He's not the brother with the brains and the reason, even though most days he's hell bent on thinking that way. Dean likes cold, hard facts. Shit that is tangible, that he can feel gritty beneath the calloused skin of his scraped and bloodied fingers. He wants to know how he can do something correctly, and once, and then never have to consider doing it ever again. Normally this isn't such a problem. Until he gets into the main ring and the chaos swirls in an ugly thunderstorm overhead. That's when his true nature bears its ferocious head and kick starts to life with a deep guttural hiss.
x
Dean was never book smart, didn't really get much out of reading. He always scoffed at doing the research part of the job because really Sammy that is the most boring part, why don't you go look at porn on the laptop like a regular guy? Sam got all the smarts in that family, and the influence with how to use them to their advantage. He is all cool collected logic, reason like velvet honey flowing off in phrases and fairytales that never existed from his mouth.
Sam is not like Dean. He is always sure of a situation before he goes bolting into it, understands the ramifications, and has thought out a solid back up plan just in case anything were to go array as it tends to every day of their God forsaken lives. Sammy needs to know, never lets his own agenda get in the way of anything, works outwards from that throbbing pain inside his head.
x
Dean knows a lot of different things, mostly useless in the grand scheme, but enough to make the world tolerable enough to survive in it. He can make one hell of a righteous dickbag when he wants to be. All bravado and bragging rights, cocky little smirk slashed across his freckled face, disaster brimming on the brink of utter and total destruction on his sharp tongue and the pain of an ashen world in his rosemary eyes. Holds his head too high, too proud, too everything about him screaming that he doesn't want help, nor does he need it and you're an idiot if you think otherwise.
He knows enough pick-up lines paired with swagger to make any girl drop their panties at his feet. He can shark anyone out of their life savings with a toothy grin and deck of cards. His shot rings true with his eyes shut and fingers barely holding onto the trigger. And his hands, coated in oil and grease can hot wire the Impala to take him anywhere at any time. He's pretty good with locks in general. But if these are his life skills and professions, then it's a wonder he's been around this long.
Sam always points out that he has a smartness that weighs him down so heavy that the car rides low, grates of metal slapping upon the pavement. It's a haunting kind of genius that plagues his mind, wrestles with his soul, and makes a fucking puppet out of his heartstrings. Where Sammy always knows the solution with a book or an honest to God fact, Dean knows the solution from the push and pull of the stirring insides wrenching around in his guts.
x
Here is what Sammy researches, looks into in great detail, spends days upon nights poring over the information with back up plans laced within other back up plans because the fucking apocalypse is kissing their doorstep and there is no margin for error here. You get the big bad and blow it to smithereens, easy enough in theory of all those words and paragraphs and diagrams and charts that he memorizes with his fingers fretting over the surface of the page, blurring the ink and smudging the lines. But when it comes down to it, all that logic and reasoning and carefully, meticulously plans get shot to shit within seconds because the stirring in Dean's gut births forth with the terror of an angel scorned by their heavenly father.
x
The hellhounds bark and ravage at their heels. The unwanted gnashing of teething and ripping of flesh, sounds of screams echoing a nearly empty sky, and for once in his life, his smartness rubs off on someone else. And he in that moment, he begs for anyone to hear him, to listen because God, there is a point as to why I have to hold it in my guts, stewing like some sick science experiment. Jo takes off in a full sprint towards his body, licking the asphalt, stone in his teeth and with every fiber of his being he shouts her name like some kind of horrible curse. Shots in the air fired and lost other than the deafening noise of his blood pumping furiously through his ears, shallow breaths coming in quickly as those blonde waves spin out akin to Medusa's snakes, damned shooting stars scarring the sun.
Jo.
x
These are facts. Ones that Dean mulls over and over in his head, shaking his brain senseless in order to catapult them out and into the world, far from the workings of what he has sloshing around inside there. These are things s that he accepts and believes and understands have never and will never change or alter under any and all circumstances.
Jo Harvelle was the first (and only, he might add with a snort) girl that ever bested him. She clocked him so hard in the nose, he had been pretty sure she reset a bone that needed resetting at some point anyway. And she didn't even apologize for it.
She was obsessed with knives. Loved twirling 'em around and around in her little hands, sharp edges darting all over the place, in some kind of weird hypnotic way that made his eyes watch without even realizing it.
She loved her mother more than anyone, except perhaps the ghost of her father. Jo was her father's daughter, through and through. The taste for hunting all the evils of the world stemming in her blood stream, suffocating her need to be the innocent little one that Ellen had wanted her to be, had wanted her to be saved from.
Jo Harvelle was one tough bitch. She could take care of herself, he was certain of that. From the stance, tall and proud in her petite form that carried so much confidence that could never be swayed by anyone or anything. The girl was not weak, didn't need any saving.
These are certain known knowledges about Jo. Even Sam knew these things once, kept them stored up tight like Dean did because they were useful tid bits of information that could be utilized at a later date. Yes, this is what was known easily as things you could find in a book or inside documents of Sam's laptop.
x
These are truths. Ones that Dean mulls over, yanking on his heart strings, stirring in his guts, whispering no need for release from the cocktail he shakes time upon time, middle of the night pounding for some kind of answer and recollection. A dusty tin of things he knew about Jo Harvelle that haunt him, cannot be propelled with rock salt or conjured out, permanent little ditties that raise hell on a regular basis. They cannot be changed or altered under any and all circumstances.
Jo Harvelle was beautiful. Not in that kind of way with the sass of her hips or the flip of her hair, rather in how she looked when he saw her bemused take on his persona. Dean was no stranger to women, had spent countless nights with ones wrapped around his torso, faces that he had forgotten, bodies that all felt the same to the touch. Women meant to be forgotten, never remembered. But Jo, from the first chance he takes in her figure, her face, the way her brown eyes narrow at the corners when he talks, how her hair is this gold halo over her head, that all perky smile that shifts to a menacing frown in less than two seconds, sighs that slip from her chapped and cherried mouth, rambling on and on. She is worth remembering, and he often thinks of death and how it wouldn't be so terrible if that was the first thing welcoming him in.
She was young and innocent in every sense of the words, how she stared up at him and Sammy like they were some kind of saviors holding stolen angels' halos in their bloodied fingers. Just a kid and this was never her battle to fight, nor was he any kind of solider that deserved her to come home to. The days that he saw her back in Philly and Duluth, she was so weak and fragile, not he was ever going to tell her that because he wasn't stupid, well not completely, but truly till the last gasp of air she took, between his mouth and hers, she was too pure to this kind of world, too pure for him to have and to keep. He was responsible for a lot of things, he didn't want to be responsible for this too, but most nights he cashes in the thought lying in his twisted bed sheets that Jo was what he once thought life could've been like. What he could've had if it weren't for everything else ugly and evil in his way.
She was hopelessly, head over heels crazy for him. That's probably the one that dulls the senses more than anything. Dean's seen a lot of weird in this place, sees a lot of what people never hope to see, never want to see, and when she looked at him it was some kind of elaborate mistake brimming out on the horizon that goes out to meet you in a way that you can't ever avoid. He was blindsided by the moments that she would appear in his eye line, cloud his vision and then rumble off again to be laid aside. Let's put it this way, since Dean isn't so good with the heart on the sleeve thing. He has seen Hell and Heaven and nothing is better or more terrifying than the way she looked at him.
And the last one, the one that he keeps bottled up never to be set free, never to deign to utter a word to anyone about is the guiltiest action he has ever done. He's been through Hell and back, suffered through Purgatory, eaten the ashes of past lives and regrets, and still, it's this that makes his heart jump into his throat, bears down on what is left of his horrible excuse for a soul. She died saving his life, letting him be, giving more time that he knew should belong to someone so holy and perfect and not ready to face death's doorstep. It should have been him, ravaged and beaten senseless, locked in the room with the bombs prepared to blow at a moment's notice, a warrior's dying for a fallen soldier; it's how he should've gone, surrounded on all sides and taking down the enemy in his final minutes. He never forgives himself for it, though he knows she would've wanted him to, would've made him, been fucking livid if he hadn't. And that isn't even what he feels guilt for, had feigned peace for as long as he can recall on that judgment. Her soul would've never rested had he not.
No, his biggest guilt gets eaten up and swallowed whole every time he kisses another woman, reserves a glance in their direction, especially in these mad times that he lives. Because see here is the truth he never told, but has been ripping holes in his stomach, sweating sin and aching grace, the lie that he told her lifetimes ago it seems sometimes, tripping over the words as the wire began their slip from her dying hands. His mouth pressed with force upon her own, tasting what he should never have been allowed to taste, salty chasms of water damming forward as the life slowly faded from her brown eyes. "This is it. See you on the other side, probably sooner or later," he tells her, hazel eyes wanting and praying in a way that she was sure he hadn't done before. He had wished to all holy hell that she couldn't read what he projected across her porcelain cheeks.
She chokes on her words, hands falling by the wayside, "Make it later." And she cries like the weak, pure, innocent girl that she is and always has been and he holds it in for her and pretends to be strong, and walks away not daring to look behind him. It would've been all he needed to turn around and go back.
x
He had lied. And he was damn good at it.
Dean Winchester is a lot of things, but he isn't book smart. His logic and reason fail him and for some purpose or another, he wanted Jo Harvelle with all of his blackened soul to believe him in that moment that yes, they would see each other again. Dean knows that isn't true though because where he will be going sure as hell isn't where she is. Jo was all that was right with the world, and he is all that is wrong with it, so you can bet when he is kissing the angel of death, he is praying to every god in this universe that she isn't where he is going.
x
Sammy doesn't know these truths. They aren't facts that can be found in a textbook or smarts that can be learned over time and higher education. They aren't something that one finds wedged within pages of an encyclopedia, written on scrolls to be handed down as ancient wisdoms, no charts or pictures on how to fight that upset pit in your stomach that you know will always be right and will collect when it comes time.
Sam doesn't know these truths to be sure, but he knows one that he too, keeps to himself, locked away and bottled up never to be freed nor released because the mere thought of it sends Dean running faster than if Lucifer himself was biting at his ankles. Dean loved Jo Harvelle. His big brother will laugh at this accusation under the dim lights of a shady bar, raise his left eyebrow, and shrug it off his shoulders, so much so that Sam feels possessed for thinking it because Dean Winchester is a lot of things. He isn't book smart, instead he understands via that horrid swirling notion in his soul, and ignores that beating pain his chest. That is where this truth, this fact hides because Sam has seen Dean put it there in a lock box where no one knows the combination, not even the girl herself.
And even then only in the complete and terrifying silence of a motel room in God knows where USA, beneath a suffocating blanket of nightfall and dangerous eons of constellations would his brother even consider letting it burst forward. It's something tangible and for that very purpose it must stay kept away, always missed. What was that she had once said to Dean, sidled up to him at the Roadhouse, fingers playing out their nonexistent future on his forearms?
Wrong place, wrong time.