But We Could Breathe - for slartibartfast
Author: affabletoaster
Recipient: slartibartfast
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mild D/S, Spn-style alcohol abuse
Pairing: Anna/Jo
Length: 4106 words
Summary: Set in the time between 4.16 (On the Head of a Pin) and 4.20 (The Rapture). In the eye of the storm, Jo and Anna hold each other up.
Notes: Hope you like it, slartibartfast! Thanks for the song inspiration; I hadn't heard of her before, but Basia Bulat is playing in my town tomorrow night! Unfortunately, I've got a prior commitment, but what an uncanny coincidence!
Many thanks to electricalgwen for being, as ever, a speedy and insightful beta!
Jo swung the old F-150 into the parking lot off Highway 174, glancing at the piece of paper jammed in the edge of her rear view mirror. Yeah, this was the place. There was only one other vehicle in the parking lot, a rust-red '97 Dodge pickup with a redhead sitting on the tailgate. Jo pulled in a couple spaces away and checked the paper again. She muttered the girl's name to herself, just to make sure her voice was working after the long drive from Illinois. "Anna. Right." She tucked her favourite Smith & Wesson into her jeans pocket where she knew it would be obvious to the other hunter, and dropped down out of the cab onto the asphalt.
Anna held up a friendly hand in greeting, and she slid off the tailgate. "Glad you could come. Bobby hasn't failed me yet," she said with a nod, jamming her hands in her jacket pockets.
Jo caught the glint of metal at Anna's side and figured the other young woman had taken the same precaution. Her eyes flicked reflexively down the other's legs, checking for good places to hide knives, but the bootcut jeans and Puma sneakers didn't look threatening. For the hundredth time that day, Jo wondered if she should have called Bobby to verify Anna's connection, but the desperate urge not to interact with Bobby & Co. still shouted down that inclination. Jo nodded in return, her hand reflexively massaging the flask of holy water in her own pocket. "So what's the job?"
Anna reached into the bed of the truck and pulled out a fistful of printouts. "This old Victorian in town has a haunted hallway. I can't just salt and burn the remains, since the relevant remains are in the hallway itself, and the ghost is one of those hyper-active ones that gets a bit territorial. It's a two-person job. Either you distract and I burn, or the other way around. I suppose I don't need to ask if you're any good with a shotgun?"
Jo looked up from the papers, which detailed the sordid history of the unfortunate hallway. "I'm definitely capable of distracting it, if that's what you're wondering."
Anna playfully flicked a salt shotgun shell at Jo, something like a challenge in her eyes. "Yeah, I bet you are."
~~~
The job itself went pretty smoothly. Anna showed her around the place, which--thank god--had been inhabited by a pair of "believers" who had been all too happy to turn the house over to Anna and head to someplace a little less paranormal for a few days. As the sun sank lower, Anna armed herself with salt, lighter fluid, and matches, and Jo stuffed her pockets with rock salt shells. They made their stand by the hall closet, and Anna crouched inside peeling and incinerating the love letters the previous owner had used as shelf paper. Jo stood over her with the sawed-off and kept the crazed thing at bay until it stopped coming anymore. As the apparition disappeared in curls of flame, Anna rocked back on her heels to grin up at Jo. "Thanks. I owe you a drink."
Jo was almost a little dazed at the efficiency of the operation. It's the way she always hoped these things would go, but the spirits so rarely played by the rules. She met the flashing white grin with one of her own, and offered her hand to haul Anna up to her feet again. "Deal."
It wasn't until they were outside the house that Jo acknowledged the uneasiness in her gut. "That was too easy. I don't think we should leave so fast."
Anna closed her phone and looked up. "You're right. I just called the family, and they'll be back in tonight. I told them to give me a call if they have any more problems, so let's stay in town tonight, just in case." She gave Jo a sidelong grin. "I've got a room at a motel down the road. I'll just book it for another night, shall I?"
Jo laughed, thinking how differently she would have taken that comment from any of the guys at the Roadhouse. "Sure, why not? We're all girls here." Jo swung up into the F-150's cab, then watched Anna do the same in her own truck. The petite redhead dragged the Ram into gear with a grace that Jo could appreciate. Jo had always taken pride in her truck, her second purchase with her saved waitressing wages. She'd bought the '87 from Bobby right after she brought home her first very own Smith & Wesson. It wasn't exactly sleek, but Jo loved the thrust of power from the engines as she pushed it to highway speed, and she relished the buzz of the road as it worked its way up through the bucket seat into her bones. The F-150 wasn't just a set of wheels or some intangible notion of freedom. For Jo, it was better, stronger, and more real than anything any Roadhouse hunter had tried to give her, and better than anything Dean wouldn't give her. Jo's eyes flickered to the back of Anna's head, visible through the back window of her cab. Would someone like Anna have a clue what Jo was talking about? She shrugged. Some people sit on washing machines.
The sun sank into the horizon, and before long Anna's taillights swerved into a motel parking lot. Jo grabbed her overnight bag from the passenger seat and followed Anna into room 508, which was, Jo noted, mercifully blandly decorated and completely lacking in ceiling mirrors. There was, of course, just one queen bed. If Anna noticed Jo pause, she didn't let on.
After a few minutes to wash the grime and smoky smell off their hands, Jo and Anna headed down to the bar next door to the motel. It was a familiar sight to Jo, somewhere between condemned and Roadhouse chic, floor greased with hot sauce and spilled beer. Promising to fetch the first round, Anna pointed her to a booth with a sticky table and a black-and-white photograph of an old-school Impala. Third generation. More likely a '64, Jo registered, before she could stop herself. She quickly dispelled all Winchester-thoughts and slid into the seat. Clearly Anna knew what she was doing. The booth was well-located for keeping an eye on the low-ceiling establishment, raised a little from the pool-table area, but shielded by the wall shadows of the nearby corner. Jo swept her gaze around the room, keenly aware, as ever, that she and Anna were conspicuously female, some of the only ones in the joint, and definitely the only ones there alone. She'd always been fiercely proud of her mother for maintaining the Roadhouse after her father died. As far as rough customers went hunters could be the worst, but Ellen didn't take any bullshit and the hunters had respected that, for the most part. That shell had cost Ellen, Jo knew, and that price was certainly part of the reason she was so protective of her daughter. Jo's face twisted into a wry smile as she caught herself speculating about the caliber of the gun tucked into Current Pool Shark's waistband, hidden by his faded navy t-shirt. Ellen wanted to shield her daughter, but she wasn't stupid. Growing up in a place like the Roadhouse taught you stuff.
The guy next to Pool Shark had clearly caught the direction of Jo's eyes, and he elbowed him and pointed in Jo's direction. Just in time, her vision was filled with Anna's pale skin and too-red hair, as the other girl slid four pints onto the table and slid into the booth. She hoisted her glass. "Cheers. To a nice and routine hunt, for once."
Jo echoed her, adding an emphatic, "No shit." Before they drank, Jo held up her flask of holy water. "No offense, but you know how it is."
Anna held out her glass. "None taken. I've already put some in yours."
When the holy water had been dispensed, Anna took a long drink from her beer and licked the foam off her upper lip with an unabashed shiver of pleasure. "God, I needed that. So what do girls do now, Harvelle? Play Truth or Dare? Strip poker? Or do you just want to challenge Bubba over there to a game of pool?"
Jo took a cool, prickly swig. The familiar draught slid easily over her tongue and down her throat, tasting like hops and safety and home. "Might have to. I forgot to bring my dolls." She focused on the other hunter, slight and pretty, so much like Jo herself. "So you just hunt like this all the time? Alone?" As soon as she said it, she realised how condescending it sounded. "Not that you can't. I mean, I did it for a while. But you like it that way?"
Anna polished off her pint before answering. "Enh," she shrugged, "it's not normally a problem, and I like doing my own thing. I don't object to having a partner, but with what we've been up against lately, there aren't a lot of us to go around. When I asked Bobby for a hand, he said you'd been on your own for a while. I just thought we could help each other out a bit."
"I've connected up with my mom now. We've been hunting together for awhile, after she got used to the fact that I hunt at all. Some people don't want their kids to go into the family business."
Anna exchanged her empty glass for one of the remaining untouched pints. "Wow, with your mom. That's got to be...exciting. Why isn't she along right now?"
"Honestly? The stomach flu, and she is so pissed off about that." She followed Anna's example and finished off her drink. "I guess it's hard to hunt with her sometimes. She really doesn't like me to take any chances. Still, it's nice to have the company, and she knows what she's dealing with." She fixed Anna with a measuring gaze. "How'd you get into all of this stuff?"
"Family," Anna replied shortly. Jo waited, and eventually she went on. "They're all kind of in the business. I just don't get along with mine quite as well as you do with yours, I guess. I tried to get my brother to give me a hand, but he's a bit of a of a pansy sometimes."
Jo bought the next round, and Anna the next. Jo had forgotten how nice it was to drink with someone who isn't your mom. As down-to-Earth and tough as Ellen was, there was one thing she couldn't be, and that was not-Jo's-mom. Hearing Anna talk about her hunts, Jo felt a tug of nostalgia for her solo days. Hey, family was important, and God knows she didn't have much left--that's kind of what tended to happen in this business--but Jo was enjoying this chance to let her guard slip a little and talk about dumb things like shampoo and imported beer as if they really meant something. She sent silent thankful prayers to Robert S. Singer and the god of stomach flu and sucked down each pint in between increasingly comfortable exchanges.
"Right, so I'm like 'What the hell, Mike,' and he's all 'Do you really think that's an appropriate word to use right now?' Dear god in heaven, he can be such a tight-ass." Anna was twirling a Bud Lite coaster on the table and she spoke with something between affection and derision.
"So where is he now?" Jo exchanged her empty glass for one of the filled ones, and it sloshed over the rim onto her hand. Yeah, this beer would definitely be her last one tonight.
"God knows," shrugged Anna. She glanced up, and a devious smile crept across her face when she noticed Jo's dripping hand. "Hey, let me help you with that."
Jo's eyebrows shot towards her hairline as the other girl pushed her glass out of the way and slid her upper body over the table. Anna propped herself on her elbows and, taking Jo's hand, she lowered her mouth to the warm droplets.
Jo was too shocked to do anything but let Anna proceed, and as soon as the hunter's lips closed over her little finger, warm and moist, Jo caught herself letting out a nearly-silent sigh of...pleasure? She was suddenly very aware of what a low-cut top Anna was wearing. Leaned forward the way Anna was, the v-neck spaghetti strap tank did nothing at all to hide the red lace trim on Anna's bra. It wasn't that Jo hadn't looked at another woman's breasts before. Ever since her own had started to develop, she'd been appraising and comparing, but this was different. Right now she was looking looking, and perhaps it was just possible she'd never really noticed how pleasant those gentle curves could be. Jo's mind overloaded a moment later, as Anna's tongue swept another finger into her mouth, and oh GOD, how could she be allowed to do that?
Jo must have let escape some small noise of pleasure, because Anna chuckled knowingly over Jo's hand, teasing the pads of her beer-baptised fingers with the tip of her tongue before plunging them back into the pulsating warmth. Jo's free hand slid reflexively to the nape of Anna's neck, but she pulled it back suddenly when it connected with her too-soft flesh and too-long hair.
Anna released Jo's hand, triumph all over her face. When she spoke, her voice was confident and low. "Don't tell me you haven't tried that before." And suddenly she was beside Jo, with no safe, sticky table between them. "And don't tell me you haven't tried this before." And good god there was her mouth, and it was touching Jo's mouth, and she was kissing her, first softly, barely there, and then her tongue, teasing and wet and slippery, and Jo could feel her lips responding, treacherously kissing back with tongue and hunger and want. A warmth was coiling below Jo's belly, and as though she knew exactly where, Anna's fingers slid under her shirt and around her waistband and found the spot and pressed, cutting through the soft-focus haze with their sharp coolness. Jo found herself gasping against Anna's lips, slumped against the back of the booth. One of Anna's hands was twisted in her hair, the other was gently gripping Jo's side, fingers still stroking the curve of her hip.
From somewhere very far away, Jo gathered the bits of her brain that made sense. "Ah, no, I haven't done that before."
Anna's smile was almost beatific. "You didn't seem to mind it. I think you should try it again." And she lowered her lips to Jo's again, gently pulling her head back to bare her throat. This time Anna lingered only a few moments on her lips, and Jo found herself pressing her mouth helplessly to the heavy bar air as Anna's tongue slithered over her jaw and to the sensitive soft flesh of her throat. She knew she was making soft noises now, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she was still in that bar, but nothing seemed to matter quite as much as that one spot on her neck that Anna had just found. Jo's hips bucked involuntarily as Anna's teeth grazed the skin, and Jo felt Anna's hand lower to cup her ass and pull her closer, her hips grinding into Jo's in a way that was just too right to actually be happening.
"You like it. You like it with a girl." Anna's breath danced in the passages of Jo's ear and her tongue flickered after it, tracing the ridges, then the lobe with a barely-there touch that Jo couldn't stand to continue, and couldn't bear to stop. Her chest heaved brokenly, and her fumbling fingers found the hem of Anna's shirt, sliding underneath the thin material with the boldness of a dam released.
Jo was rewarded with a gasp from the other girl, and then a low moan. Their eyes locked, and Jo read triumph and desire behind Anna's bright gaze. She tried not to think about how her own face must betray her uncertainty and need, focusing instead on the catches in Anna's breathing as she slipped her hands under the other girl's bra and grazed her nipples into nubs. And suddenly Anna's fingers had found her belt, and the coil beneath Jo's belly tightened, her need ringing in her ears.
Anna's exploring fingers swiftly navigated the belt, button, and zipper, pushing Jo's jeans down to gain better access. The stonewash denim rumpled above Jo's knees, between Anna's, and the redhead reared back to survey her work, sliding out of the other hunter's grasp. She panted down at Jo, a little twist of a smile on the corner of her mouth. Her fingers continued to probe, stroking and kneading Jo as only Jo herself had ever really known how. She was only dimly aware that her lower legs were draped unceremoniously over the edge of the booth seat, and their activities must be drawing attention, if only for the noise. Was that Pool Shark approaching over Anna's shoulder? Jo tore herself through the shivers of pleasure, trying to focus her eyes. Just as the man got within striking distance, Anna sharply raised a hand and seemed to freeze his stride with a tiny flick of her fingers. At the same time, she slipped a finger of her other hand into Jo, jolting her back into the electric labyrinth of her own body. She couldn't imagine what could wield such a power, didn't want to imagine. The welcome invasion seemed to fill her all the way up her spine, claiming her, holding her up.
Jo realised that her eyes were closed, and she forced herself to open them again. If it were possible, Anna had become even more pale, her eyes, lips, hair now darker and redder than they had been. The low light from the bar was different too, as it limned her figure with a gentle glow. The hand that had stopped Pool Shark was plunged into Anna's own warmth, and the shadows were dancing on her face as she rose and fell in the rhythm of their close-pressed bodies.
All these things washed over Jo, but none of them could diminish that coil or deny the thick rope of want that spiraled through her core. She gripped Anna's thighs with her hands, kneading them, pulling the girl impossibly closer. "Please...please..."
Anna leaned forward, slipping two dripping fingers into Jo's mouth. She tasted them eagerly, relishing the oh-so-personal texture of Anna's fingerprints. Jo's mind was screaming that this couldn't be real, but there were Anna's lips again, meeting hers with a hunger that couldn't be illusion. They dissolved into hands and collarbones and tongues, twisting around each other, pressing skin to skin where they could, and wrenching aside what kept them two. And then Anna's fingers found their purchase, plunging and grinding against her clit, and Jo arched back in the booth seat, the silhouette of Anna's unfurled wings seared into the inside of her eyelids.
She felt Anna slump against her moments later, tasted smoke and Garnier Fructis on the crimson hair in her mouth. Jo and Anna held each other weakly as the aftershocks rode them and as their muscles struggled to make sense of their unexpected intensity. It was Jo who spoke first, with a voice that she barely recognised as her own. "Wings? Are you serious?"
Anna's chuckle seemed equally alien. "What, you've never been touched by an angel before?" She winked out, and reappeared on the other side of the table again. "You know, you're not a bad lay."
"Thanks," said Jo with a grunt as she drew herself into a sitting position and felt around for her dignity. "You aren't either."
"This isn't a Thing, you know. I'm not sticking around."
"Neither am I. And what was with the crap about a hunt?"
"Had to give you a good reason to stop by. Don't worry, the people who own the house are in Tijuana for the week. A few illusions, a plausible hunt, you wanted it to work, so it did. The universe is spiraling towards oblivion, and it's nice to take control of things sometimes, to make things work." Anna flexed her hands. "God, it's good to have a body, you know?" She caught the discomfort on Jo's face, and shook her head. "Not a meatsuit. This body is mine only. It's a long story."
"I've got to go kill something. Maybe a Winchester." Jo finished adjusting her clothes and hauled herself to her feet, hating how exposed she felt in the aftermath of their encounter.
Anna didn't move. Neither, for that matter, did any of the other patrons of the bar. Every single one of them was frozen in place, presumably where they'd been when Anna had worked her mojo.
"Are you going to leave them like that?" Jo demanded.
"I'll release them when I leave. I haven't decided yet if they'll remember it all. You, on the other hand...I think you should."
"I feel like something should be different now."
"It isn't. I gave you an unauthorized excerpt, a detour, an interlude, but we don't have the juice to change the ending. Are you afraid of where it's going to go?"
Jo's eyes met Anna's with steel. "I'd be an idiot not to be."
Anna conceded her point with a concise nod. She raised two fingers to Jo's forehead. "Maybe I'll see you around."
"Like hell you will." Jo tried to brush aside the other girl's hand, but it was like trying to swat a freight train. The angel's fingers touched her head for a mere second, then against her back and legs Jo felt the familiar fabric of her bucket seat in the truck. She let her head fall against the headrest and gave herself an experimental shake. Just as smoothly as she'd banished the bar and its patrons, Anna seemed to have melted the alcohol out of Jo's bloodstream. Just as well. Jo wanted to get out of there.
She twisted the ignition and shoved the F-150 into reverse. As she guided the truck out of the parking lot, she noticed her overnight bag on the passenger seat, and she snorted a cynical thank-you to the angel. The moon was riding high now, big and almost-round. As she pulled onto the highway and felt the familiar hum of acceleration, Jo blinked back the moisture gathering at the edges of her eyes. Adrenaline, of course. "That was freakin' weird," she told the dashboard. It didn't answer. For the seven hundredth time since the day the Winchesters had walked out of her life, Jo's thumb hovered over her speed dial for Dean. And for the seven hundredth time she tossed her phone back down on the passenger seat and reached for the radio dial.
An unfamiliar song crackled out of the speakers, probably something drifting down from the Canadian stations, but Jo didn't feel like messing with it. She let the female singer's voice wash into the nooks of her soul, catching on the bits that were her mother, on the phantom edges that must be her father.
The birds of paradise came to me yesterday,
Laughed when they told me my fate;
We'd be cold, we'd be tired but we could breathe,
One day I'm gonna leave this place.
Recipient: slartibartfast
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mild D/S, Spn-style alcohol abuse
Pairing: Anna/Jo
Length: 4106 words
Summary: Set in the time between 4.16 (On the Head of a Pin) and 4.20 (The Rapture). In the eye of the storm, Jo and Anna hold each other up.
Notes: Hope you like it, slartibartfast! Thanks for the song inspiration; I hadn't heard of her before, but Basia Bulat is playing in my town tomorrow night! Unfortunately, I've got a prior commitment, but what an uncanny coincidence!
Many thanks to electricalgwen for being, as ever, a speedy and insightful beta!
Jo swung the old F-150 into the parking lot off Highway 174, glancing at the piece of paper jammed in the edge of her rear view mirror. Yeah, this was the place. There was only one other vehicle in the parking lot, a rust-red '97 Dodge pickup with a redhead sitting on the tailgate. Jo pulled in a couple spaces away and checked the paper again. She muttered the girl's name to herself, just to make sure her voice was working after the long drive from Illinois. "Anna. Right." She tucked her favourite Smith & Wesson into her jeans pocket where she knew it would be obvious to the other hunter, and dropped down out of the cab onto the asphalt.
Anna held up a friendly hand in greeting, and she slid off the tailgate. "Glad you could come. Bobby hasn't failed me yet," she said with a nod, jamming her hands in her jacket pockets.
Jo caught the glint of metal at Anna's side and figured the other young woman had taken the same precaution. Her eyes flicked reflexively down the other's legs, checking for good places to hide knives, but the bootcut jeans and Puma sneakers didn't look threatening. For the hundredth time that day, Jo wondered if she should have called Bobby to verify Anna's connection, but the desperate urge not to interact with Bobby & Co. still shouted down that inclination. Jo nodded in return, her hand reflexively massaging the flask of holy water in her own pocket. "So what's the job?"
Anna reached into the bed of the truck and pulled out a fistful of printouts. "This old Victorian in town has a haunted hallway. I can't just salt and burn the remains, since the relevant remains are in the hallway itself, and the ghost is one of those hyper-active ones that gets a bit territorial. It's a two-person job. Either you distract and I burn, or the other way around. I suppose I don't need to ask if you're any good with a shotgun?"
Jo looked up from the papers, which detailed the sordid history of the unfortunate hallway. "I'm definitely capable of distracting it, if that's what you're wondering."
Anna playfully flicked a salt shotgun shell at Jo, something like a challenge in her eyes. "Yeah, I bet you are."
~~~
The job itself went pretty smoothly. Anna showed her around the place, which--thank god--had been inhabited by a pair of "believers" who had been all too happy to turn the house over to Anna and head to someplace a little less paranormal for a few days. As the sun sank lower, Anna armed herself with salt, lighter fluid, and matches, and Jo stuffed her pockets with rock salt shells. They made their stand by the hall closet, and Anna crouched inside peeling and incinerating the love letters the previous owner had used as shelf paper. Jo stood over her with the sawed-off and kept the crazed thing at bay until it stopped coming anymore. As the apparition disappeared in curls of flame, Anna rocked back on her heels to grin up at Jo. "Thanks. I owe you a drink."
Jo was almost a little dazed at the efficiency of the operation. It's the way she always hoped these things would go, but the spirits so rarely played by the rules. She met the flashing white grin with one of her own, and offered her hand to haul Anna up to her feet again. "Deal."
It wasn't until they were outside the house that Jo acknowledged the uneasiness in her gut. "That was too easy. I don't think we should leave so fast."
Anna closed her phone and looked up. "You're right. I just called the family, and they'll be back in tonight. I told them to give me a call if they have any more problems, so let's stay in town tonight, just in case." She gave Jo a sidelong grin. "I've got a room at a motel down the road. I'll just book it for another night, shall I?"
Jo laughed, thinking how differently she would have taken that comment from any of the guys at the Roadhouse. "Sure, why not? We're all girls here." Jo swung up into the F-150's cab, then watched Anna do the same in her own truck. The petite redhead dragged the Ram into gear with a grace that Jo could appreciate. Jo had always taken pride in her truck, her second purchase with her saved waitressing wages. She'd bought the '87 from Bobby right after she brought home her first very own Smith & Wesson. It wasn't exactly sleek, but Jo loved the thrust of power from the engines as she pushed it to highway speed, and she relished the buzz of the road as it worked its way up through the bucket seat into her bones. The F-150 wasn't just a set of wheels or some intangible notion of freedom. For Jo, it was better, stronger, and more real than anything any Roadhouse hunter had tried to give her, and better than anything Dean wouldn't give her. Jo's eyes flickered to the back of Anna's head, visible through the back window of her cab. Would someone like Anna have a clue what Jo was talking about? She shrugged. Some people sit on washing machines.
The sun sank into the horizon, and before long Anna's taillights swerved into a motel parking lot. Jo grabbed her overnight bag from the passenger seat and followed Anna into room 508, which was, Jo noted, mercifully blandly decorated and completely lacking in ceiling mirrors. There was, of course, just one queen bed. If Anna noticed Jo pause, she didn't let on.
After a few minutes to wash the grime and smoky smell off their hands, Jo and Anna headed down to the bar next door to the motel. It was a familiar sight to Jo, somewhere between condemned and Roadhouse chic, floor greased with hot sauce and spilled beer. Promising to fetch the first round, Anna pointed her to a booth with a sticky table and a black-and-white photograph of an old-school Impala. Third generation. More likely a '64, Jo registered, before she could stop herself. She quickly dispelled all Winchester-thoughts and slid into the seat. Clearly Anna knew what she was doing. The booth was well-located for keeping an eye on the low-ceiling establishment, raised a little from the pool-table area, but shielded by the wall shadows of the nearby corner. Jo swept her gaze around the room, keenly aware, as ever, that she and Anna were conspicuously female, some of the only ones in the joint, and definitely the only ones there alone. She'd always been fiercely proud of her mother for maintaining the Roadhouse after her father died. As far as rough customers went hunters could be the worst, but Ellen didn't take any bullshit and the hunters had respected that, for the most part. That shell had cost Ellen, Jo knew, and that price was certainly part of the reason she was so protective of her daughter. Jo's face twisted into a wry smile as she caught herself speculating about the caliber of the gun tucked into Current Pool Shark's waistband, hidden by his faded navy t-shirt. Ellen wanted to shield her daughter, but she wasn't stupid. Growing up in a place like the Roadhouse taught you stuff.
The guy next to Pool Shark had clearly caught the direction of Jo's eyes, and he elbowed him and pointed in Jo's direction. Just in time, her vision was filled with Anna's pale skin and too-red hair, as the other girl slid four pints onto the table and slid into the booth. She hoisted her glass. "Cheers. To a nice and routine hunt, for once."
Jo echoed her, adding an emphatic, "No shit." Before they drank, Jo held up her flask of holy water. "No offense, but you know how it is."
Anna held out her glass. "None taken. I've already put some in yours."
When the holy water had been dispensed, Anna took a long drink from her beer and licked the foam off her upper lip with an unabashed shiver of pleasure. "God, I needed that. So what do girls do now, Harvelle? Play Truth or Dare? Strip poker? Or do you just want to challenge Bubba over there to a game of pool?"
Jo took a cool, prickly swig. The familiar draught slid easily over her tongue and down her throat, tasting like hops and safety and home. "Might have to. I forgot to bring my dolls." She focused on the other hunter, slight and pretty, so much like Jo herself. "So you just hunt like this all the time? Alone?" As soon as she said it, she realised how condescending it sounded. "Not that you can't. I mean, I did it for a while. But you like it that way?"
Anna polished off her pint before answering. "Enh," she shrugged, "it's not normally a problem, and I like doing my own thing. I don't object to having a partner, but with what we've been up against lately, there aren't a lot of us to go around. When I asked Bobby for a hand, he said you'd been on your own for a while. I just thought we could help each other out a bit."
"I've connected up with my mom now. We've been hunting together for awhile, after she got used to the fact that I hunt at all. Some people don't want their kids to go into the family business."
Anna exchanged her empty glass for one of the remaining untouched pints. "Wow, with your mom. That's got to be...exciting. Why isn't she along right now?"
"Honestly? The stomach flu, and she is so pissed off about that." She followed Anna's example and finished off her drink. "I guess it's hard to hunt with her sometimes. She really doesn't like me to take any chances. Still, it's nice to have the company, and she knows what she's dealing with." She fixed Anna with a measuring gaze. "How'd you get into all of this stuff?"
"Family," Anna replied shortly. Jo waited, and eventually she went on. "They're all kind of in the business. I just don't get along with mine quite as well as you do with yours, I guess. I tried to get my brother to give me a hand, but he's a bit of a of a pansy sometimes."
Jo bought the next round, and Anna the next. Jo had forgotten how nice it was to drink with someone who isn't your mom. As down-to-Earth and tough as Ellen was, there was one thing she couldn't be, and that was not-Jo's-mom. Hearing Anna talk about her hunts, Jo felt a tug of nostalgia for her solo days. Hey, family was important, and God knows she didn't have much left--that's kind of what tended to happen in this business--but Jo was enjoying this chance to let her guard slip a little and talk about dumb things like shampoo and imported beer as if they really meant something. She sent silent thankful prayers to Robert S. Singer and the god of stomach flu and sucked down each pint in between increasingly comfortable exchanges.
"Right, so I'm like 'What the hell, Mike,' and he's all 'Do you really think that's an appropriate word to use right now?' Dear god in heaven, he can be such a tight-ass." Anna was twirling a Bud Lite coaster on the table and she spoke with something between affection and derision.
"So where is he now?" Jo exchanged her empty glass for one of the filled ones, and it sloshed over the rim onto her hand. Yeah, this beer would definitely be her last one tonight.
"God knows," shrugged Anna. She glanced up, and a devious smile crept across her face when she noticed Jo's dripping hand. "Hey, let me help you with that."
Jo's eyebrows shot towards her hairline as the other girl pushed her glass out of the way and slid her upper body over the table. Anna propped herself on her elbows and, taking Jo's hand, she lowered her mouth to the warm droplets.
Jo was too shocked to do anything but let Anna proceed, and as soon as the hunter's lips closed over her little finger, warm and moist, Jo caught herself letting out a nearly-silent sigh of...pleasure? She was suddenly very aware of what a low-cut top Anna was wearing. Leaned forward the way Anna was, the v-neck spaghetti strap tank did nothing at all to hide the red lace trim on Anna's bra. It wasn't that Jo hadn't looked at another woman's breasts before. Ever since her own had started to develop, she'd been appraising and comparing, but this was different. Right now she was looking looking, and perhaps it was just possible she'd never really noticed how pleasant those gentle curves could be. Jo's mind overloaded a moment later, as Anna's tongue swept another finger into her mouth, and oh GOD, how could she be allowed to do that?
Jo must have let escape some small noise of pleasure, because Anna chuckled knowingly over Jo's hand, teasing the pads of her beer-baptised fingers with the tip of her tongue before plunging them back into the pulsating warmth. Jo's free hand slid reflexively to the nape of Anna's neck, but she pulled it back suddenly when it connected with her too-soft flesh and too-long hair.
Anna released Jo's hand, triumph all over her face. When she spoke, her voice was confident and low. "Don't tell me you haven't tried that before." And suddenly she was beside Jo, with no safe, sticky table between them. "And don't tell me you haven't tried this before." And good god there was her mouth, and it was touching Jo's mouth, and she was kissing her, first softly, barely there, and then her tongue, teasing and wet and slippery, and Jo could feel her lips responding, treacherously kissing back with tongue and hunger and want. A warmth was coiling below Jo's belly, and as though she knew exactly where, Anna's fingers slid under her shirt and around her waistband and found the spot and pressed, cutting through the soft-focus haze with their sharp coolness. Jo found herself gasping against Anna's lips, slumped against the back of the booth. One of Anna's hands was twisted in her hair, the other was gently gripping Jo's side, fingers still stroking the curve of her hip.
From somewhere very far away, Jo gathered the bits of her brain that made sense. "Ah, no, I haven't done that before."
Anna's smile was almost beatific. "You didn't seem to mind it. I think you should try it again." And she lowered her lips to Jo's again, gently pulling her head back to bare her throat. This time Anna lingered only a few moments on her lips, and Jo found herself pressing her mouth helplessly to the heavy bar air as Anna's tongue slithered over her jaw and to the sensitive soft flesh of her throat. She knew she was making soft noises now, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she was still in that bar, but nothing seemed to matter quite as much as that one spot on her neck that Anna had just found. Jo's hips bucked involuntarily as Anna's teeth grazed the skin, and Jo felt Anna's hand lower to cup her ass and pull her closer, her hips grinding into Jo's in a way that was just too right to actually be happening.
"You like it. You like it with a girl." Anna's breath danced in the passages of Jo's ear and her tongue flickered after it, tracing the ridges, then the lobe with a barely-there touch that Jo couldn't stand to continue, and couldn't bear to stop. Her chest heaved brokenly, and her fumbling fingers found the hem of Anna's shirt, sliding underneath the thin material with the boldness of a dam released.
Jo was rewarded with a gasp from the other girl, and then a low moan. Their eyes locked, and Jo read triumph and desire behind Anna's bright gaze. She tried not to think about how her own face must betray her uncertainty and need, focusing instead on the catches in Anna's breathing as she slipped her hands under the other girl's bra and grazed her nipples into nubs. And suddenly Anna's fingers had found her belt, and the coil beneath Jo's belly tightened, her need ringing in her ears.
Anna's exploring fingers swiftly navigated the belt, button, and zipper, pushing Jo's jeans down to gain better access. The stonewash denim rumpled above Jo's knees, between Anna's, and the redhead reared back to survey her work, sliding out of the other hunter's grasp. She panted down at Jo, a little twist of a smile on the corner of her mouth. Her fingers continued to probe, stroking and kneading Jo as only Jo herself had ever really known how. She was only dimly aware that her lower legs were draped unceremoniously over the edge of the booth seat, and their activities must be drawing attention, if only for the noise. Was that Pool Shark approaching over Anna's shoulder? Jo tore herself through the shivers of pleasure, trying to focus her eyes. Just as the man got within striking distance, Anna sharply raised a hand and seemed to freeze his stride with a tiny flick of her fingers. At the same time, she slipped a finger of her other hand into Jo, jolting her back into the electric labyrinth of her own body. She couldn't imagine what could wield such a power, didn't want to imagine. The welcome invasion seemed to fill her all the way up her spine, claiming her, holding her up.
Jo realised that her eyes were closed, and she forced herself to open them again. If it were possible, Anna had become even more pale, her eyes, lips, hair now darker and redder than they had been. The low light from the bar was different too, as it limned her figure with a gentle glow. The hand that had stopped Pool Shark was plunged into Anna's own warmth, and the shadows were dancing on her face as she rose and fell in the rhythm of their close-pressed bodies.
All these things washed over Jo, but none of them could diminish that coil or deny the thick rope of want that spiraled through her core. She gripped Anna's thighs with her hands, kneading them, pulling the girl impossibly closer. "Please...please..."
Anna leaned forward, slipping two dripping fingers into Jo's mouth. She tasted them eagerly, relishing the oh-so-personal texture of Anna's fingerprints. Jo's mind was screaming that this couldn't be real, but there were Anna's lips again, meeting hers with a hunger that couldn't be illusion. They dissolved into hands and collarbones and tongues, twisting around each other, pressing skin to skin where they could, and wrenching aside what kept them two. And then Anna's fingers found their purchase, plunging and grinding against her clit, and Jo arched back in the booth seat, the silhouette of Anna's unfurled wings seared into the inside of her eyelids.
She felt Anna slump against her moments later, tasted smoke and Garnier Fructis on the crimson hair in her mouth. Jo and Anna held each other weakly as the aftershocks rode them and as their muscles struggled to make sense of their unexpected intensity. It was Jo who spoke first, with a voice that she barely recognised as her own. "Wings? Are you serious?"
Anna's chuckle seemed equally alien. "What, you've never been touched by an angel before?" She winked out, and reappeared on the other side of the table again. "You know, you're not a bad lay."
"Thanks," said Jo with a grunt as she drew herself into a sitting position and felt around for her dignity. "You aren't either."
"This isn't a Thing, you know. I'm not sticking around."
"Neither am I. And what was with the crap about a hunt?"
"Had to give you a good reason to stop by. Don't worry, the people who own the house are in Tijuana for the week. A few illusions, a plausible hunt, you wanted it to work, so it did. The universe is spiraling towards oblivion, and it's nice to take control of things sometimes, to make things work." Anna flexed her hands. "God, it's good to have a body, you know?" She caught the discomfort on Jo's face, and shook her head. "Not a meatsuit. This body is mine only. It's a long story."
"I've got to go kill something. Maybe a Winchester." Jo finished adjusting her clothes and hauled herself to her feet, hating how exposed she felt in the aftermath of their encounter.
Anna didn't move. Neither, for that matter, did any of the other patrons of the bar. Every single one of them was frozen in place, presumably where they'd been when Anna had worked her mojo.
"Are you going to leave them like that?" Jo demanded.
"I'll release them when I leave. I haven't decided yet if they'll remember it all. You, on the other hand...I think you should."
"I feel like something should be different now."
"It isn't. I gave you an unauthorized excerpt, a detour, an interlude, but we don't have the juice to change the ending. Are you afraid of where it's going to go?"
Jo's eyes met Anna's with steel. "I'd be an idiot not to be."
Anna conceded her point with a concise nod. She raised two fingers to Jo's forehead. "Maybe I'll see you around."
"Like hell you will." Jo tried to brush aside the other girl's hand, but it was like trying to swat a freight train. The angel's fingers touched her head for a mere second, then against her back and legs Jo felt the familiar fabric of her bucket seat in the truck. She let her head fall against the headrest and gave herself an experimental shake. Just as smoothly as she'd banished the bar and its patrons, Anna seemed to have melted the alcohol out of Jo's bloodstream. Just as well. Jo wanted to get out of there.
She twisted the ignition and shoved the F-150 into reverse. As she guided the truck out of the parking lot, she noticed her overnight bag on the passenger seat, and she snorted a cynical thank-you to the angel. The moon was riding high now, big and almost-round. As she pulled onto the highway and felt the familiar hum of acceleration, Jo blinked back the moisture gathering at the edges of her eyes. Adrenaline, of course. "That was freakin' weird," she told the dashboard. It didn't answer. For the seven hundredth time since the day the Winchesters had walked out of her life, Jo's thumb hovered over her speed dial for Dean. And for the seven hundredth time she tossed her phone back down on the passenger seat and reached for the radio dial.
An unfamiliar song crackled out of the speakers, probably something drifting down from the Canadian stations, but Jo didn't feel like messing with it. She let the female singer's voice wash into the nooks of her soul, catching on the bits that were her mother, on the phantom edges that must be her father.
The birds of paradise came to me yesterday,
Laughed when they told me my fate;
We'd be cold, we'd be tired but we could breathe,
One day I'm gonna leave this place.