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we_take_five ficathon: prompt, smear.
Title: A Lover in My Bed, and a Gun to My Head
Chapter: 4 of 4: If Not yet of the Flesh
Wordcount: 2430-ish
Fandom & Pairings: Supernatural - Dean/Jo(centric), Sam/Jo
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Angst/Drama/Action
Warnings: Written after BUABS.
Thanks to: Katie for the always speedy and amazing beta, Jen for the encouragement and the reading and the love, and thanks to everyone who has been waiting very patiently (and impatiently, heh) for this fic to be finished. I hope it’s worth the wait!
previous
Ch. 1 – Humans are Animals Too
Ch. 2 - Thank God for Independence Day
Ch. 3 – Her Crooked Handiwork
A Lover in My Bed and a Gun to My Head
Chapter 4: If Not yet of the Flesh
Bylas, Arizona
Silver City was not forgiving, and they barely got out alive. Jo leads them into the fire with incoherent, fever-induced words, murmurings of gatherings and rituals, wolves allied with demons. And for the first time since they took up the hunt, running is the only option. They fail, people die, and the city burns to the ground.
She heals in Arizona, opens her eyes and closes them again and shivers from the hurt, doesn’t ask questions or cry, just chokes down what food and water she can and sleeps again.
Dean watches his baby brother sit at her bedside, just as he knows she had with him back in Princeton. It’s during these times, the mirror looking back at him, that he almost gives it up, the guilt swelling like a balloon in his throat, rising and rising and pushing confessions onto his tongue and through his teeth, but he swallows them back down, knowing just what good they wouldn’t do.
The truth isn’t really true until you say it out loud, right?
Two weeks in, it gets bad, real bad, and they take her to the emergency room. She’s asleep when the doctor comes in after, pushes through the curtain, tells them in very big remorseful words just how tore up she is inside, how Ellen won’t ever have grandkids, how she’s lucky to be alive.
When Jo doesn’t ask about what happened in Silver City, Dean knows it’s because she already knows the truth, not in some psychic, chosen-child, Sammy kind of way, but in that intuitive all-my-worst-fears-are-true kind of way.
They stay in Arizona far too long for Dean’s taste. But Sam insists. “She’s not ready yet,” he says to Dean when she sleeps. “It’s too soon.”
And for the first time since Dean can remember, there isn’t any place to go to anyway. There aren’t any jobs, not for anybody. Bobby and Ash promise to call if anything comes their way, but they never do. It’s like whatever happened in Silver City brought everything to a sudden halt and nobody can figure out why. Jo doesn’t even seem to notice.
But Dean knows she does, feels the questions lingering on the air every time they don’t talk about it, every time Sam doesn’t ask Jo why she left, even though Dean knows he wants to, remembers how truly fucked up it left him. And maybe that’s why Sam doesn’t ask her – ‘cause he doesn’t want to know.
The idea that maybe he already does know doesn’t even cross Dean’s mind.
It’s in those last few days, the road calling, that they’re alone for the first time. It’s the afternoon, and Jo’s still sleeping. Dean slinks off to the motel pool, drained and filled with lawn furniture and fading plastic inner tubes. He sits on the hot ground against the concrete wall just inside the gate, pulls a pack of smokes from his back pocket, and lights a match. He doesn’t really even like cigarettes, but lately it makes him feel normal, makes him feel like a real person again.
“Those’ll kill you, you know.”
“Fuck, Jo!” His cigarette falls into his lap when he starts, and he brushes it off hastily before it can burn a hole in his jeans. “You scared the shit out of me! What the hell are you doing here?”
She doesn’t answer his question, just sits next to him, pulls her knees up to her chest, and squints. The sun is going down. Her arm is pressed to his, and he realizes it’s the first time they’ve really touched since he pulled her out of that building back in New Mexico. He wonders if she realizes it too and doesn’t move away.
She eyes the disregarded pool, the broken lawn furniture piled high in the deep end, crushed leaves, dirt, and sand. Like some forgotten relic. Like them, really.
“We gonna do this out here?” she asks simply.
This time it’s Dean who doesn’t answer, just leans his weight into to her when she shifts her body to face him, curls close to him against the wall. It’s answer enough, and she takes a breath, not sure where to start.
“I need you to let me talk and not say anything until I’m finished, because if I don’t say it now, I won’t ever.” She pauses then, and waits, but he doesn’t say a word, more silent agreements. “I want to explain why I left, and I want to explain why I didn’t wait for you to wake up, because I know that hurt you. And Sam, he’s just, so forgiving. And I thought I loved him, I thought that I—and I can’t imagine ever hurting him, even though I already have. And I knew that if I stayed—if I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to stop it, and I knew that you’d hate me forever because even though he’d forgive you, and I know he would, Dean, things would never be the same between the two of you, and that would be my fault. My fault, Dean. And I couldn’t let any of that happen. And I knew that if I waited for you to wake up, I wouldn’t have the strength to go. I’d risk it because, fuck, Dean, it’s you.” She reaches for him, and his cheeks are rough with stubble after days of not shaving, not caring, and she presses her forehead to his. “This,” she says, the space between them growing ever smaller, “this is why I couldn’t wait for you. This is why I couldn’t say goodbye.”
His lips graze hers. “Dammit Jo,” he whispers against her mouth before he presses his lips roughly against hers and wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her body to his, ignoring the scrapes the jagged wall leaves on his arm as he reaches behind her. She whimpers quietly when his tongue finds entrance and his hands fall to the skin of her lower back, his hands dipping below her jeans, fingers dancing over the tops of her panties.
The thing is Dean knows all this already. He woke up, Sam’s drunk, saying something about a note, and she’s nowhere to be found. What else was he supposed to think?
It would have been easy to feel betrayed. Maybe if she were just some girl, he could have. But with her, it had always been about so much more. He proved that when he let himself get knifed because the world had stopped moving when he thought she might be hurt. And that was the choice, the moment, the real transgression. Everything else that followed was inevitable.
It isn’t her fault.
Because circumstance is never what you want it to be, that’s just the way the cards fall, at least when your name is Dean Winchester. And it kills him to think of the guilt she’s carried all this time. So when she comes to him, spilling these needless confessions, half thoughts and whole truths, all he can think is that it may just be well worth it.
What’s done is done, right?
There’s a risk in sharing truths, but the real truth is found in the giving of it, in taking that risk. And so when they find their way back to the motel room, him dragging her a bit, and then vice versa, hands fisted in sleeves, breaking and reconnecting, and that empty sound of their feet scraping along the pavement, he doesn’t think of Sam. He’s pretty sure she doesn’t either.
Once inside, he wastes no time, tugs her shirt over her head and discards his own, their kiss breaking just long enough to rid of them. He pulls her against him, bare stomach to bare stomach, groans inwardly at the feel of her warm skin on his, held fast together by his hands on her waist, her hands on his back, that damn smell of coconuts.
“Dean, we shouldn’t,—” she murmurs between kisses.
“No,” he says and steps forward once more, as the backs of her legs hit the bed. He locks eyes with her, making sure she understands his full meaning. “No, Jo. We really shouldn’t.”
He finds her wet mouth again, and she loses her balance then, falls backwards onto the unmade bed, which groans in protest. Dean tumbles down on top of her, her legs wrapping instantly around him. He crushes his lips to hers, traces the roof of her mouth with his tongue. She moans into his kiss, and any misgivings she may have had melt away when he slips his hand between her open legs, presses his palm into her warmth.
“Oh, god, Dean,” she hisses, and reaches for his belt buckle, runs her hands across the bulge of his cock pressing against the rough denim of his jeans before she finds it. “Get these off,” she commands, driven by her need to have him inside her again. After a minute, they’re both naked, free of their constrictive clothing.
She pulls him back down on top of her urgently, lips colliding in their desperate need to be connected, because they’ve wasted so much time already and they both know they won’t have another chance.
“Jo,” Dean finally says, breaking their kiss. He pushes his hips between her legs and hovers over her, elicits a moan from her, low, needy. He knows she’s leaving again. He knew it the moment she came to find him by the pool, and the truth is he knew it long before that. And he wants this. God he wants this so much, wants to bury himself inside of her, feel her come undone under his weight. What will happen after is unavoidable. Because this kind of betrayal can’t be erased, and Sam, forgotten Sam, means too much to him. But in this moment, irrational thought floods his brain, and what he needs from her is promises he’ll never get, promises he doesn’t really want.
“Dean,” she whines, grabbing his hips and pulling him towards her, desperate to have him fuck her. “Please,” she whimpers.
Her quiet plea is all he needs, and damn the consequences. He pushes into her, captures her mouth with his in the motion, feels her respond under his weight, her sharp exhale, hips pressing into him, her soft tight walls opening up for him, legs latching firmly behind him.
It’s different than the last time, his hurt making it nearly impossible for him to have her like he wanted her. But now he is in control, and she cries out when he pulls out of her and thrusts back in, and this is what he was missing all this time.
“How the fuck is this so wrong?” he growls against her ear, kisses her neck, and thrusts in again.
“Fuck, Dean,” she calls, lifts her hips to meet his roughly as he pushes in once more, “oh, god.”
He wants to make this last, but his body takes over and his pace quickens with her urgency. It has been far too long. She murmurs his name over and over, a prayer, a curse or both. And it only drives him faster, further.
He finds her mouth with his, silencing her cries with his kiss. He pulls back, locks eyes with her, rocks his hips against her again and reaches down to find her clit, first lightly, then more forcefully. She comes, eyes open, open, and bucking against him. He wraps his fingers around her thighs, holds her down as he continues to thrust into her, her walls contracting around him, taking him with her. He comes, hot and thick inside of her, her name on his lips. And when he says it, what he wants to say is, Stay, but he bites it back, collapses on top of her, breathless and sweaty, and feeling only the slightest bit alone.
In the year without him, Jo had given in, immersed herself in the hunt, in the seeking of the dead, and in death itself. Knowing – hoping – that it was just around the corner, and she wouldn’t have to fight anymore. The people she saved, the ones she gifted with life, could see in her eyes a certain darkness, the kind of darkness that can rot away at a human soul, if not yet at the flesh that houses it.
Asking why and how, wishing for the things she couldn’t have, didn’t seem worth it – the torture, the regret, the empty feeling of never getting an answer. But now when she wakes up, naked, facing him, finds him tracing his index finger along the length of the pink and puckered scar along her abdomen, she can’t help but ask the questions one more time.
Dean’s other hand slides down her arm, finds her hand, pulls it to his abdomen, presses it against his scar. It’s grayed and faded and a part of him now. She looks down at their matching hurts, knows she’ll never be able to look at hers without drawing lines to him.
“These’ll last forever,” he says and there’s hope in his voice, like maybe he thinks they will too, and Dean Winchester has never sounded more earnest.
Jo closes her eyes, and even when she does it’s his green eyes she sees looking back at her, the freckles that dance across his nose, the way his mouth curls just before he’s going to kiss her, such a seldom occurrence, yet seared into her memory.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t.”
“I’m not,” he says, presses his forehead to hers when she opens her eyes, brushes her hair from her face, “I’m not.”
“You are.” The words hang in the air for a minute, but it feels like more.
“Where will you go?” he asks, and just like that, he’s lost to her again. And even though she wanted it, it’s still hard to hear.
“I don’t know,” she says, tracing her finger along his scar and back again, presses her palm into it, lowers her eyes. “You won’t try to find me?”
“No,” he says quickly, and he almost half means it.
“Good,” she says. And it’s the truth. Then, after a moment, “How long do we have?”
“A few hours,” he says, kisses her forehead.
“It’s not enough,” she says, lifting her chin and finding his mouth waiting.
“It has to be,” he says, when they part briefly. More truths.
“I know,” she says into his kiss.
“Fuck,” he curses, pulls her against him.
“I know,” she says again. “This is—”
“I know.”
-fin
we_take_five ficathon: prompt, smear. Title: A Lover in My Bed, and a Gun to My Head
Chapter: 4 of 4: If Not yet of the Flesh
Wordcount: 2430-ish
Fandom & Pairings: Supernatural - Dean/Jo(centric), Sam/Jo
Rating: NC-17
Genre: Angst/Drama/Action
Warnings: Written after BUABS.
Thanks to: Katie for the always speedy and amazing beta, Jen for the encouragement and the reading and the love, and thanks to everyone who has been waiting very patiently (and impatiently, heh) for this fic to be finished. I hope it’s worth the wait!
Ch. 1 – Humans are Animals Too
Ch. 2 - Thank God for Independence Day
Ch. 3 – Her Crooked Handiwork
A Lover in My Bed and a Gun to My Head
Chapter 4: If Not yet of the Flesh
Silver City was not forgiving, and they barely got out alive. Jo leads them into the fire with incoherent, fever-induced words, murmurings of gatherings and rituals, wolves allied with demons. And for the first time since they took up the hunt, running is the only option. They fail, people die, and the city burns to the ground.
She heals in Arizona, opens her eyes and closes them again and shivers from the hurt, doesn’t ask questions or cry, just chokes down what food and water she can and sleeps again.
Dean watches his baby brother sit at her bedside, just as he knows she had with him back in Princeton. It’s during these times, the mirror looking back at him, that he almost gives it up, the guilt swelling like a balloon in his throat, rising and rising and pushing confessions onto his tongue and through his teeth, but he swallows them back down, knowing just what good they wouldn’t do.
The truth isn’t really true until you say it out loud, right?
Two weeks in, it gets bad, real bad, and they take her to the emergency room. She’s asleep when the doctor comes in after, pushes through the curtain, tells them in very big remorseful words just how tore up she is inside, how Ellen won’t ever have grandkids, how she’s lucky to be alive.
When Jo doesn’t ask about what happened in Silver City, Dean knows it’s because she already knows the truth, not in some psychic, chosen-child, Sammy kind of way, but in that intuitive all-my-worst-fears-are-true kind of way.
They stay in Arizona far too long for Dean’s taste. But Sam insists. “She’s not ready yet,” he says to Dean when she sleeps. “It’s too soon.”
And for the first time since Dean can remember, there isn’t any place to go to anyway. There aren’t any jobs, not for anybody. Bobby and Ash promise to call if anything comes their way, but they never do. It’s like whatever happened in Silver City brought everything to a sudden halt and nobody can figure out why. Jo doesn’t even seem to notice.
But Dean knows she does, feels the questions lingering on the air every time they don’t talk about it, every time Sam doesn’t ask Jo why she left, even though Dean knows he wants to, remembers how truly fucked up it left him. And maybe that’s why Sam doesn’t ask her – ‘cause he doesn’t want to know.
The idea that maybe he already does know doesn’t even cross Dean’s mind.
It’s in those last few days, the road calling, that they’re alone for the first time. It’s the afternoon, and Jo’s still sleeping. Dean slinks off to the motel pool, drained and filled with lawn furniture and fading plastic inner tubes. He sits on the hot ground against the concrete wall just inside the gate, pulls a pack of smokes from his back pocket, and lights a match. He doesn’t really even like cigarettes, but lately it makes him feel normal, makes him feel like a real person again.
“Those’ll kill you, you know.”
“Fuck, Jo!” His cigarette falls into his lap when he starts, and he brushes it off hastily before it can burn a hole in his jeans. “You scared the shit out of me! What the hell are you doing here?”
She doesn’t answer his question, just sits next to him, pulls her knees up to her chest, and squints. The sun is going down. Her arm is pressed to his, and he realizes it’s the first time they’ve really touched since he pulled her out of that building back in New Mexico. He wonders if she realizes it too and doesn’t move away.
She eyes the disregarded pool, the broken lawn furniture piled high in the deep end, crushed leaves, dirt, and sand. Like some forgotten relic. Like them, really.
“We gonna do this out here?” she asks simply.
This time it’s Dean who doesn’t answer, just leans his weight into to her when she shifts her body to face him, curls close to him against the wall. It’s answer enough, and she takes a breath, not sure where to start.
“I need you to let me talk and not say anything until I’m finished, because if I don’t say it now, I won’t ever.” She pauses then, and waits, but he doesn’t say a word, more silent agreements. “I want to explain why I left, and I want to explain why I didn’t wait for you to wake up, because I know that hurt you. And Sam, he’s just, so forgiving. And I thought I loved him, I thought that I—and I can’t imagine ever hurting him, even though I already have. And I knew that if I stayed—if I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to stop it, and I knew that you’d hate me forever because even though he’d forgive you, and I know he would, Dean, things would never be the same between the two of you, and that would be my fault. My fault, Dean. And I couldn’t let any of that happen. And I knew that if I waited for you to wake up, I wouldn’t have the strength to go. I’d risk it because, fuck, Dean, it’s you.” She reaches for him, and his cheeks are rough with stubble after days of not shaving, not caring, and she presses her forehead to his. “This,” she says, the space between them growing ever smaller, “this is why I couldn’t wait for you. This is why I couldn’t say goodbye.”
His lips graze hers. “Dammit Jo,” he whispers against her mouth before he presses his lips roughly against hers and wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her body to his, ignoring the scrapes the jagged wall leaves on his arm as he reaches behind her. She whimpers quietly when his tongue finds entrance and his hands fall to the skin of her lower back, his hands dipping below her jeans, fingers dancing over the tops of her panties.
The thing is Dean knows all this already. He woke up, Sam’s drunk, saying something about a note, and she’s nowhere to be found. What else was he supposed to think?
It would have been easy to feel betrayed. Maybe if she were just some girl, he could have. But with her, it had always been about so much more. He proved that when he let himself get knifed because the world had stopped moving when he thought she might be hurt. And that was the choice, the moment, the real transgression. Everything else that followed was inevitable.
It isn’t her fault.
Because circumstance is never what you want it to be, that’s just the way the cards fall, at least when your name is Dean Winchester. And it kills him to think of the guilt she’s carried all this time. So when she comes to him, spilling these needless confessions, half thoughts and whole truths, all he can think is that it may just be well worth it.
What’s done is done, right?
There’s a risk in sharing truths, but the real truth is found in the giving of it, in taking that risk. And so when they find their way back to the motel room, him dragging her a bit, and then vice versa, hands fisted in sleeves, breaking and reconnecting, and that empty sound of their feet scraping along the pavement, he doesn’t think of Sam. He’s pretty sure she doesn’t either.
Once inside, he wastes no time, tugs her shirt over her head and discards his own, their kiss breaking just long enough to rid of them. He pulls her against him, bare stomach to bare stomach, groans inwardly at the feel of her warm skin on his, held fast together by his hands on her waist, her hands on his back, that damn smell of coconuts.
“Dean, we shouldn’t,—” she murmurs between kisses.
“No,” he says and steps forward once more, as the backs of her legs hit the bed. He locks eyes with her, making sure she understands his full meaning. “No, Jo. We really shouldn’t.”
He finds her wet mouth again, and she loses her balance then, falls backwards onto the unmade bed, which groans in protest. Dean tumbles down on top of her, her legs wrapping instantly around him. He crushes his lips to hers, traces the roof of her mouth with his tongue. She moans into his kiss, and any misgivings she may have had melt away when he slips his hand between her open legs, presses his palm into her warmth.
“Oh, god, Dean,” she hisses, and reaches for his belt buckle, runs her hands across the bulge of his cock pressing against the rough denim of his jeans before she finds it. “Get these off,” she commands, driven by her need to have him inside her again. After a minute, they’re both naked, free of their constrictive clothing.
She pulls him back down on top of her urgently, lips colliding in their desperate need to be connected, because they’ve wasted so much time already and they both know they won’t have another chance.
“Jo,” Dean finally says, breaking their kiss. He pushes his hips between her legs and hovers over her, elicits a moan from her, low, needy. He knows she’s leaving again. He knew it the moment she came to find him by the pool, and the truth is he knew it long before that. And he wants this. God he wants this so much, wants to bury himself inside of her, feel her come undone under his weight. What will happen after is unavoidable. Because this kind of betrayal can’t be erased, and Sam, forgotten Sam, means too much to him. But in this moment, irrational thought floods his brain, and what he needs from her is promises he’ll never get, promises he doesn’t really want.
“Dean,” she whines, grabbing his hips and pulling him towards her, desperate to have him fuck her. “Please,” she whimpers.
Her quiet plea is all he needs, and damn the consequences. He pushes into her, captures her mouth with his in the motion, feels her respond under his weight, her sharp exhale, hips pressing into him, her soft tight walls opening up for him, legs latching firmly behind him.
It’s different than the last time, his hurt making it nearly impossible for him to have her like he wanted her. But now he is in control, and she cries out when he pulls out of her and thrusts back in, and this is what he was missing all this time.
“How the fuck is this so wrong?” he growls against her ear, kisses her neck, and thrusts in again.
“Fuck, Dean,” she calls, lifts her hips to meet his roughly as he pushes in once more, “oh, god.”
He wants to make this last, but his body takes over and his pace quickens with her urgency. It has been far too long. She murmurs his name over and over, a prayer, a curse or both. And it only drives him faster, further.
He finds her mouth with his, silencing her cries with his kiss. He pulls back, locks eyes with her, rocks his hips against her again and reaches down to find her clit, first lightly, then more forcefully. She comes, eyes open, open, and bucking against him. He wraps his fingers around her thighs, holds her down as he continues to thrust into her, her walls contracting around him, taking him with her. He comes, hot and thick inside of her, her name on his lips. And when he says it, what he wants to say is, Stay, but he bites it back, collapses on top of her, breathless and sweaty, and feeling only the slightest bit alone.
In the year without him, Jo had given in, immersed herself in the hunt, in the seeking of the dead, and in death itself. Knowing – hoping – that it was just around the corner, and she wouldn’t have to fight anymore. The people she saved, the ones she gifted with life, could see in her eyes a certain darkness, the kind of darkness that can rot away at a human soul, if not yet at the flesh that houses it.
Asking why and how, wishing for the things she couldn’t have, didn’t seem worth it – the torture, the regret, the empty feeling of never getting an answer. But now when she wakes up, naked, facing him, finds him tracing his index finger along the length of the pink and puckered scar along her abdomen, she can’t help but ask the questions one more time.
Dean’s other hand slides down her arm, finds her hand, pulls it to his abdomen, presses it against his scar. It’s grayed and faded and a part of him now. She looks down at their matching hurts, knows she’ll never be able to look at hers without drawing lines to him.
“These’ll last forever,” he says and there’s hope in his voice, like maybe he thinks they will too, and Dean Winchester has never sounded more earnest.
Jo closes her eyes, and even when she does it’s his green eyes she sees looking back at her, the freckles that dance across his nose, the way his mouth curls just before he’s going to kiss her, such a seldom occurrence, yet seared into her memory.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t.”
“I’m not,” he says, presses his forehead to hers when she opens her eyes, brushes her hair from her face, “I’m not.”
“You are.” The words hang in the air for a minute, but it feels like more.
“Where will you go?” he asks, and just like that, he’s lost to her again. And even though she wanted it, it’s still hard to hear.
“I don’t know,” she says, tracing her finger along his scar and back again, presses her palm into it, lowers her eyes. “You won’t try to find me?”
“No,” he says quickly, and he almost half means it.
“Good,” she says. And it’s the truth. Then, after a moment, “How long do we have?”
“A few hours,” he says, kisses her forehead.
“It’s not enough,” she says, lifting her chin and finding his mouth waiting.
“It has to be,” he says, when they part briefly. More truths.
“I know,” she says into his kiss.
“Fuck,” he curses, pulls her against him.
“I know,” she says again. “This is—”
“I know.”
-fin