln. “We grew up together.”
“Really?” The woman’s smile turns into a grin. “You never mentioned you were from around here.
“Thedford, Nebraska,” Lincoln says and he somehow manages to sound proud of that. Jo will never understand it. “Don’t worry. No one’s heard of it.”
“I always pegged you as a city boy.”
Jo almost laughs when she hears that but refrains for Lincoln’s sake. She’s not surprised. Lincoln had always been good at adapting. He probably had no trouble adjusting to city life - made himself seem like it was always home.
Lincoln smiles then. “Jo, this is my partner, Olivia Dunham.”
“Nice to meet you, Agent Dunham,” Jo says politely and then scoots in further in the booth. “Want to join us for a drink?”
Olivia looks between the two of them and shakes her head. “Sorry. I’ve got to make some calls back to D.C.”
“Too bad,” Jo says, trying to sound sincere as she hands Olivia her forgotten coat. Olivia nods at the both of them.
“See you back-” Lincoln starts and then suddenly stops, trying again. “See you tomorrow.”
Olivia raises an eyebrow and pats him on the shoulder. “Tomorrow.”
Jo pushes down the irrational feeling of jealousy. It’s stupid to feel that way about someone she hadn’t seen in seven years, even if that someone is Lincoln. It’s none of her business how Lincoln spends his free time these days.
Lincoln looks nervous - not blatantly so, he is too good of an agent now, but his tells are something Jo would never be able to forget. This is how she knows he’s about five seconds away from blushing bright red. As his best friend, Jo feels it’s still necessary to tease him even after all these years so she waits until Olivia is completely out the door before she smirks at him. “Tomorrow, huh?”
Sure enough he turns as red as a ruby, flush spreading from his neck up onto his cheeks. “Shut up, Jo.”
---
Lincoln got into Cornell and the whole town put aside their petty squabbles to celebrate. Lincoln’s parents threw a party in one their barns. They even invited Jo’s mom whose first thought was to decline and then after the gentle prodding of her daughter, she shut down the Road House for one night to attend. She and Mrs. Lee even shook hands and Lincoln took a picture of it because they both needed proof it had happened.
Not long into the party, Jo convinced Lincoln to sneak away. They found a spot in one of the smaller barns, climbed up onto the loft and sat side by side sharing headphones while listening to music on Jo’s CD player.
Eventually Jo couldn’t bare the secret lingering there between them and she reached into her back pocket and handed him the crinkled envelope she had been carrying with her for a week. She had opened it, thrown it out, reopened it and thrown it out a million times now.
She had applied on a whim, somewhere during the beginning of senior year when she realized that if Lincoln went to college out East she would lose him. She never thought she’d get in.
“I got accepted,” Jo whispered. Lincoln stared at the letter and Jo could see he was deciding whether to be excited or worried.
“Are you going?” Lincoln asked.
Jo didn’t know how to explain that she didn’t want to go to NYU. She didn’t know how to explain she applied to college so she could hold off thinking about their inevitable separation. So she could pretend they were normal. That she was normal.
She didn’t know if Lincoln maybe had his answer already and just needed her to say it so instead she just shrugged and hoped it was enough.
---
And here’s the thing: Jo shot her first person at the age of sixteen. She was on a hunt with Ritchie and they couldn’t exorcise the demon in time. That demon had its hands wrapped around a little boy’s neck and what choice did Jo have. She aimed and fired and didn’t miss - just like her daddy taught her.
They buried the body in the back yard. Ritchie broke up with her when they got home.
She came home to Lincoln who accepted her with open arms, who knew it wasn’t just about a boy, who didn’t ask any questions.
Since then Jo has even more blood on her hands and Lincoln will still love her despite it.
Jo doesn’t know what to do with that.
---
After Olivia leaves, her presence still hangs between them, even after Lincoln tries to change the conversation at least four times. Jo’s never been one for talking about things but sometimes they just have to be mentioned in passing or they’ll never get past them.
“A blonde huh?”
Lincoln blushes a little again, but he doesn’t say anything. Just tips the shot glass back and lets the scotch slide right down his throat.
“She’s got quite the track record,” Jo continues, and she realizes this is the jealousy babbling on, not the sane girl Jo usually is.
“Don’t,” Lincoln says harshly, and either he’s heard it all before or he just can’t bear to have Jo shatter the illusion he’s made Olivia out to be. “Just don’t.”
Jo doesn’t.
She owes him that much.
---
Jo didn’t enroll in college.
She did help Lincoln pack though, and she even sent him his first two care packages. The first two years he was at college he wrote and called constantly. He came home for summers, but never during the year because he thought it was a waste of money. Jo saved up enough money to visit him once he’d started his third year. This was a week or so after Dean Winchester showed up and Jo decided it was time to start hunting for real.
Lincoln looked older which seems strange. It had only been a few months since she had last him. She decided he had probably grown a little and that was what she was noticing, not the way he dressed now, the fine cut of his scarf or the sharp fit of his pea coat - clothes he never brought home because Thedford always swelled with heat in the summer.
Jo had never been to a big city and New York felt like it would swallow her whole at any minute. She kept her arm wound tightly around his, and her neck was sore from all the staring up at the skyline she did. She felt out of her element and hated it. He promised her that it was a normal reaction. Eventually she warmed up to it - whether it was the way Lincoln’s eyes lit up at all the things he wanted to show her or the actual sights themselves, she’d never know.
Later that night, they went back to his dorm. He had his own room now and every boy who saw them pass through the winding halls gave her an appreciative glance. She never looked twice at any of them but she did bump shoulders with Lincoln to point it out. He rolled his eyes but Jo saw the hint of a blush right underneath his collar.
In his room, they watched a few movies - horror flicks because Lincoln loved to mock their methods as much Jo did. Afterwards, they lay side by side on the tiny mattress and talked. Jo asked about school and Lincoln mentioned that the FBI recruiters had visited this week. He said he was thinking about signing up. Jo nodded, trying to picture Lincoln as an agent and failing miserably.
Lincoln asked her about home, about what’s on her mind because he always knew when she was avoiding something. At that moment, she could not bring herself to tell him she’d decided to start hunting, so she told him something close enough to it.
“There’s this guy,” Jo said, eventually, keeping her eyes focused up and away from him. “John Winchester’s son. He showed up a few weeks ago.”
“Yeah?” Lincoln said, glancing over at her.
“Yeah.” Jo saw Lincoln smirk out of the corner of her eye and she slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Lincoln turned back towards the ceiling. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I’m not going to be like my mother. Chase after some hunter.”
“I’d want better for you,” Lincoln said quietly.
Jo felt something strange settle in her chest. She ignored it, but she couldn’t help thinking that Lincoln was giving himself his own pep talk. Jo sighed. “I don’t need a man.”
There was a long, pregnant pause. “No. You don’t.”
“I had a lot of fun today,” Jo said, “This place is kind of amazing.”
“It is,” Lincoln said, brightly, and Jo realized now why he looked so different when she arrived. It wasn’t that he looked older. It was that he looked more content. Thedford might have been his home, but New York was a part of him that had been missing all these years - something she couldn’t ignore.
“I’m happy for you,” Jo said.
“You should stay,” Lincoln said, “You’d make this place perfect.”
Jo didn’t know what to say so instead she did what felt right at the moment. She leant over and kissed him.
---
It happens because it has to. Because if there’s one thing Jo’s learned you can only run for things for so long. If something’s meant to happen, you can’t avoid it. And everything, even running, comes to an end.
It happens because Lincoln is distracted by her presence and he forgets how much of an enemy Jack Daniels can be. He drinks past his limit, leans over when she’s in the middle of telling her favorite hunting story and presses his hand against her cheek.
It’s a silent way for asking for more, and the thing is Jo never learned how to say no to him. Usually, Lincoln never asks for anything, but this is one of those times he doesn’t have the better reasoning not to.
She leads him to her truck, drives them down the block to a motel the other blonde and he weren’t sharing a room in. She books a room and when the doors are shut and the room is dark she lets him take what he’s always wanted, what she was always been afraid to give.
He never stops smiling. It’s that same smile he had at thirteen when he was telling everyone there was more to her, the one that told her it was okay to be heartbroken at sixteen, the one that’s haunted her dreams and left her aching every minute he was away.
She doesn’t know how to smile back - the swell of emotions she’s feeling at that instant scare her more than anything. She clings on tightly to him, buries her face in the crook of his neck - presses her lips to the pulse there, and when she can bare to she presses her lips against his, feels that smile of his burned into her.
She doesn’t want it to stop. She knows when it does there’s a whole other chapter to come - a twist like the one that kept them from exchanging words for seven years.
She knows this ending - it’s a bad one for both of them. They’ve hit it before and this time the stakes are higher, but that doesn’t stop her from holding on tightly and letting it all happen.
Again, some things are unavoidable.
---
That day in New York, they fell asleep wrapped up in each other. It had been just a kiss. Lincoln was too much of a gentleman for that. Jo woke up early, when the sun wasn’t up yet. She stared at the ceiling thinking of what it would be like to spend every day like this.
Jo left before he woke up, pressed one kiss to his forehead. Changed phones and headed out on the road. Picked up hunting job after hunting job. Her mother never forgave her for making her break the news to Lincoln.
Jo never went back to New York, never called him. She knew she needed a clean break to keep him from ending up as one of the hazards of the job.
She still missed him every day after she left.
---
She leaves again before he wakes up.
History always repeats itself. She didn’t need hunting to teach her that.
This time she’s not more than ten miles down the road when her phone’s ringing. She answers it without looking and regrets it immediately. She doesn’t even bother guessing how he found out her number.
“I thought we were past this, Jo.”
Her heart sinks a little because beneath all that anger in his voice, she can hear the sadness. It crushes her to know she put it there. “I’m sorry.”
Lincoln’s laugh is less bitter than it should be. “No you’re not.”
“I wish I was,” Jo says. She doesn’t know if that even makes a difference.
“I waited for you all this time,” Lincoln admits, “And then I met Olivia and I thought, ‘maybe this is someone who can make me forget’ but the second you showed up I realized that’s not possible because I’ve only ever loved one woman my entire life and I don’t know how to do any of it differently.”
“I don’t know how to stop,” Jo says, and it applies to everything - to hunting, to leaving, to breaking his heart. She feels the tears start to spill at the corner of her eyes. “That woman will take really good care of you.”
“Jo…”
“I should have stayed in New York with you.” The words are said before Jo even realizes she feels that way, but as soon as they’re out there she realizes it’s the truth. “Maybe I would have left after a few days. Maybe I would have lasted a few years. Maybe I’d still have been with you. It would have been nice to have tried.”
Lincoln’s sigh is too heavy. Jo can almost picture him rubbing his eye, smoothing the skin over his brow. “I’m going to be coming home to Thedford in a few days. Let’s talk about this then.”
“Okay,” Jo says and then she shuts he phone before he can ask her to promise.
Jo doesn’t go home.
---
A week later she’s in Missouri fighting off shape shifters when she gets a text.
Come home. It’s from her mother. She thinks she should ignore it, but when she calls and there’s no answer and the texts back remain unopened, she tries some other people in town but gets the same thing. She even sends a text to Lincoln against her better judgment and when he doesn’t respond, she panics. She decides she better head home to be sure it’s not serious.
It’s not - well at least not in the way she’s used to. When she pulls up to the house, Lincoln’s waiting outside with her mother in tow.
“Sorry,” Ellen says, though she looks nothing of the sort, “It was the only way.”
She leaves them alone and before Jo can jump back in her truck and run away, Lincoln grabs her hand and tugs her towards the back of the house. The swing set is pretty much rusted through and completely unsafe for occupancy, but they sit on it anyways.
“I should have expected it,” Lincoln says, eventually, when their silence combined with the creakiness of the swings becomes too much. “You avoid these conversations like the plague.”
“I’m sorry,” Jo says and she realizes she’s been saying that a lot, but this time she means it.
“Before New York, I thought it was always going to be a one sided thing - at least romantically. I was okay with it.” Lincoln paused. “But I can’t handle knowing that these feelings are mutual and you’re holding back for reasons you think you’re hiding but aren’t.”
Before Jo loved how easy it had been for Lincoln to read her, now it was frightening.
“You once said that people deserved better than to be chasing after hunters,” Jo says, and then waits because she’s afraid to admit anything out loud. She pulls her lip in between her teeth. “You deserve better.”
Lincoln groans, the kind of exaggerated long suffering sound that makes Jo wants to laugh even though the conversation is serious. She’s reminded of the beginning, of the children they were before things got so complicated. Lincoln must see her smile because his mood lightens immediately.
“You know what? I do deserve someone good. I deserve a smart, funny, good woman who loves me. I deserve a woman with a good heart who takes every decision she makes seriously, who doesn’t let the world jade her no matter how hard it tries. I just wish you saw yourself the way I see you because if I’m the man you think I am then I deserve someone like you, Jo.”
Jo will admit she’s become a cynic. Growing up in a bar will do that to a girl. All she heard was sweet talk, sugary words that were meant to make her week in the knees. She could see right through it. But Lincoln is not a bar fly and he’s not a hunter either. When he speaks, Jo can feel the words resonate in her bones. It makes her heart beat just a shade faster and her breath catch in her throat.
After all, Lincoln always tells the truth.
“They’ll come after you,” Jo says finally, but it’s a half-hearted attempt to find a reason not to say yes to whatever it is he’s proposing. “I’ll piss someone or some thing off and it will hunt you because you matter to me.”
She always did want to save him from the usual fate of a hunter’s family, but the more she thinks about the more she realizes that Lincoln has a boatload of tricks up his sleeve to deal with the supernatural. Not to mention demons were the only things that really held grudges and they tended to steer clear of big law enforcement like the FBI.
Lincoln grins, realizing that he’s winning. “I can handle it. I know monsters just as well as you.”
“This is stupid,” Jo says, but her sudden grin says otherwise. “I travel all the time. We’d never see each other.”
“You take a job. You come home to New York for a few days and I’ll be there. Then you head off again.”
Jo sighs, still plagued by uncertainty. “Lincoln.”
Lincoln ducks down and kisses her before she can say anything else. It’s the barest press of lips, and it’s difficult to maintain contact with both of them on swings.
“Please,” he whispers against her lips as they pull back.
She never could say no to him.
---
Lincoln’s case ends, and he heads back to New York.
The check comes in and Jo helps her mom rebuild the bar. She takes a job a few states over. It lasts a week and a half.
Afterwards, she catches a plane to New York. Lincoln’s waiting for her at the terminal, arms open and even though it’s incredibly cheesy she lets him pull her into a gigantic hug and spin her around in the middle of the airport. When he sets her down, she smiles.
“Welcome home,” he says. It’s not Thedford and it’s not some seedy motel or the driver’s seat of her pick-up but with Lincoln by her side it sounds like the truth.
It feels like she never left.
-END-
Prompts:
-meeting in bars
-drunken conversation goes interesting places or doesn’t
-old friends reunite after a long separation