SPN Fic: Five Times the Harvelles and the Winchesters (Never) Hunted Together (Gen, PG)
Title: Five Times the Harvelles and the Winchesters (Never) Hunted Together
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG
W/C: 2,000
a/n: Thank you to the lovely musesfool for the beta. Set at various times between 5x04 and 5x10, with references to 2x14, no spoilers for 5x10.
1.
The wyverns -- dragons, Dean kept insisting, with a look that showed exactly what Dean thought of a pretentious term like wyvern -- were smaller than Jo expected them to be. She ducked beside the Impala as one of them swooped over her head, the wings stirring her hair.
Crouched near her, Dean flinched at the scrape of claws raking against metal when the wyvern skimmed the top of his car, leaving scratches. Then Dean gave Jo a hand signal, two fingers flicked sharply forward. He raised his shotgun as she ran across the street, keeping her head down, the beat of wings growing more distant. Pieces of broken masonry dug into her knee through her jeans when she reached the truck and knelt, blood rushing in her ears. She took slow, deep breaths to calm her heartbeat.
She and Mom had gotten to town first, drawn by the voices on the police scanner Mom had installed in the truck. What with it being the end of the world, Jo thought she shouldn't be quite so surprised to find a flock of dragons attacking a very small Nebraska town. They looked like they'd escaped from the pages of her medieval art textbook.
The town's three deputies had tried, only to give it up when one of them got his arm torn open, and the others ran out of ammo. Last Jo had seen them, one was dragging their injured buddy into the post office while the third, a slender dark-skinned woman, covered them with her last few bullets, while Sam covered her with his shotgun.
Everyone else in town had already fled. It was the three deputies against the dragons when Jo and her mother got there, and then the Winchesters.
Jo spotted her mother at the end of the block, keeping low with her knees bent and her back against the brick wall of the post office, crossbow trained towards the sky, where another wyvern turned in circles. She raised her head and gave Jo a small, closed-mouth twitch of a smile. Jo saw the reminder in the way she gripped the crossbow, the tightness of her jaw, how much her mother hated this. That smile was only for Jo, as if she was the one who needed the encouragement. Jo didn't know how to tell her that the race of her heartbeat, the satisfying mental click that happened when she sighted on a target, the knowing she'd removed one more horrible dark thing from the world, wasn't something she needed comforting from. She smiled back at her mother.
Things went quiet, an inhale of time, while the wind kicked an empty fast food container down the street, whistling the way only the wind in Nebraska could, before Jo heard the sound of many wings beating, growing louder. Sam came racing around the corner with a flock of wyverns bearing down on him.
"Now!" Dean yelled.
Jo and Dean both stood from their cover and fired, taking the things out of the sky. The creatures hit the ground with thuds that sounded brittle and soft, flesh and bone and wing. One of them got too close to Sam, and he threw himself down as it rushed over his head. He rolled onto his back, aimed his shotgun, and fired.
Several more fell out of the sky but it wasn't enough, and Dean started forward into the street before an arrow snapped into a diving wyvern. It tumbled over, landing a yard away from Sam.
Turning to look at her mother, Jo saw her lower the crossbow and pull another arrow out of the canvas bag at her feet.
2.
Jo could've taken that poltergeist herself, but after it threw her down the stairs, leaving her bruised yet mostly unharmed, her mother made a phone call.
By the time Sam and Dean showed up, Jo and her mom were done screaming at each other. They leaned against the side of the truck outside the house, drinking a couple of Cokes from glass bottles. Her mother insisted Jo hold a bag full of ice against her shoulder.
"I'm sorry," Jo said, as Dean pulled the bag aside, leaning closer to see the bruise. His fingers were warm against her chilled skin as he examined the injury. She swallowed, hoping he couldn't see the jump of the pulse in her throat. "You've got bigger fish to fry than some ghost, but she --" Jo jerked her head at her mother. "-- said we had to call you."
Dean lowered his hand. "It's ok."
"We did need to call them," her mom said, voice taut.
"No, we didn't. I can take this one."
"Joanna Beth..."
"Mom!"
Sam had his fingers shoved into his pockets as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hunched a little. Jo'd seen him look like that before, as if he were trying not to be noticed.
"Honestly, we could use a break from this apocalypse shit. A good old fashioned haunting." Dean rubbed his hands together.
"Actually, no, we need to deal with this apocalypse shit," Sam said, with a bitter grin. Dean started to speak, but Sam looked at him, tight-lipped, and Dean trailed off. "But uh...we're happy to help," Sam added. "You'd do it for us."
Jo's fingers curled tighter into the ice bag, feeling like it was three years ago as her stomach clenched. Maybe it was always going to be like this, with her mother intervening and calling in the mighty Sam and Dean Winchester to bail out sweet little Jo with her starry-eyed hunting ambitions. She felt about twelve years old, and instinctively ran her tongue over her teeth, almost expecting to feel the braces.
"Fine," she said, then recognized the sharpness in her own voice. "Thanks."
Sam leaned against the truck beside her, arms folded, as Jo briefed them. He was so close she noticed the stains on his jacket and the tiny scars on his fingers. Standing this near to him didn't bother her any more.
3.
"Bobby wouldn't tell you what was going on?" Jo was driving for a change, rain speckling the windshield. The drops gleamed red from the lights of other vehicles, like blood on the glass.
Her mother had kicked off her boots, and sat in the passenger seat with her legs tucked under her. She looked very young, leaning with her chin against her fist, elbow propped against the door. "He said the boys had gotten cursed, and he wanted us to deal with it." Her voice was a little scratchy. Three hunts in the past two days.
Jo almost tried the speech again about how her mom didn't have to drag herself all over the country to look after her, that this was what Jo wanted to do, her choice. Her mother could go back to the bar she'd bought with the insurance money, do her thing.
She could do this alone. But the memory of all those hours on the road by herself, and then how when she'd cracked a rib going after an Ördög, her mother had wrapped the bandage tight around her before bringing hot soup from the diner down the road from their motel, maybe Jo didn't want to have that argument again. Not now. Not yet, anyway. Someday.
Mom slept most of the way to Bobby's. It was night when they got there, both rubbing their eyes blearily, movements stiff as they slid out of the truck.
"Well?" Her mother walked up the porch steps towards Bobby, who sat waiting for them in his wheelchair. She reached for his hand, squeezed it, then let go.
"Hello, Ellen," he said. "Jo, hey, kid." He leaned is head back and shouted, "Boys, they're here!"
From within the house, Jo heard an unfamiliar voice call out, "We told you not to call them!"
"Too bad!" Bobby shouted back. He rolled the chair over to the door and opened it, then made a sweeping motion with his arm. "After you, ladies." There was an amused twist to his mouth behind his beard.
When they stepped inside, Jo saw why.
It took a few minutes of staring to recognize them. A flush started to rise up Dean's neck, which was much too slender.
Then Jo burst out laughing. "Oh my god."
"It's not funny," Dean said, in a voice that was and yet was not like Dean's.
"Oh yes, it is." Her mother's voice was choked, eyes gone bright with held-back laughter.
Sam folded his arms protectively over his chest. Jo leaned her forehead against the back of an armchair and pounded her fist against the upholstery until she stopped laughing.
She raised her head. "You...you have boobs," she gasped out. "You're girls!"
The glare of fury Sam directed at Jo made her half expect that the armchair would spontaneously combust. It only made her start laughing again. Finally Sam threw up his -- her -- arms, before stomping off towards the stairs.
"Okay, so why'd you call us?" Her mother asked Bobby.
"Yeah, you're the expert in curses and cures and stuff," said Jo.
"This ain't exactly my area of expertise. I mean, I can likely find the cure for it and all, but..." Bobby pulled off his hat and rubbed his head before he jammed the cap back on. "What if they need, I don't know, tampons or something."
Jo laughed so hard she started to cough. Bobby patted her on the back.
4.
The demon slammed Jo against the wall of the chapel, leaning in to put his mouth next to her ear. "It's going to be fun ripping you apart, little girl."
Jo brought her knee up hard into his groin, then jammed her palm against his chin. Blood spurted from his mouth as he staggered away from her, his black eyes looking like they'd gone even darker. Maybe they had, raised aggression changing their color.
She'd read a lot about demons, how they worked, how to exorcise them. She understood demons, but when she fought them, she always had to tell herself to keep her hands steady, keep her head, never show the fear. That's what they all taught her -- her father and Dean and all the hunters who would bother to talk to her. Whatever you were fighting, once you showed fear it was all over, they had you by the short hairs.
Holy water splattered into the demon's face, smoke rising from his skin. Mom kicked the demon in the stomach, making it stumble back into the devil's trap. Dean started to read the Rituale Romanum.
On the other side of the chapel, Sam was already shouting the Latin, another demon screaming out of the mouth of the businessman it had possessed.
When the last demon was exorcised, her mother leaned against the wall, then slid down to sit on the cold marble floor. "Hell, I hate those things." Her glance went to the unconscious hosts lying nearby. "What they do to people." Jo heard the break in her voice.
Jo slid down next to her and took her hand. She gripped Jo's fingers tight. Dean slid down on the other side of her, while Sam came over to sit next to Dean. Salt clung to the soles of their boots. The four of them sat, waiting for their breaths, loud in the hollow acoustics of the small chapel, to slow.
"Anyone wanna go out for a beer?" Dean said.
They all raised their hands.
5.
In the back of the Impala, Jo listened to the low rhythm of voices as her mother and Dean talked. She'd lost the thread of their conversation, something about angels. She heard her mother's voice rise in a question, and caught how Dean's jaw tightened as he didn't answer.
They'd been awake for eighteen hours, dealing with a multiple haunting at a former insane asylum outside Saginaw. Pale flashes of light periodically slid through the car, over them all, cutting the darkness. Jo was so sleepy her vision kept blurring, the ache in her shoulder from where she'd struck the wall growing dull. The deep thrum of the Chevy's engine swept around her as she leaned into the soft give of the seat.
Sam rested his head against the window, eyes closed, an ace bandage wrapped around his wrist. The bag of ice had fallen to the floor. Jo blinked, rubbed her eyes, then leaned down to pick it up. She put it carefully on his wrist.
"Thanks," Sam mumbled. He sounded like a little kid.
After a while the conversation in front stopped. Her mother curled up against the door, and after a few moments Jo leaned forward to see that her eyes were closed, her breathing soft and even.
Dean's glance went to the rearview mirror, checking on Sam, before he turned a fraction, checking on her, meeting her eyes. She held up her fingers in an OK sign, tucking her legs up under her as she leaned against the back of the seat again and closed her eyes.
She wasn't aware of falling asleep, but the next thing she knew she'd jerked awake with a sense of time gone. Her head rested against Sam's arm, the flannel soft against her cheek, although she didn't remember moving closer to him.
Glancing up, she caught him looking back at her. For a moment Jo tensed, ready to pull away, but he just closed his eyes again. So this was all right, this was no big deal. "You might as well go back to sleep," he muttered. "'S another four hours yet."
"Oh," she said.
The Impala rushed on through the dark, and Jo went back to sleep.
~end
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG
W/C: 2,000
a/n: Thank you to the lovely musesfool for the beta. Set at various times between 5x04 and 5x10, with references to 2x14, no spoilers for 5x10.
1.
The wyverns -- dragons, Dean kept insisting, with a look that showed exactly what Dean thought of a pretentious term like wyvern -- were smaller than Jo expected them to be. She ducked beside the Impala as one of them swooped over her head, the wings stirring her hair.
Crouched near her, Dean flinched at the scrape of claws raking against metal when the wyvern skimmed the top of his car, leaving scratches. Then Dean gave Jo a hand signal, two fingers flicked sharply forward. He raised his shotgun as she ran across the street, keeping her head down, the beat of wings growing more distant. Pieces of broken masonry dug into her knee through her jeans when she reached the truck and knelt, blood rushing in her ears. She took slow, deep breaths to calm her heartbeat.
She and Mom had gotten to town first, drawn by the voices on the police scanner Mom had installed in the truck. What with it being the end of the world, Jo thought she shouldn't be quite so surprised to find a flock of dragons attacking a very small Nebraska town. They looked like they'd escaped from the pages of her medieval art textbook.
The town's three deputies had tried, only to give it up when one of them got his arm torn open, and the others ran out of ammo. Last Jo had seen them, one was dragging their injured buddy into the post office while the third, a slender dark-skinned woman, covered them with her last few bullets, while Sam covered her with his shotgun.
Everyone else in town had already fled. It was the three deputies against the dragons when Jo and her mother got there, and then the Winchesters.
Jo spotted her mother at the end of the block, keeping low with her knees bent and her back against the brick wall of the post office, crossbow trained towards the sky, where another wyvern turned in circles. She raised her head and gave Jo a small, closed-mouth twitch of a smile. Jo saw the reminder in the way she gripped the crossbow, the tightness of her jaw, how much her mother hated this. That smile was only for Jo, as if she was the one who needed the encouragement. Jo didn't know how to tell her that the race of her heartbeat, the satisfying mental click that happened when she sighted on a target, the knowing she'd removed one more horrible dark thing from the world, wasn't something she needed comforting from. She smiled back at her mother.
Things went quiet, an inhale of time, while the wind kicked an empty fast food container down the street, whistling the way only the wind in Nebraska could, before Jo heard the sound of many wings beating, growing louder. Sam came racing around the corner with a flock of wyverns bearing down on him.
"Now!" Dean yelled.
Jo and Dean both stood from their cover and fired, taking the things out of the sky. The creatures hit the ground with thuds that sounded brittle and soft, flesh and bone and wing. One of them got too close to Sam, and he threw himself down as it rushed over his head. He rolled onto his back, aimed his shotgun, and fired.
Several more fell out of the sky but it wasn't enough, and Dean started forward into the street before an arrow snapped into a diving wyvern. It tumbled over, landing a yard away from Sam.
Turning to look at her mother, Jo saw her lower the crossbow and pull another arrow out of the canvas bag at her feet.
2.
Jo could've taken that poltergeist herself, but after it threw her down the stairs, leaving her bruised yet mostly unharmed, her mother made a phone call.
By the time Sam and Dean showed up, Jo and her mom were done screaming at each other. They leaned against the side of the truck outside the house, drinking a couple of Cokes from glass bottles. Her mother insisted Jo hold a bag full of ice against her shoulder.
"I'm sorry," Jo said, as Dean pulled the bag aside, leaning closer to see the bruise. His fingers were warm against her chilled skin as he examined the injury. She swallowed, hoping he couldn't see the jump of the pulse in her throat. "You've got bigger fish to fry than some ghost, but she --" Jo jerked her head at her mother. "-- said we had to call you."
Dean lowered his hand. "It's ok."
"We did need to call them," her mom said, voice taut.
"No, we didn't. I can take this one."
"Joanna Beth..."
"Mom!"
Sam had his fingers shoved into his pockets as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hunched a little. Jo'd seen him look like that before, as if he were trying not to be noticed.
"Honestly, we could use a break from this apocalypse shit. A good old fashioned haunting." Dean rubbed his hands together.
"Actually, no, we need to deal with this apocalypse shit," Sam said, with a bitter grin. Dean started to speak, but Sam looked at him, tight-lipped, and Dean trailed off. "But uh...we're happy to help," Sam added. "You'd do it for us."
Jo's fingers curled tighter into the ice bag, feeling like it was three years ago as her stomach clenched. Maybe it was always going to be like this, with her mother intervening and calling in the mighty Sam and Dean Winchester to bail out sweet little Jo with her starry-eyed hunting ambitions. She felt about twelve years old, and instinctively ran her tongue over her teeth, almost expecting to feel the braces.
"Fine," she said, then recognized the sharpness in her own voice. "Thanks."
Sam leaned against the truck beside her, arms folded, as Jo briefed them. He was so close she noticed the stains on his jacket and the tiny scars on his fingers. Standing this near to him didn't bother her any more.
3.
"Bobby wouldn't tell you what was going on?" Jo was driving for a change, rain speckling the windshield. The drops gleamed red from the lights of other vehicles, like blood on the glass.
Her mother had kicked off her boots, and sat in the passenger seat with her legs tucked under her. She looked very young, leaning with her chin against her fist, elbow propped against the door. "He said the boys had gotten cursed, and he wanted us to deal with it." Her voice was a little scratchy. Three hunts in the past two days.
Jo almost tried the speech again about how her mom didn't have to drag herself all over the country to look after her, that this was what Jo wanted to do, her choice. Her mother could go back to the bar she'd bought with the insurance money, do her thing.
She could do this alone. But the memory of all those hours on the road by herself, and then how when she'd cracked a rib going after an Ördög, her mother had wrapped the bandage tight around her before bringing hot soup from the diner down the road from their motel, maybe Jo didn't want to have that argument again. Not now. Not yet, anyway. Someday.
Mom slept most of the way to Bobby's. It was night when they got there, both rubbing their eyes blearily, movements stiff as they slid out of the truck.
"Well?" Her mother walked up the porch steps towards Bobby, who sat waiting for them in his wheelchair. She reached for his hand, squeezed it, then let go.
"Hello, Ellen," he said. "Jo, hey, kid." He leaned is head back and shouted, "Boys, they're here!"
From within the house, Jo heard an unfamiliar voice call out, "We told you not to call them!"
"Too bad!" Bobby shouted back. He rolled the chair over to the door and opened it, then made a sweeping motion with his arm. "After you, ladies." There was an amused twist to his mouth behind his beard.
When they stepped inside, Jo saw why.
It took a few minutes of staring to recognize them. A flush started to rise up Dean's neck, which was much too slender.
Then Jo burst out laughing. "Oh my god."
"It's not funny," Dean said, in a voice that was and yet was not like Dean's.
"Oh yes, it is." Her mother's voice was choked, eyes gone bright with held-back laughter.
Sam folded his arms protectively over his chest. Jo leaned her forehead against the back of an armchair and pounded her fist against the upholstery until she stopped laughing.
She raised her head. "You...you have boobs," she gasped out. "You're girls!"
The glare of fury Sam directed at Jo made her half expect that the armchair would spontaneously combust. It only made her start laughing again. Finally Sam threw up his -- her -- arms, before stomping off towards the stairs.
"Okay, so why'd you call us?" Her mother asked Bobby.
"Yeah, you're the expert in curses and cures and stuff," said Jo.
"This ain't exactly my area of expertise. I mean, I can likely find the cure for it and all, but..." Bobby pulled off his hat and rubbed his head before he jammed the cap back on. "What if they need, I don't know, tampons or something."
Jo laughed so hard she started to cough. Bobby patted her on the back.
4.
The demon slammed Jo against the wall of the chapel, leaning in to put his mouth next to her ear. "It's going to be fun ripping you apart, little girl."
Jo brought her knee up hard into his groin, then jammed her palm against his chin. Blood spurted from his mouth as he staggered away from her, his black eyes looking like they'd gone even darker. Maybe they had, raised aggression changing their color.
She'd read a lot about demons, how they worked, how to exorcise them. She understood demons, but when she fought them, she always had to tell herself to keep her hands steady, keep her head, never show the fear. That's what they all taught her -- her father and Dean and all the hunters who would bother to talk to her. Whatever you were fighting, once you showed fear it was all over, they had you by the short hairs.
Holy water splattered into the demon's face, smoke rising from his skin. Mom kicked the demon in the stomach, making it stumble back into the devil's trap. Dean started to read the Rituale Romanum.
On the other side of the chapel, Sam was already shouting the Latin, another demon screaming out of the mouth of the businessman it had possessed.
When the last demon was exorcised, her mother leaned against the wall, then slid down to sit on the cold marble floor. "Hell, I hate those things." Her glance went to the unconscious hosts lying nearby. "What they do to people." Jo heard the break in her voice.
Jo slid down next to her and took her hand. She gripped Jo's fingers tight. Dean slid down on the other side of her, while Sam came over to sit next to Dean. Salt clung to the soles of their boots. The four of them sat, waiting for their breaths, loud in the hollow acoustics of the small chapel, to slow.
"Anyone wanna go out for a beer?" Dean said.
They all raised their hands.
5.
In the back of the Impala, Jo listened to the low rhythm of voices as her mother and Dean talked. She'd lost the thread of their conversation, something about angels. She heard her mother's voice rise in a question, and caught how Dean's jaw tightened as he didn't answer.
They'd been awake for eighteen hours, dealing with a multiple haunting at a former insane asylum outside Saginaw. Pale flashes of light periodically slid through the car, over them all, cutting the darkness. Jo was so sleepy her vision kept blurring, the ache in her shoulder from where she'd struck the wall growing dull. The deep thrum of the Chevy's engine swept around her as she leaned into the soft give of the seat.
Sam rested his head against the window, eyes closed, an ace bandage wrapped around his wrist. The bag of ice had fallen to the floor. Jo blinked, rubbed her eyes, then leaned down to pick it up. She put it carefully on his wrist.
"Thanks," Sam mumbled. He sounded like a little kid.
After a while the conversation in front stopped. Her mother curled up against the door, and after a few moments Jo leaned forward to see that her eyes were closed, her breathing soft and even.
Dean's glance went to the rearview mirror, checking on Sam, before he turned a fraction, checking on her, meeting her eyes. She held up her fingers in an OK sign, tucking her legs up under her as she leaned against the back of the seat again and closed her eyes.
She wasn't aware of falling asleep, but the next thing she knew she'd jerked awake with a sense of time gone. Her head rested against Sam's arm, the flannel soft against her cheek, although she didn't remember moving closer to him.
Glancing up, she caught him looking back at her. For a moment Jo tensed, ready to pull away, but he just closed his eyes again. So this was all right, this was no big deal. "You might as well go back to sleep," he muttered. "'S another four hours yet."
"Oh," she said.
The Impala rushed on through the dark, and Jo went back to sleep.
~end