A Dean/Jo drabble that I started a long time ago, but abandoned. I decided to finish it as I really did love where I was originally going with this. The ending's sort of rushed, as I never quite could piece together how to finish this. Enjoy.
"Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions." - Anais Nin
It is not love.
In their line of work, love never works out.
Jo thinks it is comfort. Two souls finding solace in the company of one another - the constants and fixed points a repose in their already volatile existence.
Regardless of what they decide to call it, they know it won't end well. They were too well-trained in patterns - in the life, to pretend not to see them (his parents, her parents), so neither breathed a word.
Instead, they hid in the very darkness they hunted in. Stolen kisses and touches under the ink black night, the adrenaline of the hunt coursing through their veins. Starry nights eclipsing the calloused whisper of finger tips along sun-kissed skin. There was nothing pretty or delicate about it - just a clash of lips and fingers clutching one another as roots would cling so desperately to the earth. Each brush of their lips cementing their reality.
Sam pretends he doesn't notice what they're doing: disappearing in the middle of the night, Dean's lingering touch at the small of her back, Jo's uneasiness when he's gone for too long (she pretends she'll be annoyed if she has to play Jo-in-shining armor, but Sam knows).
He tries to bring it up to Dean while Jo's stocking up on snacks at some run-down gas station where cars are few and far and he swears he's seen this very spot in some horror movie.
"Dean, what are you doing?" He knows better than to press his luck when all he gets from Dean is a stone cold expression. Of course, Sam's always been one to press his luck and he opens his mouth again, only to be interrupted by the swinging door of the Impala. Jo comes stumbling in, broad grin and a bright red twizzler hanging from the side of her mouth. Dean shoots him a look that Sam knows means the conversation is over. He was a gambler, not suicidal.
Sam watches the way Dean's shoulders drop, like he isn't holding the weight of the world on them, not when he has her to help share the weight. "Hey, where's mine blondie?" Dean grins at her from the rearview mirror as he brings the engine to life. Sam sighs, shaking his head.
They carry on. One hunt after another. Hidden kisses in Kansas City, research in St. Louis, dead end in Nashville. Eat, sleep, repeat, repeat, repeat.
It ends when she takes off: packing up and hot wiring a down on its luck set of wheels.
Jo doesn't regret it. After all, they knew the patterns, the destination point for taking this tenuous path. Like worn out maps on the palm of their hands they'd traced for years, they knew. Forever was an allusion, so real yet intangible. One of them was bound to call checkmate; she just wanted to be the first one.
Still, knowing doesn't make it any easier and when Dean doesn't follow after her, it seals the deal with a bitter kiss of what could have beens.
She cries and moves on. Jo's never been the kind of girl to sulk.
It's weeks before he catches up to her in Minnesota.
She's working a hunt, knee deep in mud and rain, dirty blonde hair plastered against slick skin: another Wendigo terrorizing campers.
He finds her eventually. Blood and grime licking at her skin and she's falling to her knees, a Wendigo scorched and withering at her feet. He can't help but look at her with reverence, that clenching in his chest reminding him of words left unsaid.
They find shelter at some seedy motel off the road. Jo stays in the car while Dean works the lady at the front desk to get them a room. She falls for his charms and Dean's walking back with a sly grin on his face and the motel key.
The room is nothing spectacular. Just another to add to their collection of dreary suites they've dubbed home.
The first thing they do is secure the space - salt, doors, guns at the ready.
The second is Jo fixing her gaze on the poor excuse of a bed the motel offers. It makes no difference to her.
The mattress sinks at her weight and it's when she falls back on the dingy sheets that she realizes how much she hurts.
"You know, your dirty ass really should be hopping in the shower," he clucks, eyes watching her intently, searching for any cuts or bruises invisible to his eyes. Jo closes her eyes, her mind racing, trying to block out his voice, his face, his very presence.
He doesn't make it easy as he pulls up a chair across from her and grabs at her ankle, yanking off a muddy boot and tossing it aside. He's suddenly there, all around. The spicy, earthy smell of him, the calloused touch of his fingers, the slow heat of his breath on exposed skin. She hates how easily he breaks down her walls.
She grunts and lifts her head to glare at him, her body aching at the jerky movement.
She has a thousand words dancing at the tip of her tongue, but her brain feels cloudy and jumbled with the marriage of fleeting adrenaline and pain.
Her eyes are following him scrupulously, watching as he reaches for the sorry excuse of a first aid kit he probably pilfered from the front desk.
"Hey Jo, I thought your ma taught you not to stare," Dean says as he pulls bandages, gauze and alcohol out. "Instead of staring, you should be thanking me for saving your ass."
"What mama doesn't know won't kill her," she replies dryly as she struggles to sit up. "Besides, nobody asked you to come be my knight in shining armor, Dean. I can take care of myself. Clearly." Her tone is biting, each word lined with thorns like a rose.
His brows furrow in annoyance, a frustrated sigh escaping bow-shaped lips. "It's not what I meant, Jo."
She tilts her head mockingly. "What exactly do you mean, huh, Dean?" She doesn't give him a chance to reply as she finally manages to sit up. She feels too exhausted to deal with this, to deal with him.
Before he can answer her question, she asks the one that had popped into her head the minute she laid eyes on the eldest Winchester.
"What are you doing here anyway?" She means for it to come out short and clinically, instead, she sounds just as tired as she looks.
He doesn't look at her.
He grabs her arm gently and she doesn't protest, the adrenaline dwindling like water down a drain. She's sitting up now, shoulders sagging and chin bumping against her chest.
Dean stays quite: keeping busy by dousing her arm with alcohol, smearing away the curling red and grime adorning her skin like a tattoo. It never truly washes away (they both know that).
She knows he's thinking though. She reads it in the furrow of his brow, the nervous, restlessness of his body.
When he's done, he finally looks up at her with that infamous Dean Winchester expression painting his face. She hates it, the way it carries too much guilt and self-loathing. It makes her heart sink like a stone at the years embedded in those green eyes.
She isn't ready for his question when he asks.
"Why did you leave?" It's simple - one just as straight forward as hers.
She doesn't look at him. Instead, she keeps her gaze on the gauze he'd expertly placed along her arm. She simply shrugs, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth. "Honestly?"
The expression on his face is bemusement for a second and she's sure he has a sarcastic remark ready at the gate. "Yeah, Jo, honestly," he resigns, his voice gruff. She wonders when was the last time he slept.
She pauses, the air pregnant with words they've both failed to say. So many words and they couldn't even say three.
"Wrong place, wrong time, Dean. It's how we've always been, how we'll always be," she replies. Her voice sounds entirely too loud to her own ears.
She leaves it at that because she knows she doesn't have to tell him she was scared. The boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders and the lost girl with something to prove.
They are both quiet now. Dean hunched over, tending to the remaining cuts dancing up and down her arms in angry red waves.
When she's all patched up, he let's go. She hates herself for missing the calloused touch of his fingertips against her skin.
She shifts so she's on her side, her back facing him.
For a moment, all she hears is the soft shuffle of his feet against the cheap fabric of the carpet and inhale and exhale of her own breath.
"Tomorrow," is all he says. For the first time, she thinks maybe tomorrow will be the right place, the right time. They always had tomorrow, didn't they? The ever shining light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
She doesn't break the silence save for the squeak of old springs as she lays back down onto the bed, pulling her feet gently back up and curling onto her side.
The bed squeaks again at the weight of another body - Dean's curling behind her, lean muscle and hips pressing gently against her back.
Soft lips brush against the delicate skin at the base of her neck and her eyes flutter close. He consumes her - his smell of gun powder, oil and sun, his calloused fingers drawing circles at her hips, and warm breath against her skin.
They've never been able to define them. Words never quite matching up.
If them means this - she'll take it. Even if tomorrow never comes, she'll know she at least had him then.
"Always tomorrow," she breathes back.