shatterverse | (no subject)

Jo doesn't mind that part. She played clean up for far more years than bar tender. Pesky age laws.

Once she's down, towel thrown over a shoulder and bottle of beer acquired, she meanders back toward that way.

"Good day in crazy world?"

Rachel shrugs, jacket adjusted subtly. Her hair is pulled back in a tight braid, which really only happens when she's been training and wants it out of her way. "No better than usual," she replies, but looks pleased enough for Jo's company.

She's bored out of her mind - again. But Metropolis is better than Smallville.

"Though I'm loving the shopping here. Way better than Topeka."

The shopping talk gets a bit of a smile, not because its shop talk but because of how much it brightens Rachel up.

"Golden buy of the day?"

The jacket is adjusted less subtly.

Rachel grins.

"And that I don't need to use money to pay for it? Even better." She's still grinning, before and after taking a gulp from her water bottle. "What about you? Sick of town yet?"

Jo snorted at the adjustment, but gave it an appraising look and nod.

"Sure, but there's hardly a day in my life that isn't true."

"Point." The next lift of the water bottle ends in Rachel looking toward the exit - idle, more than a suggestion. "Are you and Jack planning on heading out?"

Jo smirked a little at the combination of names.

(As as much as it deserves a smirk there's a comfort there she's not focusing on, but it's there all the same.)

"Not as I know. He might be itchin' to return to the farm or traveling by now. Didn't ask. He's all breeze in and out like normal."

Rachel's eyes dart back toward his, a hint of irritation at the downturn of her mouth.

"You are so confusing, you know that?"

"Yeah."

Actually she relatively simple. More so not than ever before.

It would be even more simple if she could stop remembering.

"We we're just in it for the fighting, not sure he's all hip conjoined."

~~Except when maybe she was.~~

Rachel makes a face - a mixture of irritation and fondness.

"Not about Jack." She takes another drink, glancing over at the bar Jo had just rubbed down, the glasses waiting to be washed. "You've been aching to go out and do things since I met you. What keeps holding you back?"

She keeps expecting Jo to be comfortable, happy in the places she finds her, for all the time she spends there.

Jo looked if anything more amused by the explanation.

"Could say the same of you. You're still here in the city."

Rachel does the mature woman-of-twenty-something thing to do.

And sticks her tongue out at Jo.

"Hey, I already admitted I wanted to hang out with you a while," she points out. And doesn't add that it was possibly the closest she'd come to an apology of any sorts.

Or an admission of acting like a bitch back in Smallville.

There's another snort and a pull of her beer as she laid siege to a chair.

"What happened to having had enough of this?"

"You and the city are not interchangable," Rachel informs her, but it's with a smirk. "And if you tell me you're gonna be here for weeks, I'm dumping your butt again and coming back when you're ready to go."

It's with a very careful, faux-subtle-ness that she adds, "And without Mr Pearl Jam and his freaky flying car, probably."

When she says his name, says Dean--

Dean who hasn't talked to her yet. Dean who had vanished on her again. Dean who said he'd come.

Dean who wasn't there when she...

--Jo's lips firmed and she shook her head slightly, looking back at the bar.

"I didn't mean the city. I meant you, having had enough--stomping off instead of going back to Lawrence only to show up a week later, leaving notes and vanishing again. Ringing any bells?"

Rachel's frowning a little at Jo's reaction, frustrated - and not about to admit why.

And wincing at Jo's summation.

"Liberty-sized ones," she mumbles, focusing on her water bottle again. "I stomped because I thought you were going off with Dean and Jack - though I probably still would've gone off if I'd known you were going back to Lawrence," she adds quickly, giving Jo a bit of an annoyed look. "I still have no idea why you did, you were going out of your mind there as much as I was.

"And I showed up again because-- well, you wouldn't believe me." Gods jabbering at her in mirrors. "Because I was going to California and wanted some stuff from that room I had in your house. And I vanished again because Dean pissed me off and I wanted to get out of there before I beat the hell out of him."

Jo looked back, her expression is calm, but her eyes were sharper. Her fingers slid along the neck of her beer slowly.

"Except that you left with him."

Not that she wants patty cake and story hour and for either of them to know, but she can't help the bitterness that twists her insides.

It's an easier emotion than the ones she won't face.

Rachel meets her gaze with her lip curled.

Pure disgust. At the idea.

"I ran into him at the farm. He'd left Lawrence right before I did, I didn't even know about it. He offered me a ride to California and I mentioned you," this is stressed quite obviously in reaction to the sharper gaze, the bitterness there, "and didn't get anything out of it.

"It was a faster way to get where I was going. Don't put anything else on it."

Any other week it would be comforting. It really would be. In the dark part of her heart that hates and denies that it still brightens even when he's an asshole because he's being an asshole in her presence.

Except neither of them know.

And neither of know what they're trivial excuses meant this time.

Jo took a long pull of her beer, copper eyes unwavering, as she tried to hold down the urge to throw her bottle, the itch that raced under her skin.

"You still looking for company out?"

"That depends," Rachel snarled back, hackles would be raised if she had them, on edge from the accusation. "Are you going to mope about him the entire time? Because I'd rather you two go fight it out before I'm alone with either of you again."

Jo's eyebrows rose, the collected expression not moving even as her fingers tense marginally against the glass. She stood up, letting the chair screech and fall behind her.

"Thanks, but I'm not looking for your charity or your rules. I don't need either. I'm fine without them and you."

I shot the back of my mothers head off and burned to ashes the only family I've known, she wants to say. The days keep rolling. Nothing changes. It didn't matter. I'm still talking and breathing.

I don't need you.

(Don't leave me.)

Edited 2008-09-27 01:30 (UTC)

Rachel's fists clench and her jaw sets, ready for the fight.

Traveling by herself, alone, the nightmares, the uselessness, if Lucy hadn't been there to stop her...

"Jo."

She's looking away, posture still tight, spiky, glaring at the woodwork on the table.

"I love someone. I'm not going to be interested in anyone, ever, that isn't him. And he isn't here."

She's going to make sure of it, no matter what, he doesn't deserve this.

"If you want to go, you want to fight, you want someone with you, then I'll go, I want to."

Only person that didn't-- look at her when she fought, even more than Dean's reaction, never considered her a freak or a monster.

"I don't need that look on your face anymore than you need my rules."

She looks over sharply, blue eyes narrowed and cold and utterly honest.

"And it sure as hell isn't charity I'm offering."

She's tried alone.

She doesn't want it.

Wait. She thought this was still about Dean?

Jo had to bite her cheek not to laugh. It would be that sharp, high laugh, the one she'd given in the basement when she saw the guns, again. The one that said the world was different here.

Except it wasn't. She couldn't let it be.

She reached up her empty hand, wrapping her fingers around her neck.

She nodded at Stella behind the bar, giving a thin wan smile, before she said, still and calm and dark.

"All I have right now is the need to beat the ever living shit out of something. Constantly. And I'd be happier if that something deserved it and could be eviscerated in the process."

Rachel's jaw clenches. It doesn't seem to matter if the laugh makes it out or not, the insult is there all the same, and her single-word response comes out through clenched teeth: "Good."

Her chair squeaks in protest when she shoves it back and gets to her feet. "I'll hang around another day or two and then I'm getting out of here."

And Jo can do what she likes with that information.

Personally? Rachel's gotta go find something to beat the ever-living shit out of right now.

Jo looked back, aloof calmness touching her expression again.

She could shove that honest admission back into the dark.

"Good. It'll give me time to locate a machete."

(no subject)

theresnodoor - 2008-09-27 02:02 (UTC) - Expand