Chapter Text
Setting: southern rural Oklahoma, summer 1993.
They’re staying at some cheap chain motel. At this point, they’re all mostly the same, but the team has come to a consensus about which franchises are better than others. Dusty’s criteria is based on how many fast food and barbecue joints are within a 5 mile radius, with zero regard for motel cleanliness or mattress softness. The others, though, were happy to live off overpriced gas station food if it meant more comfortable beds and bathrooms that had reliable hot water.
Jo sits on the bed in shorts and one of Bill’s t-shirts. The comforter is scratchy underneath her legs, and she’s grateful for the way her dripping hair dampens the t-shirt, offering some reprieve from the unrelenting heat of the day. The sun’s going down now, so things should cool off, but not fast enough for any of them.
Dusty, Beltzer, Haynes, Laurence, Joey, Sanders, and Rabbit are out getting food. It’s one of the relatively rare times they managed to find a cheap motel with acceptable accommodations and good food nearby. Preacher was in his room enjoying a frozen meal he’d picked up at the gas station. More than anything, he just wanted a little peace and quiet for a while, maybe catch up on the book he’s reading if he doesn’t fall asleep.
She’s not hungry, the knot in her stomach is sending waves of nausea throughout her body. She’d probably puke if there was anything in her stomach, but she realizes now that she hasn’t eaten all day (didn’t have time to). She’s been sustaining herself with black coffee and food when someone forces her to take a break to eat. Usually it’s Bill, sometimes Dusty, and more rarely one of the others will drop a granola bar at her work station. But it’s prime tornado season, all of them are more preoccupied than usual. In the bathroom, she hears the water turn on as Bill gets ready for his shower. They’d had a… mud incident earlier, which is why they’d elected to stay at the motel instead of grabbing food with the others. She’s alone for the first time since realizing she’d somehow lost her engagement ring during the chase today. She’d felt it like a punch to the gut, but with the danger she and the team were in, couldn’t afford to process it then. Anything but staying focused on the task at hand carried the very real risk of getting someone killed. She’d always been fine taking risks when it came to her life -and Bill’s since he signed up for it and was agreeable- but she wouldn’t put her students and friends at risk. Well, more than necessary. She and Bill always venture into the bear’s cage, but they stay back -theoretically safer, but tornadoes (and lightning and straight line winds) are inherently dangerous and unpredictable, so safety is never guaranteed.
God, she wants to puke. She lost the ring. The ring he’d spent a lot of money on to give her, that he picked out just for her. And contrary to popular belief, she’s a bit sentimental (just a tad). She wears the necklace that her mother gave her on her 18th birthday even though their relationship can be described as incredibly strained at best. When people give her things (which is rare to begin with), she cherishes them. He’s going to think she was careless or lost it on purpose. That she has no regard for him or the time and money he put into getting it. She feels panic rising from that knot in her stomach to the lump forming in her throat. She hasn’t had a panic attack since grad school. But now, finally alone with her thoughts and feelings after a day of pushing them down, she has nothing left to distract herself with, no one to keep safe from a vortex of unforgiving wind, and no one to keep up appearances for.
She stares at her empty left ring finger, and with her other hand touches where her engagement ring sat just this morning. She’d never admit it -hell, can barely admit it to herself- but tangible proof of someone’s love for her is incredibly important to her. Almost a need. She pushes that thought away -she doesn’t need anyone or anything. She lives a fairly nomadic life, with an apartment she sublets during the chase season, when she’s basically living motel-to-motel. Her apartment is bare except for the necessary furniture and a TV she barely uses. She turned 30 a few months ago, just after she met Bill. And for the briefest of moments, standing in her very minimalist apartment, wondered if she was somehow a failure for having so few possessions, no friends outside of the storm chasing community, and barely any savings (most of her salary that didn’t go to food, rent, and stuff like that went toward her work; the grant money was just never enough). So the necklace from her mom, the single picture hanging in her apartment that Meg had painted her years ago, the stuffed animal her dad had given her the week before he died (which is in a box in the back of her closet, she hasn’t looked at it in years because it’s too painful), and the engagement ring from Bill; these tangible objects that offered physical proof of their love for her, on days where she thinks she’s unlovable -or worse, undeserving of love- offer safe harbor.
The sounds of Bill dropping the shampoo bottle followed by his cursing pull her out of her thoughts. She doesn’t know what’s worse: the pain of losing something so sentimental, or the pain of knowing this will hurt him, disappoint him, and make him doubt her love for him. The lump in her throat grows, and she feels the back of her eye burning. She berates herself, knowing Bill will be out of the shower any moment and walk in. She’s well-aware that she has control issues, mainly in that she refuses to let anyone see her out of control of herself. She can even acknowledge that, perhaps, she has issues with emotional intimacy and being vulnerable. And God forbid she needs help or protection. In her mind, it’s all perfectly rational, and she doesn’t see a problem with it. It’s simple: if someone sees her vulnerable, they’ll feel the need to take care of her, which is unacceptable. Her father had felt the need to protect of her and her mother, and it killed him. Literally. She’d learned in college that tornadoes don’t suck, they blow, and the storm door had come off because the wind blew it off. Her and her mom were never in any danger in that storm cellar. Her dad didn’t need to try to hold the door down, whether it was on or off as long as they stayed in the back they’d be fine. If her dad hadn’t felt the need to protect them, he’d still be alive. She even thinks that maybe if, at six years old, she hadn’t needed her mother’s comfort and security after losing her dad, maybe her mom wouldn’t have turned to alcohol. In the back of her mind, a quiet voice raises protest that the thought is ridiculous, but it doesn’t matter because she ignores it.
Her thoughts are spiraling now. Her heart is racing. She’s fighting tears so hard she’s practically shaking. She needs to get it together before Bill comes back. This is why she never lets herself think about any of this; she loses control. She loses the vice grip she has on the feelings she’s been pushing down for the past 24 years. And when that happens, she legitimately feels so much she’s convinced she’s drowning, will die, that everything will suffocate her. She hasn’t noticed that the water shut off two minutes ago. She doesn’t hear the bathroom door open. All she can hear, all she can think about, is the thoughts and feelings swirling in her head. Mostly, she really, really wishes she hadn’t lost her ring.
Bill walks out from the bathroom in a t-shirt and his boxers, scrubbing at his wet hair with the towel. He’s talking about what they should do for dinner. He rounds the corner and stands there, staring at Jo, who isn’t answering him. She’s staring at the TV, but it’s not on.
“Jo?,” he says, louder than he’d previously been talking. She blinks, the tears spilling over, and jumps. Clearly she hadn’t heard a word he’d been saying. “Jo, what’s wrong?” He pushes down his own feelings of panic. He’s never seen her like this before and is trying to figure out if someone died. She only shakes her head in response. His heart breaks as she sniffles and swipes the tears off her cheeks. He’s never realized just how slender she actually is, how small. She’s relatively tall, physically fit, and has such a commanding presence that he’s just never noticed that his 6’ larger frame does practically dwarf her. He carefully sits on the bed next to her, not touching, but close enough that she can feel the heat radiating off his skin from the hot shower. He wonders if in the weeks since he’d proposed, she’d changed her mind. His eyes flick down to her ring finger, and his heart drops when he sees it’s bare. “Jo?” He says quietly.
He must have some amount of panic in his own voice, thinking she’s ending things, because she finally says, “I lost it.” It’s quiet, monotone, and it tears at him.
“What?” It’s not accusatory, it’s not angry, it’s a single syllable conveying his confusion -but he’s still not sure she’s not ending things. Her eyes are still watery, though he can see she’s reigning herself in, focusing on the conversation.
“The ring. I realized this afternoon that it was gone. We… we’d covered, what, at least 200 miles before I even realized. There was no chance of finding it. And then we kept hitting tornado after tornado, and I didn’t want to tell you during the chase…” she trails off, unsure of what else to say. “I’m sorry,” she adds, even quieter. She swipes at her eyes again and stares down at her hands, like she’s ashamed. Bill just can’t figure out if it’s over losing the ring, crying in front of him, or both. Probably both, he thinks. He takes a moment to make sure he gets his next response right; he knows he’s on very unstable ground, like he’s on the side of a cliff that could crumble if he places his foot on the wrong foothold.
“It’s just a ring, Jo, it’s okay,” he says, doing his best not to show that is is, in fact, a bit upset. He’d spent more than he should have on the ring, and though he tries not to think this, he can’t help but feel that if Jo paid better attention to anything other than tornadoes, she might’ve felt the ring slip off. But he knows blaming her won’t help things, so he pushes it to the side to deal with over a beer this weekend.
“It’s not just a ring!” She exclaims, jumping up from the bed. She sounds equal amounts irritated and exhausted. She paces, raking a hand through her hair. She’s putting distance between them, space to put herself back together. It hits him suddenly: the engagement ring did, in fact, have sentimental value to her. He’d never pegged her as sentimental before. But the thought that the ring means this much to her brings a smile to his face.
“Shit happens, Jo. I’m not mad. If anything, I feel bad that you’re this upset about losing it.”
She stops pacing at the window and stares out of it, keeping her back to him. “Yeah, well…” her tone has a bit more bite to it now, and she shrugs. She’s clearly feeling self-conscious about this whole thing. She sniffs again, runs a hand through her hair again. “Can we just forget this happened?” Her walls are going up again, he can practically see it in real time.
“Nope,” he replies with a charming, cheeky grin. She turns around, looking ready to lay into him, when he gets up and puts his class ring on her finger. “Not till I fix this.”
“Bill, what are you-”
“There’s no way we’ll find the ring out in those fields, but I want you to have this ring. I know it’s a little big, but we can get it resized.”
She stands barefoot, looking up at him with red, puffy eyes, and feels her heart melt. Bill isn't the most affectionate person nor is he the best with words, but he navigated this situation perfectly. “I love you,” she whispers, pulling him in for a kiss.
“I love you too,” he says after they pull a part, and then envelops her in a bear hug. She relaxes into his warm embrace for a moment before starting to squirm away. He holds on tighter.
“Bill, I’m fine,” she says, her words muffled by his chest.
“Stop that.” His tone is playful but also serious. “We’re a team, you don’t have to hide things from me.”
“I don’t do this,” she gestures around vaguely. “I’m not… touchy-feely. I don’t-” she sighs, exasperated with herself.
“We’re all entitled to have a moment every now and then,” he says with an easy, warm smile. To lighten the mood, knowing she needs some levity, he adds, “even fearless storm chasers.” He’s not going to push, not tonight.
This earns him a smile, and she reaches out to squeeze his hand. “What are we doing for dinner,” she asks. “I’m starving.”
“You know… I’d really like a nice, quiet dinner just the two of us. Takeout here?”
“Perfect,” she smiles.