He closed his eyes but didn't drop his hand, and Jo wondered if she should follow suit. But she couldn't. She couldn't close her eyes. She needs every hard line of the wall over Jack's shoulder, every hard line of the solid floor beneath her feet. She needed every line on his face, and those closed-eyed, pressed lips, every tiniest give this was not simple for him either.
There'd be nothing to drill her focus down on if she closed her eyes,
and took that darkness over it rather than the blistering clarity of solid, same-as-it-was world.
Jack's eyes open, and he says those three words, and Jo still can't move that second. It's slow. A press-quirk of her lips, like her muscles wouldn't obey her not to move. But that's it. That's. All she feels is the there and then gone press of the small line where her lips meet, the muscles as the edges of them flicker.
It's the first time she stutter stops. Jo half raised her hand, and the way she stopped it in midair probably gives away it was impulse, not choice, and then aware caught a second later. Held it, awkward in the air, before she did it anyway. Put her hand to her cheek, to the place she hasn't touched, not even in the bathroom, alone with herself, not since she covered her face with a hand as it'd all caught up with her after Sam pulled Dean off of her.
The bone is solid through the thin sheef of muscle and skin that make her cheek. Her cheekbone. The hook of her jaw—the place where her jar went down to hold her teeth. There aren't are congealed cuts. The inside of her cheek doesn't feel like she half bit through the inside. It's ... not good. Good is the wrong word. It's like vertigo slams her. Confusion. Normal more like falling, like she can't stand, can't find the equilibrium that kept her standing a minute, two minutes ago.
And the edges of her eyes prickle wildly for a few seconds like she can't orient to the solidness under her fingers. To the sheer unreality of the thing happening, once he'd done it, and it was done.
Like, somehow, she might have imagined all of it.
(But she didn't. Her mind reaches blindly for the worst, like stabbing a hole into herself is easier than just standing still.
And it's so clear. The solid sheer weight pressing her body into the sand. The absolute finite focused rage as Dean—Dean—stared at her like he was staring through her, with rabid unwavering conviction every time his fist landed, a chosen action that even in-action had been reaching for wilder, for more violent, as though even that wasn't, couldn't ever be enough.
The bone deep memory of a kind of pain she hadn't ever felt before.
No broken bone, no fall, no wound like that. Never.
Her bones are solid.
Nothing else is.)
Her voice is hoarse—a whisper. The lever of her balance taken out.
"You couldn't have left some of the pain?"
Sorry, Jack. If you were expecting something different there.
no subject
either.There'd be nothing to drill her focus down on if she closed her eyes,
and took that darkness over it rather than the blistering clarity of solid, same-as-it-was world.
Jack's eyes open, and he says those three words, and Jo still can't move that second. It's slow. A press-quirk of her lips, like her muscles wouldn't obey her not to move. But that's it. That's. All she feels is the there and then gone press of the small line where her lips meet, the muscles as the edges of them flicker.
It's the first time she stutter stops. Jo half raised her hand, and the way she stopped it in midair probably gives away it was impulse, not choice, and then aware caught a second later. Held it, awkward in the air, before she did it anyway. Put her hand to her cheek, to the place she hasn't touched, not even in the bathroom, alone with herself, not since she covered her face with a hand as it'd all caught up with her after Sam pulled Dean off of her.
The bone is solid through the thin sheef of muscle and skin that make her cheek. Her cheekbone. The hook of her jaw—the place where her jar went down to hold her teeth. There aren't are congealed cuts. The inside of her cheek doesn't feel like she half bit through the inside. It's ... not good. Good is the wrong word. It's like vertigo slams her. Confusion. Normal more like falling, like she can't stand, can't find the equilibrium that kept her standing a minute, two minutes ago.
And the edges of her eyes prickle wildly for a few seconds
like she can't orient to the solidness under her fingers.
To the sheer unreality of the thing happening,
once he'd done it, and it was done.
Like, somehow, she might have imagined all of it.
(But she didn't. Her mind reaches blindly for the worst,
like stabbing a hole into herself is easier than just standing still.
And it's so clear. The solid sheer weight pressing her body into the sand. The absolute finite focused rage as Dean—Dean—stared at her like he was staring through her, with rabid unwavering conviction every time his fist landed, a chosen action that even in-action had been reaching for wilder, for more violent, as though even that wasn't, couldn't ever be enough.
The bone deep memory of a kind of pain she hadn't ever felt before.
No broken bone, no fall, no wound like that. Never.
Her bones are solid.
Nothing else is.)
Her voice is hoarse—a whisper.
The lever of her balance taken out.
"You couldn't have left some of the pain?"
Sorry, Jack. If you were expecting something different there.