Log; Complete

[bitingnightmare.livejournal.com]

When; Apr. 27 (evening)
Rating; PG13 (language)
Characters; John Constantine silkcutremix, the Corinthian bitingnightmare
Summary; Sores aren't the only open wounds neither magus nor nightmare can heal.
Log;

Friday's sunset left only a week more, but thus far the Corinthian had done little to help those from their world, their waking world.  He had nothing to offer, seemingly having lost his immortality, his very nature.  Cori wasn't a nightmare, he wasn't even a man, he was a broken function, a broken machine.

This made the few sores that had bubbled across his skin particularly painful.  One had opened earlier, leaving a patch of dry unhealable granuled flesh.  Even with bandages wrapped around his upper arm he could feel the sand wanting to flake off.  Shit at least the bed sheets were clean from the last plague, free of those burrowing mites that had caused John enough agony.

It was the only comforting thought of the day, that the Englishman had cared to clean up a bit (even if cursed the day before).  But there was the matter of spilled stomach acid from the latest failed ritual with which to contend.  Cori climbed out of bed slowly, willing to see to it if John wasn't.

----

The stomach contents filled the flat with a sour rotten odor akin to vomit, an acrid slime stretching along the hard floor in a puddle. John was sitting there, dismayed, discouraged. A failed ritual indeed. The Corinthian's movements were still labored and now his situation had gifted him with boils. John did not look up from the animal's carcass, there on his knees in a miserable slump. Watching him had hurt.

 

----

"We'll find something else," Cori suggested.  The pungent odor reminded him of the sweet smell of success, a corpse well made with its eye sockets completely emptied.  Ironic.

The nightmare pulled a bucket, scoop, and mop from the utility closet in the kitchen.  Funny how that gray thing hadn't rotted yet, its fibers made to clean up blood, vomit, and now the remains of a sacrifice.  He set them at the spill site and carefully reached down to scoop the non-liquids first.  His movements were slow, a little unsteady, the opposite of the once smooth and stealthy predator.

The grungy fibers soaked the acid in slow circles.  It hurt the palms of Cori's hands, where John had healed them months ago, but he was determined to be something other than bedridden.

 

----

A hand seized that deteriorating arm, swift as a striking serpent but it was not painful. It wasn't even firm. It was enough to catch the nightmare's attention, stop him.

"Cori, no." There was a stiff absoluteness in his voice.

 

----

Teeth eyes glanced to the rough hand on his wrist, his wrapped wrist.  Christ what was Cori becoming?  The corners of his lips turned in a brief frown as he halted his sweeping circles.

"It isn't your fault."

 

----

"I'll do it," John growled. He did not look at Cori; he avoided Cori.

 

----

He narrowed his teeth eyes briefly, anger and disappointment in them though how emotive could little mouths get?  He offered the mop handle to the magus without a word.  The Corinthian's palms were red, small boils developing along the creases.

 

----

There was a flicker of blue eyes as John caught sight of them. They were sad blue eyes, ones sinking off towards the fringes of despair. The only thing that held them back was the hope that a piss drunk stroke of brilliance would come, but the bog was full of puke and John was empty of inspiration. He took the items from Cori, half-heartedly setting off to work.

 

----

Something itched, terribly, like tiny jagged teeth gnawing on his skull for a soul.  It hurt him too, John's despair, Cori's inability to get better.  He interpreted his ill health as a weakness and the ultimate sign that the Corinthian did not, and would not ever, govern his own life.

(They'd been through worse, why was this so damned futile?)

He sat on the edge of their bed, clothed in loose dark blue pants and sleeveless shirt.  The color hid his cold sweats.  He scratched at his palm.  "Sorry."

 

----

"I'll figure out something." The reply croaked from the magus like a dying gasp, faint and airy and away. The mop moved like a funeral march, slow and solemn. John's gaze remained on the floor, which it had briefly narrowed in momentary defiance of his closing defeat.

He'd find out something. He would. He'd better.

 

----

"John," said the nightmare, not one to have a defeatist nature.

He always figured he'd go down with a fight, it was a matter of not acknowledging that he was going down in the first place.  But Cori's skin had broken out with another City plague, and each pustule that cracked was another piece of him that couldn't be healed.  They were accepting jars of dust and sand at the fucking 'office'.

His chest rose up and down in a heavy huff.  "I'm not holding it against you if you can't," the Corinthian said quietly.

 

----

The mop clattered against the floor, filth and slimy water trailing from the moist end. Constantine was facing the Corinthian.

"Cori," he growled, taking a step closer. "Dammit, Cori, it's not that I can't, I will." Closer. "Don't doubt me."

 

----

He hardly flinched over the sudden sound or John's reaction.  Cori expected as much.  He looked the other right in his vibrant piercing blue eyes.  The nightmares didn't come, but neither was he trying to force fear into him.  Those teeth eyes were direct in a way few could interpret.  One of those few was John Constantine.

"And if not," asked the Corinthian, voice quiet but stern, "you'll blame yourself for this?"  He held his blistering palms up to the magus.

 

----

"Fuck!" That was the last thing John needed to see, his own handiwork gone to shit. To touch? To look away? He took a few breaths, his chest tight. A small "Yes" squeezed out.

 

----

"No," Cori countered in a sharp growl, fragile finger pointing at him.  "It isn't your fault and you know it.  It's because of what I am."  His brow furrowed out of frustration, then disappointment for that admittance.  Wasn't that the basic truth, he couldn't be saved because he was linked to function and that had stopped running weeks ago.

 

----

John shook his head. "There is a way around this, and we just haven't found it yet, fuck. Cori... Cori, look at this place. You told me not to give up on it." Constantine was not even a foot away now. "Fuck whose fault it is, the result'll be the goddamn same."

 

----

"I'm sick of seeing your face every time it doesn't fucking work," he snapped.

All that time Cori had told him not to give up, all that strength unraveled.  He'd rather see the Englishman accepting of the possibility written in the chained book rather than scuttling with the twin and her rats.

 

----

John tensed. "Would you rather see me do nothing? Twiddle me thumbs? Wave you off to wherever the hell you go after?"

 

----

"No," the Corinthian shook his head, snow blonde hair sticking to his forehead from a sweat, "I don't go anywhere."

He closed his teeth eyes tightly, no tears for the inevitable, only disappointment.  The nightmare didn't think even a ribbon could save him, them.  What had the dog said... as long as you.  "You have a way out don't you," Constantines always did, "if this goes to shit I want you to use it."

 

----

John said nothing to this, wrought with too much conflict to sputter much out beyond an uncomfortable grunt. Leave... John could leave but there was an obligation inside him that urged the magus to take more than himself. Zee, for one.

Not Cori.

----

A grunt, a characteristic response from John when he had no words to say.  How he'd come to notice the magician's manner, his habits, those unique nuances, in such a short time.  Seven months was little to an immortal, but he and John Constantine had managed to stretch them out for all they were worth.

"I'm tired, John, tired of slow death," he said with a look to the redness on his hands, "fucking tired of promises we can't keep."

 

----

"So you want to die?" John snarled, unwilling to let something so good in his life go away like everything else had, fleeting as he was in the lives of others. He fucked up with Miss Ireland. He was not going to repeat it. "Now?"

 

----

"I don't want to die," he snarled back, "not now, but every fucking day goes by telling me I don't have a choice.  You do."

The Corinthian shook his head.  "It's a god damned shame," his tone softened.

 

----

"I'm not fucking leaving you." Lung cancer. They both thought Cori was going to die but he was not. John was going to make sure of it, he swore. He seized those shoulders with an aggressive tenderness. "You're not going to die."

 

----

His teeth eyes narrowed again, not out of protest but out of the discomfort in his skin, his unhealing wounds.  Like the phantom hairline fractures in his skull.  Cori shut his eyes.  "That's exactly it, you son of a bitch.  You're not going to leave me but fuck if I know I'll be leaving you.  I'm so... fucking sorry."

 

----

 

John huffed. "You're going to last as long as I will, mate, and it's not going to be until the end of this fucking month."

He would not fail. He would not fail.

 

----

The Corinthian opened his teeth eyes but didn't lift his gaze yet.

John and his fucking pride, he would miss it if he faded away.  He would miss it as much as the stubble in the sink, the unrelenting fancy for 'birds', the scent of a Silk Cut, his company.  Cori didn't want to see it all go down the drain, couldn't bear to see the wounded blue eyes if they failed.  He didn't think the Englishman's pain was worth it.

"I don't want you to hurt," said the Corinthian.  Maybe John didn't know it, maybe he'd forgotten that once the white blonde had read through his journal, but he knew the man had more hurt in his fifty something years than Cori had in two thousand.

 

----

But John was a man, a living thing born of another, not created. He had all the sensitivities and nuances that made him human, all the little things that lasted only less than a century more so than perceived eternity. All the pain the magus had felt was an extreme concentration. Seeing the nightmare like this was peeling off the magus' emotional armor, his cool, his control.

Solace was the lazy days in the flat, the air heavy with mingled brands of cigarettes and hours of sitting there in skivvies thinking about sex when they weren't doing it. They were laughing at the City, enjoying life. Constantine was not ready to go back to London; he found he could hone his edge here. He did not want the nightmare to go.

John's lips felt dry. "Too late for that."

 

----

He didn't have to, not if he inhaled the remnants of sand and dust that made the Corinthian's body.  A morbid thought, but for all they knew it was the only option left.  Nightmares didn't die like men, they simply were not whenever their creator deemed them unworthy, and his Lord had already left (leave the pets to drown).

His expression softened.  Too late, unsalvageable, was the pain worth it?  Maybe so after all.  Mindful of his sores, Cori reached up to press his fingertips along John's stubbled jaw.  He wanted to taste those dry lips, wished their last fuck hadn't been so rotten, wished he could work magic.

"Tell me you'll move on if I go."

 

----

Those hands still remained on the Corinthian's shoulder. Those blue eyes traveled downward to nowhere, from the teeth to a void below.

"I don't think I can do it again."

 

----

He knew little about Miss Ireland but the Corinthian felt he knew a lot about her impact on Constantine.  "You have to, I've got that much faith in you," he managed to crack a smile, even if it appeared apologetic.  Cori wasn't sure about his survival, but he felt sure about John's ability to endure.

 

----

"Then," John softly said, "do you think it was right?" The dog.

 

----

"I want to think so, and think you're invincible at the same time."  He pressed his fingers into John's very human flesh.  How many times had the magus cheated death?  Cori witnessed it once with his own eyes.

 

----

Rough flesh losing its glow as the magus lost his appetite, forgot to eat, made excuses not to eat. "Then you won't go unless I will."

 

----

"You won't even eat," he countered.  Cori knew why too.  It was beyond the Englishman's unique brand of stubbornness, but how could he fault John for it?  It was a testament to his undying determination, born out of devotion or an inability to accept failure was another story.

 

----

"I forgot," John shrugged. Thinking about food had not even evoked a suggestive growl from his belly. His insides felt numb, all of him attuned on keeping Cori alive.

 

----

"Don't forget," said the nightmare before he closed the distance between them, dry mouth to dry mouth.  He meant eating, knowing how much John liked to eat at his best, but Cori may as well have meant himself too.  In death or not, he didn't want the Englishman to erase him from memory.