"You smell like sex." Jo skimmed her lips over his neck before pulling her sweater back on over that lace bra he liked so much. Her statement rang true; the whole cab of the truck had that carnal scent. He associated the smell with all the best things in life, and he took an opportunity to kiss her back. Opting for the first available patch of skin, he got her cheek.

"So do you. Is this the part where you sell me a line about how this was a mistake and you have too much self-respect for sex?"

Despite himself, he watched her for her answer. Jo might have been hesitant about giving him the inch to start dating, but the mile they just went together had been all eagerness. His nerves buzzed with after-glow, his chest ached faintly from some inexplicable tenderness.

"No. Hell no. You might make me regret it, but right now…" She grinned. "I needed that."

He bristled; the tenderness in his chest snapping from soft to defensive under the whip of those words. The comment was the same one every hunter made to his buddies at some point - "I need to get laid" or "It's been too damn long" or "Look at the rack on that one" - because their lives were full of the worst shit imaginable and sex bought a measure of happiness and relief for free. He knew that, knew how often he had said and thought the same thing. Hell, he had jacked off two days ago, thinking about how he missed sex. But the thought of Jo looking around the world with the same hungry, half-lidded eyes made him irrational.

"I guess it has been a couple weeks since you picked your car up from Travis." His words closed in around themselves at the end, an accusation lurking under them.

If he had hoped she would not sink to his level, he was wrong. Her eyes flashed as she zipped her jeans, and she slid over to the passenger seat where she could level her gaze on him more easily. She stared him down, challenged him to even go there.

"You're right it has."

He bit his tongue, knowing he should not rise to the dare in that tone, but his stubborn streak beat reason. Even the thought that she could have slept with someone else while they danced around one another at Singer Salvage Yard, while he busted his ass every day to keep her alive so that he would be the only one to ever know what could have been… He knew she couldn't know what he went through, and yet in the same thought, he blamed her for not understanding. He spoke and regretted each word individually as it escaped.

"Could you wait to get inside or did you screw him in a truck too?"

Jo flinched as if she had been slapped. Dean braced himself for her retaliation, but none came. Instead she ducked her head to tie her boots, lacing them back onto her feet, grabbed her coat, and got out of the truck. The door shut without slamming. The moment of silence after someone leaves always bore a terrible finality.

He froze, still waiting for a fiery retort that wasn't to come, and then he hastily grabbed for his own shoes, stuffing his feet into them without socks and jumping out of the car after her.

"Jo, wait."

Snow swirled down around her, and she had her cell phone to her ear.

"Yeah, I'm starting walking from the restaurant you picked… Yep. My coat's thick… Thanks. See you when you get here."

She hung up.

"Jo, I didn't…"

She whirled.

"You didn't mean to imply that I just hump whoever gets closest?"

He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off. "Spare me. I get it. Even if you don't."

"What exactly don't I get?" His tone was still angry.

"You're mad because you don't want me to be a hunter. That's what this was tonight: a chance for you to pretend I was just a girl with a crush on you. You took me out on a date, got laid, and you wanted to go home and feel proud of yourself. You don't want the reality of me to clash with your mental image where I wear dresses and bake pie and do what you want. I'm pretty sure you've had your share of sex without me over the years - correct me if I'm wrong - but I'm supposed to have waited until being holed up with me for a couple months made you horny enough to ask me out?"

Apologies were not his forte, and if the anger swelling in his chest was any indication, he wasn't sorry anyway. Jo could have just smoothed it over, let his one stupid jealous comment slide, but instead, she had blown it up into something bigger and nastier. She had no idea what she was talking about. He didn't want her to be someone else; he wanted her to be safe, damn it. Only someone as stubborn as fucking Jo Harvelle could turn him into a villain for that. The anger felt good, hot on a cold night, and he embraced it.

"Whatever, Jo."

He walked back to the truck and got in, slammed the door behind him so hard the dashboard rattled. With the truck rumbling under him, he watched Jo in the headlights, marching up the sidewalk. When she got far enough away he could no longer see her, he pulled forward some, a few yards every couple minutes, to watch her even as he wanted to grab her with both hands and shake her. By now, Sioux Falls showed no signs of other people or life. All the town's signs were turned off, carpet rolled up for the night.

"What does she fucking know? She has no idea what I've gone through for her. She has no fucking idea."

Even as he muttered under his breath, the memories of the hardware store hit him as they hadn't in weeks. Her pale, shaky hands around the detonator replaced her smiles and sighs tonight. He rubbed his hands up and down his face, trying to scrub it away, but he heard her agony as the Hellhound ripped into her, saw the blood welling up through her clothes, smelled the sickly sweet scent of death around her. What did she know about what made him act the way he acted? She had never seen him die and been helpless to stop it. If she had, maybe she would expect him to do what she wanted to keep it from happening again.

A little voice in his head reminded him that he cut her out of his life before he went to Hell, but that hadn't stopped her from knowing where he was. She might know a little something about helplessness too.

He ignored that little voice in favor of the louder outbursts from anger.

Ahead he saw another of the salvage yard's old rusty pickups pull over, emergency flashers responsibly blinking, and then saw Sam get out. Dean could practically hear his little brother asking her if she was okay, offering some words of comfort, and when he watched Sam pull her into a hug, he resisted the urge to get out and punch him; no one else needed to comfort her right now. The corner of his mouth smiled involuntarily. Violence sounded soothing. He wondered briefly how far it was to Stolley State Park in Nebraska and if he could kick the ass of a man who made Sam look normal-sized.

Once Sam and Jo got back in the truck, he followed them at Sam's cautious pace over the snowy, deserted roads, pulled into the salvage yard behind them, and then waited for them to both go inside. He stalled in the truck for a few minutes, stupidly unwilling to see either of them.

The digital display flashed midnight when he made his way inside. The living room floor was empty; Sam stretched out on the couch instead, no Jo in sight. He had a copy of some book called A Thousand Splendid Suns open on his lap, but he closed it as Dean walked in.

"Hey. You alright?" Sam's forehead furrowed with concern.

"Jo alright?" Dean reverted to monosyllabic tendencies in situations like this.

"She's upset and might be about as stubborn as you, but yeah, she'll be alright. She's going to sleep in Ellen's room tonight. You want to talk about it?"

"No. I want to pass out and sleep."

"I'm sorry it didn't go well."

"Not your fault. I knew it was a bad freakin' idea. Hunters don't date."

Sam didn't answer, and Dean didn't bother to go brush his teeth before shedding his extra layers of clothing and bunking down on the floor.

Sleep refused to come right away, and he spent a while staring at the ceiling trying not to think about anything.

Bobby nudged him awake, a cup of coffee in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

Dean's head hurt like a hangover, the anger, regret, and embarrassment dragging on him like a night of drinking. Sunlight snuck through the dusty blinds, and because of that, he knew that the old adage that everything would look better in the morning was a crock of shit. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"Best get up, boy. Your angel was poking around in my dreams last night." Bobby held out the mug.

"Which one?" Dean accepted it and took a sip. Lukewarm and black as coal. Bobby had obviously been awake for a while.

"Gabriel." Something in his tone made Dean look back at him, raising an inquisitive eyebrow, but when Bobby continued talking, his words did not account for whatever caused the electric undercurrent buzzing in his voice. "Our angel brigade says they've found Famine. They'll be here soon."

"Awesome."

"There's a reason I'm letting you know what we're about to be up against before I hand you this piece of paper. I'm sorry you had a bad night last night. Don't know whose fault it is, but whatever happened, it doesn't matter right now. It's the end of the world. We've got stuff to do." Bobby held the paper out gruffly. "I'll wake Sam up."

Dean took the permission to take a moment for himself. Normally he would have woken Sam up, but Bobby didn't do soft for no reason. If he was offering, then the piece of paper wasn't good. Dean grabbed clothes and headed into the bathroom. He took another gulp of his coffee and just looked at it. Plain notebook paper, ripped out of a composition book, had never looked so menacing.

He flipped it open, and her handwriting scrawled across the page, almost manly in its messiness.

Gone to help Mom and Rufus with the demons in Missouri. You owe me an apology. My apology's here. I'm sorry I didn't tell you how I was feeling after sleeping with you. I'm an adult, and I should have been able to tell you I'm scared to death of how you make me feel. I'm also sorry I expected too much of you. You never asked me for anything except a date. See you soon.

The words I'm also sorry I expected too much of you sliced into his insides, spilling the bile from his stomach out into his body. He read the words on the page again, the closest thing to a confession of love he had ever received. She had just been offering up some smart defense, casually joking to deflect what she was feeling, and he had been the one to bring matches and torch the barrier. I should have been able to tell you I'm scared to death of how you make me feel. Despite everything, he felt something tender unfurl inside of him reading that. He folded the paper and got dressed.

Then he put the note in his pocket. He had no idea what he was feeling, but he was feeling a lot of it.

When he walked back out into the living room, Castiel and Gabriel had arrived. Dean didn't know if angels just dug trench coats or if there was some other explanation, but Gabriel wore one now as well, a black one. His jaw set more seriously than Dean had ever seen. As Dean got closer, he could hear what Sam was saying.

"So we have to assume Lucifer will be there if Famine is?"

"Yes. With War out of commission, my brother may not be going too far from his pets. I cannot sense him yet, but we should be prepared," Gabriel said.

"What's the contingency plan for if Lucifer shows up?" Bobby asked.

"Run," Gabriel said it simply, so quickly that it sounded like a joke, but no one laughed.

"Does archangel trump Horseman?" Sam asked. Castiel looked over at Gabriel and then answered for him.

"Yes. Archangels are primordial beings shaped from God's most divine power. However, archangels are not permitted to interfere with the Horsemen. That was not part of God's plan. We do not think Gabriel will be able to take the ring, though he may be able to protect us while we do so."

Dean admired Cas's loyalty. The angel had been alone since abandoning Heaven for the Winchesters, and the relief he felt at being back on a team with a celestial being was palpable. He could have simply said that Gabriel was going to be no help, but instead, he had framed it positively. He might only be a Heavenly foot soldier, but his dedication to the people around him, be they human or angel, made him something special. There was a reason God had put Castiel back together more than once.

"Basically, I might go limp around a Horseman. We don't know. Castiel should be fine. Daddy never intended the little people to be near the Horsemen of the Apocalypse." Gabriel turned and looked at Bobby. Bobby held his chin out, that same look on his face that Dean had seen earlier, and Gabriel snapped his fingers. "We're going to need everyone ready to go. Lieutenant Dan, you've got new legs."

Bobby gripped the arms of his wheelchair and pushed himself up. His arms shook, his mouth tightened, and he stood on two legs. He swayed, but no one dared to say a word about it. He turned eyes on Gabriel that Dean could not see, but he heard a knot of emotion in Bobby's voice. He suspected there were tears in the man's eyes as he kicked the wheelchair backwards out of his way. Dean understood now what he had heard in Bobby's voice earlier, that buzzing hope below the spoken words; Gabriel must have told him in the dream that he was going to be able to walk again.

"Thank you." Bobby extended his hand, and Gabriel took it. They shook as equals, eye to eye, an archangel and an old hunter who had earned a blessing.

"Okay," Dean spoke up now, and all eyes turned on him. He watched the faces that had been quietly joyful shift as they saw him. An ominous rumble prickled through him. "So I missed the first part of the conversation. Where are we headed?"

No one answered him for a few seconds, and the answer came to him the same time Sam finally spit it out.

"Missouri. Famine seems to be the reason for the demon surge Ellen and Rufus went to check out."

Dean could tell by their faces that no one needed to be told Jo was on her way to join her mother and Rufus. Her note weighed like lead in his pocket.

A train roared in his head as he asked, "Where in Missouri?"

Castiel, Bobby, and Sam looked surprised by the question, as if unsure how it could possibly matter, but Gabriel, who knew exactly who this Dean Winchester was, met his gaze.

"Carthage," Gabriel answered.

Dean felt the world fall out from under him. He had thought he would never have to go back. Jo and Ellen had died in Carthage, Missouri.