The Soul of a Woman
first chapter of an upcoming jo harvelle x bela talbot fic in honour of @spnwomenweek! this is the first thing i've written in a while and i really enjoyed it
content warnings: mild homophobia and sexism, mentions of sex
word count: 3.6k
chapter 2 here
*
Jo had seen a lot of old movies. She'd heard a lot about femme fatales. Hell, she'd fantasized about enough of them: the mysterious, darkly beautiful women with blood-red lipstick and skintight dresses, the girls who wielded a smile like Jo wielded a knife. The women who could slink into any bar in the world and know that every eye in the room would be feasting on her.
She just never thought that would be her bar.
Sure as shit, though, there she was, as real as the creaky old door she pulled open. Silhouetted by the last copper drops of sunset outside, all Jo could make out of her at first were vague highlights- light brown hair in perfect waves over her shoulders, a classy black coat, thigh-high stiletto boots. Still enough to stop her in her tracks like an idiot halfway through cleaning the counter, though.
If this were an old movie, she thought- and definitely in the movie she'd be playing in her head later tonight- this woman would stroll right over to the bar, heels clicking on the wooden floorboards, looking at Jo with those brown (hazel? Green? She couldn't tell from here) eyes, perch delicately on one of the grotty old barstools, and order something classy- a martini, or red wine, or whatever else they drink in big cities. If this were an old movie, the Roadhouse would stock something better than cheap whisky and crappy beer. Jo would pour her a drink while she tapped her long red nails on the bar, staring at Jo's strong, steady hands the whole time, and then as she handed her the drink her eyes would flicker back up to meet hers, the look on her face somewhere between daring and deadly.
This wasn't an old movie, though. The brunette barely looked at her as she cast her eye over the place before heading to a table. If it wasn't for the purposeful way she strutted over to the back corner- to Hank, the crusty old hunter sat there by himself, no less- she would've assumed the woman was lost. She wasn't exactly the Roadhouse's typical clientele, if her full set of teeth and lack of knuckle tattoos was anything to go by.
She watched the woman sit down and strike up a conversation, but between the clack of the pool table and the drawling voice of Johnny Cash on the old jukebox, she couldn't make out what they were saying. Not that she was eavesdropping. She's not a creep. She was just curious, is all. And maybe a little concerned- Hank could be a real bitch after a couple beers, and Jo remembers serving him at least four. She wasn't about to leave this lady alone with him.
Hunter circles weren't exactly known for being paragons of women's equality, or whatever. It was a stupidly hypermasculine scene, where every guy seemed to think the size of his dick was relative to the size of his gun collection, and that any woman should count herself lucky to see either. Sure, it was infuriating, but Jo had to laugh- she had a bigger knife collection than any of them (and she kept her dick in a drawer next to her bed). Maybe it was a little patronising, but Jo had long since appointed herself the guard dog of any woman who came into the bar alone. The Roadhouse put her and her mom in a unique position- the guys who came in here knew not to fuck around with either of them, or they'd lose the one good hunter bar in the state. And if that wasn't enough to keep them in line, there was always her mom's rifle stashed under the counter.
Consciously or not, she kept close to the rifle as she watched the pair in the corner. By the looks of it, she had nothing to worry about- the other woman seemed pretty in control of the situation, her professional demeanour and piercing eyes keeping him in check. A few minutes passed, Jo served a couple of regulars, somebody put another quarter in the jukebox. Ash came back from the store and went straight to the back room, saluting her with one hand and carrying a family pack of Cheetos in the other. Jo cleaned glasses and refilled the bowl of peanuts on the bar, always keeping one eye on the corner table. Though she still couldn't make out a word, the conversation seemed to be growing tense- the woman sat back with her arms crossed and her brow set in a steely glare; Hank leaned forward, prodding the table emphatically with his gnarled sausage fingers. A drop of spittle must've shot across the table, because the woman took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped a spot on her cheek. By now, Jo had dropped all pretence of polishing glasses. When she stopped staring a hole into the back of the guy's head to look back at the woman, the woman met her gaze.
Jo furrowed her brow and nodded towards Hank: This guy bothering you?
The woman slyly raised an eyebrow: Nothing I can't handle.
She shrugged, and gave what she hoped was a sympathetic expression as the woman turned back to her conversation. She'd been on the receiving end of Hank's drunken bullshit enough times herself, though she always gave as good as she got. Her mom always said that attitude was gonna get her killed one day, not that she'd have acted any different herself. If her mom wasn't on a hunt right now, maybe she'd have stepped in already- though, in fairness, maybe if Ellen Harvelle had been around, Hank wouldn't have been so damn ballsy.
Jo had just made up her mind to leave the woman to deal with it herself when Hank exploded. He slammed his hand down on the table so hard his empties rattled, and his gruff voice echoed round the bar- "Stupid bitch, I oughta fucking kill you!"
"Hey!" Jo snapped, like Hank was a disobedient dog that had just shat all over her floor. He whipped round in his chair. The other patrons looked from Jo, to Hank, to Jo again. "None of that shit in my bar tonight, Hank, you hear me?"
Hank stood up slowly, his face beet-red, like all six foot of him was gonna intimidate her into minding her own business. Like she hadn't killed monsters twice his size and five times his intelligence. She didn't flinch.
"You talking to me?"
"There another Hank in this joint?"
He stepped forward. Jo walked round the bar to meet him. He looked her up and down. "This ain't your fucking bar, princess."
"Sure as shit's gonna be my boot up your ass in a second," she spat, crossing her arms over her chest (mostly because she knew how good her biceps looked like that. She wasn't as scrawny as she used to be). "Unless you get out of my fucking bar."
A tense second passed. Every eye in the room was on them, watching with mild interest as if a bar fight might liven up their evening a little. They must've been kinda disappointed when Hank huffed and started to turn away. He grabbed his coat from the back of his chair, gave the woman one last wordless dirty glare, and passed Jo again on his way to the door, muttering something just loud enough for her to hear. The only words she made out were "dirty fuckin' dyke".
Jo snapped. "One more word outta you and it'll be my damn buckshot up your ass instead."
Hank chuntered a meaningless reply and slammed the door on his way out. Someone across the room let out a low whistle, and the half a dozen hunters in the bar went back to their beers like they'd never been interrupted.
Jo huffed and uncrossed her arms. As stupid as it was, as much as she knew she could defended herself if she had to, her heart still pounded in her chest. Despite the fact she'd just stood her ground and successfully kicked the guy out of her bar, she felt weirdly small. She told herself she was being stupid. She'd handled it, and now she could get back to her damn job. She rolled back her shoulders, stood a little taller.
The sharp click of heels snapped her back to reality, and she turned around to see the brown haired woman walking her way. Casual as you like, the woman strolled past her to the bar and perched on a grotty old stool, one elbow resting on the counter. She looked at Jo expectantly.
Jo held her gaze as she walked back behind the bar. She planted her hands palm-down on the bar, a little over shoulder-width apart. She noted with a twinge of satisfaction the way the other woman's eyes flitted to her forearms.
"Well," she said, finally, the slightest hint of a smirk on her lips. The British accent was a surprise. "Aren't you my knight in shining armour."
Jo couldn't tell if she was joking. She shrugged. "Hank's been asking for someone to put him in his place for a long time. Honestly, I've been waiting for an excuse."
The woman's painted lips parted in a grin. "Then I suppose you should be thanking me."
The corner of her lips quirked upwards. "Get you a drink? Sure you could use one."
"Whisky. On the rocks."
Jo raised an eyebrow in surprise, but set a glass with a couple ice cubes down on the counter. The woman laughed. "Is that a problem?"
She shrugged and turned to the liquor shelf. "Just figured you were more of a, I dunno, top-shelf champagne kinda girl."
"And what gives you that impression?" When Jo turned back to the bar, bottle in hand, the other woman was leaning forward on both elbows, holding up her glass.
The slim neck of the bottle clinked against the glass as she poured out a double measure. "We don't get many in here looking like you, is all. Our usual clientele has less..."
"... Manners?" The woman offered.
"Teeth," she replied. The woman laughed at that. She raised the glass to her lips. Jo's eyes followed the elegant line of her throat as she swallowed. Realising she probably looked like a bit of a creep- and this woman's dealt with enough of those tonight- she cleared her throat and absently flicked a spot of dirt off the counter. "What brings you here, anyway?"
The woman thought for a second before she spoke. "I had business to conduct with- our mutual friend."
"Hank?" Jo snickered. "What sorta business could you have with him?" Did this woman even know this was a hunter bar?
Again, she hesitated. "I trade in... Unique artefacts, shall we say." That answers that, then. "Our friend was interested in my wares but wasn't willing to be reasonable on the price. Honestly, you'd think you could just pick up a seven hundred year old pagan high priestess' sacrificial knife at Walmart."
"So where did you find a seven hundred year old sacrificial knife?"
The woman gave her an unreadable smile, like she was sharing a private joke that Jo wasn't in on. "If I told you that, I'd have to kill you."
Jo rolled her eyes. "Suit yourself. Name's Jo, by the way."
"Bela. Pleasure to meet you, Jo." Bela. Can't get more femme fatale than that. Jo didn't even care if it was her real name. Bela held out her hand- a practiced gesture, elegant and precise and casual as everything else about her. Her eyes lingered for a long moment on the woman's perfectly manicured hand, her delicate wrist in its silver bracelet, her slender fingers, before she offered up her own- all stress-bitten nails and calloused skin. Bela didn't seem to mind. As she took her hand, eyes flickered to Jo's chest. Jo felt her cheeks flush.
"Interesting necklace," Bela said. Oh. Jo tried not to feel weirdly disappointed. She let go of Bela's hand and fiddled with the pendant that hung around her neck from a leather cord.
"Thanks. Uh, an old protection symbol. Had it since I was a kid."
Bela's lip curled upwards. "Does it work?"
"Well, I'm not dead yet, so."
"Touché." Bela leaned forwards, her fingers brushing Jo's as she took the pendant lightly. Jo let herself be drawn in by the pull of the leather cord as Bela took a closer look. "A sigil. Hm. I always found it odd, the way hunters will kill someone for using witchcraft, but they'll pay a fortune for a talisman of their own. Pretty hypocritical, don't you think?"
"Huh." Jo stopped to think. "I guess there's good magic and bad magic. Depends how you use it. Sure, I know a few hardcore hunters who'd disagree- if it ain't one hundred percent human it's getting fried, that sorta attitude- but for me, guess it's like any other weapon. The same knife you use to attack one person can defend someone else."
"And sometimes that's the same thing." A strange look passed over Bela's face, for a fleeting moment; it reminded Jo of that moment during the investigation stage of a hunt, when the witness leaves and you can drop the act for a second. Before she could comment, the woman had schooled her features back into a cocky smile. The witness was back, the character assumed once again. She let go of the pendant, and Jo suddenly became aware of how close their faces had been throughout the entire interaction. She swallowed and leaned back a little. Bela grinned. "You're not exactly what I expected from a hunter."
"Yeah?"
Bela hummed, taking a drink. "More... Philosophical."
Jo huffed a laugh, crossing her arms. "That's a first. Wait till I tell my mom."
"I'm sure you're not giving yourself enough credit," Bela practically purred. Jo couldn't believe her luck.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. Jo took a few orders, poured a few drinks, wiped a few tables- but always rushed straight back (as casually as she could) to carry on talking to Bela. She was incredible. Intelligent, funny, a little bit mean, confident, well-travelled, well-read. Jo could easily have been intimidated by her. Instead, she stood her ground, telling Bela a few stories from her more impressive hunts, flashing her a few charming smiles, talking her through how she got her battle scars when Bela pointed them out. (Okay, maybe she played them up a little, made the hunts seem more dangerous than they really were, but who can blame her?)
She didn't notice how late it was till the last regular raised a hand goodbye and walked out the door. A glance out the window at the dark sky- so black it seemed almost purple, with a few little stars just visible behind the grimy glass panes- told her it had to be near midnight. The last bars of a Zeppelin song echoed around the bar, almost eerie in its emptiness. Near-emptiness.
Bela met her gaze and slowly slid her glass across the expanse between them. There was that daring look in her eyes again, the one that made Jo's breath catch in her throat. Bela seemed to enjoy that. "One more for the road?"
Jo's lip curled upwards. If she wanted any more than just a stimulating conversation tonight, now was her last chance. Barely breaking the look between them, she set a second glass down on the counter and poured out two fingers in each. "Road's pretty dangerous this time of night. Local cab company doesn't come this far out of town."
"That's disappointing." Bela didn't look at all disappointed.
"You staying nearby? I could give you a ride."
"I don't doubt it," she replied, in a tone that stopped Jo's heart in its tracks. It had been a long time since a woman had flirted with her so shamelessly- in fact, it had been months since she'd had a chance to flirt at all. She begged herself not to mess this up.
With a steady hand she raised the glass to her lips, tipped her head back and downed it in one, feeling the familiar pleasant burn of whisky travel down her throat. She willed herself not to grimace at the sting of it; she knew Bela would be watching. She set the glass down with a clink and leaned forward on her elbows, her voice a low drawl. "Then again, you could always stay over."
Bela's eyebrow quirked upwards. "Do you have a spare bed?"
"No."
"Good."
*
It was only once they reached Jo's bedroom door that she realised what a bad idea this might be. Not the company, definitely not the sex- but bringing Bela back to her room? She took it in as if seeing it for the first time: faded blue flowery wallpaper that hadn't been changed since the 70's, a closet full of band tees that hid an arsenal in the back, an overflowing laundry basket, a small desk littered with candy bar wrappers and newspaper clippings from her last case, a double bed that rivalled a Tracey Emin piece. A rickety bookcase lined one narrow wall, the lower shelves packed with Manila folders full of case research; the middle shelves with books of lore from all around the world, theology, demonology, paganism, history, anthropology, parapsychology, voodoo, hoodoo, cryptozoology; the top shelf was her personal collection- a few battered old noirs and pulp fiction novels, survival guides, and a couple of gender studies books from that one semester at community college. The wall by her bed was almost completely covered: old photos of Jo and her parents, Jo aged eleven holding her first shotgun, Jo and her (very few) college friends at a bar; posters for The Runaways, The Donnas, Bikini Kill, The Cranberries; taking centre stage was her personal favourite, an original 1993 cover of Vanity Fair featuring the insanely hot KD Lang and Cindy Crawford barbershop shoot.
She could've slapped past-Jo for leaving the room in such a mess. Bela, surprisingly, thankfully, didn't seem to mind. She cast a glance over the room and strolled straight to the bookcase, bending down and lightly running a finger over the titles on the middle shelf.
"You've got quite the collection here. I know people who'd pay a fortune for some of these."
Jo followed her, slowly, hungrily eyeing the parts of her body where the dress clung to tightest. All intelligent thought flew out the window. She leaned against the bookcase, just in front of the woman. "They're not for sale."
"Shame." Bela picked a title- an anthology of North American folklore- and flicked casually through the well-worn pages with a small smile. "This brings me back to my days at uni."
"You studied this shit?" Maybe if Jo had found a course like that, she would've finished her degree.
"Anthropology and Classical Civilization, with an emphasis on cross-cultural belief in demons," she answered absently, as if that was a normal thing to say.
"Huh. That how you got into the life?"
Bela blinked. "More or less. But I didn't come here to talk about demonology."
"Really?" Jo frowned, mockingly. "So what did you come here to talk about?"
She smiled, stepped forward into Jo's space. "I wasn't planning on doing much talking at all."
Bela's lips tasted of whisky and the slightly chemical tang of makeup. Her skin was soft where Jo's hand met the back of her neck, pulling her down to her level (though Jo still had to stand on her tiptoes to make up the distance), and when her breath hitched in desire her chest pressed against Jo's. She pulled Jo forward by her belt loops, a low sigh escaping her as Jo sucked at her lower lip. Jo's hand travelled down from her neck to her collarbone to her shoulder, running a finger lightly underneath the thin black strap of her dress. Bela stepped back abruptly.
For a moment Jo thought she'd done something wrong- had she misread the signals somewhere? Was she moving too fast? Making her uncomfortable?- but then Bela looked down at her, almost smug, and reached behind her back to unzip her dress.
*
That was a crazy dream. Great, yeah, but crazy. That was a dream, right? There was no way Jo actually hooked up with an insanely hot British woman last night. Didn't know her subconscience had a thing for British accents, but, hey. Maybe if she let herself drift back off she could stay in that world a little longer.
Her mom had other ideas.
"Jo!"
Jo grunted in response.
Her mom shouted again. "Joanna Beth, get your lazy ass down here!"
Reluctantly, she rubbed her eyes and sat up. Huh. She wasn't expecting herself to be naked. Why would she sleep naked?
She was too tired to care. She threw on some underwear, grabbed some ratty jeans and a tank top from the laundry basket, ran a hand through her hair. Turning to her bedside table, she grabbed her phone, her dad's knife, and her-
Where was her necklace?
"Shit." She looked on the floor, the windowsill, checked her pockets, checked her jacket. Still nothing. She'd worn that pendant every day of her life since she was ten years old, and every night she put it in that exact spot on her table, right next to her pillow, and now it was gone. "Shit."
Getting a little frantic now, she tossed aside the duvet and searched the bed. Nothing down the side of the bed or underneath it, either. When she threw the pillows to one side, something caught her eye- something fluttering to the floor. On closer inspection, she found a folded bar napkin, stained with red lipstick in one corner with an inscription in neat black pen in the middle:
Sorry, sweetie x
"... Shit."
