New Words for Old Desires, for rillaotvalley (Dean/Jo, R)
Title: New Words for Old Desires
Author: mcee
Recipient: for rillaotvalley!
Rating: R for sex and language.
Pairing: Jo/Dean AU (with Sam, Ellen and John)
Summary: What if the Harvelle women were the ones hunting evil, saving lives, and the Winchesters owned a bar in Nebraska?
Author's note: Thanks to ink_stain for the awesome beta job and to sevenfists for the invaluable input.
The car sits in the dirt and Jo sits in the car, boots up on the dashboard despite Ellen's protests. Jo doesn't care; they've been on the road for almost eighteen hours, she wants to wash her hair, and when they'd crossed into Nebraska, she'd hoped her mother would pull into one of the many motels dotting the sides of Route 2. Instead, they're parked outside some sad excuse for a bar in broad daylight, and Ellen's patience is proving even shorter than Jo's.
"I just gotta get some information. Stay here and shut up, or come in and make yourself useful," Ellen half-yells as she slams the car door.
"Yes, ma'am!" Jo shouts after her, watching her march inside. She mutters a curse and undoes her seatbelt to follow.
The fucking Winchester mystery Roadhouse better make a decent cheeseburger.
*
Ellen's got her hand in some big guy's fist, their elbows pumping over the bartop and their smiles wide like they're old friends. Could be, for all that Ellen ever tells Jo beyond the need-to-know of the hunt.
She watches Ellen perch on a stool, watches her nod when the man behind the bar uncaps a beer for her. He looks like the domesticated version of a hunter: broad and rough, eyes a little haunted. But his stubbled face is free of scars, his step has no limp, and he's a little soft around the middle, the way Jo knows her mother likes 'em.
Jo cases the room by habit, walks the lengths of the walls as she takes in the neon beer signs and scratched-up tables and glowing jukebox. The Allman Brothers are crooning about Melissa, and Jo notices the way the half-dozen patrons are tracking her movements with practiced ease but awkward interest, like they haven't seen a girl in days. Most probably haven't.
"Jo," her mother calls. Jo skirts the pool table carefully and approaches the bar, squaring her jaw at the tall man her mother's jerking her head at. He's got a towel over his shoulder and both hands on the bartop. "This here's John Winchester. I told you about him. He's the man to call for intel. Knows everybody."
"Everybody who matters, anyway," John Winchester rumbles with a warm smile, and Jo has no idea whether to like this man or not. There's something unsettling about him, like he both knows more than you and nothing at all about the life. Jo decides on peaceable caution for now and takes a seat next to her mother.
"Hey. You got cheeseburgers here?"
Ellen sighs and John laughs, big and deep. Makes Jo feels like she's ten again, trying to show Jim Murphy that she can shoot a Mason jar off a fence from fifty yards. Jo squares her jaw at him, wishing her boot heels reached the lowest rung of the stool.
John steps back and hollers at the backroom. "Sam!"
A dishevelled head passes by the serving window then appears at the kitchen door, revealing a lanky boy in worn-through jeans and a greasy apron.
"Make these fine ladies a couple cheeseburgers, would ya?"
The boy nods and smiles at both of them before retreating. Jo sits up a little straighter, begrudgingly wishing she'd had the chance to wash her hair. Next to her, Ellen smirks behind the neck of her bottle.
*
John and Ellen are wrapping up their second hour of leaning over the bar with their heads together, whispering and stabbing their fingers at maps and the scribbles in Ellen's journal. Jo, who managed to pay attention for the first half-hour, if that, is pushing a French fry around her plate, collecting the last of the ketchup with it before popping it into her mouth. She takes her time sucking the salt off each of her fingers just for the sport of attracting the skeezy gazes of the hunters hunched over their tables around the room, downing hard liquor at three in the afternoon.
Sam Winchester hasn't reappeared, other than to push their two plates through the service window an hour and a half ago. Jo thinks she can hear discordant humming from back there, to the tune of a song different from the one playing on the jukebox. Must be in there reading or jerking off or something, she thinks uncharitably, rather than pondering the things he could be doing with her instead.
She's about to go back there herself when Ellen's stool skitters backwards and Ellen is shaking John Winchester's hand again. Their business here is done.
*
Jo turns seventeen that summer and they drive circles around the map for another four months before orbiting back to Nebraska, where nothing much ever happens. Jo wonders if that's the reason Winchester opened his business here, a sort of no-man's-land for monsters, a temporary refuge for those who hunt them. But by their very nature hunters don't generally want to leave well enough alone; Jo can attest to that first-hand.
Ellen wants them back to the Roadhouse "for a couple beds and a gun". Jo's heard all about the Colt, but if there's anything she's learned from a lifetime of following Ellen Harvelle's whims, it's to develop selective hearing.
Nebraska is hilly, boring. Jo sticks her elbow out the window and accelerates, the old Chevy rumbling smoothly around them. Ellen, nursing three broken ribs, a gash in her side, and a fucked-up knee, lolls limply in the passenger seat, too doped up to mind when Jo reaches over to turn the radio up.
Nothing's too dire; just real messy. Hunting redcaps usually is.
It's dark by the time they get in and there are more vehicles parked outside this time around, large battered pick-ups and juiced-up Jeeps, a brace of muscle cars older than Jo is. Hunters are nothing if not predictable to their peers. Jo parks the Impala among them, feeling oddly like this is a homecoming of sorts.
John Winchester is wearing a different shirt but that's the only thing about him that's any different from the last time Jo saw him. He nods at them when they come in, takes in Jo's shoulder under Ellen's arm, the way Ellen's dragging her feet. He only narrows his eyes at them, face serious as he pours someone a whiskey.
The place is packed this time, more people to watch them cross the room, to watch Ellen crumple into a free chair, holding herself funny. Her face is tight the way it gets when she doesn't want to let on that she's hurt or tired or lonely. To Jo or to anyone else.
"What'd'you go and get mauled by now?" John calls as he makes his way to their table, half-pissed, half-amused.
Ellen slumps forward over the table, grunting as she clutches her side. The bandage has bled through and is starting to stain her shirt. "Screw you," she slurs. "Just get me a drink."
John is silent for a moment. Jo watches him, annoyed that this guy seems to know her mother--the unfathomable Harvelle--more than Jo'd give anyone credit for. Then he says, "You need to get sewn up before you get knocked out. Sam!"
Jo, both hands around Ellen's elbow, looks up expectantly. John frowns and turns, calls after his son again. When he fails to materialize, John curses under his breath and stomps away. Jo hears his heavy footfall up a flight of creaky stairs, out of sight.
"Jo." Ellen's eyes are at half-mast, a little glazed, but she's fixing Jo with a meaningful, surprisingly lucid gaze. "Remember. The Colt."
"I will, mom."
Ellen stares for a beat longer, then nods and winces, shoulders tensing in pain. Jo rubs her hand in soothing circles on her mother's back, an ear still out for John's voice. Ellen's spent years drilling into Jo's head that if you can't make it on your own, might as well pack up and go home. Feels wrong to be asking these people for help, and Jo has to remind herself that they're here because Ellen wants them to be. Unfathomable indeed.
John's voice booms back through the room a moment later, another set of hard footsteps echoing his. "Get the stuff," he's saying. "I'll get her something for the pain."
Jo watches as he disappears back behind the bar and a younger version of him makes his way to them, shouldering past people with a frown on his face. Another son, Jo thinks, then remembers hearing about him. John's boys, plural. Jo stares.
But his eyes barely skim over her when he kneels by Ellen's chair, hands pushing Jo's out of the way. Ellen sits back docilely but narrows her eyes the newcomer. "Dean Winchester. What're you still doing around here."
“Just earnin' my keep, ma'am.” Dean smiles humorlessly, brow knit in concentration as he takes care to unbutton Ellen's shirt without pulling at the drenched bandage sticking to it. Jo watches wordlessly as the shirt is discarded and the tank top underneath pushed up, Dean's hands dark against the paler skin of her mother's flank.
"Kid!"
Jo jumps, eyes meeting Dean's, her hackles raising by habit. The flush she feels creep across her cheeks, however, is unexpected and not entirely welcome. "What?"
"I said cut me some of that gauze. You did a shit job with this bandage, she's bleeding out."
John reaches over and cuffs Dean upside the head, his voice a deep warning. "Mind your manners, boy."
Cheeks burning, Jo rifles through the first aid kit to find scissors, feeling childishly defensive. "I wrapped her up fine. It's the stitching I'm not so good at." She swears at the shakiness of her fingers when she hands a length of bandage to Dean, who takes it with a reproachful glare mixed with something that makes his face color a little.
"Ellen," Dean's saying, deep and abrupt, trying to get Ellen's attention. He ducks his head so she focuses on him. "I'm going to stitch you up, all right?"
"Where's Sam," Ellen mutters, grimacing when Dean's fingers, slick with her blood, prod at her wound more capably than Jo would've expected him to.
"Sam's out getting his nails done, who the hell knows. I'm here, I can fix you up. Now sit back, be quiet, and drink your milk." On cue, John reappears, pouring her a sloppy drink from a bottle he sets down next to the first aid kit. He stands back and they both watch Dean work, his mouth set in a grim line.
When he's done, Ellen's mostly out of it, and the bottle in front of her empty. John hoists her up to help her to a bunk in the back.
There are fewer patrons left now, and Dean is watching her. "You gotta change the bandage every four or five hours the first couple days, okay?"
Jo nods, the fight leaving her. "All right."
Dean stares at her, wiping his hand on a dish rang, staining it. There are drops of blood on his jeans, a constellation of dark specks. "Jesus," he mutters, shakes his head, then walks away.
They stay overnight, time enough for Ellen to sleep off the meds and the booze. Jo doesn't see Dean again, but she hears the bass of a stereo, somewhere, making the floorboards vibrate.
*
There are a couple more redcaps after that. Many more injuries, none of them grievous enough to really slow them down. There's a fight, then another fight, then a brief stint at college, followed by a humbling return to the road and a determined renewal of purpose.
Then Ellen splits under pretense that she's protecting Jo, paying no mind to the shitstorm of recriminations she's leaving behind. She buys a used pick-up from Bobby; Jo takes the Impala. They divvy up the weapons. Jo cries when Ellen hands her the journal, and her mother manages an awkward sideways hug, her arm tight around Jo's shoulders, like the tired lines around her eyes.
*
She's in Arkansas, twirling a stir-stick around her coffee while she waits for her grilled cheese. She looks up to find Sam Winchester grinning down at her.
"Jo Harvelle, right? Ellen's kid?"
He grew up, filled out. If it weren't for the hair and the dimples, she's not sure she would've recognized him. He's also obviously acquired a crusade--or inherited one--judging from the get-up, the shadows around his eyes, the fading scars on the back of his hands when he takes the seat next to Jo. Despite the weariness, he looks as guileless as ever. They bump shoulders amicably, falling into easy small talk.
"So what's a guy like you doing in a place like this?"
He frowns, looking nothing like his brother when he does. "I was tracking a banshee, but." He stops when she smirks. "But you've already wasted it," he finishes, nodding and grinning. "Nice."
"Yup. This morning. Bitch gave me a hell of a time, too."
"Kudos. I was just about to call this one and go home."
Home. Jo shifts in her seat, gnawing on the end of her stir-stick. "How's Dean doing these days? Still making himself useful?"
Sam snorts, reaching for Jo's coffee to take a tepid mouthful. "He wishes."
A beehived waitress sets Jo's grilled cheese down in front of her in a clatter of flatware, and disappears before Jo can ask for a coffee refill. The cheese oozing out from under the crust is already congealing and the grill burn is shaped like Florida. Jo's hunger turns a little sideways.
"So, Sam. You still make those awesome cheeseburgers?"
His eyes narrow when he grins, like he's on to her. "I can be persuaded."
"Then let's call this one and go home."
She leaves a couple bills next to her plate and follows Sam's old Wrangler all the way back to Nebraska. Feels like her compass has been pointing that way all along.
*
She watches Sam settle back in and wonders what it must be like to have a homebase, somewhere to hang your hat, a place that keeps a you-shaped hole when you're gone and welcomes you back when you return. He seems to fall back into the swing of things seamlessly, beaming at the hearty pat he gets from John (who looks a little different but mostly the same), greeting familiar patrons, wrapping the greasy apron back around his hips.
"So--cheeseburger, was it?" he winks, and this time he nearly has to duck when he goes through the kitchen door.
John sets a beer down in front of her and she downs half of it down gratefully, eyes inexplicably trained to the doorway leading to the stairs.
"He's not home," John says mildly.
Jo feels sixteen again, busted, but has accumulated enough pride to bristle at the implication. "Who?"
John slips away with a smirk that lets her know she's not fooling anyone.
*
Later that night, she's sitting on the edge of the bunk in the spare room, unlacing her boots, when Dean Winchester suddenly fills the doorway. Unlike his brother, he hasn't changed at all. Same stubble, same bowlegged stance, same stubborn set of his shoulders. Jo wonders if she measures up this time, somehow.
"You wanna go sit outside and get drunk?" He still looks like he's trying to figure out why she's here.
"Sure. Lemme get my jacket."
The crickets are out, making a racket, and she and Dean sit on the back porch with their boots in the dirt, tipping their longnecks silently. A garden of empties has sprouted around their feet and Dean's rolling his fourth between his palms, not saying anything just about as loudly as a person can. She's not sure what comes next, and whether it involves Dean, whether he's the reason she lead Sam on a little all the way to this. She wants to ask why it's Sam she ran into on the road and not him. He looks like someone eager to be anywhere else but here.
"You wanna go for a ride?" she says, and watches his eyes brighten when they slide sideways to meet hers.
In the dark parking lot, Dean's hands are all over her car, palms caressing the paint job, shaping the angles of the hood. Jo likes the way he nods appreciatively when he sticks his head through the open window to look inside. She's spent a hell of a lot of hours keeping the upholstery pristine despite the blood, the gore, the questionable hygiene of road life. He smiles, then, and Jo swallows a little thickly.
She lets him drive.
His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. He drives recklessly, blowing down backroads, kicking up a trail of dust behind them. For a moment she thinks maybe he's taking them somewhere, but after a while he just pulls right back into the Roadhouse lot, a little ways into the field. It started to rain, the patter of fat drops drumming on the windows. She's watching rivulets slide down the windshield, connecting like roads on a map. Dean's hands are clumsy on her thighs, his breath sour on her face when he moves into her space.
He holds her face when he kisses her, a clatter of teeth and bumping noses. His tongue slicks hotly against hers and she feels it all the way down to her boots, all the way into her belly, between her hipbones where her arousal, ill-shaped and a little out of practice, lights up like a flare.
She palms him through his jeans and he bites at her jaw, rough hands shaping her tits through her shirt. He fucks her bent over the backrest of the front seat, her jeans and panties bunched around her ankles, his knees bracketing hers as he coaxes the thick head of his cock into her. It's tight like this, and Jo holds on to the seat with her nails, Dean panting in her ear.
She can't bring herself to care when he shoots inside her with a shaky moan, digging bruises into her ass.
*
She spends two days at the Roadhouse, laughing with Sam, talking shop with John, fucking Dean in his damp bedroom in the basement. He sleeps with his face pressed into her neck and she spends half the night listening to the tread of boots upstairs and getting to know Dean through the nameless shapes of the stuff scattered around his tiny cluttered room. In what little light there is, she thinks she can make out band posters and stacks of records, internet print-outs taped to the wall along with scribbled notes, not unlike those her mother keeps.
She leaves in the morning on the third day. Sam makes her pancakes and John hugs her, a big bear-hug type of embrace, and she grins into his shirt. Next to her, Dean is silent, staring down at his coffee desolately.
They don't see her out. It's habit, among hunters, never to make partings into goodbyes.
She dumps her duffel into the trunk along with a couple new knifes John'd found for her and a wrinkled brown bag Sam had given her on her way out. It smells warm and buttery. Jo'll stop for lunch once she hits the stateline.
Jo looks up when she hears the screen door creak open then slap shut. Dean is striding purposefully towards her, jaw tight, a bag slung over his shoulder. He tosses it into the backseat and climbs in wordlessly.
She gets in and they stare out the windshield for a long moment, breaths out of synch until Dean says, "Where are we going?"
Jo rubs at the thighs of her jeans, palms her belly, full of want. She squints at the world beyond, the glare of the sun off the pavement leading back to Route 2.
"I was thinking California."
END
Author: mcee
Recipient: for rillaotvalley!
Rating: R for sex and language.
Pairing: Jo/Dean AU (with Sam, Ellen and John)
Summary: What if the Harvelle women were the ones hunting evil, saving lives, and the Winchesters owned a bar in Nebraska?
Author's note: Thanks to ink_stain for the awesome beta job and to sevenfists for the invaluable input.
The car sits in the dirt and Jo sits in the car, boots up on the dashboard despite Ellen's protests. Jo doesn't care; they've been on the road for almost eighteen hours, she wants to wash her hair, and when they'd crossed into Nebraska, she'd hoped her mother would pull into one of the many motels dotting the sides of Route 2. Instead, they're parked outside some sad excuse for a bar in broad daylight, and Ellen's patience is proving even shorter than Jo's.
"I just gotta get some information. Stay here and shut up, or come in and make yourself useful," Ellen half-yells as she slams the car door.
"Yes, ma'am!" Jo shouts after her, watching her march inside. She mutters a curse and undoes her seatbelt to follow.
The fucking Winchester mystery Roadhouse better make a decent cheeseburger.
*
Ellen's got her hand in some big guy's fist, their elbows pumping over the bartop and their smiles wide like they're old friends. Could be, for all that Ellen ever tells Jo beyond the need-to-know of the hunt.
She watches Ellen perch on a stool, watches her nod when the man behind the bar uncaps a beer for her. He looks like the domesticated version of a hunter: broad and rough, eyes a little haunted. But his stubbled face is free of scars, his step has no limp, and he's a little soft around the middle, the way Jo knows her mother likes 'em.
Jo cases the room by habit, walks the lengths of the walls as she takes in the neon beer signs and scratched-up tables and glowing jukebox. The Allman Brothers are crooning about Melissa, and Jo notices the way the half-dozen patrons are tracking her movements with practiced ease but awkward interest, like they haven't seen a girl in days. Most probably haven't.
"Jo," her mother calls. Jo skirts the pool table carefully and approaches the bar, squaring her jaw at the tall man her mother's jerking her head at. He's got a towel over his shoulder and both hands on the bartop. "This here's John Winchester. I told you about him. He's the man to call for intel. Knows everybody."
"Everybody who matters, anyway," John Winchester rumbles with a warm smile, and Jo has no idea whether to like this man or not. There's something unsettling about him, like he both knows more than you and nothing at all about the life. Jo decides on peaceable caution for now and takes a seat next to her mother.
"Hey. You got cheeseburgers here?"
Ellen sighs and John laughs, big and deep. Makes Jo feels like she's ten again, trying to show Jim Murphy that she can shoot a Mason jar off a fence from fifty yards. Jo squares her jaw at him, wishing her boot heels reached the lowest rung of the stool.
John steps back and hollers at the backroom. "Sam!"
A dishevelled head passes by the serving window then appears at the kitchen door, revealing a lanky boy in worn-through jeans and a greasy apron.
"Make these fine ladies a couple cheeseburgers, would ya?"
The boy nods and smiles at both of them before retreating. Jo sits up a little straighter, begrudgingly wishing she'd had the chance to wash her hair. Next to her, Ellen smirks behind the neck of her bottle.
*
John and Ellen are wrapping up their second hour of leaning over the bar with their heads together, whispering and stabbing their fingers at maps and the scribbles in Ellen's journal. Jo, who managed to pay attention for the first half-hour, if that, is pushing a French fry around her plate, collecting the last of the ketchup with it before popping it into her mouth. She takes her time sucking the salt off each of her fingers just for the sport of attracting the skeezy gazes of the hunters hunched over their tables around the room, downing hard liquor at three in the afternoon.
Sam Winchester hasn't reappeared, other than to push their two plates through the service window an hour and a half ago. Jo thinks she can hear discordant humming from back there, to the tune of a song different from the one playing on the jukebox. Must be in there reading or jerking off or something, she thinks uncharitably, rather than pondering the things he could be doing with her instead.
She's about to go back there herself when Ellen's stool skitters backwards and Ellen is shaking John Winchester's hand again. Their business here is done.
*
Jo turns seventeen that summer and they drive circles around the map for another four months before orbiting back to Nebraska, where nothing much ever happens. Jo wonders if that's the reason Winchester opened his business here, a sort of no-man's-land for monsters, a temporary refuge for those who hunt them. But by their very nature hunters don't generally want to leave well enough alone; Jo can attest to that first-hand.
Ellen wants them back to the Roadhouse "for a couple beds and a gun". Jo's heard all about the Colt, but if there's anything she's learned from a lifetime of following Ellen Harvelle's whims, it's to develop selective hearing.
Nebraska is hilly, boring. Jo sticks her elbow out the window and accelerates, the old Chevy rumbling smoothly around them. Ellen, nursing three broken ribs, a gash in her side, and a fucked-up knee, lolls limply in the passenger seat, too doped up to mind when Jo reaches over to turn the radio up.
Nothing's too dire; just real messy. Hunting redcaps usually is.
It's dark by the time they get in and there are more vehicles parked outside this time around, large battered pick-ups and juiced-up Jeeps, a brace of muscle cars older than Jo is. Hunters are nothing if not predictable to their peers. Jo parks the Impala among them, feeling oddly like this is a homecoming of sorts.
John Winchester is wearing a different shirt but that's the only thing about him that's any different from the last time Jo saw him. He nods at them when they come in, takes in Jo's shoulder under Ellen's arm, the way Ellen's dragging her feet. He only narrows his eyes at them, face serious as he pours someone a whiskey.
The place is packed this time, more people to watch them cross the room, to watch Ellen crumple into a free chair, holding herself funny. Her face is tight the way it gets when she doesn't want to let on that she's hurt or tired or lonely. To Jo or to anyone else.
"What'd'you go and get mauled by now?" John calls as he makes his way to their table, half-pissed, half-amused.
Ellen slumps forward over the table, grunting as she clutches her side. The bandage has bled through and is starting to stain her shirt. "Screw you," she slurs. "Just get me a drink."
John is silent for a moment. Jo watches him, annoyed that this guy seems to know her mother--the unfathomable Harvelle--more than Jo'd give anyone credit for. Then he says, "You need to get sewn up before you get knocked out. Sam!"
Jo, both hands around Ellen's elbow, looks up expectantly. John frowns and turns, calls after his son again. When he fails to materialize, John curses under his breath and stomps away. Jo hears his heavy footfall up a flight of creaky stairs, out of sight.
"Jo." Ellen's eyes are at half-mast, a little glazed, but she's fixing Jo with a meaningful, surprisingly lucid gaze. "Remember. The Colt."
"I will, mom."
Ellen stares for a beat longer, then nods and winces, shoulders tensing in pain. Jo rubs her hand in soothing circles on her mother's back, an ear still out for John's voice. Ellen's spent years drilling into Jo's head that if you can't make it on your own, might as well pack up and go home. Feels wrong to be asking these people for help, and Jo has to remind herself that they're here because Ellen wants them to be. Unfathomable indeed.
John's voice booms back through the room a moment later, another set of hard footsteps echoing his. "Get the stuff," he's saying. "I'll get her something for the pain."
Jo watches as he disappears back behind the bar and a younger version of him makes his way to them, shouldering past people with a frown on his face. Another son, Jo thinks, then remembers hearing about him. John's boys, plural. Jo stares.
But his eyes barely skim over her when he kneels by Ellen's chair, hands pushing Jo's out of the way. Ellen sits back docilely but narrows her eyes the newcomer. "Dean Winchester. What're you still doing around here."
“Just earnin' my keep, ma'am.” Dean smiles humorlessly, brow knit in concentration as he takes care to unbutton Ellen's shirt without pulling at the drenched bandage sticking to it. Jo watches wordlessly as the shirt is discarded and the tank top underneath pushed up, Dean's hands dark against the paler skin of her mother's flank.
"Kid!"
Jo jumps, eyes meeting Dean's, her hackles raising by habit. The flush she feels creep across her cheeks, however, is unexpected and not entirely welcome. "What?"
"I said cut me some of that gauze. You did a shit job with this bandage, she's bleeding out."
John reaches over and cuffs Dean upside the head, his voice a deep warning. "Mind your manners, boy."
Cheeks burning, Jo rifles through the first aid kit to find scissors, feeling childishly defensive. "I wrapped her up fine. It's the stitching I'm not so good at." She swears at the shakiness of her fingers when she hands a length of bandage to Dean, who takes it with a reproachful glare mixed with something that makes his face color a little.
"Ellen," Dean's saying, deep and abrupt, trying to get Ellen's attention. He ducks his head so she focuses on him. "I'm going to stitch you up, all right?"
"Where's Sam," Ellen mutters, grimacing when Dean's fingers, slick with her blood, prod at her wound more capably than Jo would've expected him to.
"Sam's out getting his nails done, who the hell knows. I'm here, I can fix you up. Now sit back, be quiet, and drink your milk." On cue, John reappears, pouring her a sloppy drink from a bottle he sets down next to the first aid kit. He stands back and they both watch Dean work, his mouth set in a grim line.
When he's done, Ellen's mostly out of it, and the bottle in front of her empty. John hoists her up to help her to a bunk in the back.
There are fewer patrons left now, and Dean is watching her. "You gotta change the bandage every four or five hours the first couple days, okay?"
Jo nods, the fight leaving her. "All right."
Dean stares at her, wiping his hand on a dish rang, staining it. There are drops of blood on his jeans, a constellation of dark specks. "Jesus," he mutters, shakes his head, then walks away.
They stay overnight, time enough for Ellen to sleep off the meds and the booze. Jo doesn't see Dean again, but she hears the bass of a stereo, somewhere, making the floorboards vibrate.
*
There are a couple more redcaps after that. Many more injuries, none of them grievous enough to really slow them down. There's a fight, then another fight, then a brief stint at college, followed by a humbling return to the road and a determined renewal of purpose.
Then Ellen splits under pretense that she's protecting Jo, paying no mind to the shitstorm of recriminations she's leaving behind. She buys a used pick-up from Bobby; Jo takes the Impala. They divvy up the weapons. Jo cries when Ellen hands her the journal, and her mother manages an awkward sideways hug, her arm tight around Jo's shoulders, like the tired lines around her eyes.
*
She's in Arkansas, twirling a stir-stick around her coffee while she waits for her grilled cheese. She looks up to find Sam Winchester grinning down at her.
"Jo Harvelle, right? Ellen's kid?"
He grew up, filled out. If it weren't for the hair and the dimples, she's not sure she would've recognized him. He's also obviously acquired a crusade--or inherited one--judging from the get-up, the shadows around his eyes, the fading scars on the back of his hands when he takes the seat next to Jo. Despite the weariness, he looks as guileless as ever. They bump shoulders amicably, falling into easy small talk.
"So what's a guy like you doing in a place like this?"
He frowns, looking nothing like his brother when he does. "I was tracking a banshee, but." He stops when she smirks. "But you've already wasted it," he finishes, nodding and grinning. "Nice."
"Yup. This morning. Bitch gave me a hell of a time, too."
"Kudos. I was just about to call this one and go home."
Home. Jo shifts in her seat, gnawing on the end of her stir-stick. "How's Dean doing these days? Still making himself useful?"
Sam snorts, reaching for Jo's coffee to take a tepid mouthful. "He wishes."
A beehived waitress sets Jo's grilled cheese down in front of her in a clatter of flatware, and disappears before Jo can ask for a coffee refill. The cheese oozing out from under the crust is already congealing and the grill burn is shaped like Florida. Jo's hunger turns a little sideways.
"So, Sam. You still make those awesome cheeseburgers?"
His eyes narrow when he grins, like he's on to her. "I can be persuaded."
"Then let's call this one and go home."
She leaves a couple bills next to her plate and follows Sam's old Wrangler all the way back to Nebraska. Feels like her compass has been pointing that way all along.
*
She watches Sam settle back in and wonders what it must be like to have a homebase, somewhere to hang your hat, a place that keeps a you-shaped hole when you're gone and welcomes you back when you return. He seems to fall back into the swing of things seamlessly, beaming at the hearty pat he gets from John (who looks a little different but mostly the same), greeting familiar patrons, wrapping the greasy apron back around his hips.
"So--cheeseburger, was it?" he winks, and this time he nearly has to duck when he goes through the kitchen door.
John sets a beer down in front of her and she downs half of it down gratefully, eyes inexplicably trained to the doorway leading to the stairs.
"He's not home," John says mildly.
Jo feels sixteen again, busted, but has accumulated enough pride to bristle at the implication. "Who?"
John slips away with a smirk that lets her know she's not fooling anyone.
*
Later that night, she's sitting on the edge of the bunk in the spare room, unlacing her boots, when Dean Winchester suddenly fills the doorway. Unlike his brother, he hasn't changed at all. Same stubble, same bowlegged stance, same stubborn set of his shoulders. Jo wonders if she measures up this time, somehow.
"You wanna go sit outside and get drunk?" He still looks like he's trying to figure out why she's here.
"Sure. Lemme get my jacket."
The crickets are out, making a racket, and she and Dean sit on the back porch with their boots in the dirt, tipping their longnecks silently. A garden of empties has sprouted around their feet and Dean's rolling his fourth between his palms, not saying anything just about as loudly as a person can. She's not sure what comes next, and whether it involves Dean, whether he's the reason she lead Sam on a little all the way to this. She wants to ask why it's Sam she ran into on the road and not him. He looks like someone eager to be anywhere else but here.
"You wanna go for a ride?" she says, and watches his eyes brighten when they slide sideways to meet hers.
In the dark parking lot, Dean's hands are all over her car, palms caressing the paint job, shaping the angles of the hood. Jo likes the way he nods appreciatively when he sticks his head through the open window to look inside. She's spent a hell of a lot of hours keeping the upholstery pristine despite the blood, the gore, the questionable hygiene of road life. He smiles, then, and Jo swallows a little thickly.
She lets him drive.
His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. He drives recklessly, blowing down backroads, kicking up a trail of dust behind them. For a moment she thinks maybe he's taking them somewhere, but after a while he just pulls right back into the Roadhouse lot, a little ways into the field. It started to rain, the patter of fat drops drumming on the windows. She's watching rivulets slide down the windshield, connecting like roads on a map. Dean's hands are clumsy on her thighs, his breath sour on her face when he moves into her space.
He holds her face when he kisses her, a clatter of teeth and bumping noses. His tongue slicks hotly against hers and she feels it all the way down to her boots, all the way into her belly, between her hipbones where her arousal, ill-shaped and a little out of practice, lights up like a flare.
She palms him through his jeans and he bites at her jaw, rough hands shaping her tits through her shirt. He fucks her bent over the backrest of the front seat, her jeans and panties bunched around her ankles, his knees bracketing hers as he coaxes the thick head of his cock into her. It's tight like this, and Jo holds on to the seat with her nails, Dean panting in her ear.
She can't bring herself to care when he shoots inside her with a shaky moan, digging bruises into her ass.
*
She spends two days at the Roadhouse, laughing with Sam, talking shop with John, fucking Dean in his damp bedroom in the basement. He sleeps with his face pressed into her neck and she spends half the night listening to the tread of boots upstairs and getting to know Dean through the nameless shapes of the stuff scattered around his tiny cluttered room. In what little light there is, she thinks she can make out band posters and stacks of records, internet print-outs taped to the wall along with scribbled notes, not unlike those her mother keeps.
She leaves in the morning on the third day. Sam makes her pancakes and John hugs her, a big bear-hug type of embrace, and she grins into his shirt. Next to her, Dean is silent, staring down at his coffee desolately.
They don't see her out. It's habit, among hunters, never to make partings into goodbyes.
She dumps her duffel into the trunk along with a couple new knifes John'd found for her and a wrinkled brown bag Sam had given her on her way out. It smells warm and buttery. Jo'll stop for lunch once she hits the stateline.
Jo looks up when she hears the screen door creak open then slap shut. Dean is striding purposefully towards her, jaw tight, a bag slung over his shoulder. He tosses it into the backseat and climbs in wordlessly.
She gets in and they stare out the windshield for a long moment, breaths out of synch until Dean says, "Where are we going?"
Jo rubs at the thighs of her jeans, palms her belly, full of want. She squints at the world beyond, the glare of the sun off the pavement leading back to Route 2.
"I was thinking California."
END