Jody takes off driving before Dean even pulls the door shut.
"You alright?"
When he nods, she does the same. Then she punches him in the arm, hard enough to bruise.
"I'm sorry."
"You fucking should be."
He wipes the dirt from the soles of his feet onto the dashboard.
"Where are your shoes, you little idiot?"
Dean leans back into the hand on his head, but the caress is over almost before it started. "Tonight or tomorrow?" Dean asks.
"What?"
He turns to face her. "Do you want to split tonight or get some rest first? I can drive if you want to go now. We could just roll from here with the clothes on our backs, like we did out of Barstow."
"Heat that hot?" She winces. "What the hell did you do?
"Nothing. It's just time to roll. Cops and ... other bullshit."
"Anything to do with that giant?"
Dean rubs his busted ankle. He has every intention on keeping it to himself, but the words spew out of his mouth. "He's fucking married. He's getting married."
"And you care because …"
"Shut up."
"Look. Let's agree. No more adults, okay?" Jody looks at him, waiting for some sign of compliance that Dean is never going to show. "This guy gives me the creeps, Dean. I got a bad feeling the first time I saw him."
Dean's laugh is the bitter, acid-flavored kind. "Yeah? A bad feeling? You ever have a bad feeling about Marc? Or Garrett? 'Cause those guys? They gave me fucking bad feelings. Like, a lot." His voice cracks and he shuts the fuck up.
This has to be Sam's fault. Before Sam started trying to get Dean to talk about this shit, he hardly ever thought about it at all.
"I'm not talking about my poor choices," Jody says. "I'm talking about you messing around with kids your own age, okay? No more with Sam."
"If we leave, that's guaranteed."
"What is wrong with you? You love him or something? Because I warned you..." Her voice has that same high-pitched disappointment and accusation as the time in Twentynine Palms when Dean broke into the cash register at her job.
"No."
"Good. Because we don't do that." She checks her mirror before switching lanes. "He looks like a fucking good lay. That body. God."
"Yeah."
"I understand that, but so are a lot of people. Even some your age. And if they aren't, you teach them. No more adults until you are one. Please."
"Fine. Let's just get out of here, now. ... Please."
"Did something happen?" Jody scours him with her eyes, as best she can in the car in the dark. "Did he hurt you?"
"I told you. He's not like that."
"Well, we're not leaving. Not yet."
Dean reaches for the radio and she slaps his hand. He sucks his teeth and watches other people's brake lights.
"Your coach invited us to dinner."
"What?!" He gapes at her. "Is that why he's been acting so weird? You went and talked to my coach?" Dean has half a mind to tuck and roll and hitchhike out of town.
"I wouldn't have had to do that if you had answered my fucking calls all weekend. I talked to every fucking person at your school because you were fucking missing." She spits the words at him before her expression breaks into something softer. "It was cruel, Dean. To let me think -"
"I'm sorry. I…"
She wipes her face with a rough palm and punches his thigh. "You're a selfish little shit."
"What do you want me to do? I'm sorry. Okay? I was pissed."
"Pissed that I wouldn't let you fuck a giant, who you went behind my back and fucked anyway, and now you want to run away from, because he's not what you thought, exactly like I said in the first place."
He couldn't feel any sicker if she had bottled up this bullshit and made him chug it. "You win, okay? Congratulations. Can we just get out of here?"
"Dean, shut up! No! We're not leaving. We're going to have dinner with these people. Your coach seems to think you have some serious potential. He's ... really proud of you."
If Dean didn't know his mother better, he would think she was choked up. But Jody doesn't do choked up or supportive. She has two gears: obnoxious and annoyed. "You do know that we're talking about football. Since when do you give a flying shit if I have potential or not?"
She stares at him longer than seems safe, considering that the car is still in motion and she's supposed to be driving it. "I want good things for you. Do you not know that?"
"Whatever." He can't think of anything more meaningful to say to her weird show of emotion. "We always blow town after bullshit with the cops."
"This is different."
"Why?"
"How about you stop arguing with me for a change, for fuck's sake? I've done everything I could for you. Everything. Can you just fucking do what I say and stop second guessing me for once?"
They're hardly out of the car when Dean's phone buzzes in his pocket. Jody watches him check it. "That him?"
"No," he lies and follows her up the walkway to the front door of the apartment.
"Tell him to leave you alone."
"I already did."
"Tell him I'll gut him."
Dean stops on the cracked sidewalk to read his text.
SW: Hey
He doesn't turn around to confirm the sneaking suspicion that he would find a gray Prius parked somewhere among the rusted out Fords and Chevys.
"Dean. Come in the house." Jody leans against the open door.
"I'm coming."
DS: Hey
SW: Just wanted to say good night
DS: Night
SW: Talk to you tomorrow
DS: Sam
SW: Just talk
Dean looks at Jody, who runs her finger across her throat.
DS: Yeah okay
SW: Check your mailbox.
SW: You. Not your mom. You have to have shoes
Castiel is in the kitchen with his hand curled around a steaming mug. Sam looks at him with a new and familiar amazement. Once again this man has revealed to him a new side of himself. In his life, Sam has never been this close to violence. He has never felt himself so near to inflicting harm on someone. Sam doesn't want to murder Castiel; he wants to do damage.
A few days ago, when he smacked Castiel to end the caustic words he was spewing at Dean, it was worse than Sam had ever thought himself capable of doing. Sam had not exaggerated. If Castiel ever raises his hand against Dean again, Sam will finish him.
But this is not that. Not defense.
This is a roiling current with its source in Sam's bones. It threatens to engulf him and turn Sam into the kind of monster he has always condemned as being depraved and poorly raised. Something cruel and deadly. His body was made for that. Sam could strike, kick, crunch limbs, so easily.
He retreats to his room and secures the door, putting as much distance between himself and the person he yearns to hurt.
Dean leans with one shoulder against his locker staring down at the fresh message.
SW: Should we grab dinner out or should I cook tonight?
It had come in this morning after first period. Dean hasn't responded because he has no fucking clue what to write. He takes a deep breath and thumbs in,
DS: Practice
Sam replies within seconds.
SW: I know. I'll pick you up after
DS: Can't tonight
SW: K. Tomorrow?
When Dean doesn't reply, his phone starts to buzz, alerting him to an incoming call. He glances up the hallway, as if someone might be watching. After stuffing the phone back into his pocket, he grabs his backpack and heads toward his class. On the third attempt, he wipes his hand over his mouth and resolves to turn the phone off.
Instead, in a moment of weakness and stupidity, he dips into the corner by the stairwell and answers, "What?"
Sam is silent for a second, probably surprised to be hearing Dean's voice instead of leaving another message. "I miss you."
"You saw me yesterday." Dean doesn't ever intend to be an asshole. It just happens naturally without effort. It actually requires more concentration not to be one.
"Listen."
Dean is about to protest when Sam cuts him off.
"Two years is nothing. I can wait, okay?" he says. "I understand if you want to wait until we're legal everywhere. I know you're trying to look out for me and I know that you're probably right. I just want you to know that I can wait. We don't have to do anything, nothing, you know… but I do need to see you. I… I can't let Castiel… He's taken so much from me already."
"Then, why are you fucking marrying him?" Dean shuts his eyes. He didn't mean to let that slip. It's not his business. It's not for him to tell Sam what or who to do.
"I told you this; I thought you understood."
"Yeah, well…" Dean hunches his shoulders and turns his back as a pair of giggling girls passes to go up the stairs.
"Castiel needs a lot of help, Dean. Once he gets it, he'll be able to stand on his own two feet. He'll leave us alone. I'm sure of it. The best way to make sure he gets what he needs is to through my insurance. The only way I can do that is-"
"Whatever. I got to get to class, man."
"Dean. Listen," Sam shouts into the phone. "If I were to move to Kansas-"
"Later, Sam." Dean squeezes out the words just as his throat closes for business.
He hangs up, cuts off and puts away the phone away. He scrubs his face with both hands, forbidding himself to fucking feel anything.
Sam slouches on his way out of the meeting back to the cubicles. Mrs. Mosely rests a hand on his arm, "Sam, it's not any of my business, but by the look of things I'm guessing you got girl trouble."
He huffs and laughs at the irony of her entirely off, though not entirely inaccurate, assumption. Beside Mrs. Mosely, Amelia's face is pinched in a concerned expression.
"No."
"Well, whatever it is, if you want to talk about it…"
"Thanks. I appreciate that." And Sam does, but he has no idea on earth how he would even begin that conversation.
They're playing some 80s song when Dean strolls into the gym with hands in his pockets. He parks it under a paper mache palm tree, watching people dance badly, just like that prom scene in Napoleon Dynamite.
JoAnna Winchester approaches, and Dean looks at his feet to keep from checking out her dress any more than he already has. That ruffly pink material looks like cotton candy. Her father was right to shut down the date. She looks like something to eat and here lately, Dean feels like one of those skinny kids with the puffed out, empty bellies and the flies laying eggs on their eyelids.
He hasn't answered a call or text from Sam in two weeks. He didn't answer the door any of the times the guy came to the apartment. Dean feels like he's been on hunger strike and Jo …
She holds out a paper cup of punch for him. Dean wipes the adorable Shirley Temple curl from her face. It falls right back into place, partially hiding her smile.
"You spike this?"
She grins. "You know me."
It's that sparkling juice stuff they always serve at these things, but it takes the edge off the desert sands swirling in the back of Dean's throat.
"You look nice," she says to cover for the way she's looking him over.
He has on the suit and tie he got from Sam, because it's the nicest god damn thing he's ever owned. That suit, along with his fucked up Chucks. "Yeah. You, too."
She looks down at herself, as if she doesn't already know what she's wearing. She twists her ankle to the side to show off the two-inch heel on her sparkly Cinderella shoes. "Hope I don't fall on my ass."
"You'll be fine."
She smells like strawberry candy. Or pie. The kind of pie you gorge yourself on until it makes you sick and then you keep eating it anyway because it's fucking delicious and you don't give a shit if you explode and die and someone else has to clean up the mess.
Dean massages the back of his neck and forces himself to look across the room. He's not looking for anything in particular. Just anything other than Jo's cleavage, most assuredly accomplished through the modern sorcery of the push-up bra. That doesn't make it any less dazzling.
Garth waves, with his other spindly arm around a short, plump, brown-skinned girl. His shiner outshines Dean's. He definitely took one for the team, the little idiot. Dean raises his punch in salute.
Jo raises up on her tiptoes. Without thinking, he leans down to hear her better and slides a hand to her back. "You want to dance?"
Warm breath on his ear sends a smoke signal directly to his dick. Dean shakes his head and backs up a little.
Jo bites the corner of her waxy pink lip and nods. She takes a deep breath and starts to tell him something else. He doesn't bite this time, and she has to hold his arm to steady herself as she reaches up to whisper, "My dad's office in ten minutes."
Dean tries to say no. He tries to leave her there, waiting in that room, and flee the building. It would be the right thing to do. But there is a pit in his chest that's been growing deeper and darker since the last time he saw Sam. Maybe Sam's sister can fill it.
He's been jerking off multiple times a day, thinking about Sam, trying to force himself not to think about Sam, thinking about Sam anyway. Leaving his phone off and at home and feeling like he was going to implode and cease to exist. They never should have come to this stupid town.
Jody is still insisting they go to this dinner thing with the Winchesters. But she had to work the last two weekends, so it's the waiting game and all around fucking torture. Meanwhile, Coach Winchester is still treating Dean like he's made out of guano and Jody won't say what beans she spilled when she talked to him.
It's not really a matter of choice, but of compulsion when Dean finds himself at his coach's door. He takes a breath, lets the ice rush through his veins in relief and disappointment that the door is locked.
He takes a step back, shakes his head as clear as it'll get and turns to walk up the hall. Maybe Jo was teasing him. That would only be fair. God knows he's teased the hell out of her, without really meaning to.
The bass thumps from up the hallway. Behind him, the door creaks open. Dean turns. Jo smiles and gestures for him to hurry. Something flits in his gut, like a butterfly with broken glass for wings. He checks over his shoulder and jogs to slip into the tiny, dark room.
There's a single candle on the desk, like Dean's birthday cupcake from Jo's parents. That ought to knock some sense into him. He promised the coach, but it takes honor to keep promises. If Dean ever had anything close to honor, he's all out of it now. All he has is this aching need for affection that Sam bred into him with just a few days of constant contact and heartless kindness.
Heartless, because Sam knew he had someone. He knew that Castiel would be back, would need him and that Sam would fawn and fall on his knees to do whatever that pyscho wanted. Sam knew he belonged to Castiel. Dean can't even be angry, because he knew it, too, from the beginning.
He's not angry. He's fucking crushed and forcing every single smile, faking the swag, sick to his stomach with every bite he chokes down.
Jo steps against him and his arms go straight to her slim hips. She rolls her lips under her teeth, looking up at him with so much hope, reflecting back his desperation. When Dean kisses her it's not because he wants her, but because he understands and sincerely regrets the excruciating frustration he's caused her. He kisses her because he has never suffered anything like this pull toward Sam. If what Jo feels for him is anything like it, Dean owes her more than a kiss. He should be groveling at her feet for forgiveness.
It isn't until Jo reaches for his belt that Dean realizes just how far down her throat he's plunged his tongue. He steps back, rock hard. His dick is completely on board with this substitution. She's not Sam. Not even close, but she is legal in all 50 states and single and all Dean's for the taking.
Jo pushes his back up against the wall and kisses the hell out of him while she loosens his tie, rucks his shirt out of his pants and opens his button. Dean catches her wrist as she's working on the zipper. He pulls away, breathless. "Jo."
"I want this, Dean. I really want this."
"Yeah, I see that. Just … take it easy for a minute." He turns his face away from her, struggling to get some of the blood back in his brain.
She lets up with the kissing and revs up the petting: soft, warm palms sliding under his shirt up his chest, slightly sharp nails blazing trails back down. Dean leans his head back against the wall, pins his hands behind his ass to keep himself from touching her.
Jo peels down one, then the other of her baby pink spaghetti straps. "My dad expects me to stay a virgin forever. But that's not how real life works."
She drops to her knees.
"Aw, Jo." Dean closes his eyes.
Actually, he closes one eye, because he knows he should not be looking at her. He is physically unable to get the other one to shut, because Dean is a human being and he wants nothing more than for her to suck him off while he imagines her brother on his knees.
After all, Sam has Cas. Why shouldn't Dean have something good?
JoAnna is church-girl-good, praying to him with her breath on his dick. Raspberry-colored nails, cream-white lady fingers rubbing up and down his thighs. Holy God, she's good.
Dean is hard enough to pulverize nails and on the verge of disintegrating into fucking tears. Sam's wrath, the coach's, not to mention not wanting to hurt sweet Jo: there are so many good reasons not to touch this girl. And how can he not touch this girl?
He puts his hands over hers to make them stop agitating the hell out of his skin.
"I want my first time to be with you," she whispers up at him, eyeing his dick like it's the fucking holy grail and all she wants to do is drink. Dean would be selfish not to let her drink. "I know that you don't want me to regret it. But I would never ever regret you. No matter what happens afterwards."
As she reaches for his dick, her lips part.
Some super-human force makes Dean stop her hand. He grinds his other palm against her forehead, holding her back. "Get up. Get up. Getupgetupgetup. God, please."
She stumbles to her feet and murmurs at her twinkly shoes. "Too forward. Right? You wanted to hunt me."
"What?" Dean pulls up his pants, covering the evidence of how he feels about girls who go for what they want.
She hangs her head and cries into her small hands. Dean looks at the door. This is his shot.
Instead of making tracks and leaving the little virgin in tears, he takes her bird-boned wrist and pulls her with him to her father's chair. He draws her into his lap with her back to his chest.
All he has to do is nudge and her thighs spread wide, legs draped over his. She drops her head back onto his shoulder and urges his left hand to cup her tit. This little girl dissolves like sugar in water, soaks his fingers hot and sweet. She moans and grinds against him, tiny body straining in his hands. He kisses her neck and whispers her name because that's all it'll take.
She whimpers and shudders for an eternity. It always was magic, making a girl come: the tremble and quake, responsible for that helpless cry.
After a while, Jo is still again, only panting softly. Dean wipes a tear from his face onto her shoulder and clears his throat. "Listen, Jo. I … I shouldn't have done that. I.."
"I love you," she murmurs, even before she's fully caught her breath.
"Jo."
"I do. I love you. Whether you love me back or not."
He squeezes his arm tight around her ribs. "You're my best friend. That's unbreakable, okay?"
She nods.
"You wouldn't want me for a boyfriend. No one would. I don't have any fucking clue how to do it."
"But I do. I would, if you did." She turns her head, trying to brush the corner of her lips against his.
The whole room smells like girl now. Dean's head spins with it. He buries his face in Jo's bun, breathes in vanilla shampoo and hairspray. She's still perched on his boner, making rational thought damn near impossible. He has to get out of this. Has to not fuck this up any worse. Has to not fuck Jo.
Dean pushes her up out of his lap, but she spins and stands there with her knees touching his. She runs her fingers through his hair. He shakes his head and presses his chin to his chest, damn near hyperventilating. He needs to make her stop wanting him so that he can fucking do the right thing.
"I'm going to tell you something, and I don't want you to get mad at me. But you are. You're going to get mad at me, and that's okay because it's my fault. I went after him and I always get what I fucking want."
This is a bad idea. But if Dean stops talking, he's going to start screwing. His blood is boiling, dick bone-hard. That attention addict part of him is hooked on the way Jo wants him. It's the only reason he's been leading her on this long. And if he fucks her, she'll never forget him as long as she lives and who can resist that kind of immortality.
Another selfish part of Dean wants to believe that Jo is his friend. And if someone other than his mother and Sam's crazy fiancé knows what Sam and Dean had, that makes it more real. It was too brief with Sam, but it was so good. Dean will never have anything that good again.
After this dinner thing, Kansas is about to be just another rearview mirror state. So he says it, because what difference does it make? "I wanted your brother the second I saw him."
"What?" Jo's brown eyes burn almost black by the light of that candle.
"I, um... Sam and me -"
"Sam? My brother, Sam? When did you even meet him?"
"Your dad's party."
"That was like a month ago." Judging by the look on her face, Dean ought to have brought a vomit bag along for this ride.
"A little more than that. We, uh-"
"You what? You wanted him? What does that even mean?"
Not too late to use that door. "Hate-free zone, right?"
"No." She shakes her head sharply. "No way you're gay."
"You're right. I'm not."
"So…" Jo's anger melts into confusion. "Did you have sex with my brother? Is that what you're saying?"
Dean exercises his right to remain silent. Anything else he says can and will be used against him.
"Sam is, like, thirty."
"Twenty-seven," he says, already forgetting that he was supposed to be shutting the fuck up.
It takes a moment, but Jo's eyes soften. Her head tilts sweetly as she reaches out to touch his cheek. "He molested you."
"No."
"That's why you're so weird about this." Her fingers stroke down his face.
Dean shakes his head, unable to believe how far off the rails this shit has gone. "Jo."
"We have to tell my father."
