7317/Oops - John Messed Up.

Oops - John Messed Up.
Date of Scene:	11 August 2021
Location:	Lighthouse Keeper's Cottage
Synopsis:	John confesses his recent 'sins' to Meggan, she's convinced they can overcome, as always - while John's left wondering from where her unwavering faith in him comes.
Cast of Characters:	John Constantine, Meggan Puceanu

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John Constantine has posed:
    Avoidance, they name is John Constantine. Well, part of his MIA status, outside of quick check-ins, with Meggan *can* be explained by the fact that he's been trying to keep the underworld from imploding or exploding or burning up or whatever the Hell happens when Death Gods go to war.

    But he knows he can't put it off any longer. So, there he is, standing in front of the door to the cottage. Yeah, just standing there. He's just standing there; for a really really long time he's just standing there - or at least until the empath inside might notice he's standing there.

    There he is, the man that fights Death Gods along with other Gods and... well, Lady *Death*, standing there with his heart thumping wildly in his chest and trying to work up the nerve to talk to his girlfriend about a thing he did.

    Eventually, if she doesn't notice him first, he'll flip the lock with a spell and open the door.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meggan dwells not in darkness. Not when seated against the powerful lenses strobing out into the Atlantic. Most oceanside lighthouses these days faced automation or mothballing but the historical ones sometimes survive with their Fresnel lenses and original carapaces intact. Computers control the flashing signals delivering hope to mariners since the days of Pharaoh and Sparta. That may be the case too on the edge of the sea, but Gotham never entirely relinquished the older ways. Gone are the vast seas of lamp oil to fuel rotating mirrors and glass, but plenty still demands attention.

A rail wreathes the circumference of the tower, and here she perches. Wind streams through her golden and silver hair that refuses to knot, instead a banner of sunshine. It points with the breeze out to sea, sure to reverse as the ocean water warms compared to the land. Hands rest on the rail at either side as though her lengthy, near-eternal vigil for seafarers tossed about by pirates or the Coast Guard is somehow needed. It's not.

The same could be said for many people.

Give a second, give a moment. When John crosses the long, skinny spit connecting the Cape Carmine Lighthouse to its actual cape, at some point she knows. Sylphs of the air may betray him. A plump seal dives off a stone the size of a lorry into the surging sea. Maybe the beam swept back against the headlands catches that silhouette and somehow... oh, bollocks, all of it. Considering his own soul is practically consumed by a whitefire cradle, she knows. Empathy goes a long way.

When he steps inside, she drops like a stone to the ground. Floors sail by, narrow windows piercing the Gotham baroque exterior witnessing the fall. Not so high that it lasts for seconds, her descent ends abruptly in the garden. Bouncing up from a bed of hens and chicks, bee-balm and chamomile breaking under her soles for a fragrant symphony, she blithely anticipates trouble for tugging open the window. Slinking in means a good deal of shimmying, cantilevered from the waist, and getting through enough to brace herself on the very thick windowsill that penetrates a wall wide enough to withstand Delaware winters or angry kraken. Though it's a sad kraken to meet her.

Eventually, if he doesn't notice her first, she flips onto her back and pulls her legs in, hovering precipitously for landing on the floor like a crab.

John Constantine has posed:
    Normally he might have even noticed before hand, the second she dropped through the floor even, but John's distracted tonight; by a *lot* of things. So, well, he doesn't notice until she's mid-flip. "Bloody Hell," he hisses out when she lands; startled that. He doesn't typically startle quite that easy.

    "So, uh... love, uh... been a wee busy," he stammers. AWKWARD. He runs one hand back through those spiky blond locks of his, drops the hand to his side, finds a pocket, finds a pack of Silks, plucks one out... tucks it between his lips, doesn't light it yet though. Just feels good sitting there.

    "Been busy..." he repeats lamely. "I... there..." Spit it out man. "...ahhhhh... bugger."

    This is not going how he planned and there he is with no flowers or candy or fine wine or ANYTHING because that's just not him.

    Also something that isn't him? The *fear* that radiates from the very center of his being. ...and that's not fear of Meggan's antics, never that.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Caught sneaking into her own house instead of using one of the obvious windows? Meggan briefly smiles, one of those bright and unabashed signs of delight curving her lips. Golden hair ripples in a banner as she distracts herself from wiggling through the parted window. Nothing like pulling her knees through and managing somehow to wobble on the sill without toppling backward. That's an impressive skill to say the least, highly underrated.

"You do Constantine things when called up by everyone and sundry. Surprised you don't advertise on the night bus as a precaution." London, such as she is, calls a man's tattered soul in her whiskey-dark voice and irrepressible charms. Faded, tattered, and hard to ignore.

Once rotating around to stand in some unlikely display of supple flexibility and flight, she dashes on her bare feet away from the window in John's direction. Her smile doesn't pause, though, not for cigarattes -- a standard -- or his awkward intent. So she can wait, hands come together. "Not another spate of doubt?" Her brows raise, lips rounded in a query.

It's so easy not to be that sardonic and battered by the world. So very easy.

Haven't they slain that and buried it? If not, resurrect the corpse, slay it again, put it away again.

John Constantine has posed:
    John shoves his hands into the pockets of his trench. That thing really is like a suit of weird armor for him. He takes comfort in it, he truly does.

    "No, love, not that." Doubt - it's not so much that he doubts her... not that. Silences stretches out for a few minutes at least, a few minutes spent working up the nerve to just come out with Something Big.

    Finally, as he's actually lighting that Silk with a little bit of dancing flame on his fingertips, he says, "We need to talk, Meggan... about your possible future without me and what I need you to do with it."

    Heavy shit, that! No wonder he was hesitant?

    We should sit down, aye?" But he doesn't make any move to head in the direction of 'sitting down'.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meggan flits across the room, not even bothering to walk. This is her home and floating comes as easily as breathing in cigarette smoke does to John, less an acquired habit than an extension of the self's expression into the greater world.

"I seem to recall one of us is shite at dying, and the other at staying dead," she observes, tilting her head and raising her eyebrows quizzically. The pad of her thumb used to polish its opposite's thumbnail to a soft gleam, she looks up again at John. Blonde and careless in a weather-worn way, subject to the fleeting devil-may-care grin, that heavy weight doesn't seem to be dragging her under.

Maybe he can't. Possible that something intrinsic in her resists being sunk, like cork. Even if cork actually can be waterlogged, as any drowning victim in an old life preserver could attest.

She holds out her hand. "Welcome home, at least. This one of those moments I get the strong stuff out?" There's no alcohol of mundane means that ever hits after the first sip. He's another matter.

John Constantine has posed:
    John takes her hand and pulls her in close and tight. He presses a kiss to the side of Meggan's head, right at the temple. "Yeah, but I think I really fucked up this time, love." He knew it the second the words, spoken with a desperate need to *fix* what's coming before the whole world ends because of it; words he can't even regret given the moment in which they were spoken.

    ...and for a long few moments, he doesn't move. He just clings to his girl like she's the only thing keeping him afloat. These days, that might just be true.

    When he finally lets go and steps back, he murmurs, "Strong stuff, it might be a good idea." Then he takes the lead toward the kitchen.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Not for the first time." How can that be a benediction? Why can it sound like a blessing? On her faultless lips, Meggan makes it both. John has the advantage to press his mouth to her temple, in turn receiving the ignited smile and fingers curling beneath his chin in a passing caress. Almost thirty-five, still alive, much longer than the cards for a diviner ever might have played out.

The clash of intentions holds them together long enough to send the mage and Tuath De Danann hurtling apart after an initial glancing blow. Cast one more into the unseen vagaries of tomorrow, she floats him literally in her wake by going backward through the cottage into the kitchen with its grandiose oak table capable of hosting the proper Knights of lost Camelot or various poker club members.

The cellars aren't exactly deep on an island. But making her trade as a bartender and an activist leads to payments through varied means, and she can dig about one-handed through a chest to come up with two bottles; one that undoubtedly might be black fire, another almost clear but for a faint amber tint. "Not this one," she points to a thing without a label, a squat container with a narrow neck sealed by nacre. "Straight poison to anyone with iron-based blood."

Like she ought to have. And doesn't.

John Constantine has posed:
    Floating, not of his own making, still not John's favorite thing. But he tolerates it. It's Meggan. Once in the kitchen, he settles at that giant table and asks, "Ashtray, love?" He tucks that Silk back between his lips and leaves it there; there's likely at least one fallen bit of ash left in his wake on trip through - sorry Megs.

    When the bottles are brought forth, he comments darkly, "Might be the better way of it, just one sip?" He's mostly joking, *mostly*.

    "Someone came into the bar, some wanker costumed freak, during that meeting I held the other day," he begins. Better just to tell it and be done now, right? "He invoked *his*," pointed that, she'll get it. "...name in my presence."

    After it starts, he doesn't finish until it's over lest he not finish it at all. "So, the bastard got my attention, I ended up in the street outside, it was... pandemonium, like you'd think. ...and I spoke a deal. I told him if he'd help me fix the underworld, I would go with him, I'd be his. He hasn't answered the deal yet, maybe he won't."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The earth shunting her up really might be seen as Danu scorning her daughter, wouldn't it? Not that Danu scorns any of her children. Rather defeats the purpose of being a mother goddess, Gaea by another name, and Meggan has no reason whatsoever to not love that embodiment of nature.

"Second drawer, whole stock of them. You have to wash them next time though," she burbles, pointing blindly at the thick cabinetry that was meant to withstand everything short of a bomb. Two glasses come out along with a shaker, as if she might make a cocktail of some kind. Mixing up a last hurrah for John could be inappropriate. Down goes the bottle on the table next to him. "Don't make me pull poison from your blood, love. I haven't much experience making it come out gently through the pores."

It could be a kind of blood magic, that, in its truest form. The wax-wrapped stopper comes out from the antique bottle of black-fire spirits and she pours out two fingers into one glass. The other gets the whiskey, older than anyone wants to ask. If he checks, the Laughing Magician might spot a mark on the bottom. Something drawn up from the depths of the North Sea off a wreck from around the 18th century doesn't imply regularly found. Such is the peril of dating a pseudomermaid.

Minor compared to that 'I promised to go with my archenemy, a duke of hell' matter.

"So we're moving, if it comes to that," she says, looking over at the table. At John. Down comes the glass, pushed over to him.

Even if her soul is screaming. If she had a soul.

John Constantine has posed:
    John pushes himself back up to fetch the ashtray and lingers at the drawer a little too long. He's still there when he asks, "Moving? To where?" He barks out a little laugh. Maybe he misunderstood, seems he must have... he often does with her.

    He settles back down at the table and picks up the glass. He stares down into it for a long time before downing it in one quick, smooth motion.

    At some other point, he'd likely ask Meggan if she could get more of that stuff for the bar, but his mind's too heavy and crowded with other things.

    "If it happens, if he takes the offer, I don't want you or Chas or *anyone* doing anything about it, love. It's my mess, it's what's coming to me, been coming to me... I've just avoided it."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
He drinks from the glass. She will not until John gives it back. That's the way of things, the bartender's confessional and the first right to sip to the guest, the gods, and the gallows in that order. Testing for poison is another matter, but poison hardly matters for someone with venomous ichor in his veins, is it?

Her fingers stroke his hand around the wrist, drawn to the lifeline of his palm and the blue line of blood streaked on the underside of his arm.

"I spoke a vow." These things seem so incredibly simple from her side of matters, or seem to be, given the somewhat even tone. It holds up actually fairly well. "There is nothing to be done, John. He nor you or I would have to. What will be will be."

Doesn't stop her, though, from blowing out shakily and sucked back in. The little things happen. "What did you want to happen after?"

John Constantine has posed:
    If she pauses at all on his pulse, she'll feel how hard his heart pounds in his chest. John Constantine is truly *terrified*. He pushes the glass over. "Then you have to find a way to break it." The vow that is. "I can't... it's... I can't let your damnation be my fault."

    Her question throws him for a loop and silence follows. He stares off, expression blank in a thoughtful sort of way. Finally, "I don't know, love."

    He takes a drag from his mostly burned out cigarette, puts it out, lights another. It's a chain smoking sort of night, it really is, more so than the usual. "It's all such a bloody mess." A beat and he adds softly, "I'm sorry, Meggan. I'm sorry that you love me and that I was too selfish to stop that from happening. I never should have put my need for you before *you*."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Why are you sorry?" For a moment there, she is up, away from the table, hand clasped to her chest and staring at John with eyes wide and phosphorescent green that drowned emeralds in a tropical lagoon would never achieve. The uplifted cant of her cheekbones and those sharply tapered ears tend to dramaticize the play of emotion across her countenance, an unfair ploy imagined by a girl striving only to fit in among a culture obsessed by specific canons of appearance and beauty.

Grief and fears from a time before him roil her, tilting equilibrium into a tailspin. "Don't *say* that. I never have regretted loving you and I won't now, John Constantine. Mistake me not, nothing less would send me back to their realms ever again. But I swore that pledge knowing every word and not even Merlyn himself would convince me to break my word." Another shade of a word rests on her lips, bitten off as she covers her mouth with her hands to keep the treachery from awakening some consequence not to be tolerated in a house of mysteries or a tower of hopes, however fleeting and frail.

The Keeper of the Light, after all, is no idle title.

A good amount of the wattage usually turned out to sea is finding the room, pulled in by a distressed elemental instinctively reaching for photons to stand guard against the void. "How can you damn me? I *was* Hell. They pulled me down there at their sufferance and manipulated me into... to... being it, all tangled up in every sin done and every tear ever shed. I know it's nothing compared to the trials you went through or face every day. Not by a longshot. It's so easy to see the strength in you that you claw back after everything. He has to be terrified of you and hate you more than anything because your defiance is the echo of why they Fell in the first place, the big F fall. They thought they were the rebels. Then a mortal made in the image of their maker shows up and throws back what they prided themselves on, the only shred of reason for their great war they have after five billion years or five thousand or whatever the real time scale is." The words tumble forth in a telling of guards off, curbs crashing away from the usual ebullience, blood smeared under nails gone much too sharp for the skin already healing and hardening to resist them at her palms. "He's sc-scared shiteless of you for saying no. When he tried to get advantage, what happened? Tortured became the torturer would have been one thing, you think? But what happens when you tossed him down and walked away? Who else did that, d'ya know? Name's a bloody short list. They remember. They hate the name, but they remember."

Tears run in the vibrating memories tearing out from their paper-mache boxes where they get stowed, for those hours awake and dead and none between. "Tell me again how you caused my damnation and by what means, cause the way I see it, I never stood a chance soon as they got me. Price of being ignorant and not the sharpest pencil in the box, innit? Or I was when I showed them the hope of redemption -- that maybe they could be in the clear, forgiven maybe -- and that's not a cheque I'm sure can be cashed. God isn't really on speaking terms with a daft girl from Cumbria, you might've noticed?"

John Constantine has posed:
    "If I'm so strong, Meggan, why then am I so *fucking tired*?" John asks, his voice thick with it, the tired, the fear, the emotion... the bloody *tired*. He's exhausted, who wouldn't be? How man mortal men - demon tainted or not - would even be sane and standing after the past few weeks?

    When he looks up at her, those faded denim blues are a little too bright, and not with Hellfire burning. He blinks, once, twice, blinks back the brightness of brimming tears and says, "Maybe I wanted him to take the deal, yeah?" Because maybe he's just *that* tired. But it's a lie, it really is, a lie told by the mind of an exhausted man that feels backed into a corner, lost... afraid, losing hope in how this current battle to save the fucking world will turn out.

    "What have I done, Meggan?" he whispers, barely there before he leans forward to rest his elbows on the table and press his hands to his face. Because now, in the face of her unfaltering faith in him, in the presence of her undying devotion and love for him? Well, he's starting to regret those words spoken in desperation in the streets. "What have I done?" he repeats, dragging those elegant hands down over that scruffy, haggard face. "I don't wanna die, I don't wanna leave you... but I don't know if I have it in me to beat him again."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"You don't give up?" The question is there, hanging in the balance. Meggan hugs herself, and then shakes that off, going for the bottle and dumping another finger-deep splash into the glass he hasn't let go of entirely. It remains in John's province. "You don't have to beat him, you just have to outfox him and isn't that your reason for being and breathing? Constantine, the bloke who comes out swinging hungover and boxes in some uppity ponce of a demon. Gets the upper hand on an Egyptian mummy or whatever nasty spirit came out from great-grandma's dormer, when a City banker lobbed junk out for auction."

She drops to the ground two steps in, a thud of her body landing by the chair he sits in, gold hair spilled on the ground. "Fake it til you make it, thought that was the other thing they say all the time. Come up with some bullshit. Throw him at the angels or a mammoth or... make that Death witch who fancies herself all white and scary. Imagine they would have a fight worth it. Convince Superman to do the eyeblasty thing on him, he's done that before."

Resting against his leg isn't much but something, gentle and steady. "It's all done, yeah? You keep moving forward, you don't look back. I tied my daft self to you, so I'm not going anywhere."

John Constantine has posed:
    Maybe he didn't even hear me," John adds to the list of things he could do, it's just that this thing is called wishful thinking.

    His hand falls to the top of Meggan's head and rests there for just a moment or two before...

    "Let's just go to bed, love, worry more tomorrow?"

    He takes the last draw from that Silk and along with the exhaled smoke he says, "I promise I won't fake it when we make it..."

    Man needs a distraction, he truly does. He pushes himself to his feet, butts that cigarette in the ashtray that he probably will not remember to wash tomorrow and holds both hands out to help her to her feet.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Yeah, didn't hear. Bullshit. It's a demon. The fae know a thing or two about promises, and agreement even without entirely conscious awareness until the offer comes to the lips and ears burn.

Wishful thinking would be a nice concept. If only.

"When did you last sleep?" A soft question they ask a lot, don't they? John, crap at sleeping, Meggan crap at staying awake, sometimes. Her kin excel at walking between dreams but not so much her. "Prefer more of the bed?" Because really, how often does one get to choose if they sprawl like the dead and share with a small spotted cat? "One of these days, I'm hauling you to a henge to see what happens."

Like will Merlyn appear? Roma? A great angry dragon that wants to bite his face off? She rises up to his offered hands, tipping her head until her brow rests to his. "Really. It will turn out. Don't be afraid. We can figure it, or we get to spend a good long while making him regret the decision. Maybe after a couple years he'll toss us both out for being maddeningly adorable."

John Constantine has posed:
    "I got an hour, maybe, last night after Paris," John admits and even adds, "Wasn't very peaceful." A tired sigh of a breath, and then another sucked it as if to try to chase away the first.

    "No, not more. Could be a jail cot and I'd still want you, just as you are now, clinging to it with me. I never sleep better than when I'm in bed with you, love." All things considered, he doesn't look *that* bad, smudges under the eyes, few bruises left from being crushed and battered by animated bones - he showered at Chas's when he dropped Phoebe off so he doesn't stink like Eau de'Bones-n-Death.

    Phoebe, oh yeah, that... "Lil' Glow Worm is moving into Chas's spare bedroom." Seventeen year old living above a bar, always a great idea.

    When their foreheads touch, he reaches up to stroke her cheek with the pad of his thumb. "I love you, Meggan. ...and I'm still sorry for that, for loving you too much to push you away for good," ...and he's good at doing that, the master really. "... but it doesn't change it, nothing ever could."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meggan may be British, fae, and not at all conventional. Raised in a caravan or the Lake District in what amounted to a crofter's cottage, she does not stand by the norm. "Is there a reason you're saddling him with a minor in a situation that could get him in a lot of trouble? Americans don't muck about with kids, even ones this close to being free and clear legally. I'm not even sure here they treat adults as eighteen year olds. Plenty can't drink."

Hard possibly to believe her actual age is mirrored to his, for all she chooses to occupy a university student existence. Age is malleable, he proves that being weathered halfway to fifty and her ignoring time altogether. A hug is the only answer before tottering out of the kitchen, no drinks taken on her part and only on his.

The spontaneous pull isn't something easily escaped from, at any rate, enabling a spark of human contact. "Try pushing me away for good and I'll return just to spite you. It'll be your luck that does it, too. If you honest and truly want me to leave -- not for some protective notion, but because you don't love me or don't want this, you just say it. Mean it."

The very notion sucks. She probably well and truly hates even giving thoughts room to breathe. "Otherwise, yours."

John Constantine has posed:
    "She claims she doesn't have anywhere to live, that she's been couch surfing. I didn't saddle, he was chompin' at the bit. He misses Geraldine." John wraps his arms around her and pulls her closer again before they even make it to the bedroom, a kiss to the top of the head. "It'll be all right, I think the kid knows a thing or two about discretion. Don't think she'll be shouting it from the rooftops that she's living with a man near twice her age that's not a relative."

    Another kiss to her crown, some of the tension, that fear, it's starting to fade away to leave behind nothing but bone tired. He truly is *exhausted*, down to his core exhausted.

    "I could never mean it, that's the problem, I can't even fake it with you."

    When they finally make it to the bedroom and he gets out of everything needed out of for proper sleeping, he murmurs, "Don't let go tonight, love." Maybe, tonight, the distraction he truly needs is just her holding him tight against the nightmares so he can face the real ones, the ones that cross into the waking world, with a fresh set of eyes and a rested mind tomorrow.