[ It's quiet first. Castiel's hand weaves a little tighter in hers. Thumb brushing the back of her hand as he stares, stricken and unbelieving.
Jo knows the game Cas is playing when he starts talking. Jo has played that game—had to checkmate herself in every match; there's no one else there at the board, in the dark—for weeks and months now. Outrunning a brutal nightmare that wants its very human due, and what was Jo if not a continuation of life refusing to give into to the wants of people and things around her that demanded she fit some shape determined by anyone but her?
But when he gets to those last words, something sharpens too much, mixes, and replaces the implication, volatile and acid dripped, with the two of them. Faces flushed, lips slightly swollen, hands clutching each other, the flippant disregard for Cas, the guy, her absolute nonexistence to the list of anyone listed as in danger or worth of note, and something in Jo sizzles along the line of her spine. Annoyed. Smarting. Jealous. ]
No. [ This time it's more defiant. ] You don't get to say that. You don't even get to think that any part of that was real. Do you hear me?
[ She levels him a hard look, even through the daze shatter of her own expression. She pulls out words that belong here and that she's refused to touch on with anyone, for any reason, since that week. There'd always been something else to do, someone else to care for, and she was needed for it. Convenient that. ] Unless you'd like to add to that, that somewhere in that head of yours, you think he actually wanted to hurt me, too.
Are you ready to add that to your plate? Because I don't think you are. And I'm not going to agree that anything out of a demon's mouth gets our time.
[ He didn't. She'd known that unquestioningly, even so far over the edge of physical hysteria, it was a miracle she'd kept herself together. She'd seen how broken it'd left him. Worse to see it, hold him, near silently sobbing and shaking in her arms after it. The barest stretch of a breath before all of this. An eternity ago.
Jo doesn't know for the life of her if she has what he needs—that ache that's written all over his face, looking for an answer, looking for her to stop a plummeting fall in progress—but she knows that the mess of her heart, of the thing between her and Dean that even Sam won't touch, not even while staring at her with those big dark redwood tree too aware eyes, the one that exists only in blinding clarity and agony at the their worst of times, doesn't get to be the benedictive means of immolation for Cas' personal pyre. No one is dying today. (Not yet.) ]
That demon wanted to hurt you, and he did. [ So so much.
In a place and way, no one knew to be looking out for. She didn't.
(Fuck knowing if she knows how to handle it; it's a scorchmark that she didn't know to protect it.
Him.) ] But he's not Dean, and he doesn't get to have any more of you than that.
no subject
Thumb brushing the back of her hand as he stares, stricken and unbelieving.
Jo knows the game Cas is playing when he starts talking. Jo has played that game—had to checkmate herself in every match; there's no one else there at the board, in the dark—for weeks and months now. Outrunning a brutal nightmare that wants its very human due, and what was Jo if not a continuation of life refusing to give into to the wants of people and things around her that demanded she fit some shape determined by anyone but her?
But when he gets to those last words, something sharpens too much, mixes, and replaces the implication, volatile and acid dripped, with the two of them. Faces flushed, lips slightly swollen, hands clutching each other, the flippant disregard for Cas, the guy, her absolute nonexistence to the list of anyone listed as in danger or worth of note, and something in Jo sizzles along the line of her spine. Annoyed. Smarting. Jealous. ]
No. [ This time it's more defiant. ] You don't get to say that.
You don't even get to think that any part of that was real. Do you hear me?
[ She levels him a hard look, even through the daze shatter of her own expression. She pulls out words that belong here and that she's refused to touch on with anyone, for any reason, since that week. There'd always been something else to do, someone else to care for, and she was needed for it. Convenient that. ] Unless you'd like to add to that, that somewhere in that head of yours, you think he actually wanted to hurt me, too.
Are you ready to add that to your plate? Because I don't think you are.
And I'm not going to agree that anything out of a demon's mouth gets our time.
[ He didn't. She'd known that unquestioningly, even so far over the edge of physical hysteria, it was a miracle she'd kept herself together. She'd seen how broken it'd left him. Worse to see it, hold him, near silently sobbing and shaking in her arms after it. The barest stretch of a breath before all of this. An eternity ago.
Jo doesn't know for the life of her if she has what he needs—that ache that's written all over his face, looking for an answer, looking for her to stop a plummeting fall in progress—but she knows that the mess of her heart, of the thing between her and Dean that even Sam won't touch, not even while staring at her with those big dark redwood tree too aware eyes, the one that exists only in blinding clarity and agony at the their worst of times, doesn't get to be the benedictive means of immolation for Cas' personal pyre. No one is dying today. (Not yet.) ]
That demon wanted to hurt you, and he did. [ So so much.
In a place and way, no one knew to be looking out for. She didn't.
(Fuck knowing if she knows how to handle it;
it's a scorchmark that she didn't know to protect it.
Him.) ] But he's not Dean, and he doesn't get to have any more of you than that.