Supernatural fic: Dispossessed
So I was looking through my old unfinished fanfic and found this, a stalled attempt at Jo fic, because yes, I actually do like her. And yes, I would still like Garth Ennis to start writing Supernatural, because God knows I can't deal with the emo twins no more.
It's unfinished, but whatever. HET IS THE NEW SLASH.
Title: Dispossessed
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Jo Harvelle, some Dean/Jo
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: 2.06 "No Exit"
Jo knew there were three points in her life where, if things had gone down another way, everything would have been different. The night her daddy left for his last hunt, the day her mother bought the roadhouse, and the moment Dean Winchester walked through the door and didn't try to get into her pants.
Sometimes, she wishes he had. That he'd laid some tired old line on her, even copping a feel when she brought him a beer. Then she could have acquainted his balls with her knee and written him off as just another loser who drifted in and out of Harvelle's. It would have been easy.
But he didn't.
He came in with a gash on his forehead and grease ground deep in his hands, and when he'd finally worked up the guts to hit on her, something made him stop. She could see it, the instant he was going to say it. How it was all there, hanging between them, the script right down to getting her drunk and slipping out under the watchful eyes of her mother.
But he'd hesitated, the charm hanging like a loose thread, clinging to a moment that was already long gone. Then his eyes dimmed, the mask came off, and the smart-ass seemed to leak out of him like a day-old party balloon. Like he'd done it once too many, and this time, it wasn't going to work. It wasn't going to make him forget.
Something in her stomach twisted then, and she knew things had changed. Everything was different.
Jo's daddy was a preacher before he became a hunter. She didn't know much about the particulars -- no one really talked about it, especially not her mother. But she found pictures and some divinity books; underlined passages and question marks in the margins, a cracked Polaroid of her as a baby, sitting on her mother's lap with some godawful pink bonnet strapped to her fat little face. The hunters used to call him Preacher too, when her mother was in a good mood and actually let them in her house. Cracking jokes about the shepherd turned wolf between beers and bad poker hands. But that was before Jo knew what it meant. What her father really did.
He'd always come back from a hunt beaming, bursting through the door so hard she thought it was going to fall off its rusty hinges. Daddy! and she'd run to him, the big hulk of his legs stepping back like she'd caught him by surprise. He'd grab her, swing her around, crushing her to his chest as her head spun. He always smelled of leather and whiskey and rotten eggs, and she loved it. She didn't even know she wasn't supposed to. She was seven or eight before she found out that sulfur made everyone else retch.
"How's my little Jo Peep?" he'd say, lifting her high up, so her feet dangled.
She'd giggle and he'd kiss her face all over, big daddy kisses that made her squeal and pull away, pouting. "Your whiskers tickle."
He'd stroke his chin, testing the day-old growth. "You're right, baby. Gotta shave before your momma sees." Then he'd put her down, and her mother would come out from the kitchen, hands dirty from baking or gardening or taking apart the pipe under the sink that was always backing up. One more squeeze, and Jo was back on the floor, her daddy's eyes never leaving her mother's face.
Her memories of him were all like that. Unfinished fragments and half-formed thoughts; like those books of his that she couldn't decipher. Ancient riddles and incantations, questions that never got answered, no matter how hard she tried.
Dean asks her about her dad. She knows she started it, that he almost doesn't really want to know. Maybe because it's too painful to dredge up the past, even if it's not his own. But she drew his blood, and now he's going for hers. It's only fair, she reasons. Quid pro quo.
She looks away as she talks, concentrating on those days in their house in Nebraska when the roadhouse didn't exist, when she didn't wash smoke out of her hair and draft off her hands every night or hate every man who walked out the door because he was doing the job she was born for.
But Dean's too close to her, for once not telling her what to do or making her feel like an idiot. Even if it is the way she feels most of the time when he's not there to make it worse, his eyes like a hundred floodlights focused just on her.
Instead, he's quiet, listening, watching her, with something like pity in his eyes. She doesn't want to see it there but she does, doesn't want to look at him but she does, and it's inescapable; like her father dying and her mother never talking and the fear burning inside her, forcing her to track it down to all those dark corners of the world no one else ever saw. Salt and fire is supposed to kill all dead things. But not this.
Jo looks at him, and it's like she's not even there anymore. It's like she's seeing him for the first time, noticing all the things she never did before -- the scar on his forehead, the morning shadow he hasn't shaved off yet, the tiny freckles along a nose too perfect for a guy in this line of work. And those green eyes. She wants to tell him everything. Draw out whatever it is that lies behind them, like bait.
"It's my way of being close to him," she says, and almost believes it.
She's not sure if he buys it. There's only a split second before Sam bursts in, saying the cops are downstairs. The moment is gone. Buried.
Jo's told herself all her life that wants to do the job because she wants to be close to her father, to resurrect the first man who broke her heart. That's what all the books say, anyway. And Ash, when he wants to be an asshole.
But it's not. It's not revenge either, or some twisted way to confront her anger.
She doesn't know why she wants to do it. Not yet, anyway. All she knows is that every time she gets close, she can feel herself being pulled in, drawn to something she can't quite name. To kill maybe; to have that power in her hand. To feel invincible, like nothing is ever going to get at her again.
Because nothing ever will.
It's unfinished, but whatever. HET IS THE NEW SLASH.
Title: Dispossessed
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Jo Harvelle, some Dean/Jo
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: 2.06 "No Exit"
Jo knew there were three points in her life where, if things had gone down another way, everything would have been different. The night her daddy left for his last hunt, the day her mother bought the roadhouse, and the moment Dean Winchester walked through the door and didn't try to get into her pants.
Sometimes, she wishes he had. That he'd laid some tired old line on her, even copping a feel when she brought him a beer. Then she could have acquainted his balls with her knee and written him off as just another loser who drifted in and out of Harvelle's. It would have been easy.
But he didn't.
He came in with a gash on his forehead and grease ground deep in his hands, and when he'd finally worked up the guts to hit on her, something made him stop. She could see it, the instant he was going to say it. How it was all there, hanging between them, the script right down to getting her drunk and slipping out under the watchful eyes of her mother.
But he'd hesitated, the charm hanging like a loose thread, clinging to a moment that was already long gone. Then his eyes dimmed, the mask came off, and the smart-ass seemed to leak out of him like a day-old party balloon. Like he'd done it once too many, and this time, it wasn't going to work. It wasn't going to make him forget.
Something in her stomach twisted then, and she knew things had changed. Everything was different.
Jo's daddy was a preacher before he became a hunter. She didn't know much about the particulars -- no one really talked about it, especially not her mother. But she found pictures and some divinity books; underlined passages and question marks in the margins, a cracked Polaroid of her as a baby, sitting on her mother's lap with some godawful pink bonnet strapped to her fat little face. The hunters used to call him Preacher too, when her mother was in a good mood and actually let them in her house. Cracking jokes about the shepherd turned wolf between beers and bad poker hands. But that was before Jo knew what it meant. What her father really did.
He'd always come back from a hunt beaming, bursting through the door so hard she thought it was going to fall off its rusty hinges. Daddy! and she'd run to him, the big hulk of his legs stepping back like she'd caught him by surprise. He'd grab her, swing her around, crushing her to his chest as her head spun. He always smelled of leather and whiskey and rotten eggs, and she loved it. She didn't even know she wasn't supposed to. She was seven or eight before she found out that sulfur made everyone else retch.
"How's my little Jo Peep?" he'd say, lifting her high up, so her feet dangled.
She'd giggle and he'd kiss her face all over, big daddy kisses that made her squeal and pull away, pouting. "Your whiskers tickle."
He'd stroke his chin, testing the day-old growth. "You're right, baby. Gotta shave before your momma sees." Then he'd put her down, and her mother would come out from the kitchen, hands dirty from baking or gardening or taking apart the pipe under the sink that was always backing up. One more squeeze, and Jo was back on the floor, her daddy's eyes never leaving her mother's face.
Her memories of him were all like that. Unfinished fragments and half-formed thoughts; like those books of his that she couldn't decipher. Ancient riddles and incantations, questions that never got answered, no matter how hard she tried.
Dean asks her about her dad. She knows she started it, that he almost doesn't really want to know. Maybe because it's too painful to dredge up the past, even if it's not his own. But she drew his blood, and now he's going for hers. It's only fair, she reasons. Quid pro quo.
She looks away as she talks, concentrating on those days in their house in Nebraska when the roadhouse didn't exist, when she didn't wash smoke out of her hair and draft off her hands every night or hate every man who walked out the door because he was doing the job she was born for.
But Dean's too close to her, for once not telling her what to do or making her feel like an idiot. Even if it is the way she feels most of the time when he's not there to make it worse, his eyes like a hundred floodlights focused just on her.
Instead, he's quiet, listening, watching her, with something like pity in his eyes. She doesn't want to see it there but she does, doesn't want to look at him but she does, and it's inescapable; like her father dying and her mother never talking and the fear burning inside her, forcing her to track it down to all those dark corners of the world no one else ever saw. Salt and fire is supposed to kill all dead things. But not this.
Jo looks at him, and it's like she's not even there anymore. It's like she's seeing him for the first time, noticing all the things she never did before -- the scar on his forehead, the morning shadow he hasn't shaved off yet, the tiny freckles along a nose too perfect for a guy in this line of work. And those green eyes. She wants to tell him everything. Draw out whatever it is that lies behind them, like bait.
"It's my way of being close to him," she says, and almost believes it.
She's not sure if he buys it. There's only a split second before Sam bursts in, saying the cops are downstairs. The moment is gone. Buried.
Jo's told herself all her life that wants to do the job because she wants to be close to her father, to resurrect the first man who broke her heart. That's what all the books say, anyway. And Ash, when he wants to be an asshole.
But it's not. It's not revenge either, or some twisted way to confront her anger.
She doesn't know why she wants to do it. Not yet, anyway. All she knows is that every time she gets close, she can feel herself being pulled in, drawn to something she can't quite name. To kill maybe; to have that power in her hand. To feel invincible, like nothing is ever going to get at her again.
Because nothing ever will.