The Roadhouse, Nebraska -- 1997
Jo Harvelle had met a lot of weird hunters in her thirteen years at the Roadhouse. But there was something different about the Winchester boys.
Dean was easy enough to figure out - handsome, charming, the kind of hunter her dad probably wished he had for a son instead of a daughter. He was telling her about a wendigo hunt now, his weird sword thing wrapped up beside him at the bar.
But Sam... Sam was the really strange one.
She kept catching him watching everything, pretending to be asleep in that corner booth. Most people wouldn't notice, but Jo had grown up learning to spot hunters' tricks. The way his eyes weren't quite closed, how he seemed to track every movement in the room.
It was creepy. But also kind of fascinating.
"My mom keeps looking at him," Jo mentioned to Dean during a pause in his story.
"Who, Sammy?" Dean glanced at his brother. "Yeah, well, he's a weird kid sometimes."
But it was more than that. Jo had seen how her mom tensed up when Sam first walked in, like she'd seen a ghost. And dad... dad had gone all quiet, touching that old scar on his chest like he sometimes did when he was thinking hard about something.
"Has he always been like that?" she asked, trying to sound casual.
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Just... different?"
Dean's easy smile flickered for a second. "He's just smart. Reads too much probably."
But Jo saw how Dean's hand drifted to his wrapped-up sword thing whenever someone got too close to his brother. Like he was protecting him from something.
Her mom was talking to Sam now, both of them speaking too quiet to hear. Jo watched Sam's face - how he looked both younger and way older than fourteen at the same time.
"Jo!" her dad called from behind the bar. "Stop bothering Dean and help me with these glasses."
"I'm not bothering him," she protested, but moved to help anyway.
As she passed Sam's booth, she could have sworn the shadows moved wrong. Just for a second. Like they were following him or something.
But that was crazy. Shadows didn't move by themselves.
Did they?
"Here," her dad handed her a stack of clean glasses. "And stop staring at the Winchester boy."
"Which one?" Jo grinned, trying to lighten her dad's weird mood. The glasses clinked as she arranged them under the bar, deliberately taking her time to keep watching the strange brothers.
"Either of them," he muttered, but his hand went to that old scar again. The one he never talked about, except to say he was lucky. Jo had asked about it once, but Mom had changed the subject so fast it had to be something important.
The jukebox switched songs, some old country tune that made the few remaining hunters nod along.
Through its reflection, Jo saw Sam sit up straighter in his booth, like he'd heard them even though they were way too far away and the music should have drowned everything out.
That was another weird thing - he always seemed to know when people were talking about him.
A drunk hunter stumbled past Sam's booth, and Jo could have sworn the shadows under the table stretched out, making the man unconsciously step wider around it. But that had to be a trick of the light. Right?
The bar was nearly empty now, just Old Pete nursing his whiskey and Cooper cleaning his guns in the corner.
Ash's weird computers kept beeping from the back room, and Jo wondered what was so important about all those disappearing hunters her parents kept whispering about.
She'd overheard bits and pieces - something about ancient books and warnings written in dead languages.
"Hey," Dean appeared beside her, making her jump and nearly drop a glass. "Need help with those?"
"I got it," she said quickly, trying not to blush. He smelled like gun oil and leather, and it wasn't fair for anyone to have eyes that green. "Don't you need to watch your brother or something?"
Dean laughed, but it sounded forced. His eyes darted to Sam for just a second, something protective and almost worried in his expression. "Sammy can take care of himself."
As if to prove it wrong, there was a crash from the back room. One of Ash's monitors had fallen, the screen cracked and sparking. The lights flickered, just for a moment, and Jo could have sworn the temperature dropped.
"Damn it," Ash stumbled out, his mullet even messier than usual. "That's the third one this week! Every time I get close to mapping those disappearances-"
He stopped suddenly, glancing at Sam's booth. Jo saw Sam tense, just for a second, before carefully relaxing. Like he knew something about the broken computers. Like maybe they weren't accidents at all.
"Jo," her mom called from behind the bar, using that tone that meant business. "Bed. School tomorrow."
"But Mom-" she started to protest, gesturing at the glasses she was still putting away.
"Now."
She knew that tone. No arguing allowed. But she took her time gathering her things, watching Dean return to that wrapped-up sword thing he kept close.
He cleaned it like it was made of gold instead of steel, and sometimes, when the cloth slipped, Jo thought she saw it gleam with a light that wasn't from the bar's fluorescents.
Their dad was passed out in one of the upstairs rooms, supposedly from a headache. Jo had heard him earlier, muttering about yellow eyes and wing-beats before Dean had helped him upstairs.
As she headed up, Jo paused on the landing, looking back at the bar one last time. Old Pete had dozed off, Cooper was packing up his guns, and Dean was still focused on his sword-thing. But Sam... Sam was watching her.
Not in a creepy way, just... knowing. Like he could see something about her that even she didn't know.
The shadows around his booth seemed deeper than they should be, and for just a second, she thought she saw them move against the light, like living things reaching out.
He smiled slightly and nodded, and for a moment Jo felt a strange sense of déjà vu, like she should remember something about him but couldn't quite grasp it.
The feeling slipped away as quickly as it came.
Did she?
The question made her head hurt, like trying to remember a dream that kept slipping away.
Jo shook her head and went to her room, closing the door on the mysteries below. She was being silly. Sam was just a weird kid, that's all. Smart like Dean said, probably reading too many books and getting strange ideas.
But as she lay in bed, listening to the muffled sounds of the bar below, she couldn't shake the feeling that something big was happening. Something to do with those Winchester boys.
Especially the younger one, who moved like he had shadows for friends and smiled like he knew all the world's secrets.
Maybe tomorrow she'd try talking to him properly. Maybe she'd figure out why her parents got so tense whenever they looked at him, or why Dean's sword hummed when Sam walked past, or why the shadows seemed to dance in his presence.
Or maybe some things were better left as mysteries.
After all, she was just a kid. What did she know about shadows that moved wrong or secrets that made hunters disappear?
Still... she hoped the Winchesters would stay a while.
Things were definitely more interesting with them around.