Log; Complete [Part 2]

[silkcutremix.livejournal.com]

When; BACKLOG, May 15thish
Rating; R for LANGUAGE
Characters; John Constantine [silkcutremix], Elle Driver [venomouselle]
Summary; Encounter, lecture, trigger, suppression, outpour.
Log;

"It'll work until it heals over," said John, approaching her side cautiously to reach into a pocket on the outside, producing a small knife. "I'm sure with the big one you play with, this will be nothing but a silly little butterknife. Sit down and give me your arm.

"Here's your silly little patch by the way." It dangled on a finger.

---

Elle turned. It was funny to see a knife in his hands, she wasn't sure why. "You'll get to meet my nice big one if you keep all this up." Even as she spoke she moved. "Lemme at least dress would you?"

Upon passing him, the assassin reclaimed her eye patch. "When you lose an eye, do tell me how silly you think they are especially when around young children..." Elle almost said lovers but let it drop.

---

"I never thought you'd be the sort to consider that group," Constantine smirked, watching her as that pocket knife waited by his side. Cori had more skill with wielding one but John knew how to cut even the most intricate of sigils on a variety of canvases, human flesh included. The tip of the blade rested on his lip, his expression as mysteriously sly as ever.

---

John's trench coat dropped to the floor as Elle stepped into her room. She emerged not long after in a white velour track suit. Upon exiting, nearly trampled the discarded coat. "Fuck sake," she muttered to herself, picking it up again.

"Okay." Seeing the life resting on his smug mouth reminded Elle that her own mouth had just begun healing at their last encounter. A good kiss of metal that began this hellish plotline. Goddamn, Budd.

---

Flicking his cigarette butt to the hard floor while Elle dressed, John made a quick gesture when she emerged, giving her a little flick of his head to indicate the couch. He would recover his coat later. "Sit there, an' give me your arm. We're going to have a little arts and craft session."

---

Sitting, Elle rolled up her sleeve. Two and two together made four, "you're going to cut me with that?"

---

John gave his little knife a look then turned his gaze back onto her. "Yeah? Would you rather me do this with me teeth?"

---

"No, no I wouldn't." She slowly put out her arm to him as though to shake his hand not knowing which side was going to endure this. The assassin made herself breathe evenly, already anticipating the sensation.

---

"Good girl."

Should there have been a sleeve, that was rolled back, the magus turning the pale underside of that arm up. With that, the knife hovered above her flesh for a moment, the sterile chill icing down from the blade's edge. Was he making a careful judgment of where to place the first incision, or was he being a bloody tease?

---

Elle turned her face away. She cold feel how cold it was already. "Are you waiting for a written invitation or just making a mental picture first?"

---

"It won't work if it's not perfect," John said. The knife bit.

---

"Mmph!" Arm twitched slightly underneath the first cut. Elle bit her lip, not going to make any more noise than she needed to.

---

John was indifferent, already channeling his focus intensely into his work like an artist. Carving wards and sigils was an art in itself; if you drew it wrong, in most cases nothing would happen, in rare cases, the fuck up came back several times bloody awful on your arse. Constantine was cutting by memory, his blade leaving red slivers and beads of blood, but his was reliable, accurate. He could memorize magic circles down to their most intricate detail quickly. It was a talent he had. Kept his arse intact.

---

The careful, exact small cuts one after another increased her breathing. Nothing about his movements were hurried. She could feel blood roll down over the rest of her arm, sticky and hot. Elle concentrated on keeping still, keeping calm. Silence and the scrape of the knife were not contributing factors.

"Do this often?" Her voice was small, in a higher, more airy pitch. Feminine.

Talk so I don't have to!

---

"I practice on meself," replied the magus coolly, casual with his work. This truly was nothing new to him, just flesh that wasn't his. "I could be carving this on your soul. It'd last longer."

---

Elle grit her teeth. She couldn't toss or pull away. She wanted more than anything for it to stop and he only just started. "Soul?"

What the fuck had she gotten herself into?

---

John smiled, and it wasn't a warm comforting one either. "Magic's a funny business, Elle. Let's keep at managing your affliction, eh?"

---

That earned John a grunt. "Affliction. Right." Her fingers curled into a fist ."This is what I get for the one night I let loose," she spoke softly as if to herself.

---

"Wrong place at the wrong time." One last slit to a serpent eating itself, amazingly immaculately carved to an almost Celtic likeness, as far as flesh art and knives went. John stepped away to search for that discarded rag browning with his blood.

---

"That's you all over it. Am I right?" Blood ran warm over her shaking arm. She slowly turned to face him and looked down upon the image now carved into her skin.

"Holy shit!"

---

"Bloody coincidence, innit? I just remembered." He, approaching Elle again with the rag, gave it a look. "Yeah, who else did you beat the shit out of just now?'

---

"Not anyone recently. You're just special." She held the opposite arm out for the rag. "Any magic directions for my fancy body art?"

Art it was. At least for now. Elle tried to imagine what it'd look like as an intricate work in scabs. That wouldn't be very pretty. Scars might have more appeal.

---

"Pick at them and they'll scar, luv," John replied as if reading her mind, placing the rag on her wounds for her regardless of what she might have said. He was being a gentleman for once. "Other than that, you do nothing."

---

Pressure on the wound made her hiss. "This mean I'll never be a fucking dog again?" She looked up at John, eye wary. He was a conman for certain, a friend for now. Either way she had to trust him.

Elle hated that. She knew about guns, swords, and general fighting tactics. Easily she could think up more than a dozen ways to kill a man. Here and now, she was to go on someone else's expertise. Even though here was the smug bastard who unintentionally dropped her into this.

---

A friend in the loosest sense of the word, but John didn't give a damn. A part of John liked Elle and truly he was a good man at heart, wrapped up in a cold bastardy fuck's exterior. He would help Elle, but he would not do it at the expense of who he was, or who he had crafted his public persona to be. The City changed those, and the magus was not sure if it was for the better, particularly when it tried to change him.

"No, you shouldn't, unless you do something bloody stupid."

---

With her own hand, Elle held down the rag letting it soak up the blood that still ran. The cloth would never be white again. Or at least the funny sort of dingy white. There was something symbolic in it but she didn't care to persue it farther, the same went for the strange knowing look in John's face.

"Stupid? Maybe you're used to magic folks, but I'm rather..." fuck she couldn't talk about being very careful with this piece of work, "I perform well when it counts." Safe enough to say.

---

Constantine watched her. A rag was a rag and it wasn't his. Not that he cared. "I don't know how you can fuck up a bloody tattoo," literally, "but I think you're smart enough to not be creative and try to figure that conundrum out."

---

Elle shrugged. "No more furry temper tantrums." She smiled just a little. "Bout time you fixed things."

Could they even talk about what happened? Elle wasn't sure if she wanted to. Initically that was on her mental agenda in the event that they were civil with one another. How does one bring up a one night stand especially when details are fuzzy?

---

A friggin' bandaid, but whatever she said. "Yeah, fixed." Constantine did not appear to want to linger on the subject either. There were fuzzy details and then there were the fuzzy results after. She might have been the first he would have to "fix," she would not be the last.

---

"That doesn't sound very affirming. If there's more spit it out." Grateful maybe, but satisfied not entirely. She picked up on his desire to stray off subject. "What do I need to know, John? Not what you want me to know, what do I need to know?"

---

"Your definition of 'fixed' seems to be keeping the bitch under control, that is all."

---

"When I say under control I mean not coming back... and that's not what you mean when you agree to my fix." She needed a cigarette, especially if she was expected to maintain patience.

Elle stood and retrieved retrieved her Red Apples from the remainders of her clothing. She left the pack ontop of the cloth shreds and returned to sit on the couch with the cigarette jutting outward from her pursed lips.

---

John took this time to produce another Silkcut for himself. Puff. "For good is going to take some time and another method. It won't come back as long as you have that little number I just cut into you."

---

Now they were getting somewhere. "What do you call this by the way?" Elle made a motion to the cloth as she lit her cigarette. "I'm pretty sure," delicious first inhale, "it's not going to come off in the shower or anything."

---

"Summer's coming up. Suppose you could do with something a little less."

---

"Come again?"

---

"Just wait until your air conditioner breaks in the heat of July, right?"

---

"Right...If that's suppose to make sense, I don't see it." She flicked ashes into the coffee can stashed close to the couch.

---

John shook his head. "Done fuck all I could in that case. I'm off then."

---

One eyed and one armed, Elle could still move fast. She was up on her feet and in front of him. "Maybe, it's now your turn to listen, huh?" God, did he have to make everything harder than it needed to be?

---

John cocked a brow. Not finished? He stopped. "Out for an ear now?"

---

"I want you to know that if I weren't drunk, I would have sent you back home to Cori."  Elle needed to say it. For her own piece of mind she needed the words to be spoken. "I wasn't in a very good place. I guess I should be glad that it was at least you are someone I know but that doesn't take away from the fact that it shouldn't have happened."

---

"It did. What else can I do?" John shrugged. "I am not going to crawl on my knees and bloody sob about it no matter how many teeth you knock out, alright?"

---

The assassin gave him the rightly deserved punishment for making the mistake of not seeing the apology she hid. Elle's elbow connected with his gut and her fist swung upward into his face. "Bitch, I don't expect you to do anything of the sort. I fucking told you it's my turn to talk."

---

Blood again, this time the taste was in his mouth. John had stumbled back, buckled over, both arms holding that throbbing awful gut. He made motions to heave but spat up some of the blood that had pooled in his mouth onto the floor. That was also warm, hot even. He sank to his knees, falling forward forehead to the floor.

---

She shook her head and leaned over him. "I feel like...maybe you and I sleeping together was some kind of universal irony or prank." Elle spoke slowly and softly. The likelihood of John being able to focus on what she was saying was slim to nothing. She still needed to get it out.

"I'm pretty sure I called you by a few names that weren't yours."

---

John hocked up another mouthful of blood, coughing from the pit of his stomach. Oh fuck, he better not vomit... Risking another blow, he murmured, "Luke must have been one of them, yes?"

---

"Yes. That's my thinking. Well, I suppose if you don't remember what I called you that's just fine." The fact that Elle had been saying names, let alone nicknames had her irritated. These were things that people weren't suppose to now. "I'd prefer it that way."

No one needs to know except those who do.

With a sigh she retrieved a towel. She'd have to clean the damn floor when he left with bleach. Luke and Jan would pick up on the smell in nothing flat.

---

John observed. "Does he give you enough? Will he after he figures out you've been playing a bit rough with ol' Johnny?" The envelope was always to be nudged, but there was still a feeling of power of him over her. He could afford to. It made her think.

She would thank him, one day.

---

:Elle fumed. She could hardly think when angry. Thoughts that did process were of the cruel and calculating breed Feeling confidant in the new brand on her arm, she knocked him flat, back to the floor. "What happens is none of your fucking business." He had no right, no right at all to be so damn smug and flippant in the face of her concerns. Maybe that was one of the things she loathed most about most City-dwellers. With all of their other worldly power it was so easy to take for granted the fragility of connections that were held together so carefully with every possibility of being torn or broken.

She placed a foot on his stomach, holding the cloth she intended to give him at her hip. "You talk to me like you want to be roughed up, Johnny."

---

"It makes you take less of the shit you can't see," John sneered, a dog belly up. But he was making her angry, that meant something. "You're insecure. What should be saying should mean nothing to you if there is nothing wrong."

---

"Oooh. So now this is where you are going to be helping me in other aspects of my poor, bitten, fucked up life," Elle muttered bitterly, adding more weight as she leaned over him.

---

"You admit it," John choked out. He considered testing the strength of that ward, but hell, he was getting a reaction out of her as it is.

---

"Fuck off," she growled--nothing animalistic about it.

---

John smiled. An improvement there. "And how." He rested his head flat against the floor.

---

"Where did you get the authority or permission to turn our conversation toward my relationship status? Not value your balls or something?" Elle already demonstrated how efficiently she could move and one blow to the area already gave him a taste. "

---

"Observer," replied the magus, a hand subconsciously reaching towards her foot. Couldn't... bloody breathe... His tar-stained lungs were not helping matters much.

---

"Big fucking baby." What's a little bit of lightheadedness? Elle eased her foot off of him and threw the cloth into his blood streaked face. "For such a big mouth you really don't have the physical fortitude to hold up well."

---

"No," he mumbled while taking it to clean himself off. "But I'm not afraid to face the bleedin' consequences for me actions... if it makes things better."

Very quietly, he added, "And you deserve better."

---

Elle laughed a little at his mumbling, "I'm not afraid either. I'm just lucky I don't get caught doing the wrong thing." There was something about seeing a man try and recover his ego after an ass kicking by a lady that really made her smile every time. Still didn't take away from the fact that Elle was not pleased he stepped over the line.

"What was that?" she asked, not catching the last words.

---

John was secure in his ego; he knew what Elle was physically capable of, and that she would use it on a hair trigger with her temper. The fact that she was angry and, well, she was not going to seriously admit it, but Constantine's sense of smell was good; he knew the smell of bullshit.

"I just said something nice, luv. Maybe you should use your canine hearing a little more next time."

---

With a long sigh and glance at the brand new mark on her skin, Elle retreated to sit on the couch. "Right. Nice." Should she even bother to try and continue this?

"So. I guess you don't want to hear what I have to say." She didn't pout, but the definite impression of dismissive snark--a specific brand she herself could whip up and if this continued to drag out the only conclusion would be worse harm to John.

---

John, sitting up, furrowed his brow. That the magus did not get. He did not deny anyone there words, but Elle kept on bringing this up. It made him feel like a goddamn rapist.

"I never denied you any chance to speak. You're only shooting yourself in the bloody foot every time you bring it up.

"Speak."

---

Eye wide her jaw fell into motion, speak she did. "I hate the way your fucking scrutinizing me as though you know what's going on in my head. Worse than Bill at least with Bill I knew that anything in there was something that he approved of.

I feel like I've done something wrong to myself, Cori and you. Hell, I haven't felt this comfortable among friends since the early days of the DiVAs. Fucking you was an accident waiting to happen. I could have fucked anybody. I'm so fucking alone that it's really scaring me. Luke's interested but comes and goes like a goddamn cat. I hate cats.

Cori's been a prince to me. I don't think I've ever known a man who I cared so much about and had no desire to fuck. You aren't mine, you're his. I had no right. No fucking right. I was so out of my head I didn't know any better and that's fucking disgusting. I should have gone to bed. I should have turned on the shitty TV set and went to bed.

My mother could have done something like this. I can see her right now in my head, drunk out of her goddamn mind draped over some rich dick at a dinner party all nice and safe in some champagne flavored day dream. The stupid cunt never did anything for herself. Just was a pretty ornament to see and be seen. Who the fuck was I to her? I'd rather die than be anything close to that bitch." Her face felt hot, anger was boiling, throbbing at her temples and still she just kept talking.

Goddamn, John Constantine. Goddamn him.

---

John listened, and as she spoke, he still had the gall to get up and sit with her, slowly, steadly. If she made any motions, he would have left but something doubted she would do anything.

A bottle, that's what she was, a goddamn bottle and somehow she could not spray this on Luke. Was Luke, true to his cat allusion, like talking to an animal, a pet? In any case...

"Does Luke know this? Any of it." That was all he asked. Fuck, Luke should have known this. John should have known this second at the very least. Cori was quick to pick up on when he was troubled. Did Luke allow her the same before problems escalated?

For once, the magus understood the nightmare's demands to know.

---

Elle glared at him, biting her lip. She was going to answer but fought as much as she could. At this rate she was going to bite the soft tissue of the inside of her lower lip off. "A bit. He gets the drift." In an effort to control herself the words were clipped and spat out quickly.

---

"Sometime tells me you're lying." His voice was firm.

---

"What makes you think that's a reliable source?" Elle made her voice stay just as steady.

---

Constantine produced another cigarette, another one lit up. "Oh come off it. You think I am that blind to the rest of you? You speak as if I can't see you friggin' emoting, nevermind the soddin' tension I'm getting."

---

"What the hell do you want me to say, John? The mess was there before you stepped in it? I'm really not angry with you? I liked every moment of our little mistake?" The assassin would not let herself be uprooted, not so easily.

---

"I want you to say nothing." John made eye contact with that single blue eye with all the confidence and firmness of an alpha. "I want you to wake up."

---

I haven't been sleeping. But fine. Consider me awake. Now what?"

---

John should have narrowed his eyes, should have done something, but he did not. Keep looking. Keep staring. Keep digging. "Does Luke love you?"

---

Pain blossomed slowly without a slice or wound expanding outward from her chest. Blood rolled from the corner of her mouth. He really had to make her say it. "No. No he does not love me. I don't expect him to."

---

It all made sense now. "So what is he? Do you love him? Did I truly love you more when we were blindly fucking than he has ever for you?"

---

"Stop." Elle was not going to cry. She was not going to waste tears on this. Retaining eye contact with John she took several breaths. "What... does it matter? He's someone to make me feel wanted, make me feel good. I like him. I don't love him...."

---

John got up. Elle was going to have to decide for herself, and John had enough of seeing this, seeing this very familiar cycle one too many times, in many different forms. Drugs, alcohol, prostitution. Elle could have done worse.

John could look Cori in the teetheyes and tell him that he loved him. Cori could do the same. That was not Elle's case.

It saddened him.

"I'm leaving," he bluntly said.

---

"You're doing it again with the eyes," Elle said softly, slowly. She could quite easily break his nose or collarbone with the close proximity they were sitting in. She wanted to, he deserved it.

She had dignity and she had pride. Both were within John's understanding. It seemed incomprehensible to her that he'd go this far and challenge her this much. And for what purpose? To just up and leave.

---

To walk away. The story of his friggin' life. John was approaching the door, but stopped. Briefly. "Doing what? Did they see the real Elle?"

---

"Scrutinizing," was her answer. "Just because you see something that makes sense doesn't mean its real." Elle remained seated.

---

John's eyes narrowed. "Think about what you just said for a moment, luv, then come back to me. You're not just sleeping," he growled as he opened the door, dropping the rag as the cigarette bobbed on his lips, "you're fucking comatose."

---

"Don't throw words like that at me. I put a bitch into a coma and I'm worlds better than she is! Goddammit, is it a crime to just want to be content? Happiness is something that will leave before you really come to know how great it is." Bite and lash, she had to regain something.

---

"Straws, Elle." John stepped through the door, disappearing. "Straws."

The door closed.

---

The first thing to kiss Elle's mouth to comfort was a cigarette. Music began to play and she didn't know what was freely flowing in the air. Didn't really matter right now. Just the taste of nicotine and a few moments to sit before cleaning up the mess around her.

---

John could hear the faint music. Ignorance was bliss, he supposed. He bit on the end of his own cigarette, wondering what it was like to live that way, if he could ever live in such denial like that again. When someone had anchored the magus, he had truly loved them and the love that could bleed from his own hardened, callous heart was few and far in between but it flowed. His heart gushed for Cori, perhaps even too much so.

Still, John knew what love was. He could feel it. He had felt it. Did Elle, or did she truly need a rock? The magus in turn truly cared for Elle, but she would have to help herself. There was only so much a magic man could do.