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Faith loves her bike. Loves to bend forward and duck her head under the wind, feel the road rushing by under her feet and the engine between her thighs. The fenders gleam black and the chrome shines like the moon, and there's a nice little custom logo of a crossed sword and stake on the side. She can shoot a crossbow from the seat and hit a moving target without slowing down.
Halfway from Salt Lake to Cleveland, though, she's forced to admit the bike's not the best thing for a road trip. Especially not after a week of tracking and killing a stone demon. Her muscles ache, her visor is spattered with bugs, and her teeth are jittering from the long ride.
She's in the middle of nowhere, bumfuck Nebraska, when she pulls off the highway and sees the sign: ROADHOUSE.
Faith angles the bike into the tiny dirt parking lot and leaves it under a tree. There's a knife in one pocket of her jacket, and a stake in the other pocket, but she leaves the rest of her weapons in the saddlebags. She's a slayer; she can pretty much handle anything the average bar can dish out. Besides, a crowded bar doesn't leave much room to swing a sword.
Inside, the jukebox is playing loud and the air is full of smoke and conversation. Faith is used to tracking things, sensing when something is not right, and this place feels just a little off. The bar is filled with guys in leather and flannel and denim, ordinary people in an ordinary bar in the middle of the country, but there's a feeling in the air of awareness, of observation. Faith knows she's being watched. She doesn't get the feeling of a vamp or a demon or anything, though. Just a weird kind of wariness.
Trying hard to act as normal as she can -- nothing to see here -- she steps up to the bar and waits her turn. The bartender's down at the other end, leaning on her elbows and talking to a skinny guy with a big blond mullet. She's cute -- trim and lean and there's a good three inches of bare skin above the waistband of her jeans. She has long blonde hair, and Faith has always liked blondes. Faith just enjoys the view and waits patiently for her beer, but she must be more distracted than she thought, because suddenly she hears the word demon behind her and everything else fades into the background.
She doesn't turn her head or look around, just sits there with her eyes still on Blondie the Bartender's firm little ass and listens hard to the conversations around her. The guys in the bar, and nearly all the patrons are male, are talking about lots of things: Cornhuskers football and farming and taxes. Faith skips through the words like a motel TV, trying to pick out the voice she heard before. And there it is.
"Four suspicious deaths in six months, and--"
"Hey there, what'll it be?" It's Blondie the bartender, and up close her front is just as cute as her back side, slim and straight with firm little breasts and long waves of hair like some old movie star.
"Whatever's on tap is good." Actually she wants to cross the bar and pummel those guys until they tell her what the hell they were talking about, but a beer'll do.
Blondie pours the beer and Faith tries to find the conversation about suspicious deaths again, but all she can hear are the goddamn Cornhuskers.
"Here you go," says Blondie with a smile, setting the pint down on the bar. "My name is Jo. You just holler if you need somethin'."
Faith grins, because who the fuck says holler anyway, and flashes a dimple. "I'll do that." She takes a minute to watch the bartender -- Jo -- walk away before she glances around the rest of the bar.
There's a police scanner next to the cash register, and an old guy in the back poring over three or four newspapers. A horseshoe nailed over the front door, but then that's not all that strange. Faith's eyes track up the walls and across the thick ceiling beam, carved all over with intricate protective runes. That's a little bit more unusual.
What is this place?
She's glancing around again, and sees Jo say something to the older woman at the other end of the bar, then slip out the back door. It's as good an opportunity as any, as good as she's going to get, and Faith leaves her beer behind as she follows.
Outside, there's a dirt parking lot with a couple of old, junky cars and trash cans. A floodlight attached to the roof lights up a big circle around the bar, and Jo is standing under it lighting up a cigarette. She looks different out here, away from the beers and the jukebox and all that stuff. Smaller, out of her element. But then she looks up at Faith and catches her eye, and Faith sees something else behind that blonde hair and that soft, rounded face. There's a hardness to her too, just enough to make Faith back off for a second and pull out a cigarette of her own.
"Got a light?"
Jo presses the glowing end of her cigarette to Faith's, and Faith cups it with her hand and inhales. She leans back against the wall, not quite close enough to touch but almost. They stand there under the floodlight and smoke their cigarettes for a few minutes, listening to the cicadas out back and the muffled music coming from inside.
"So what is this place?" Faith finally asks.
"Just a bar," Jo says quickly. Too quickly.
Faith raises her cigarette to her lips and inhales, says nothing. Sometimes that tactic works, but Jo doesn't say anything else, so when she lets out the lungful of smoke she has to ask another question.
"And the carvings on the ceiling? What's that about?"
Jo drops her half-smoked cigarette into the dirt and steps on it. She looks up and meets Faith's eyes, deliberate. "Why do you ask?"
It's her job to see those things, to ask these questions, but Faith doesn't explain that. If she's right, she doesn't need to explain anything to this girl. "You tryin' to keep something out, or hold something in?" she asks instead.
"Out." The answer is fast, definite. It's not so much the answer that tells Faith what she needs to know, but the fact that Jo answered at all.
There's a whole lot of darkness beyond the circle of the floodlight, but neither one of them looks that way. Jo licks her bottom lip and looks up, the calculated expression on her face changing so fast it makes Faith blink. She's coy now, smiling and looking up through long mascara-coated lashes. It's just as contrived as the tough-girl mask she was wearing a minute ago, but that doesn't really matter. Faith drops her cigarette in the dirt and turns toward her, smiling back.
They're about the same height, so Faith just leans forward and angles her head and then they're kissing, just like that. Jo's lips slide over her own, lipstick slick and smooth across her tongue, tasting of cigarettes and beer and Mary Kay. There's no hesitation here; the coy act is gone as fast as it appeared. Jo's kisses are fast and hungry, her hands grasp at Faith's shoulders and push her back against the wall, then drop lower and knead at her breasts, nipples already firm and aching.
Faith could shove this girl off of her and push her up against the wall in a second, of course, could throw her through the wall if she wanted. Instead she leans back and lets her drive, wrapping one arm around her waist and slipping her fingers in under the tight waistband of her jeans, pulling her body closer. Jo's breasts press up against her own, and Faith arches her back, tries to create a little more friction. Jo's fingers are clever, her hand kneading and twisting and tweaking Faith's nipples through the thin material of her t-shirt, and fuck that feels good.
She wiggles out of her leather jacket, hears it fall to the ground with a hard thunk. Her weapons are still in the pockets, but damn if that matters at all. Faith's a slayer, she doesn't need that shit to kick ass, should anything interrupt them. And if anything does interrupt, she doesn't care if it's a monster or the damn fry cook, they're getting a good ass-kicking, because Jo has got Faith's t-shirt pushed up to her armpits now, bra shoved aside and kissing and tonguing at her chest like she only has a fifteen-minute break and she already wasted half of it on nicotine and now she needs a different kind of fix.
Faith reaches for her waistband, but there's something in the way. Looking down, she can see it's the little half-apron that Jo was wearing inside, with a pencil and a notepad and a couple wads of tip money in the pocket. She fumbles around and gets the thing untied finally, then reaches for the buttons on Jo's jeans, opening them as fast as she can and slipping her hand inside. Jo's panties are slick already, and Faith pushes past the wet fabric and presses one knuckle to her clit, twisting and pushing her hand as best she can inside the tight denim. With her other hand, she grabs Jo's tit, the nipple hard like glass already, and gives it a little twist, just hard enough to hurt in the best possible way, and that's all it takes. Jo is gasping in her ear, forehead pressed against the bar wall behind her, cursing softly and breath tickling Faith's ear.
"Fuck," she says. "I needed that." She reaches for Faith's zipper, head still pressed against the wall. Faith starts to pull her hand away, fingers slick with wetness, but Jo bites her earlobe and says, "Don't stop."
She pushes Faith's jeans down over her hips and slips one finger inside like she knows just what Faith likes, like they've been doing this for years. Her other hand rests against the wall by Faith's head, and she's leaning against it with her elbow locked, a guy's stance that's kinda funny from such a small girl. Faith just watches her face, flushed and pink with blonde hairs stuck in her lipstick. It's all she can do to keep her own knuckles rubbing over Jo's clit as those long fingers fuck her, slip-sliding against all the right places and turning her insides to liquid. The heel of Jo's hand is pressing against her clit, and Faith grinds down against it, her back scraping against the wall. She can feel the pressure building low in her belly, and she grabs a handful of blonde hair and pulls Jo in for a rough kiss, tongues and teeth and lips and wet and soft all at once. She's pressing down, her hips flexing as Jo's fingers pulse inside of her and her hand rubs against her clit and a wave of release sweeps through her, spreading that heat out from her belly through her legs and arms. Faith breaks the kiss and lets her head fall back against the wall, just breathing and feeling her pulse pound in her veins.
She trails her fingers across Jo's cheek, and Jo turns her head and takes them in her mouth, sucking hard on one finger, then two. Faith comes back to herself a little bit, realizes she still has one hand down Jo's jeans and someone isn't ready to head back inside yet. She twists her hand around inside the tight jeans, trying to get a little bit of room to maneuver, but Jo grabs her wrist and holds her in place with still-sticky fingers.
"Wait," she says, voice muffled by the way her tongue is still wrapped around Faith's fingers. "Just-- like that -- yeah. Fuck." And Faith gets it, uses her knuckles and sets up a rhythm, pressing hard and fast against the slick nub of flesh and then there's a gasping hitch of breath and Faith feels the legs pressed against her own begin to shake and sharp little teeth bite down onto her fingers.
Faith grins and leans in again for another kiss, slower and languid this time, full of satisfaction and sated release. She trails her spit-slicked fingers through Jo's hair and wipes her other hand on her own jeans. Jo pulls back slowly without actually stepping away, and does up her jeans while her legs are still pressed to Faith's.
"Thanks," she says, with a little lopsided smile that's a lot more real than anything Faith saw from her before.
"My pleasure," Faith says, leaning forward and pressing another kiss against her lips.
She just laughs and grabs her apron off the ground before stepping away toward the door. "I gotta get back to my shift." Faith nods and watches the door close behind her, then reaches down and fishes around in her discarded jacket for another cigarette. She lights it and holds it between her lips as she zips up her jeans and pulls her shirt down over her chest. She draws in the smoke slow and smooth, feels her pulse slow down from its frantic pace. The roaring in her ears subsides and she can hear the sound of cars out on the road, the jukebox still churning out music inside.
When she's done with her smoke, she slips her jacket back on and steps inside, stops off at the bathroom to wash her hands and comb through her hair a little, make sure she doesn't look too thoroughly fucked. Jo's talking to the old guy with the newspapers, leaning over his shoulder and reading something that's circled in red, but she leaves off and walks over when Faith comes in.
"You know, I never got your name," she says with another lopsided smile, leaning over the bar.
Faith fishes out her wallet to pay for the beer she never drank and lays down a ten. "It's Faith," she says, smiling wide and flashing a dimple. And then, because she can tell there really is more to this place than just a police scanner and some Hoodoo protection carvings, she asks, "Gotta pen?"
Jo hands her a pen out of her apron, and Faith grabs a cocktail napkin and writes her cell number on it. "You hear about anything goin' down in Cleveland, you let me know and I'll take care of it."
"I'll do that. Faith." Jo's voice has a little lilt to it as she says the name. She takes the napkin and slips it into her apron pocket with the ten-dollar bill. "Don't be a stranger now."
Faith grins at her, remembering the taste of her lipstick and the little breathy sounds she made. "Oh, I'll be back."
It's the next day by the time she rolls into Cleveland, but she's still thinking about that girl.
Three weeks later she gets a message from an unfamiliar number, and it's Jo's voice telling her about three murdered watermen in a warehouse down by the docks, and how it might be some kind of angry spirit. Angry spirits aren't really her thing, but Faith figures it's worth checking out.