Iɴ Hᴇʟʟ, I'ʟʟ ʙᴇ ɪɴ ɢᴏᴏᴅ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴀɴʏ → sᴇᴍɪ-ᴏᴘᴇɴ

[righteously]

Who: Dean & Various
When: August
Where: Cadens & the Horizon
What: Catch-all

Warnings: Winchester-brand violence, booze, and suicidal ideation I'm sure.

I ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ғɪɢʜᴛ
Tᴏ ᴘʀᴏᴠᴇ I'ᴍ ʀɪɢʜᴛ
I ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ғᴏʀɢɪᴠᴇɴ

Comments

[tobeclosetohim]

He changed things.

Jo's head turns so that she can look at him straight on finally.
She hates and drowns herself in the fact staring at him is easier.

(She's not even letting herself move to see if there are still six letters, in the shaky line of a small child and a stolen knife, carved seated-low on the inside of the bar. Whether the box of her father's things is still in the second storeroom — the one not for the perishables. If all the books and her mother's meticulous records of all the cases to pass through.)

He changed things. That earns a slow frown. Like he'd chiseled a new name on a grave marker. Because he felt like it. Because he could. She has no clue what to do what that feeling. Because he says it, but he goes on standing there, not saying anything more than she asked, but almost a little too precisely. Like she might pop if his words had any more pressure.

So she does something she does too well. She pivots.

"Should I expect that to happen to me, too?"

[righteously]

He changed things.

Because this place isn't a museum to him. It's not a tomb, it's not a grave, it's not a monument to the dead. To him, this is a living, breathing place that deserves life, and growth, and change. It deserves to be what it was, what it is, and it deserves to keep on becoming. They have a different relationship with these walls, the two of them. Hers runs deeper, longer, more foundational.

His is an idea. Potential, what if, what could have been, what he could never have — but somehow, inexplicably, has.

"I got no idea," he admits bluntly, shrugging, palms slightly out. "I don't know how this crap works. Not really. I'm just wingin' it like the rest of us sorry sons of bitches. I can tell you that you can make whatever you want to here. Sky's the limit. You want sixteen rodeo clowns to pop out of a closet, I'm not gonna kink shame."

A beat, and then more seriously, "Do you, uh... You want some time? I can leave you to it, if you need a minute."

[tobeclosetohim]

It sounds like shit, but the impossibly solid floor of the only home she'd ever had in her whole life is under her shoes. A second chance, with a dream of a thing, not the real thing. But it looks so real, it felt real under her fingertips earlier.

What would she even make? What would ever come out of her unbidden? It's the only place that's mattered in her life. She'd gone to several people's places; she's been to Bobby's out there (no more real, but probably feeling like it was), but none of them was anything like her home. Nothing was. Nothing in the whole of the hunter community existed like the Roadhouse.

Until it didn't, and then nothing resembled it at all anywhere.

At that last offer, Jo's gaze goes far enough to make it a few inches above his head, more ceiling boards than anything else, before it comes back, and she's shaking her head. It's slow, conflicted; her brows pinch, and when she looks back down, it's not really at his face this time. Lower. But not specifically at anything in focus on him or the floor.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to have an answer for that."

[righteously]

"Fair enough," he says, mild and agreeable, with a conceding tilt to his head.

Another quiet moment passes.

"Well, I tell you what," it both is and isn't a proposition, and he says it while he heads for the bar. On top of it, a half-empty bottle of whiskey left over from the night before. He reaches for it immediately. "I'm gonna sit here and have a drink, and if-or-when you decide, you let me know."

Until then, he'll sit quietly, and drink in companionable silence while she processes — giving her space, but not leaving her alone. It's the best thing he can think to do.

[tobeclosetohim]

"Make me one."
Is that request? She can't tell.

Beat. "A double. Whatever it is."

Jo tries hard not to think about that connection to Dean behind the bar, knowing where things are, having done this enough to feel comfortable just moving around here like he's been doing it for far longer than she's ready to look at.

She just wants something that will burn.

Something that will make her feel her skin again.

[righteously]

"Comin' right up," no question, no muss, no fuss. Just one hell of a tumbler of whiskey set on the bar top in front of her, and then him pouring his own (slightly less full) glass before taking up a spot beside her — for however long it takes.