Work Text:
"Jo," says Sam, and it's the first thing he's said out loud in a week.
He doesn't really talk much these days. No one to talk to. That's the way he wants it. He's a little sick of Bobby trying to be his father.
He's so startled to see her that he doesn't even realize she's got a gun pointed at him for a few seconds. Now it's too late to aim his own at her.
"It's you, isn't it, Sam," she says back, firm and unmoving, her eyes flinty and her plump little mouth set.
*
To his surprise - and strange, lung-releasing relief - Jo doesn't say anything much. Maybe she's heard about Dean already. Or maybe she doesn't want to know, doesn't want to see him anyway. She sits in the front seat of the Impala next to him, this tiny thing, obviously weary but too stubborn to get some sleep.
When dawn begins to loom on the horizon, Sam pulls off the highway and into the parking lot of the first shabby little motel he sees. He and Jo exchange looks. She has gray circles under her eyes. He probably does, too. Wordlessly, Sam gets them a room. Two queens, of course. That's what he would've gotten anyway. Old habits die hard.
Sam sleeps in the car most of the time now. Motels are mainly for when he needs to mend himself with sleep or stitches or alcohol. They're just so stupid; he's sick of them. On the shoulder of the highway, people pass by every minute. In motel rooms, he's all alone.
Except for now.
Jo claims the bed farthest from the door, tossing a leather rucksack and a worn-looking army issue duffel onto it. Then she sinks onto it too, knees wide apart like she's a cowboy, to pull out her phone and check her messages. Sam stands there, tight-lipped, and watches her, hands pushing into his jacket pockets.
He was too late on the hunt. Jo had smashed every other thing in the entire house in the process of weeding out the drawer of little whittled figurines. Freakin' hoodoo. They were pitch-black clumps of ashes surrounded by circles of chalk in the backyard by the time he'd gotten there.
She seems different. He only remembers blurry bits of nearly killing her in Duluth; remembers the vulnerability and pride in her face, the knot on her forehead, how light she had been in his arms.
Now she seems to expect silence.
*
Jo stays with him.
It can't last, and it doesn't very long - but while it does, it aches in his chest. It hurts and it's perfect - and it hurts.
Sam forgets fucking Madison like it was just a passing shadow. She didn't need him, and he didn't need her, not beyond his body's need and his desire to get laid. He doesn't understand that anymore.
He understands this. Jo's independent, fierce, no-nonsense, goofy. There aren't fires in elegant hearths or shelves full of good books surrounding them - just salt and knives and how they've both forgotten college. Just how bad they both want to hunt. She doesn't really need him, but it feels like she does when she grabs his hair and wraps her coltish legs around his waist and cries, Sam, Sam, Sam, please, as he pounds her ass against the motel wall (this olive green pattern that looks like paisleys and nothing at all).
He doesn't need Jo, but his body does, like it's gasping for air at the surface before getting dragged under again.
He can lift her, fuck her standing up in the middle of the room, in the middle of nowhere, just bouncing her on his cock.
He can grab her, wrestle her down in a split second, rip her shirt open and suck her tits right through her bra; fill her pussy with two fingers to the hilt, his thumb settling perfectly against her clit; pin her in place just muttering her name, Jo, like he can't breathe.
He can see her for what she is as she lays on old motel mattresses, naked, wheat-colored hair in painful twists, eyelashes cutting down over those gray circles under her eyes, his come still thick and white in the delicate folds of her.
She's so light.
She's so light it hurts his eyes.
*
"Maybe I can help," she says, obstinate, making Sam scrub his face all the harder. There's blood dripping from one temple. Maybe his head got gashed somehow. It doesn't hurt. The water's cool on his skin, but he can hardly feel it.
She can help. He knows she can. She puts together cases like he does - organized, scrutinized. She digs into them with a fascination, stays up all night, is thinking about them instead of food or hooking up.
"Jo," says Sam, huffing down at the sink. "This is my hunt."
"Y'know - you're just like your brother," she says, lifting a flat hand like she's going to judo chop his throat, then spins and disappears from the doorway with a whip of curls, pale as a ghost.
Something about her reminds him of his mother and Dean at the same time.
*
She hisses at him in a way that makes him think that this hurts for her, too, in that way where it's so bad it's good, or so good it's bad.
"Do it - do it."
This is the only thing they've got, it feels like. The only thing that's real in their world - the only thing they can feel, and it hurts.
"God," grits Sam, and his body heaves against hers, feeling so huge and muscular. She's thin underneath him, and small, and so soft and so hard. He's a roiling, crushing, unstoppable wave and she's a stone beneath him, worn smooth, worn down. "You ready, Jo? You ready for it?"
They're connected when they're coming - when she's wetting his thighs with sweet little streaks, when his cock is jerking in her and he knows she can feel every strain of it.
Afterwards, they don't cuddle or talk.
They just let exhaustion overtake them, and Sam dreams.
He dreams about Dean. He dreams that Dean wrecked the car like Jo wrecked her truck, and that's how he died. He dreams that Dean's gone to college - Stanford, of course. They've switched places for some reason that doesn't make sense, and Sam's not supposed to be here. He dreams about Dean and Jo hiding in the walls of the murder castle, and he goes from floor to floor, breaking down the walls with an axe until he hits flesh and a spray of warm blood lands on his face.
In the mornings, they don't eat breakfast.
*
When Jo's phone rings, it's usually Bobby - Sam's stopped picking his up, so Bobby calls hers instead - and he listens to her voice. How can she sound so casual? How can she say, "We're doin' good. We're just outside of Collins. Yeah, it's raining buckets. Ground's all slippery."
She says everything and nothing at all.
One Tuesday (of course it's a Tuesday) in the middle of something she's saying about the trail of deaths they're tracking, he rolls over, grabs her jeans, pulls them down.
"Sam," she says, sharp, but he just pushes her thighs apart and bends to lick, deep and hot, at her cunt through her little cotton panties.
"Can I call you back?" Jo asks Bobby rigidly, and then there's the beep of her phone and this frustrated, breathless moan. "Sam. You dumbass, he said he could help you -- Sam --"
It's times like that Sam grins.
And Tuesdays like that he could relive.
*
When Jo leaves, Sam just stands there in the muddy parking lot, hands in his pockets, and watches her hotwire the car with the little flashlight between her teeth.
They don't say anything. What is there to say? They both knew what it was, and they're both hunters. Jo's on the death trail. He's on the trickster's. They can't have anything but the life, if they want to live it. It wasn't meant to last - because hunters can't have anything. It was just company through a few states.
Still, he sneaks one of his better knives into her rucksack. And she gives him a hug that makes him bend, and doesn't protest when he picks her up - just wraps her legs around him like she does when they fucked, her boots bulky against the ass of his jeans.
"Sam," she says, soft and strong, and that says it all.
*
There are times, especially behind the wheel, when he catches himself talking to Dean in his head.
Would you have fucked her like that, Dean?