Fic: Try, try, try to understand

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Title: Try, try, try to understand
Author: latentfunction
Recipient: sophiap
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Author's Note: Vague spoilers through season four. Title from Heart. 2400 words.
Summary: Based on sophiap's prompt, Jo and Ellen, mother-daughter demon hunting team extraordinaire.

Jo's got a hour or two, tops, left on this job when they pull into the parking lot. Krystal makes the wait-staff take their breaks one at a time, and as the new girl, Jo's had to wait until the end of her shift to nurse a too-strong cup of coffee in a booth by the window. She's going over the latest intel her mom emailed her when their Impala turns off the main road, and she scowls when she recognizes them.

It looks the same as ever, a hulking flashy thing that scatters gravel as it's driven to the far end of the lot, but three men pile out instead of two, and a fourth stays in the back seat. She frowns, but by the time she's out of her seat and checking on her tables again, they're seated firmly in her section, watching her. Dean's shrugged deep into his button-down, August heat wave or no, and his eyes are dark, with smudgy shadows underneath. Sam's even bigger than she remembered, but pale and greasy as well, and Jo rolls her eyes instead of frowning at them.

She drapes the end of her ponytail over her left shoulder, so her hair covers the name embroidered into the ill-fitting uniform, and bites the inside of her cheek as she walks. They're months and years back from the dead, Dean's been fucking buried since she saw him last, and she wants to shiver.

"Hi boys, I'm Lizzy, and I'll be taking care of you today." She slaps open her order pad when she reaches the table and levels a hard smile at Sam and Dean, eyebrows slightly raised. They both nod at her without making a big deal of it, just a couple of guys off the road, and she breathes easier. She doesn't recognize the other man, who's shorter than both of the Winchesters, with a scruffy beard and smooth hands. He gives her the same, tired agreement as Sam and Dean, though, and she wonders how much he knows.

"Can I get you something to drink?" she continues, not giving them time to interrupt.

"Coffee," Sam says, after glancing at his brother. "All around."

Jo nods and makes a note. "You ready to order or you need a little time?"

"Why don't you tell us about this place. What's good here, and all," Dean says. His eyes don't really settle on her but flicker about the room, and she already knows all the exits he's cataloguing – the kitchen and its staff door behind her, the line of windows above the booths, the flimsy drywall between the dining room and the manager's office.

"Well, I've been working this job for about a week now –" Dean finally looks at her full-on and she wants to smirk, knowing he gets it – "and the daily specials are usually really great. That's a BLT with a loaded baked potato today, by the way, and you can add a salad if you'd like."

Dean purses his lips, and his stupid duckface makes Jo want to laugh at him, where she used to want to laugh with him.

"Sounds good," he says after a moment, and Jo jots it down. "You guys ready?"

Sam shakes his head and the other guy says, "No, give it a little longer."

Dean shrugs and leans back in his seat. "You're new in town, then?"

"Few days," Jo repeats. "How about you? Haven't seen you around, and I think I'd remember that car."

"Just passing through." Dean shakes his head. "How's the job treating you?"

Sam glances up sharply, frowning, but the third guy just flips to the other side of the menu and keeps going through the lunch specials.

"Going great." Jo smiles, bright and shiny, and thinks through her next words. "Took me a few days to get the routine down, but it's coming along real easily now."

"Good, good." Dean leans across the table and taps twice in front of Sam. "It's not haute cuisine, guys, get a move on."

"Double hamburger, all the lettuce and stuff on the side," Sam tells her. "And that loaded potato instead of fries, please."

Jo nods. "How d'you want your burger cooked?"

"Rare as they'll do it," he says, and Jo might be looking at her order pad but that doesn't mean she can't see Dean stiffen, or Sam turn to look out the window after he speaks.

"And for you?"

"The special," the third guy says. "Extra tomatoes."

She rips their order slip from her pad and glances over her shoulder. "I'll get that coffee right out," she says. She can't be sure, but she doesn't feel their eyes on her as she walks away.

The pot's almost empty, and she serves them mugs that are two-thirds full and no longer steaming. Dean gives her the there-goes-your-tip stinkeye she's been flashed a lot in the past week, wearing this fucking pastel dress and serving patrons who don't know all about how she grew up with weaponry, but his lips twitch, and she rolls her eyes at him.

Only bottled water for the coffee!, says the sign over the pot. Jo uses what's left of the gallon jug already in the wait station and then ducks through the kitchen to the fetch another. The water's stacked on shelves against a back wall and no one ever watches as she pulls a crucifix from under her uniform and blesses the jug. She's heard the stories about the Winchester boys, but she also watched them sip holy coffee without problems, so the grapevine either has it wrong, or the rumors aren't nearly as bad as the truth.

Jo hovers over her other two tables until they lay their silverware in the center of the plates, and tip her, and leave. Sam and Dean and whoever are quiet, mostly, making small talk that's all pronouns and no specifics. She wipes tables down and picks up that they're on the move, that they're on some sort of job, that it's not going well, but nothing more.

Dean shoots her a blinding grin when she carries out their tray, balanced high above her shoulder like she never bothered when she only carried bottles and shots, and falls upon his food when she slips it into place. She stands by his shoulder and keeps her distance from the other two, even though Sam smiles just as friendly as his brother and the scruffy guy doesn't engage her.

Krystal steps out at 3:00 to take her afternoon cigarette, easy as clockwork, and Jo freshens their coffee and brings Dean a bowl of ranch before she pulls the bobby pin away from her side-swept bangs and breaks into her boss's office.

It turns out to be a little altar, tucked into the keyboard shelf under the desk, and Jo doesn't know how Krystal burns her candles but she doesn't care, either. The books are harder to find, and Jo's starting to think they're in the safe, with the cash and the paychecks and the tax paperwork, when she finds them in a bottom drawer, mixed in with some make-up and a box of tampons. She's out of the office again with time to spare and slips out the back door to her car. Everything's stashed in the cab of her truck before Dean's finished his second cup of coffee, but she refills it anyway. She's smiling too wide and maybe he'll connect the dots, but really, who better than this table, if someone's gonna figure her out?

They order more stuff to go – a salad with thousand island on the side, a cup of lemonade, and a half dozen chocolate chip cookies. Sam frowns as he gives her someone else's credit card for the check, but Jo shrugs and runs it through the register anyway. She's riding high on her real work, and she's not exactly worried about job security here, so she sticks an entire pie into their takeout bag, beneath everything else. It's warm enough that it'll wilt the salad if no one eats it right away, but she figures the food is for whatshisface, still sitting in the Impala, and if it is, they'll find the pie soon enough.

"You heading out?" she asks, when she hands over the bag and Sam scrawls something illegible on the slip of the receipt.

"Yeah," he says. "Places to be."

"Where're you headed?" She can see the old bruises still lingering on the sharp points of their face, and the healing gashes on the knuckles, and is pretty sure she doesn't want to know – but she wants to know where they're not going, as well.

"You know." Dean shrugs. He's smiling but it doesn't get close to his eyes. "Got some old business to take care of."

"Still got a ways to go?" That makes Sam look up, with a smile playing around his mouth, but it also makes her sound like the other women in this place, so Jo ignores him.

"Oh, yeah," Sam says. "Probably another day and a half."

Jo straightens the condiments on their table instead of smiling. Mom's new place, with its stupid name and its collection of new regulars that act just like the old guys, is too close to be their target, if they're telling the truth.

"Gotta get on down the road, you know?" Sam continues.

She smiles widely now, and nods. "I know the feeling."

"Thought you just got in?" Dean asks.

"Her work's done here," the other guy says. Dean rolls his eyes but he smiles up at Jo. "Isn't that right? Lizzy?"

Dean's just humoring him, scowling half-heartedly like the guy's telling an old, boring joke, and so Jo shrugs. "Shift's almost over."

Dean stacks the empty plates together, smearing ketchup from one onto the bottom of the next, and Jo reaches for them, taking a second to get them arranged and still have a hand free for Sam's signed slip. "Need a hand getting that?" Dean asks.

Jo raises her eyebrows high and he backs down immediately, spreading his palms and leaning away from her. "I know what I'm doing here."

"Never said you didn't." Dean grins at her, familiar, like they're close enough for secret smiles on top of the codes and half-truths.

"Y'all drive careful," Jo says, and smirks, and heads to the back before they can get the last word after all.

They tipped her in cash instead of putting it on the card; it's twenty percent, rounded neatly up to the next dollar, and she tucks it into her pocket while she swipes a rag across their empty table. The car's gone by the time she gets their plates to the back, and Jo is out of the building high behind them. She'd checked out of her room that morning and she doesn't stop until she's a few miles out of town. Her own stolen pie rides shotgun in a white cardboard box, warm and sweet, and she thinks about eating it straight from the pan, not even licking the fork clean before loading it up with another bite.

Jo parks on a long, straight stretch of road and wriggles around in the cab to change. She pulls on a pair of jeans under her skirt before unbuttoning the dress and leaving it, shed like a skin, in the passenger seat. The wifebeater she wore underneath is sweaty by now, but the knife strapped to her upper arm, hidden under sleeves that brushed her elbows, is so familiar she'd only notice the weight if it was missing.

Ellen answers quickly enough, once she's on the move again, so that Jo doesn't have to wonder if it'll go to voicemail. "How'd it go," she says, not really a question, by way of hello.

"Easy as I told you it would." Jo wishes she'd tied her hair back before she started driving with one hand and talking with the other, but the windows are still up and it can wait.

She can hear her mom's steady hunt and pecking in the background for a moment. "What'd you do with the books?"

"Got em wrapped up here with me." She glances at them in the other seat, under the yellow folds of some other girl's uniform. The fabric's draped so the embroidered name's visible, Mary, just next to a stain on one of the covers. "You want me to bring them home?"

"What are they?"

Jo tells her: a few grimoires, none of them very old or relatively dangerous. "But I think we've got copies of them all, right?"

"Sure do. Drop em by anyway. I'll give them to Bobby next time he come by."

She laughs. "If we already have them, no way is Bobby gonna need a copy."

"No, but three or four more books in that man's house is just another drop in the ocean. He's got the room for them."

"Did you look into those deaths I called about?"

"Yeah, I'm emailing you the info now." A few more keys clacked in the background. "You still have the coordinates in your phone?"

"Mmm hmm." Jo nodded, uselessly. "I'm thinking it's a spirit."

"That's what I'd thought, too."

She reached a stop sign and let her truck idle, not edging through the T intersection just yet. She should turn left: the next job, the road open before her, the wind tangling her hair into wonderful snarls. She could be there in five, six hours if she drove like she meant it.

"You call me when you get there," Ellen said.

Jo snorted but she smiled, safe alone in the car. "Yeah, I'll do that."

"Love you, Jo."

"You too." She ended the call and dropped the phone into her lap, then leaned over, worked her way into the pie's box, and broke off a bit of the crust.

She watched the empty road while she ate, letting the truck rumble in place underneath her. When another car came up behind her, she gunned it, straight on til morning. She'd make it to The Outhouse with the rest of this tank of gas. The pie'd be cold by the time she got there, but there was probably a freezer-burnt pint of ice cream in the kitchen, and her mom always did keep late hours, and it'd work.