FIC: Put It All In Bags, Just Call It Charity 1/2

[dollarformyname]

Title: Put It All In Bags, Just Call It Charity
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairings/Characters: Adam/Jo friendship (sorry, gen's all I can manage lately; it can be pre-sexin' if you really want it to, though)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language. Unbeta'd, because I like to live dangerously.
Timeline/Spoilers: Just another one of those Jump The Shark AUs.
Word Count: ~7,543
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit. Story title from the song Can't Go Back by Soul Asylum. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: There's a name for the brand of frustration he incites, and if she'd known it sooner, she would have left him in jail.

A/N: This is completely the fault of high_flyer87, who just had to have contagious thoughts in this discussion

-:-

She's in a rush to meet up with her mom in Jackson, hoping to avoid another lecture on punctuality and aging the woman another five years for every minute she's late. Momma's been a hard sell when it comes to splitting some of the work down the middle and she really doesn't want to jeopardize her newfound freedom, no matter how fleeting or mundane the mission.

Blip of a siren, and she totally should have been paying better attention to the speed limit. She should have listened to her mom about running off at the mouth too, because the next thing she knows, there's a roadside circus, five squad cars from two towns and one little, old her in handcuffs.

She uses her one phone call to get cussed out, knows there's more where that came from once her mom gets here to clear up this little 'trunkload of unlicensed firearms' misunderstanding, and fuck these podunk cops and their dinky little jailhouses, anyway. It's not her fault the fat jerk had nothing better to do than stare at his speed ray-gun thing, hoping to catch a hot little number looking to ass-wiggle her way out of a ticket.

“Get your goddamn hands off me.” She twists in the man's grip, and he frowns in distaste when she manages to wrench an arm free.

“I can always add to them charges,” he grumbles, hand splayed between her shoulderblades to encourage her none-too-gently along the short, rank corridor. His oversized hoop of keys jangle obnoxiously as he detaches them from his belt loop and stops near the end of the line.

It's all gloom and doom: cracked and stained concrete and steel bars, blood and urine and mold in the air, a single window set high into the wall and so cramped with steel grating it might as well not be there at all.

She wrinkles her nose up. “What? No maid service?”

The deputy's had his fill of her charming personality, it seems, pushes her inside and slams the gate behind her with an echoing clang. She turns so he can uncuff her through the bars, eyes falling on her only neighbor.

Great. Equal opportunity imprisonment.

The guy in the corner cell looks about as dangerous as a fruit fly until he sees he's got company and vaults to his feet. “Hey! Hey, c'mon, you gotta listen!” he pleads with the cop, who ignores him, and Jo might feel mild sympathy for his desperation if it weren't for the lake of dried blood all along the front of his t-shirt.

She stiffens, fingers itching for the weapons they confiscated, backs up against the bars furthest from the lunatic. “Just 'cause you mighta found some 'suspicious paraphernalia' and think I'm some kinda whacked-out serial killer ain't no reason to stick me back here with the ax-murderer,” she gripes.

“I don't even own an ax!” The other prisoner scowls at her extremely unwelcome contribution before resuming his case with the deputy. The cop's clearly lamenting his position back here with the scum of society today. “Swear to fucking god, I was just visiting my mom and she—she wasn't her and there were two and then she bit me and then she—then she fucking turned into me and I know it sounds crazy but that's... I never woulda hurt her! They were things! Freaky-ass things, okay? I don't care if you put me in a straitjacket, but you gotta make sure she's okay! They tried to fucking eat me and I dunno if she's okay and I can't wake up and it's seriously fucked! They're gonna gobble up all the kids or something, and no one believes a goddamn word because it's crazy, I know it's crazy, but I saw it and it still hurts, ya know? I mean, chunks of missing flesh with tooth marks? Where the fuck did that shit come from if I imagined it, huh?”

He flails around in pissed-off terror while he's ranting, and this is about the point that Jo takes notice of the dirty bandages all up and down his arms, flecks of red seeping through. She idly wonders if it's legal to keep him in here without medical attention while other bells are clanging out of order in her head. His jeans are torn and stiff with mud, flakes of the same in his hair, a longer look at his face and there's something... there's definitely something, aside from the potential monster run-in that's gotten him all in a tizzy.

He's still going, turning a little blue in the face, the deputy just staring at the spectacle with equal parts disgust and intrigue.

“Whoa, hey. Okay, guy, okay,” Jo cuts in. “Chill out a sec, alright? Take a breath.” His eyes are bruised and bloodshot and wild, like he forgot where he was for a minute there, but he does take a breath, chest hitching with the effort and some of the color leaving his face. She spreads her hands in the air, slowly stepping up to the bars separating them. “Can I take a look?”

“I—“ He glances around like he thinks she's talking to someone else. “W-what?”

“Your arms,” she says carefully, nodding at them. “Can I see?”

He glances down, back up, brows furrowed, and she half-expects him to suddenly claim English as a foreign language for all he seems to understand, his outburst having exhausted his limited range. But then he fumbles his arms up, shaky hands peeling back the bandage around his left wrist. He holds it out for her inspection, watching her hopefully and not a little warily.

“It bit me,” he repeats, and yeah, she can see that. It's pretty damn nasty-looking, all purple-red and flaps of torn flesh underneath clumps of dirt. This ain't no love-bite, that's for sure. It's gotta be hurting something fierce too.

The cop's angling his head so as to get a peek without being too overt, and she snaps a glare at him. “You get a kick outta letting people suffer like this? That's gonna get infected.” The guy is in no way sympathetic. “At least get him some aspirin. Dick,” she mutters as she gives the kid his hand back. She supposes she shouldn't think of him as a kid, can't be that much younger than her, but he looks so far out of his element it's hard not to translate the naivety to youth.

It doesn't make a lick of sense for him to be locked up when he's nothing but a bloody, scared mess, but that's how these things go sometimes. She's run across leads in stranger places. “So, what? You think he mistook himself for prime rib? That's some crack police work there.”

The deputy sneers at her, crosses his arms and pulls himself taller. “I'd worry about my own problems if I were you.”

“Well, you ain't me, so—“

“I didn't kill anyone!” the kid butts in, grabbing the bars and rattling all around as if to will himself on the right side of them. “You're supposed to help people! This isn't helpful! My mom's out there! She could be... she could...” He doesn't finish that, instead turning that helpless gaze on Jo like she has any say in the matter. “You believe me, right? I'm not crazy!”

“I believe you.” It's all she can give him right now, but it seems to be enough.

“That's real sweet,” the cop drawls. He smirks sourly as he turns to leave. “I'll see about getting some watercolors back here and you two can paint clowns together 'til the Feds come.”

“There's gonna be a letter to my congressman about this!” Jo glowers at the answering crash of the outer gate. “Fuckin' Doughboy.”

She huffs and plops her ass down on the lumpy cot jutting out of the wall, and her fellow prisoner does the same. There's a short stare-off of mutual assessment, her mind turning over the few facts she plucked from his stream of babble.

“You're not just humoring me, are you?” His face is pinched as he gingerly re-wraps his wrist.

“I just got done interrogating a creepy taxidermist so I could dig up his dead daughter and make her stop playing on the freeway at night.” She scans her new accommodations with marked disdain. “Not really in a humoring kinda mood.”

He gives her a long look, and she meets his gaze, steady.

“You're serious.” He shakes his head, but hey, she doesn't see sense in sugarcoating it at this point. “You're fucking nuts.”

Jo chuckles wryly at that. “You had a cannibalistic shapeshifter use you as a chew toy, and I'm crazy? Your monster ain't the only one out there, guy.”

He doesn't seem to have any response for that, looks entirely displeased at the new knowledge, in fact, hunching in on himself and studiously avoiding eye contact. Apparently, coming to his defense only gets her so far. It's nothing new, of course. Denial is a winding, many-layered thing; she's seen it on so many levels and feels confident she's still pretty far from seeing them all.

Unwelcome bucket of reality aside, she can't tolerate the defeated slouch for very long. “I'm Jo, by the way. I might be able to help you, if you think you can put up with my lunacy for a minute.”

More silence, and Jo settles in for the long sulk ahead. His pouting is kind of getting on her nerves already, and this? This is familiar. She's always too delicate, too clueless, too eager, too insane. She's used to being underestimated or dismissed out of hand, but it doesn't get any less annoying each time it happens. She doesn't understand why it's perfectly okay for the big, tough men to wander around in the dark with their big guns and not her, why their thirst for vengeance makes them heroes and her desire to do good for the sake of preserving a legacy makes her an idealistic child with no real concept of hardship. If it was Bobby Singer in here, this guy'd be halfway to sung by now, she'd bet on it.

“Adam,” he mumbles after a minute, plucking at a hole in his jeans. He meets her bitter stare, and she deflates a little at how utterly exhausted he looks. “How do you expect to help me from in here?”

And just like that, Jo changes her mind. He isn't looking at an inferior being, just sees her in a position identical to his own, from which he has accomplished all of bupkis.

She grins. “I got a secret weapon.”

-:-

Time in the clink is a decrepit, arthritic thing with split tennis balls adorning its walker for traction. Jo taps her nails. Adam does gross stuff.

“Ew! Stop picking at it!”

“It itches!”

“Well, just... run it under some water or something. Maybe that'll help.”

“The water's brown. I'll pass on the cholera today, thanks.”

“Oh, right, 'cause gangrene is so much better.”

“Picking sores doesn't cause gangrene.”

“No, but that mysterious substance on the wall might. Hope your hands haven't done too much exploring around here what with you crammin' your fingers in your open wounds and all.”

He scoots away from said substance, stops picking.

Silence, silence, boring-ass silence, drip-drip-drip of water and she glares at the puddle beneath the rust-streaked sink, looks away after a beat and starts humming. Adam is mildly impressed with her singing voice, and they find they have a mutual appreciation for the eighties. Well, mostly mutual.

“What's wrong with Pat Benatar?”

“Nothing.” She clears her throat. “Nothing at all.”

“What? Her hair's not big enough? Didn't mean to interrupt your ode to Whitesnake there.”

“I'm just havin' a hard time picturing you rocking out to Love Is A Battlefield.”

He glares. “You're kind of sexist, you know that?”

Jo splutters, and Adam chuckles.

The pipe goes on dripping; it reminds her of the sewer, the things that are navigating underneath them right now, and she mentally labels and files the different species of evil she's come across down there. It's nowhere near a full moon, so she doesn't think Adam turning is going to be an issue. Doesn't hurt to double-check, though, even if all she accomplishes is killing time.

“You'd be surprised how many kinds of shapeshifters there are.”

“What?” He wriggles uncomfortably, eyes restless.

“Shifters. Most of 'em are humanoid, even the werewolves. They just get extra hairy. Yours have hair?”

“There's no such thing. Science says so.”

“Well, damn. If science says it's true, I guess my eyes have just been playin' tricks on me all this time.”

“That's tragic.” He doesn't miss a beat. “Maybe you should see an optometrist.”

Jo knows when she's been shut down, decides to come back around to it later. She chatters idly about life's milder adventures, and they thumb-wrestle through the bars until Adam's scraped hands get too sore. She gets up, stomps over to the sink, turns the valve to shut off the water and tugs at the pipe. A spit of moisture dribbles out of the new hole in the wall as it tears free, and she drags the metal across the concrete—scrape, scrape, clink, scrape.

“What're you doing?”

“Girl shouldn't go too long without a weapon. S'just asking for trouble.”

“You're making a... what do they call those things?”

“Shank.”

“You're making a shank?”

Another scrape, and Adam makes himself as small and nonthreatening as possible.

Jo gets away with scaring the kid for about twenty minutes before her favorite deputy comes back to see what all the racket's about. He confiscates her toy. Adam insists he's the good one and should be rewarded with a deck of cards or a tennis ball, gets the cop's big, fat retreating back in response.

“Suck up.”

“Bite me.”

Jo nearly chokes on her laugh.

“What?”

“Should be careful who you say that to.” She glances at his arms.

“Oh, fuck off.” Adam goes to lay down on his cot and stares at the wall for a while.

She scrutinizes his back and tries to pin down the pinging familiarity he evokes, wondering how much time has passed out in the world where clocks still exist, how much longer she'll have to play this game of denial tag with her skittish victim as he weaves in and out, pokes the scary topic and runs away again when it gets too slimy or sprouts fangs.

“Quit staring at me.”

“Not like there's a whole lot else to look at.”

“Little introspection wouldn't hurt. Be careful which stones you turn in that psyche of yours, though. Could get messy.”

“You gonna give me the full scoop sometime this century, or are we gonna beat around the spooky bush some more?”

“Depends.” He rolls over to look at her, that pissed-off uncertainty shadowing his face again. “You gonna keep trying to pass Stephen King's greatest hits off as your life story?”

“Sorry. I just figured I'd see how far I could push it before you came clean. Let me guess...” She makes a show of tapping thoughtfully at her chin. “Hannibal Lecter dosed you with some kinda hallucinogenic to see if it'd add flavor? Oh, or maybe it was hill people.”

“This is how you earn trust? Making fun of me?”

“Who's makin' fun? Oh, right. That'd be you. Did you run out of synonyms for crazy? 'Cause I'm sure Deputy Dawg in there'd be happy to bring you a thesaurus if you ask real nice.”

His cold shoulder makes things pretty boring from that point on.

-:-

Jo's secret weapon comes striding in about a million hours later, clad in a smart pantsuit and armed with every bit of maternal indignation in her arsenal. She bullies the deputy the whole way down the corridor, and when she stops in front of Jo's cell, Ellen gives her a look that promises she's not too old to bend over her knee, by god.

Luckily, the mama bear thing contributes pretty well to numerous disguises, and coming off as a no-nonsense Fed that's not about to have her case fucked up on account of yokel law enforcement isn't all that hard.

Ellen stands back with her arms crossed, a sharpness in her eyes that compels the cop to hurry it up already, she ain't got all damn night, and he fumbles noisily with the keyring.

Adam jumps to his feet and fidgets, like he's not sure if he wants to come closer, or hide underneath the cot. Ellen barely spares him a glance until Jo gives her a meaningful look, and as her mom works really, really hard at not smacking the deputy upside the head for putting Jo back in cuffs, Ellen gives Adam a once-over.

Her conclusions are swift and unpleasant, if the hard lines of her face are anything to go by. “What's his story?”

“Oh, um.” The deputy shoves Jo at her like it'll appease the grumpy volcano and keep it from drowning him in lava for another year. “Might be linked to those bodies over in Windom. We're lookin' into it.”

“I'll be holding my breath for that breakthrough,” she mutters, and Adam clangs himself against the bars in a blur of movement.

“Bodies? What bodies? Nobody said—you didn't—and I was here and you were—There are bodies? Oh, god.” He starts hyperventilating a little bit, and Ellen cocks a brow, nonplussed at his spastic panic, tunes him out when Jo lightly elbows her to remind her of the covert issue at hand.

“What a coincidence. Just came in on that case. Suppose I can take him off your hands too.” Overbearing she may be at times, but Jo beams with pride at how her momma can project such authority. It's just one of those tones no one but mothers have perfected, she supposes, but damn if she's gonna be spitting out any kids just to get one like it.

“You ain't got any papers for—“

“What the hell is this?” Ellen plows right over his dawning suspicion, gesturing at Adam's wounds. “You looking to arm him with a suit for cruel and unusual punishment 'fore we can even build a case, or what? If that boy's seen a real doctor, I'm the fucking tooth fairy. And those clothes oughta be in an evidence bag!”

“Now listen here—“

She pokes him in the chest, and he stumbles back a step. “No, you listen, Mayberry. You march in there and you get your supervisor on the phone, make sure you tell him you woke him up in the middle of the night 'cause the FBI caught you with your Eighth Amendment pants down, and he needs get his ass here now.”

“Alright, lady, alright.” The deputy throws his hands up in surrender. “Just take him outta here and we'll forget all about—“

“Forget nothin'. What'd they do? Pin a badge on the first idiot that strolled on by? I'll call him my damn self. Open this door.”

Jo chokes back laughter while he lets Adam out, the deputy sweaty and increasingly red-faced as Ellen practically hauls him up front by his collar and demands every scrap of evidence along with both of their case files, and leaves the station with two kids in tow instead of just the one she came for.

The night is so thick with humidity, Jo swears she could take a bite out of it. A glance at Adam and she feels kinda bad for that thought. Bite-able air is free, less smelly air, all the same, and she breathes deep, relieved.

Adam shuffles along obediently, obviously incredulous but fortunately keeping his mouth shut until they're safely out of earshot. “Holy shit!” he squeaks as Ellen stuffs them into the cab of her truck. She drops the lock-picking kit into Jo's lap, and Jo proceeds to divest herself and her new jail-buddy of the cuffs while her mom settles in behind the wheel. “That was so fucking illegal! Do you even know how illegal that was? It was really, really illegal!”

“Perks of the job,” Jo chirps.

“What job? Impersonating law enforcement is a job? You guys are insane! You're gonna go to prison forever! The real kind where they do unpleasant things with broomsticks! Ow, hey!” Adam twists away from her, wide-eyed and grumpy, rubbing at his stinging cheek. She's always wanted to do that to a hysterical person, and it wasn't like she slapped him hard or anything, the big baby.

“Don't start the ranting again, we ain't got time for— hey, you hit me!” She clutches her abused bicep in shock.

“You hit me first.”

“Yeah, but I'm a girl.”

“Doesn't make my face hurt any less.”

Jo smirks. “I'm startin' to like you.”

“Alright, children, knock it off,” Ellen snaps, and Jo is sadly reminded of the middle-name trouble she's in right now; any grateful, glowing feelings she might have had for getting her mom to follow her lead and break a stranger out of jail are swiftly draining away. Ellen flicks a glare at both of them, hard frown as her eyes find the road again, and any second now— “Joanna Beth, you best start explaining, and you best start yesterday.”

Despicable criminals in serious need of a lecture or not, Adam flattens himself back against the seat, trying to remove himself from the path of projectile admonishments. Smart kid, Jo thinks, a little resentful that he gets to be the bystander here.

“There's a hunt, Momma, and—“

“Despite what you might think, I ain't a damn fool. Figured that out all by myself.” She shoots a pointed look at Adam's bloody clothes. “I done told you about drivin' like a maniac through these backwater towns. You think I'm getting your car outta the impound, you better think again.”

“You're the one setting impossible deadlines! Who drives across Minnesota in eight hours without breaking a few traffic laws?”

“If you'd get in and out like you're supposed to instead of lollygagging, you wouldn't have any problems!”

“You always do that! It's never you, it's always me! There's no way I can meet your crazy expectations! I can't work like this!”

“Fine with me. Guess we can finally start lookin' for a place to settle down, then.”

“Oh, you'd just love that, wouldn't you?”

“Believe I've said as much, over and over.”

Jo can't even explain how much it ticks her off when her mom gets all calm and logical on her while she's trying to vent some righteous indignation, so she just stops talking. She snatches up the case files, slaps them into her lap, huffs and puffs regularly lest anyone forget her upset as she scans them over.

“Suppose I'm heading for Windom,” Ellen says curtly, and Jo's busy grinding her teeth so Adam takes it upon himself to answer.

“Yes, ma'am.” He shifts uncomfortably. Jo snorts and elbows the kid for encouraging her, not keen to let him sink back into his brooding funk like he did at the station while they awaited the calvary.

He elbows her back and scoots closer to her mother, doesn't seem to know what else to say.

Ellen catches on to his reluctance, tone a degree softer when she says, “You gonna tell what took a few dozen chunks outta you? I don't relish going in blind, kiddo.”

“We should stop someplace and get you patched up first,” Jo suggests, getting a grunt of agreement from Ellen.

Adam haltingly relays his tale, and Jo's a mite bitter. Fuck knows how many hours poking and prodding at him and her mom gets the whole story almost straight out of the gate.

She huffs again, divides her attention between listening for new details and smirking in derisive amusement at Deputy Fathead's write-up on her eventful traffic stop, squinting under the drive-by lighting of the town's streetlamps, which her mom notices and interrupts Adam to bitch at her for. A roll of the eyes as she digs a penlight from the glovebox, and she moves on to Adam's file, distinctly thicker.

He was found running down the middle of the street, screaming about body-snatching aliens with a craving for human flesh, apparently having started at the most sane conclusion before toning it down. Christ, and he called her a nutjob.

Jo snorts and flips the page, getting into the meat of the investigation that ultimately led to his confinement. It's not pretty and, as it turns out, a trip to Windom is completely unnecessary. In fact, it will probably do more harm than good at this point. She doesn't look forward to telling Adam that, though, heart climbing sickeningly up her throat with every word she reads.

“It was so freaky, and I don't even... there's a reasonable explanation for all of this, right? Mom's probably hurt, but they wouldn't—I mean, she can't be—“

Jo kind of wants to hug her mom and never let go now, damn it. He needs to shut up.

“Momma, we gotta see to those bites soon.” She emphasizes the 'soon', and Ellen interprets it correctly, worried glance and a slow nod.

Adam cottons on to the frog in her throat, but luckily doesn't understand what it means. “It's not that bad, and we're not that far anyway. I can tough it out for another half hour.”

“We don't wanna risk an infection.”

“It's fine. Look, just—“

“We're stopping, so shut the hell up about it, alright?” Jo snaps, and he must see something terrible on her face because he clacks his mouth shut and goes all dewy-eyed, glances from her to the folders and back again. Too smart for his own damn good.

“What? What is it?” He snatches them away before she can stop him. She tries to take them back, but he twists himself around and throws his weight into squashing her up against the passenger-side door so she can't move.

Ellen, seeing the potential catastrophe, pulls over to the side of the road.

“House burned down,” Jo mutters for her mother's benefit, because it's too late, he's already seen, the stubborn asshole. “They found some remains inside. Guessing some other hunters got there first.”

Adam scrambles over her lap and out of the truck, plunges to his knees and vomits in the ditch.

NEXT