InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Inconceivable!"

Joanna Beth Harvelle (reoismyantidrug) wrote in entrywaythreads,
@ 2021-02-12 22:10:00

Entry tags:

bucky barnes, jo harvelle

Kind of Like Home

Jo Harvelle

Bucky Barnes

WHERE
The Last Round

WHEN
2.12.21
8:30 pm

STATUS
PG
Open to Multiples

WARNINGS
TBD

Checking out the local hole in the wall

The more she noted, the more like home it felt.

To be quite honest, Jo had shown up in this place with very little desire to check things out in the beginning. As far as she was concerned, it was better to just lay low and get her head on straight before she ever made her way through the insanity that was bound to be Purgatory.

Her first venture around the place was when Michael was named Mayor of the joint. That alone was probably a sign that things were not going to be running smoothly around here. She'd gone, she'd seen, she drank, she was surprisingly amused... and then she'd gone back to her rinky-dink apartment and settled back into the quietness of being alone once again.

Tonight, however, two days before what she knew to be Valentine's day, Jo was feeling cooped up and stir crazy, dying for human interaction even if she didn't necessarily have to interact with them to accomplish it. It was those feelings that led the hunter to The Last Round, a bar that looked more like her scene than the others she'd seen around the place and reminded her somewhat of the Roadhouse. It was really the nostalgia it inspired within her that had her deciding that this was the place.

Making her way in, she took a good look around and then settled herself on a stool at the bar. An order of a beer and a shot of chilled whiskey was made before she turned and took in the rest of the atmosphere. The more she noted, the more like home it felt. She could see herself being here fairly often, perhaps even working here if they were willing to give her the job. It'd be a good trade-off, she thought.

Once her drinks were set in front of her, she took the shot first — liquor before beer, in the clear — and then took a slow drag of her beer. Jo didn't know what the night would bring, but it couldn't be all bad, could it? After all, she was in Purgatory... was she really in any kind of real danger? She supposed she'd find out for certain if a fight broke out, but until then, she'd just sit back and take it all in.

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freezerburn
2021-03-07 02:31 am UTC (link)

Bucky shrugged his metal shoulder, the hand suddenly hidden in his coat pocket for the moment. He was lucky that he'd shown up in something that wasn't either his uniform (a good jacket, sure, but his arm was totally exposed) or something for warm climate (because Gehenna, though not Russia, wasn't exactly warm central). He had a pretty sturdy coat that kept his arm concealed from the majority of the people here. Important, because though he was vocal about it over their version of the internet, he also wasn't waving it around here in the every day world, flipping people the bird every time he could. A metal arm was something you could easily hide, and so he did.

"I don't know what a star trek is, but it doesn't sound like a good time." He wrinkled his nose. Dangerous. She called drinking dangerous, which meant she knew what alcohol was, and she knew what it did both to her and the people around her. And it meant that, somewhere deep down, under all that cute blonde hair and that cute smile, she was a fighter.

Because regular girls didn't call alcohol dangerous. They called it fun and just one more. Danger only became clear with alcohol when you were afraid of something coming up behind you, and you knew that if you drank too much, you wouldn't be able to help yourself out of a bad situation.

He sat down on the stool just beside her, his cup clinking as he set it back down and gestured to the bartender to get him some more. "So, what monsters do you hide from?"

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reoismyantidrug
2021-03-14 03:47 pm UTC (link)

He was strange. A little too observant. Jo could tell from looking at him that he'd probably led an interesting life. A rough one, for sure... but she didn't know what kind of rough. After all, "rough" came in all forms. Jo had learned to decipher what kind of "rough" a person was in most situations, but this one was an enigma.

He hadn't given anything away in his mannerisms or his speech patterns. She was no behaviorist, but she could spot certain tactics — lying was an easy one, for example — and people had so many tells that she'd found herself looking for them upon first meeting someone. Poker was a damn good teacher for that and Jo was a pro at the card game.

She was surprised, however, when he moved from his own seat and took the one next to her. Her fingers itched to grab the knife from her pocket, the one with the initials W. A. H., but she withheld for the moment. If need be, she could defend herself, but that didn't mean that this guy was going to make her.

What monsters do you hide from?

The question caught her offguard as much as his shift in seats did.

Monsters.

She swallowed and took another pull of her beer.

Monsters.

She'd been ripped apart by a monster. She'd hunted them damn near her entire life, which hadn't been that long. She'd been in love with two men who did the same thing... given her life for one of them.

So, she supposed there was only one answer to that question...

"I don't hide from monsters... I find them and I kill them."

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freezerburn
2021-03-17 05:43 pm UTC (link)

"That wasn't exactly my question," Bucky said. He turned in his seat, looking at her face. She was tiny, and she had cute blonde hair and huge eyes. She looked like every other girl who had ever danced with him, who had ever chased Steve. She looked normal, which meant that she probably wasn't, if she was here.

"More like..." He tapped his flesh fingers against the bar. "More like I was asking if you were hiding from personal demons like drinking too much or your uncle beat you or something like that. But hey, monsters, let's jump into that."

He pulled his metal hand out of his pocket and picked up his glass. There was no point hiding it here, no point shoving it into his pocket for very long. He didn't like to wave it in the faces of other people, but hiding it so as not to scare the other denizens of purgatory was sort of like hiding a runaway train in the desert: couldn't be done, and why bother, anyway?

"So, which monsters are your favorite to hunt?" Because anything had to be better than a discussion about why she hunted the monsters, right?

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reoismyantidrug
2021-03-21 02:58 pm UTC (link)

"Personal demons don't exactly take a starring role in my life. They're more like a backstage setup needed to keep the top-billed diva happy and calm," she quipped, smirking ever so slightly as she thought about it herself. The things that happened in her life and in her mind could probably accurately be attributed to some kind of soap opera, really. It'd be supernatural in nature, but still apt.

With the appearance of a very metal hand, Jo's eyebrow raised and she didn't bother hiding her interest in the new arrival. It wasn't something she'd seen before in her lifetime and so it was curious.

After a moment, she turned her attention back to her alcohol and the conversation at hand.

... at hand... she couldn't help but snort at that one.

Clearing her throat, she ran her own very flesh-covered hand through her hair and took another pull of her beer. "Favorite? I don't know that I really have a favorite, but the vindictiveness in me would probably say Rawhead. And if I ever get my hands on a hellhound, I'd probably take great pleasure in that."

A Rawhead caused her father's death (though some would say that blame belonged with John Winchester) and a hellhound was responsible for her own. So there was that nifty little twinge of serotonin every time she killed one (or imagined she could kill one).

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freezerburn
2021-03-29 06:32 am UTC (link)

"Germans, for me. Big old ugly ones with a bad sense of what passes for human compassion." Bucky picked up his drank and swallowed all of it, ignoring the bite of the alcohol. It stung his throat, but it was usually gone as fast as he'd swallowed. The upsides of seventy years of torment, right?

He tapped his metal thumb against the glass, wrinkling his nose. He made a face and then turned the glass upside down and turned in his seat to smile at her. It wasn't really a false smile, but you could tell something was missing, there, some tiny portion of the expression just that off.

"So tell me what a rawhead is," he said. A hellhound made sense, but he'd never heard of a rawhead. He didn't think he knew anyone who had, either, but what did he know?

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reoismyantidrug
2021-04-02 09:01 pm UTC (link)

Jo was familiar with that expression. It was the same one that she'd seen in her mother's eyes on occasion. The same one she'd seen on the Winchesters' faces. On other hunters. In the reflection of the mirror. Oh yes, that facial expression was so familiar to her that it almost ached to see it on some stranger.

Downing the rest of her own drink, she ordered a second for herself and one for her "new friend", then turned to look at the other patrons in this place.

It was always weird at first, talking monsters with someone who was new to the life. Or thought that a person might just be telling tales. She'd seen plenty of hunters have "the talk" with newbies. So this was just par for the course, she supposed.

"A Rawhead," she started, "is a demon. It looks like a human but the skin is... it's all wrinkled and sagging and doesn't fit really well. Almost like it was pulled on as a half-thought and it's leathery as hell. It has claws on its hands and feet and it likes to hide in basements."

Thinking of her own run-ins with them had her grimacing. "They aren't easy to kill. The only thing that really does it is high voltage. It's strong and it's fast... and it preys on kids." She found her new beer by her hand as she finished and seemed to punctuate her sentence with a swig of it.

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freezerburn
2021-04-05 06:43 am UTC (link)

"Mm." Bucky tapped his metal hand against his palm, suddenly sorry he'd skipped out on the glove. It made a dull clicking noise, and it wasn't exactly Bucky's favorite noise. "Monsters are bad. Monsters that eat children are worse."

He wrinkled up his own nose. "I could probably help you if any of those show up here." What the hell did Bucky know? They might. Except for the arm, Bucky was more or less immune to electricity; it might fry the arm or send it into a reset, but Bucky was pretty sure with Shuri having constructed the arm for him, it would be flawless. The kid had talents, a lot of them. But Bucky's own body handled electricity with shockingly (no pun intended) little reaction.

Plus, he'd be willing to bet a Wakandan prosthetic had its upsides in a monster fight.

"The worst monsters," he said, reaching for the fresh glass of rotgut he'd been handed, "are the ones that look like humans." He thought of Pierce, of that sharp blue gaze and the body that had aged faster than Bucky had thought possible when he'd been able to remember anything at all.

He thought of Zola. And his face tightened into the rictus mask, a smile that was false and so painfully obvious in what it lacked. He hated that man. And worse, he hated that he'd been unable to kill him.

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