>>“I guess. Haven't run into Norman Bates yet, at least.”
“Yeah I guess there are like eight million movies about people dying horribly in motel rooms aren't there?” Jo realizes, wrinkling her nose, “Those always freak me out, you know, the psycho motel manager that kills people. Or the psycho anyone that kills people. Monsters are easy, you know? You just have to know about them ahead of time and learn how to kill them. People--” she cuts off, realizing she's getting way too close to straying from the unspoken agreement not to discuss anything heavy (and “people tend to make you trust them for years then break all your fingers” is pretty heavy) and turns it around at the last moment with a laugh and addition of, “I mean, you went to high school. Bitches are craaaaazy.”
Then Dean heads off towards the jukebox while Jo waits, swinging her feet and raising her eyebrows as she waits for her education in “real” music. When Four Sticks starts up she laughs, a mixture of pleasure because she actually likes this song, appreciation of Dean's drumming antics, and amusement which she explains briefly with-- “I have definitely gotten 'hey I got a six pack and Led Zepp IV in the tape deck if you have awhile' from guys passing through here before. I have no idea why it's always IV.” Making a 'who do they think they're kidding' face at Dean also serves to put him in another category (which is weird because hasn't she been thinking of him as some pretty-boy asshole who manages to be pretty okay despite himself? It's not like she's kidding herself that he's hitting on her or anything though, wouldn't even want that because...she wouldn't...so it doesn't matter whether he's that kind of guy with girls he thinks of as girls not just family friends right?) so he hopefully won't be offended or weirded-out by that association with his 'proper rock' song.
She listens with the appropriate nods at Dean's explanation of his relationship with Sam, breaking in with a laugh at his impromptu performance. There's no reason to disabuse Dean of the notion that the way he takes care of Sam is 'just part of the brother thing' but Jo's been around enough regular siblings to see how a lot of them don't even speak in school, knows hunters from the bar who don't even speak to their families any more, and the stories she heard from Gordon about his sister are suddenly taking on a whole new light. Plus there's the way he's hesitating over the words when he talks about his mom, which she gets, she thinks, because it sounds something like the feeling she gets when she talks about her dad, a hitch, a skip in the record, but not something you want pried apart or remarked upon or that makes you want to never mention them or anything. So when the line about the owls in the night comes on (her favorite from when she'd first heard the song and had latched onto it the way she sometimes does random song lyrics that give her a quick snapshot of an association, the owls that come outside the Roadhouse on quiet nights) she settles for wailing out her own imitation of Plant's voice, laughing when it comes out high and breathy instead of growly. Her father had always said she'd had a “church choir” voice, laughed when she'd tried to join in on any of his gritty old songs, said 'pretty girls with pretty voices can't sing Black Sabbath' and she'd made him laugh by insisting that she wasn't pretty, she was growling.
“Yeah,” she adds, that done, “I guess it'd be cool too, having someone near your age around who, you know, knows. I'm an only child, obviously, and so's my mom but my dad had an older sister. She's out in California now but she still comes around to check on us and stuff. She's pretty cool, taught me to curse and doesn't flip out like everyone else around here when I talk about wanting to hunt.” She makes a face at that and then goes back to nodding along to the beat, “Ready to put those on the stove?”