Prompt: Them coming together finally? Please! Also, if you threw some angst in there, I'd just die!
All In
Her body reacted as it always did when a nightmare shocked her back into the waking world – her muscles tensed to run, her fingers clenched the hilt of her father's knife, her eyes searched the room for the monster lurking in the corner. Even as she repeated to herself that it was only a dream, it took several minutes for her heartrate to normalize and her hands to stop shaking. She sat up, curling against her bent legs, but the images wouldn't go away. She could still see Annette, eyes glassy as she lay there on the ground…
The hunt had been bad. Very bad. It'd been a shapeshifter, a stealthy one, a playful one. It had seen them – her and the Winchesters – as worthy opponents and the hunt as a game of chess. It had taken them days to figure out the pattern of its kills, which had only increased once the creature had realized they were hunting it. The shifter had started dropping bodies like clues in a scavenger hunt.
But the worst part hadn't been the bodies. No, the worst had been that they'd gotten familiar with a couple of local cops. Evan and Annette, partners who refused to let the hunters do their jobs without them.
"These are our people," Evan had argued, shouting over Dean's generic comments that the cops would be better off leaving it to them. "And protecting them is our job."
He was a good man. And Annette… Jo'd liked Annette, seen a lot of herself in the woman, and she'd began to wonder just how similar she might've been to Annette had she never known about monsters.
But now Annette was dead. The shifter had grabbed her, tried to use her as a shield against the hunters in the final showdown. And when if had realized it'd lost its little game, it'd ripped her throat out. No mercy. No hesitation. Annette was just… gone.
Jo kicked off the sheets that had somehow wrapped themselves around her clammy legs and marched out of her room with a cursory glance at the clock on her bedside table. Four in the morning. There was no guarantee she would be the only one up, given that she, Dean, and Sam all had their fair share of bad nights, and a part of her hoped someone else might be roaming the halls just to have some sort of distraction. Either way, she couldn't stay in her room. Besides, they each had their routines for battling the nightmares: Sam would go for a run at ungodly hours, Dean would drink and look for another hunt, and Jo'd make some coffee and get back to electronically documenting all the files, reports, and experiments that seemed to be stashed in the bunker's every nook and cranny. It was a self-assigned project that she doubted she would ever finish, but it kept her hands and her mind busy.
She'd been living in the bunker for six months now. It hadn't been planned, but somehow she'd gone from occasional guest to regular tenant to permanent resident without a single one of them noticing the transition until the deed was done.
"There's plenty of room anyway," Sam had shrugged when she'd abruptly commented on it one day. "It's actually kind of nice having another room taken, you know? Makes the place feel more lived in instead of a ghost town."
She'd talked to Dean about it, too, making sure he was ok with her more permanent presence there. She was… they were… what were they? They flirted, and they kissed. He wrapped his arms around her whenever they were sitting on the couch, she always reached for him when he was getting too tense. Neither one of them had pursued any relationship outside of each other. But nothing had been said – no labels were given, no conversations had, no promises made.
And so she'd brought up her staying there, half afraid Dean's commitment-phobic side would awkwardly tell her she could stay for a few days but not forever. But he'd just shrugged in his casual Dean way and said, "Like hell I'm going to complain if one of my only friends still alive decides to stay for a while."
Friends. That had stung.
But she'd stayed. She hadn't really felt at home since losing her mother, despite the multitude of apartments she'd rented, and the bunker wasn't home just yet. But it could be. One day. Hunting with Sam and Dean was like taking a breath of fresh air. The job was still the job, hunting still hunting, and she didn't regret choosing this life, but the burden that came with it all was easier to bear when she could see she wasn't the only one struggling with it. They never talked about it, of course; that wasn't their way. But the brothers' presence was more than enough to keep her grounded in a way she hadn't been in a long, long time.
"Hey."
She blamed the remaining haze from the nightmare for the fact that she'd almost passed Dean by as he lounged at his usual place in the library.
"Shit. Hey. Sorry. Didn't see you there."
He watched passively as she shuffled forward and fell into the chair next to him. "Annette?" he asked.
She rubbed at her eyes and nodded. He needed no other explanation. "You?"
His gaze dropped to the bottle in hand. He pealed at the beer label, which was so tattered that Jo suspected he'd been at it for a while. "Evan."
It wasn't the answer she was expecting. Dean usually shouldered the lives he lost, while Sam worried about the ones still alive but scarred by what they'd seen. The dichotomy was one of the reasons they worked so well together.
"You think he's going to be ok?" she asked.
"Nope."
He took a swig of beer. It was only then Jo noticed the number of bottles littering the table. She also noted he was wearing the same clothes he'd had on when she'd gone to bed. In fact, she'd said good night just as he'd plopped himself down in that very chair…
"Want something to eat?" she offered, pushing herself to her feet. "I'm feeling like pancakes."
"You know he wanted to marry her?"
Jo paused then lowered herself back down. "Evan wanted to marry Annette? I didn't think they were together like that."
She wished she still didn't know. That made the whole damn thing worse.
He shrugged. "They weren't together. He wanted to be, though." Dean threw his head back and finished the rest of the beer before sliding it away from him. "That second night when we went on stakeout, he started telling me about how they'd known each other since they were kids. She was the girl next door; he was the nerd too out of her league to ask her out. Then they'd gone to the academy and come back as partners. He always thought there was something there on her end, too, but he never pushed. Always figured when they got settled into the job they could try things out." He furrowed his brow. "I don't even know why he told me any of that."
Oh, Evan… Suddenly, Jo itched for a beer of her own.
"Maybe… maybe he'd been holding it in for so long," she said eventually, "and you were just some stranger he thought he could vent to and never see again."
"Yeah? Well, I wish he'd kept his mouth shut."
She selfishly wished Dean had kept his mouth shut, too. Dreaming about Annette's corpse staring up at her and asking to be saved was bad enough, but at least Annette's suffering was over. Evan's, now… he'd be living with the what ifs for the rest of his life.
"I'm not him, Jo."
She frowned, not exactly following. "What do you mean?"
Dean was sitting up now, leaning forward on his knees and looking at her with a look so broken and lost she would've cried if the nightmare and this conversation hadn't left her so drained.
"I'm not Evan," he said. "I refuse to be Evan. He sat there for years, and he knew what he felt, and he didn't do a damn thing about it. And, yeah, maybe Annette would've been killed by that shifting son of a bitch anyway, but at least he would've known. At least he wouldn't be left sitting there empty with memories and possibilities going around and around and around in his head like a living hell."
"Dean, I don't–"
"I'm all in." He shifted forward. His legs straddled hers, and his hands brushed against her knees. "This thing that we've got going on here, Jo, I am all in."
"What are you talking about? Dean, I don't… You're…" She searched his gaze, confused as hell. He wasn't making any sense, and she doubted she could blame her confusion on the remaining fog of sleep.
Then she saw the empty beer bottles on the table, and it clicked.
"You're drunk," she sighed.
He grimaced, waved halfheartedly at the bottles beside him. "Sam was here a half hour ago. Most of them are his. Just listen to me, Jo. Please. These last few months… I don't what we are or what we've been doing, but never in my entire life have I been happier. And that might not sound like it means much because I've had a really shitty life, but I mean it. I get up, and I don't reach for the alcohol first thing. I don't think about everyone I've lost or all the shit I've done. I'd do it all again. I don't wish for things to be different because things being different would mean you wouldn't be here. It would mean you wouldn't be a hunter. It would mean I would've never met you. It would mean you might've died alongside Ellen. So I'm glad for all the crap I've been given if it brought you here to me. You know I'm not good at these things, and I know we haven't talked about what we're doing here, but I want you to know – I need you to know – that this is it. You are it for me, Jo. It's not going to be romantic, and I'll probably give you more reasons to leave than to stay because I'm too broken to function right, but I am telling you now that I- I love you, Jo. I love you, and if you let me, I'm going to ask you to marry me someday."
He loved her. He loved her?
He was going to ask her… someday.
There was no hesitation in his gaze. There was desperation, resolution, and a fierce storm of something she couldn't admit even now, but there wasn't an ounce of doubt.
"Damn it, Jo. Say something."
Her lips crashed onto his. It wasn't sweet; it wasn't romantic. It was a claim. It was desire and love and hope and fear all twisted together. His lips parted. She slanted her mouth over his. His arms reached up, pulled her into his lap, wrapped themselves around her waist. Her hand tangled itself in his hair and pulled him closer, closer. She could feel his fingers digging into her waist, and she scratched at his back in return, melding every inch of herself into him.
When they finally broke apart, she barely moved, leaving her forehead to rest against his. His gasping breath mingled with hers, and somehow she knew his eyes were still closed, too.
"I have two things to say to you," she eventually gasped. She opened her eyes and leaned back just enough to meet his gaze, his green eyes so clouded with longing she almost forgot what she wanted to say. "Number one – if you are saying this because you are drunk or because you think I am some sort of security blanket you can keep until you outgrow me, I swear I will kill you dead." She mashed her lips against his, immediately silencing his protests. "Number two – I have waited for you for too damn long, Dean Winchester. You do what you have to do, and you make sure this is what you want before you go asking me things you can't take back, but remember this – I'm all in, too. I am all in, and I will be for as long as you'll have me."
His eyes searched hers. "Are you sure? I'm not perfect, and I'm not an easy person to-"
"Just shut up and kiss me, Winchester."
He refused to be Evan, and she refused to be Annette. Who cared what her life would've been like if she'd never become a hunter? Dean was right; everything they'd suffered, all the shit they'd survived, the people they'd become… it had brought them to that very moment, to that kiss right there. And she wouldn't have given it up for anything in the world.
She was all in.
