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Dean is so used to driving for days with no stopping, that when he pulls the Impala into a Motel 6 and sees Jo’s beat up pickup truck, he’s certain he’s hallucinating.
He hasn’t heard from Jo for months. Well, only one really. Not since he was at the Roadhouse last and she was still behind the bar. At least long before she got on the road. The hunting life is inevitable, a kind of genetic code ingrained in each family that’s got at least one hunter, especially the Harvelle’s. It was only a matter of time before Jo had up and run away, hit the old dusty road out of Nebraska and beat it into the heart of the southland.
Slamming the Impala door shut, Dean grins to himself when he remembers this morning, dropping Sam off at the town library so his bookworm little brother could dig deeper into whatever the case they were on was. He’d be pissed when he missed getting to see Jo. They’d hit a dead end with questioning witnesses, and Bobby was bitching that if he got one more phone call from a suspicious police force, he was going to let them rot away in jail and not answer his cell phone.
When Dean checked in, two queens, smoking if you’ve got it (Sam liked big balconies), he tapped his credit card on the gritty plastic top of the front desk. That was definitely Jo’s truck.
When the clerk turned to grab their keys, Dean leaned far over the desk to see the arrangements, and furrowed his eyebrows when he saw Joanna Montana on the roster. Everyone in the business used fake names--hell, Dean had a whole fucking list of the ones not to use anymore. Back in Albuquerque, they’d used a set of names wanted by a shitload of states, just because they were tired and the set was the first ones to come to mind. It was a shitshow when they were woken up at 3AM by a pounding at the door that settled in around Dean’s temples for the rest of the day.
The point is: Jo should know better than to even think of using her first name as half of an alias.
When he gets to their room, 6B, he throws his shit on the bed farthest from the door and goes to see what the fuck is up.
It’s a nice enough day out, sunny but overcast, not the harsh sepia tone of normal summer sunlight. When he knocks on the door, Jo answers, looking pissed off, shielding her eyes from the glare with one bandaged hand. She looks like she’s taken a beating, but mostly she looks tired. Where her big flannel shirt gapes open, swaying lightly in the breeze, Dean can see a shoddy bandage job around her upper torso, an Ace bandage striping across her breasts. It’s starting to bleed through.
“What, Winchester, you miss me already?” She says, grinning, but it falls flat when her hand tightens on the door frame to keep herself steady.
Dean just stares at her, working his jaw for a minute before he can finally force out, “What the hell happened to you?”
“Ghoul got a jump on me,” Jo says, backing up when Dean starts pressing forward into the room.
She shuts the door and leans against it, aiming for casual but looking like she’s about three minutes away from giving up the ghost. Her jaw is shut tightly, a proud look in her eye as she tips her head to look at him.
“Did you stitch yourself up?” Dean asks, already looking around for her ancient duffle bag, and, spotting it by the door, hefts it up onto the single bed in the room.
“Does it look like I can stitch myself up?” She asks, and for the first time, Dean notices the careful way she’s holding her arm close to her body.
“What the hell were you gonna do, bleed out?” Dean pulls her to sit on the bed, gently, and kneels beside her. “Lemme see.”
She huffs out an annoyed sound, tinged with an edge of pain, and struggles to get her overshirt off, baring a dirty tank top. She’s not wearing a bra.
“I was gonna go to that cheap doctor’s place in the morning.”
Dean balls up her first shirt layer and tosses it across the room, not wanting to look at the rust colored smears down its right side. He fingers with caution the edge of the bandage, giving her a moment to understand what he’s doing. She looks determinedly at the wall ahead of her, eyes glistening like two black stones in the light filtering weakly from the dirty window.
The ghoul got her good, alright, Dean thinks as he reveals the puckered edge of the thick claw gouges just under her armpit. The skin has been flayed back; a literal pull-like rip away from the muscle tissue below.
He lets out a low whistle as a thick smudge of congealed blood drips from the largest gash.
She grins mirthlessly, lips a pale grey, and Dean leaves her on the bed for a minute while he paws through the mini-bar for a bottle of something stronger than water. When he returns with a bottle of gin, no shotglass, Jo looks torn between wincing and laughing.
“Y’all are gonna make me a damn alcoholic.” She mutters, unscrewing the cap.
He hands her the bottle and unscrews the cap for her, before ducking under her bad arm and letting her rest it on his shoulders. With better access to the wound, he pulls her first aid kit closer, and pretends to not notice the way she’s pulling strongly on the square bottle.
“Why the hell don’t you have thread in here?” Dean grumbles, and Jo’s small fingers flex against his neck.
“I’ve got dental floss,” She offers, mouth wet with gin, almost cheerfully and not helpful at all, and it’s great that she thinks this is hilarious, it really is, but Dean’s seen shit like this go gangrene.
Threading the curved needle, Dean warns her with a tap to the thigh. After a neat row of stitches (Sam’s would be neater, honestly, but Sam’s off reading chick flick romances) Jo is slumped pliantly against him, sweat dampening the hair around her temples, the bottle much emptier than before.
“Shower,” She says, a weak protest, and Dean groans at the thought of the effort, pressing a kiss to her forehead as he hefts her up easily to lean against his side. He ignores her grin.
“Bath,” he insists.
He puts her on the toilet and leans over to turn on the bathtub, carding his fingers through the water to check the temperature as it fills. When it’s halfway full he spins the tap off. Standing, he pulls his shirt over his head, following it with his Henley, leaves his amulet on out of habit. He leaves his briefs on, because even though wet clothes are generally horrible, he’d rather have Jo be comfortable.
Jo however, makes Dean pull off her pants and panties before climbing into the bathtub, movements made sluggish by alcohol. Her eyes are half lidded and dark, and Dean pushes away the stirring in his belly at the warm silk of her skin as he settles down behind her.
“Gonna wash my hair like a good Southern gentleman?” She asks, grinning lazily like the cat that got the cream.
“Sure am,” He replies, cupping a hand in front of her eyes so she won’t get water in them.
She’s suddenly hit with a wave of realization, thinking this must have been how he used to give Sam bath’s when John was out on a hunt. It’s almost maternal in nature, the way he spoons her with legs on both sides of her hips, curves a strong hand over her brow, and pours hot water through her hair. She shivers.
“Too hot?” He asks, dropping the cup into the water, (already tinted brown, but Jo’s too exhausted to care), and squeezing her shoulders.
“No, no,” Jo says, reaching for the cup, disoriented and wanting the warmth back, and hisses; clutching her arm tightly to her chest to cover the vulnerable pucker of flesh under her arm as she pulls, hard, at her stitches.
“Hey, easy, it’s alright,” Dean says, trapping her arms under his own as he crosses them over his chest and pulls her to lean back against him. “Breathe through it.”
She does, or tries to, and when she can see through the embarrassing film of tears not just fueled by anger at her own stupidity, she forces out a laugh.
“I’m useless when laid up,” She says, and is relieved when it doesn’t sound self-deprecating, just tired.
“Yeah, me too,” Dean says, a grin in his voice, even though they both know it isn’t true. Mostly. She’s seen him get more shit done when halfway to incapacitation than any other person she’s known.
(When they were both young, their parents ended up on the same hunt and double teamed some specters, but what Jo remembers is Dean sliding down an embankment on his ass to save a half-drowned mutt, and ripping his hand all to shreds; regardless of it, he’d still held the dog all the way through the vet examination, stroking its mud-slicked ears and looking fit to cry if they gave a bad prognosis. Jo always wanted to hang around their hotel room, and that night she helped take care of Dean’s hand while he babbled, look Sammy, I got stitches!)
“Alright,” Dean says, there’s a muted click of a bottle opening, and she blinks sluggishly back to awareness to notice that they’ve been sitting quietly for a couple of minutes, the only noises the steadiness of Dean’s breathing and the drip of the faucet.
When he’s done rinsing shampoo out of her hair, Dean helps her to sit up so he can wash the rest of her body. His throat clicks dryly as he swallows, hands slippery across the expanse of her back. He doesn’t make her raise her bad arm, just lets the water around them loosen any residual dirt still there from days of hunting.
“All done,” He says, and makes to stand before she does, before she gets a hand around his wrist.
“Wait,” She says quietly, breaking through Dean’s thoughts. “Can you--” She breaks off, mouth snapping shut so forcefully it actually makes a noise.
“Jo,” Dean says, voice low as he prompts her to speak again. When it doesn’t seem that she will, he waits her out.
“Can you help me shave my legs?” She asks, addressing the dirty water. She dares him to make her explain, dares that he will tease her for it, because fuck him, really she won’t have to say that she likes keeping herself smooth like she’s retaining what femininity she has left in this male dominated profession. Fucking Winchesters.
But Dean just laughs. “Jesus, that’s all? You had me spooked for a second.” He clambers out of the bathtub and drains the dirty water away from it before refilling it. He leaves it running while he goes into the other room to search her bag for her razor.
He hears her stop the water, and when he comes back in she’s watching him with an easy smile, steam curling up from her hand where it lays, glistening, on the arm of the tub. Her hair’s half dried in places, and curling around her temples, and he taps her knee when he gets close enough. He sits next to her, both of them facing the faucet, and he lathers up her legs with soapy hands before dipping the razor into the bathtub to get it wet.
She drops her head back against the porcelain and watches as he draws the razor, so fucking careful in a way he never is, up over the curve of her ankle bone. As he moves up higher, dragging the blade against the grain of the hair, he rubs his thumb over the slick-smooth expanse of ankle he’s already shaved. The action is so intimate that her chest tightens. He’s completely focused on her, and such attention coming from a man whose fancy is caught by an early model passing car, it’s a lot. Her gaze is so latched on his face that she almost doesn’t notice when he taps her knee to switch legs.
It feels so damn good, her legs overly sensitive now that they’re not fuzzy anymore, that she groans when she finally slides her right leg back into the tub. Dean laughs kindly, and just hangs his arms over the edge of the tub, resting with his elbows sprawled apart. He kneels and watches Jo and Jo watches him back, a small smile curling up at the corner of her mouth.
He gets distracted by the way the soap runs in streaks when he dips wet fingers to rest against her calf, and for a moment he just dips his fingers into the water and tries to manipulate the soap into swirls.
She has to balance on Dean when she gets out, dizzy from the sudden temperature change, and swats weakly at Dean when he snickers at her. She can’t remember the last time they were this easy around one another, not even having to talk to convey messages to pass a towel to one another. She suspects it was too long ago. Jo sits on the toilet while Dean dries himself off, and she leers a little as he peels off his wet briefs, because really, they weren’t covering much anyway. He pinches her cheek like a grandma, and it’s such a stupid gesture, so Dean, that it shocks a laugh out of her.
Dean grins, a quick flash and the smile settles somewhere deep in Jo’s chest the same way it sticks on Dean’s face all the way back to the bedroom. They’re past the pretense of friends now, and while he finds her clothes to wear, he texts Sam one handed what is going on, laughing at something Sam’s said, no doubt.
She throws Dean’s briefs over the radiator in the corner. It’s so domestic that she snorts out a laugh, and tries to hide it, but when Dean turns to look at her, face so incredulous, she’s no good.
“What?!” Dean asks, grinning wide, nudging her as he sits beside her. “Damn it Jo, you’re gonna---gonna pull your stitches—” He manages, face creased up with a big smile as he snorts, unsure of the joke but laughing by proxy.
“We’re like a damn married couple—” Jo laughs, smacking her hand on Dean’s thigh, leaning against him as she crows with laughter through the pain of her side.
“We are not!” Dean protests with a grin, but realizing that he’s got his ankle hooked around hers and he just gave her a bath for christ’s sake, he kind of agrees. “Okay, maybe we are--but a really fucked up one.”
“Yeah yeah, bitch bitch,” Jo says, and her jaw cracks when she yawns widely, cutting off what she was going to say.
“Alright, that’s enough chatting. Time for bed.” Dean folds back the duvet and nudges Jo until she huddles under it. He stands, tucking her in, and hears her say, faux casually—
“Stay?”
“Yeah,” He says, voice suddenly gruff. “Just grabbin’ a shirt.”
When he curls up against her back, she tucks into him perfectly, and he ducks his head, suddenly feeling vulnerable as he rubs his nose against the pronounced top knob of her spine.
Jo closes her eyes tightly. “Thanks Dean.”
He smiles.