maybe we had to fly - for flutterfingers
Title: Maybe We Had To Fly
Author/Artist: psychedelicammo
Recipient: flutterfingers
Pairing: Jo/Jess
Rating: Pg-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Jess is the girl of Jo's dreams (literally).
Notes: I apologize profusely for how late this is. Seriously, I'm really freaking sorry.
Before Jess is a fellow hunter, or even a case, she's the girl of Jo's dreams. But only in the most literal sense.
She looks like a cheerleader, blonde and beautiful, one of those perfect blow up doll with push up tits. The kind of girl always looking down their button noses at flannel wearing dykes like Jo.
But now she's moving through the Roadhouse with purpose, headed straight for Jo. The urgency in her step doesn't mesh with the slow atmosphere of the bar and that immediately puts Jo on edge.
She calls Jo's name, even though she doesn't remember the introductions.
"You need a refill or something?" Jo asks, angling her hip against the bar and looking cocky.
"What? No, but you're a hunter, aren't you?"
None of the patrons glance up and Ellen isn't even in sight. The hairs on the nape of Jo's neck go up, though, and she wonders if this is what Spiderman feels like.
"This is a hunter's bar, but you've still got to keep your voice down." Jo guides her to a chair. "Who-"
"You're not in a bar right now. It's complicated, but you've got to come help me." The girl's gripping her arms like Jo is her only lifeline. "I've been searching for weeks and you're the first hunter I've found."
Jo can just blink stupidly for a second, wonder just what's going on when the other girl's eyes go wide.
"Please, Jo, help me."
And before Jo can ask the how, whats and wheres, she's blinking awake to the sound of the motel manager banging on her door.
"What the hell?" Jo mutters beneath her breath as she rolls out of bed, the details of her weird dream already forgotten.
+++
She's back again. This time they're in a park, it's one Jo recognizes from her last job, a ghost haunting kids just outside of Mobile, Alabama. Jo's still picking wood chip splinters out of her palms.
"I'm dreaming." Jo says while the stranger sits on a swing, kicking her legs, slowly propelling herself.
She nods, "I'm Jess."
Jo looks around, trying to acclimate herself to the dream. "Yeah, hi Jess." She says absently.
"Well I figure if you're going to come rescue me, you might as well know my name."
"And how do I know you're not just some figment of my imagination. A fantasy or something."
Jess smiles a little, though she still looks sad around the eyes and so tired. "Does that mean I'm your type?"
"Not even close. I prefer less pep squad, more Xena."
"We'll see about that." Jess flirts half-heartedly and reminds Jo that this is a case. A potential case.
"So what's your problem? Other than you being stuck in my head."
"I need more than that?" Jess's feet rest firmly on the ground and she looks up to meet Jo's eyes. She takes a deep breath, "I'm lying in a hospital bed Caliente, Nevada. The doctor's think it's a coma."
"But you think it's supernatural."
"You don't? Jo, I've been walking through dreams for weeks looking someone who could help. You're the first one I've found."
It's so easy for Jo to go to her knees and wrap Jess into a hug. Jess feels real in her arms, though she smells faintly of antibacterial soap, that sterile reek of hospital. But she seems starved for touch the way she folds into Jo, eager for the contact and it reminds Jo just how helpless and awful it feels to be the victim. Jess takes great gulps of fresh air, gradually calming as Jo continues to rub soothing circles into her back.
Comfort is easier to give in dreams. Jo feels almost freer knowing that it's all in her head, except for maybe Jess. And the idea of an intruder in her brain, doesn't feel nearly as violating as it should.
"You're waking up." Jess's pulling away just as Jo feels a tug in her gut. "Nevada." Jess says by way of farewell.
Jo wakes up in another motel room. This one has tacky goldfish painted on blue walls. She stares blankly for a moment before rolling out of bed. She scribbles Jess and Caliente, NV on a McDonald's napkin before she can forget.
+++
Nevada is days away, but Jo makes good time that afternoon, once she's got coffee flowing through her system and "Find Your Own Way" playing in the tape deck.
After a few days of lull she's renewed by the prospect of a hunt. She's always operated better with something on the docket, idle hands and all that.
But driving doesn't leave her time to do the necessary research and she's yet to find Binsfeld's Classification of Demons on audio book at her local library. So she hits three on her speed dial and waits for Bobby to pick up.
"What can I do for you?"
"I've got a case."
"Yeah," Jo can hear his brow furrowing over the phone. "Pretty soon after the last one, don't you think?"
"I can handle it." Jo insists.
"Which is why you're calling me to do your book work?"
Jo grunts into the mouthpiece, but decides that was rhetorical and doesn't deserve a real answer. "You going to help or not, Bobby?"
"Yeah, yeah, of course I'll help. What are you looking at?"
"What do you know about comas and astral projection?"
"You'd be better off talking to a psychic, I know that much. Why, someone been astral projecting onto you?"
"Not quite, it's more like dream visitation." Jo can hear an undercurrent of rapidly turning pages.
"Malevolent?" Bobby asks after a moment.
"Friendly than Casper, the ghost."
He hesitates for a moment and Jo listens to the sound of an old fashioned index. "All right, I'll call when I've got something."
"Thank you, Bobby." She says. Jo really is grateful, Bobby's really the only open channel of communication that Jo has. Ellen hasn't called much since Jo struck out on her own, though she's just as guilty. And Jo made a pact to stay away from whatever trouble the Winchesters are courting this week, at least until they express an actual need for her help. She's still got a little bit of self-respect and preservation when it comes to those two and Jo intends to hold onto that as long as she can.
"Your welcome. Be careful." Bobby warns before hanging up and Jo decides that maybe it's not the worst fate in the world, to have somebody else looking out for you.
+++
Jo gets to bed early that night. She opens her eyes again to a stretch of pavement; much like the one she's been driving on all day long, but dustier. She's surrounded by a vast expanse of red dust and thinks she might be in the desert here.
Jess walks up behind her, barefoot and picking her way carefully across the hot blacktop. "You're coming." She smiles, really smiles, at Jo for the first time. It feels like sunshine on her skin.
"I'm pretty far out, though. I find it hard to believe that there wasn't another hunter between Alabama and Nevada."
Jess's loose shirt whips around her in the wind and her hair flies back. "Maybe none I wanted to trust with my life."
"You trust me?" Jo asks, looking down the interstate and into the horizon. The road's the best, most stable home she knows now, along with the feel of a shot gun in her hands, ready and loaded with salt. And she's laying it all at Jess's feet, or at least her subconscious is, after knowing her for such a short while.
But that's the life of a hunter, haphazard relationships built with fear, trust, desperation, dependence, and a base instinct for self-preservation. Bridges easily burnt when the hunter leaves town to continue the only steady, monogamous relationship a drifter can maintain, their love of the road.
"I'm on my way." Jo reaches down to thread her fingers through Jess's. The action is smooth in the dream, while it would have felt clumsy and awkward in the real world. Jo's not used to picking up nice girls in the real world. But in the dream she feels loose and graceful when she slides into Jess.
"Thank you."
Jo still feels the ghost of Jess at her side when she wakes.
+++
"So how do you know about hunters?" Jo asks, a fry hanging off the cusp of her lip like a cigarette. She and Jess are in a dinner now, the one where Jo ate lunch.
The settings of her dreams are becoming the medium with which she tells Jess about her day. Jo thinks this means she's gotten use to the intrusion and should worry more. She should doubt the validity of Jess's easy presence, pressing constantly on her mind. Instead she reaches across the table and takes the waded napkin from Jess's fidgeting hands and places it aside before sliding her palm against Jess's.
But her vague knowledge of the supernatural has been a question tugging insistently at the back of Jo's mind going on two days now.
"I've been with one." Jess says to the tabletop.
"Oh." Jo says before quickly changing the subject. She doesn't like that Jess won't meet her eyes. "Where do you go during the days?"
"Nowhere. I hang out in your mind, I think. But with you awake it feels like someone turned out the lights."
"You can't just go back to your own body?"
Jess shakes her head, but doesn't look at Jess, instead focuses the whole of her attention on the press of their joined hands. "If I went back to my own body I probably wouldn't be able to find you again. I walked from dream to dream then rode them when they woke to the next sleeping person. It's weird, I can feel my body trying to pull me back, even though we're still two states away."
"So you just hang out in my brain during the day?"
"I try not to touch anything." Jess says, sounding very much like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
"But you know what's going on up here?" Jo asks again, this time tapping her temple.
"Yeah." Jess tightened her grip on Jo's hand when she tries to tug away.
The truth is she's been thinking of Jess a lot, in her waking and dreaming hours. And not just because she's rushing across the country to get to her bedside for a case either, not if she's honest.
Jo leans across the table, knees squeaking in the vinyl. She tangles fingers in the long fall of Jess's hair before moving in for the kiss.
The slide of their mouths is slow and wet. Jess responds immediately, she was expecting it. Her lips part and lets Jo inside before pulling with her own hands, catching Jo close.
A muffled moan of disappointment fills both their mouths when Jo feels the now familiar pull as she rejoins the waking world.
+++
"Other than laying in a coma, what's this dream girl of yours doing?"
Jo turns red and coughs to cover up her unease, even though Bobby can't see her blush over the phone.
"I mean what are her other symptoms, Jo." He says, sounding agitated and way too knowing. Jo wonders if everyone's just got a free; all expenses paid look into her mind now.
"She's tired." Jo says, remembering the pinched look in Jess's face, how careful and economical she is with every movement. Jo's really no judge, at least until she gets to the hospital, but she bets Jess's lost weight.
Turning pages.
"Right Here Waiting For You" comes on the radio and she turns it up a bit before digging into the passenger seat for one of her REO tapes.
"You might be dealing with a psi sucker. Probably a wraith, though you won't know until you see her in person. It has occurred to you that this might be a set up?"
Jo remembers the feels of Jess's mouth against her own, cool and soft, giving just as good as she got.
"Yeah, Bobby, but I don't think so."
"Alright." He says, drawing out the l. She thinks he mumbles idjit, but the radio's too loud now.
She hums along, "Whatever it takes, or how my heart breaks," She sings under her breath.
"As much as I appreciate the serenade, I've got other work to do today."
"Thanks for looking into this."
"Don't mention it. Kill it with silver."
"Bye, Bobby."
She thinks he may say, "Go get your girl." But Jo's already hanging up.
She turns up the radio and steps on the gas. There's a round of silver bullets in her glove compartment.
+++
This is their last dream together. Jo's only hours away, but she pulls into a rest stop and locks the doors anyways. She wants this time and goes to sleep in the driver's seat.
"Almost there." Jo opens her eyes and should be more surprised to find a plush, Valentine's suite waiting for her.
"You trying to tell me something, Jo." Jess smiles, she's dressed in lingerie that Jo's only seen in catalogues, sitting demurely on the edge of the bed.
Jo's stayed in rooms like this, draped in tacky red velvet, cheap mirrors on the ceiling and fat cupids in the wallpaper. It's so outrageous and over the top and all a product of her own mind. Jo doubles over laughing.
Jess laughs with her and holds out a hand and leading Jo onto the mattress.
"I figure, since you've been walking around my brain for so long, you probably know just what I want." Jo says, cupping Jess's breast before kissing down the long slope of Jess's neck, sucking little pink marks into the skin. "No use in hiding it."
"You do have a colorful imagination." Jess says, snapping the strap of her own bra before winding her arms around Jo's neck and drawing her into a kiss.
"You can still say no. Just because this is my mind, doesn't mean-"
Jess's thigh slides between her legs and she rolls them. Jo topples over with an undignified cry; one Jess catches with her tongue. She laughs when she has Jo pinned to the mattress and Jo can see their reflection in the ceiling.
+++
"I want to see your Jane Does." Jo tells a doctor the next day. She's made it and is now waiting in hospital reception, dressed like she's got money and the power of the law on her side, carrying a suitcase. People treat you better when they think you're important. She's got a fake badge resting in the inside pocket of her blazer, just waiting for an excuse.
"I'm looking for a missing person. Blonde woman, mid-20s, been here a couple of weeks. Comatose."
When Jo sees the body it knocks the wind right out of her. Seeing Jess in the flesh when just last night, dreaming on the side of the road she fucked fingers into that hot, willing body. Jess looks different here, surrounded by white and sharp corners instead of glazed with sweat, illuminated by garish lighting, bucking against Jo's lap.
Here she's pale and wane. Jo shifts, feeling the gun in her shoulder holster. She did some of her own research, to supplement Bobby's. It's a wraith all right, siphoning the energy right out of Jess's weak, incapacitated body. Now Jo's just got to find the sonuvabitch, pump a few round into him and Jess will wake up. That's the plan.
"Do you know her name?" Dr. Marcus asks. He's got a clipboard out, looking over her stats.
"Jessica -Jessica " Moore, "Harvelle."
+++
Jo spends all day watching the staff. Cataloguing everyone that goes in and out of Jess's room. It's not a private room. She counts three nurses, visitors for her roommate. The doctor never comes back again. Though Jo checks, all the other incapacitated patients in the ward, rendered silent and unable to speak out, are also his patients.
When visiting hours end, Jo slips into the supply closet and changes into a pair of nurse’s scrubs. She hides the gun in a stack of clean sheet and slips out of the closet.
She moves the roommate to an empty bed, down the hall and no one question her once she drops Dr. Marcus' name.
She can't kill the doctor in the hospital, though. Jo wants to go to Vegas someday, and can't do that if she's wanted for murder.
Instead she turns on the charm. "I don't normally ask, but I find with especially difficult cases it's best to unwind in good company. Are you good company, Dr. Marcus?"
Of course he is. And if Jo has to unbutton her oxford until he can see bra, than that's just what it takes.
He hisses and thrashes once she's got him pinned to the alley wall, barrel of her gun at the base of his skull. His spines come out in self-defense, but it's too little too late. She buries two bullets in his brain, one through his heart and is gone before the body hits the ground.
She's upstairs and dressed as a nurse again before the panic starts. Dr. Marcus has been shot.
Jess still doesn't wake, though.
+++
Jo sleeps curled in the visitor’s chair in the corner of the room and dreams, but Jess doesn't make an appearance.
She dreams of the road, sitting in the driver's seat, roaring down the way with wind in her face.
When she wakes, Jo can think of nothing but the empty passenger seat beside her as she watches the slow rise and fall of Jess's chest.
+++
"I don't know what to tell you, kiddo. Are you sure you got the wraith?" Bobby asks, trying to placate her.
"Right between the eyes."
"Maybe she just needs time to snap out of it. That's got to be tough on the body, just give it time."
Jo hangs up after that and curses softly. But it's not Bobby's fault Jess hasn't woken yet.
She's sitting in the same chair she slept in, pulled up right to the side of the bed. Dressed in civilian clothes, just a regular visitor now, the nurses are nothing but pleasant and helpful. They brought Jo some coffee from the cafeteria and some magazines. When Jo just scoffed at the copy of Us Weekly, they traded it for a book of fairytales snuck from the children's ward.
Equally ridiculous, Jo thought, but somewhere between reading Snow White and Sleeping Beauty aloud, Jo thinks she's done worse with less of a hunch. So, with nothing to loose, she closes the book and sets it aside, a knot of anticipation coiling in her gut to compliment the stress tension running high through her body.
"Here goes nothing." She whispers, looking down at Jess, pretty, beautiful, Jess. There are tired smudges beneath her eyes and her face is pinched and gaunt where the wraith stole from her. But when Jo cups her cheek, drawing closer, her skin feels warmer than it had the day before.
She kisses her lips carefully, as if Jess is something fragile that could break, but becomes more forceful when Jess stirs beneath her after first contact and flush coming over her cheeks.
Jo kisses her nose, eyelids, cheeks, everywhere before returned to her lips.
She's laughing into Jess's mouth when she finally comes awake, blinking slowly up into Jo's grinning face.
For a minute Jo worries that her dreams of Jess really were some fault of her imagination. But then Jess smiles too, it curves her lips and brightens her eyes, so much better in the real world. She threads her fingers through Jo's, holding them fast against her cheek.
"Hi." She says and it feels like a whole new beginning.
Author/Artist: psychedelicammo
Recipient: flutterfingers
Pairing: Jo/Jess
Rating: Pg-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Jess is the girl of Jo's dreams (literally).
Notes: I apologize profusely for how late this is. Seriously, I'm really freaking sorry.
Before Jess is a fellow hunter, or even a case, she's the girl of Jo's dreams. But only in the most literal sense.
She looks like a cheerleader, blonde and beautiful, one of those perfect blow up doll with push up tits. The kind of girl always looking down their button noses at flannel wearing dykes like Jo.
But now she's moving through the Roadhouse with purpose, headed straight for Jo. The urgency in her step doesn't mesh with the slow atmosphere of the bar and that immediately puts Jo on edge.
She calls Jo's name, even though she doesn't remember the introductions.
"You need a refill or something?" Jo asks, angling her hip against the bar and looking cocky.
"What? No, but you're a hunter, aren't you?"
None of the patrons glance up and Ellen isn't even in sight. The hairs on the nape of Jo's neck go up, though, and she wonders if this is what Spiderman feels like.
"This is a hunter's bar, but you've still got to keep your voice down." Jo guides her to a chair. "Who-"
"You're not in a bar right now. It's complicated, but you've got to come help me." The girl's gripping her arms like Jo is her only lifeline. "I've been searching for weeks and you're the first hunter I've found."
Jo can just blink stupidly for a second, wonder just what's going on when the other girl's eyes go wide.
"Please, Jo, help me."
And before Jo can ask the how, whats and wheres, she's blinking awake to the sound of the motel manager banging on her door.
"What the hell?" Jo mutters beneath her breath as she rolls out of bed, the details of her weird dream already forgotten.
+++
She's back again. This time they're in a park, it's one Jo recognizes from her last job, a ghost haunting kids just outside of Mobile, Alabama. Jo's still picking wood chip splinters out of her palms.
"I'm dreaming." Jo says while the stranger sits on a swing, kicking her legs, slowly propelling herself.
She nods, "I'm Jess."
Jo looks around, trying to acclimate herself to the dream. "Yeah, hi Jess." She says absently.
"Well I figure if you're going to come rescue me, you might as well know my name."
"And how do I know you're not just some figment of my imagination. A fantasy or something."
Jess smiles a little, though she still looks sad around the eyes and so tired. "Does that mean I'm your type?"
"Not even close. I prefer less pep squad, more Xena."
"We'll see about that." Jess flirts half-heartedly and reminds Jo that this is a case. A potential case.
"So what's your problem? Other than you being stuck in my head."
"I need more than that?" Jess's feet rest firmly on the ground and she looks up to meet Jo's eyes. She takes a deep breath, "I'm lying in a hospital bed Caliente, Nevada. The doctor's think it's a coma."
"But you think it's supernatural."
"You don't? Jo, I've been walking through dreams for weeks looking someone who could help. You're the first one I've found."
It's so easy for Jo to go to her knees and wrap Jess into a hug. Jess feels real in her arms, though she smells faintly of antibacterial soap, that sterile reek of hospital. But she seems starved for touch the way she folds into Jo, eager for the contact and it reminds Jo just how helpless and awful it feels to be the victim. Jess takes great gulps of fresh air, gradually calming as Jo continues to rub soothing circles into her back.
Comfort is easier to give in dreams. Jo feels almost freer knowing that it's all in her head, except for maybe Jess. And the idea of an intruder in her brain, doesn't feel nearly as violating as it should.
"You're waking up." Jess's pulling away just as Jo feels a tug in her gut. "Nevada." Jess says by way of farewell.
Jo wakes up in another motel room. This one has tacky goldfish painted on blue walls. She stares blankly for a moment before rolling out of bed. She scribbles Jess and Caliente, NV on a McDonald's napkin before she can forget.
+++
Nevada is days away, but Jo makes good time that afternoon, once she's got coffee flowing through her system and "Find Your Own Way" playing in the tape deck.
After a few days of lull she's renewed by the prospect of a hunt. She's always operated better with something on the docket, idle hands and all that.
But driving doesn't leave her time to do the necessary research and she's yet to find Binsfeld's Classification of Demons on audio book at her local library. So she hits three on her speed dial and waits for Bobby to pick up.
"What can I do for you?"
"I've got a case."
"Yeah," Jo can hear his brow furrowing over the phone. "Pretty soon after the last one, don't you think?"
"I can handle it." Jo insists.
"Which is why you're calling me to do your book work?"
Jo grunts into the mouthpiece, but decides that was rhetorical and doesn't deserve a real answer. "You going to help or not, Bobby?"
"Yeah, yeah, of course I'll help. What are you looking at?"
"What do you know about comas and astral projection?"
"You'd be better off talking to a psychic, I know that much. Why, someone been astral projecting onto you?"
"Not quite, it's more like dream visitation." Jo can hear an undercurrent of rapidly turning pages.
"Malevolent?" Bobby asks after a moment.
"Friendly than Casper, the ghost."
He hesitates for a moment and Jo listens to the sound of an old fashioned index. "All right, I'll call when I've got something."
"Thank you, Bobby." She says. Jo really is grateful, Bobby's really the only open channel of communication that Jo has. Ellen hasn't called much since Jo struck out on her own, though she's just as guilty. And Jo made a pact to stay away from whatever trouble the Winchesters are courting this week, at least until they express an actual need for her help. She's still got a little bit of self-respect and preservation when it comes to those two and Jo intends to hold onto that as long as she can.
"Your welcome. Be careful." Bobby warns before hanging up and Jo decides that maybe it's not the worst fate in the world, to have somebody else looking out for you.
+++
Jo gets to bed early that night. She opens her eyes again to a stretch of pavement; much like the one she's been driving on all day long, but dustier. She's surrounded by a vast expanse of red dust and thinks she might be in the desert here.
Jess walks up behind her, barefoot and picking her way carefully across the hot blacktop. "You're coming." She smiles, really smiles, at Jo for the first time. It feels like sunshine on her skin.
"I'm pretty far out, though. I find it hard to believe that there wasn't another hunter between Alabama and Nevada."
Jess's loose shirt whips around her in the wind and her hair flies back. "Maybe none I wanted to trust with my life."
"You trust me?" Jo asks, looking down the interstate and into the horizon. The road's the best, most stable home she knows now, along with the feel of a shot gun in her hands, ready and loaded with salt. And she's laying it all at Jess's feet, or at least her subconscious is, after knowing her for such a short while.
But that's the life of a hunter, haphazard relationships built with fear, trust, desperation, dependence, and a base instinct for self-preservation. Bridges easily burnt when the hunter leaves town to continue the only steady, monogamous relationship a drifter can maintain, their love of the road.
"I'm on my way." Jo reaches down to thread her fingers through Jess's. The action is smooth in the dream, while it would have felt clumsy and awkward in the real world. Jo's not used to picking up nice girls in the real world. But in the dream she feels loose and graceful when she slides into Jess.
"Thank you."
Jo still feels the ghost of Jess at her side when she wakes.
+++
"So how do you know about hunters?" Jo asks, a fry hanging off the cusp of her lip like a cigarette. She and Jess are in a dinner now, the one where Jo ate lunch.
The settings of her dreams are becoming the medium with which she tells Jess about her day. Jo thinks this means she's gotten use to the intrusion and should worry more. She should doubt the validity of Jess's easy presence, pressing constantly on her mind. Instead she reaches across the table and takes the waded napkin from Jess's fidgeting hands and places it aside before sliding her palm against Jess's.
But her vague knowledge of the supernatural has been a question tugging insistently at the back of Jo's mind going on two days now.
"I've been with one." Jess says to the tabletop.
"Oh." Jo says before quickly changing the subject. She doesn't like that Jess won't meet her eyes. "Where do you go during the days?"
"Nowhere. I hang out in your mind, I think. But with you awake it feels like someone turned out the lights."
"You can't just go back to your own body?"
Jess shakes her head, but doesn't look at Jess, instead focuses the whole of her attention on the press of their joined hands. "If I went back to my own body I probably wouldn't be able to find you again. I walked from dream to dream then rode them when they woke to the next sleeping person. It's weird, I can feel my body trying to pull me back, even though we're still two states away."
"So you just hang out in my brain during the day?"
"I try not to touch anything." Jess says, sounding very much like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
"But you know what's going on up here?" Jo asks again, this time tapping her temple.
"Yeah." Jess tightened her grip on Jo's hand when she tries to tug away.
The truth is she's been thinking of Jess a lot, in her waking and dreaming hours. And not just because she's rushing across the country to get to her bedside for a case either, not if she's honest.
Jo leans across the table, knees squeaking in the vinyl. She tangles fingers in the long fall of Jess's hair before moving in for the kiss.
The slide of their mouths is slow and wet. Jess responds immediately, she was expecting it. Her lips part and lets Jo inside before pulling with her own hands, catching Jo close.
A muffled moan of disappointment fills both their mouths when Jo feels the now familiar pull as she rejoins the waking world.
+++
"Other than laying in a coma, what's this dream girl of yours doing?"
Jo turns red and coughs to cover up her unease, even though Bobby can't see her blush over the phone.
"I mean what are her other symptoms, Jo." He says, sounding agitated and way too knowing. Jo wonders if everyone's just got a free; all expenses paid look into her mind now.
"She's tired." Jo says, remembering the pinched look in Jess's face, how careful and economical she is with every movement. Jo's really no judge, at least until she gets to the hospital, but she bets Jess's lost weight.
Turning pages.
"Right Here Waiting For You" comes on the radio and she turns it up a bit before digging into the passenger seat for one of her REO tapes.
"You might be dealing with a psi sucker. Probably a wraith, though you won't know until you see her in person. It has occurred to you that this might be a set up?"
Jo remembers the feels of Jess's mouth against her own, cool and soft, giving just as good as she got.
"Yeah, Bobby, but I don't think so."
"Alright." He says, drawing out the l. She thinks he mumbles idjit, but the radio's too loud now.
She hums along, "Whatever it takes, or how my heart breaks," She sings under her breath.
"As much as I appreciate the serenade, I've got other work to do today."
"Thanks for looking into this."
"Don't mention it. Kill it with silver."
"Bye, Bobby."
She thinks he may say, "Go get your girl." But Jo's already hanging up.
She turns up the radio and steps on the gas. There's a round of silver bullets in her glove compartment.
+++
This is their last dream together. Jo's only hours away, but she pulls into a rest stop and locks the doors anyways. She wants this time and goes to sleep in the driver's seat.
"Almost there." Jo opens her eyes and should be more surprised to find a plush, Valentine's suite waiting for her.
"You trying to tell me something, Jo." Jess smiles, she's dressed in lingerie that Jo's only seen in catalogues, sitting demurely on the edge of the bed.
Jo's stayed in rooms like this, draped in tacky red velvet, cheap mirrors on the ceiling and fat cupids in the wallpaper. It's so outrageous and over the top and all a product of her own mind. Jo doubles over laughing.
Jess laughs with her and holds out a hand and leading Jo onto the mattress.
"I figure, since you've been walking around my brain for so long, you probably know just what I want." Jo says, cupping Jess's breast before kissing down the long slope of Jess's neck, sucking little pink marks into the skin. "No use in hiding it."
"You do have a colorful imagination." Jess says, snapping the strap of her own bra before winding her arms around Jo's neck and drawing her into a kiss.
"You can still say no. Just because this is my mind, doesn't mean-"
Jess's thigh slides between her legs and she rolls them. Jo topples over with an undignified cry; one Jess catches with her tongue. She laughs when she has Jo pinned to the mattress and Jo can see their reflection in the ceiling.
+++
"I want to see your Jane Does." Jo tells a doctor the next day. She's made it and is now waiting in hospital reception, dressed like she's got money and the power of the law on her side, carrying a suitcase. People treat you better when they think you're important. She's got a fake badge resting in the inside pocket of her blazer, just waiting for an excuse.
"I'm looking for a missing person. Blonde woman, mid-20s, been here a couple of weeks. Comatose."
When Jo sees the body it knocks the wind right out of her. Seeing Jess in the flesh when just last night, dreaming on the side of the road she fucked fingers into that hot, willing body. Jess looks different here, surrounded by white and sharp corners instead of glazed with sweat, illuminated by garish lighting, bucking against Jo's lap.
Here she's pale and wane. Jo shifts, feeling the gun in her shoulder holster. She did some of her own research, to supplement Bobby's. It's a wraith all right, siphoning the energy right out of Jess's weak, incapacitated body. Now Jo's just got to find the sonuvabitch, pump a few round into him and Jess will wake up. That's the plan.
"Do you know her name?" Dr. Marcus asks. He's got a clipboard out, looking over her stats.
"Jessica -Jessica " Moore, "Harvelle."
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Jo spends all day watching the staff. Cataloguing everyone that goes in and out of Jess's room. It's not a private room. She counts three nurses, visitors for her roommate. The doctor never comes back again. Though Jo checks, all the other incapacitated patients in the ward, rendered silent and unable to speak out, are also his patients.
When visiting hours end, Jo slips into the supply closet and changes into a pair of nurse’s scrubs. She hides the gun in a stack of clean sheet and slips out of the closet.
She moves the roommate to an empty bed, down the hall and no one question her once she drops Dr. Marcus' name.
She can't kill the doctor in the hospital, though. Jo wants to go to Vegas someday, and can't do that if she's wanted for murder.
Instead she turns on the charm. "I don't normally ask, but I find with especially difficult cases it's best to unwind in good company. Are you good company, Dr. Marcus?"
Of course he is. And if Jo has to unbutton her oxford until he can see bra, than that's just what it takes.
He hisses and thrashes once she's got him pinned to the alley wall, barrel of her gun at the base of his skull. His spines come out in self-defense, but it's too little too late. She buries two bullets in his brain, one through his heart and is gone before the body hits the ground.
She's upstairs and dressed as a nurse again before the panic starts. Dr. Marcus has been shot.
Jess still doesn't wake, though.
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Jo sleeps curled in the visitor’s chair in the corner of the room and dreams, but Jess doesn't make an appearance.
She dreams of the road, sitting in the driver's seat, roaring down the way with wind in her face.
When she wakes, Jo can think of nothing but the empty passenger seat beside her as she watches the slow rise and fall of Jess's chest.
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"I don't know what to tell you, kiddo. Are you sure you got the wraith?" Bobby asks, trying to placate her.
"Right between the eyes."
"Maybe she just needs time to snap out of it. That's got to be tough on the body, just give it time."
Jo hangs up after that and curses softly. But it's not Bobby's fault Jess hasn't woken yet.
She's sitting in the same chair she slept in, pulled up right to the side of the bed. Dressed in civilian clothes, just a regular visitor now, the nurses are nothing but pleasant and helpful. They brought Jo some coffee from the cafeteria and some magazines. When Jo just scoffed at the copy of Us Weekly, they traded it for a book of fairytales snuck from the children's ward.
Equally ridiculous, Jo thought, but somewhere between reading Snow White and Sleeping Beauty aloud, Jo thinks she's done worse with less of a hunch. So, with nothing to loose, she closes the book and sets it aside, a knot of anticipation coiling in her gut to compliment the stress tension running high through her body.
"Here goes nothing." She whispers, looking down at Jess, pretty, beautiful, Jess. There are tired smudges beneath her eyes and her face is pinched and gaunt where the wraith stole from her. But when Jo cups her cheek, drawing closer, her skin feels warmer than it had the day before.
She kisses her lips carefully, as if Jess is something fragile that could break, but becomes more forceful when Jess stirs beneath her after first contact and flush coming over her cheeks.
Jo kisses her nose, eyelids, cheeks, everywhere before returned to her lips.
She's laughing into Jess's mouth when she finally comes awake, blinking slowly up into Jo's grinning face.
For a minute Jo worries that her dreams of Jess really were some fault of her imagination. But then Jess smiles too, it curves her lips and brightens her eyes, so much better in the real world. She threads her fingers through Jo's, holding them fast against her cheek.
"Hi." She says and it feels like a whole new beginning.