It's In Your Eyes

Daddy

Jo's POV -

"I've got Grace." Castiel announces triumphantly, laying down the cards on his little tray and smirking. I throw mine into the pile with a mock grunt of annoyance, then laugh. He's getting good. Very good. He has even beaten Ash a few times.

"Have you been practising while we're all working are butts off in lessons?" He nods and I sigh, giving him a nudge on the shoulder. He's been really chipper, excited about getting out of here tonight I think. Getting to move back to the dorms now that his temperature is down enough. Then I stand. "I better get going. Have to meet Charlie... and Benny and that, for lunch. See you at dinner?"

"Yeah... How are things, by the way?" There's an air of concern in his voice and I look back quizzically, my bag over my shoulder. "I heard you and Benny were a bit of a... Thing, now. True?"

"Oh... Well, I don't known... I guess?" Weird question. Funny he would ask something like that. I ignore the way the words stick in my mouth like paste, lingering there, not belonging there or feeling right. When he doesn't say anything else, just stares at me with a funny look on his face, I shift, turning to leave again. "See you later, Cas."

Outside I let out a long breath. One I think I might have been holding since I entered that place. I haven't been to see Cas much while he's been in there, hospitals are not my scene, but I'd made an effort, because it was one of my friends.

Just being in a hospital environment had me freaked. Ever since my dad had been shot in that mugging I couldn't go near one without feeling faint, sick, dizzy. And a hundred other things too that just spelled trouble and pain for me.

He'd been shot when I'd had my back turned, but he'd almost died in my arms on the ground on the street. Only to hold on, reach the hospital, and to code in front of my eyes again. And there was nothing I could do. Just watch him slip into that coma.

It hadn't been fair of my mother. I was forced, day after day, week after week, for months, to go to that hospital, stand by that bed where my father lay, tubes sprouting out from every possible place, dressed in my church clothes, pig tales tight and neat, nails clean, face free of dirt. Other than those damn pig tails, I didn't resemble the daughter my father had left behind. Not at all. All those visits achieved was to hurt me, seeing my daddy like that, and to turn hospitals from a place of healing, where I went to get my wrist set after falling hard from a tree, to a damning place, where nothing gets better. Where no one wakes up. A long, flat note that says nothing but goodbye.

So that's why I couldn't stand over Cas, silent and unmoving, eyes closed. That's why.

I look up when someone taps me on the arm.

"Jo? Jo, God, are you okay?" Dean's crouched in front of me, concern twisting his face, where I'm crumpled up next to the wall just outside the hospital wing. I hadn't gotten far away before I'd broken, without realising. But I'd gotten further than the last time I remember, when I'd crumbled in the middle of the wing.

"I... Err-" I search for something to say but no words make it past my lips. At least not in a coherent, legible form. Then I catch movement just over his shoulder and I glance past him, my heart shuddering with a mix of embarrassment and want.

"Jo?" Dean taps my cheek and I tear my eyes away from Charlie's wild, worried ones.

"Dean, she's okay." She cuts in, forcing him to stand and giving him a little shove towards the door. "Go see Cas, I'll stay here. We need to go to lunch soon so get a move on..."

Dean hesitates, but moves on with slight reluctance. Charlie sinks down next to me and wraps her arm around my shoulders.

"You shouldn't go in there by yourself." She sighs into my hair when I rest my head against her chest. "You should wait for someone to come with you. Just ask me next time, okay? Anytime."

I nod but my throat's like sandpaper, too dry to get out a word.

"So... What do you think?" She asks me, like I understand. I look up at her and she goes straight to brush away a tear from my cheek. "Of Dean... And, erm, Cas."

I gape at her for a moment, before swallowing to lubricate my mouth and throat. "What?" That is so...

"Yeah, no he hasn't out and out said anything. But God, it's so obvious it's funny..." She chuckles and I can't suppress the smile that sound brings to my mouth.

"Now that you mention it..." I tuck in tighter to her side and duck my head down to her again, her neck warming my forehead and nose. "I see it... It would be quite cute..."

"Very."