Supernatural - Make This Go on Forever (1/1) - Sam/Jo
Title: Make This Go on Forever (1/1)
Author: Tonya (_fullofgrace)
Rating: PG
Genre: Sam/Jo
Disclaimer: The usuals. No own, no sue.
A/N: Written for the gamma theme at 1sentence. These are fifty snippets that form a story of Sam and Jo on the road together.
Word count: 3547
Summary: This is the story of two hunters.
1. Ring
Jo watches as Sam fists his brother’s silver ring, hand closed so tightly she wonders if his nails are digging into his own palm and drawing blood; and as the fire burns higher in front of them, she wraps her arms around his still frame and says the only two words she can manage, I’m sorry.
***
2. Hero
They share a beer together one night, sitting out on the hood of the Impala, Sam’s silence saying everything Jo already knows; he was a complete ass, she says as she sips her drink, but he was your hero too, and the small smile of acknowledgment he gives her in response proves she knows him better than either of them even thought.
***
3. Memory
Sometimes she can feel it in the pit of her stomach when his gaze lands on her, and she finds herself racked with memories of grabbing and yelling and pain, but she understands that it hadn’t been him that night, no matter how hard it is to separate him from the memory; ironic that she forgives him long before he forgives himself.
***
4. Box
Jo never asks about the box he leaves behind at Bobby’s; she’d seen him pack away the things--his brother’s belongings, mainly clothing--a few days after the pyre had long burned out; and she doesn’t need to ask because she already knows it’s Sam’s way of finally letting go of his brother and saying his final farewell.
***
5. Run
Run, go, Sam yells, and she isn’t sure if it is stubbornness, stupidity, or maybe a mixture of them both that keeps her at his side, rifle drawn; but when the corner of his mouth turns up in a nervous but appreciative smile, she knows she has made the right choice, no matter what lies ahead.
***
6. Hurricane
You’ll get caught in the eye of the hurricane messing with that boy, her mother tries to warn her, but Jo simply shrugs off the warning with a smile and a small shake of her head; because she knows that even though she feels at ease hunting at Sam’s side, that is certainly a line she never plans to cross with him.
***
7. Wings
The day Jo tosses her bag into the trunk of the Impala for the final time, her mother watches from Bobby’s porch with a disapproving shake of her head; but Jo hugs her mother even as she frowns and tells Jo, I should have clipped your wings a long time ago, before kissing her goodbye.
***
8. Cold
The first night in an unknown motel feels strangely cold and empty, even with Sam sleeping peacefully in the bed beside hers; and she wonders if Sam ever notices the cold when he moves from motel to motel or if simply by growing up on the move, he never felt the warmth of a bed to call home to know the difference.
***
9. Red
Just by odds, the longer you’re hunting, the more likely you are to get injured, and Jo’s fairly decent at patching up others from some of her experiences at the Roadhouse, but to see her own red blood flowing so freely between her fingers, it stops something in her; later, she’s embarrassed to find out she fainted, awake only to find Sam tending to her, and he at least has the courtesy to blame her fainting on exhaustion and loss of blood and not on being weak, and the way he says it, she can almost make herself believe it.
***
10. Drink
They always go out and drink after a successful hunt, and she’s not sure if it’s a tradition from his time with his brother or if it’s something new he’s trying with her; but either way, those moments are the ones where she gets to see Sam most at ease, no longer thinking of research or their next move but rather relaxing and smiling and telling her things she never thought she’d know about Sam Winchester.
***
11. Midnight
She wakes one night at midnight to find the lumpy full-sized bed beside hers empty, and she has a mild panic moment before she realizes his belongings are still in the room; she finds him outside on the hood of the Impala, twirling the silver ring that once belonged to his brother now on his own right hand, and she joins him on the hood in her pajamas because it is the third month anniversary of Dean’s death, and he doesn’t need to be alone.
***
12. Temptation
Her focus always on the eldest Winchester, she had never really noticed Sam before, but now as they share motel rooms as they trek across the country, she starts to notice things she never saw before-- his dimples when he smiles, the way he slouches in his chairs to make himself seem smaller, the messy bedhead he can barely tame; and sometimes, she wonders if this was what her mother had warned her about months before.
***
13. View
Enjoying the view back there, she teases as she bends and stretches to retrieve her bag from the trunk of the Impala; she closes the trunk with a grin as she turns to him, and he rolls his eyes, a smirk on his lips, as he tells her he’s headed to check them in for the evening.
***
14. Music
She leaves her ipod out one day on accident, and when she steps out of the bathroom, Sam already has the ear buds in his ears; and she tries her best not to look embarrassed--eyebrow raised and arms folded across her chest--as he grins up at her, but even she can’t help but give a small, embarrassed smile as he asks, Poison, Jo? Seriously?
***
15. Silk
Her mother used to say her hair was the color of corn silk when she was born, the strands darkening up as she aged; and when she looks in the mirror, her messy ponytail stained with mud and blood that is not hers or Sam’s or the person they had saved, she thinks about her mom and how she always used to brush her hair as a little girl before bedtime; but now it’s the smell of Sam’s shampoo that is her nightly ritual in the shower that helps her get a good night’s rest.
***
16. Cover
The glove compartment has a box of fake IDs, and Jo can’t help but frown when she remembers her face is replacing the IDs Sam burned that once belonged to Dean; and every time she grabs a new ID to use, she can’t help but wonder what Dean’s fake name would have been for his cover.
***
17. Promise
It’s immature, she knows, but it works and it’s theirs; they don’t need promises written in words or blood because anytime one of them promises the other something--whether it be they won’t get hurt or that they’ll do the laundry next round--they pinky swear; And yes, it’s immature, but it works and it’s theirs.
***
18. Dream
The first night he wakes from a vision, panting and covered in a cold sweat, she doesn’t know what the hell is going on; and it takes two cups of coffee and another hour of sleep before it sinks in what he just told her, Sometimes my dreams come true.
***
19. Candle
She didn’t realize he knew when her birthday was, and she wonders if her mother had told him at some point because she knows she didn’t; but in the end, it doesn’t matter how he found out because it brings the biggest, stupidest grin to her face when she wakes up to find a cupcake with a candle sticking out of the middle of it on her nightstand with a note that says, Happy Birthday, Jo, gone to grab coffee.
***
20. Talent
Jo never figured him for a hustler, always sure that had been more Dean’s thing, but he has a good talent for it, cheating drunk guys out of their money at the pool tables; and when they walk out of the bar, three hundred bucks securely tucked into the pocket of his jacket, she can’t help but grin and shake her head because as much as he likes to deny it, Sam is more of a Winchester than he realizes.
***
21. Silence
Their first fight on the road is over something stupid, over how he’s usually the one doing the driving and how she’s tired of always being the passenger on these trips, but Sam doesn’t yell or fight back, he simply scowls and gets quiet, refusing to take the bait, as they walk to the car; and he tosses her the keys without a single word, admitting defeat much easier than Jo had ever expected.
***
22. Journey
The first time they get lost in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere, is when they have their second fight over something stupid--her blaming the map and him blaming her for being too stubborn to ask for help from him when she obviously couldn’t read the thing; but thirty minutes, one balled up map, and a handful of curse words later, they’re back on the road, and they nearly stumble over each other’s apology before laughing at how idiotic they both sounded.
***
23. Fire
Salt and burns seem to be a weekly thing for them, the most typical way to get rid of a vengeful spirit, but there is something about watching the remains of a little girl go up in flames of orange and red that almost makes Jo’s stomach turn; and when Sam tells her that he can handle cleanup this time, she appreciates the chance to escape into the darkness of the Impala.
***
24. Strength
She doesn’t think she has it in her, her head pounding in a way that makes her believe she has a good concussion, but Sam is knocked out beside her, his body taking most of the impact against the wall; and she is not going to let them die this way; Not this way, she thinks again to herself as she raises the gun and fires.
***
25. Mask
She learns that he’s good at hiding his insecurities behind a smile and a shrug; Sam Winchester doesn’t open up about his emotions often, and Jo can’t help but wonder if he’s always been like that or if, without his brother around, he’s closed himself off more.
***
26. Ice
It’s not often they have a day off, a day without researching or chasing the next hunt, but they make the most of it when they can; and when Jo finds out there’s an ice rink about fifteen miles from the motel they’re staying at, she drags him out amid protests that he’s too tall and too clumsy for that sort of thing; but in the end, he’s not too tall or too clumsy, and she has more fun than she’s had in a very long time, and she can tell just by his grin that he has as well.
***
27. Fall
It would have happened sooner or later, but she never expects it to happen so hard and so fast; She’s asking for trouble, and she knows it, but there‘s something about Sam that makes it very difficult not to fall for him.
***
28. Forgotten
Her mother’s warnings long forgotten, she kisses him, and to her surprise he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t grab her by the shoulders and tell her she’s making a mistake; instead he wraps those long arms around her, enveloping her, and kisses her back as if his life depends on her.
***
29. Dance
They dance around each other for days after their kiss, him sheepishly ducking his head as they pass each other in the motel room; but when she grabs his arm one night and tells him to stop acting like such a girl about all this, the kiss she receives in return for her words ends the dance once and for all.
***
30. Body
As they lie together, her fingers move over the fresh bruises across his shoulder blades, a nasty toss from a poltergeist resulting in the marks, but when her fingers find the scar at the base of his spine, she feels him tense under her fingers; he never told her about that scar but he doesn’t need to, his body speaks for him.
***
31. Sacred
Some things are simply sacred, part of the routine that never changed when she joined Sam on hunts; and though she’s sure she used to hear him complain all the time about Dean’s choice of music, she can’t help but smile every time he puts Metallica in the tape deck as they leave each different motel in a trail of dust.
***
32. Farewells
When are getting your ass back home, her mother asks, but Jo is used to the question by now, seeming to get the same one every time she and her mother talk; somehow she can’t make her mom understand that this is what she does now--she’s with Sam, she hunts, he needs her and she needs him--but she knows that sooner or later her mother will have to accept the fact and say goodbye to her little girl.
***
33. World
Sometimes it feels like the whole world is out to get them--some hunters are still looking to make Sam enemy number one and the authorities are still interested in him and his supposed crimes, even if his apparent partner in crime is dead; but no matter what or who happens to be on their tail that day, that week, that month, when she crawls into bed next to him and he wraps an arm around her to pull her closer, Jo knows the world can’t be all bad all the time.
***
34. Formal
When Jo officially, formally, tells her mother that she isn’t just hunting with Sam anymore, that they are in a relationship, she can already imagine her mother shaking her head again in that “what am I going to do with you, girl?” way she‘s perfected over the years; but Ellen simply sighs, wishes her luck, and tells her to inform Sam she’ll castrate him next time she sees him if he hurts her daughter.
***
35. Fever
They’ve been through a lot together--taken down a pack of vampires, hunted a werewolf, vanquished a pissed off spirit or two, and none of those things knock both of them on their asses as easily as a simple flu bug; curled next to Sam, her fever coming through in a cold sweat, Jo almost wishes the flu was something corporeal so she can put a bullet in it or burn it into a pile of ashes to end her and Sam’s suffering.
***
36. Laugh
She loves to hear him laugh; It’s an innocent sound that seems to contradict everything about their lives, and that’s why she loves it; because when things seem dark around them, hearing him laugh about something as silly as her tripping over her own feet coming out of the shower makes things just a bit easier to bear.
***
37. Lies
She can always tell when he’s lying, not that he does it a lot with her, but when he does, he gives himself away with tics he probably doesn’t even realize he has; it always amazes her that he can spend his whole life lying to other people in such a smooth manner with a charming smile on his face, but when facing her, he can’t pull it off like she knows he has the ability to do.
***
38. Forever
They never make any silly high school promises of forever because forever doesn’t exist for them; they live day to day, and there is no guarantee that either of them will make it to forever, but if forever is to ever become a possibility--is to become something they can guarantee--Jo knows they will have it.
***
39. Overwhelmed
She thinks she’s used to the visions and the complete weirdness of them, but sometimes she finds herself overwhelmed by the reality that Sam can actually have psychic visions; it scares her the most when he wakes up screaming her name in fear.
***
40. Whisper
Wanna do it in the stacks, she whispers as they sit at terminals in the local public library; she’s joking, but the pondering look Sam gets on his face makes her snort in disbelief and punch him gently in the shoulder, and with a grin, they both go back to work, but Jo knows she’s in store for some fun tonight if they manage to wrap this one up without getting banged up too badly.
***
41. Wait
Jo has never been the type to stand by and wait patiently, and her mother tries to tell her to sit tight while Sam talks to Bobby in the back room about his most recent visions that haunt him; but she can’t wait patiently, not when she’s a part of this too, a part of his life; and when Sam steps out of the room, that look of determination on his face she’s seen so many times before, she knows she’s in for a struggle to save him from himself.
***
42. Talk
I have to do this on my own, he tells her, but she won’t hear it; they’re supposed to do this as a team, that’s how they function; but just as stubbornly as her, he won’t budge, afraid that if she comes along those dreams he’s been having the past few weeks will become a horrible reality; and Jo can’t understand what’s so dangerous that she can’t help until he says three words that make her heart stop dead in her chest, Meg is back.
***
43. Search
Jo wakes up to an empty bed, and she charges down the stairs of Bobby’s house and out the door, her bare feet scrapping across the gravel as she searches for the Impala; but the car is gone, and she doesn’t turn around when she hears her mother call her from the porch; instead, Ellen walks up to her, handing her a folded sheet of paper, He wanted me to give you this, and as Jo takes the paper from her mother’s hands, she doesn’t know whether to cry or punch something in anger; but with nothing to punch in front of her, she settles on tears as her mother hugs her.
***
44. Hope
You gotta have hope, Jo Anne, her mother tells her as she sits on the stoop of Bobby’s porch, waiting to hear that familiar rumble of the Impala pulling into the gravel drive; But hope is hard to come by when all she really needs and wants is Sam.
***
45. Eclipse
On the seventh day, the moon swallows the sun, and Jo closes her eyes and waits for the light to return; because she fears that if the light doesn’t come back, neither will Sam.
***
46. Gravity
She can feel the pull in her stomach, that rollercoaster like drop of gravity, every time she gets his voicemail on his cell; her messages range from pleading to concerned to angry, but the final message is always the same, Your ass better come home to me, or I will hunt you down, Sam Winchester.
***
47. Highway
Being cooped up in Bobby’s house, Jo gets nostalgic for the highway, when it was just her and Sam and the purr of the Impala; and she knows that as soon as he comes back, she’ll be ready to hit the road again because he is coming back; in her heart, she knows he’s coming back.
***
48. Unknown
She passes the time researching other cases, reading through Bobby’s old books, just doing anything that keeps her focused on something other than the unknown, something other than Sam and whether or not he’s dead or alive.
***
49. Lock
Bobby would kill her if he knew, but she sleeps with the front door unlocked; her rifle is always resting on the floor right within reach from her self-made bed on the couch, but she knows that Sam doesn’t have a key; and if he comes back in the middle of the night, she wants to be the first person he sees when he comes through that door.
***
50. Breathe
Another morning passes without a word, and Jo walks into the kitchen, expecting to see her mother making a fresh pot of coffee and ready to offer Jo more false promises of Sam’s safe return; but instead, Sam leans against the counter, looking tired and a little worse for wear, as he sips from a mug of coffee; and at first, she thinks she’s hallucinating, a side effect of restless sleep for over a week, but then he smiles at her and she knows it’s real; and a hard punch to the shoulder delivered with a threat and one soft kiss later, he wraps his arms around her and Jo knows she can finally breathe because he’s home.
Author: Tonya (_fullofgrace)
Rating: PG
Genre: Sam/Jo
Disclaimer: The usuals. No own, no sue.
A/N: Written for the gamma theme at 1sentence. These are fifty snippets that form a story of Sam and Jo on the road together.
Word count: 3547
Summary: This is the story of two hunters.
1. Ring
Jo watches as Sam fists his brother’s silver ring, hand closed so tightly she wonders if his nails are digging into his own palm and drawing blood; and as the fire burns higher in front of them, she wraps her arms around his still frame and says the only two words she can manage, I’m sorry.
***
2. Hero
They share a beer together one night, sitting out on the hood of the Impala, Sam’s silence saying everything Jo already knows; he was a complete ass, she says as she sips her drink, but he was your hero too, and the small smile of acknowledgment he gives her in response proves she knows him better than either of them even thought.
***
3. Memory
Sometimes she can feel it in the pit of her stomach when his gaze lands on her, and she finds herself racked with memories of grabbing and yelling and pain, but she understands that it hadn’t been him that night, no matter how hard it is to separate him from the memory; ironic that she forgives him long before he forgives himself.
***
4. Box
Jo never asks about the box he leaves behind at Bobby’s; she’d seen him pack away the things--his brother’s belongings, mainly clothing--a few days after the pyre had long burned out; and she doesn’t need to ask because she already knows it’s Sam’s way of finally letting go of his brother and saying his final farewell.
***
5. Run
Run, go, Sam yells, and she isn’t sure if it is stubbornness, stupidity, or maybe a mixture of them both that keeps her at his side, rifle drawn; but when the corner of his mouth turns up in a nervous but appreciative smile, she knows she has made the right choice, no matter what lies ahead.
***
6. Hurricane
You’ll get caught in the eye of the hurricane messing with that boy, her mother tries to warn her, but Jo simply shrugs off the warning with a smile and a small shake of her head; because she knows that even though she feels at ease hunting at Sam’s side, that is certainly a line she never plans to cross with him.
***
7. Wings
The day Jo tosses her bag into the trunk of the Impala for the final time, her mother watches from Bobby’s porch with a disapproving shake of her head; but Jo hugs her mother even as she frowns and tells Jo, I should have clipped your wings a long time ago, before kissing her goodbye.
***
8. Cold
The first night in an unknown motel feels strangely cold and empty, even with Sam sleeping peacefully in the bed beside hers; and she wonders if Sam ever notices the cold when he moves from motel to motel or if simply by growing up on the move, he never felt the warmth of a bed to call home to know the difference.
***
9. Red
Just by odds, the longer you’re hunting, the more likely you are to get injured, and Jo’s fairly decent at patching up others from some of her experiences at the Roadhouse, but to see her own red blood flowing so freely between her fingers, it stops something in her; later, she’s embarrassed to find out she fainted, awake only to find Sam tending to her, and he at least has the courtesy to blame her fainting on exhaustion and loss of blood and not on being weak, and the way he says it, she can almost make herself believe it.
***
10. Drink
They always go out and drink after a successful hunt, and she’s not sure if it’s a tradition from his time with his brother or if it’s something new he’s trying with her; but either way, those moments are the ones where she gets to see Sam most at ease, no longer thinking of research or their next move but rather relaxing and smiling and telling her things she never thought she’d know about Sam Winchester.
***
11. Midnight
She wakes one night at midnight to find the lumpy full-sized bed beside hers empty, and she has a mild panic moment before she realizes his belongings are still in the room; she finds him outside on the hood of the Impala, twirling the silver ring that once belonged to his brother now on his own right hand, and she joins him on the hood in her pajamas because it is the third month anniversary of Dean’s death, and he doesn’t need to be alone.
***
12. Temptation
Her focus always on the eldest Winchester, she had never really noticed Sam before, but now as they share motel rooms as they trek across the country, she starts to notice things she never saw before-- his dimples when he smiles, the way he slouches in his chairs to make himself seem smaller, the messy bedhead he can barely tame; and sometimes, she wonders if this was what her mother had warned her about months before.
***
13. View
Enjoying the view back there, she teases as she bends and stretches to retrieve her bag from the trunk of the Impala; she closes the trunk with a grin as she turns to him, and he rolls his eyes, a smirk on his lips, as he tells her he’s headed to check them in for the evening.
***
14. Music
She leaves her ipod out one day on accident, and when she steps out of the bathroom, Sam already has the ear buds in his ears; and she tries her best not to look embarrassed--eyebrow raised and arms folded across her chest--as he grins up at her, but even she can’t help but give a small, embarrassed smile as he asks, Poison, Jo? Seriously?
***
15. Silk
Her mother used to say her hair was the color of corn silk when she was born, the strands darkening up as she aged; and when she looks in the mirror, her messy ponytail stained with mud and blood that is not hers or Sam’s or the person they had saved, she thinks about her mom and how she always used to brush her hair as a little girl before bedtime; but now it’s the smell of Sam’s shampoo that is her nightly ritual in the shower that helps her get a good night’s rest.
***
16. Cover
The glove compartment has a box of fake IDs, and Jo can’t help but frown when she remembers her face is replacing the IDs Sam burned that once belonged to Dean; and every time she grabs a new ID to use, she can’t help but wonder what Dean’s fake name would have been for his cover.
***
17. Promise
It’s immature, she knows, but it works and it’s theirs; they don’t need promises written in words or blood because anytime one of them promises the other something--whether it be they won’t get hurt or that they’ll do the laundry next round--they pinky swear; And yes, it’s immature, but it works and it’s theirs.
***
18. Dream
The first night he wakes from a vision, panting and covered in a cold sweat, she doesn’t know what the hell is going on; and it takes two cups of coffee and another hour of sleep before it sinks in what he just told her, Sometimes my dreams come true.
***
19. Candle
She didn’t realize he knew when her birthday was, and she wonders if her mother had told him at some point because she knows she didn’t; but in the end, it doesn’t matter how he found out because it brings the biggest, stupidest grin to her face when she wakes up to find a cupcake with a candle sticking out of the middle of it on her nightstand with a note that says, Happy Birthday, Jo, gone to grab coffee.
***
20. Talent
Jo never figured him for a hustler, always sure that had been more Dean’s thing, but he has a good talent for it, cheating drunk guys out of their money at the pool tables; and when they walk out of the bar, three hundred bucks securely tucked into the pocket of his jacket, she can’t help but grin and shake her head because as much as he likes to deny it, Sam is more of a Winchester than he realizes.
***
21. Silence
Their first fight on the road is over something stupid, over how he’s usually the one doing the driving and how she’s tired of always being the passenger on these trips, but Sam doesn’t yell or fight back, he simply scowls and gets quiet, refusing to take the bait, as they walk to the car; and he tosses her the keys without a single word, admitting defeat much easier than Jo had ever expected.
***
22. Journey
The first time they get lost in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere, is when they have their second fight over something stupid--her blaming the map and him blaming her for being too stubborn to ask for help from him when she obviously couldn’t read the thing; but thirty minutes, one balled up map, and a handful of curse words later, they’re back on the road, and they nearly stumble over each other’s apology before laughing at how idiotic they both sounded.
***
23. Fire
Salt and burns seem to be a weekly thing for them, the most typical way to get rid of a vengeful spirit, but there is something about watching the remains of a little girl go up in flames of orange and red that almost makes Jo’s stomach turn; and when Sam tells her that he can handle cleanup this time, she appreciates the chance to escape into the darkness of the Impala.
***
24. Strength
She doesn’t think she has it in her, her head pounding in a way that makes her believe she has a good concussion, but Sam is knocked out beside her, his body taking most of the impact against the wall; and she is not going to let them die this way; Not this way, she thinks again to herself as she raises the gun and fires.
***
25. Mask
She learns that he’s good at hiding his insecurities behind a smile and a shrug; Sam Winchester doesn’t open up about his emotions often, and Jo can’t help but wonder if he’s always been like that or if, without his brother around, he’s closed himself off more.
***
26. Ice
It’s not often they have a day off, a day without researching or chasing the next hunt, but they make the most of it when they can; and when Jo finds out there’s an ice rink about fifteen miles from the motel they’re staying at, she drags him out amid protests that he’s too tall and too clumsy for that sort of thing; but in the end, he’s not too tall or too clumsy, and she has more fun than she’s had in a very long time, and she can tell just by his grin that he has as well.
***
27. Fall
It would have happened sooner or later, but she never expects it to happen so hard and so fast; She’s asking for trouble, and she knows it, but there‘s something about Sam that makes it very difficult not to fall for him.
***
28. Forgotten
Her mother’s warnings long forgotten, she kisses him, and to her surprise he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t grab her by the shoulders and tell her she’s making a mistake; instead he wraps those long arms around her, enveloping her, and kisses her back as if his life depends on her.
***
29. Dance
They dance around each other for days after their kiss, him sheepishly ducking his head as they pass each other in the motel room; but when she grabs his arm one night and tells him to stop acting like such a girl about all this, the kiss she receives in return for her words ends the dance once and for all.
***
30. Body
As they lie together, her fingers move over the fresh bruises across his shoulder blades, a nasty toss from a poltergeist resulting in the marks, but when her fingers find the scar at the base of his spine, she feels him tense under her fingers; he never told her about that scar but he doesn’t need to, his body speaks for him.
***
31. Sacred
Some things are simply sacred, part of the routine that never changed when she joined Sam on hunts; and though she’s sure she used to hear him complain all the time about Dean’s choice of music, she can’t help but smile every time he puts Metallica in the tape deck as they leave each different motel in a trail of dust.
***
32. Farewells
When are getting your ass back home, her mother asks, but Jo is used to the question by now, seeming to get the same one every time she and her mother talk; somehow she can’t make her mom understand that this is what she does now--she’s with Sam, she hunts, he needs her and she needs him--but she knows that sooner or later her mother will have to accept the fact and say goodbye to her little girl.
***
33. World
Sometimes it feels like the whole world is out to get them--some hunters are still looking to make Sam enemy number one and the authorities are still interested in him and his supposed crimes, even if his apparent partner in crime is dead; but no matter what or who happens to be on their tail that day, that week, that month, when she crawls into bed next to him and he wraps an arm around her to pull her closer, Jo knows the world can’t be all bad all the time.
***
34. Formal
When Jo officially, formally, tells her mother that she isn’t just hunting with Sam anymore, that they are in a relationship, she can already imagine her mother shaking her head again in that “what am I going to do with you, girl?” way she‘s perfected over the years; but Ellen simply sighs, wishes her luck, and tells her to inform Sam she’ll castrate him next time she sees him if he hurts her daughter.
***
35. Fever
They’ve been through a lot together--taken down a pack of vampires, hunted a werewolf, vanquished a pissed off spirit or two, and none of those things knock both of them on their asses as easily as a simple flu bug; curled next to Sam, her fever coming through in a cold sweat, Jo almost wishes the flu was something corporeal so she can put a bullet in it or burn it into a pile of ashes to end her and Sam’s suffering.
***
36. Laugh
She loves to hear him laugh; It’s an innocent sound that seems to contradict everything about their lives, and that’s why she loves it; because when things seem dark around them, hearing him laugh about something as silly as her tripping over her own feet coming out of the shower makes things just a bit easier to bear.
***
37. Lies
She can always tell when he’s lying, not that he does it a lot with her, but when he does, he gives himself away with tics he probably doesn’t even realize he has; it always amazes her that he can spend his whole life lying to other people in such a smooth manner with a charming smile on his face, but when facing her, he can’t pull it off like she knows he has the ability to do.
***
38. Forever
They never make any silly high school promises of forever because forever doesn’t exist for them; they live day to day, and there is no guarantee that either of them will make it to forever, but if forever is to ever become a possibility--is to become something they can guarantee--Jo knows they will have it.
***
39. Overwhelmed
She thinks she’s used to the visions and the complete weirdness of them, but sometimes she finds herself overwhelmed by the reality that Sam can actually have psychic visions; it scares her the most when he wakes up screaming her name in fear.
***
40. Whisper
Wanna do it in the stacks, she whispers as they sit at terminals in the local public library; she’s joking, but the pondering look Sam gets on his face makes her snort in disbelief and punch him gently in the shoulder, and with a grin, they both go back to work, but Jo knows she’s in store for some fun tonight if they manage to wrap this one up without getting banged up too badly.
***
41. Wait
Jo has never been the type to stand by and wait patiently, and her mother tries to tell her to sit tight while Sam talks to Bobby in the back room about his most recent visions that haunt him; but she can’t wait patiently, not when she’s a part of this too, a part of his life; and when Sam steps out of the room, that look of determination on his face she’s seen so many times before, she knows she’s in for a struggle to save him from himself.
***
42. Talk
I have to do this on my own, he tells her, but she won’t hear it; they’re supposed to do this as a team, that’s how they function; but just as stubbornly as her, he won’t budge, afraid that if she comes along those dreams he’s been having the past few weeks will become a horrible reality; and Jo can’t understand what’s so dangerous that she can’t help until he says three words that make her heart stop dead in her chest, Meg is back.
***
43. Search
Jo wakes up to an empty bed, and she charges down the stairs of Bobby’s house and out the door, her bare feet scrapping across the gravel as she searches for the Impala; but the car is gone, and she doesn’t turn around when she hears her mother call her from the porch; instead, Ellen walks up to her, handing her a folded sheet of paper, He wanted me to give you this, and as Jo takes the paper from her mother’s hands, she doesn’t know whether to cry or punch something in anger; but with nothing to punch in front of her, she settles on tears as her mother hugs her.
***
44. Hope
You gotta have hope, Jo Anne, her mother tells her as she sits on the stoop of Bobby’s porch, waiting to hear that familiar rumble of the Impala pulling into the gravel drive; But hope is hard to come by when all she really needs and wants is Sam.
***
45. Eclipse
On the seventh day, the moon swallows the sun, and Jo closes her eyes and waits for the light to return; because she fears that if the light doesn’t come back, neither will Sam.
***
46. Gravity
She can feel the pull in her stomach, that rollercoaster like drop of gravity, every time she gets his voicemail on his cell; her messages range from pleading to concerned to angry, but the final message is always the same, Your ass better come home to me, or I will hunt you down, Sam Winchester.
***
47. Highway
Being cooped up in Bobby’s house, Jo gets nostalgic for the highway, when it was just her and Sam and the purr of the Impala; and she knows that as soon as he comes back, she’ll be ready to hit the road again because he is coming back; in her heart, she knows he’s coming back.
***
48. Unknown
She passes the time researching other cases, reading through Bobby’s old books, just doing anything that keeps her focused on something other than the unknown, something other than Sam and whether or not he’s dead or alive.
***
49. Lock
Bobby would kill her if he knew, but she sleeps with the front door unlocked; her rifle is always resting on the floor right within reach from her self-made bed on the couch, but she knows that Sam doesn’t have a key; and if he comes back in the middle of the night, she wants to be the first person he sees when he comes through that door.
***
50. Breathe
Another morning passes without a word, and Jo walks into the kitchen, expecting to see her mother making a fresh pot of coffee and ready to offer Jo more false promises of Sam’s safe return; but instead, Sam leans against the counter, looking tired and a little worse for wear, as he sips from a mug of coffee; and at first, she thinks she’s hallucinating, a side effect of restless sleep for over a week, but then he smiles at her and she knows it’s real; and a hard punch to the shoulder delivered with a threat and one soft kiss later, he wraps his arms around her and Jo knows she can finally breathe because he’s home.