Emet (the Bitter with the Sweet remix) Part 1[Supernatural; Jo, Dean/OC, Sam; R]

[ll-cool-cj.livejournal.com]

Title: Emet (the Bitter with the Sweet remix)--Part 1 of 2
Author: 2ndary_author
Summary: the Winchesters are a package deal, and George Clay will never be Dean’s top priority.  Not while Sam is alive—not even, Jo realizes, when Sam isn’t alive.
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/OC, allusions to Dean/Jo and Dean/Sam
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Supernatural characters belong to their creators; George the OC belongs to rivkat; references at the end of part 2
Original story: Dabarim by rivkat

 

"He was but one of many things to Thee--

A cunning lump of clay, a sentient clod--

One of a universe of miracles....

Thou hadst infinity to shape and guard--

I only Adam."

1.

After Sam broke Dean’s deal at a crossroads in the Wyoming desert, he goes west, to California.  So Jo Harvelle packs her bags and heads east.  Sam had saved his brother from hell: how could she possibly compete with that?

She gets off the Greyhound in Indianapolis, finds a room in a fleabag motel, bloodies the nose of the first guy who feels her up in the lobby. (Jo had warned him to keep his hands to himself, but he'd just leered—“aww, sweetheart, don't worry 'bout your boyfriend; if he cared, he’d be here”—so he left with one less tooth than he’d come with). She disperses a swarm of pixies and gives a werewolf a run for his money, but after two months, she realizes she’s developing a crick in her neck from looking over her shoulder.  Another bus to another city.  A third, a few months after that. 

It’s November and sleeting when Jo arrives in Pittsburgh.  She buys a cup of coffee to keep her fingers from freezing while she scans the bus station notice board. A hand-drawn sign, blue ballpoint on notebook paper, advises that the Wharf Rat Café is hiring bartenders.  That, plus the fact that she’d have to stand outside for four hours to catch the next New York bus, makes up Jo’s mind for her: Pittsburgh it is. 

Hell, who knows, maybe she’ll even stop and see the Liberty Bell while she’s here. 

No, wait, that’s not right—the Liberty Bell is in Philadelphia.

“Hey,” she turns to the coffee vendor, “what’s Pittsburgh famous for?” 

He looks at her like she just got off a flying saucer instead of the Dayton-Pittsburgh bus. 

“Steel!” he says, with such vigor that Jo imagines he was a structural engineer before immigrating to experience the American dream of selling coffee at a bus terminal.  In the past few months, she’s gotten very good at inventing lives for fellow travelers. “In Pittsburgh, they make steel.  And from steel,” he waves his hands to indicate the enormous possibilities, “from steel you can make anything!”

She buys another cup of coffee and a postcard of the Carnegie Library to send to her mom, asks for directions to the address on the Wharf Rat ad.  Turns out the café is just on the other side of the river, a run-down little building stuck to the side of a huge old warehouse.  Above the plate-glass window, there once was a sign: Jo can read WHARF RAT in the clean spaces where letters have been removed.  The place looks pretty well abandoned, but when Jo drops her duffle to pound on the door, she can hear someone moving around inside.  There’s the sound of a deadbolt turning, and then she’s looking down at a short, round, dark-haired woman a few years older than herself. 

“You from the Bureau of Prisons? Jeezoman, I thought you all were coming tomorrow! C’mon in, c’mon in.”

The woman tries to hold open the door, smooth down her skirt, shoo Jo out of the sleet, and shake her hand all at the same time.  “I’m Marie.”

“Uh, Jo.  Harvelle.  Jo Harvelle. Not from the Bureau of Prisons.”  Jo figures she’d better get that out in the open right away. “I’m here about the advertisement for a bartender. This is the Wharf Rat Café?”

“Oh, well.  That’s a relief.  I weren’t expecting you until tomorrow. Well, not you, I suppose,” Marie explains in a rush.  “The Bureau. Anyway, don’t stand out in the wet. Just let me open the light—so dark I can’t find m’arm in here, and they just went and reconnected the electric.” 

Marie hits a switch somewhere, and a bank of dusty bulbs hum to life, dimly illuminating a long, low room with booths by the windows and a cigarette-scarred bar running along the parallel wall. “Now.  That’s better, innit?  Jo, you said?  Like Joan?  I have a cousin named Joan, we all called her Joey.”

“Sure,” Jo agrees.  Why not?  “Joan.”

“Well, fact of the matter is, Joan, there is no more Wharf Rat, and no call for a bartender.  But I can offer you a cup of coffee.  Poor thing, you’re just all over rain, arncha?”

Jo’s pretty much floating on coffee at this point, but there’s no place to go except back to the station and nothing to do except wait for that New York bus, so she accepts.  Over two more cups—both significantly better than those of the bus station vendor/engineer—she learns all about Marie’s deadbeat husband, Jake, the original Wharf Rat proprietor, who took off with that floozy barmaid Jeannette, and good riddance to the both of them.  She hears in detail about Marie’s former job as the secretary-bookkeeper at Yarnell Package and Shipping and her more recent battles with the zoning board as she attempts to turn the Wharf Rat into a bakery.  This leads into a long segue about some guy in Baltimore who did the same thing and now has a show on cable.  Jo is pretty sure no one buys from bakeries anymore—not with all the chain grocery stores and Krispy Kreme on every corner and all that low-carb crap—but she’s tended bar long enough to know that when people share their dreams, best policy is to smile and nod.  Marie’s started in on a long explanation of the right way to make German Chocolate cake before Jo thinks to ask what any of this has to do with the Bureau of Prisons.

“Oh,” Marie chirps, “they’re my…whatsit…my labor supplier!”

Turns out the Pennsylvania Correctional System has a “reintegration program" that sends paroled offenders out to work in the professions they’d learned behind bars.  The ex-cons got real-world work experience, and the business owners got semi-skilled labor at cut-rate prices.  For some reason—Marie can't understand why—no one seems to think this is much of a bargain. 

Jo nearly chokes on her coffee.  Marie, whose idea of conflict involves Yarnell customers upset because their deliveries were delayed, who’d lived under Jake’s thumb for seven years of marriage, who invited complete strangers in for coffee?  This Marie was going to command a work party of convicted felons?  Jo considers the possibilities with a sort of horrified fascination, like someone’s just told her that Dean Winchester had been invited to a State Dinner.

“If I can’t work at the Wharf Rat, could I maybe work at the…whatever you’re gonna call the bakery?”

The words are out of Jo’s mouth before she even thinks about them, and once they are, she wants to take them back.  Jesus Christ, a bakery?  A bakery that’ll probably go bankrupt within the year?  If you’d wanted to spend your fucking life in a kitchen, she tells herself sharply, you could’ve married Mitch Riley when he asked and just stayed in Nebraska. 

“Oh, hon, that’s sweet of you to offer,” Marie says, like Jo is asking for a job just to do Marie a favor.  “But I couldn’t pay you much.  I mean, the men from the prison?  They get their housing from the state while they’re in the program, so I don’t have to pay them a lot.  And, truth is, I don’t have a lot.  Don’t even have a name for the bakery, yet. Jake…well, when he left—I got this place, might make a little renting the rooms upstairs, but all my savings, the money from selling the house, that’s all my seed money.  I’m sure you’ll find something better, smart girl like you.  You know, I could send you up Yarnell: maybe they’d give you my old job?  Can you type any?”

If the alternative is typing in an office, Jo figures she’ll take the kitchen.  Better access to knives and salt and other useful implements. “I’ll take one of the rooms upstairs,” she says before she can think better of it. “I help out here, you don't charge rent, and we'll call it even.”  She’s warming to the idea—beats the hell out of another bus to another damn city.  She’ll stay just long enough to save up some cash, make sure naïve Marie doesn’t hire any serial rapists, and then she’ll be on her way, back to the hunt.

Clearly expecting Jo to change her mind, Marie offers to show her the upstairs space—two scantily furnished bedrooms, a bathroom, a tiny kitchen, an oddly shaped living room looking out over the river. 

“This is where Jake and I lived when we first got married, before we moved to the house,” Marie comments, idly stroking the garishly flowered wallpaper.  Maybe it’s the rainy light, but she suddenly looks exhausted. “I’m back in with my mother now, she needs looking after these days and I…well, I couldn’t think of living back here by myself.  My mother—she never liked Jake—she says I’m better off without him, and I suppose I am, really.  It’s just…hard, you know, when someone makes a choice and it’s not you he’s choosing?”

Jo feels her breath catch painfully. Green eyes and freckles, she thinks, but all she says is, “Yeah.”

“Of course, if Jake were still here, you’d never have your bakery,” she offers, then realizes that might not be considered really tactful to go trading Marie’s husband for a job. “Anyway…my mother, she always says you have to take the bitter with the sweet,” she finishes lamely.

It’s Hallmark advice, but Marie smiles.  “I like that,” she says.  “The bitter with the sweet.  Isn’t that just the way?”

2.

The next morning, when ten convicted criminals arrive shepherded by one meek civil servant, Jo is waiting with a clipboard. 

“I’m J-,uh, Joan,” she says.  “That is Marie Pulaski, your boss if she decides to keep you.  And this is not a free ride.”  

She sends the city-appointed handler to go over paperwork with Marie in one of the booths and leads the men into the commercial kitchen behind the bar, where she outfits them with cleaning supplies.  One group to clean the kitchen, one to organize their first supply shipments in the storage rooms, one to put together the pantry shelving.  She stands in the doorway where she can see them all and makes notes.  The tallest guy is working so slowly his group will be done with the whole room before he’s finishes that top shelf.  The one with the tattoo creeping out from his prison-issued t-shirt is scouring that grill like his life depends on it.  At the end of the day, she gets money from Marie, pays everybody in cash, and tells six of them to come back tomorrow—Morris, the Tattoo Guy, is a keeper; Tall Guy, not so much.  The civil servant gives her the hairy eyeball, but Marie just smiles and chatters at him until the van arrives to take everyone back to their halfway house. 

By the end of the week, Jo has an immaculate kitchen, two fully stocked pantries, and a workforce of twelve that she wouldn’t be ashamed to turn loose at the Roadhouse.  If only the Roadhouse still existed.

3. 

Her days fall into a routine.  She wakes while it’s still dark, cooks breakfast downstairs (a single serving of oatmeal on the huge industrial stovetop), and turns on the ovens so they’ll be warm for the morning shift. 

Wandering into the pantry, she scans the stock and the previous day’s invoice: they’ll need to order more Molina and if they don’t start moving some of that custard stuff, they’ll have twenty gallons of sour milk to deal with.  At the far end of the smaller pantry, near the walk-in freezer, there’s a single, high window.  Beneath it is a rack of Metro shelving that holds ten-pound canisters of salt. Morris, who helps her with the inventory, wants to move the salt and use that shelf for shortening, which is less susceptible to damp. Besides, he says, it doesn’t make sense to keep half their salt here and the other half in that inconvenient cabinet over the door, where they need a stepladder to even get at it.  Jo pats a canister of salt as she passes. She lays down regular salt lines at night, when everyone goes home,  but since her run-in with a demonic Sam Winchester...well, she just likes a little extra security. They’ll keep they layout just the way it is, thanks all the same.

Jo unlocks the doors for the morning shift—Charlie, Skaz, Jesús, and Mike.  They bring in the morning paper, spend a few minutes shooting the breeze about the Steelers, agree to pass on the note she writes for Marie about the Molina.  After that, it’s a twenty minute ride on the chain-sprung bike she salvaged, across the bridge and past the bus-station to work.  Sometimes, she’ll go out of her way to drop off an early morning order—two dozen doughnuts, muffins for somebody’s breakfast meeting—but that’s not a regular thing:  business isn’t that good yet. 

Until the bakery makes her fortune, Jo’s got a job selling overpriced flavored coffees to yuppies, which would make Dean laugh if he knew, because she’s always drunk her coffee plain black with one sugar. 

(“Nothin’ high-maintenance about you, sweetheart,” he’d once teased when he brought her morning coffee. “You like the simple things in life.”

She’d swatted at him, nearly upsetting the mug, and rolled back into a pillow. “Don’t call me sweetheart,” she’d mumbled.)

Jo had learned old-fashioned diner lingo from her Ma, who’d worked in a few Mom-and-Pop lunchrooms growing up, before chain restaurants and fast food took over.  Adam and Eve on a raft meant poached eggs on toast; a waitress whose table wanted a hamburger with ketchup and onions would ask the cook for hot cow, make ‘em cry and paint it red.  On days when young men in suits order half-caf grande vanilimocha, she reminds herself that plain black coffee with sugar was a cup of sin—dark, hot, and sweet: the simple things. 

During her breaks, she sits in a corner booth, reading and taking notes.  Once, she’d been so caught up in her book that she didn't hear her co-worker until he was standing next to her.

“Griot and the Zombie Myths,” Marshall had read over her shoulder.  “Sounds like good times.”

Jo had jumped and slammed the volume shut.  “Anthro class,” she’d replied, and reminded herself that a hunter always sits back to the wall, so as to see anything that approaches.  She will not forget again.     

After work, she usually heads over to the Carnegie Library, the same one whose postcard she bought her first day in the Steel City, to add to her notes and check out a few more books.  She buys herself a burrito for dinner from a cart out front: just because she lives in a damn bakery doesn’t mean she has to cook.  On the bike ride back—home, Jo tells herself, it’s home now—she mentally starts a list of things she needs to resupply.  Every few weekends, she takes off to “visit family,” which means she’ll tag along with a group of hunters from around York.  Sometimes Marie will lend her one of the bakery vans, sometimes she’ll catch a ride with one of the hunters coming in from New Jersey.  It’s a casual thing: for a God-fearing people, the Amish seem to have more than their fair share of ghoulies and ghosties.  The York hunters will take whatever help they can get, and Jo’s glad enough to keep her hand in the game.  Still, she knows that for all they might appreciate the help, they don’t need her.  Lately, that’s started to grate a bit. 

Marie has left her a covered plate of pierogis and a list of possible bakery names.  Now that the bakery really exists outside her day-dreams, she’s decided that the place needs a name, and every day brings two or three more that would be just perfect. Originally, Jo tried to steer her away from anything truly awful—Marie’s Munchies?—but now she’s lost interest.  They can keep calling it The Bakery for all Jo cares.  It’s not like she’ll be here all that long.

She’s brushing her teeth one night when her phone rings and she digs it out of the laundry pile, expecting it to be Josh from Ellwood, calling to see if she needs a ride to York this weekend. 

“Jo?”

Her hand clenches reflexively around her forgotten toothbrush as the voice on the end tells her what she already knows: “It’s Sam.  Sam Winchester.”

“What do you want, Sam?”  The taste of toothpaste is turning her stomach.

“Can you—I mean…we’re downstairs, by the…is this a loading dock?  Can you come open the door for us?”

Later, Jo won’t be able to say why she did it.  Maybe it was the us.  Maybe it was just a determination to look Sam Winchester in the eye for the first time since he'd threatened her life.  Maybe it’s just the latent masochism of seeing the Brothers Winchester together again.  Something makes Jo snap her phone closed, wash her mouth out, and stalk downstairs in her pajamas to unlock the doublewide door where Marie takes in her deliveries.

Sam and some other guy, a hunter she doesn’t know, are standing on the doorstep with Dean sagging between them, his arms slung over their shoulders.  He looks up when the door opens, face gray and head lolling against Sam’s shoulder. 

“Hey, Jo,” Dean’s loopy grin that says painkillers even more clearly than his posture.  “Said I’d call you.”

“Sam called me,” she replies flatly.

He looks confused for a moment.  “Oh…yeah,” Dean says thoughtfully, just before he sways forward and throws up all over the kitchen floor.

4.

Jo jumps back, Sam steps forward, and it’s all totally gross for three minutes or so until things get sorted out. 

“Bed,” Sam says, shoving a first aid kit into Jo’s hands so he can practically carrying a woozy Dean up the stairs as she leads the way. “George’ll take care of the kitchen.”  George must be the other hunter—Jo barely gets a look at him—and cleaning up their own mess is the fucking least they can do, so Jo doesn’t thank him.  Doesn’t do anything except lead Sam upstairs and through her little apartment to the bedroom.  She leaves the first aid kit on the rickety chair that serves as her bedside table and goes back out into the kitchenette.  She gets a glass, fills it with water.  Adds ice from the tiny refrigerator.  It’s not just to keep her hands busy.  She’s simply thirsty all of a sudden, can still taste toothpaste on her tongue.  She doesn’t offer her help, leaves Sam to take care of Dean.  Who is she to interfere with the fucking Winchesters?  She's learned her lesson about that.

Jo is on her third glass of water when Sam comes out into the living room.  She’d forgotten how tall he is.  The room looks small around him, even half-furnished as it is. 

“Hey,” he says, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

“Hey.”

“I—uh, sorry about the kitchen… Antibiotics always make Dean...And, you know, for calling so late., sorry about that, too.  And just…for showing up like this.”

And for tying me up and threatening to kill me last time we met, for telling me my mother is a liar and my father was bait? Jo supplies, Sorry about that, too? But all she says is, “Whatever.”

Sam stands in the middle of the room, like he’s not sure if he should ask permission to sit or not.  “There was this vrykolakas and…” he waves away the details, like he’s too tired to get into them “Anyway, took a good chunk out of Dean’s shoulder coupla nights ago.  I think it’s infected. We—there was nowhere else to go.”

In the silence, Jo hears footsteps: the other hunter, coming up the stairs, hovering in the doorway.  

“This is George.  George Clay,” Sam explains when he enters. “A—uhm, a friend of Dean’s.  George, this is Jo Harvelle.”

Jo, curious to see how Sam will describe her, barely glances at the man.  Our parents were friends, she imagines him saying, and has to suppress a hysterical giggle. 

George just grunts.    Jo looks between them, waiting for someone to say something, and finally gives up.  She pours the rest of her water down the sink. 

“I’ll get some sheets, sleep in the back bedroom,” she offers.  “You two can fight it out for the couch.”

George shrugs.  “I’ll sleep with Dean,” he says nonchalantly and promptly walks into the bedroom and closes the door behind him.  It happens so quickly and casually that Jo is not quite sure what she’s just seen until she hears her cheap mattress springs squawk under the added weight.  She can actually feel her jaw drop open.  A friend of Dean’s?!

Jo lets her gaze wander from the closed door over meet Sam’s glare.

“Do not,” he says, deadly calm, “say a single fucking word.”

Jo’s mouth snaps shut.  She stalks past Sam, into the spare bedroom, and closes her own door.  She has nothing to say to Sam Winchester.  

5.

The next morning, Jo walks into the living room to find Sam is standing silhouetted by the window, staring out at the river.  Or, at least, she thinks it’s Sam, until she gets a closer look and realizes it’s the second hunter.  George.  It’s an easy mistake to make: he’s tall, like Sam, same shaggy hair, but the coloring is a little different.  George looks like he’d been a red-head as a kid, still had some auburn in his brown hair and the ruddy complexion of someone who sunburnt in January.  Jo could sympathize.  His eyes were like Sam’s, oddly enough.  The whole shape of his face, in fact, looked like Sam, but younger, rounder.  The way Sam must have looked when he was seventeen or eighteen, before he went off to college. 

Jo realizes that she’s staring.  “Morning,” she says, quickly looking away.  “George, right?” 

“Yes, ma’am” George replies, not at all flustered, as though being scrutinized by a strange girl was part of his normal morning routine. Most hunters are kind of awkward around women, but maybe he’s different, being attracted to guys and all that.  Jo is not really sure how that works. 

“I’m , uh, gonna make breakfast—d’you want anything?”

“No.”

“Really?  How about coffee or something?  No trouble.”  Jo glances at the closed bedroom door and finds herself feeling almost sympathetic.  Poor guy probably think Dean loves him, probably thinks Dean’s the one.  He wouldn’t be the first.

“No, thank you,” George says again.  Polite. She wishes she could clue him in: the Winchesters are a package deal, and George Clay will never be Dean’s top priority.  Not while Sam is alive—not even, Jo realizes, when Sam isn’t alive.

It’s none of her business who Dean Winchester sleeps with these days…but still. Speak the truth, she thinks, and shame the devil.  Speaking of devils: “Where’s Sam?”

“Out.”

Ok.  Clearly not much of a conversationalist, this one.

“Well, I swapped for the morning shift at work, but I’ll be back this afternoon.  You—you and Dean’ll be ok ‘til then?”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“You can call me Jo,” she offers. 

“Thank you, ma’am.”  She looks at him, but he doesn’t crack a smile. 

Sam calls while she’s at work.  Jo recognizes the number, waves one of her coworkers over to deal with her customer, and takes the call in the supply room.

“I’ve gotta head down to Georgia,” Sam explains rapidly.  “Look into something. I’m not sure Dean’s up to traveling.  Do you…that is, would it be ok if he stayed at your place for a couple of days, maybe over the weekend?  George’ll be there to look after him.  You don’t have to change your plans or anything.  I just—would that be ok?  We’d really appreciate it.” 

The use of that plural—we, like Sam can speak for Dean: the boy king, the royal we—pisses Jo off, and she nearly refuses.  Dean’s not her responsibility anymore; they don’t owe each other anything.  But she’s being petty and she knows it.  “Sure,” she agrees.  “Dean can stay as long as he needs to. George, too,” she adds, wondering if thinking about the two of them together will ever not be weird. The sleeping together thing—ok, whatever, Jo thinks: so, Dean’s just not that into her.  Fine. It’s not like they were ever really exclusive or anything  But it’s been Sam-and-Dean for so long that George-and-Dean is going to take some getting used to. 

“Great, Jo.  Thanks so much,” Sam says, sounding so relieved and grateful that Jo has to remind herself: she doesn’t like Sam Winchester, not even when he’s taking care of his big brother.

6.

It’s a quiet weekend.  Dean sleeps all day Friday, fighting off the infection, waking only when George coaxes him into eating something. When Jo leaves for the library Saturday morning—and yes, she may own three undocumented firearms, but her books are always returned on time—she notices that the door to the bedroom is open a crack.  If she nudges it open a little more, well, so what?  It’s her fucking house, after all. Dean does look better, she admits grudgingly: still a little flushed, but without the sweaty, swollen look that comes from infection.   His head is half on the pillow and half on George’s shoulder, face turned into the other hunter’s neck.  George, in turn, has his left arm thrown possessively over Dean’s chest, like someone might try to steal him away.  Jo doesn’t even hear a change in his breathing, but she suddenly realizes that he is looking straight at her, watching her expectantly with eyes so much like Sam’s that it sends a shiver climbing her spine. 

“I'm, uh, going out,” Jo manages, and if her voice is barely a whisper, she’ll swear it’s just because she doesn’t want to wake Dean.  Guy needs his rest. 

George just nods, the movement jogging Dean’s head.  Dean mumbles fitfully, turning in his sleep within the cage of George’s arms.  George and Jo stare at each other for a moment, studying each other over Dean’s back and the tumbled blankets of the bed.  And then George simply closes his eyes and, to all appearances, falls suddenly and deeply asleep.

 When Jo returns from the library, Dean is still sleeping and George casually mentions that Dean suggested she might want to accompany him to the Laundromat.  Sam has harnessed his demon blood, Dean is in a committed gay relationship, George has completely forgotten their early morning staring competition, but Jo has to admit the strangest thing about the weekend is the fact that Dean Winchester gave up the Impala keys.  Hell, it must be love. 

Later, after Jo’s shoved all her clean clothes back into the trashcan liner that serves as her laundry bag, she watches George folding t-shirts and boxers with mechanical perfection.  She drums her heels against the machine, just to see if…yes.  Yes, when George Clay gets annoyed, he really does look just like Sam Winchester.

“So,” she says. “You and Dean.”

 “Me and Dean.”

 “How’d you two meet?”  Jo asks when it becomes clear that she’s not getting anything else out of him.

 George looks over at her, slightly confused.  “We had…a mutual enemy.  In Georgia,” he offers, eventually. 

 Jo is startled into a laugh, because, seriously, a mutual enemy?  That certainly sounds like Dean's way of thinking. As does the fact that the enemy now exists in the past tense.

 George gets chattier after that, almost like someone—Dean?—has told him it’s ok to talk to Jo, that she can be trusted.  (Jo squelches the flush of pride this causes; she doesn't give a damn what the Winchesters say about her).  All though the spin cycle, George details the eight months he and Dean—and later Sam—have spent on the road.  He tells a good story and it’s only when he turns away to feed quarters into the dryer that Jo feel her heart twist because George is living her life.  The life she’s supposed to be living.  He’s out on the road, hunting, while she’s schlepping over-priced coffee and trying to talk Marie out of naming the bakery anything really stupid. 

 Jo has seen George predict Dean’s request—a glass of water, more of the off-brand meds Sam had boosted from somewhere, another blanket—with freakish accuracy.  Still, that talent must apply only to Dean, because George doesn’t seem to notice that she’s quieter on the ride home.  She’s only half listening, really, when suddenly she realizes—

"Wait, where were you, again?” Jo interrupts George’s recounting of their battle with the vrykolakas.

 “What?”  George asks, and Jesus, Dean must like them slow!

“I said—where were you? When all this was happening?” she repeats. 

“I was out behind the house.  See, Sam was supposed to set up the trap, and then Dean and I were going to come from different directions and force the—” He starts telling her again.

 “Right, yes.  You said that,” Jo snaps.  “So, if you were outside the house, how do you know everything that happened?”  Because it’s the level of detail that’s getting to her.  George is telling the story of Dean’s attack like he was in the fucking room when it happened.

 George shrugs, puzzled by her intensity.  “Dean told me,” he said like it should be obvious.

 7.

Jo goes for a long run on Sunday morning.  If the door to Dean and George’s room is closed firmly when she leaves, well, she only notices in passing.  She runs along the river, runs until her legs feel weak and the bones in her left knee start to crackle with every step.  (It’s been doing that since she landed on it wrong after tumbling out of the hayloft in a haunted barn near Ephrata). When there’s nowhere else to go, she turns and runs home.   

She bursts into the bakery kitchen and nearly crashes into Marie, who is giggling hysterically while George guffaws on the other side of the room.  They look up at her, startled, and for a single, paranoid moment, Jo wonders if they’re laughing at her. 

 “Oh, Joan, there you are!  I was just telling George here about something Skaz said the other day.  You should have told me your cousins were visiting,” Marie chides, still breathless with laughter. “I would’ve had them up the house for dinner or something.”

 "What are you doing?”  Jo demands, and it comes out harsher than she means but, honestly, what part of laying low does George not understand?

 “Dean wanted pie,” George says, in the same flat way he says everything: Dean wants, Dean thinks, Dean says…

 Jo realizes that he’s got puffs of flour whitening his t-shirt and a streak of some fruit filling on his cheek.  He and Marie are clearly baking up a storm and she feels a sudden bolt of white-hot anger.  She turns and head upstairs before she can say something stupid, something about how Marie is her friend.  Like Dean had been her friend, before George came along.  She’s already hobbled over to the little refrigerator and pulled out a water bottle before she realizes that Dean Winchester is stretched out on her thrift-store couch, watching her over the edge of the battered old notebook, chewing on the cap of his pen. 

 “What are you looking at?”  she asks, belligerent.  She should have noticed him laying there; she should be more observant.  She used to be—time was, she registered every entrance, exit, and occupant of a room as soon as she walked into it.  She kind of stopped doing that in Pittsburgh.  She should start again.  It's not like she has anyone else to watch her back. 

 Dean shrugs without moving his head from the arm of the couch.  “Should put ice on that knee,” he observes 

 “I’m fine.  I can take care of myself.”

 “Ok,” Dean says mildly.

 “You’re boyfriend’s downstairs, making you a pie,” and, God, Jo, you sound like such a bitch. 

“He’s not—”  Dean starts.

Jo raises one eyebrow.

 “We just…look out for each other, is all.”

 "And what about Sam?”

“Look out for him, too,” Dean wears just the hint of a smirk, pleased with himself for not answering the question she’s really asking. 

Jo huffs a sigh.  He’s impossible.  She unearths a package of frozen peas and slaps it on her knee

Dean goes back to making notes in his book.  A moment later, slyly…. “So, what kind of pie?”

Jo chucks the peas at his head, but he snags the package out of the air easily.  The smirk is full-grown now.  “Never mind, I’ll go ask, myself,” Dean levers himself out of the couch, wincing almost imperceptibly. “Want me to save you a piece? Don’t say I never gave you anything.”  He waggles his eyebrows and she is not, absolutely not, smiling back at him. 

 “We’re cousins,” she calls after him, figuring Dean’ll be less likely to blow their cover if he actually knows what it is. 

 Dean sticks his head back around the door.  “That the best you could do?”

“Don’t look at me.  George came up with it.”

 Dean laughs out loud, then shakes his head, fondly.  “Loyal as the day is long, but good thing we’ve got Sam around for the brain-work.”

 Later, Jo will wonder if this means Dean considers Sam disloyal.  At the moment, though, she’s thinking that she’s missed hearing Dean Winchester laugh. 

“Catch,” he says suddenly, and tosses the peas to her.  Jo fumbles the package, not really paying attention, and sloshes water all over her sweatshirt.

“Asshole!”

 Dean drums his fingers on the doorjamb. “We’d be good cousins, Jo,” he says thoughtfully.  “Doncha think?”

 There’s a burst of laughter from the kitchen and Dean darts out of the doorway. 

 Jo caps her water bottle and limps over to the couch.  Spitefully, she goes out of her way to step on Dean’s notebook before dropping onto the threadbare cushions.  She lays the peas over her knee and listens to the muffled conversation from the kitchen.

When Jo comes back from work on Monday, the Impala is no longer parked out front.  The apartment is immaculate.  She’d have trouble believing anyone else had ever lived there, if not for the single sheet of paper stuck to her door with what might be a wad of chewing gum.  Dean’s sharp capitals. Thanks + take care. Love, your cousins. 

That's the last she hears of the Winchesters or their new friend George for nearly two months.

8.

When Sam calls with directions to an old cemetery north of Pottstown —and seriously, how did he even get this number?—Jo can’t resist. 

 “Can’t you get George to help?”  she asks innocently.

 “Yeah,” Sam begins, “about George…

9.

Waiting in the dark of the cemetery, Jo realizes that if anyone had told her last year that she’d be siding with Sam against Dean Winchester and his gay lover, she would have immediately suspected a trickster at work.  Or at least some very high-end psychotropic drugs.  And yet, here she is, shotgun at the ready.

 Sam’s explanation had been pretty basic.  Turns out George is…well, an animated statue, the way Sam described it, created by a rabbi who owed Dean some kind of favor. 

 (“A golem,” Sam had explained over the phone. 

 Which had sounded familiar, and Jo had ransacked her memory until … “Oh, yeah! I saw that movie!”

 “What movie?”

 “The one with the elves and the ring and the—”

 “No, golem, not Gollum. It’s a creature from Jewish folklore.”

 “Oh.”)

 Golem, according to Sam’s mini-history lesson, were clay creatures inscribed with magic words that gave them life and made them totally loyal to their masters.   Apparently, their superhuman strength and singleminded devotion made them dangerous.  Jo had been a little skeptical about that—ok, so George was maybe a little dim and perhaps too inclined to do whatever Dean wanted.  But dangerous? 

“Creation spells are a powerful magic,” Sam had lectured.  “We can’t just have this creature following Dean around, trying to protect him.”

 Jo had almost said that, as far as she could tell, George has been doing a pretty good job of protecting Dean, but something—her inner bartender, maybe—hears what Sam isn’t saying.  Sam’s worried, sure, but only partly because Dean’s new hunting partner is a supernatural being.  What really bothers him is that Dean’s new hunting partner…isn’t Sam.  Sam’s afraid that he’s being replaced.  And that’s something Jo can totally understand.

 “Ok,” she’d said.  “What do you want me to do?”

Jo can see twin flashlight beams bouncing over the uneven graveyard and, as they get closer, she can make out Dean and George, a few inches taller and a few steps behind. Jo can tell she startles Dean when she steps out from the shadows, even though he recovers quickly.

“Hey, Jo,” he says, like he always expected her to be here.  “This one's all set, nothing more to do."

Jo levels her shotgun right at Dean's chest. “Oh, I think there's something,” she says, feeling a perverse thrill when his eyes widen.

It’s only when Sam reaches for George that Jo sees Dean’s surprise turn into shock.  Somehow, she’d just assumed that Sam had called her from the road where he’d been hunting with Dean and George.  But from the expression on Dean’s face, that’s not the case.  Dean is watching Sam like his brother is someone he’d never expected to see again, much less at midnight in the middle of an overgrown cemetery.

Sam’s eyes are clear and bright—hazel not black—but Jo still feels a tendril of pure terror crawl across her neck when he starts speaking in tongues. 

She jumps when George suddenly crashes to his knees; she recovers quickly, but not before giving Dean the opportunity to overpower her.  He doesn’t.  He just watches as Sam, still mumbling, plucks a slip of paper from his pocket and slides it into George’s head. 

“Sam Winchester, what did you just do?” Jo hears herself asking, but she already knows—knows with a sudden, horrified certainty, what Sam’s planning. 

“Gave you a partner,” Sam says.  “One who’s completely loyal to you.”  

Sure enough, when she steps away from Dean, George’s gaze follows her.  Singleminded devotion…that had been the term Sam had used when describing golem.  She takes another step back, and George stands and follows.  Great.  Just great.

“Magic like this is too powerful to waste,” Sam explains, like reassigning a golem saves some kind of fossil fuel.  What the fuck?  Like Jo hadn't been doing perfectly well on her own. “I need a minute, okay?” he adds in a tone that implies Jo and her new golem are crowding his busy schedule.

Jo stalks off toward Marie’s delivery van because if she stays a moment longer she is going to fucking shoot Sam Winchester.  Behind her, she can hear George’s shambling footsteps.  Jesus Christ.  What has she gotten herself into? No, that’s not right: what have the goddamn Winchesters gotten her into?

10. 

Jo slams around, cursing and shoving supplies back into the van—shotgun, shells, salt, knives, flashlight.  George somehow knows not to ask if she needs any help.  He simply stands to the side, watching.  He’s still there when Jo climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the engine.  She looks at him through the windshield, studies his face in the light of bright headlights that don’t make him squint. He’s not quite as tall as she remembers him being, and at some point, Dean must have gotten him a haircut.  There’s a vulnerable spray of freckles across his nose, which she hadn’t noticed before.  Jo sighs and, before she can think better of it, she leans over and pops the passenger side door. 

“Get in,” she says gruffly.  And then, because she’s not sure if golem need instructions to do everything, “Don’t forget your seatbelt.”

Part 2