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S11 E12 Don't You Forget About Me
You've been sitting in Jody Mills' living room for twenty minutes and you still aren't sure what to do with your hands.
Claire had let you in. Easy, breezy, like inviting three people over without telling anyone is completely normal, and now you're on the couch with Sam while Claire and Dean occupy the one perpendicular to it, and the house just sits around you being a house. A real one. Dark wood paneling, lamps throwing warm amber light, a stone fireplace, family photos on the mantle. The kind of ordinary that feels almost foreign after living in the bunker between cases.
You know who lives here. You know the whole story. Jody Mills, sheriff, surrogate mother to two girls the world chewed up and spat out, one of the most genuinely good people in a universe that doesn't hand those out freely. She's going to be great. You know that. You remember watching her and really liking her. Only this isn't a character. This is the real thing, in person, and none of that is making you any less nervous.
"That'll be her," Dean says, nodding toward the window as a truck slows into the driveway.
Sam's hand finds your leg and pats it once, reassuringly.
Outside, Jody's truck pulls into the driveway. She spots the Impala.
"Winchesters."
"Why would they be here?" Alex says from the passenger seat.
"I didn't put up the bat signal." The truck doors open and footsteps cross the front walk.
When the door opens, all three of you are on your feet. Jody takes in the living room. Sam, Dean, you. She doesn't look surprised. She probably stopped being surprised by strange things in her house a long time ago. Then she smiles.
"Well, there goes the neighborhood. Hi."
"Jody." Sam crosses to her and she pulls him into a hug, while he takes the grocery bags from her arms in the same motion.
"Oh, thank you." She lets him, then turns to Dean with her arms open. "Come here."
"It has been too long," Dean says, and he means it. You can hear it underneath the easy grin.
"Hey." Jody hugs him.
Sam is already looking past her at Alex. "Clearly it's been too long. Alex, that is you, right?"
Alex looks mildly offended. "I don't look that different!"
"It's amazing what you can accomplish," Claire says, "when you spend two hours in the bathroom every morning."
"Since when are you even up in the morning? I'm surprised you're awake now."
"Hey." Jody cuts across both of them without raising her voice, which is somehow more effective than if she had. "I'm pretty sure the guys didn't come here to watch you two kill each other." She looks at the boys. "Is everything okay? I didn't accidentally butt dial you or anything, did I?"
"I called," Claire says as she stands. "About the monsters. That you refuse to believe are monsters."
The silence that follows is brief and very specific. Then Jody's attention swings back to you, standing off to the side of all this, and she does a quick, clean assessment with cop's eyes, warm but sharp, and waits.
Sam opens his mouth. Dean gets there first.
"Yeah, uh, we told you about her." He gestures vaguely in your direction. "She's our, uh. Bunker-mate." A beat. "Hunting partner." Another beat. "She's a… friend. She's…"
"My girlfriend," Sam says.
Just like that. No fumbling, no qualifier. Like it's the simplest thing in the world, because to him it apparently is.
Dean points at him. "That."
Jody's mouth curves. She looks at Sam for just a moment, something warm and a little knowing in it, then back to you.
"Well. That was painful to watch." She sticks out her hand. "Nice to meet you."
You shake it. The last of the nerves dissolve somewhere around girlfriend. "Really good to meet you. I've heard a lot about you."
"Should I be worried?" She nods toward the boys.
"All good things."
"Hm." The corner of her mouth lifts. "I like you already."
Jody turns back to the grocery bags. "I'm putting another chicken on. You settle in."
"You might want to make it two," Dean says, then quieter, mostly to himself: "I'm starving."
* * *
You offer to set the table mostly to give your hands something to do. Sam has the same idea, apparently, and the two of you fall into a quiet rhythm around each other, plates, glasses, silverware, while Jody moves back and forth from the kitchen and the sounds of Claire and Alex establishing their battle lines drift down the hall.
His hand finds the small of your back when he reaches past you for the glasses. Brief, easy, like he's been doing it for years. You glance up at him and he's already looking back, and for a second neither of you says anything, which is exactly the kind of thing that's been happening ever since the first kiss.
"Sam," Jody says from the doorway. "Napkins are in the second drawer."
"Got it." He goes to find them. You go back to the silverware. When you look up, Jody is standing next to Dean in the doorway, watching the two of you with an expression you can't quite read.
She leans slightly toward Dean. "They've got it bad. Don't they." It isn't a question.
Dean follows her gaze. Sam is coming back, and when he passes you he says something low that makes you laugh, then goes to fold napkins like that's a completely normal thing he just did.
"Yeah," Dean says. "Definitely."
"They're cute together."
"Cute." He says it like the word has done something to personally offend him. "Try living with them twenty-four seven. It is nauseatingly cute. Do you know what it's like to be the third wheel in your own car?"
Jody presses her lips together against a smile. "Ah, I can imagine."
"And that's them toning it down in front of people. It's… " He stops. Looks back. "But I mean, I'm happy for them. I am. Sam's lucky to have her, and she's…" He glances at you, and something in his expression settles into something quieter and more real. "She's pretty cool."
Jody nods, like that's exactly what she expected him to say.
* * *
Dinner, once everyone is seated, takes approximately four minutes to go sideways.
It starts with Sam and Dean, which, honestly, you should have expected. They eat like two men who have been surviving on gas station food and motel vending machines for longer than either of them wants to admit, and the sight of an actual home-cooked meal in front of them seems to short-circuit whatever part of their brain handles social norms.
Sam's knee is warm against yours under the table. You're pretty sure he doesn't even notice he's doing it.
Claire and Alex watch from across the table with the barely-contained amusement of people observing a nature documentary.
"Guys." You set your fork down. "Slow down. You're going to accidentally eat the plates in a second."
Dean looks up, unbothered. "It's good."
"It is good," Sam agrees, already reaching for more mashed potatoes. His arm brushes yours on the way back.
"Sorry," you say to Jody. "None of us cook, so we don't get home-cooked food very often. Well, ever. They lose all sense of decorum when it happens. And they didn't really have someone to teach them table manners growing up…"
Dean points at you with his fork. "That is both true and unfair."
"Eat your chicken, Dean."
He does.
The case comes up. Claire lays it out with the focused intensity of someone who's been waiting all day for an audience that might actually take her seriously, and Jody counters each point with the practiced patience of someone who has heard it before. Sam and Dean listen and eat in a way that somehow doesn't seem rude when they do it. You stay quiet, watching the dynamic, filing it away.
Dean gestures at Claire with his fork. "What else you got?"
"Uh, I'm working on it," Claire says, quieter.
Alex seizes the opening. "Claire did catch a werewolf. Oh right, turned out to be a German shepherd with rabies."
Jody adds the vampire story. The councilwoman. The erotic cosplay. By the end of it Dean is smothering a grin and even Sam has stopped pretending to focus on his food. Claire sits through the retelling like she has already decided not to react, which is its own kind of reaction.
Then Alex picks up Jody's wine glass and brings it toward her mouth.
"Hey." Jody says it without even looking up. "Put it back."
Alex puts it back.
You press your lips together.
"Can we stop talking about monsters and hunting?" Alex says. "What about real life?"
And then Claire, with the precision of someone who has been sitting on ammunition and waiting for exactly the right moment, says, "Real life? Okay. Yeah, sure. Let's get real. You and Henry set on a weekend yet?"
"What?"
"When you sneaking off to Jody's cabin to screw yourself silly?"
“Ohhh. Here we go.” Dean says under his breath.
Alex's eyes go wide. She looks cornered. "Um, we're not…" She turns to Claire. "You're completely insane!"
"You might wanna clear your g-chats before you commit to that."
The three of you go appropriately awkward. Jody's mouth drops open, taking a second to absorb both the information and the fact that it just got aired at the dinner table in front of everyone. Probably both things equally.
"This seems like, uh — family business," Sam says, already pushing back from the table with the energy of a man who has located an exit.
"Sit." Jody hits the table once. "Stay."
Sam sits. His shoulder bumps yours as he settles back in and you catch the look he gives you, somewhere between help and please don't laugh. And you look very deliberately back at Jody.
"Alex." Jody's voice is measured. "Anything you want to say?"
"Nope."
A breath. "'Kay, uh, well — I may have — I've…definitely seen birth control pills in your backpack."
"Oh, we're going there," Sam mutters.
"Okay," Dean says, to no one in particular.
Claire finds this whole situation deeply amusing. Alex says, "Oh my god."
"Hey," Jody says. "If we can't talk about it we shouldn't be doing it, right?" She looks at the table. At you, Sam, Dean. "Right?"
"Yep," you say. "And Alex, that was actually being responsible. It was the right call."
Jody points at you. "Yes." Then back to Sam and Dean. "Right?"
Sam stutters something that doesn't quite become a word.
"What?" Dean says.
Jody looks at Alex. "Okay. I'm not going to tell you that you are too young to be having sex, or you." She points at Claire.
"Who's she going to have sex with?" Alex says, glancing at Claire. "She doesn't talk to anybody."
"Hey." Jody's tone settles that. "What I will tell you is that birth control pills are useless against STDs. Whoever you are with needs to suit up. Every time. Always. No pulling up the drawbridge early."
You nod.
"I know, I get it!" Alex clearly just wants this to end.
"And don't expect the guy — as much as I love Henry — to always show up packing." Jody gestures at Sam and Dean. "Am I right?"
Sam looks down at his plate and takes a large bite to avoid answering. Dean stares at her blankly.
"She's right," you say. "Right, Sam?"
"We're not…" Sam finally looks up. "This is… I'm not part of this."
"You're part of this," you say.
"Stop! We haven't done anything yet." Alex's voice pitches up slightly. "I'm just… trying to be prepared."
You and Jody look at Sam and Dean, who are both doing their best impressions of men who are not currently at this table. Dean smiles awkwardly and raises his wine glass in front of his face. You shake your head at both of them.
"Seriously?" Jody says.
"Guys," you add.
Jody stands up like a woman who has made a decision, and that decision is more wine. "Great, um, we need some more mashed potatoes. I'm just gonna… " She drains her glass in one clean motion. " … I'm gonna get some more potatoes. Potatoes."
She disappears into the kitchen.
Dean watches her go. Turns to Claire. "This is fun."
Claire puts a bite in her mouth, nodding, sarcastically delighted.
You look at Sam. He looks like a man reconsidering several recent life choices, which is fair. You smile at him anyway.
He shakes his head, but the corner of his mouth gives him away.
The rest of dinner passes in extremely awkward silence.