Inheritance, for cynicaloptimus (Dean/Jo, adult)

Title: Inheritance
Author:cjmarlowe
Recipient: Becky (cynicaloptimis)
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Dean/Jo
Summary: A story about the things that are passed down.



"It's just a fair, Dean, it's not the apocalypse," said Sam, patting down the bench next to him then rummaging through the glove compartment. "You don't need to curse every detour sign."

"Yeah, well, I don't know about you but I've noticed a link between town fairs and bad things happening," said Dean, pulling up to a stop sign on a street corner that he wasn't even sure was on their map.

"Being forced to wear pink is not the definition of a bad thing," said Sam. Dean just shot him a dark look. "Okay, the murders are a bad thing, I'll give you that."

"If I'd shown up in this thing at school, one would've been the cause of the other," said Dean, making a right only to run into a red light a block later. "Goddammit."

"Dad didn't dress you in anything other than army surplus and Goodwill since you were six," said Sam, wrenching himself around to look in the back seat. "I don't think you had to anything to worry about. Damn it, have you seen a book about this big, block lettering on the cover?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm sitting on it," said Dean, squirming uncomfortably before yanking a hand-bound book out from under his ass. "You have too many books."

"Do you even know what I had to go through to get my hands on this?" said Sam, flipping through to a marked page. "An index of all known extant cursed objects. It's invaluable, Dean."

"Yeah, so what if we run into an unknown one?"

"We're not going to-- all right, if we run into a previously unknown cursed object I'll make sure it's added to the next edition, how about that?"

Dean gunned through the light only to run into yet another detour sign, their third so far. "At this rate we're going to be detouring through Alaska before we get there," he muttered, pulling up at yet another stoplight. "How many streets do you need to block off to run a festival, anyway?"

Sam was barely listening to him, holding up a picture from the estate catalogue Dean had just managed to get his hands on next to a drawing in the book. "What do you think? The same?"

Dean barely gave it a glance before the light changed. "Looks the same to me," he said. "Not that the two deaths by mysterious disembowelment weren't already a tip-off."

"The thing's been totally quiet since the mid-forties," said Sam. " I can't believe it's just popped up after all this time."

"Well, let's get it and get out of here," said Dean, finally pulling in against the curb of a tree-lined street. "This is the address on the paperwork."

"Nice place," said Sam as they got out of the car and headed across the street and up her flower-lined front walk. "What did you say her name was again?"

Dean straightened his pastel polo shirt and tried not to let his distaste for it show. "Mrs. Wilhelmina Penelope Millstone," he said, pronouncing every syllable. "Seriously. The whole thing."

"The whole thing?" repeated Sam, seconds before the door opened and they both plastered smiles on their faces. "Mrs. Millstone?"

"Mrs. Wilhelmina Penelope Millstone," she corrected him kindly. "What can I look for you two fine looking boys today?"

"Well, really, it's what we can do for you," said Dean, pushing forward. "We're art students over at the, uh, local college--"

"Adams College."

"--at Adams College, and we hear you have a fine example of, uh--"

"Bavarian hand-painted porcelain," Sam finished smoothly, whatever the hell that meant. "A vase, with a large stag on one side? We were wondering if you'd let us take a look at it, maybe take some pictures so that we can exhibit it in an art show we have coming up."

"It would be great exposure," finished Dean. "The world should see such a, uh, fine piece."

"Oh dear," she said, her face falling. "Oh, if I'd known anyone would actually be interested in that old thing I wouldn't have donated it to the charity auction. They came by just yesterday."

"Charity auction?" said Sam, swallowing visibly.

"Those lovely girls up on Forrest Road," she said with an oblivious nod. "Epsilon Sigma Pi, from the college."

"Ah, sorority girls," said Dean. "We'll have to talk to them."

"If you ask me, it wasn't much of a fine example of anything," she confessed. "I'm convinced my sister only left it to me because she knew how much I disliked it. Not that she liked it any better; she kept it locked in a cabinet in a sitting room she hardly used."

"Well, that's a disappointment," said Sam. "Epsilon Sigma Pi you said? Do you happen to know when this auction is taking place?"

"Well the festival's already started," she said, "so it could be any time now. You'll want to hurry if you want to get pictures of it. You might even be able to pick up the real thing for a decent price. I can't imagine anyone will be offering too much for it, to be honest, but the young lady was adamant that it would make an excellent donation."

"I'm sure she was right," said Dean. "Bacardi porcelain--"

"Bavarian porcelain."

"Bavarian porcelain is hot right now."

"Well, you'd best be on your way over there, then," she said. "Just be careful, it's not as safe out there as it used to be."

"Don't worry about us, ma'am," said Sam, "we know how to take care of ourselves."

"I'm sure that you do," she said and they were off her porch moments later, stopping across the street to regroup.

"Well, that explains why the murders started up again after so long," said Sam. "If it was locked away, then nobody was going around touching it."

"Until her sister died and passed it on," said Dean. "Or maybe she was just good at hiding the bodies. The sister sounded like a real piece of work; you should've seen some of the other things that came out of her estate."

"Either way, it passed through about ten sets of unsuspecting hands before making its way here," said Sam.

"I’m not surprised at least two of those people had passing homicidal thoughts when they touched it. Hell, I think I get homicidal thoughts just looking at pictures of the thing."

"And now god knows how many more hands it'll pass through at a charity auction," said Sam. "We need to get our hands on that vase before someone else dies."

"So to speak," said Dean, while Sam looked around like he might find it atop a nearby park bench, or maybe stuffed inside someone's mailbox. "The vase would make a great donation? Seriously? Did you see some of the other stuff she had just sitting around in her front hall? What we need to do is check out this sorority. Something weird is going on there."

"You know, any other time you suggested that, I would've suspected your motives."

"Every other time I suggested that, you should've," said Dean, winking at him. "What do you think, we've got some kinky, devil-worshipping sorority girls? You think they knew what they were getting their hands on?"

"I'm pretty sure that's the plot of a porno you once tried to get me to watch," said Sam.

"My favourite part was when they decided that group sex on the pentagram would break the curse," said Dean fondly. "Hey, do you think that might work here?"

"Remember what I said earlier about your motives being pure?"

"Was that before or after you brought up the porno?"

"Nevermind," said Sam. "Keep the shirt on. We need to go up to the college and find Epsilon Sigma Pi."

"I look like a tool."

"Yeah, but you look like a collegiate tool," said Sam. "It'll work for us."

"Trust me, Sammy, they'll be more likely to talk to me in my leather jacket," said Dean. "It's always worked for me before."

"If you're as good as you think you are, you can work the polo shirt too," said Sam. "Everything else you own has blood on it."

"I don't own this, we borrowed it from a laundromat."

"You stole it from a laundromat."

"Stealing implies I intend to keep it," said Dean. "All this needed to do was convince a few people that I was a fine, upstanding young man. Come on, toss me my jacket and we'll get out of here."

Sam pulled the jacket out of the back seat of the Impala and tossed it over the top of the car into Dean's waiting hand.

"Now let's just hope Forrest Road is somewhere on the detour route."

:::

They didn't find the vase at the stately sorority house on Forrest Road. They didn't even find any sorority girls at the house on Forrest Road. What they did find was Jo Harvelle, leaning casually against her pick-up like she'd waiting for them all along.

"Sam," she said. "Dean. What brings you to this little college town?"

As if she didn't know.

"You?" said Dean. "Seriously? You already got the vase?"

"Got it, locked it in a curse box and tucked it away for safekeeping," she said, her eyes daring them to challenge her on it. "Nice shirt."

Dean yanked his jacket across his chest to cover it, adjusting quickly to the situation. "So Epsilon Sigma Pi, huh? Any naughty pillow fights while you were working undercover?"

"Don't you wish you'd gotten here sooner so you could've watched?" said Jo with an arched eyebrow and not so much as a blush on her cheeks. "So does this mean you'll be leaving town before you even buy me dinner? Cause that'd be a shame."

Dean looked at Sam and they both gave a little shrug, Sam's eyebrows rising and a hint of a smirk turning up Dean's lip.

"How about lunch, and you fill us in on your little caper here?"

"Tell me, why is it a job when you do it, and a little caper when I do it?"

"Okay, big caper," conceded Dean, to her wry look. "That vase was bad news."

"Don't worry, I didn't touch it," she said. "No one's going to be killing you in your sleep."

Sam just snorted and clapped Dean on the shoulder, turning away to move some of his books into the back seat of the car.

"Sweetheart, something always wants to kill me in my sleep," said Dean. "The trick is not to let it."

"You're going to have to be a lot quicker off the mark, then," she said. "I had the job done before breakfast. Speaking of which, if you're not actually going to be feeding me soon I'm going to need to go take care of it myself."

"There was a diner right when we were heading into town," said Dean, who never let a potential feeding hole go unnoticed. "That all right with you?"

"We're just off a street lined end to end with nightclubs and cafes and you want to go to a diner on the edge of town?"

"Pretty much, yeah," said Dean. "You in?"

She pretended to think about it for a moment, tapping her fingers against her truck and looking Dean up and down, sizing him, and maybe the whole situation, up.

"Yeah, I'm in," she said finally. "I'll meet you there."

She didn't give him a chance to argue the point, or even decide whether or not he was going to, before she was hopping into her truck and putting it in gear.

Dean slid into his own driver's seat, started the car and took off down the street after her without a word. "What?" he said finally.

"I didn't say anything," said Sam, but there was amusement behind his words.

"Yeah, but you're thinking it."

"Thinking what, Dean?" said Sam, but Dean didn't answer, just took a corner a little too hard on their way back out of town. "Jo sure grew up to be something else, huh?"

Jo grew up was the key phrase there, and maybe a couple of years wasn't that long in a normal life, but when you were out on the road it was the difference between idealistic girl and hunter. Dean caught himself smiling in the rear-view mirror as he wound his way out of town, and didn't even bother trying to hide it from Sam.

"She sure did," he said, and hit the gas a little harder.

:::

"You going to finish those?" said Jo, snagging a french fry off Dean's plate before he could slap her hand away. He made a swipe to reclaim the half of it that wasn't already in her mouth, but that too was gobbled down before he could get there.

"So when you made the curse box," Sam was asking, with absolutely sincerity, "did you use yew or oak for your base wood?"

"Oak," said Jo, making an abortive movement towards Dean's plate, but he was already on guard this time. "Yew's harder to come by, and Bobby said oak was pretty good choice for a clay-based object anyway."

"You used oak for ours, didn't you, Sammy?" said Dean, mostly to prove he was following the conversation.

"Oak with some holly insets," said Sam, "just to, you know, strengthen it up a little."

"Strengthen it up? I thought you did those because we were stuck in a motel during a thunderstorm and you couldn't pick up a wireless signal."

"That too," said Sam, shooting him a look that Dean figured was supposed to shut him up. Not his fault Sam made extra work for himself when he was bored, though.

"That was a nice move you pulled, with the charity angle," he said, turning his attention back to Jo. "I remember the first time our dad tried to pull that one off. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week; people figured he just wanted stuff to pawn."

"Yeah, I remember him telling me about that," she admitted, not quite looking up from Dean's remaining fries. "Something about finding the silverware locked up when he went back in that night."

Dean could feel Sam's eyes on him as they felt silent, but he didn't meet them. This wasn't the getting-to-know-you conversation it might've been with someone else. Jo already knew things about them, in ways Dean never really thought about before now.

"The only thing I remember about that one was Dad waking me up when he got back to the motel using some words I'd never heard before," Sam said finally.

"And then repeated right up till you started kindergarten and just about got your mouth washed out with soap," said Dean, then stuffed his mouth with four fries at once to end his part in the conversation.

Dean knew Sam got it, but he was surprised when Jo shut up about it too without making any fuss, without looking at Dean like he was making something out of nothing.

"So what do you want to do?" Sam asked him after a moment. "Not much sense sticking around here if the job's done."

"There is the corn and apple festival," offered Jo, then looked up at each of them in turn. "No, seriously. It's an annual thing. Corn and apples."

"There you go, Sammy, the corn and apple festival," said Dean, much more enthusiastic now that he wasn't having to detour around it. "Roasted corn. Candy apples. I'd say that's worth sticking around for, wouldn't you?"

"I do need to find us a new hunt, since this one was a bust," said Sam.

"It wasn't a bust, you were just late," Jo said, digging it in a little harder. "You gonna come on some rides with me?"

"You have no idea--" began Dean, until Sam jabbed an elbow in his side. "You like the ferris wheel?"

"I bet you were the guy who always hoped for it to stop when you were at the top with a skittish date," said Jo, which if Dean had actually ever gone to fairs in his teens would probably not have been far from the truth. "It's pretty small here; the festival's not much for rides. But there's food and entertainment, and probably dead animals in jars if that's more your style."

"Would that be the food, or the entertainment?" said Dean around another handful of fries.

"Unless you've developed a taste for formaldehyde, I'd suggest sticking to the candy apples."

"What do you say, Sam?" said Dean. "You up for a little fair-going before we head out?"

"I don't know, Dean," said Sam wryly. "Bad things happen at fairs." The whole situation had fifth wheel written all over it, though, and thank god Sammy was smart enough to notice. "Actually, as long as we have these handy Adams College student IDs, I'm going to hit their library and see if there's anything worth looking at."

"Yeah, you do that," said Dean, jumping on that as soon as Sam stopped to breathe. "I'll give you a lift up there and we can meet back at the motel later."

"Sure, whatever," said Sam, not quite keeping a knowing look off his face. He could be a real smug bastard sometimes; probably got it from his brother. He looked like he was about to say something else, probably something about how long Dean needed him to stay away from the motel, but Jo mercifully cut him off.

"I know the best way over there," she said, and at this point Dean trusted her recon, even when it came to traffic. "You can follow me."

Dean was already feeling like they'd been doing that all day.

:::

"Midway's over that hill," she said once Dean'd parked next to her in the shade of an apple tree and hopped out to see what was up. "I don't feel like paying an arm and a leg just to park in someone's muddy field."

"So we're trespassing on someone's orchard instead. Fair enough," said Dean, giving his baby's hood a pat. He didn't like it any more than she did, everyone parking however the hell they wanted and threatening his paint job. "Just over that hill, or over that hill and two miles down the road?"

"Does it matter?" said Jo, checking her doors then shoving her keys in her jeans pocket. "Maybe a half mile tops. Can't you hear it?"

Now that he was thinking about it he could, but the din and tinny music of the midway tended to travel over impossible distances. She reached back for his hand but didn't hold on, just gave it a tug until he was trailing up the hill behind her, catching up at the crest and looking out over the back lot of the festival, a couple of trailers, a couple of tents, people hauling bags of garbage to a portable dumpster.

It was nothing he hadn't navigated before.

"So how long've you been in town then?" he said. "Sam picked up on the murders a few days ago but I only managed to get the estate catalogue this morning."

"Estate catalogue?" she said. "I just came to town and hit the antique dealers, asked who was likely to have the sort of vase I was looking for. They pointed me to Mrs. Millstone--"

"Mrs. Wilhelmina Penelope Millstone."

"--right away."

"So wait, you knew it was the vase all along?"

"Just as soon as I made a call to Bobby. He's got this book--"

"Cartwright's Compleat Guide to Cursed Objects?"

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"Just a hunch," said Dean, shoving his hands in his pockets and ducking around a couple of festival workers, slipping through a break in the plastic fencing and reaching back through for Jo's hand so she could follow. This time they didn't let go until they were well onto the gravel and concrete pathways.

Dean had a corndog in his hand before long, and a brown paper bag of popcorn not long after that, his eyes barely skidding over the rides, ignoring the quilt show and the art exhibition.

"So I guess you knew my dad," he said when they'd found a wrought iron bench out behind the burger canteen, not out of the blue but picking up a conversation a few hours old and assuming she would too.

"Well, he did used to visit the roadhouse," she said, but Dean knew that, he knew that part already. "I thought my dad's friends were the coolest people in the world."

"Dad was great," said Dean, because that was the most important part, that was what he wanted to get out there up front, "but talking about hunts were object lessons with me and Sam, they weren't stories."

"I was a little girl in a saloon full of hunters," said Jo, stealing popcorn from the dregs of his bag. "Everything they said was a story to me. I'd listen to them all night of Mom would let me."

"Weird to think you knew him different like that," said Dean, leaning forward onto his knees and looking off into the distance. "Hey, is that a roller coaster? I haven't been on a roller coaster since I was a kid."

"Not much of one," said Jo, hesitating only long enough for Dean to notice. "I think you have to be below a certain height to ride it."

"Only if you're a gigantor like Sam," said Dean. "Come on, let's check it out."

They didn't let them on the roller coaster (not because they were over twelve but because they were reluctant to empty their pockets and boots), but Dean found a snow cone stand on the way and they shared a blue raspberry, Jo sticking out her electric blue tongue at him when they were done.

Dean barely resisted sucking it clean.

"Hey, look at that, a Fun Shack," he said, pointing at a sign with chipped red paint. "What is a fun shack, anyway?"

"Definitely not what you're thinking it is," said Jo, steering him away. "Try not to get us run out of town before we find the booth with the free apple cider."

They passed the Epsilon Sigma Pi charity auction on their way and Dean raised his eyebrows at her.

"Of course it's real," she answered the unasked question. "If you'd been paying attention you'd have seen they've been advertising all over town." And now that he was thinking about it, Dean though he remembered seeing something about that on the bulletin board in the laundromat. "I wanted there to be something concrete if she decided to follow up on it."

"And if she stops by to see if her vase is there?"

"In the unlikely event she actually stops by," said Jo, "I'll be nowhere to be found, and neither will the vase. It wasn't as though she wanted to keep the thing anyway. No harm, no foul."

"I kind of liked her," admitted Dean, looking back over his shoulder at the entrance to the auction tent one last time. "She was feisty."

"You like them feisty, don't you?" said Jo. "Maybe you want to head back over to her place, see if she wants some company?"

When Dean fed her a hot mini-donut from the bag to shut her up, he wasn't surprised when she bit down on his fingertips, smiling around them.

"I think Sam was more her type," he said, and steered them down a new path, clown-faced juggler to one side of them and weary-faced parents to the other. They'd been in circles already, little to see and less of that worth seeing, but there was something about it that kept them moving, seeing everything one more time.

"He had the best jokes," said Jo, stopping in front of a cotton candy machine. "He used to wait until my mom was out of the room before telling them."

"My father didn't tell jokes."

"Well, John Winchester did," said Jo, telling him about a man he never knew. "Filthy ones. My mother would have throttled him if she'd known."

"I didn't hear my father tell a dirty joke till I was twenty," said Dean. "Hell, twenty-two. Just him and me and a bottle of Jack Daniels in a bar in Duluth."

"I only ever knew him in a bar," said Jo. "Always around other hunters. I didn't even know he had kids until about a year after he started coming around."

Dean fell silent, moved away from her side and pulled out his wallet to buy a cone of cotton candy.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean...."

Dean shoved a fistful of sticky candy into his mouth and faced forward, Jo at his side but not with him anymore. She didn't know his father, just some hunter who passed through sometimes, dropping a few stories and jokes and never anything that mattered.

"It doesn't mean you weren't important to him."

"Sweetheart, you don't need to tell me how important I was to my father," he said, putting a firm and abrupt end to that conversation. Dean already knew, entirely too well.

Jo was smart enough not to bristle at the comment, moving in closer again and letting Dean's sticky fingers brush over her wrist.

"What's white and red and has seven dents?" she said a few minutes later as they passed a table full of prize-winning jam.

"I don't know, what?"

"Snow White’s cherry," she said and grinned at him. "It's a lot funnier now than when I was twelve."

Dean snorted and shook his head. "My dad told you that? Seriously?" He could picture it, though, his father with a beer in one hand, some peanuts in the other, and a wide grin on his face.

"He told it to Pete Hildebrandt, actually," she admitted after another moment passed, "but I was sitting in the corner pretending to do my math homework. I always liked him. Your dad, not Pete."

"He was a pretty likeable guy," said Dean. "It's how he got the job done."

"Like father, like son, huh?"

People moved around them, passing on either side, thinning as they reached the distant edges of the festival, electrical wires taped to the walkway and weeds in amongst the less-trampled grass. Dean waited till they were completely alone before he pulled out his gun, back behind a carnival game at the opposite end of where the Echo Valley Boys were starting up their set on the main stage.

"He gave this to me when I was fifteen," he said, turning it over in his hand. It wasn't his best gun, but it was the one that was almost always close at hand. "I say he did, anyway. He left it out one night and I claimed it, and he never said one word about it after that."

It was just the way John Winchester worked.

Jo looked at it like she was supposed to, didn't touch. "Mine's bigger," she said, "but it's back in my truck."

"Sure, you just keep telling yourself that," said Dean, spotting her smile out of the corner of his eye. Expecting it. "Don't be jealous just 'cause I have awesome guns."

"It's not the size that counts," said Jo.

"Isn't that supposed to be my line?" said Dean, sliding the gun back into his boot. "Of course, it does."

"You just keep telling yourself that," said Jo, elbowing him in the side. "I always liked knives better anyway."

It was hard to argue with that. He'd seen Jo's knife before but she pulled it out anyway, and Dean didn't think it was for his benefit. She looked at it for a moment, twirled it over her fingers, then tucked it away again so deftly Dean wasn't even sure where it was hidden.

"I'd say mine's bigger, but you already know that."

"Whatever you say," she said, patting his knee and then letting her hand rest there until Dean's closed over it. "Your dad said something to me once."

"I get the feeling my dad said a lot of things to you once."

"When I was sixteen," she said. "When my dad'd been gone for years already. He said my dad would've given me the knife himself if he'd still been around. It meant a lot."

"Sounds like you knew a pretty good guy." No matter what Ellen told her about him afterwards. No matter what really went down the night Bill Harvelle died, which the way Dean figured it no one would ever really know now.

"My mom never wanted me to go out hunting," said Jo, "but I think my dad did. I think your dad thought my dad did too."

"I'm guessing you never told you mom about that."

"Never told my mom about a lot of things," she said. "She made herself scarce a lot when your dad came around, after."

"Yeah, I got that idea when she threw us out," said Dean. But hell, it couldn't have been easy for her. It wasn't like Dean hadn't taken his frustration out in the easiest direction instead of the right one a time or twenty.

"Never turned him away, though," said Jo. "All that water under the bridge and she never turned him away."

Dean wasn't sure what he was supposed to say about that, what it was even supposed to mean. Other than that he'd spent his whole life by his father's side, and there were still people out there who had pieces of him that Dean didn't.

"You should know," said Jo a few minutes later, "that once your dad trusted us enough to talk about the two of you, he never really stopped."

:::

Sam called as the sun was starting to go down behind the ferris wheel, Jo looking around with narrowed eyes, watching the lengthening shadows for those things that hid within them. Dean held up a finger to her, backed himself up against a flimsy plastic fence, and listened as Sam read him an editorial piece from the Franklinville Herald talking about the recent rash of suicides.

"I dunno Sammy. Maybe Franklinville's just a really depressing place to live."

Jo took a few moments to squat down, look underneath a trailer and check the sill of a cracked window, then turned back to Dean, walking purposefully over to where he was standing with an expression Dean couldn't quite read on her face.

"They're all off the same bridge, and all between midnight and dawn," Sam was saying as Dean watched her approach.

"Bridge could be convenient. Time of night's when the fewest people would see them."

"Maybe," said Sam, "but I want to check it out anyway. Could be a malevolent water creature; we've got about a dozen possibilities there."

"Yeah, maybe we'll bag ourselves a mermaid," said Dean, licking his lips as she reached him. "I gotta go, Sammy. I'll see you back at the motel."

He snapped the phone closed before Sam could answer, just as Jo's arms trapped him against the fence.

"Time to go?" she said.

"It was nothing important," said Dean, letting himself be trapped. "Just Sam."

"So... time to go?" she said again, something different in her voice this time. They were both silent for a moment, then Jo let go, backed away, angled her head towards the path they'd come in on, towards the hill hiding the nearby orchard.

This time Dean led, and Jo followed.

Their shade had vanished with the movement of the sun, the black metal of the Impala gleaming, the blue of Jo's truck deep like the afternoon sky. Dean could feel the heat of it already, sweat prickling on his arms and the back of his neck despite the cooling evening air.

Jo ran her hand over the door handle of her truck like she was contemplating opening it then stepped back, leaned up against the passenger door of the Impala instead and crossed her arms over her chest. "So today wasn't completely terrible," she said.

"Not completely, huh?" said Dean, coming around the other side of his car to meet her.

"I think I can consider this one a job well done."

"So you're leaving?" said Dean, trapping her against the car with one arm on either side. "Just like that?"

"Well, now that you mention it," said Jo, like she'd been waiting for him to set her up just like that, "I think I might have time for one more ride."

Dean smirked, leaned in closer, and Jo met him look for look, motion for motion. "What do you think the odds are that someone's going to wander back here and see us?"

"Not good enough that I'm going to let you stop now," she said, and fisted his shirt, tugged him in against her. A button popped free, clinked off the car door and disappeared into the grass.

Dean's hand found its way to her waist, slipped up under her blouse, down inside the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back. Her skin was soft, warm, just a faint slick of sweat down her spine.

Her hands came up between them, not to him but unbuttoning her own blouse carefully, bottom to top so Dean was forced to follow with his eyes, had to wait to see the white lace of her bra peek out at him.

"Off," he said, like somehow she needed to be told, but he didn't take his hands off her body to help, let her slip it off herself and toss it behind her, watched it float downwards until his attention was drawn to Jo again. One hand was still at the small of her back, fingers touching the curve of her ass, the other slid up to deftly unhook her bra, let it hang there on her shoulders as his hand slid up all that bare skin to the back of her neck.

A shrug of her shoulders and the bra, too, slipped off to land on their feet, then they were standing there in the open orchard, in the golden sunlight, with hands smoothing over every bit of bare skin they could find.

Jo tugged at his shirt, pushed it over his stomach, and Dean backed away for just long enough to raise his arms.

"If you tear it, you'd be doing me a favour," he said and the shirt was finally yanked off, tossed somewhere in the long grass and out of sight.

Right up until her hands fell on his bare chest it all felt slow, leisurely, as lazy as the setting sun, then suddenly it was skin on skin, peaked nipples and roaming hands and the rustle of leaves overhead, whipped up by a sudden wind. Dean's hand fell on her breast and he reached for her jeans, unbuttoning one-handed without even having to look.

Jo sank her teeth into his shoulder as she kicked out of them, just bare legs and white panties after that and she wrapped an ankle around his calf, yanking him closer. She hissed as her bare skin was pressed up against the hot metal of the car but she didn't move away, arched against it instead, and Dean's hand slipped in between her legs, over her damp panties, fingers pressing hard against her and thumb rolling against her clit.

"Been waiting all damn afternoon," she said, lifting a knee and pressing her foot against the car door, grinding back against him. She closed her eyes, bit her lip, and as Dean braced his other hand against the car, breathing hard against her skin, he felt the heat of the black metal bite into him too. "Don't you dare stop."

As if he could.

He waited until the heat was too much then let go and flipped her over, mouthed the red impressions on her back, on her thighs, yanked on her panties with his teeth until he gave in and pulled them down to her ankles in one firm yank, letting her kick them away. Then she was over again, shoulders backed against the car, and Dean was on his knees, between her legs, hands on her thighs and mouth between them.

"Bastard," she murmured, writhing and needy, clutching at his hair and trying to climb him. Dean wouldn't be hurried, his tongue sliding through her slowly, achingly slowly, flicking at her clit and following it with his lips and teeth. His neck ached and her thighs were trembling and he kept at it, kept going, pressing her thigh up onto his shoulder and keeping her there long after she might've gone weak-legged and stumbled.

When he finally stood again, let her put both feet on the ground, he smeared his lips against her upper arm and reached between her legs again, slipping two fingers in hard and rocking the heel of his hand against her. She trembled and gasped and might've been coming right then and there on his hand but Dean didn't stop, reached behind one thigh and urged her legs up again.

It wasn't until he had her hoisted up against the car, her legs wrapped around his waist, that he finally kissed her, smashing in hard with teeth and lips and tongue. She cried out soft and rocked against him, one hand braced on the roof of the car and the other clutching his shoulder, squeezing so hard it ached.

"Not like this," he said suddenly, choking on words that were agony to get out, and he had to pull himself away to get it done, letting her down and wiping his trembling hands on his jeans. Then he yanked open the door and urged her inside, sprawled across the back seat. A wave of hot air washed over them, but it couldn't be any hotter than Dean already was.

His jeans finally came off then, discarded without a look, and he crawled in after her, overtop of her, between her knees and around her. Condoms were under the seat and she didn't even blink at that, didn't ask why they were already so close at hand.

She was so wet and he was so hard and the only relief he got, the only time he touched himself, was in the few moments before he surged forward and pushed inside.

"Jesus, Dean," she said, her legs up and around him again before he knew it. Her hands were over her head and his were on her breasts, cupping them and brushing over her nipples with his thumbs as he pushed inside. He ached to put his mouth on them and kissed her again instead, letting her fuck him with her tongue, letting her fuck him in every way she could.

She trembled under his hands and trembled around his cock and Dean was shaking too, so ready for this, rocking into her so hard and steady that the car shook around him. His rhythm slipped and then shattered as his gut tightened, as Jo fluttered around him and moaned into his mouth and he knew she was coming, maybe coming again. His teeth sank into her lower lip and he lifted one hand to grip the back of the seat, using the leverage to push and push and push and hold himself deep inside her as he finally came.

Dean lay there, still, panting against her cheek, until Jo finally pushed him away, pushed herself up onto her elbows and watched as Dean tied off the condom, shoved it into the 7-Eleven bag they used for trash.

He thought maybe he should say something until he saw her face, met her eyes, and knew she got it already, knew she was thinking all the same things he was. Knew he didn't have to offer sweet nothings and didn't have to explain. He stayed a few moments longer, ran his hands gently over her sides, her stomach, her thighs, then backed out of the car and stretched up towards the darkening sky.

Dean found his jeans in a heap against the rear tire, his shoes not that much further away. He slipped them on and didn't even bother looking for the shirt; if he was lucky it would make a magpie a good home one day. When he turned back Jo was half dressed, plucking her blouse off the car antenna and buttoning it swiftly, top to bottom.

"I want to make Tulsa by tomorrow," she said, checking her face in the side mirror of her truck, brushing her hair back with both hands. "Had a friend of Mom's call me up, ask me to look into a possible haunting."

"Yeah, Sam wants us to go hunt the Little Mermaid in the morning," said Dean, reaching out and snagging her phone from her back pocket, flipping it open and fumbling as he punched his number into her address book. He wasn't as deft with the thing as Sam was, didn't exactly go giving out his number to everyone he fucked, but this time it mattered.

"So I guess I'll be seeing you around?" said Jo as he handed it back, slipping it back into her pocket without a look.

"Pretty sure we'll cross paths, you keep working our jobs," said Dean.

"Wouldn't have to if you were a little more on the ball," said Jo, smiling, lips still shiny and teeth gleaming in the last of the sunlight. "I'll be at Bobby's come Thanksgiving, if you're up that way."

"Might be," said Dean. "Stranger things have happened."

"Ain't that the truth," she said, and rested one hand on the driver's side door, ready to go but just waiting, just waiting one more moment before actually doing it.

Dean waited too, watched her, tugged restlessly on the jeans that were sticking to his sweaty legs.

"Thanks," he said finally, and trusted her to know it had nothing to do with what they'd just done. "Take care of yourself, Jo."

"You too," she said, and while Dean kept watching she hopped in her truck and took off down the road without a backward glance. A few moments later, when the dust started to settle, Dean took off the other way.