Title: The Curse of Bittersweet Kisses
Chapter 8

~~~~~~~~~~

While it was rather tempting to disappear into the bedroom after dinner and stay there until morning, Jo knew that would cause trouble as well. She didn’t think Castiel would believe they spent all their time in there having sex. It wasn’t believable no matter what Dean’s past was. Neither would he approve of them spending hours alone in the room. He’d become suspicious and that was the last thing they wanted right now.

So she forced herself not to hide away, trying to remember how she’d seen her parents behave with each other before her dad had died. It was little stuff she and Dean did when they were in the same room: holding hands, sitting close, and while she thought they were good at those things, they were the pits with kisses. When they kissed, it was like Dean was afraid he’d break her, consistently bittersweet in tone. Another no-no. They needed to show something more, to “sell it” as he’d put it and they weren’t, both of them falling down on the job. It was one more thing they needed to talk about and had been avoiding. There were the details of Lisa and Ben to discuss, the family Dean and Sam had gained and lost to ask about, and more. She knew her reasons for avoiding that talk, but what were Dean’s? Was it all the emotional pain he felt or were there other reasons?

She knew they needed that in-depth talk and had been thinking about it, trying to anticipate what Castiel might do and the things he might ask from both of them.

Jo sat beside Dean on the couch, legs curled up to one side. His arm was around her, hand resting on her shoulder, and he flipped through an old journal while she watched tv. The news had made no mention of God Castiel making any appearances and she hadn’t bothered to change the channel though she wasn’t interested in the drama that had come on. She’d spaced out a little instead, thinking on the talk, that next move she and Dean needed to make. It wasn’t going to be easy to broach the subject of Lisa and Ben Braeden and she dreaded it, yet tactically, it needed to be done. It had to look like he was sharing things with her. Castiel had to think he’d done the right thing in raising her.

Bobby had left earlier to pick up a vehicle and Sam had gone with him. It had looked to Jo like Bobby wanted some time to talk to Sam alone. He’d asked him to go, muttered something about Sam’s strength, then ordered Dean to play house with her while they were gone. Ellen was out somewhere. She’d neglected to tell either of them where she was going and Jo suspected she hadn’t had any plan at all. Bobby’s house, once a refuge, had quickly become claustrophobic for them all, Bobby included.

A chill slid down her back. The room seemed suddenly too quiet, despite the droning of the drama on the tv and she thought she could feel a presence there with them. Jo was learning not to discount that feeling. Each time she’d had it, Castiel had shown up not long after.

She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her right ear. She was going to play the little obedient wife card as long as possible and still had a few more things to set up. Dean was okay with her plan, but he, like Ellen, told her to be careful. They’d talked the night before about it, after he’d told her about the weeks he and Sam had been gone. They’d sat side by side on the bed, Jo outlining her basic plan of being the sort of wife Castiel wanted for him in order to lull Cas into complacency. They’d agreed that it was the best plan for her at present and one that could be altered as they gained information. She’d pretend she was trying her best to adapt to the role of wife and Dean would pretend he was enjoying having a wife. They’d share information and ideas in the room alone and, when Castiel was on live tv, they’d share all that with the others.

It had been nice to hear something besides defeat, doom, and gloom from his lips. He’d sounded more positive than he had the day Castiel had raised her. Figuring out how to talk in secret to Sam, Bobby, and Ellen had helped.

Jo laid her head on Dean’s shoulder. His hand raised from her shoulder, touched her hair, and returned to her shoulder, squeezing a little. She closed her eyes and relaxed against the warmth of his body. It was nice to be held, especially by someone who knew her past, understood who she was, and accepted her. Not to mention he smelled pretty good. After a moment, she sat up, studying him. He was so different from the young man she’d first met at the Roadhouse, a man now weighed down and heavy by the trouble in the world.

Sometimes, she could almost see that young man from before with her. In the morning, the light would hit his face just right so that he appeared much younger than he was. There’d be a softness to his features that wasn’t there the rest of the day. She preferred the morning the best, when he was waking from sleep and not yet remembering that weight upon his shoulders.

Occasionally, Jo wondered if they had the choice to go back to that moment they’d met having the knowledge they now held, would they have done anything differently? Would they have tried to have something personal knowing the choice would be taken away in an instant?

He was frowning at something on the page, stubble from the long day dark on his jaw. With a sigh, he shut the journal and looked at her. “I got a big heap of nothing. Anything interesting on the news?”

“No. The news was over almost an hour ago. Same old, same old.”

He checked his watch. “Oh. Anything interesting on?”

“No. Just some stupid drama. Whose journal are you checking?”

“It’s one of the ones Rufus left behind. Thought he may have run across something that might help with what we’ve been seeing. You know, that new thing.”

It was a pretty roundabout way to indicate Castiel and she understood who he meant. It was a matter of self-preservation to talk around his name with creative uses of phrases. “He did work in different circles.” Rufus had always seemed to go up against things Jo had thought were extinct, then acted like it was nothing. It made sense to check his journals, but she’d thought Sam had already gone through them. “Didn’t Sam read them already?”

“He wasn’t looking for what I am.”

Jo shrugged off his hand at her shoulder and turned on the couch to face him. “What are you looking for?”

He didn’t answer the question. “It was a long-shot. Dad knew more than us, Bobby more than dad, Rufus more than him….” He tossed the journal to one side. “I thought I might find a different tactic to try.” Reaching out a hand, he touched her face, a finger tracing her features: the slope of her nose, the curve of her jaw. His thumb swept along her lower lip. “Come here.”

Even when it was the two of them, they tried to show affection in case Castiel was there watching, yet suddenly, Jo couldn’t take another sweet, gentle kiss that made her remember Carthage. It was time they moved on from that place and if she had to take the initiative on this, then so be it. Leaning forward, she kissed him the way she’d once dreamed he’d kiss her, as though eager for more. He tasted like the pie and ice cream they’d had after dinner: peach, vanilla, and a hint of nutmeg -- or was it her imagination? When she sat back, he looked stunned and Jo made a quick decision. She stood and grasped his hands in hers, tugging him to stand. “Come on. We’ve got the house to ourselves. What are we doing sitting here watching tv?”

“Being an old married couple,” he replied, letting her pull him towards the stairs and up them.

“We should save that for when we are an old married couple. Surely we can still count as newlyweds?”

At the top of the stairs, she turned…and caught a glimpse of Castiel at the bottom of the stairs watching them. He was spying again and she pretended she hadn’t seen him, grabbing Dean’s shirt and shoving him against the wall, like she couldn’t wait to get him into the bedroom. He responded by cupping her face and kissing her properly, the way she’d kissed him downstairs.

Somewhere in the middle of that kiss, or string of kisses, rather, with his tongue in her mouth and one hand sliding beneath her shirt, Jo realized how easy it’d be to lose control of this. They were already dangerously close to that line. She was close to that line.

He grasped her waist, body nudging hers towards the door of their room. Jo went willingly because the sooner they were away from Castiel’s line of sight, the better. They were a powder keg ready to blow and she had no idea how they’d gotten there, kisses morphing into sheer desire. Had this been waiting all along? Dean nibbled a line along her jaw and down her neck and Jo gasped in a breath, groping along the door with one hand for the door handle. She found the door handle, turned it, and then they were moving into the room.

Dean slammed the door without letting loose of her and Jo knew she had to stop this or things were going to get more complicated than they needed very fast. But she didn’t want to pull away. She wanted to sink against him and say to hell with her morals and the conviction she’d had that there should be more than physical attraction. His hands returned to her face and he drew back a fraction before resting his forehead against hers. His fast breaths mingled with hers and Jo grasped his forearms in her hands. It would be so easy to lean forward again and touch her lips to his. “Tell me no,” he ordered in a voice that sounded as shaky as she was feeling.

She licked her lips.

“Jo,” he prompted. “Tell me no.”

“No,” she whispered, a refusal of his order to refuse, yet he took it as fulfillment of that order.

He released her, held his hands out to his sides, and for once, Jo couldn’t read the expression on his face. “I think we managed to be convincing.”

Jo crossed her arms over her breasts, still feeling the ghost of his touch against her. “I think so.” She backed up, retreating around the bed to stand by the boarded up window. She needed time alone to handle what had just happened and wasn’t going to get it, so she swallowed hard and tried to hurry herself through the process. When she looked at Dean, she thought she saw the same thing on his face now, that wondering how they’d gotten to this point in seconds when previous kisses hadn’t had that effect on them.

Easy, she thought. We haven’t been really trying, too afraid of the possibility of…this.

She felt off-kilter then, similar to how she’d felt the day she’d been raised. This was a good thing…and bad at the same time.

“I take it he was watching us?” He threw himself down on the bed, causing the headboard to thump hard against the wall. His hands raised, ran through his hair, then clasped behind his head.

“He’s downstairs. Or he was.”

Dean nodded, staring up at the ceiling. He was quiet for a minute, his words hardly what she was expecting to hear. “It’s no secret I like you, Jo.”

“I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t liked me.” Castiel had known of her attraction for him and his for her.

“But we don’t need complicated and we’d be….” He licked his lips. “We’d be complicated.”

She leaned back against the wall. “I agree.” But what a complication he’d be!

When he turned his gaze to her, it was frank and honest. “I don’t think selling it will be our problem anymore. It’s more like --”

“-- getting carried away could --.”

“--be the problem,” he finished for her. “We can’t win for losing, can we?” Before she could reply, he added, “Tell me no every time we get back in this room.”

She shrugged. “If you want.” It wasn’t a promise. She suspected there’d be a day, probably soon, where they’d both want that answer to be yes. She’d be free to say it at that time. Silence descended between them. Jo wrestled with her emotions and impulses and, when she felt calmer, she said, “We need to talk.”

“About?”

“Everything. There’s things you need to tell me that you haven’t. Things I have to know in case he questions me and you know he will eventually. He’ll attempt to determine how close we’re really getting and if you’re sharing the sorts of things he thinks you should.”

“This is why you wanted to come up here?”

“Yes.”

“Shoot.”

“They’re not easy things for me to ask and you to answer,” she warned.

“I said shoot. Ask what you want.”

Jo bit her lip, then said in a soft voice, “You need to tell me about Lisa.”

His features shuttered and he sat up, putting his back to her. “No. Anything else but that. End of subject.”

“Is it? What….” She glanced away, cleared her throat, then looked back. “What do I do if he asks if you’ve shared everything with me and starts in with facts and false facts trying to trip me up?” She shrugged. “Right now I don’t have any idea what that was like for you or what happened besides basic, bare bones. I know you were with her and her son for a little over a year and now you’re not. I know they were used against you and their memories of you are gone. I understand the correlation between them and why he raised me, but I have to have details of what you had with them, the real, gritty details you haven’t told me. You’ve avoided saying anything specific and I get that. I understand it, but…..”

His jaw tightened.

“How would I know what’s truth? He’d catch me in a lie, Dean, and you, Sam, and Bobby are quick to tell us what he does to liars, thieves, murderers…anyone who doesn’t behave the way he wants. You know he’d do something to me.” She took a step forward. “Tell me the personal things, like the perfume she likes, so I can tell him I wear a different one because the other was hers and it hurts you to smell it. Tell me about Ben and a moment or two you were proud of him the way a parent would be. It’s those things I need to convince Castiel we’re real.”

“I told Sam I’d break his nose if he ever mentioned her and Ben again.”

“You going to break my nose like you threatened Sam?” She went around the bed to stand in front of him, daring him to do just that. “Then do it already because I’m going to keep asking until I have the sort of answers I can get through a Cas interrogation with. Do you want me gone again? Us gone again?”

“No.”

“Or do you want us all to survive this?” Jo moved closer, feeling like she had when she’d faced Castiel in that restaurant. She wasn’t certain how Dean would react, even a bit afraid, yet she pushed on. “We have to be united. You know that and that means I have to know details and things a real wife would learn. He has to think you’re opening up to me. I’m sorry to make you say anything when I know you’d rather keep it in, but that’s how it is. You think I want to hear the details? I’d rather not, but we share things whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not. It’s how we’re going to convince him and make it through this.” She didn’t look away from him, staring right at him. “Trust me. Do you trust me?”

His stare was hard and wounded, but he appeared to have gotten her point. “I tell you anything, you keep that information to yourself unless he questions you. You never try to talk about it with me in any way. I don’t want to work through the memories, I just want to forget. You let it go and otherwise pretend neither of them exist -- just like Sam does.”

“I will,” Jo promised and she meant it.

Dean turned his face to the wall and began to talk.

~~~~~~~~~~

He wasn’t mad at her. Not really. Jo was right. Castiel clearly expected an intimacy between them that they were currently struggling to display. Physical attraction was one matter, emotional things another, and it’d be the emotional ones that’d do the most for them. She was thinking tactically, being smart about it, trying to anticipate Castiel and here he was fighting her on it and being a dumb, stubborn son of a bitch.

She was right. One of these days, probably very soon, Castiel was going to interrogate her and she had to know things, but he hated to delve back into the emotional aspects of all that had happened with Lisa; to admit out loud just how badly he’d failed. He didn’t want Jo to see that part of him and hear the many ways he sucked as a committed boyfriend, not because she wouldn’t understand, but rather because he was ashamed of that failure and how he’d let Lisa and Ben down.

Jo was going to see him for what he was: worthless.

With a hard swallow, he began to tell her those things Cas would expect her to know, details he’d tried to bury and bits of information he hadn’t told anyone. “She didn’t have to take me in, but she did. She knew I was broken.” He didn’t look at Jo until he was done. Only then did he turn his head and realize she’d begun to cry. Tears streamed unchecked down her face. She was crying for him and the understanding of that almost undid the little bit of composure he had left.

Dean stood, putting distance between them. “Now you know,” he choked out. “We done?”

She didn’t say any of the things he expected. No words came from her lips about how it wasn’t his fault or that he’d been irresponsible in letting Castiel wipe their memories. She simply said, “Thank you.”

Those two words deflated his self anger in a rush and he nodded before leaving the bedroom. He needed to be alone for awhile.

~~~~~~~~~~

There was a reason Ellen hadn’t told anyone where she was going. She pulled into the parking lot of the Church of Castiel and parked at the far end of the lot. The evening service, which began with a meet and greet, would start in half an hour and she wanted a clear shot out of there when it was over.

Ellen had known Jo and Dean would try and talk her out of this. It was why she hadn’t told them about this visit she’d planned. She wanted to see these people for herself, evaluate personally the sort of threat they could be when they managed to take down Castiel. As fanatical as his church appeared to be, she didn’t think they’d take the deflating of their god lying down.

She turned the car off, squinting at the building. It was one of those prefab constructions that could be thrown up in a matter of days. To each side of the building were cleared areas and she saw they were adding to the building already. Must be growing as fast here as they were the rest of the world. It boggled her mind how fast he’d taken hold of people. Each time he appeared on tv there were reports of new believers and the numbers of attendance at his churches soared.

And he’d only been a god for a short while. It was unreal.

People were in line at the double doors and Ellen joined them. What took the longest was that each person was personally greeted before being led into the building. Her greeter was a young, dark-haired girl who couldn’t be more than nineteen. She handed Ellen a folder and smiled.

“Hi. I’m Megan. Have you found Castiel yet?”

Ellen took the folder. It had a picture of Castiel on it, one taken from the tv news reports, and other pictures also from reports. Sick people, children, the elderly. As propaganda went, it was effective, demonstrating clearly the good he’d been doing. There was no denying that feeding orphans and caring for both the sick and elderly were good things. Where was the balance however? Where was the depiction of his wrath? “It’s more like he found me,” she replied and pushed past before Megan could ask for a ‘testimony’.

It didn’t look like a church exactly, the masses of flowers everywhere reminding her of a flower shop. She vaguely remembered Castiel once saying he liked flowers. He should like this place then.

She found a seat at the back and waited for the service to begin.

~~~~~~~~~~

The invitation to ride along with Bobby had been unexpected. Usually, it was Dean he did things like this with. This was the first time in a long time they’d ridden anywhere alone together.

“You okay, Sam?”

He turned his head to look at Bobby, wondering if the question meant right now or just in general. He decided it meant right this moment. “For now.” It was nice to be away from the house and have a purpose that wasn’t hunting. Maybe Jo had a point with their constant focus on the job. Their lives shouldn’t be the job, but too often that was how it was.

“No guests tagging along with us?”

“Not anymore. Big L got bored about an hour ago.”

“Thank heaven for small favors.”

“I know. He said that while Michael was humorless, he was still better company than both of us, went on for a few minutes on how boring we are, then disappeared.”

“Any other problems?”

“You mean am I seeing a half-scorched world with smoldering fires at the edge of my sight? Strangers with fearful eyes calling me names like ‘monster’, ‘demon lover’, and ‘blood drinker’? Creatures I’ve killed telling me it’s their turn to stalk me before I relive hunts where I’m them? Or maybe the Campbells claiming it’s all in the blood while they drink blood from a bowl carved from a human skull and snack on intestines?”

Bobby glanced at him. “Something like that.”

He read Bobby’s expression and laughed a little. “I know. I’ve got issues.”

“Hey, you said it not me.”

“The thing is, a lot of it I know is my mind warping real events or distorting my fears. The Campells, for instance. We had a talk about family and what it is, but we were all drinking beer and eating spaghetti. No blood or intestines anywhere. Those are okay.”

“Okay? I’d say no hallucinations is the okay part, kid.”

“I mean it’s the ones I don’t recognize as memories or fears that are the worst, the ones that take over. The ones where Big L shows up.”

“Whose idea was it to use Big L? Yours or Dean’s?”

“Mine. I’m trying not to use his name.”

“Call the devil by name and there he appears.”

“Yeah.” He licked his lips and slid down in the seat. “No problems like that at the moment. No weird world covering reality, or hooks in my skin, or seeing the after effects of being used as a punching bag by two pissed off archangels, one of whom was still wearing my half-brother.” Neither Michael nor Lucifer had taken their anger out on Adam. Adam, after all, had done what had been asked of him. He’d been obedient and done what Dean was supposed to do, while Sam and Dean had thwarted the plan. Since Sam was then the only one there to attack, he’d gotten the brunt of the anger until the two had gotten bored with him and started in on each other.

“You think they’ve moved on to him?”

Bobby was the first one to ask about Adam. Sam suspected Dean didn’t ask only because he was afraid of the answer and thought Adam was being tortured. He couldn’t face knowing that. Sam knew better about Adam. Michael had taken him off before starting a fight with Lucifer and both had made sure he was set apart from them and Sam, safe in one corner of the cage and unaware of where he really was. A consideration he’d never thought he’d see from either of them and a thing he wondered about. He shook his head. “No. He followed orders. It’s me and Dean they want. We’re the rebels who couldn’t follow directions. They won’t hurt Adam.”

“You’re sure of that? I mean, you’re gone now, out of their reach.”

Something scratched at the back of his mind, a thought he couldn’t quite bring into focus.

“Death retrieved your soul, rescued you. I’d think they’d be pissed off at whoever is left and that means Adam.”

Sam turned his attention out the side window. “Maybe. I don’t know. It didn’t seem like they cared about him at all. He was nothing to them.” How would Adam feel about that? Why had Death only saved Sam? Was Adam fine where he was? Possibly, he decided. The two archangels had made him his own little oblivious corner, tossing him aside like a toy they were done with. Perhaps it was the same as heaven for Adam. Maybe it didn’t matter where he was in the end. Maybe Adam had his heaven wherever he was put.

Bobby drove in silence for awhile. John Denver was on the radio. When the song had segued into Willy Nelson, Bobby said, “Thought you wouldn’t mind getting away from the newlyweds for awhile.”

He hoped Castiel remained as unaware of nuance in voices as he’d always been because Bobby’s voice declared clearly that newlyweds was the wrong word for Jo and Dean. “Thanks. Interesting with the dresses and Jo.”

“Well, when Joanna Beth gets an idea in her head, ain’t nothing stopping her. She’s like her mother in that regard. Anyone thinks Jo takes after Bill doesn’t know Ellen very well.”

While he and Dean hadn’t talked about whatever Jo was up to, Sam thought she’d hit on something. It was a good way for her to begin investigating. The guise of making Dean’s life easier as the wife Castiel had appointed was smart. It was very smart of her to use that role Castiel was trying to force her into against him. “She’s smart.”

“That she is.”

More miles passed and Sam sighed, deciding to broach the subject that had been in his thoughts all day. “Bobby…do you think I might be schizophrenic?”

His reaction was instantaneous. He pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the truck before turning in the seat to face him. “Why would you ask that, Sam?” The way he said it indicated he’d had that wondering himself. Not comforting to realize.

“Because of the hallucinations. The voices. Big L talks to me.”

“You want honesty?”

“May as well.” He shrugged as though he didn’t care when he cared very much what Bobby thought. “I know I’m screwed. A little honestly won’t change that.”

Bobby studied him so long that he was afraid of what the answer was going to be. “I don’t think the diagnosis would be as simple as schizophrenia -- if they could even manage to make a diagnosis. I think you’ve got so much trauma going on in that head of yours that you’d make some doctor’s career. Death’s wall was holding something in that wasn’t meant to be let out and I think that something is that stew of diagnoses. That’s issues plural, Sam. I think he tried to give you a halfway decent chance at a normal life, or as normal as we get, and Castiel started a crap load of dominoes falling by ripping that wall down.”

“That’s what I think, too. Were they always there do you think?”

“You mean were you always this messed up?”

Sam nodded.

He turned back to face the windshield, put the truck in drive, and carefully pulled back onto the highway. “Yes, but so’s your brother and in case you hadn’t noticed? Ain’t none of us winning ‘sane person of the year’ award any time soon.”

Strangely, those words were what comforted him and when Lucifer popped back in, he was able to ignore him until the hallucination disappeared once more.