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It's after closing time, and the door's bolted, the chairs are all up on the tabletops, the glasses are clean, the floor's been swept and lights are blazing bright and unwelcoming. The last customer left half an hour ago, and it's Jo's turn to close up. She's locked the takings in the safe, checked that nothing too horrific has happened to the john (cleaning the bathrooms is not, thank God, part of her job description here. Not like at home) and she's slotted one of her own CDs into the machine to listen to as she finishes up. She's wiping down the ledge inside the bar one last time when he somehow lets himself in; and there's a moment there where Jo is suddenly three states away, watching a demon striding towards her with Sam Winchester's easy smile. Her muscles are clenching automatically, her belly knotting with tension and her pulse quickening with fear and anger as she remembers being helpless. As she remembers the taunts about Dean. As she remembers the taunts about her Dad. But that was then, and this is now, and tonight Sam Winchester looks like he may never smile again. She's pretty sure he's human.
Still, she eyes him warily, her fingers creeping down to close over the comfortingly familiar hilt of a the sheathed blade in her pocket.
“Sam?” It's a question, and she sees comprehension on his face, and just a touch of shame.
“Yeah,” he says dully. “It's really me. Just me. No passengers.” He doesn't apologise for the last time, and that right there speaks volumes about how much he's changed. His knuckles are scraped and bloody and there's a scratch on one cheek, and he looks – bruised. Broken. Like his last hope just turned to dust. He hooks one of the barstools back down off the bar and sits on it, and looks at her blankly for a moment. Then his mouth twists a little, like he's too bone-tired and miserable to remember how it feels to smile, but like he knows it's what's expected. “I really – I just need a beer.”
There are a lot of different answers she could make to that, but Jo has heard about what happened to Dean Winchester, and she knows what it feels like to lose someone, so she cuts him a little slack. But she's still a hunter, not a patsy, so she doesn't take her eyes off him as she pours a slug of bourbon into a glass and plonks it on the stained wooden surface. “On the house,” she says, and watches narrowly as he knocks it back. Some of the tension seeps out of her shoulders then, and she lets go of the knife and reaches down to grab a beer.
“No, it's okay,” he says. “Screw the beer – I'll stick with Bourbon.”
Jo looks at him thoughtfully, and then grabs herself a glass. “Fair enough,” she says, and pours them each a double. Light catches the rich burnt-sugar depths of the liquid, and sparks off something behind the glass, something stirring sluggishly like the worm in a bottle of mescal, and Sam's hand closes suddenly over hers as he steadies the bottle and studies its contents. Jo lets him, and there's a small, tight smile on her face as she watches the penny drop. This isn't her first day on the job. Her Momma taught her well.
“Silver crucifix,” she says. There's one in the bottom of every bottle. “My boss thinks it's a joke, or a quirk, or something. I figure – what the hell. A girl can use a heads up before one of her customers breaks out the fangs or the freaky eyes.”
Sam's mouth twists into something that's almost a smile. “Smart,” he acknowledges, nodding. “So – did I pass the test?”
His hand is still wrapped around hers, skin warm and dry and calloused, and Jo's acutely conscious, all of a sudden, of just how big Sam Winchester is. She knows that, of course; she has a visceral memory of how strong he was, when he – when the demon riding him – took her for a fool once before. “For now,” she says after a moment, licking her lips. She glances down at his hand kind of pointedly, and Sam makes a small hiss of indrawn breath and lets go.
“Sorry,” he says. And it's not the thing he should be apologising for, but she lets it slide, and takes a swallow of Bourbon.
She doesn't mention Dean. This is how it goes in their line of work – people are always dropping off the grid, always getting turned into the things they're fighting, always being shot through the head by their best friend while they bleed out and cry for their wives and daughters. Shit happens, and everyone deals with it differently. Some people can't stand to talk about it. Some people can't do anything but. Looking at Sam Winchester, she has no idea which way he's going to go.
She's thought about Dean, of course, since she heard about what happened. Kept kind of expecting to see him walk through the door anyway – it's always difficult to believe someone's dead if you didn't see the body. Sometimes difficult even if you did see the body, of course, especially in this line of work. Still – she couldn't quite believe it when she heard. Still can't, to be honest. She's sorry for Dean, and for Sam, but she also feels – well, to be honest she feels vaguely cheated. Because, okay, sure, she gave up on hoping that Dean Winchester would ever feel anything real for her a while ago (well, mostly gave up), but she'd still kind of expected that at some point down the road, surely, she'd at least get to sleep with the guy. (And she hadn't hoped that then he'd finally realise what a blind fool he'd been to overlook her all this time, and start making declarations of love. Honestly. Well. Not much.)
Aw, fuck it. Truth to tell, she's probably never going to stop carrying that particular torch, even though she knows better. Even though he's dead. Because, sure, the Winchester brothers were far and away the hottest thing to walk into the Road House, but quite apart from the pretty – and, hell, there was plenty of pretty to go around between the two of them and their Dad – the thing about Dean that always got to her was how utterly, totally devoted he was to his family, underneath all the bluster and macho posturing. He was unexpectedly sweet, despite all the bad boy, devil-may-care, girl-in-every-port crap. It may have been the pretty face and the cocky walk that caught her eye in the first place, but it was the sweetness that just undid her. Jo's seen more than her share of chest-beating assholes, and scary sons of bitches with a taste for killing that might have been channeled into carving up little old ladies if they hadn't stumbled upon the darkness at the edges of the everyday world and concentrated on killing the monsters instead. She's seen hunters with something to prove, hunters eaten up with the need for revenge. But she hasn't seen many of them who are in it for love. Some – but not many. And none of them looked like Dean.
Difficult to watch all that devotion and not imagine it being directed at you.
But he never treated her like anything but a younger sister – not even that, a younger cousin - he was fond and friendly and teasing and a little patronising, but never flirtatious, in spite of the way she knows for a fact he flirts with every other damn woman he meets. But not the Harvelle women, apparently. Ellen and Jo got slotted into some bit of his brain that said “family”, albeit not real close family, and that meant he never once looked at Jo like she'd have liked him to look. Damn it. And now he's dead and gone and it's all too late. Because that's just how the cookie crumbles, and she isn't going to get one more shot at Dean Winchester after all. He never saw her as a hunter or as a woman, and she had so wanted him to notice her as both.
Stupid world.
“You here on a job?” she asks, after a while, eyeing Sam curiously over the rim of her glass. “Or – you weren't looking for me for something, right? You're just in the neighbourhood?”
“Just in the neighbourhood,” he agrees, staring at his empty glass like he can't even see it. He just sits there, still and silent as any statue, his eyes glazed, lost in thought.
Jo frowns, and then pours him another slug of liquor.
“D'you want to talk about it?” she asks, tentatively, not sure whether she wants to hear about it, whatever it is. Probably Dean, but could be something more – the lives they lead, there's no knowing what could have a person looking like that. And – it's not that she doesn't care, but she's got her own worries, and she gets more than her fair share of drunks spilling their guts every night. She doesn't really need it after hours. And - she's still not sure how she feels about Sam. Not fair to blame him for what the demon did, of course. She knows that, intellectually. Not fair to blame him for what his father did either. For what his father maybe did, if the demon told the truth. Sam's a good guy. He's never been anything but sweet and polite to her – when not possessed by a demon with a grudge, at least. And, hell, hideous though it was to have a demon attack you in the guise of a friend, how much more hideous must it be to have that demon wriggle inside you and use you like a glove? To be trapped and helpless in your own skin while some monster runs around killing and maiming and causing havoc while pretending to be you? She knows that Sam was a victim just as much as she was, if not more.
But - Jo still has this residual anger towards him, this faint sense of having been wronged. She knows it's irrational, she's trying real hard to squash it - but there it is. She's still kind of pissed at him. And maybe she isn't hiding it as well as she thought, because he looks up at her then, and she has no idea how to interpret the expression in his eyes.
“No,” he says, finally. “I really don't.”
She nods. “Okay.”
She swirls the Bourbon around in her glass, and lets the silence grow. It's comfortable, actually, she realises with surprise, even though it's Sam Winchester; she doesn't see many hunters now, doesn't get to share this part of her life very much any more. It's kind of nice, in a weird way, to be sitting quietly with someone else who knows the truth of how things are. Someone who knows – at least, she thinks he knows – that she's not just a pretty face.
“I killed a werewolf five days ago,” she says, to make conversation. “Father of three. Poor bastard had no idea what he was doing.”
Sam looks at her like he's actually registering that she's there. “Solo?” he asks, and it's professional curiosity in his voice, not big brother disapproval. He isn't trying to protect her from her choices. He's too wrapped up in his own stuff to play that game.
She nods, and feels a little flicker of pride. He was a big guy even before he got all monstered up, but Jo had still managed to take him down. And, sure, it had been luck as much as judgment – but she'd not frozen up, she'd not made any rookie mistakes. She feels like she's been doing this for years now, even though it's less than twelve months. She feels like she's been doing this her whole life.
Sam looks around at the bar, almost like he's surprised to see it there. Like he's found his way here, to this bar stool and this glass of Bourbon completely on autopilot. “Is this home now? Or are you just passing through?”
Good question. It shocks her to realise that she's been treading water without even realising. She came because of the rumours of the werewolf, and she took him down already; she stayed around because – well, because she'd made some friends, and because Mick was short-handed, and a nice guy, and - and this isn't her life, and it never will be. It could be, if she wanted it, and it's been weirdly seductive, in its own way. But – she doesn't want to be one of the sheep. She wants to make a difference.
“Just passing through,” she says. “I'm done here.”
She'll pack her bag when she gets back to her rented room tonight, and call Mick with some bullshit excuse. This time tomorrow she can be half way out of the state.
She looks at Sam narrowly as he knocks back the last dregs in his glass. “What about you? Do you know where you're going, Sam?”
He looks at her then, really looks at her, and what she sees in his eyes makes her suddenly pity him in spite of herself. “No,” he says, and then laughs. It's a harsh sound, and one with a story behind it, but she doesn't ask. “Hell doesn't want me, and I don't think I'm on the guest list for Heaven either. So – no. No idea.”
“Oh.” That was kind of a bigger answer than she'd been looking for. She swallows. “Are you going to be okay?
“Sure,” he says glibly. They both know it's a lie, but Jo lets it stand.
“Okay,” she says. “You need a place to crash?” She wouldn't make this offer to many people, and she's kind of shocked that she's making it to Sam Winchester, when she still wakes up in a cold sweat some nights remembering that evening. But - nightmares come with the job, and she knows it wasn't his fault. And maybe she wants to prove to herself that she can handle it too.
He's looking at her now, and she realises after a moment that it's embarrassment on his face. She wonders if he's got any money. He doesn't look like he's functioning real well without Dean; she's got a bad feeling about Sam Winchester. She's seen it before too many times – partners who would come to the Road House, drinking and laughing and telling stories, and then one day there was just one of them, moving like a shadow, hollow-eyed and quiet. And then they'd be gone too. Off their game, used to having someone at their back, used to having someone who listens, who understands, who gives a shit whether they live or die.
She thinks about Dean Winchester dying for his little brother, and thinks about how she felt when her Daddy died, and she sighs. “You've been sleeping in the car, right?” His silence is answer enough. “Look – don't get the wrong idea here, buster, because I'm not offering anything else, but there's a sofa bed, and a shower, and you look like you could use both.” She shrugs. “I don't have a kitchen or whatever, but there are crackers. Have you eaten?”
He shrugs. “I'm fine.” Which is bullshit, but what the hell. He's a grownup, and she's not his mother.
“Let me finish closing up,” she says. She feels a little stab of guilt towards Mick and Ellie, and to Kay and Waylon and RitaSue – but she needs to pull herself out of this rut, and they'll be able to find another waitress fast enough. She can't go getting to comfortable in these places – these gigs are just a way to keep herself fed, keep a roof over her head. They aren't her real job. She's a hunter. It's time to move on.
“Not yet,” he says, looking at her through his eyelashes, trying for puppydog eyes. He's kind of rusty at it, she thinks, but it works anyway because it's just so damn pathetic. She sighs and refills his glass, but not her own. Sam looks at her empty glass, and frowns. “Have another shot?”
“I don't – Sam, I'm not sure this is a good idea,” she says. She doesn't want to lose her edge. Particularly not around him.
Sam cocks his head and looks right at her again, really looks at her, and she feels an utterly unexpected little jolt of electricity. “Chicken?” he asks, and his voice is a little deeper now, a little – okay, fine, it's kind of a bedroom voice. And she's not falling for that shit, because she's not some dizzy little waitress, and she knows that the Winchesters come with crazy levels of baggage. And – he's the wrong Winchester brother, damn it.
But she's never been one to back down from a challenge either.
“Fine,” she says, still meeting his gaze and lifting her chin just a little. She fills her own glass. “Let's make it interesting, then.” She watches his eyebrows lift. “Truth or dare.”
There's a startled little pause, and then Sam chokes out a laugh. “You don't want to play that game,” he says.
“Yeah, I think I do,” she says, still looking him right in the eyes. “What's the matter, Sammykins? Chicken?”
He laughs. It's kind of bitter and raw and out-of-practice sounding, but it's a laugh. “Fine,” he says. “God, Jo, when did you get to be such a little hard-ass?”
She rolls her eyes. “I'm my Momma's daughter. I was always a hard-ass, Sam. You just didn't notice.”
Half an hour later they've finished off the Bourbon and moved on to Tequila, and by this point they both know that Jo lost her virginity round the back of the Road House when she was fifteen, and that Sam slept with a guy once, at Stamford, and that Jo has developed a phobia for small enclosed spaces, and that Sam still dreams about Jessica sometimes, and that Jo came within a hair's breadth of getting killed by a vampire last month, and let the bastard get away. And they know that Sam would totally sleep with Ellen if he ever got the chance, and that Jo had the hots for Dean – but they kind of knew these things already, so maybe that doesn't count. They have also established that, even after quite a number of drinks, Jo can still juggle, and Sam can still walk on his hands.
“Truth,” says Sam, and Jo studies him narrowly.
“Why are you here?” she asks, and watches the smile slide right off his face, like she pretty much expected it to.
“Dare,” he says.
“Too damn late. Spill.”
He doesn't look at her. “Crossroads demon,” he says, woodenly. “Wanted to make a deal, but they weren't buying.”
Jo knows she's gaping, but she can't help it. She probably should have expected something like this, the Winchesters being, well, the Winchesters – but she sure as shit hadn't seen it coming. “That's what you meant when you said – oh my God, you – you idiot! You wanted to bargain away your soul? After Dean died to save your ass? Did you learn nothing from what happened to him?”
“You don't know what you're talking about.” There's a warning note in his voice, but Jo ignores it.
“You think that's what Dean would want? Are you insane?”
“You don't know what you're talking about,” he says again, and his voice is thick with it now, dangerous, spilling out some messy mix of emotions. They stare at each other, and they're both breathing hard.
“Dare,” says Jo at last, reckless and angry, when it's clear that Sam's not going to say any more, and when she's convinced herself to shut the fuck up, and reminded herself that she's really not his momma.
Sam's expression isn't very kind. “Gimme a lap dance,” he says.
Jo almost spits out the tequila she's just swallowed. “You're kidding.”
“Hey, you're always insisting you're all grown up, Jo.” He's watching her closely and his face is shuttered and mean, his voice taunting. He's trying to put her in her place. Maybe not so sweet after all, Sam Winchester, once he's away from Dean.
“That's not the point. I'm not – you're kidding, right?” She's never flirted with Sam Winchester, never thought about him like that, even though he's plenty pretty enough, and she figured it was mutual. Hell, she knows it's mutual – he's just trying to psyche her out because she hit a nerve with her question.
Sam shrugs, and his mouth twists into a triumphant little smile. “S'what I thought. Chicken.”
“Oh, fuck that shit,” says Jo, her eyes narrowing. He thinks this is enough to throw her? He doesn't know her at all. She knocks back her drink. “Fine. Gimme a minute. And go sit on a proper chair.” She catches a glimpse of his startled face as she turns away and runs her fingertip down the spines of the CDs under the bar, looking for the one she wants. By the time she's found it and slotted it into the cheap little CD player, Sam's taken the chairs down from a nearby table, placed their glasses and the bottle firmly in the middle, and he's sitting there with his long, long legs stretching out before him, his arms crossed in front of his chest and his head cocked slightly, watching to see what she's going to do next. He's still got this triumphant little smile curling the corners of his mouth, like he thinks he can embarrass her. Like she's going to back down. Like ten years of working in bars and a year of hunting monsters solo can leave a girl easily intimidated. Jo Harvelle is a lot of things, but shy isn't one of them. Not really.
He gives a startled little half-laugh when the first bars fill the air – 'Black Velvet', which seemed appropriately smoky and sensual to Jo – but his laughter falters when she meets his eyes. She wouldn't do this sober, sure – but Jo's not sober right now. She isn't a kid, and she hasn't been one for a long while - and she's pretty pissed about the way the Winchesters always treat her like one. She isn't smiling, and she isn't playing, and she's gratified by the way that the smile slides off Sam's face too after a moment. Jo might not use her sexuality very often, might have more of a girl-next-door image than a cheap-slut-who-can-bend-like-a-pretzel image, but that's just common sense and self respect. It doesn't mean she doesn't know how to do it.
She hears the breath hiss out between his teeth as reaches up and pulls her hair free from the sensible ponytail, her eyes fixed on his, her hips shifting with the rhythm, and although there is a small voice in the back of her head asking her what the merry hell she's playing at, Jo's kind of enjoying this. She grinds her hips to the beat, the music warm and sweet and sluggish as honey dripping from a comb. Tosses her head a little, watching Sam through the tumble of her hair as she runs hands down over her body and imagines, for just a moment, that it's someone else touching her. Imagines – what the hell, why not – that it's Dean touching her. Jo catches her breath and bites her lip at the thought, and closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, he's just staring, his mouth open just slightly, light catching the wetness of his lower lip. She's enjoying the little rush of power, enjoying the fact that Sam Winchester had thought to put her in her place, and that she's turned the tables on him. He's just a guy - and she likes him well enough, but he doesn't make her stupid like Dean did; she doesn't have that stomach-clenching sense of hopeless wanting around Sam Winchester that his brother always provoked. Still she knows how to make him see her, and want her, and she's just drunk enough to go ahead and do it – because life is short, and if she's got to have regrets, she'd rather have them be about things she did than things she left undone. There are already too many of those.
“Jo, you don't – sorry, I didn't mean,” says Sam, his tongue stumbling and his expression a priceless combination of sheepishness and desire. And that – that feels good. Wickedly good. She licks her lips, and lets her gaze slide down from his eyes towards his lap – and she does smile, now, because he's starting to get hard. Sam makes a small, strangled noise in the back of his throat and crosses his legs, and, yeah, he's really blushing now. Jo's proved her point, and she's not even got to the fun part yet. She should probably stop, since they both know she's won.
Instead, she crosses her arms in front of her and takes hold of the bottom edge of her t-shirt, her eyes still fixed on Sam's face, a half-smile playing over her lips. She sees his eyes widen, sees his eyebrows shoot up into his tangled bangs, and then she sees nothing but cotton as she's tugging the t-shirt up over her head.
“Fuck,” gasps Sam, a moment later, and he isn't looking her in the face any more. “Oh, fuck, Ellen's going to kill me.”
“Probably,” agrees Jo, running her fingers over her skin, still circling her hips like she's already fucking somebody. There's a ripple of dark laughter in her voice. She looks at him through the pale fall of her hair, sure of herself, here and now, and sure of him, and she's surprised by how much she wants this, suddenly. Wants to see what's hiding underneath the layers of clothing, underneath the careful politeness. She could never have done this with Dean, Jo reflects, sadly, because she wanted him too much, and not just for one night. But Dean is dead and gone, and Sam is here right now; she shakes off any wistful thoughts and licks her lips again, letting herself appreciate the breadth of his shoulders and the length of his legs in those jeans.“But it will be worth it,” she says huskily, reaching forward to uncross his legs again, then straddling his thighs in one neat movement. She can feel his erection pushing up through the layers of denim, and she's looking right into his eyes as she grinds down against it. There's an instant, kind of horrible, where she suddenly flashes on the demon that had her tied up, the demon that taunted her about her daddy's death, and then she clamps down real hard on that reaction and tells herself firmly that that creature wasn't Sam. This is Sam. And she's in control.
Sam's hands close over her bare arms, holding her still. “Jo,” he says, and his voice is shaking. “I don't think this is a good idea.”
“Yeah, probably not,” agrees Jo, and she undulates her hips just to hear his breath hitch, and watch the way his eyes flutter closed for a moment. “Guess we're both fresh out of good ideas these days, hey Sam?”
And that does it – suddenly Jo's finding herself yanked closer, and Sam Winchester is kissing her like it's their last night on earth, one big hand wrapped around her upper arm and the other pressing against the small of her back. And, damn, so much for the careful politeness – this boy takes no prisoners, once he's set his mind to something, and, damn, he's a big guy. A really, really big guy – long fingers, long legs, and it turns out that what's hiding underneath all the layers of clothing is solid muscle. It crosses Jo's mind, with something like startled hilarity, that she may just possibly have been paying attention to the wrong Winchester brother for all this time – but even as the thought crosses her mind, she knows it's not true. Knows that Sam might be the one she'd pick for a one-night stand, but Dean's still the one she'd want to marry, if some magical fairy godmother popped up and gave her a choice in the matter. She feels kind of dirty thinking about his brother while she's got her tongue in Sam's mouth, but she doesn't let it bother her.
“Fuck me,” she says, between kisses, sliding her hand inside his shirt and feeling his heartbeat hot and swift against her palm. Her tiny little rented room is round the back of the bar, but she doesn't have the patience to stop what she's doing and lock up properly before she can get laid. Hell with that. “Here, Sam,” she says, biting his earlobe wetly. “Let's do it here. You got condoms?”
Sam makes a choking noise against her throat, and his hand dips down the back of her jeans and slides inside her underwear. “Yeah,” he says, hoarsely. Jo smiles, and darts her head down to find his face and press hungry, biting kisses onto his mouth. She's not going to be scared of Sam Winchester again. Not going to have nightmares about being overpowered by a demon in her workplace. She's going to rewrite those memories, and have fun doing it, or she's going to die in the attempt, goddamn it.
He doesn't ask if she's sure, the way she kind of expects him to. He doesn't tell her they shouldn't do it, or say that she's like a sister to him, or worry any more about what Ellen will say. Instead he unzips her jeans and hauls them off her, laughing a little as she curses her cowboy boots and hops around ungracefully, until he tugs them off as well, all tangled in the denim, and pulls her back down. And then she's straddling Sam Winchester's lap, grinding down on him, and her blue cotton panties are soaked right through, and, fuck, yeah, she's going to do this, right here, and she throws back her head and laughs, because the werewolf didn't get her, and the goddamn vampire didn't get her (although it was a pretty close thing), and that mean-ass poltergeist at Old Man Emerson's three weeks back didn't get her, and she might have lost the boy of her dreams to another demonic sonofabitch, but she's still going to fuck Sam Winchester in the middle of her workplace, because life is short, and you're a long time dead. And, actually, for all that it's fucked up as hell, her life does have its moments of pure, grade A awesome.
“C'mon,” she says, a light of challenge glinting in her eyes. “Stop pussying around, Winchester. Fuck me, already.”
She would never have said that to Dean, she's pretty sure – but then, hell, she never would've thought that she'd say that to Sam either, so who knows? And she's not going to kid herself – she loves the way that Sam's eyes narrow, and the way that he growls, actually growls, and then stands up, supporting her weight with one hand under her ass while she wraps her legs more tightly around his waist, and her arms around his neck, and lets herself be carried over to the pool table.
“Now that's what I'm talking about,” she says, laughing into his collarbone, and in return he pinches her ass hard enough to leave a bruise. God, she needs this. It's been months and months since the last time she got laid – doesn't do for a girl on her own to let her guard down too often, and on top of that she's picky. Which can be a nuisance, 'cause after a successful hunt a person sure can use a little well-deserved R&R.
Sam's got her sprawling back on the felt with her legs still wrapped around his waist, and he's grinding up against her and pushing her bra down so he can free her breasts, closing his mouth around one nipple and sucking on it, all tongue and teeth, until she's squirming and gasping and clutching at his neck, fingers buried in his too-long hair while his fingers slide inside her underwear and investigate just how wet she is. “Jesus fuck, yes!” she exclaims, fervently, and feels him smiling against her skin. He licks his way lower, tracing a path down to her bellybutton and beyond, and she's grinning like a Cheshire Cat and making encouraging noises – when his mouth veers away and starts paying attention to her inner thigh instead. Jo makes an incredulous noise, and tugs at his hair, and he slaps her hand and carries on not going down on her. Jo's belly muscles clench as she curls up and glares down at the top of his head.“Seriously, Sam – you waiting for a written invitation?”
“Shut up, Jo,” he says, and rubs her clit hard with his thumb in a way that robs her of her next words, and goes back to what he's doing. “I know what I'm doing.” He sounds entirely too smug, but he has a point. Jo flops back down onto the pool table and draws a ragged breath, and decides to let him get on with it.
“No, really,” she says, some time later. “Which one of us is the girl again?”
She feels his breath huff warmly against the skin of her leg. “Oh, that would be you, Jo,” he says, and his voice is pitched low and torn between amusement and annoyance. “That would definitely be you.”
“Then stop being such a fucking - uh – oh, Jesus - I - Oh!”
She hadn't really been expecting him to bring her off the first time with just his hands, but it turns out that there's a lot she doesn't know about Sam, and in a very short time he's got her writhing and making noises that would embarrass the living hell out of her if she weren't pretty much focused on coming. Damn. Damn, he's good at this. She's still kind of light-headed when he flips her onto her belly, and she lies there, still feeling shivery aftershocks of pleasure, and listens to the sound of foil being torn open. A few moments later he lines her up, pushes her wet panties aside and finally thrusts home. And – fucking hell!
Jo learned plenty about keeping silent during sex – kind of inevitable, living out in the middle of nowhere with her mom and pop, when most of her forays into fucking were with hunters, and they were every bit as eager to avoid being overheard by Ellen as she was. Probably more so, in retrospect. So, yeah, Jo can be quiet, when she has to. But she's generally kind of loud. And Sam Winchester, damn his smug hide, is setting out to make her scream. And he's succeeding, and then some. She's not screaming Dean's name, either – she'd kind of wondered, in the back of her head, whether that might happen (because it did happen once before, when she found herself having to make her own entertainment because the guy she was bedding was plenty cute, but rather less skilled than he seemed to believe) but as it turns out she doesn't need to escape into fantasies about Dean. As it turns out, Sam is more than capable of keeping her attention fixed on the here-and-now - and anyway, there's no possibility of forgetting who she's with, because he keeps up a steady litany of unexpectedly filthy talk about what they're doing, and about how much her Momma would disapprove of the both of them, and about how hot she is, and what else he'd like to do to her.
It is, quite frankly, the best sex she's had in – God, in years. She's not going to say ever, because she doesn't want to encourage his ego any, even in her head (and, besides, this is a one-time deal), but – yeah. Wow. He's got some skills. Honest to God, she had no idea Sam had it in him. Biggest surprise she's had in months. (And by biggest – yeah, she definitely does mean biggest. Almost uncomfortably so.)
“You wanted to fuck Dean, didn't you?” he breathes in her ear, after a while – and, okay, wow, awkward. Didn't see that coming. Jo bites her bottom lip, and Sam punctuates his question with a snap of his hips. “Didn't you, Jo?”
“Yes!” she says, because, fuck, fine, it's what he wants to hear, and they both know it's the truth.
“You wanted him to bend you over one of your Momma's tables, or fuck you up against the bar, didn't you?”
“Yes,” she gasps, shuddering, and he bites her shoulder hard. “Yes, okay? Yes. I was hot for him, all right? Satisfied?”
“He could be so fucking stupid,” says Sam, his voice ragged, and she gets the impression he isn't even listening to her. His hands are tight around her waist, jerking her back against his cock, controlling their rhythm. “Didn't notice what was right in front of him. Jerk. He should have – we should have taken you together. Should've made it into a party. You'd have gone for that, Jo, wouldn't you? My cock pumping into you while you sucked Dean off?”
Jo squeezes her eyes closed, and makes a shocked sound somewhere between a gasp and a moan. “Fuck!” is all she can say, as Sam thrusts in sharp and quick, his hips slapping against the curve of her ass, because, okay, sure, now she's thinking of Dean. Can't help it. Sam's brought Dean into the damn room with them after all.
“Maybe I could fuck your mouth while you let him in here.” His fingers are rough and sloppy on her clit, grinding down to where his cock stretches her open. “ 'Cause you would let him, wouldn't you, Jo? You'd let him in wherever he asked.”
“Yes,” Jo says, barely audible now, but Sam hears her, and a moment later she gasps as he pushes two slick fingers into her ass. “What the – you – fucking hell, Sam!” she protests, but then she's shuddering as he starts thrusting harder and faster.
“Both of us in you. You'd love that, wouldn't you, Jo? You'd beg for it.”
“Yes,” she admits, kind of hating him right now but just a heartbeat away from coming anyway. “Yes, but you – this is fucked up, Sam. This is – oh, God, ye-eah! - you – oh!”
“Say his name,” says Sam, his voice low and tattered, and Jo's eyes start out of her head a little.
“What?”
“Say. His. Name! Say it!”
“You are seriously – you – oh, Jesus, that's – oh, fuck, yeah!”
“Say it!”
“Dean! Dean! Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, yeah - Dean!”
She feels him coming inside her then, and he's wrapping his arm around her chest and pulling her close, his chest shuddering like he's sobbing or something, and she thinks – she's almost sure that she heard him say it too. Although she's not sure what to think of that. So she decides not to think about it, and instead – because she's close, real close - she pulls his hand down to her clit and gets him to finish bringing her off for the second time.
It's a little weird afterwards, because of the Dean thing, but Jo's tired, and Sam's exhausted, and so she ends up dragging him back to her little bedsit for the rest of the night anyhow, along with a litre bottle of water. She figures that if he didn't need some sleep and a shower before, he sure as hell does now. (And besides – she isn't quite ready to watch him walk out the door. And he's surprisingly cuddly. Jo's a little disturbed by how much she likes that.)
They have sex again, a little before sunrise – sleepy, relaxed, friendly (unprotected! Fuck! She is an idiot!) sex, and then Jo falls asleep again with Sam spooned up behind her, the two of them sweaty and sticky and thoroughly disgusting by this point. And it's – nice. It's really quite appallingly, disarmingly, nice.
She wakes up first. They've rolled apart in the night, each finding their own space. Both used to sleeping alone these days. Jo wakes up and she lies there for a long while, and thinks about Sam Winchester. Thinks about travelling around in the Chevy with him instead of making her way out here all alone; thinks about having him at her back on hunts; checking in to motels together; pulling scams together. And she's kind of shocked by the surge of wanting that this provokes. Not just for the sex – although, Christ on a crutch, yeah, she could definitely get used to that. But – not just for the sex. For the companionship, and the support. Because this life is pretty fucking lonely, and it's plenty dangerous, and she's always envied the hunters who worked in teams. Father and son. Husband and wife. Buddies. Brothers. (She's like to think there's some mother-daughter teams out there, or some sisters, but she's never seen them.)
She gets out of bed quietly, and steps into the tiny bathroom, and she thinks real hard about the previous night while she showers all the traces off her flesh. Or – well, most of the traces. She's going to have some bruises, for definite, and she's going to have to find somewhere that supplies the goddamn morning after pill too. But she's clean as a whistle by the time she steps out of the shower, and as she brushes her teeth she's reminded herself of the fact that the Winchester men, while they might well be hotter than hotsauce in a volcano, are also bad luck. Like, serious, serious bad luck. Open-up-the-gate-to-hell bad luck. Sell-their-souls-to-demons bad luck. And that the people who get close to them? Have a habit of getting dead.
And, yeah, okay, you could say that about most people in this line of work. But the Winchesters have raised it to a fine art form.
And, besides – she doesn't want to just be a substitute for Dean. Not in any way, shape or form. Sam Winchester has more baggage than United Airlines, and Jo doesn't want any part of that.
So by the time that Sam finally opens his eyes – and, Jesus, he's plenty pretty lying there all fucked out and naked in her bed, with his great big shoulders and the messy tangle of his bangs – Jo will be clean and dressed, her wet hair hanging in a neat braid down her back, her few possessions stowed neatly in her backpack, and she'll be gone. She'll leave him a note. Leave the key, and ask him to drop it in the mailbox. (Later she'll call her boss and feed him some lie about why she had to leave.) But that's it. No morning cuddles, no listening to lies about calling, or dealing with offers of a seat in the Chevy and something more permanent than a one-night stand. She doesn't know which would be worse – but she knows she doesn't want to hear either one.
Moving on, like she said. But not with Sam.