10821/Great(ly Normal) Expectations

Great(ly Normal) Expectations
Date of Scene:	19 April 2022
Location:	House of Mystery
Synopsis:	John is a mess and for once it's not his own blood!
Cast of Characters:	John Constantine, Meggan Puceanu

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John Constantine has posed:
John's day is often recognizable by the state of his coat and how fast he takes it off when he gets home, so the fact that he's dropped it half-way between the door and the couch, right there on the floor, sopping wet and covered in brown and green sludge. A few feet further in, his shoes, then socks.

We find John Constantine on the couch, barefoot, with his sleeves undone and his head tilted all the way back over the edge of the couch. He has a cigarette in his mouth and he's taking a long drag with his eyes closed.

Long day.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The sacred coat, stained and patched, is so mistreated after its valiant service. A strategy to shed the vestiges of armour leaves that honourable servant heaped on the floor, a sorry state of affairs. John may have done away with it, but the House will not be so ignobly decorated or his clothes neglected. He might have several lungfuls of poisoned smoke down before the House's other long-term resident, other than the House itself, makes her appearance.

No footsteps announce her because, like him, she's barefoot. Unlike him, Meggan defaults to hovering above the ground unless consciously focused on treading the floor. In bare feet, bright glittery rose-pink nail polish freshly applied, she skates across the ground to catch the poor coat. Sweeping it up lightly, she assesses the state of the garment after a light shake. If no mice, string, demons or cats fall out, all is well.

The benefit for having an elemental around? She can sing out the sludge or the goo into their proper places, piled up while a puddle of pure water gathers about 8 inches above the ground.

"Welcome home, love," she merrily chimes, up to absolutely no good in trying to pull out the congealed goo from the deeper fibres. "You slosh around a sewer this time or you get up to your eyeballs tramping through a swamp?"

John Constantine has posed:
"I took a bus on a whim, ended up tipping through a cross-dimensional rift that dumped us into a swamp being invaded by the Rot. It took Swamp Thing forever to bloody show up, but we handled it once he did." John plucks the cigarette from his mouth and tilts his head to look over at Meggan.

"You'd think the wanker would have a better monitoring system by now."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Swampie's doing well?" Trust another, smaller guardian of the Green to be intimately interested in that. Her smile perks right up, cresting to the point of a sun rising in the house, but limited somewhat from becoming too overwhelming. "Should we keep this together for him or jar it up for the library?" The leaf-green eyes brighten, pupils subsumed, their traces of humanity shed for a few moments as she critically assesses the goopy combinations.

"Could be he wants you to show up and help out?" With total innocence, that comment comes. She whisks the coat over to a closet, tapping on the door first. Then the trench coat ends up installed on a perfectly regular wooden hanger, good as... well, whatever it can be called. Not new. Intact.

A swivel flares the button-down shirt turned into a dress of sorts, and she easily flits back to John. "You've good reason to put him on notice for being off for a bank holiday. We need to wander to Murias and see a man about a dog." Scrunching up her face to avoid laughing, she manages it for a few seconds. "I reckon my cousins'll be mighty ticked to Excalibur's letting me carry him around."

John Constantine has posed:
"He's doing as well as he ever is, luv. Bloody stubborn and pathologically grumpy." John takes another long drag of his cigarette and then leans back against the couch, watching Meggan. "If he wants mew to help out, he could just bloody well ask." But Swamp Thing is, well, Swamp Thing. No more capable of politeness than John himself; less, maybe.

"Dog?" Did he forget something? It wouldn't be the first time. "Your cousins'll have to deal with reality, unless they decide to alter it." And that's a whole other kettle of fish. He finishes his cigarette and then flicks it away; it doesn't make it to the floor before being incinerated completely; not even ash left.

"I'd say you're chipper tonight but it _is_ your face next to the word in the dictionary."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"He's always nice to me. Maybe we can wrap this up nicely for him, with a cutting from the garden?" Giving a thoughtful look to the assembled gunk, Meggan dusts her hands off. "Plunk a proper cinnamon stick in it, and call everything done. Or a seed if we've one that belongs elsewhere."

Rotating to face John, she floats in place for a moment before launching into a full-out pounce that sends her descending like a golden-swept comet. "The Tuatha have a responsibility to guard Excalibur, but they failed at that with Felix Faust. Ever since I've taken it back I've wondered about the responsibility for guarding it. Last time round they did a shite job. Not that I want the duty of guarding a lake. They must do better, the trick I pulled on Eclipso won't work always."

A moot point for her; landing atop him is better than not.

John Constantine has posed:
John looks up when she launches herself at him and gives a sharp, lopsided smile just before she lands on him. His hands come up and he wraps his arms around her waist, tilting his head up and looking Meggan in the eyes.

"We'll get the Excalibur thing sorted. That, or I'll just have to become King of Camelot." He says it in jest, but the way things go sometimes it would be a horrifyingly plausible outcome.

"Even if I am shite at pulling out."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Cigarette smoke and cherry threatening her, Meggan doesn't crash-land into John. He gets time to pull her down or rescue himself from the lightest of collisions between the fae and the magician.

"That's life," she sighs, content to bury her face in his shoulder. Dinner is served, the smile a scintillating reminder of the devil-may-care attitude with him. Feast or famine, as she brushes her nose against his. "It'll sort itself, I hope. Don't become king, you /know/ Merlyn is a bugger in anyone's side." He raised her, trust her to know. Golden waves spill around them like sunlight from her loose hair. "I'd noticed."