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Dean's done with the library. Done with the whole stupid city. He's got a carful of books and no intention of hanging around any longer.

But he's also got to find Jack, Jo and Rachel, and he doesn't really know where to start. He's heading down the street in the vague direction of Jo's hole-in-the-wall apartment, hoping the others will somehow be there too.

They've got work to do.

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Jo rolled her eyes, with a shake of her head.

"Just because my mom left messages on his phone, you think the Road House existed as a phone tree?"

Dean shrugs. "Guess not. That's just ... weird t'think of. I never knew he'd ... yeah."

There's a lot, Dean knows, that he never knew about his dad.

Jo nodded, leaning her head back.

"It's not like I have any encyclopedic knowledge on him. I thought he'd vanished when I was young like a lot of my--" she hovered, not saying the word uncles-- "the other hunters who never came back."

She hadn't known then, and she'd never questioned it.

This was their life. That was how it happened.

Dean nods, stroking the Impala into gear and pulling out.

The image of tiny Jo getting her knee patched on the hood of the Imp is ...

It's cute.

He clears his throat, nodding. "He used to disappear on us a lot. Working. We didn't see him all that often, when we were really little."

Jo nodded. Her dad did the same time.

"He talked about you guys."

"Aw, geez." Dean glances over at her, grinning sheepishly. "Ever say anything I'd wanna know about?"

Jo snorted, unable not to smile.

Pressing her lips together, she closed her eyes, tilting her face up.

"I don't know if I know you well enough to be having hallmark moments."

"Hallmark moments, huh?" Dean laughs, chuckles really.

He really is in a good mood.

"Jo Harvelle, I'm pretty damn sure if you ever found y'self in a Hallmark moment you'd blast the fuck outta the photographer and everyone else in your way."

Jo opened her eyes, looking over at him, lips curling into a smirk.

"Maybe. You ever see the wallet pictures?"

"The wallet pictures?"

Dean's eyebrow quirks up.

"Sounds kinky."

Jo grimaced and smacked his arm hard.

"Don't do that, now I'm imagining your father in ways that are just-" she mockingly shuddered. "-wrong."

She rubbed her eyes, grin still tugging at the edges of her lips. "There were pictures in it. Well, at least the once."

"Oh, ew."

Dean grins at her, bright and wide.

"He carried around pictures?"

That was just wrong.

Especially since John could only be remembered through the eyes of eight year old Jo, in a mountainous ways Sam didn't get to be mountainous. As rock star parent or guardian, capable yet totally not allowed to even coexist in the flicker of images he had in her mind.

Jo shrugged, not-quite-shaking-it when she nodded.

"Yeah. Cute and faded and the kind no one really wants parents to have, but they manage. Sam and your mom, you. I think there was some kind of family one. It was a long time ago."

And he was being kind. Maybe even charitable.

Probably because no matter how pissed he got, John Winchester might have taken his issues out on the people talking to him on the next stool or even behind the bar, but not on a little girl.

Dean nods, watching the horizon ahead of them and smiling. Not a smirk, for once.

"Yeah. Long time ago. But I guess families come through a'ight."

Families stay. Sam came back. His Dad -- his dad won't, but ...

Well, Sam's here. And not nuts. And he's driving down the street with Jo and she's real, too - not a chick you'd find in a bar, not some piece of ass to spend a night with - Jo's real. Got history. Got family.

It's kinda nice to have people around who're real.

He really was chipper. It's almost disorienting.

It makes her smile reluctantly, tucking into the corners of her mouth, even when she's looking away.

"Stop there." With helpful pointing.

Hey, he's a chipper sort of guy.

No, really.

"Stopping." He pulls over obediently and grins over at her.

Jo got out of the car.

The look her door got was a flicker of something uncomfortable before it vanished. She stuck her left hand in her pocket while unlocking the door with her right, calling over her shoulder to distract herself.

"We getting Rachel next?"

"Uh," Dean says, slowly.

"About that. No?"

Jo had been looking for something to distract her from her eyes darting around he room remembering something else quite recent, which didn't sit as well with Dean in her doorway.

That hadn't been in.

She was putting stuff piled on the table back into her backpack. "Why? She busy with that friend?"

Dean leans against the door and tries not to loom.

He's looking around, too, gaze flicking over everything in the room with the sharp quick attention of a hunter. And maybe more.

"Yeah. That's it."

Yeah ... she's busy.

It's a nearly empty room.

If the house in Lawrence had the feel of a hunter with a home stock piling, this is a hole in a wall that makes motels look homey. Bare walls and floors, sparsest furniture and no decorations or signs of life aside from a pile on the table and a full trash can.

The bedroom and bathroom through small doorways on the opposite side are empty of any signs.

Wait.

Roll back.

Jack was coming and Rachel wasn't now?

Jo's not entirely sure this is so amazing.

"You meet him?"

"Birdboy? Yeah."

He wanders into the room and grabs the desk chair, twirling it around to sit backwards, splay-legged.

"Bit of a prick, honestly. Uh, they're not coming."

That gets an arch brow, lips pressed as she glanced up from the table.

"He didn't say anything when I met him."

"Said two words to me." Dean shrugs. "He's why she's not comin'. She wouldn't go anywhere without him, and I don't trust him."

That gets a pointed expression, zipping her backpack.

"You trust her, but you don't trust her calls?"