7085/Can she keep a good man down

Can she keep a good man down
Date of Scene:	26 July 2021
Location:	House of Mystery
Synopsis:	Battles fought hard are won and lost in an instant, but hearts given freely are kept an eternity. Whatever the darkness coming at them next, John and Meggan? They'll stare it down together.
Cast of Characters:	Meggan Puceanu, John Constantine

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Meggan Puceanu has posed:
How close she walks to her own doom, to becoming some kind of monster. And for what?

Meggan doesn't leave the bedroom where John might as well a half-animated corpse, lost to the midnight ocean of his own inner world. She may be an empath, but she cannot walk those dreams without plunging past the mental barriers that separate his mind into its own sovereign realm. He hasn't invited her in, no matter her Tuathan parent's blood enables stepping through dreamlit kingdoms. That would compromise his independence.

She stares into the reflective surface of the water pitcher for a long, long time, seated at the side of the bed. Scrunching up her nose transforms the planes of her face. Her lips curl, drawn back in a redcap's bloodthirsty leer, then shifting into Finvarra's own furious likeness but female instead. Her features flow with disturbing ease, reflecting back nightmares of her own making and theirs. The price of failure is that horrific caricature of her human countenance, the appealing visage adopted to pass in society.

Palms to her face, she shakes her head to banish the notion. Those dark thoughts have blossomed in the fertile soil of the mind, and now she has to weed them. Simply flopping back onto the bed isn't an option without disturbing the exhausted mage. Instead, she rolls onto her stomach and floats above him, off to the side.

A gentle hand traces the line of his shoulder to the hip, idly
strumming while she casts herself adrift in kind. His slumbering
rhythms drag her into the same pace. If they were in the city, she
could follow the emotional rhythms of other residents, cats, the sky.
Here, there are only them. Only the bard. Only the House, and those
mysteries aren't one she wants to pry into. So better still to pull
herself back to the core and delight in what the present offers. She daydreams. Sometimes sweet, sometimes salacious, most often sublime. And if the weary man who revealed something he never intended to a faerie king thinks about sitting up or surfacing from dreams, she's there to coax him back down again.

Or sit on him. Either way.

John Constantine has posed:
    The manic mind of John Constantine, because mania is surely the only name that applies to John's current state can only be sated, even by the best of them, for so long. They have a name for it now, something about a bi and a polar, it fits.

    At least when he climbs out of slumber it's a quiet and gentle thing? No screaming, no sweats, no mumbled horrors from the recesses of his mind. He simply opens his eyes.

    ... he lays there for a moment or two, accessing his situation and obsessing over a gift granted him by luck and fate that, despite it all, is still tucked away safely into the pocket of his sodden trench coat; the dagger.

    Is Meggan awake, he dares to turn his head ever so slightly to see if he can tell...

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Mania entwines them both in its grasp to varying degrees. His might be fed by liquor, urgency, and drugs. Hers feeds from the emotional punch of the faerie courts, reeling through Unseelie intent contrary to summer's golden fury and vigor. The contradictions need time to settle out, like sediment cascading to the seabed after a vigorous storm.

She isn't asleep in a conventional sense. Arm folded to pillow her head, her palm rests somewhere just off John's shoulder. He might need to turn a bit more than usual to locate her down and up there; downslope of him, six to nine inches off the mattress as the mood takes. Curling up on thin air is as easy as cuddling into supportive memory foam or feather tick.

Dark wheat-gold lashes framing green eyes almost conceal the narrow crescents attesting to being awake but meditative, or as close as an unpracticked soul like her can get. If he doesn't move too quickly, he might not end up with a green-eyed cat dropping onto the bed or a startled faerie on the ceiling.

It's happened before. Different reasons, better ones.

John Constantine has posed:
    So what to do with this situation. There may be a tiny sliver of him that thinks it's not worth the effort and that just going back to sleep would be best. Truly tiny thing, he's got things, after all, and they need doing. Words more mouthed than spoken cause a little whisper of magical energy in the air; a spell cast on himself not her. Its intent is only to muffle him, surround him in a mystical 'fog' of sorts that will mute his impact on the word around him; dampen sounds he makes, cause even heavy footfalls to become no sound at all save to the most sensitive ears - ease his passage through this world to that of no more than a quiet spirit really; all the while keeping him physically *here*.

    Spell cast, he holds his breath and attempts to slip out of the bed unnoticed, his motions slow and deliberate on top of the mystical 'bubble' of softness about him.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
That tiny sliver of him can go take a jump in a lake. Preferably it can sit beside the lake that Excalibur occupies, its demigoddess owing the Tuatha de Danaan trying her best not to be an unwanted blanket anyway. It can go frowny-face and bring dregs of negative cynicism to defending said sword against Eclipso, since they damn well need every chunk of help they can get in protecting the artifact.

Synchronicity eases his way through the world, anyway. Probably works at sneaking out of rooms, since no doubt generations of Laughing Magicians needed to sneak out of a married man or woman's bedchamber without guards or Society noticing. Imagine the scandal of bedding Countess So-and-So or Honourable Lord Mayor Over-There, having no idea the magus scarpered over a balcony with a cursed gem or a precious letter. Brigands, the lot of them. John's neither first or last at that. Maybe. Last is an open question.

Really, the more dangerous aspect is the emotional split and Meggan's innate perception of the invisible when keyed to the right state of mind. It's not reflexive. Too easy to be overwhelmed that way, and right now presence of mind and self are more important. The strum of those curling fingers is really the dangerous thing.

If they hit nothingness, she'll know, probably. But wrapped up in one of his shirts, floating as is her wont, he's not disturbed her. Not really.

Proximity is a bitch when that's her drug, isn't it?

John Constantine has posed:
    First order of business... pants. What he finds in that vein is a pair of old flannel loungers, soft and comfortable and nothing he'd ever be caught dead in outside ... well, Meggan. And probably Chas, his best mate has probably seen John's taste in 'lounge wear' The pair he's currently sliding lanky legs into bear the likeness of the Alice's Chesire Mad Hatter on a background of black.

    Kinda fitting to the man, innit? Mad as a hatter.

    On bare feet, he tip-toes his way toward the door and finds it ... locked. Or, more to the point, the house is barring his exit. Bloody Wretched HOUSE. But he dare not swear it out loud.

    Okay, well, he's good at thinking on his feet. He needs a circle, it needn't be one of protection, merely of focus. Toothpaste...

    ...and half an hour, perhaps three fourths of one, later he's sitting on the floor, cross-legged, hands palms up on his knees, eyes closed. The dagger is in the center of a toothpaste circle, the minty scent of it wafting through the room. Johnny Rotten blares 'My Way' on repeat from the earbuds he's wearing.

    His crow tattoo, one of many that many never get the opportunity to see, is peeking from the waistband of his pants, still perched - he's still 'here'. Yet the odd mushrooms and strange purple leaves burning nearby indicate that, well, maybe he's kinda not?

    He's put his fool self into some sort of trance it seems.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Loungewear deserves to be more than sweatpants. Flannel pants may be a misdemeanor, but Meggan treats sweatpants as a sin worthy of shredding 'accidentally.' It's better that way for everyone.

The House knows John's wearisome ways better than most, and her direct action to take care of him serves as a particular concern. Now something ought to be said for the daydreaming faerie waking up sooner and interrupting a toothpaste circle-drawing. She might kick herself later.

Later is far enough along that John already fondles his blade from the comfort of the floor instead of turning the mattress into his makeshift spell platform. Which is when she inverts, watching his efforts upside down after switching positions. Golden braids weave and twist in a puddle on the mattress, lodged over the spot where his body was. Telling, so telling.

She licks her lips, watching him as transitioning from weariness to wakefulness comes far faster, louder, than anyone might like. "Mrr?"

Mushrooms belong in soups and otherworldly gates, not inked in trouble. His attempts to outsmart them all bring her to smiling; well, it's a frown, wrong way. A small one, trying to suss out what he's about. "Love? You've already started working?"

Yes, just kicking herself a few times for good measure.

John Constantine has posed:
    There are benefits, at least, to the demon blood mixed with his own. He *is*, if only slightly, a little more durable than the average mortal. At least the goose egg has shrunken to merely a golf ball on the back of his head, the wound to his side is healing nicely and no longer weeping or red.

    Not much, however, is going to save those battered lungs from a few hours of inhaled swamp water. Even in his trance state, there's an audible wheeze with each breath.

    ...but that is all the answer Meggan gets to her question, in the immediate moment anyway.


    John is most certainly here, but not, it's an odd in between for certain, his mind caught up in the hunt for that which he seeks so completely that it's oblivious to everything else.

    ...even the dagger rising from the floor in the middle of the circle, business end pointing right at the Laughing Magician's heart. Here, in the hallowed - or is that cursed - halls of the wretched house, he figures he's safe, right? Nothing could harm him *here*?

    "YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE, CONSTANTINE!" Disembodied, male... loud, but not louder than Johnny Rotten.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
<<Bloody fool. But that's why I love you.>> A sigh shared to the House and the gods, if gods exist for godlings, and she stretches herself out into an obscenely flexible arch that greets the sun without actually needing said fiery, hateful daystar in the sky anywhere. Or visible; the room probably lacks windows, knowing John.

Her back arches and hands touch the ground before her feet do in a final rotation. Feet tucked under her, she kneels by the bed's end; it doesn't have a footboard for that headboard, and therefore proves itself doubly useless. No breaking the pasted circle, for that could be well a hazard.

But nothing a foot couldn't scuff or a hand couldn't reach through with some impunity, right?

Because that dagger looks particularly dubious, and pointed at an astrally projected mage's heart means a danger pointed at a completely defenseless person. Few people get physical vessels in the Astral, but for the psychics. Does he?

<<Fuck.>> At least it's in Scots Gaelic.

"House, creak a floorboard if you believe me interrupting this is a terribly bad idea?" she asks, worried, creeping up to the protective barrier. Crossing it without breaking the minty-fresh line should be safe, sommat. She just needs a fingertip. It might or might not deflect a blast of wind, but the only way to know is to try with that damn dagger. The House gets her say. John might.

The air around the room is brought forth in a zephyr, not hard, pushed at the cirle to see if it'll go through and make the dagger wobble. If that doesn't work, and the air *inside* the bubble doesn't answer the elemental call, then knocking it down by crossing is the next last horrible best step.

John Constantine has posed:
    Breaking the line of it, in this case, would do nothing but break his foci for the spell. Protection wasn't even a real consideration; not here, not in The House.

    So the wind meets no barrier in its attempts to save a fool magician from himself. In fact, it catches the thing just as it starts to move forward out of that pasty circle.

    John's faded denim blues snap open, wide, uncomprehending... terrified? That's a disturbing look on John Constantine. "Can't breathe," he manages to choke out, but his hands are at his throat, struggling against something unseen, but not 'not there'. The imprint of the 'hands' around his throat is certainly clear enough, pressing, squeezing, bruising...

    It's reverberating, a *feeling* more than anything tangible though. NO! NOT HERE!

    That Bloody Wretched HOUSE... no it will not allow that! Whatever managed to break the House of Mystery's many defenses will find itself face to face with those defenses fortified a thousand fold... and, find its ass booted right out the door but not before...

    The dagger, the damnable reason for all of this, twirling in the wind on the ground, stops, halted by something unseen before its blade flares once, a bright blue light, and when the light fades to nothing? The circle is empty.

    ..."Bloody hell," habit more than curse, the words are choked, stuttered, he's shaking, *trembling*... the unflappable John Constantine is still SCARED.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Things happen quick.

Beat. Bring in the danger through the security system and pay the price, is it? Meggan wears a piquant expression when the air plucks up the apparently noxious metal blade and bobbles it around, awaiting her confirmation about whether to flatten the thing to the floor or keep it wobbling harmlessly.

Beat. She swivels when he protests of not breathing. A taste of fear before the words even come jettison reason, damn the paste, plunging to catch him.

Beat. The House's wrath and warded spells come to play fast, faster, than the faerie can. Her verdant eyes blaze, almost painfully bright, with her poised in front of John in a gesture as much inquisitive as it is protective. And this is why you always have a partner in the craft, a familiar, a something.

Beat. The light dies, and he shivers, and the only reaction is the most ancient of all. He might not like it: an embrace of two souls in a storm, pulled together. She smells of the fresh rain-washed sky and greening meadows and clean stone, and his damn shirt. He can fight his way free with a nudge if he wants, but if he doesn't, the comforting sweep of her hand at his spine weaves oscillating spirals and matches the murmur at his ear.

"You're here. You're back. We've got you."

John Constantine has posed:
    ... he doesn't fight it, doesn't protest, in fact John actually folds into Meggan's head resting on her shoulder, his rapid breaths hot on her neck. Between the panic welling and those battered lungs, each breath is quite the struggle in the beginning.

    "Something's coming," he whispers when he finds the breath to do so. It's a barely there thing, repeated twice in a tremulous voice.

    ...and there in lies the heart of it all, of his fear. *Something* is coming and he *still* hasn't a clue what it might be, only that it was powerful enough to near kill him, might have if not for Meggan's presence, *here* in this place of safety, no matter how wretched and annoying the House can be at times? Well, he's always felt safe here.

    But then, just as quick as it came, it passes. His panic is swept way by his mania; that crazed mind of his and its *need* to know. His breathing evens and he pulls back, but not entirely away. "I have ta..." Go, that's where that sentence is going, but in his rush to make it happen, the last word never comes, he's just suddenly trying to stand, perhaps to even flee the House in those ridiculous pants! That wouldn't never really and truly happen, but he looks like it crosses his mind.

    ... of course, there's his continued barred exit from the bedroom, delivered by that Wretched House - and, perhaps, Meggan to get past first?

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Small moments like this count. In the vast span of long-lived races, for whom a century is a passing decade, a millennium twenty years, these twinkling instants crystallize with painstaking clarity. Oh, they may forget faces and treat the rising and falling empires like a subdivision going up down the street. They don't forget this. They shouldn't.

"John," she croons, for his name inflected by her accent becomes something of a stanza, the promise of a song. "Darling, I know." For he hsa told her, and it probably must be, a black shadow stalking along the horizon or meandering through the woods where the impenetrable darkness fuses with its loping, terrible shape. When the senses flash with danger and then the mind denies anything exists out there, the doubt can be a terrible, gnawing beast of its own.

Her thumb strokes his jaw to his chin before he pulls away, and his potential disentanglement to go running off pell-mell for the nearest bookstore or smokeshop warrants the slow release of slender arms wrapped in loose sleeves pushed up as he goes. A skewing of the open collar slinks sideways, baring her shoulder. Lifting her head to meet his gaze, rather than track what he looks at, bounds a question.

Or puts them in a hell of a compromising position.

"Wait," she finishes the sentence, commands, pleas on her knees, suggests in an intimate murmur. They are all the same, they are none.

Her fingers curl at her throat, tracing the line of her collarbone. "A wild horse can't see where he's being led." Old analogy from times long past, but she's a Romanischal, part of the Travellers, her adopted family part of the old horse markets and caravans all the way back to India. "You rush in and leave yourself vulnerable, like this." The weeping wound. The bruises. The wild eyes. "Said yourself to me yesterday when I was about to take Fionnbharr's head." A swipe of the claws, whoops, there goes the Fair-Haired in a bloody heap.

"You gave me the most precious things freely. Won't you take them if I give them to you?"

John Constantine has posed:
    John stands there, denim blues fixed on Meggan. There's that tilt of his head, slight, the shake of it, slight... repeated, his hand folded into a loose fist somewhere up near his forehead. Hanging in the balance, that's what he is... suspended between what he needs and what he wants, or... maybe confused because the two are *blurring*. Up down, right left, which is which.

    He drops to his knees in front of Meggan. The hand near his forehead falls, reaching out to grasp her face, thumb on one side, fingers on the other, perhaps a little too roughly. "I can't bloody well figure it out, MEGGAN!" The words are bellowed, just inches from her.

    ...and then he... kisses her. Hard, desperate that, frantic even. Only a moment or two in time does it stay that way though, it softens into something else, something unexpected from the likes of John Constantine - surrender. Wherever the rest of this night leads, it's in her hands. All of it, he's hers to lead. His life is chaos, so much turmoil and uncertainty and unpredictable *chaos*, to the outside observer. In reality, he's always keeping tight control over all of it, as much as is possible anyway.

    That now, in the most vulnerable of moments? That he's willing to relinquish that control to Meggan? Well, if that doesn't prove that his freely given heart, and his unwavering trust, is hers? Nothing ever will, will it?

John Constantine has posed:
    ...some hours later, lovers dream in the afterglow of where the night led. Blissful sleep isn't tarnished by thoughts of what darkness may or may not be coming for them.

    The waves of Synchronicity certainly had some part in their paths crossing and if it's true, that must have been a tidal wave. What price will be paid for it? That's a question for another day, innit?