Jo Harvelle (jo_beth) wrote in lost_world, @ 2013-11-22 16:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | !status: complete, dean winchester, jo harvelle |
Little Talks (Jo/Dean, log)
Note: Backdated to just after this
Jo had a lot to think about. The conversation with Rob was something she wasn’t even sure she was ready to process. As a result, she’d spent a lot of time in her room on the spaceship. Or as much as anything that the aliens had created could be considered ‘hers.’ It wasn’t hers, no matter how many of her things were here. She’d discovered that TV was a thing that could be had on the spaceship. So she’d holed up and binge watched a few old sitcoms. Family Ties, Full House, things that she’d probably never admit to watching. She was secretly a little glad to have the room to herself for that. Besides, it was nice to just distract herself with some of the things she’d grown up watching. Of course, there was also the fact that she’d almost assaulted one of the aliens and it was probably safer to keep her temper in check at least until she could find a way to really hit them where it hurt, so to speak.
Currently, Jo was in full-on veg mode, complete with sweats and a tank top, when there was a knock at the door. She searched for something else to throw on quickly and then realized that she just didn’t have much time to do so. Whoever it was was just going to have to deal with the comfort clothing. Besides, it wasn’t like she was that much of a glamour queen even in her everyday clothes.
She opened the door, fully expecting Mary or Johnny who were, as far as she knew, the only people who knew where her room was. Her jaw dropped open ever so slightly as she saw Dean instead. It wasn’t that she’d been avoiding him. Not exactly. She just hadn’t felt much like looking for him and getting frustrated with not finding him. Not after that first day.
“Dean. Come in,” she said.
There were probably things that needed to be talked about. Things were certainly not easy lately. Then again, when were they?
----
He wasn’t entirely prepared for the Jo he found on the other side of the door. Dean had never really had enough time with Jo steadily to see her in sweats and mope mode, though he’d seen a lot of hard stuff in York, with and without Jo. Dean stepped into her room and looked at Jo, who was camped in front of the glow of a t.v. set.
He heard a laugh track and a ‘have mercy!’ and smirked. “Hi,” he said. “How’s uncle Jessie?”
Dean shut the door behind him and came further into the room, looking around, then back to Jo.
----
Jo glared, though it wasn’t quite as harsh as some of her usual glares might have been.
“You breathe a word of this to anyone, Winchester, and you’ll be sorry.”
She moved to shut the TV off and then looked around the room for some glasses and the bottle of whiskey that she’d managed to convince the aliens to replicate for her.
“Thirsty?” she asked.
She wasn’t avoiding conversation so much as being hospitable. She finally looked up again once she’d poured both drinks. They did need to talk about a lot of things, but that didn’t mean that they needed to lead with that.
“How have you been?”
That wasn’t small talk. They’d been apart long enough and there’d been the islands and now the spaceship and she wasn’t sure if the aliens had done anything else to him or what else might have happened. Her eyes silently flickered over Dean, checking for any signs of injury anywhere.
----
Dean grinned. It wasn’t normal for him to go very long without being threatened, and it seemed today would be no exception. His eyes followed her when she moved, and lingered on the bottle. Whiskey? How did…
“Did they make that?” He arched a brow and lowered his chin toward his chest a little. “Is it any good?”
It was painful to have to do this every time--ask the questions because there’d been a forced absence or catastrophe. He shrugged.
“Okay. Y’know, not great. I’m not an island guy.” He hoped she was trying to picture him in the damn outfit everyone had had on that last world. Without his car.
Without her.
“This is stupid,” Dean said. He meant both their situation, the one forced on them, and the one that was being created because of it. Without another word, he moved to hug her, if she’d allow it.
----
“It tastes just like the real thing,” Jo said. It was weird to her too. And she was definitely not happy about accepting anything from the aliens, but hey, booze helped ease all pains, right?
She actually could picture Dean in that outfit, minus the car, and with nothing but sun and sand and not a whole lot else going on.
When Dean came in for a hug, she wrapped her arms around him tightly and sighed.
“It really is.”
They’d had all of maybe five minutes to be a normal couple in the last few years. Not that she actually wanted normal so much as not having to lose each other and re-find each other every month or so. Not having to deal with being put in all sorts of bizarre situations. Not having to wonder if he’d woken up naked in the shower with anyone else through no fault or choice of his own. She just wanted a little bit of time to breathe and time to actually see what could be there if they had the chance. She knew about the future that Mary came from and she’d really like the chance to start building toward that.
She took a step away and looked at Dean. They’d never really finished their fight because Mary had been more important and then everything else had happened. She didn’t much want to finish the fight either. She just wanted to have closure and she wanted to get to the point where things were really okay with them. Especially if tomorrow they might be dumped on separate ends of some other planet yet again.
“Look, I’m just going to cut to the chase. I’m sorry I blew up at you while we were looking for Mary. For what it’s worth, I never blamed you for where the aliens put you or who they put you with. If you’d told me, it wouldn’t have even been a thing. But you didn’t and if we’re going to make this work, we need to tell each other things. Especially if we’re rocketing all over some crazy universe and getting dropkicked from one planet to the next. I want to know about the things that happen to you while we’re apart, you know?”
Jo usually wasn’t one to babble quite so much but it all needed to be said so it came out in a rush. She finally stopped talking and just looked at him for a reply.
----
It was really hard. It was already hard, not having Sam here. Not being able to get Bobby on the phone. It was hard not being able to find Ellen--like, probably ever. Add to that losing Jo over and over, and Mary…
Dean silently congratulated himself for not killing everything in sight or becoming a less functional alcoholic.
When Jo started talking, he listened. That was a lot all at once for her; the Harvelle women were to the point and usually took as few words as possible to get to that point. But he nodded just the same. “Yeah. I know.”
He didn’t know what to say just then. She’d missed absolutely nothing on the last planet, except for Sympathy vanishing from right in front of him. “You okay?”
----
He knew. Jo looked and met Dean’s eyes.
“Good. Then I think we’re on the same page.”
She took a step closer to Dean and reached up to run a hand through his hair.
“I’d really like to get back to our life now. Yeah, Hellmouth and all.” She managed a smile. “But I’m alive, you’re alive, and Mary’s alive. Those are all good things in my book.”
She’d missed him. It was easier when she was angry and distancing herself, but standing this close and having had the chance for that anger to evaporate, it really drove the point home that she missed him. She didn’t like sleeping alone these days. Not when she’d gotten used to sharing a room with Dean before everything went sideways.
“Have you talked to her-Mary, I mean?”
She didn’t think she needed to elaborate. She was worried about Mary, and she’d also had words with both Mary and Johnny about what he was. She thought that maybe this was the sort of thing that she and Dean needed to catch up on and see what they planned to do about it. For right now, Jo thought a holding pattern was best. She didn’t like the idea of ‘wait and see’ but she couldn’t see a better way to handle things. At least, she couldn’t see a way to handle things that didn’t result in breaking their daughter’s heart.
----
That was still weird. She said ‘our life.’ Dean wasn’t even sure that Lisa had done that. She must have, but for the life of him right now he just couldn’t remember.
“Yeah, I did,” he said. The sentence was followed by a deep sigh. “I told her if he fucks up, I have a bullet with his name on it.” He wasn’t going to dance around it. “I’m guessing you know about all of that. Johnny?”
Even though he said Johnny, Dean thought of Ruby.
“After Sam, I just… I can’t. Phaedra’s the closest I can get to trusting something we should be hunting, and even that took a long time. I don’t like that she doesn’t get to ever let her guard down.”
Dean caught himself sounding a lot like a parent. He shook his head as if to clear it.
“Okay. This is weird now.”
----
Jo gave Dean a look, eyebrows raised.
“Now?” she asked. “If it wasn’t weird before, then I’d hate to ask what you consider normal,” she teased.
Though she knew damn well what he considered ‘normal’ and it went a hell of a long ways away from what most people considered normal. She was the same way, though the last year or so had thrown her for every loop imaginable. It was a little strange seeing Dean getting all paternal, but it was sweet too. She’d never imagined herself as having kids until Ellen showed up, but somehow she could see that. And seeing Dean this way over one of their future kids, well… it just made her love him that much more.
“She told me about all of it. I don’t like it any more than you do, but she loves him. And from what I can see, he loves her too. As much as I hate it, we have to owe it to her to give them a chance.” She frowned. “And it’s really damn weird to have to let go of a kid when we never actually got to have her as a baby.”
She was surprised that the thought that they might never get home to live all of that made her sad. She’d never really yearned for babies like some women, but knowing that two were in their future suddenly made her regret the fact that she might not ever get the future that Mary had come from. There was also a part of her that was determined that if-no, when-they got home, they would find a way to save Ellen. There had to be a way to stop the angels from taking her back in time or… something. There had to be something.
----
He was fine until she said the word ‘babies.’ Then, something inside Dean sort of shut down. He didn’t abandon the topic, he just didn’t really acknowledge what she said. Babies were fucking terrifying.
Dean wasn’t sure he’d told Jo about Ruby.
“Sam had a girlfriend. Demon. She’s why the last seal got busted, she was goading him the whole time.” He shook his head. “I want to like the guy. I just… I can’t. Not yet.”
As he was trying his hardest to not come back to the topic of babies, Dean remembered something Ellen told him about her childhood. That he would sing to her. Hey Jude. He didn’t even really know Ellen, and he wanted her back.
“But we did,” he said. “And that’s the fucked up part. It didn’t happen yet, but it did. And I can almost… feel.. parts of it.”
He shrugged. Things couldn’t get so serious right now.
“You like your room?” He asked, nodding into it with his chin.
----
Their future was Mary’s past, and that was the bitch of it all, wasn’t it? Jo frowned, still chewing on the screwed up timeline. On all of it.
“No, you didn’t tell me about Ruby.” Her hand reached out to find his. “I don’t blame you for not trusting him. I don’t trust him either. But she does, and I guess that’s what matters for now.”
Until he did anything to show that that trust was misplaced. That went without saying. Jo had certainly told him as much.
“You ever feel like we just started a book and someone spoiled the ending?” she asked.
There was a part of her that would have liked the chance to live things as they’d happened in the original timeline. As much as she was glad that she’d gotten the chance to get to know Mary and meet Ellen and as much as she wouldn’t trade that for anything, it had taken away the chance to be surprised at where things might go in their lives. And it had taken a relationship that was relatively new and placed some sort of expectation over it.
She didn’t mind the question that could change the subject, even if it seemed a little random. She glanced around the room and then back to Dean.
“It’s all right. I don’t hate it, but I can’t say I’m all that emotionally attached,” she said, her lips quirking ever so slightly into a smile. “What about you? How’s your room?”
----
Dean shook his head. “Nah. Used to try to read those choose your own adventure books and always skipped to the end, anyway. The end was always the same. The middle was where things were different.”
He hoped to God their lives weren’t like that show. The How I Met Your Mother crap got old--fast. But he didn’t know that wasn’t the case. Maybe there were speedbumps, or obstacles, or other people between here and there. He hoped not, but there was no way of knowing.
He pressed his lips into a sort of grimace when she asked about the room. “Eehhh.” Things that weren’t motel rooms really didn’t feel normal to Dean, and probably never would.
----
“I don’t think real life works that way,” Jo said. “Nothing’s guaranteed, so the middle matters.”
At least, she thought it did. Maybe they knew that things worked out, but that didn’t mean that they could just stop trying. It also didn’t mean that things would work out as they expected. Not when everything had changed with Mary and Ellen coming to the past and now with this abduction.
“Well, it’s no Phoenix motel. But the furniture’s pretty comfy and on the plus side, the sheets are actually clean and there’s always hot water.”
As much as the Phoenix motel had been run down, she did sort of have a soft spot for that place. After all, that’s where they’d stayed when she’d first come back and when they’d first gotten together. There was something to be said for that. Besides, she was used to being on the road and staying at the sorts of places where they didn’t ask too many questions. The Phoenix had definitely been that sort of place.
Jo picked up the drinks she’d poured and held one out to Dean.
“You want to hang out here for a bit?”
----
He did.
Dean wasn’t overly fond of being on this ship, or of his room on it. It was just a room. And Dean had never been great about occupying those alone.
He nodded.
Who knew if they’d be separated again soon, anyway? If he had to load up on being with people he cared about, Dean was gonna do that. Because fuck these things that kept putting him in this position. Fuck them.
He took the drink from Jo, sniffed it, cursed at it silently, and took a healthy sip of it.
“If that’s okay.”
----
Jo grinned and leaned over to give Dean a brief kiss.
“I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t.”
She wasn’t the sort to placate others and she definitely wasn’t the type to offer invitations that she didn’t mean. She turned and moved over to sit on the couch, patting the seat beside her with the hopes that he’d join her.
“So a certain dress from that 1940s world turned up here. Maybe if you’re nice, I’ll try it on for you later.”
The Jessica Rabbit dress, as she was calling it, had been a little over the top for her tastes. And she hadn’t been one bit surprised that it was magenta when she’d seen it in her closet here. But Dean had made a comment on it after seeing the poster and if wearing a silly sequined dress would put a smile on his face, she was okay with that. That was something that she didn’t get to see much of these days.
----
Dean’s eyebrows rose.
He supposed that made sense, since all their belongings were here this time. It was her dress, wasn’t it? He hadn’t checked, but Dean figured that meant that his uniform from that world was somewhere in his wardrobe.
He sat down next to Jo, considering what she was saying. He was going to have some fun with her because of this little offer.
“You’re gonna wear a dress? Intentionally?” Dean smirked. “Because of me?”
----
Jo laughed and took another drink.
“I said maybe.”
Hey, she’d worn dresses before. Of course, the last time Dean had seen her in a dress had been part of a plan to infiltrate a demon’s hideout, so maybe it wasn’t that often. It wasn’t that she was opposed to them so much as they just weren’t all that practical. Particularly when there was a chance that something would need to be killed or running might be an issue.
She made a big show of settling into the couch. She certainly hadn’t said that she was going to change right away.