7051/Home Sweet ... Bloody Hell.

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Home Sweet ... Bloody Hell.
Date of Scene: 23 July 2021
Location: House of Mystery
Synopsis: In his usual, stubborn way, John refuses any and all attempts to comfort him through his most recent brush with losing his soul. He fights until the bitter end and caves only... because the bed's big enough, y'know?
Cast of Characters: John Constantine, Meggan Puceanu




John Constantine has posed:
    John Constantine hasn't managed to stay alive by... staying *down*. It really wasn't too terribly long after he fell over that he was back up again, offering Meggan a one handed, single index finger with the 'don't' implied but not spoken, and hit with a powerful urge to piss, have a smoke, a drink and get home. Not necessarily in that order. Other than the pissing that is - he had wits enough about him to know that might not be possible once he made it home. Wretched house...

    He'd come to the realization, long ago, that the thing *had* to be a woman. There were times when, for reasons he was completely unaware, that the thing got 'mad' at him. When that happened, it behaved very much like an angry wife or a jilted lover. Changing the 'locks' so he couldn't get in, hiding important things like his bedroom with all his clothes, or the bathroom. Sometimes its revenge was more subtle - didn't he *just* buy a twenty pack of Charmin? Why then, was he out of toilet paper? He knows he fixed that step, why's he tripping over it again... every. single. time? That milk shouldn't be sour already!

    But tonight, the trip to the loo before his return home wasn't necessary. When he staggered his way to the back room, where opening a portal to the House of Mystery required little more than a gesture and a thought on his part, walking through it planted him right in the middle of his right and proper, lumpy, king sized feather bed. The bathroom door was off to the side of the room, open. A pitcher of ice water, with what seemed to be never melting ice, on the nightstand. The temperature was cool enough for blankets, just the way he liked it. ...and a big fluffy arm chair for Meggan to perch in should she choose to because...

    Unlike most times, that portal doesn't close until the half-fae walks through it as well.

    Like any good woman, the House of Mystery can make her man's life a living *hell* when he's been a horse's arse, but she also has enough compassion and heart to know when that man's reached his limits. The House knows what John needs, even when he doesn't.

    ... he's sound asleep before his face even hits the lumpy pillows that go so well with the lumpy bed.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The House could have reason to dislike Meggan Puceanu, a changeling scion of murky origins. Maybe it hates blondes or despises magic users from the Otherworld. Doubtful it holds grudges against English people, but you never know. Being won in a bet doesn't assert affection for a given nationality, race or given owner. That said, the old school rules about hospitality and guest-right apply where the Celtic girl is involved. She removes her hated shoes before entering said house, and would probably rip her demon-stained clothes from her body were it not likely to be misconstrued by the House, by John himself. That's not the way to fix a thing.

She waits for him to invite her in, and without prompting -- or even caring if the House is magical, despite knowing it is -- murmurs, "Thank you," with a quiet blend of respect and relief usually found for EMTs and paramedics on scene to deal with a great horrible mess.

Then shall she wait for the right proper warlock to gain his bearings, her exhaustion so deep that the feather bed all but sings a promise that must not be heard. Triskele might be foxed to think a man or woman can be turned by the bed and not the salacious entity of lust *in* it. More the fool her, but demons never learn, especially the higher up the chain they are, products of their roles and archetypes. The arm-chair will do. If it's further than a pounce away, she nudges it with her hip so the angle is quite right.

Dreams may be a kingdom to the fae, a birthright veritably signed and sealed in their general talents, but she isn't immediately seeking to rejoin the sovereign realm where each is king, producer, and starring actor. So much turns on a gentle fulcrum, the slightest disruption certain to catapult everything into disaster.

When he collapses into a heap, she bites her lip as the outward sign of concern. Two beats, three. Detecting someone slumbering from faking it is quite easy, even without the general empathy. <<I tried.>> She speaks softly in Welsh, to him and to the House of Mystery. <<His skill so far outstrips my own. Please do not judge him too harshly for having to hold out long enough until a friend could intervene.>> That friend isn't herself, but one of death's enforcers. <<I'll not disrupt him or get in your way, but I have to know he's well, if you please. I couldn't live with myself if that thing reaped him after he fought so hard for his freedom.>>

Words exuded with a sigh, as she pulls the comforter up over John's prostrate body. Other matters can be handled at a distance, if he cares. Shoes set aside, or moving the water within reach. Long before she sinks into the chair and watches him. Sleep calls and she is the child unwilling to succumb to bedtime, fixed on ensuring nothing fades.

John Constantine has posed:
    <<Well? Is he ever? But he is safe, always, here.>> Damned if that doesn't sound like a woman's voice? Is John right about the house or does it simply sound like a woman because it's what he believes to be true?

    Three, sometimes four, hours is what John normally gets in a stretch before it starts. Tonight it only takes two before the little micro-twitches start, the jerking muscles that are, in the beginning, the only symptoms of his nightmares that reach the waking world. Sometimes that's where it ends, with him waking in the beginning, before it gets bad, quietly - only to drift off again. This isn't one of those nights.

    Once the dreaming begins, it's rushing toward a crashing crescendo that has him turning over violently from back to front in his sleep. The moaning starts, 'no'? Is it just one simple word repeated over and over again? It's hard to tell, so much of it still being trapped in his sleep, in the dark landscapes that are his dreams.

    When he sits up suddenly, eyes wide, the name that usually holds such power over his nightmares isn't the one that gets pushed from his lips with a rush of air. "Abi..." Not Astra, not this night, but that makes sense doesn't it?

    Heart pounding in his ears, breaths ragged and painful sounding, at first John isn't even aware he's not alone in the room. It's all a swirling mess of blurred lines between what might have been real and what might have been imagined still. He's home, he knows that much, and for some reason he's *finally* in his bed.

    Succubus? Abigail? Abigail dead? Drunk at the bar? That glowing girl? Dead? Meggan... Meggan... Meggan? Out of all of it, it's only the last that seems really and truly *real* in those few moments upon waking.

    He finally turns his head, yeah, she's there.

    He falls back onto the bed again. Nnnnnngggggggggg. GROAN. ...and covers his face with his arm. "Bloody hell." If only he had a quid for every time he's spat out that curse!

    "Ya don't have ta stay, luv, I'm fine." ...and a quid for every time he said those last two?

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Is he ever safe? Yes and no. Safety is all a matter of perception but arguing with your enchanted host on that is never a smart idea. Meggan hasn't got it in her to complain or duel with words. Ripostes are for people who have rested. Not those playing the act of sentinel and sentry both against troubles beyond her ken.

Besides, the pain of a man bruised by acts a decade and more ago will consume them both. That's the empath at work. Like a reader moving along a suspense novel, she can only be dragged through the cadences of sentences in their tidy typeset towards a clear destination. No amount of resistance changes what happens. Constantine dreams and those dreams inevitably tilt dark, blacker than the coffee he swills now and then. Setting the book down and walking away is no choice.

You don't leave when it hurts. Say it and abandon the protagonist, that's lying about everything she threw in his face as a challenge to the very reason why they tear apart and knit together in a messy wound. You stay, knowing the outcome may truly suck, reading between the lines at the risk he runs. Her task, then, means sticking with the difficult material through til the very end.

Through thick and thin, no matter what. In joy and suffering, in hope and despair. Sounds familiar.

And so she jerks her head to John when he surfaces from nightmare, dreaming of a redheaded woman whose meatsuit a monster wore to inflict such harm all because it could. Wrath is such a petty sin at the end of the day, but even the greats replay their classics.

She wordlessly watches him from the sidelines. Any suggestion he might fall is bound not to be revealed, for he might get halfway out before a pool of force nudges him back. Cheating's cheating; not flashy at all, but why not use a bit of telekinesis when it works? Doubly, he cannot claim she touched him when he didn't ask her to.

That hurts.

But in a way that suggests tight skin forms proud flesh, the truth that the wound is a scar. That tiny, torn muscles knit together stronger. "I do." It's simple as that, quietly drawn out. So many things to say, but she nestles into the seat. No point in raising the obvious weaknesses, the fact his soul was nearly torn out, the glow-worm not dead. Just that blonde form he's come to know in every which way, painted in supine lines.

John Constantine has posed:
    His soul was nearly torn out, it must have been Thursday?

    Anyone else might think John had fallen back asleep in the long stretch of silence that follows. But not Meggan, not someone that can *feel* the fact that he's very much awake.

    It's all starting to clear for him now, the blurred edges become sharper, the real and imagined being separated into their own corners. The corner of the latter is empty, for the most part. Because wasn't much of it actually imagined? By John's own mind? - but still so very real despite the fact.

    He's bloody well shivering, but not on the outside, not where it can be seen. The shaking and trembling is happening on the inside, where it can felt. Where the damage was done yet again.

    "You don't," he begins just as simply when he finally speaks. "...but you're goin' ta." Not a question, a fact he knows to be true. "So, why don'tcha be a peach and fetch me a scotch and a smoke?" The latter? He can actually get himself once he decides to think on it, there's an extra pack in his trench coat pocket. The former? His *other* cruel Mistress, the House of Mystery, has all that on lockdown, nowhere to be found. It'll stay that way until his want for it becomes a need driven by possible threat of delirium tremens. It's not only the man's soul that needs a bloody break, it's his body as well. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, squinting against even the dim lamp light in the room when he looks over at Meggan again. "I'm bloody knackered, luv," he admits... finally... FINALLY!

    "She still has the lighter..." Does it really mean anything? Does it actually matter? Other than it being special to him. It's probably that bit that matters, the very fact that it means something to him. Doesn't all magic, after all, start with a little meaning and some intent?

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
A day named for a Norse god, so about right. The soul's removal coming closer than most surely must affront those with a proper three part claim to it, and their anger falling on Triskele's head blooms as a notion Meggan shoves to the side. Too damn tired to contemplate the angles on that.

She hasn't slept during vigil over John Constantine, Liverpool's own worst prodigal son. The fight to not nod off takes reserves barely there, slowly dragged back in the natural point of replenishing herself. Turning into a thaumivore in this particular House would be a disaster, and consuming the air to sustain herself as an air-twisted elemental might be convenient except for the death rattle out of the warlock. So needs must and all that.

When he suggests she make good on bartending skills or fetch him a package of ciggies or a flagon of whatever, she regards him through those slanted green eyes for a long moment. "Mortlach 25, single malt, great booming thing on the palate. It's left on your counter. Went through all this but I'm afraid you have to wait." Her jaw flexes, a flattened effort to silence the distinct yearning to yawn for the umpteenth time. Seeing weakness may not be in his wheelhouse, but she truly seems not to care that he does, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

In the lowlight conditions of that bedroom, she looks perfectly mundane. For that matter, so does he even when they both know better. "I can kill the headache," she murmurs, "but water waits for you. Not my law to break, you know that." Better than dealing with fried eggs or two paracetamols, and her touch is better than a pair of pills stuck in his throat if he wants.

She gives a soft shake of her head when he asked about the lighter. "I checked. It will come back." A shift, her bones creaking, and then she rises in a light, delicate movement to walk over to the sidetable. Pouring water shouldn't be too hard, and it isn't, though she holds out the full glass to John.

One way or the other. "Succubi, is it? Prolonged or no? I heard tell of weaknesses of theirs, but must not apply there if half were true."

John Constantine has posed:
    "Maybe, I dunno," John mutters as he sits up a little more and drags himself back so he's resting against the wall; there is no headboard to the bed, it's just a frame and a mattress and box springs, man wakes up cuffed to his own headboard enough times and not for the fun reasons that spring to mind? Well, he ditches the headboard, even in this safe haven. "Somethin' feels off about all it, she's their Queen, but ... is she the only one they'll work for?"

    His hand, when he reaches for that glass of water, is incredibly ... steady compared to the shivering and trembling still happening on the *inside*. "Feels messy, yeah? Y'*sure* it was her ya sensed?"

    He really didn't think he wanted it, but once he starts on that glass of water? Well, it's gone just as quickly as if it had been that Mortlach. Speaking of...

    "Y'could go fetch it? From the counter?" Oh John.

    But he does set the empty glass aside when the bulb goes off in his head. He fishes around and comes up with that spare pack of Silk Cuts. ... an ashtray that wasn't there a moment ago is now, on the nightstand, next to the pitcher. Booze no, but the House isn't so cruel as to try and deny him BOTH his vices at the same time.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The cuffed for fun reasons not even applying in the House, at this moment, seem like such a lost opportunity. Trust him to be the greatest escape artist alive, though. Meggan would be better off using her own hands, and dealing with his rampant shifts to escape that way. More fun by half.

Shivering as the soul shriven from its host tries to settle back in a body too big for it, limbs too ponderous, hollows too dark and noxious will always draw a look from her. A long one at that, for which she wordlessly rests the back of her hand to his brow the way a mother carefully assesses the health and wellbeing of her child or a nurse a patient.

He can flinch back or break the connection after a heartbeat easily, and she merely admonishes him with a mild look. The pitcher comes back, cubes crackling around. "Hold still," she murmurs, since no desire to leave him with a frigid lap of water and ice remains in her for the moment. Her own steadiness is questionable, since the emotional wreckage and debts have yet to be much pay. Another pour ensures he has all he needs.

"Do you want me to take the pain, John? I saw a succubus with a cut-and-paste aura around her. Messed up, thinned out." Her shoulder rolls. "That leaves open ground. I didn't try to press a ring to her or kiss her to see what happened."

Ah, the dangers of a fae? Might not be too bad, but other elements are dangerous -- and especially a kiss infused with a lover raised to defense -- might just be toxic waste to a single-celled organism where that breed of demon is involved.

Might not. "I can't, John. You get it when you leave. I am here on the House's sufferance. She accommodates me and I accommodate her, with a common purpose. When was the last time you brought her something pretty? Not for your own gain, but *pretty*? A chancy grimoire, a wreath that smelled of the Dean Forest, something she'd like? Consider that first, maybe you get your Mortlach. No disrespect, sweet friend," this to the House now, "but I've lost a few winks and can't fully recall what makes you happiest. A clue would be fine."

John Constantine has posed:
    He doesn't flinch back, but he does swat lamely at her hand, gettaway...

    The easy answer to Meggan's question should be 'yes, please take the pain away'. Why then, isn't it so easy for him to just SAY IT?

    Because John Constantine is a stubborn damned fool that often times confuses pain for penance and probably wouldn't ask for help if he was drowning... in a sea demons and hellfire and she was the Holy water that could banish them all and douse the flames. - wait, isn't that Tuesdays?

    "What?! Now you're conspiring against me with me bloody *House*." Yes, big H... House. "I need shower," he grouses before trying to disengage, disentangle, distance himself from Meggan by pushing himself up from the bed. He gets about two steps from it before... a wrinkle in the area rug covering the hardwood floor has him sprawling when he trips over it. Wretched HOUSE!

    Not even his go to 'bloody hell suits that situation, instead it's just... "AAAARRRGGHH!" loud, frustrated NOISE as he's starting to fall.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
She is so, so tired.

He knocks away her hand and she might be inclined to let him do it, giving John the freedom to assert his distance. But not before that moment of contact, long enough to throw a shiver up through the nervous system that undermines the crumpling exhaustion to something she can name. Put a finger on an emotion and it often becomes clear.

Too proud, too stubborn, and therefore probably running on sheer spite and grit. The kind that sticks to a man after a few years of running on the Hellion Express out of Widdershins Station, bound for the Hellgate Line after Waterloo.

He falls and she is honestly too beyond anything, stretched translucent, when that shout rises to the rafters. Women in his life make it so difficult, do they?

Then he can be fucking scruffed and set back on the bed if she can reach him, depositing him back on the welcome of the mattress. Taken by the collar but in a way that won't either hurt him or cause her undue discomfort, he will -- if not truly distressed or fighting her off -- be gently deposited back where he belongs.

"No," she whispers, "I'm being kind. She's a good duck, you know that. You've gone and upset her when she wants you to realize you had your soul sucked out sooner than not. You have limits, John." He can shout all he wants. She's not even responsive to that anymore, still fuzzy as a cat, and prone to curling up on the chair in a gracile arrangement of long limbs and padded softness. "Cast a spell to wash yourself off or wait until I draw you a bath. At this rate the only way you get one will be if you get carried in." And it won't be by Chas. If the House agrees, anyway. "'Sides, that's how you know she cares. And me, beautiful."

She damn well curl up on the rug if it offers itself up. Picky? Not especially under the circumstances. Dropping into the seat is enough to plunge her into a halfway twilight, dusky and dreamlit. It should make running easy, if not for the vague, permeating sense of satisfaction. Relief? Somewhere on that spectrum, that all's basically as it might be.

Points for not being on the bed.

John Constantine has posed:
    He really did mean it when he said he was knackered. He doesn't have much fight left in him.

    But that doesn't mean that John doesn't hiss like a cat in true Constantine style when he finds himself scruffed and dumped. "Wretched House, should reduce it t'a pile of sticks, bloody women ... always gettin' in the way o'things... never mindin' their own business..." Grumblemutter, all of it under his breath.

    He's still 'hissing', most of it so mumbled that it's incomprehensible nonsense, when he jerks the covers up and curls a little in on himself, on his side. ...still shivering where the shivers can't be seen but felt.

    That hissing stops and silence stretches for awhile before he finally mutters, "Bed's big 'nuff y'know."

    Whether she takes the offer or not, the comfortable pull of the bed drags him under once more. The only difference her decision will make is if he sleeps a solid six, dreamless... or a meager two before he wakes bathed in his own sweat again. It's not hard to determine which choice results in the former and which in the latter, now is it?

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The choice is what it is.

No choice at all, the quiet torment snuffed out like a candleflame. Meggan can find a million reasons not to do something, but in the end of the day, the sun will shine. The glass is half-full, and every last moment of the life raging, seething, and tiptoeing around a person is worth living.

"Sorry. I've absorbed too much of you." The murmur to John doesn't reach far, but the smile visible over the line of her arm and shoulder before she sits up probably is. Truth is, that's barely a dram of John done. He's like that awful cough syrup grandmum would give her, bad initial taste and then making everything right as rain.

The bed will do.

John is going to fall as fast as she can. There might be some nice story they tell one another about remaining as far as they can in a sea of space. Nice, lumpy covers over there to wallow in are perfectly large enough for a lean, tall frame as he has. Truth told, Meggan's dream-kissed sleep is vexed by nightmares only a fraction that his are -- every few days of a month instead of every night, darkness churning from an army in Hell that answers to her banner, or that moment of touching the plane itself.

But for now? At some point, sleep causes what it will. A tangle of sheets and at some point, her brow to the back of his shoulder or his outflung arm resting in parallel with hers. Her dreams don't shriek this time. His can, of course, and like as not do until hauled into the languid strum of fingers to his brow, the sleepy crooning murmur at his ear.

"You'll be fine, love." Then both of them plummet like stones to their respective voids.

Six hours for reality to sigh and shake its head before someone tries next to kick him in the teeth again. Pretty good stretch, innit?