Work Text:
Ellen uses the insurance money from the fire to rebuild the Roadhouse, but this time she has a separate house built out back. Four bedrooms, 2 baths, a cramped little kitchen that feels like the designer threw it in as an afterthought.
"You sure about this?" Jo remembers asking her mother right at the start, when the contractor had just come aboard and construction was about to begin. "Mom, I don't want to be a burden. I can take care of myself just fine, you don't have to put me up like this."
"I know that, sweetheart," Ellen said, and there was nothing patronizing in her voice. "But this right here? This is what family is for. Besides, I want to keep you and that little one close. I like the thought of my granddaughter living right next door. Makes it easier to spoil the hell out of her."
Jo had laughed at that, smiled wide and hugged her mom.
"You plan on making me come back to work?" she asked, only half teasing. She doubted she'd be able to say no if that's what her mom wanted.
But Ellen just shook her head and said, "I don't plan on making you do anything, Joanna Beth. Wouldn't mind handing the reins and the deed over to you one day, but I know you've got to find your own way. You just do what you have to."
She's right, of course, even if Jo still doesn’t quite know what her own way entails.
- — - — - — -
Jo goes into labor a little behind schedule. By then she's cranky and sore, and she'd be ready to tear the world apart but for the reassuring presence of her two overprotective Winchester boys. Seems like one of them is always there to rub her ankles and tell her to hang in there.
She's been talking furniture with her mom for the past month and a half. Not because Jo's the type to get hung up on unnecessary details (she's spent enough time in hotels for the past ten months that just about anything will do). But Ellen's been insistent, wants everything to be perfect, and Jo knows when it's best to humor her mother and cooperate quietly. She can pretend to give a shit about the décor if it makes the woman happy.
The one thing she'd insisted on adamantly, that made Ellen's eyebrows rise nearly past her hairline, was the single king-sized bed to be put in a 'guest' room for Sam and Dean.
"Sweetie," Ellen had asked her with awkward caution. "Don't you think those boys will want their own rooms? Or at least some of their own space? Doesn't seem fair to make 'em share a bed."
"They don't want separate space," Jo had calmly explained, trying to keep her tone light enough not to give anything away. "They've lived on the road so long I don't think they even remember how to sleep in separate rooms."
"But, Jo. Honey. One bed?"
"They probably won't both need it at the same time," Jo lied. "There's still a lot of bad shit out there to hunt. Besides, they've been putting up with me long enough that I can guarantee they know how to stick to their own side of the bed without killing each other." She didn't mention that in this case, 'side' meant exactly in the middle.
- — - — - — -
When Jo is released from the hospital, along with her beautiful, healthy, sleeping baby girl, the house is nearly finished. Nothing but finishing touches, or so Ellen swears, so everyone stays close.
It's nothing fancy for the interim, just a motel two blocks off the nearest interstate. Cleaner and classier than their usual fare, but every bit as temporary. Stepping into the spacious room feels like coming home—makes Jo's chest feel warm and full, and she wonders what it will be like in a couple weeks when they set foot in the brand new house—what it will feel like when that familiar warmth has an honest to god home to go with it.
She wonders what Sam and Dean will make of it. In a way, it's the home she wanted to be able to give them before everything fell apart. Before she landed on her ass back in her own present tense, right where she didn't want to be.
She's just a couple decades late in the delivery.
Dean is holding the baby, careful and easy and confident, like it's the most natural thing in the world. Jo still worries that she's got it wrong, that she's not providing enough neck support, that there's maybe some big cosmic secret on How To Hold a Baby and she hasn't gotten the memo.
But Dean makes it look as easy as breathing, despite the winded look on his face and the wondering smile that edges back and forth across his lips.
He'd looked completely lambasted in the delivery room. So had Sam. Wide-eyed and amazed as the doctors handed Jo the squalling bundle of pinched red cheeks and tiny fragile limbs.
"She's beautiful," Sam had whispered, like it was the most incredible revelation he'd ever experienced. He brushed his fingers across one tiny cheek, and the contrast made his hands look even more impossibly enormous. Christ, the guy could nearly hold her in the palms of his hands.
"Good job," Dean murmured, squeezing Jo's shoulder and not taking his eyes off the squirming bundle in Jo's arms. "She's perfect."
"She is, isn't she," Jo whispered. She didn't know it was possible to feel this tired and wrung out and happy all at once. Her chest hummed on the verge of exploding with joy, even while her heart twinged with an achy rhythm of regret—more than anything she wished John could be here, too. He is here in a sense—as much as he can be, between his boys and the baby she holds in her arms—but Jo wishes she could see his smile.
"She's perfect," Ellen had agreed hours later, after Jo had been wheeled back to her room and the baby was asleep in the strange, plastic hospital bassinet beside her.
Her boys were gone only reluctantly, out foraging for coffee and food because Jo had finally given them her most exasperated look and promised she would be fine for a few hours. She honestly wouldn't mind the quiet.
"You got a name picked out yet?" Ellen asked, picking the baby up with delicate, practiced care and coming over to sit on the edge of Jo's bed.
Jo nodded, already fighting the pinprick of tears forming behind her eyes. "Yeah," she said. "It's on the birth certificate and everything."
"Tell me," said Ellen, smiling down at the welcome burden in her arms and then raising her eyes to Jo expectantly.
"Billie," said Jo. Ellen blinked, eyes instantly going soft and wet, and Jo swallowed past the lump in her throat to say, "It's short for Wilhelmina. Wilhelmina Mary Harvelle." She hadn't been sure at first, about the middle name, but the looks on Sam and Dean's face when she suggested it had clinched the decision for her instantly. She knew there was no other real alternative.
"It's perfect," Ellen whispered, and the words rang tight with emotion. Jo reached out and laid a hand on her mothers arm, squeezed warmly.
"I know," she said, and smiled.
- — - — - — -
They move into the finished house three weeks after bringing Billie home from the hospital. Jo barely feels the baby's weight in her arms as she steps over the threshold and into the small entryway.
It hits her with a fresh intensity that this is really home.
"Wow," she breathes.
"Yeah," says Sam, right at her elbow.
The floors are crisp and clean; the walls bare but inviting, painted in warm tones. The entry leads down a short hallway, and beyond it is the open space of the living room, the dining room, the kitchen just beyond. She's seen it at various stages of construction, but this is different. This is really it.
"What do you think?" comes Ellen's voice when they round the corner out of the hall. She's smiling, bright with excitement. When no one manages to answer, she just laughs and says, "Come on. Let me give you the tour."
Every step feels exactly right, and Jo's got no idea how to take it all in.
She sleeps that night—better than she's ever slept in her life. Billie sleeps in a cradle just beside her bed—not in the nursery yet, though that's waiting in the room next door, already equipped with a proper crib.
Billie only wakes her once that night, then once more just after dawn. Hungry. Jo thinks about putting her back down and trying to get more sleep, but the baby is awake and energized now. She looks very much like she'll raise holy hell if she doesn't get the attention she deserves.
"Want me to take her?" Dean's voice comes softly from the doorframe, where he leans casually, a smile on his face. Jo wonders if she even remembered to close that door last night.
Probably not.
"Please," she says, grateful for the reprieve.
She sleeps another three hours before hauling herself out of bed and down the stairs. She moves softly, and the new floorboards don't creak beneath her feet.
She finds them in the living room, sitting on the wide second-hand couch, and Jo smiles when she overhears their conversation.
"Dean, I just… don't think it's a good idea. What if I do it wrong?"
"For god's sake, Sammy, you're not gonna break her. Just—here. Like this. Support her head."
Jo can't see the handoff from where she stands. The view is blocked by the back of the couch. But she can see the tense line of Sam's back, the strong contrast of ease in Dean's movements as he shifts and helps and leans in close to position Sam's arms just so.
"See?" says Dean triumphantly. Sam's posture relaxes minutely.
Jo finally moves, stepping along the periphery of the room and around the couch.
"Hey," she says, settling into a soft brown chair on the other side of the coffee table. "You're a natural at that, Sam." He's not, but it's cute the way he holds Billie like an expensive piece of China. He'll settle in and get the hang of it eventually, and even now Billie looks utterly content, head balanced comfortably in the crook of Sam's elbow, body nestled along his bulky forearm and her tiny feet dangling in his lap.
He looks awed and shell-shocked, and the look on Dean's face as he watches his brother with the baby is so intense that Jo has to look away.
- — - — - — -
She doesn't ask Sam and Dean about hunting. Some things are more important.
What matters now is that they're here. Someday, somewhere down the line, they'll probably be back to their old habits. Saving people, hunting things, John's legacy.
But for the moment she has her boys, and she has Billie, and no one's going anywhere.