veneficusvenato | [After The First Order Meeting; Locked to Dean]

There are four tables. One group of people. One third of the area.
These are the things she'll try not to think about much later.
Between her and the bell that doesn't have her attention.

She'll tell herself every single bit of it was training.

The way her center tightening. Knowing.
Fingertips on the letter in her hand, pressing.
As she happened to glance up with what looked like ease.
And yet already knew. What she couldn't. Shouldn't. Was.

(And nothing else.
Not the tread of his step.
Or the sound of a nearly silent breath.

Nothing you're supposed to forget over time.)

Edited 2011-10-19 22:26 (UTC)

The particular angle of her cheek, curving down from her eyelashes. That curl in her hair that's sometimes there and sometimes gone.

You don't think about these things. You don't think about the particular little physical things you loved, once they're gone. In much the same way as you don't take a whip to your own back, you don't think about them.

And then they walk back into your life, owning pubs and running meetings of the Order you've sworn your life to, and - what are you meant to do?

Dean takes a hundred years to cross the floor, and every rasp of his jeans against the open robe he's thrown on sounds louder than a gunshot in his ears.

"Jo," he says, fiercely casual. "Hey."

And this time there are no other people.

The ones over there really don't count.

Because Dean is standing one wooden structure from her.
She's trying not to figure out if her first though is stupid.
He didn't leave. She was sure he would, did, had. After the meeting.

"Hey." Is a small mirror. Before she adds, "Longtime."
Because she doesn't mean last night at all. Which. Hell.
Her face wrinkled, momentarily. "Can I get you something?"

Too long.

He considers, shrugs.

"Sure. If you'll sit and have one with me."

They can do that, right? Lots of people do this. Have drinks with their exes, sit and talk like civilised people. Like old friends.

Is it too early to break out the hard stuff?
Because her throat went dry momentarily.

That was too casual to be work related.
Wasn't it? Maybe it wasn't? Maybe.

No. No, she wasn't floundering.
It was just Dean. Just. Dean.
Floundering she didn't do.

She nodded. "Grab a seat."

There's a barstool right there. And there's Jo, on the other side of a long wooden barrier. He can remember in painfully accurate detail what her shampoo smelled like, but all he can smell here is beer and furniture polish.

(of course she'd make the Three Broomsticks a shipshape, perfectly nice pub; Ellen Harvelle would have had it no other way.)

(if he pretends long enough that it doesn't make him wonder why she's tied down to it, what's happened to her. where those extra lines in her forehead came from. who put them there.)

"Coffee, probably. Little early for the hard stuff."

Although he really wishes it wasn't.

There's a catch at the edge of her mouth.
Uncertain between a frown and a smirk.
At him answering her unasked thought.
Because they're so far from there.
From when it would've been a joke.
From when it would've been normal.

Jo closed the letter in her hand, gathering the pile of mail and tucking it under the counter. Before she walked not far from the spot in her head Dean was sitting. Where she wasn't triangulating how many steps between where she was and there the whole time. Or trying to figure out why he was there.

She returned with two mugs. Setting one in front of him.
She didn't ask how he wanted it. Somethings didn't change.

She remembers how he likes his coffee. After all these - and so long - and -

He sips it, blank-faced, feeling too much to dare show a thing.

"Thanks."

They weren't ever much good with words. That hasn't changed.

Except when they were. In the beginning, when they lived for each new detail they could wrest from each other around their professional oaths. In the middle, when the volume of the looks they gave each other could make Sam abandon them claiming they would never get any work done.

In the end, when there were always too many words, too loud and too fast and too well aimed.

Jo opened a packet of sugar, but only poured half in. Enough she knew it was there, yet couldn't taste it. Delaying the enviable. The loss of the nonexistent distance, the nonexistent protection, nonexistent safety.

Then she rounded the bar and walked to him.
He had stipulated she had to sit with him.

She kept her hands around her mug.
One foot hooking in a stool rung.
Trying not to compare this.

No one else was here.
He wasn't reporting now.
He didn't need anything from her.

"So, how've you been?" Was conversational. At least.

Edited 2011-10-20 18:18 (UTC)

"Oh, you know. Same as always."

Lonely.

But then, that's the price they all pay, isn't it? They do their jobs and they take the consequences. Saving people, all the time. Until you lose yourself.

He leans on the bar, watches her hands. Remembers her opening a packet of sugar just like that, at a hundred cafes, a million spots. Half a spoon. Like Jo. The sugar was there, but you had to fight to find it.

And once you'd found the taste of it on your tongue you could only live half a life without it.

It had been a perfectly satisfying half-life, up until now.

"I've been busy. Didn't expect to run into you."

Oddly enough. The second comment made her smile.
Small and flippant. A flash against her mug's rim.

"No?" She believes Sam said something like that, too.
About the ludicrousness of the situation. Of her here.

"Runnin' a bar in a school town, selling Butterbeer to teenagers? Hell no."

But he's smiling, a little. With her smile, the curve of her lips tugging his own upwards. Like they're joined on a string.

God, he missed her.

She did not just stare at his mouth.

Even as there was a moment frantic want to turn back.
Look at her coffee. Her patrons. Something. Anything. Else.
She didn't. Her smiled widened, the fingers of one hand covering.

"I'll have you know, I manage a pub quite well. Impressively, even."
It's true, but the tone is all mockingly smug.

And maybe, just maybe, hiding how grateful.

"Course," Dean says, affronted that she'd have thought anything else. And grinning a little now. A real grin, even if it's a little twisted with the loss of her.

"Your mom would have your hide if you didn't."

"I should send her pictures."

She hadn't even thought of that before.

Of course, she really wouldn't. Would she?
No one else would see it in the same ways.

Sokka and Lee had both seen the Road House.
But they didn't understand it in the same way.

How could they? It wasn't bred into them. Not like this.

"She'd laugh," Dean says, smiling a little. "And she wouldn't be fooled. Not one tiny little bit."

"I couldn't just want a simple life, with orders and kids?"

Asks the girl who just ran the Order Meeting.

Trying for the millionthe time to picture it.
That so very different life, she questioned here.

Except it's tangled in her head with other memories now.
Dean's smile. Tripping alarms. And stealing half a bed.
Hardly asking, because the asking always took too long.

Like stealing a life then. And never asking.
And never knowing how to once it was gone.

Dean's laugh is ... not really funny. More sad.

"No, Jo.

"You couldn't."

Kids, Jo with toddlers tugging at her ankles, with -- That's a path of thought that would only make Dean completely maudlin, and it's not even ten-thirty. He's gonna stop that right there and maintain his self-respect, thanks.

It's a hollow sound. That laugh.
It really shouldn't be so familiar.

That shift of seriousness in her face.
Had more to do with that sound, than words.

"Then it must not be about kids and drink orders."

Dean smirks a little, dry.

"You're not fooling me that it is. Maybe the others believe it of you, but ..."

Not Dean.

He knows her too well.

"I won't ask what it is you got going on, here. Don't need t'know. Just ... if you need help, call me, okay?"

Don't need to know or don't want to know?
Still aware she couldn't say too much, even asked?

But his last words.

Jo studied him, silently.
The offer. His face. His eyes.
How long had it been since last time?

Doesn't need. Wouldn't matter if he did, but - it doesn't matter. At all.

Whatever she's into, whatever she needs ...

Dean has to look away, unable to keep her gaze. You can't stare at the sun and not get blinded.

"I mean it. I know there's ... we didn't part on the best terms, but - Jo, I mean it."

He looked away and Jo hid her frown.
In taking another drink of her coffee.

"You going to keep reporting to the meetings?"

Business. But it isn't either.

Not when she needs to know.

If he's going to be here.

Keep being here.

Stand there. Sitting there. Near her.

Business. Talking business is good.

Dean nods, gulping scalding coffee so that he can talk again. "Mm. Yeah. There's - it's not all --"

He swallows again, frowning. The perils of being an Unspeakable are - well, encapsulated in the name, really.

"The Ministry's becoming --"

Sigh.

Try again.

"Yeah, I'm sticking with you."

Jo pressed her lips together.
Pretending her stomach hadn't clenched.
Painfully, hard and sudden like a jolt.

"Yeah. It's the same on this side."

"Hogwarts?" Is a question about the direction.
Except she only thinking of his last words.
He's going to be here. Stuck to her.

Often.

Breathing was overrated.

Dean shakes his head. "Only sometimes. I'll be coming back and forth from London mostly."

He wishes he didn't feel anything in particular about this.

An Order run by Jo. Seeing her every meeting.

Christ.

What it means that they pulled her out of the field.
What it means that they gave her the amounts to an army.
How certain specific people must be about what is going on.

And all she can think of is him.
To do this. See him that often.

She's glad for the coffee cup.
Her knuckles briefly whitening.

Sokka & Lee were one thing.
Dean was wholly another.

"Good." Wait. Fuck.
Her mouth was hers.
Qualifiers. She needed -

"'Least I won't doubt my updates."

Dean swirls the remnants of the coffee around in his cup, slowly. It's almost gone.

Good. He can almost leave.

Because this is -- the way she's looking at him --

This kind of hurts.

"Nice of y'to say."

And then it's awkward.
Not that it wasn't before.
But he's looking at his cup.

And. What is she really supposed to ask?

About his family? About his job? About whether he's dating?

She doesn't want to know if there is someone waiting for him right now. Doesn't want to know how easy it was to replace her. Doesn't want to know if that number of girls is as high as the people she never even gave the chance to replace him.

Edited 2011-10-29 06:47 (UTC)

Dean sets the empty cup down and gets to his feet, awkward and uncertain. "So, uh, hey. Thanks. For the coffee."

And that's it. A cup of coffee.
The length of maybe five minutes time.

She doesn't stand. Just nodded, setting hers down.

"Yeah. No problem."

Dean manages a smile for her. Small, awkward.

Five minutes' time and he just needs to get out. This is ridiculous. It's a parody of what they used to have and it's not the funny kind.

"Nice to see you again."

Pleasantries suck.
This is Jo's opinion.

"You, too."
Is so thin.
Polite.

But everything is stuck.

Dean nods to her, not trusting his voice.

This was a bad idea. He shouldn't have come.

He turns away. It's the hardest thing he's done in a while. And he walks for the door.

He's going to walk out the door.
He even gets about ten feet away.

Before she feels like suffocating.
Like the knot in her stomach?
Is crushing her throat.

"Dean." Escapes.
Defeating.

He turns.

And for a moment she doesn't know.
What to say. How to breathe.
Looking at his face.

How long it's been.
How she's going to manage.
Even just the Order Meetings.

Except she has to. Except he's looking at her.
There's nothing. There's no way to explain how or what.

But her mouth opens, words coming because they're habit, not choice.
She can't recognize, doesn't -- "Stay safe, okay?" -- until she hears them.

Edited 2011-10-29 07:35 (UTC)

Dean pauses, half-turned.

Or maybe more accurate: Dean freezes. Just for a second. Then he half-shrugs, lifts one shoulder.

Keeps walking away.

Edited 2011-10-29 07:39 (UTC)

The tiny bell jingles.

And Jo finally swears.

It could have been anything.
Any other two English words.
Anything but that.

[After The First Order Meeting; Locked to Dean]

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