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Dean meets her when she’s eight and he’s fourteen. She’s just a kid, scraggly blonde hair unbrushed and tugged back into a ponytail. It’s a mess -- little snags and lumps of hair mixed with straw and grass. Her elbows and knees are both black with bruises and she’s wearing overall shorts that are two sizes too big.
She’s a hunter’s kid if he’s ever seen one, and it’s hilarious to watch the way she pokes and prods Sam as he reads, demanding to be left alone as always -- the sullen little dweeb -- but Jo is eight and persistent, and she gets muddy shoeprints all over Sam’s homework. He throws his hands up in the air like it’s something important and not just busywork, and Ellen comes over to pick Jo up under the armpits.
“Joanna, can’t you see that Sammy’s busy?” the bartender asks, and Dean’s liked her so far(she gave him a beer), but he scowls when she calls his kid brother ‘Sammy.’ That’s for family only.
“But I wanna play!” Jo complains, a big pout forming on her lips. “We never have other kids around.”
“Don’t give me that,” Ellen responds, but Dean can sympathize. It’s a hunter bar. It’s not like bars are family institutions to begin with, but a place like this isn’t even going to get family men, people who know how to joke with a kid or show them a smile. It’s gonna be full of gruff old men and women who know too much and have seen even worse. And Dean desperately wants to be in on whatever his dad and Bill Harvelle are talking about, wants to be welcomed to the table and seen as a man and not just a babysitter, but that’s not happening one way or the other, so he pushes himself off of his stool. His booted feet clump against the floor, and Ellen looks over at him.
“S’cool,” he says with a shrug, Sammy still gathering up all his papers on the floor. “I can take her.”
“You sure, Dean?” Ellen asks, Jo tucked against her hip.
“Yeah.” Dean waves it off, shaking his head. He’s used to kids. He’s been raising Sam for the last ten years or so. People assume he’s crap with kids or that he’d look down his nose at them, what with the jacket and the hair and the bad boy thing that he has going on, but kids are actually pretty easy. They just want someone to make them feel listened to.
Ellen walks over to him, depositing Jo at his feet. The bar owner’s looking over her shoulder at Sam, who’s buried in his work again and not looking up.
“I’d thought that Sam and Jo would get along, being so close in age...” She sounds disappointed.
“Eh. Sam’s not really what you’d call normal.” A few years ago Sam would have killed to have someone to run around and play with, but these days school’s the only thing he really loves. “He’s a big geek.”
“Dean--!” Sam complains, looking up at that.
“Hey, don’t want to be called a geek? Don’t act like a geek. That’s how it works.”
Sam just scowls at him, turning back to his books with a huff. Dean pays him no mind, instead leaning over to look down at Jo.
“Wanna leave the dorkus to his stinky books and go find a mud puddle?” Dean asks, because it doesn’t matter boy or girl, where they’re from or what they do, all kids love mud.
Except Sam ‘cause he’s broken.
This theory is proven correct when Jo’s skinny arms go right up in the air, straight as sticks, and shouts ‘Yes!’
Dean spends his afternoon out in the breezy spring sun, watching Jo stomp around and playing mud monsters with her. It’s not how he wanted his day to go, and he still wants to be inside at the table with the men, but it’s not the worst thing ever.
A few years later, he thinks that that afternoon was when Jo’s epic crush on him began.
-----
Sam, more often than not, gets left back at the bar, but he’s happy with that. Jo, not so much. Every time they stop by Dean goes in with his dad, trying to look as grown up as he can, only to get attacked around the legs by an ankle biter.
“Dean!” she says, looking up at him with big eyes, arms around his thighs and him immobilized. Bill smiles from a barstool and Dean’s doing his best to deal with things gracefully, but he doesn’t want to be the babysitter. He wants to go out ghoul hunting with his dad and Bill.
“Uh, hey sweetheart,” he replies awkwardly, trying to shuffle out of her shockingly strong grasp.
“You guys were gone for a really long time this time.” Jo puts on a pout, but she knows how to pull out the crocodile tears and Dean already fell for that once.
“Well, here now,” he assuages, trying to head her off. “But I gotta--”
“You wanna come see my Breyers?” she asks, voice all eager and happy and Dean winces, hating to break it.
“Jo,” he replies, calm as he can, putting his hands against her arms and detaching her. “We’re hunting ghouls right now, kiddo. That means I gotta go talk to your dad and mine and figure out what we’re doing.”
He hates a little that that’s only half true -- he can already see Bill and his dad working things out over at a table in the empty bar. Sam is on the other side of things, reading a book. The only person who seems to care whether Dean’s there or not is a little girl who wants him to go look at her ceramic horsies. He sighs.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?” He quirks his head, puts on a smile for her as her expression falls. “Why don’t you go bother Sam, eh? I’m sure he’d love to look at your horses.”
“Yeah, okay...” she mutters, clearly put out and Dean watches as she wanders off to where Sam has camped out. Dean lets out a breath of relief that he didn’t have to deal with any water works this time and heads over to the hunters.
He’ll see her next time.
But next time becomes the time after that, and the time after that, Jo getting taller each time they swing by. The adoration in her eyes feeds something needy inside of Dean, something he’s missed since Sam started growing up and getting over him, and as awkward as it is, he indulges her in her big hugs when he comes in the door.
Enjoys them, even, though he’s never admitting that to a soul.
It doesn’t last though. Nothing does. One hunt John comes back with blood on his somber face and Bill nowhere to be seen and their visits to the Roadhouse end.
It happens when Jo’s ten and Dean only gets to see a glimpse of her, crying to herself, little fists rubbing her eyes while her mom and Dean’s dad yell at each other. Sam tries to edge over to her, to give some comfort, but John comes storming out a moment later and gives them a terse ‘Get in the car’ and that’s the last Dean sees of her for four straight years.
The silence between Ellen and John stretches over time and distance, and only snaps when a hunt goes bad, Sam with a broken leg and John with half a fence post through his middle and Dean with nothing more than some scratches and a bruise or too. He spends that night in the ER waiting room, barely able to breathe, lungs too full and pacing back and forth across the room’s breadth. He’s convinced he’s gonna lose his whole family and that nothing’s ever going to be the same again. They took his dad and brother away on gurneys, Sam screaming and John not making any sound at all and Dean thinks he can still hear those screams.
The minute he gets any measure of wits about him, he calls Jim -- anything goes wrong, you call Jim, son. You call him first -- but no one picks up. There’s no chance of getting Caleb, the paranoid asshole never picks up for anyone. Dean wracks his brain, trying to think of anyone, anyone at all, outside of those two, that John hasn’t pissed off and alienated in the intervening years. Dean loves his dad to death, but he’s a prickly son of a bitch, and not a lot of people really get him, not like Dean gets him, and there’s no one, there’s fucking no one--
And then he remembers where they are, stuck in Bumfuck, Nebraska and maybe things ended badly last time, but Dean can’t imagine Ellen giving anyone the cold shoulder forever, and not now, not when it’s Sammy on the line. She might be pissed at their dad, but she’s a mom, and maybe Dean didn’t know her all that well but--
He’s flipping desperately through the journal, dialing the half scratched out number for the Roadhouse before he can even really process what he’s doing, and it rings and he murmurs ‘please’ over and over again, but he doesn’t know who he’s talking to. Maybe just whispering a prayer down the phone line.
“Harvelle’s Roadhouse,” Ellen’s smoky voice cuts through a ring and there’s the sound of laughter and talking in the background, glasses clinking and the tinny strains of jukebox rock and roll, and for a moment, for that one moment, Dean really wishes he were there.
“Hello? You there, buddy?” Ellen asks again, sounding a little ticked this time and Dean manages to get his legs under him.
“Hey-- Ellen. It’s Dean, Dean Winchester. John’s son--”
“Dean,” she says, sounding surprised, but, thankfully, not mad. “Yeah, kid, I remember you, don’t worry. What is it?” There’s the sound of the phone shifting, being tucked into a shoulder, and the noise in the background drops just slightly. “Is there something wrong?”
“It’s-- God,” he says, and he feels something stupid build up in his chest, nothing like the rush of adrenaline on a hunt, nothing like what he should but doesn’t feel when he’s out there in the darkness putting his life on the line. The idea of a bullet to the chest or a talon to the throat has never scared him. Not like this does.
“It’s my brother. My dad. They-- We were hunting a hodag--” he tries to get out, but he doesn’t need to go far.
“Shit,” she says, and there’s some scuffling. “Where are you?”
“Jesus.” He tries to think, to remember, tries to think around his little brother’s blood on his hands and Sammy’s hazel eyes pleading with him, looking at him with that stupid big brother worship, like Sam really fucking thought that Dean could fix him. Like Dean could put him back together. It takes him a moment. He shuts his eyes. “Loup City, Nebraska. The hospital there. Don’t even know if I’m on the other side of the state from you--”
“About an hour and a half, if we haul ass, and we will. I gotta close shit down here, but I’m sending Ash now. You stick in the waiting area and keep an eye out -- he’ll find you.”
“Thanks,” he says, breathes out like she’s given him water after a week in the desert. “Thank you, you didn’t have to--”
“It’s what we do, Dean,” is all she says, and he doesn’t get what it means, not for years.
His dad is a good man. An honorable man. But he never really got the concept of family.
-----
In the meantime, Dean works the bar, learning how to serve the drinks from Ellen, figuring it’s the least he can do to pay her back for taking them in. She doesn’t try to fight him on it. She knows how hunters work.
There’s not a lot of fancy stuff. Dean had been imagining himself like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, flipping bottles and twirling glasses, but mostly the folks who walk into Harvelle’s are looking for a cold beer and some silence, and the most complicated thing Dean has to learn is how to pour scotch the right way. The biggest chunk of his work is actually cleaning the place up -- people clomping in and out all evening, bringing mud and guts with them, and the bar gets messy fast.
Ellen leaves the back breaking labor to the young’uns, and that means Dean and Jo in the late hours of the morning cleaning the place out from the night before and “accidentally” knocking each other with the brooms.
She’s grown a lot since he last saw her, Jo has.
She’s about the same height as Sam(probably an inch or two taller, he thinks, hilariously), and skinny as a reed all around. She’s straight and flat as a board and it gives her a bit of a noodley look, but Dean’s been through high school -- she’ll grow out of that. Her blonde hair isn’t as unkempt as it once was, actually combed back now instead of just fisted into ponytails, and she’s pretty for her age.
Which is four-fucking-teen.
He’s twenty, twenty one in six months, but Jo doesn’t seem to mind that too much. Her flirting isn’t clumsy, exactly, just obvious, and Dean does his best to dissuade it without being cruel. He doesn’t want to hurt her, after all(because she’s four-fucking-teen). But he doesn’t want to encourage her either(same reason). It feels like a high wire balancing act, trying to keep everything calm and placid, trying to keep everything even, all while dozens of people are watching him.
And by dozens, he means Ellen.
He keeps waiting for her to threaten to rip his balls off, but instead she just kind of smirks when she passes by and Jo is leaning into him and he’s leaning away like she’s about to give him the Black Death.
Because this is all so amusing.
Jo doesn’t think she’s being obvious. She thinks that Dean can’t see the way she looks a little star struck every time she glances at him, or how her eyes quickly flick away when he looks over at her. She’s not pushy -- not old enough, confident enough, to be that yet -- but she also doesn’t have the skill to disguise it. So he lets her down as easy as he can. He doesn’t say anything directly, but he carefully rebuffs her, gives her the whole ‘big brother’ act, and if he’s good at anything in this world, it’s that.
He doesn’t like the crushed look in her eyes. Who would? But he’s twenty-almost-twenty-one and she’s just a kid.
He likes free sex as much as the next guy, but he has morals. And Jo deserves better.
Which is why, a week later, he’s pleased to see her hanging with Sammy, the two of them geeking out about something or other, and Sam talks with her easy, no pretense or faltering. It makes him feel pretty good on both counts, because Jo deserves to have someone paying attention to her, and Sam, despite being the most ‘normal’ one amongst them, has never been good at making friends. His brother isn’t shy, exactly. He’s just not good at fitting in.
Even so, several weeks later, when their dad is chaffing at the bit to leave and Dean walks into Sammy’s room to see Jo leaning over into his space, their lips pressed together in what Dean knows is Sammy’s first kiss(at sixteen, Dean had been getting worried), he still has to give them grief.
“Oh hoooo,” he moans from the doorway, loud and obnoxious. “What do we have here?”
“Dean!” Sam shouts angrily as he whirls around to glare at him, Jo’s cheeks going pink and her face ducking away.
“Aw, Sammy, I knew you’d find someone willing to kiss your ugly mug eventually -- I feel pretty bad for Jo though. You deserve better, honey.”
She looks up, glaring at him, and he’s surprised, really, by how genuine it is. Her eyes are watery and angry, full of fire, and Dean feels taken aback.
She gets up off of the side of Sam’s bed and marches away, Sam’s hand trying to grab her wrist as he reaches out, but she slips free and jogs out the door on the other side of the room, the one that faces towards the bar.
Dean’s still standing there like an idiot when Sam says ‘You’re an asshole, Dean,’ and when they leave two days later, Dean’s grateful.
He needs the road again.
-----
The ridiculous thing, of course, is that there’s no reason for it to be his one chance. Sam’s a good looking kid, a little awkward maybe but he’s got the quiet intellectual thing down, and hell yeah chicks can go for that. Not the chicks that Dean’s into, no. But those cute little geeky girls with their glasses and their flat ironed hair. The kind that carry books of poetry around with them.
Yeah, Dean’s pretty sure that Sam could have his pick, there.
But instead, frustratingly, Dean has to watch them skip from hunt to hunt, state to state, and Sam’s v-card stays firmly and thoroughly intact. The kid gets some play, of course. Dean sees him with one chick in Illinois, holding hands like they’re in freakin’ grade school, and when they’re in Oregon he finds a girl that he ends up being pen pals with or something. That peters out, though, over time, and really, all Sam does, all Sam really devotes any time to, is school.
Not hunting, not girls, not anything actually important.
No, Sam only has eyes for homework.
“Science fairs never made anyone happy, Sam,” Dean says, and his little brother rolls his eyes.
“Geeks invented the H-bomb, Sam,” he says, and gets a derisive snort in return.
“Seriously man -- your balls will explode. It’s true. Learned it in health class.” But all he gets for his troubles is one finger held high.
Dean tries. He really does. He tries to be a good brother. He doesn’t know where he went wrong. He’s not the best mom in the world, sure, but he didn’t raise Sam that bad, surely.
-----
The next time they swing by she treats him better than he deserves -- gets him a beer and sits on the table, talking about the hunts he’s been through since last he came by. It’s been two years, plenty of time for her to cool down, but he really was an asshole, and he wouldn’t hold it against her if she held it against him.
But there’s also the problem that she’s sixteen now and a fucking bombshell.
Just like he’d predicted, she’d filled out in all the right ways, her body still slight but curvy now. She’d stopped growing, gotten over that awkward post-pubescent hump where all the boys are tiny and all the girls are giants. She’s got some muscle on her now too, has obviously been working out.
“When I’m eighteen,” she announces proudly, “I’m going hunting.”
Dean thinks he deserves a pat on the back for not spitting his beer out all over the table -- as it is, he has to use that hand to thump his chest, trying to clear his lungs of hops.
“Oh c’mon,” she complains, rolling her eyes at him. “I’m a hunter’s kid, as much as you are.”
“Yeah, but--”
“Girls can hunt demons too, you know,” she cuts him off frowning.
“It’s not that,” he says, even though at least a part of it kind of is. “It’s just-- Your mom. She’ll never allow it.” Ellen still ran her bar, still moved weapons and info amongst the players, but she made no secret of the fact that she held a bitter view of hunting. It had taken her husband from her, and she’d always said that she and her little girl weren’t ever going into that life.
“That’s why I said eighteen, doofus.”
Dean can’t remember the last time someone called him a ‘doofus.’
“I still have some of my dad’s old things,” she continues on. “His rifle, his knives -- and his notes.”
“Jo--”
“Don’t try and talk me out of it, Dean.”
“You know I have to.”
“You’re not my big brother.”
“Yes I am,” he replies instantly, too quickly, too hotly. She looks taken aback, leaning away from him like his words had physical force. He grits his teeth and tries to calm down. “...I’m just saying. Sit on it for a bit.”
“Don’t you think I’ve sat on it enough?” She frowns at him, crossing skinny arms in her lap, over the short white barmaid apron she’s wearing.
“Not if you’ve come to this decision.”
“You and Sam have hunted since way younger.”
“Yeah, well. That’s us. We lost someone--”
“I’ve lost people too, Dean!” She hops up from the table, turning to face him, and he looks away. There’s no good way to say ‘No one will ever lose anyone like my mom.’ There’s no good way to say ‘Your loss will never mean what mine did.’
He doesn’t care what anyone says. It’ll never be the same.
They don’t stay long this time, just an in and out for info.
-----
She’s two weeks short of eighteen, two weeks short of legal, and he’s twenty four, and he feels like a giant fucking pervert.
It also feels really fucking good.
He wishes he could say different but he’s always known he’s a selfish asshole, always known that his needs run endless, his wants unslaked, and the way that Jo looks at him, like he’s important, like he counts... It’s everything he’s missing, everything he wants.
It’s exactly the opposite of how Sam looked at him when he walked out the door.
Sam is gone and Dad barely gives him the time of day, but they’ve stopped in the Roadhouse and Jo brings him his favorite beer unasked, sets it down with just a smile. She doesn’t push him. She doesn’t ask for anything. There’s no flirting this time, no pushing, no need for him to be the one responsible.
Instead she just takes a break, scooting herself up on to the stool next to him, back to the bar so she can lean against it, elbows coming up on either side, and she looks at his face. He smirks for her, puts on the show, but her eyes, her blue blue eyes, just look at him like he’s fooling no one, and the Winchester line has always been pretty firm -- there’s family, and then there’s everyone else -- but Jo blurs it. She’s half like their little sister. She’s always been there.
So when she puts her slender fingers over his wrist, he doesn’t flinch out from under them, doesn’t try to push her off. He takes it. Her fingers are cold from carrying drinks, cold from being so thin, and he puts his hand over them, lets his rough palm warm them. Her blonde hair slips over her shoulder, silky and brushed, and she’s wearing make up, simple and tasteful but still there and he tries to find the little girl in there again--
Not in a creepy way, god no.
It’s just that he’s watched Jo and Sam all of their lives, and all of a sudden they’re both grown up and applying to colleges behind everyone’s back and running away to go live normal lives by themselves where they don’t need a big brother anymore.
And maybe he sort of misses the little girl he played mud monsters with.
She leans in and kisses his cheek, and he feels the stickiness of her lip gloss. He should pull away like he always does, but instead he just sits there, sits still and lets it happen and lets his eyes drift shut for a second. As always, he sees Sam’s face, the last image of it, the shock and anger and hurt as Dean shuts the door between them--
And locks it.
He flinches.
“Jo--” he starts, but doesn’t know what to say. He turns to look at her, and she’s not angry or hurt or upset, it’s worse than that. She looks at him with sympathy, with nothing but genuine affection, and he’s not used to it, can’t take it. He can’t take it that bare and honest and real.
“I heard,” is all she says, and Dean doesn’t know how she heard, who she heard it from, but he knows instantly what she means. It makes him feel ashamed and angry at the same time -- not at her, but at Sam. There’s a whole tangle of feelings there and he can’t work through them. Their family has never done the deep emotional stuff. Sam was the only one who was even half good at it(and even then, he only wanted people to open up to him, never wanted to open up about his own damned secrets) and he’s gone.
He’s gone.
She leaves him, has to return to busing drinks, taking the tips, and Dean watches her. He has to hold himself back from doing something whenever a hunter gets handsy, reaching out to cup her ass. He knows she has some moves, but all she does is step to the side, gently detaching the creep’s hand from her backside like she’s used to it, and that makes Dean’s lip curl even more.
As if he hasn’t done the exact same thing to waitresses and bar girls all over the damned country, girls who were other people’s surrogate little sisters.
He just adds the thought to the list of reasons that Dean Winchester is a crap human being and returns morosely to his beer.
If it hadn’t been for Jo, he’d have spent the evening at the bar, drinking himself into a stupor while his dad traded secrets for info, working through some conversation in a shady corner that Dean can’t enter, can’t be privy to. He’d have drink a few beers, just enough to make chasing it with liquor seem like a good idea, and by the time he’d been done with the scotch or whiskey or hell, maybe tequila, he’d have been drunk off of his ass and regretting it the rest of the night, throwing up everything in the bar bathroom, his dad not bothering to notice and Sammy further away from him than he’d ever been.
But Jo cuts him off at three beers, and the night goes a very different way.
It probably wouldn’t have happened if Sam hadn’t left, if Dean hadn’t felt empty and abandoned and mad, betrayed. If Jo didn’t look at him like he was the world and that he’d hung the stars for her. If Jo didn’t look at him like Sam used to, didn’t love him like Sam used to.
He wants Jo anyways, has for years, but he wouldn’t have given in if he hadn’t still been winded from the loss.
It happens in the truck bed of the Sierra, Dean just tipsy enough to think that that’s a good idea. He spreads a blanket and sleeping bag out over the metal, pushing all the guns and weaponry to the side and Jo laughs, freaking giggles as he pushes her back against the insulation. Normally Dean hates girls that giggle, hates the ones that think being an air head will get his engine going(not that he doesn’t do air heads, but at least be an honest air head), but Jo’s not like that.
She’s putting nothing on. She giggles cause she’s happy, and she grins up at him because she means it, and Dean just...completely falls in love with that.
It’s a little bit the booze and a little bit the loss and a little bit every other messed up part of their lives, but mostly it’s the fact that she’s family. She’s them. She’s Winchester. And she loves him.
He kisses her for the first time, wet and sloppy, and it’s over eager, takes him a moment to get his bearings and lighten up, to do it right. But he’s done it drunk before -- he can do it tipsy, and he’d hate to give a bad impression to a stranger, let alone to Jo. One hand comes up to scoop through her hair, cup the base of her skull and she puts a leg around him. It’s simple and it’s so damned sexy.
He sleeps with her because of Sam, but he’s not thinking of Sam when he sleeps with her. He’s thinking of her as he peels her shirt off and she wriggles out of it and he’s thinking of her the first time he cups a breast, leans down to press his tongue to it, feels the soft flesh give. She’s not inactive herself, pushing his jacket from his shoulders, hands eager to find skin, and she touches his neck -- such a weird place but it’s perfect, feeling her fingertips glide over the lines of the muscles, the tendons. She smiles. His eyes are adjusting to the dark, the golden glow of the bar falling out distantly, the truck parked over by the woods, and the sound of music and voices is a constant background.
They take their time. Dean’s aware that his dad could come out at any time, but he suspects that John will be in there for awhile yet and besides, he’s too pissed at the world to care about being careful anymore. For once he just wants to have something. To get something for himself.
They take their time, kissing, exploring, but when he slides into her, pushes through a barrier he wasn’t expecting and feels her flinch, he regrets it all. Feels like the biggest asshole in the world.
So of course the first thing he does is blame it on her.
“Jo,” he says, looking down at her, brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because it shouldn’t have been here. Not in the back of some hunter’s truck, fifty feet outside of a bar. Not with some passing vagrant nomad, some idiot hunter who’ll never stick around for more than a handful of days and will probably die young.
“Dean,” she replies, and it’s chiding. She’s smiling still, but it’s softer. “I can see the stars.”
He doesn’t understand what that means though, and he opens his mouth, about to speak when she cuts him off to explain.
“You really think this is better than some motel room, or fumbling around with some jerk behind the gym?” She reaches up, puts her hand against his cheek, fingers scratching over his stubble. “I can see the stars. This is... It’s perfect.”
And she presses her lips to his and he wants to believe her.
So he does.
They leave again, just like always, and Jo doesn’t act like she thought it’d be any different -- weirdly, it’s Dean that feels torn over it. He can’t kiss her, not in front of their parents, but he hugs her tight, manages to press his lips to the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of her hair.
Her arms come around him and she says:
“See you soon.”
And he believes her.
-----
He can’t call Sam -- Sam made that clear when he walked out the door knowing exactly what it meant -- but he can call Jo, and that’s almost the same. It’s someone to talk to between hunts or when he’s on the road, and her voice makes the hours pass under him easy, driving through middle America following the heavy black line of his dad’s truck. It’s someone to talk to when he’s laid up on his belly with three deep gashes in his back, sewn up messy, and he’s stuck like that for a week just watching daytime television. It’s someone to talk to when the bars are closed or too far away and Dean’s hungry for a little action. Jo’s not bad with the dirty talk -- a little over the top, but even that’s sort of hot and cute at the same time.
After their first time together, Dean had continued with his usual habits, picking up whatever companionship he could, ladies who wanted a little fun or a little escapism, and he made no secret of it. Jo hadn’t asked for fidelity, hadn’t looked for it, and Dean had even started a relationship with a woman in Missouri for a little while. At least until she’d kicked him to the curb for lying to her because he told her the truth.
It’s after that, after all that, that things change.
It’s not like either of them make it official, like either of them say anything, but talking to Jo just seems like more fun than a quick fling with whatever barfly or bored housewife can offer him. They talk, go on about their day or hunts, and Dean doesn’t have to lie. He doesn’t have to lie to her about anything, and when he does, she calls him on it.
He likes that.
One day he asks her if she talks to Sam and there’s a pause before she says yes. He can’t call his brother, though his dad and him drive through Palo Alto every now and again, so he can’t help but ask:
“...is he okay?”
She doesn’t chide him, doesn’t tell him she can’t or that she shouldn’t. Instead she just tells him:
“Yes, he’s okay. He has a four point two, Dean, it’s insane. He met a girl last week. Her name is Jessica.”
“Jessica,” Dean repeats, and he holds the information against himself, like he can feel it, treasure it, and it’s almost like he’s talking to his brother, almost like the first contact he’s had with the most important person in his whole damn life in two and a half years and he treasures it. And he loves that Jo gives it to him.
They talk about Sam a lot after that.
She’s the one that brings him in one evening on the phone when they’re talking low and husky, bringing each other off. She talks about Sam entering the room, putting his hand around Dean’s cock and Dean needs to stop this, to object, but anything he says after that helpless moan is going to be moot, so he just goes with it. He just enjoys it. Just this once.
Of course, it’s not just that once.
Dean could have lived his whole life without knowing this about himself -- it was bad enough that he had a bit of an incest kink with Jo. At least they weren’t blood related. It’s a whole new level of fucked up that it extends to Sam, that the idea of Sam doing all the dirty things that Jo describes does it for him like few things ever have.
That it’s even hotter to have his freaking adopted little sister talking about their brother doing all those dirty things.
Dean never claimed to be a good person.
The only reason it’s alright is because it’s between them. Dean trusts Jo. Some days, he thinks he trusts her more than anyone. He was trained to trust only family, believe in only family, but Jo is family, and she’s never cut and run. And these days his dad is gone more than he’s around, has begun sending Dean out on hunts by himself, and he loves his dad, trusts him, but he’s just not there. Not like Jo is there.
And Dean thinks they’ve been doing their weird “dating” thing just about six months when he realizes he feels safe with her. They do these things where she talks to him about her and Sam both touching him and he’s not scared anymore, that oily, frightened feeling, that anticipation that she’s going to use it against him, call him sick or wrong or tell her mother -- it’s gone. He can indulge with her. Because she wouldn’t hurt him.
It’s when he realizes that, finishing up a solo hunt, that he gets in the car and drives seven hours through the night to get to the Roadhouse -- because if Dad’s going to leave him on his own, there’s no reason to obey the man’s orders to the letter, no reason to sit around his motel room with nothing to do when some girl who’s kept his confidence, kept all his secrets and taken all his absence without a single word against him is waiting in a bar in Nebraska.
He brings her flowers, cause that’s what he’s heard you’re supposed to do and she stands there and laughs at him.
Laughs and hauls him into a hug and calls him ‘doofus’ and he laughs at himself.
It feels good.
-----
He says goodbye to him again(or for the first time, he thinks with guilt instead of anger), three days later. And a few minutes after that he’s hauling Sam out of a burning building for the second time, the flames licking heat up along him and Sam’s body struggling to fling itself back to death. And only Dean stands between him and it.
It’s probably the hardest way to come back together as a family and Dean’s not ashamed to admit that he’s not equipped to deal with it. Not in the way that Sam needs. Sam needs someone to talk to, someone who’s not going to joke and blow off everything serious like Dean does every fucking time whether or not he wants to, even when he should know better. It always makes Sam give him this look: this look of judgment. Disappointment.
Like Dean’s not living up to his job as brother.
He talks to Jo on the phone under the portico of their motel in Lake Manitoc, watching the rain pour down, beating the hoods of the cars. She tries to help him, tries to comfort him.
“You’re his brother,” she says, voice sympathetic.
“That didn’t make a difference when he was walking out on us.”
“Dean,” she chides and his eyes slink to the side. He knows she doesn’t agree with what he and John did -- that she thinks it was wrong for them to give Sam the ultimatum. Dean still points out that Sam was the one who chose to leave anyway.
“Anyways, what does that matter?” he continues, not wanting to get into the same old arguments, not now. He can’t be fighting with both of his siblings.
“It matters because you know him better than anyone else. You raised him.”
“Yeah, but that was before. I haven’t spoken to him in four years, and even before that we were growing apart. You’re the one who’s been talking to him. You know him better now.” He knows he shouldn’t feel bitter about that. He knows it’s unfair that he wants to own Sam and Jo both, wants them both to love him, belong to him. He knows that he shouldn’t be jealous of the relationship the two people he loves most have without him, but he is anyway.
“Dean,” she says again, more emphatic this time and sounding even more like Ellen. “You’re being childish. He lost his fiancee, practically--”
“His what?” Dean asks, voice shrill, because what the fuck? What the actual fuck?
“Dean--”
“Were they engaged?” he asks, needs to know if his little brother was getting married and still wouldn’t call him.
“No--”
“But they were going to be.” It’s not a question.
“He was looking at rings,” she replies, like she doesn’t want to talk about it.
“He was looking at rings,” Dean repeats, voice bitter and he’s not about to apologize for it. This is bullshit. This is bullshit and he deserves to be mad. “Well that’s just great, Jo. He was planning on getting married but I bet he wasn’t planning on telling me. Or Dad,” he tacks on. “God, I can’t believe him.”
“It’s not like you can blame him,” she says, voice a little frumpy and he frowns.
“I can totally blame him. He shut me out, for four years!”
“You shut him out too!”
“I didn’t have any news for him! I wasn’t thinking about getting married!” It hurts. It hurts so fucking much because he and Sam used to tell each other everything. They used to be so close, once, and Sam used to run up to him, arms out stretched and a grin on his face, begging to be picked up and carried.
And now he doesn’t even count to get told about a wedding.
“Dean, you and your dad disowned him. It’s not an equal situation. It wasn’t like either you or Sam could have called and you both made the decision not to. You two told him that he couldn’t call you. You told him he could never come back!”
“And he still chose to go!”
“Because you didn’t give him a choice!”
“Why are you on his side?!” Dean asks, he hates the way his voice breaks like it hurts, but does, because damnit, she’s his girl. She’s supposed to take his side. It’s not like his dad is there, wherever he is. And Sam’s certainly not going to jump in to defend him any time soon.
“I’m not on anyone’s side, Dean,” she says, gentler, and it’s worse for that. “I’m saying that you didn’t leave him any options. He wanted to go to college and you two cut him off. It wasn’t a two way street. He couldn’t just call you up. He was always waiting for your call.”
And that hurts, and stings, and breaks his heart, because he still sees his Sammy and he imagines him sitting by some phone all alone out in the world, and it was never meant to be like that. It was meant to be them, together, forever. Sam and Dean.
And it doesn’t make much sense except that there’s hurt and Jo’s the one talking to him so it must be Jo’s fault.
That’s the only reason he can think of for the way his mouth snaps out words before he can even think them.
“You know, you sound like your mom when you’re mad.”
He throws the phone out into the rain with all his strength after he hears the click of her hanging up and the endless drone of the dial tone. But then he’s just a guy standing in a motel parking lot in the rain.
He always ends up alone, and the worst part is he never has anyone to blame but himself.
-----
It’s a stupid re-play of his relationship with Sam -- him and Jo playing phone chicken. Dean doesn’t want to call her because he feels like not only will he be admitting he was wrong(which he was) but that he was wrong not to call Sam(which he...might have been. Maybe). It’s ridiculous and he knows that but he’s not going to be the first one to give in.
She caves first, but it’s meaningless, and Dean doesn’t count it as a win when it does happen.
“Dean?” she asks down the line when he picks up, and he can hear the tears in her voice. He doesn’t need to ask.
“Yeah,” he says quickly, grips the phone like he could touch her, reassure her. “I’m okay, I’m alive, I swear--”
“Oh god, Dean,” and then Dean has to listen to the sound of his girl sobbing down the phone line to him. “God, I saw the news and they showed your face and called you a killer--”
“It was a shifter,” he explains, feeling guilty anyways. Their stupid fight before doesn’t matter. That he ‘won’ their little game doesn’t matter. This is something bigger. “He stole my face and kept right on killing -- we didn’t have a choice. We had to leave it pinned on me. It was the only way that all those other people would get out of jail.”
And that’s his job, after all. Saving people.
“Mom said that. I mean, she said it could be that, but it was just--”
“Yeah,” he grinds out and understands. Logic doesn’t matter in those moments. When you look on the television and see the face of someone you love, when you see people talking about them like they were a monster, like it’s good that they’re dead... It doesn’t matter.
“And I thought.... ‘This is how it’s going to happen.’ One day it will be you, and it’ll be just like Dad all over again. One day you’re going to die and if I’m lucky I’ll hear about it. If I’m lucky you won’t just be some John Doe found in a field or on a hiking trail that no one can identify.”
“Jo, you can’t think like that--”
“I have to think like that, Dean. You’re a hunter. You and Sam... The people I love are out there risking themselves and I can’t--I can’t--”
He doesn’t have anything to say to that. She’s just crying and he’s feeling like a complete louse, and he realizes that he hasn’t seen her in months. They talk all the time but it’s not the same. He’s been hung up on Dad and Sam but Jo is family too and he promises her that they’ll come by. He actually keeps it too.
He hasn’t told Sam about him and Jo and he doesn’t know if Jo’s told him. They haven’t exactly been on the up and up about their...whatever it is. It’s not like Dean’s dad is really interested in listening to him talk about his love life, and Dean’s still a little worried for his masculinity when it comes to Ellen. Neither he nor Jo have officially discussed it, haven’t specifically decided not to talk about it, but they just...haven’t talked about it anyway.
So he pulls up at the Roadhouse feeling a little awkward.
She runs out to greet them and, clever girl that she is, hugs Sam first. Then she moves over to Dean, wrapping her noodley arms around him, except he can feel the muscle in them, harder, firmer -- she’s been training.
He’s not certain how he feels about that.
He hangs on to her for just a couple of seconds longer than appropriate, doesn’t think it was too bad, but Sam’s giving him this look when he straightens up, this stink eye look, and Dean really wishes that Sam could play stupid for him like he does for Sam. Except then he remembers that Sam hates when he plays stupid for him.
Fucking little brothers.
He doesn’t get the ear full until later, and it’s not the ear full he’s expecting.
“Jo?” Sam asks, when they get into their motel room, and the kid looks genuinely pissed. “Really?” he asks, like it’s so ridiculous, so unbelievable, and Dean’s a little insulted.
“You kissed her too,” he points out.
“I was sixteen!” Sam yells, arms shooting out to either side of him. “I can’t believe you.”
And then Sam is turning to stride into the bathroom, even though Dean’s like ninety percent sure that Sam doesn’t need to pee, and slams the door.
Dean is beginning to see that in any given situation he’s guaranteed to say exactly the wrong thing.
The only upside is that now that Sam knows, Dean doesn’t have to make any excuses to go out and see her. While they’re on their little vacation Dean manages to get Jo alone a few times, and that’s great for a lot of things, not the least of which is his libido. He loves Jo -- really does, though he doesn’t say it -- but damn he loves being with her too. He’s pretty accustomed to regular sex, and he doesn’t regret giving that up for something bigger, something more real, but it does make him kind of over eager when they finally do get a bed to themselves.
She’s twenty now and he feels like less of a perv when he runs his hands over her skin, when he moves her strong thighs over his shoulders and tastes her. He still feels pretty pervy, but really just enough to make it hotter.
She rides him, touches him. She lets him do her up against the wall. She moans so fucking gorgeous in his ear and scratches down his back, little ridges rising up next to all the scars.
And in between, when they’re quiet and recuperating, half asleep, she kisses his shoulder, kisses his freckles, and traces the line of his collar bone with her fingers. It’s only here, only now, that he talks about Sam at all. She’s the only one he trusts with it. It’s fragile and tender inside of him, too easily bruised, and he still hates himself for it.
When she kisses him though, she tells him that her lips once touched Sam, and he can’t believe he gets to have this. Gets to have a girl -- woman -- that not only doesn’t dump him on his ass, not only isn’t jealous, but plays the intermediary. He’s never thought of Jo as a substitute, as anything less than this amazing person all her own, and somehow she gets that. She’ll talk with him about Sam and he doesn’t have to explain that he’s not using her, that he loves her too.
She just understands.
Dean thinks she’s the only person in his life who’s ever just gotten him. Or at least the only person who listens.
When she admits that she wants Sam too, he doesn’t feel jealous or betrayed. Instead he just feels full, and sad, and he just pulls her closer.
There’s no woman like her in the world and he’s so fucking lucky.
-----
They work it out by the time the hunt is over, like they always do. It’s hard to stay mad at someone when both of your lives are on the line and you’re standing back to back to keep each other alive.
Nothing brings families together like brushes with death.
Which only gets proven true again a month later.
They’re back in Nebraska. For a faith healer of all things. Dean’s completely against it, of course, but Sam drags him there, and then he has the gall to go and call Jo. It shouldn’t surprise him that his...ladyfriend is there waiting for him, arms crossed, but it does anyways. She and Sam bully him into going into that tent, into getting that stupid healing touch, and it works -- it works so great some other guy dies.
Dean wishes it had never happened. Sam and Jo’s faces say that they’re just happy it worked.
They want to take Sue Ann down, of course, but he can tell that neither of them really regret what happened, and Dean’s not sure how that makes him feel. He reminds himself, however, that he’d be the same if it were either of them. He wants to save people, but at the end of the day, he’d let them all die if it meant that Sam and Jo were safe and happy.
But then again, Dean never pretended to be a good person.
It’s after Sam manages to take out Sue Ann, or at least take out her cross and let the reaper take her out, that Dean’s world tips around for what has to be the one hundred and eightieth time. Although never quite like this.
Dean is still grey, still trying to catch his breath from almost being preyed on by a reaper when Sam runs up, yelling ‘Are you okay?! Are you okay?!’ and Dean wants to tell him to pipe down and give him a second. But Sam doesn’t give him a second. Instead Sam grabs Dean’s face between his time roughened hands, in those long fucking spindly fingers of his, and presses their mouths together.
And Dean’s pretty sure the reaper did give him the heart attack.
It bowls him over so badly that he doesn’t even really notice the fact that Jo doesn’t go home once everything’s over. She gets in the Impala with them and that just seems normal, okay, until three hundred miles outside of Nebraska. Then Sam’s sucker punch kiss becomes background noise to the knock-down-drag out fight that he and Jo have on the side of the highway in the middle of the night about her hunting.
They only stop when Dean’s phone rings.
And then, of course, is when things get interesting.
-----
Except for the scowling girlfriend and surly little brother.
Those are new.
“Cassie!” he greets, over enthusiastic. She gives him a ‘What are you smoking?’ look, but anything is better than dealing with Jo and Sam right now, so he gives her a bear hug. He’s tempted to whisper ‘Save me’ in her ear like a kidnap victim, but sadly, wonderful reporter though she may be, she’s never going to disarm two hunters that probably know just where to hide his body.
The world is complicated enough with potential threeways that involve one count of theoretical incest and one count of definitely-going-to-hell incest. No need to add ex-girlfriends to the mix.
They work the whole ‘Racist Truck’ case, of course. It’s not like they’re just going to let people die, but Dean spends just as much time on the case as he does making sure that Cassie and Jo are never in a room alone together. Not because they’ll fight -- no no. Both of them are mature women who have no animosity towards one another.
No, they’ll just start comparing notes on how he is in bed, and the last thing he needs right now, aside from Dad crashing this party, is his current girlfriend becoming friends with his ex-girlfriend.
And then there’s Sam.
Sam who kissed him two days ago and the two of them haven’t had a chance to talk about it. Dean hasn’t even had a chance to talk to Jo about it and he thinks it says something about how he’s improved as a boyfriend over the last two years that she’s the first person he wants to talk to about it.
When the whole thing is finished, Dean manages to say goodbye to Cassie in the least awkward way possible(it’s still pretty damned awkward) and she’s no idiot. She doesn’t guess the Sam thing, but she knows the Jo thing, and she’s smirking when she murmurs ‘Good luck with all that’ in his ear, and he laughs. She’s grateful for his help, but he’s pretty certain she doesn’t regret breaking up with him now.
He doesn’t blame her. His life is a wheeling carnival of death and crazy and fucked up, and he comes with so much baggage that he has to hire moving vans.
That Jo puts up with him at all qualifies her for sainthood, he thinks.
As for Sam...that’s more complicated.
Of course, they get cockblocked for talking about it again when Sam has another one of his freaky visions, this time of people they’ve never met before in a house they have nothing to do with. Dean drives while Jo sits in the back with Sam’s head on her lap, stroking his hair through the headache. Dean doesn’t know when they arrived at the decision to let Jo stay hunting with them -- it got lost in all the noise. Now it’s just happening and Dean can’t see a reasonable way to bring it up against so...There she is.
It’s not all bad. Dean doesn’t like her being in danger like this(and Sam’s voice pointing out that it was paternalistic that he didn’t want Jo hunting but thought that Sam should hunt on principle echoes in his head) but he does like her being around(except for when she and Sam team up against him).
It’s a mixed bag.
Saginaw is hell though, dealing with way more than they’re equipped to and Dean can see the pain in Sammy’s eyes the whole time, can see the word ‘freak’ running around and around in his head and Dean would do anything to erase it. The best he can do is promise Sam that nothing bad is going to happen to him, a promise he knows he can’t keep in this life they lead, but he makes it anyways.
And Dean knows that nothing more can come of that kiss.
Sam wants normal, needs normal, and Dean can’t give him that, but he’s not going to make him any more of a freak by bringing him into his own brother’s bed.
So Dean turns away from any conversation having to do with the kiss and is grateful when Sam doesn’t try hard to push it. Dean does his best to put it behind him, even though he knows he never will. He feels the burn of Sam’s lips against his own with every breath. It lives soul deep in him.
“It’s not what you think, you know,” Jo comments, lining up another shot on the green felt table. Dean just blew Sam off again, sending the kid to go wait in the parking lot while he and Jo finish reeling in some easy pickings at the local watering hole.
“Yeah?” Dean asks, moving around the pool table in the smoky din. “And what do I think?”
“You think the reason he’s not pushing things is because all he wants to do is forget about it. That he just wants to have some wrap up conversation and move on.”
“And you think I’m wrong?”
“I think he kissed you,” Jo reminds, a little too loudly -- Dean loves the girl, and loves the fact that she doesn’t give a shit what people think about her, but she really needs to remember that a middle America bar isn’t the place to be talking loudly about male-on-male snogging, all instances of incest aside. “And he thinks that you’re horrified.”
“Horrified?” he parrots, sounding surprised, taking his shot a second later.
“Well yeah,” she responds, her voice like he’s mentally challenged. “He came up and kissed his brother--”
“Jo!” Jesus, the woman was going to get them strung up.
“--and has no clue about how you feel. Imagine if you’d done that to him. You’d be freaked.” She shrugs, walking over to the table, leaning over it.
“And for good reason,” he scoffs.
“You’re missing my point.”
“Which is?”
She lines up and hits the ball, perfect straight down the middle and Dean winces, hating to lose, even if it’s on purpose. Damn sexy to watch her own the table, though.
“My point,” she continues, walking over to him. “Is that your brother has no idea that you feel the way you do. From his perspective, he laid one on you and you’ve been ducking him ever since.”
Dean wrinkles his nose, taking this in and it’s true, yeah. If he’d kissed Sam and Sam had just avoided talking to him ever since...that would be hell. And it’s also true that Sam’s the one that kissed him, but Dean’s not fully convinced it wasn’t some kind of pity thing. Sam is irritatingly perceptive, after all, and he’d noticed the thing between Dean and Jo right away, so maybe he’d...figured Dean out. The thought, though, makes Dean’s stomach flip over nervously and he brushes Jo off, wants to pretend this away. Again.
“C’mon, scram -- they’re getting interested and you just won.” He fists some cash from his pocket, shoving it over to her. “Git.”
She makes a face but sways off to get herself a drink from the bar. Dean is forced to watch her flirt with some asshole for the whole three games he plays with the loser until Dean takes him for all he’s worth. Dean wants to pat himself on the back for being able to hold his concentration when Jo’s doing everything in her power to drag it back to her -- punishing him for not taking her seriously, the manipulative bitch -- and Dean comes over to calmly tell the guy she’s taken. He wraps his arm around her slight waist and gives her a dirty look.
“You’re a terrible girlfriend,” he informs, but it’s the first time he’s called her his girlfriend outloud and the teasing doesn’t go as planned. Instead she lights up, gets that stupid look in her eyes like hearts are about to start floating around her head and Dean groans.
He wishes that that was his biggest problem that night. But when they get out there and find Sam missing, find Sam gone, nothing else matters anymore.
-----
They make it out of there, limping but whole, and get the hell out of dodge before the fuzz make an appearance.
And then, finally, after more than half a year of looking, they find Dad.
Or rather, Dad finds them.
Chicago is a disaster, beginning to end, and Dean doesn’t even try to pretend he’s jealous when Sam meets up with a chick he apparently ran into when he was running away from Dean(again). He feels pretty smug when said chick turns out to be a demon though. Jo gives him a look for that.
She patches them up afterwards, having avoided the worst of the attack and Sam sulks. The conversation(fight, Dean thinks) they had before Dad showed up hangs with him, Sam’s declaration that he’s going back to school, back to normal. Leaving again when it’s all over. Dean can’t help but feel bitter, carries it around with him as they drive from place to place, hunt to hunt. All he’s ever wanted was him and his family, his dad and his brother and now his...sister, girlfriend, whatever, too. He just wants them all on the road, hunting down things and carefree like they never were but like he always remembers it.
The idea that he’ll never get that, that they’ll never get there, stings.
He and Sam get into more fights than ever and Jo has to put up with the both of them. She threatens murder more than once. Dean can’t really blame her. Prank War ‘05 helps, though, as ridiculous as it should be. There’s something cathartic about going back to the years before the loss of Jessica, before visions, before college and running away, before even the fighting, and long before the kiss -- before Dean had all these awkward, uncomfortable feelings, when the two of them were just brothers doing what they could to make life bearable. Whatever they could do to make each other laugh and things like itching powder and super glue were cheap, easy tools to get by.
It’s enough for Dean to begin to pack it in and put things behind him. It still burns that Sam wants to leave and Dean still believes he can find a way to convince Sam different, like he can find the magical combination. Dean doesn’t get how Sam wants normal, wants to live in the same house in the same neighborhood in the same city for the rest of his life. He doesn’t get how that can’t be monotonous, how that wouldn’t be soul crushing, and he just has to prove to Sam how great things can be. He just has to show him.
And it’s that mission that causes him to fuck everything up.
And to make everything perfect.
Sarah Blake is hot. Dean doesn’t deny that. He’s been monogamous for over a year now, almost two, and doesn’t regret it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t recognize hot. But the best bit? She’s Sam’s kind of hot. Curvy, geeky, great smile that can light up a room. And the two of them can spooge over art history knowledge.
It’s the perfect opportunity.
Sam needs to get out there again, needs to breathe and realize that life isn’t as awful as he thinks, and he needs to move on.
“It’s what Jessica would want,” Dean tries, even though he knows it’s a stupid thing to say. It’s not like he knew Jessica at all. He has no idea what she’d want. But he knows she loved his little brother and he hopes that that’s enough.
Sam just screws up his face, though.
“Don’t say that. Don’t say that like you don’t know exactly what death does to people, Dean. How many ghosts have we put down that were good, loving people in life? How many spirits have terrorized their loved ones because they couldn’t let go? If I know one thing I know this much... The dead don’t rest. They never do.”
Dean hates the defeated quality of Sam’s voice, but just like always, he’s powerless to do anything about it.
In the end, Sam just says goodbye to Sarah, nice and polite as all of that, despite Dean pushing him, pushing him and pushing him to do more, to knock one out and understand that this life doesn’t have to be lonely. Just because Sam can’t settle down doesn’t mean he has to be alone like this. Dean knows it weighs on him, especially with Jo and Dean together in the other bed -- Sam’s always the odd man out, and he’s always been someone who hated that.
Dean remembers how bad Sam was at making friends, back in the day, and he begins to see how Sam was so miserable back then, when Dean thought everything was fine. It wasn’t that Sam was a loner -- it was just that he needed time to open up. And Dean begins to get how this nomad life could wear on him like that.
But he still thinks that he can push Sam into trying it, push Sam into Sarah’s bed, and that it’ll all work out okay.
It does not.
“Stop it!” Sam blows up, halfway through what Dean thought was a perfectly reasonable discussion of Sam’s courting practices. They’d driven out of town, per usual, Dean stewing about Sam turning Sarah down the whole way, but when they’d booked into a motel, he figured a little ragging was in order. With time and effort he was certain he could get Sam to appreciate the art of the one night stand.
But Sam, apparently, has other ideas.
“Christ, Dean,” he curses, sounding exasperated, sounding tired. “I don’t-- Can’t you get it? Can’t you understand that that’s just not what I want?”
“C’mon, man,” Dean pleads, huffing helplessly. “You’re going to drive yourself nuts. You can’t just be a monk.”
“We’ve had this conversation.”
“Well we’re having it again!” Dean shakes his head, doesn’t get how Sam can’t get this. Jo went out to pick up dinner, ostensibly, though both Dean and Sam knew it was code for ‘I don’t want to be around you boys and your boy bullshit anymore,’ so they have the room to themselves. Dean plans to put the time to good use. “You don’t have to be in love with someone to rub one out, Sam.”
“Classy,” his little brother snorts.
“Stop acting like you’re better than me. You know what? I did pretty well for myself before. It’s no wonder you hate life. You sit around being a killjoy most of the time!”
“I don’t hate life, I hate this life.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t if you just gave it a chance!”
“A chance? Dean, I grew up in this life. This is the only life I’ve ever really known. I think I gave it a damned good chance, and you know what I found? It’s dangerous and frightening. It keeps you up at night and saps you through the day. It keeps you alone, not just in relationships. It closes you off. By necessity you stop connecting with people, because you know, you always know that you’re going to leave them behind, so why try? Why put forward the effort? Why sink time into a friendship that’s going to go nowhere? No one’s ever going to really know who you are. And even the ones who do, even the ones that aren’t going to get left behind, they could die tomorrow. You could die tomorrow, so why put yourself out there? What’s the point of being a person if you’re just going to end up a corpse?”
It’s pretty much the most depressing rant that Dean’s ever heard, and it tears his heart ragged to hear it coming out of his little brother’s mouth. His little brother, who used to be so hopeful, used to get so excited about the simplest things, about things like cotton candy and books and prizes at the bottom of cereal boxes.
“Sam,” he says, not knowing what else to add, because all the things his little brother just said, he realizes, sound too much like suicide. Not a purposeful act, not trying to end his life, but rather, just giving it up. Giving in. Dean never wanted that.
‘He just needs different things from you,’ Jo had told him once, and Dean had blown her off. He’d done his best to make things alright for Sammy when they were kids, and even when they were teenagers, but when Sam marched out that door he’d taken Dean’s sympathy with him. Dean had stopped giving Sam an inch, stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt. Sam was a selfish fuck who walked out on his family and that was it. Sam was just a kid who needed to grow up and get over himself.
But now Dean’s looking at his kid brother’s angry eyes, blank and lifeless and worn down to an inch, and he can’t help but wonder if Sam was just trying to save himself back then. If it was walk out that door or kill himself, and Dean would send him to college a million times if it meant that Sam was still in this world.
He wants Sam to stay beside him forever, belong to him forever, but if it’s a choice between letting Sam go and Sam dying, maybe not by his own hand but at least by carelessness or loss of self, Dean will let him go.
He has to. Because he can lose Sam, but he can’t lose Sam.
He swallows.
“...I’ll take you back to school,” he says, finally. “When the...the thing is over. Once we’ve found Dad and gotten the demon. I’ll take you back.” He’d take him back now if he thought that Sam would go, but it won’t be yet -- not until Jessica is avenged.
“Thank you,” Sam croaks out, and it rocks Dean to the core to see such genuine emotion in Sam’s eyes again, makes him realize how long it’s been since he’s seen it, since Sam has been anything but in pain.
“Jesus--” he hisses, shakes his head. “I’m sorry. About--...about everything.”
“I’m sorry too,” Sam replies, and Dean’s about to brush him off, tell him he has nothing to apologize for, when Sam continues. “For what happened in Nebraska. For--....” He huffs, smiles a little and looks down, shaking his head. “You know what for. I shouldn’t have done that. And I know you’ve been avoiding talking about it, but you can’t deny that what happened with Sarah was at least partly cause I laid one on you. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. It was wrong of me. I was relieved you were okay but-- You have Jo. And even if you didn’t, we’re brothers, and I know that--”
“Sam--” Dean’s hold up a hand, tries to stop him, tries to stop this train wreck.
“Trust me, I know that, but you don’t have to-- It’s not a big deal. I’m not going to do anything like that again.” He glances up through his shaggy bangs and Dean has to clench his fists to keep from reaching out and brushing them back. “Anyways. I’m sorry. You don’t need to uh...hoist me off on people.”
“That what you think I’m doing?” Dean’s brow furrows.
“It is, isn’t it?”
“I just wanted my little bro to get some play, Sammy, I swear.” He holds up both hands in innocence. “Swear to god.”
“Dean,” Sam smirks over at him. “I’m twenty two, man. You don’t think I can get my own dates?”
“I think you can, I just also think you won’t.”
Sam takes one step closer, and his eyes go that heartfelt-puppy-dog way that Dean hates cause it always, invariably, gets Sam what he wants.
“I can, and I won’t because...because I’m tired of leaving people behind. It’s been almost a year since Jessica and I’m still not over that, not really, and I just-- I’m really glad that you and Jo have each other. But I’m--” He stops them, still not meeting Dean’s eyes, and Dean hates going out on a branch, would never go out on a branch for this, for something this momentous and close to his heart, not to mention dead dirty wrong, but Sam’s standing there, and he’d just about admitted to feeling something for Dean other than brotherhood.
And maybe Jo was right: Sam kissed him, not the other way around.
So Dean reaches out then, grasps the cloth over Sam’s sternum and keeps him from saying anything else. Sam looks up, surprised, finally making eye contact and Dean’s no good at this. He never has been. Jo just kind of gets him, he doesn’t know why. He and Sam...they’ve always had a harder time seeing eye to eye.
A harder time speaking each other’s language.
“...you’re not alone in that,” is what he says, and hopes it’s enough. It’s not though, of course, cause Sam just stands there looking confused at him. Dean makes a sound of disgust. “What you did in Nebraska. The reason I haven’t wanted to talk about it isn’t what you think. It’s--...I don’t... I don’t wanna fuck you up, Sammy.”
Sam’s eyes widen even more and Dean thinks he finally gets it. The knowledge makes Dean’s stomach flip over inside of him, makes it cramp and his breathing go uneven. Sam just stares at him and Dean’s waiting, knows Sam knows now and is waiting for the response, the reprieve or the refusal, and Dean doesn’t know which one would kill him more. His hand is still on Sam’s chest, fingers still wound in Sam’s shirt, and the only reason he doesn’t draw back is because he doesn’t want to draw attention to it.
He’s expecting words.
He’s not expecting Sam to kiss him a second time.
For a second he stays perfectly still, like the moment will snap back to sanity and Dean needs to retain plausible deniability. Like maybe Sam is testing him, and if Dean kisses back, Sam will spring away from him and say ‘Ah ha!’. But Sam is just lingering, trying to make it more, trying to work his lips against Dean’s, and belatedly Dean notices the warmth of Sam’s hand pressed over Dean’s chest. He’s so busy concentrating on that that he almost misses Sam drawing away, dejection on his face.
That’s when Dean hauls him in and makes it real, kisses his brother for real, tastes him and takes, for the first time, what he’s wanted so badly. And Sam does nothing but kiss him back. It’s his brother and it should make them repel, make them jump back, but instead, a few minutes later, they crash to a bed, and Dean’s lost.
He always was.
“Don’t go,” Dean mumbles out embarrassingly, didn’t mean to say it at all, his hands stretching up skin and teeth glancing off the spur of a shoulder.
“Won’t,” Sam replies and it sounds like the truth. “Thought you were disgusted with me -- Couldn’t stay here and not have this and live thinking you hated me.”
“Stupid,” Dean hisses. He could never hate Sam. There’s not a thing Sam could do in any world to make Dean hate him.
When Jo walks in the door and finds them there together they freeze, half dressed and hands everywhere. There’s no disguising what’s happening here. She’s holding a bag of Chinese in her arm and she stops in the doorway, looking at the two of them, and Dean knows, knows that Jo has a thing for Sam too, has ever since she shared her first kiss with him, but he still feels his heart hammer in his chest, like she’s going to call this cheating.
But she just stands there for a moment, staring at them.
Then she steps into the room--
And shuts the door behind her.
-----
Well, Dean and Jo do.
Sometimes they manage to convince Sam to sleep in by half an hour, doze with them, naked skin to naked skin, but Sam is Sam and he gets up, meanders around the room doing god knows what. Sometimes, when he’s moving to the edge of the bed, Dean will grab his wrist and pull him back, talk him into morning sex with lips that aren’t being used to speak and hands that wander. Either way, eventually Sam will coax them both up, amid much complaining, and shuffle them into the shower or start them packing.
Then they’ll be back on the road.
Dean is surprised by how little changes.
It’s only two weeks old of course, plenty of time ahead of them for one or all of them to unearth some drama, more than enough time for someone to freak out and do something stupid. Dean’s betting on it, in fact. But right now? Right now it’s him and his brother and sister and they’re just driving out towards the horizon every day, searching through newspapers and websites and looking for the odd, the weird, the unusual. Right now they’re saving people, hunting things, and when they’re not they’re in diners, Dean and Jo stuffing bad food in their faces while Sam tuts and sighs and lectures. Right now they’re hustling bars and playing darts and Sam and Jo are laughing, rocking into each other while Dean drinks a beer and watches.
Right now they’re crashing in motels with crappy beds, big and wide enough for three, and they’re exploring something new, something tender, and it should feel wrong, should feel impossible, but doesn’t. Dean still feels guilty a lot of the time, on both counts, and he can’t help but do so. He’s the big brother here, the one in charge, and he loves both of them, wants more for them than him, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
He’s cursed with siblings that both know their minds and have no shame about speaking them, and more often than not, that’s what lands Dean in hot water. It’s a pain, and he’s always playing the defensive with them -- it’s just a surprise that he doesn’t really mind.
Admittedly, no man minds much when he’s getting laid regularly with hot, dirty threesomes.
At least, that’s the excuse Dean feeds himself.
There’s a lull for a bit, and it’s a good thing too -- time for this thing, this weird balancing act between the three of them, to even out. To become normal. Or as close to normal as they’ll ever get. Dean can’t deny that he wallows in it, completely gives himself over to the lassitude of living crammed in between two bodies, to living not-alone, and for once, he’s grateful for the break. Grateful for the way they always pull him back, whenever the silence stretches too long, whenever he starts thinking too much, blaming himself too much, and make him remember how happy this makes him.
The lull ends in Colorado, with John rapping his knuckles against Dean’s window, and the carnival of death and crazy and fucked up picks back up again and they’re running to keep from falling behind, fighting monsters on all sides and back to back.
It’s fear and anger and adrenaline, it’s the thrill and madness of the hunt and all the danger that comes with it, but Dean knows this much: he’ll protect Sam and Jo, and they’ll protect him.
Dean doesn’t know much, but he’s pretty sure that that’s what family means.