Log: Complete

[bitingnightmare.livejournal.com]

When; Jul. 25 (night)
Rating; PG-13 (language, gelatin violence)
Characters; John Constantine silkcutremix, the Corinthian bitingnightmare
Summary; The magus invents the next Christmas craze, but the foreboding experience goes down the drain.
Log;

Several papers of scratch were scattered across their coffee table. A few heavy books, worn and musty, sat at one other end. One was open, a half-scribbled piece of paper wedged where the pages met to the spine, serving as a makeshift bookmark. Huddled over the disarray leaning on his knees was John Constantine, his classic Silk Cut wedged between his fingers as he thought with an intense focus. A popped spring jutted out from the torn cushions next to him; there was no point in replacing the couch if they were going to be here for another month (worse cast scenario).
 
John surveyed his scattered notes again, several scratches resembling magic circles prominent among the pages. Three-Five point? Four-Six? He did not have his components pinpointed yet, but a few of them were within his immediate reach, just inside the flat. A good thing; this whole hurdle of getting something open across the fabrics of time, space and dimension would not be easy. He had already accepted that, but he knew he could do it.

No need for the couch when the bed sufficed, and company had the option of sitting at the kitchen table, or on the floor.  Cori rocked back on his kitchen chair, the laptop terminal left on but the network otherwise untouched.  Why give the audience another ridiculous bed dance so soon?  Especially when half the City was involved in some sort of throwback to the hey day of tabletop games, and not the sexual kind he enjoyed.

Speaking of... the Corinthian watched the bad luck magician intently, his toothy gaze motionless save for when smoke trickled out from them.  Something about Constantine doing what he was known for was intriguing.  This wasn't even the first time he'd witnessed John at work, there'd been several other occasions, but it never ceased to... pique the nightmare's interest.  He cleared his throat.

"Anything I can do," asked the white blonde, offering his assistance even though magic wasn't his forté.  Fortunately, he excelled in other areas that greatly made up for his lack of voodoo prowess.

Constantine had appreciated that bed dance, a reminder of the versatility of the classic shag spot, but the magus was not intent on any sort of fucking right now. He had business, and his niece's life, his only family, hung in the balance. He had to go back, no matter what and the magus would not be able to forgive himself otherwise. The reason for why he had wrapped himself in the conscious of a beast resurfaced, especially now that he could not die.
 
He bit his lip for a moment, seeing that pale face in his mind's eye. All three sets of teeth were white, pulled into one big sneer and two little ones: Don't give up on you.
 
A musky pinch and a tingle of pheromones: Cori's. John adjusted his reading glasses and glanced over his shoulder towards the actual Corinthian, tickled that all this was making him horny. 
 
"I did tell you to fetch a bit of your superior's blood, didn't I?" he grinned.

Tickled was an understatement.

"I'm working on it," said the nightmare.  Having forgotten about John's sensitive nose, and having no real way to stop his body from releasing that tingling scent, Cori crossed his legs at his thighs to subtly... quell a perk of interest.  "Make due with what you've got," he added, hooking a thumb over his shoulder to the fridge.

The Corinthian puffed on the remnants of his cigarette before putting the embers out in the ashtray.  He managed to rise to his feet without a pitch in his denim and wandered over to the magician's paperwork.  Curious and perhaps in the way.

The grin faded away. "Was afraid of that," John huffed, his own meditative moments not helping stem the tide of one of his most basic desires. He shook his head, deciding that surveying their current inventory right now might not be such idea. Ingredient properties and that.
 
"Going to 'ave a butcher's," Constantine called to the nightmare as they crossed, his direction towards the fridge. Fortunately, they had more beer in their than blood. He could go for one right now, if to calm the constant buzz of magical thought in his head.

"It's a little harder than it sounds," said the Corinthian, justifying his delay in acquiring his master's blood.  Certainly John wouldn't want Cori to rush into the assignment, risking his own head right?  Right??

He tilted his head briefly as the magician passed him.  His concentration was uncanny, but the nightmare wouldn't expect any less from Constantine.  This was his niece's well being at stake after all, and no matter how much the man postured with his balls a'swinging Cori knew he could harbor great compassion, especially for the only family he had left.

He followed John to the fridge, inquisitive as a feline.  The investigation took his mind off of other basic instincts.  "That one's an arrancar's," explained the nightmare, gesturing to a sealed amber glass bottle.  "That one's Rosiel's," he pointed to a dark pint, and then to the greener one next to it, "I don't know where that one came from."  Cori smirked.

An interesting exotic selection. John had to pick up the wild card bottle and give it a once over, studying how it swirled, how it left a stain as it slinked down the glass as it swished and tilted, its general viscosity. He took it out with the other two, giving special care to Rosiel's blood. He had no open wounds on his hands, but he could not be too careful.
 
"Aged to perfection," Constantine commented.  He examined collection with a thoughtful head tilt, rubbing his chin. Point and pinnacle. The bloods he would need would be the surrounding points in the perfect shape of the sphere, the earth, its conscious forces encompassing and intersecting to make whole. Or some bollocks like that anyway. Research was research and whatever it took to get them out.
 
He fetched his coat to fish out his own smaller, hidden knife. Still not as fancy as the balisong, but functional.

"You recall what happened last time," he asked John.  Just to jog the old man's memory Cori rubbed his finger over the hole in the table; he'd sealed it with some wood putty and varnish.  Good as new, almost.  Still, the possibility of Round Two against the Champion Acid Blood Bath sufficiently did away with his carnal desire.

"I know."
 
It was enough to kill any erection. John held his thumb over a small plate to slit his thumb, his expression unmoved by the sting of the blade. He squeezed the digit instead, milking what he could of the red cocktail of shit as it dripped and spread along the eggshell white. He sucked whatever else had beaded from the wound as he retrieved other plates, pouring samples of each. Briefly, he saw himself in several shades of crimson in four parts.

"I really don't know whom that belongs to," Cori repeated, another way of warning John to be careful with the wildcard bottle.  Sure, by some stroke of luck it could be just what he needed, be it the blood of an Endless or a deity.  Most of the time the magician had strokes of bad luck.  Gemma had to be worth quite the risk.

Up till now, neither of the spills attempted to eat through the surface material nor slide off the plates and attack the pair.  It all seemed relatively normal, almost mundane.

 

Three identified bloods, one that could be anything, all passive on their own. John gave the strange wildcard blood a sniff, scenting something distantly Scottish, before glancing at the nightmare. He had been thankful Cori did not kiss him when he came home that one morning all bloodied up with his own.
 
Anything for Gemma, if just to have her live a normal life free of this magic shite. That plan wasn't going all that well. He scowled before taking the mystery blood's plate.
 
"You're good at forensics." The blood rippled as Constantine held the plate to Cori. "Taste and tell."

"........."

Fortunately for the Corinthian he would never give anyone the pleasure of seeing him go cross-eyed.  It was impossible to distinguish such an expression from his teeth.  They did just that though when John held the plate to him.  Unraveling the mysteries of a person's life and/or death through their eyes was his specialty.  Being a bloodhound or cadaver dog was not, but he could give it a shot.

Cori dipped a fingertip in the wildcard stain then raised it to his lips.  No, to his eyemouth.  It was safer that way if the blood carried any diseases, neither of them needed more.  His pink tongue came slithering out, expecting an eye and almost recoiling with disappointment when all it got was a smear of red from the nightmare's finger.  It licked his flesh clean.

Scottish was right, dirt of the moors, a trace of cold, something... reptilian.  He upnodded to John.  "Remember the dinosaur in the square during March?"  If not the leoplurodon then definitely its cousin.

John rose a brow, taking back the plate to gaze into it curiously, as if expecting to see the creature reflected off the surface rather than his own grizzled mug. So that's what it was: Dead dinosaur blood to compliment the feast that followed the many slain that one day as many of the citizens with their great powers had compensated for other things. 
 
He set it back on the table.
 
"I'm mixing in our dear departed Rosie's blood last," John added, searching around the kitchen. Pots, pans and other things he thought they never had but Cori certainly would have had joined the bloods on the counter.

"As long as it doesn't eat through the furniture again.  I don't think the coffee table would last another month," said the Corinthian, a faint smirk on his main mouth.

They had pots, pans, most of them used for cooking real food rather than concocting spell ingredients, although there was that time he deep fried the tongue...  He enjoyed honing his culinary skills; Cori could admit that no matter how odd the 'hobby' was for the dark mirror of humanity.  But he wondered if he could continue with it upon their return to the waking world, their reality.  He wondered what of theirs in the City could remain in... London?  New York?

"Need OJ," he asked the magus while fishing a carton of the juice from the top shelf.  It wasn't a proper dose of vitamin C to keep the blood fresh, but it could do for the samplings on the plates.  It could keep the blood from congealing into a gelatinous mold.. if the juice was right.

"That works," replied John.
 
Just in case, should the process cause congealing. He wasn't looking for congealing so much as a way to stretch the blood into a safe mingle. Now that he thought about it, the spell was calling for grooves: An originator of the point and where the points link and meet, a symbol for all that was connected on the planet: Men and beasts, angels and demons, the essence of power there and power that cannot be seen, the bleed that sunk through it all.
 
Awaiting the carton, John perked up in a moment of revelation: It was a six-four or a seven. More than four for the outer points in any case. He'd have to find out exactly later. Right now, not fucking up blood preparation. Constantine had three kinds of blood in him, and extracting it all into three parts was another matter entirely. The Corinthian might have cooked but the magus brewed.

The Corinthian did his civic duty by opening the carton and drinking from it first before he offered the box to Constantine.  Although he found the magic man's working mode completely alluring, the voodoo craft was lost on the nightmare.  On the other hand, the science of crime scene investigation, evidence preservation, and evidence elimination were skills in his arsenal.

That OJ though, he really should have thought twice.  Wasn't it Rosiel who had a deep complex almost carnal hunger for the citrus?  Who knew what mixing it with their blood could do.

"Is a rain dance involved," Cori asked John, grinning.  Maybe he couldn't work the magic like Constantine, but the white blonde knew how to have a little fun about his shortcomings.  Besides, rain dances were rather ridiculous to him, for magic or not.

In the manner of some strange ritual in itself, Constantine too had taken a generous swig when the carton left Cori's hands. They did not receive many visitors anyway, and the Corinthian's spit was often Constantine's, and vice versa. A distant kiss, of sorts, but John gave the carton a look, shaking it with a few good swirls before swigging again.
 
"Tastes better that way." He placed the carton with his spell-brewing array. "You did a brilliant one on top of the bed." The magus took a small, narrow baster, the tip long, into the carton, taking a sample of juice and dripping it curiously into Rosiel's sample with a tiny plik and ripple.

An indirect kiss, as the Japanese would call it, though hardly anything unusual for a pair of committed 'bachelors'.  That and the Corinthian while neat in his own right had little concern over the sanitation of others.  Why should anyone complain about a carton tainted with his lips?  He was a far cleaner creature than John Constantine.

"I can do an encore," suggested the nightmare in a joking matter.  Yes he knew, work first, play later.  His toothy gaze settled on the baster and plate, watching it intently for a reaction.  The angel's blood practically quivered when the drops of citrus spilled into its red.  The ripples settled after an unnaturally long duration.

"It's not supposed to do that," Cori said while arching a brow.  The solution of blood and orange juice seemed to grow a little thicker, more... solid.

John's magic work was dirty business as it was. The clean getup was for rubbing it in and making victory all the sweeter, but this sweetness that had soaked into the blood, the magus had not forgotten Rosiel's citrus obsession. He cocked his head, watching the blood react intently.
 
"What was it supposed to do, mate?" the magus' tone suggesting that the nightmare might have known something about this, er, chemical reaction.

"Vitamin C keeps the blood from coagulating," Cori explained to John.  He thought the Englishman might know better, maybe not.  Then again this was angel's blood, not a sample from a DOA at the morgue.

The Corinthian dared to touch it.  He brushed his fingertip along the surface, causing the material to jiggle as if it were fucking jello.  None of the red stuck to his skin.  The nightmare tilted his head then shrugged at the magician.  "I guess that means it's safe to add yours now," he said in a casual manner.  What harm could acidic jello do as long as no one ate it?

John knew that part, but indeed, this was angel's blood and for a moment he thought the Corinthian might have been familiar with its properties. It came down to him again, but angels had varied as with their blood content. 
 
"Bloody supernatural for you," John grumbled, mustering up his cool to take the plate of his own sample and slowly dab a tiny bit into it. The last time, too much at once (he guessed) had created an unmatched corrosive acid. Scenting this blood yielded a different odor from both original substances. The contact of the blood had brought the funny tang to a cloudy red sump.
 
It did not smell good, and what blood had touched it made the flat surface shudder. The plate was intact.

"Or divine," he suggested, tongue in cheek.

Who knew what God had blessed Rosiel with such immaculate (and corrosive) properties.  Was this the very manifestation of narcissism and megalomania directly coded into his DNA?  Adding John's blood must have been parallel to mixing whiskey with wine in a styrofoam cup.  The blood mold quivered again, almost recoiling from the magus' finger to avoid the inevitable contact.

His finger left a print on the surface before the soft material absorbed it.  "That's different," Cori nodded.  Down to John again, the magic man, old player from London.  Hell maybe the Corinthian was just lazy.  "Maybe if we add some champagne the pentagram will accept it for dessert."

"I need it liquid, but it's not eating shite," observed John, not too intent on offering jello to whatever super trans-dimension being that manned the passageways between worlds. He had a feeling there might have been one there, remembering the obsidian blade at his throat and the little moon-faced monkey wielding it. The blood wasn't eating his finger either. What could make the blood soft again, back to its liquid form?
 
Curious of his current concoction regardless, he jabbed his finger into it, penetrating the gel. Normal jello would have had the tears and give but these were patched up instantly. Peeling at the edges revealed he could roll it up and play with it, like modeling clay. It became stiff with his heat, the gel once cold, and stretched and broke in a manner similar to Silly Putty.
 
"I made the next Christmas craze," John announced, holding up the red gel to the nightmare.

 

"I don't know what to tell you," shrugged the Corinthian, "the juice is still fresh, it worked on the other bottles."  But strict Vitamin C wasn't the same as the fresh squeeze of a succulent Florida orange.

"What are you going to name it," he asked plainly, not quite as amused with the silly putty playdoh sheer gak.  Maybe he didn't have enough toys as a wee nightmare.  Cori watched the red material stick to John's hands without staining.  According to their last experiment the man shouldn't even have fingerprints anymore, yet there he was, playing with the next Slinky.  Hn, he reached out to touch it himself.

Cool to the touch, a little warm at fingers' depth.  The white horror gestured to take the compound into his own hands.  It intended to take the hairs off John's knuckles with it.

"Shit!" John howled, feeling something pull and tear. His hair? The Corinthian did not get to handle the compound, the magus retracting his offer when he found it not intending to leave his hand. As a matter of fact, it was crawling between his fingers on its own. Against gravity. John, no pain after that, had given it a horrified look, trying to discard it back onto the plate.
 
It still clung to his hairs.

"What the fuck," Cori shouted when John reeled back.  He has little to no hairs on his fingers, what were on his knuckles fine and translucent.  Lucky son of a bitch now.

Still, he knew this was bound to turn ugly.  Teeth eyes narrowed at the red thing that refused to let go of the magician, his magician.  The angel's blood wasn't satisfied with just the orange juice.  It seemed to want to consume all of Constantine's hand!  Just like Rosiel himself, always devouring.  Within a split second the nightmare pulled a blade from the knife block.  He whipped his other hand out to grab John's wrist.

"Don't move," he warned as the tip penetrated the red surface.

The tip slid in, tiny tiny bits of the gel sinking into the even tinier pores and scratches of the knife. Surely it wasn't molecularly even, now was it?
 
"Bloody scrape it off!" John snapped, both his hands caught as he tried to peel it off like he had done before with the plate. It chose to suck that hand in as well, latching on hair by hair and not letting go without the sting of the strain on his roots. "What good is stabbing the fucking thing?"

Snap snap growl.  The Englishman's barking only disrupted his concentration.  He forced that hand onto the table, whether it resulted in the plate shattering on the floor or not.  Hands now that John had tried to remove it with his other one, stupid.  Cori drove the knife deeper into the mold, the steel cutting right into the table, between John's splayed fingers.  Of course he made sure not to nick his old man.

Noting the way the fucking blob bound itself to the metal's property he twisted, twisted, and twisted to ravel the mound around his knife and off John's fingers.  "Come on you little angel fuck," the Corinthian hissed at the red material.  He had no hairs for it to grab, and even if it ventured towards his forearms the nightmare was determined to get that shit off Constantine and into some place lethal... Like the sink or the toilet.

John grimaced and spat more curses and insults as the blob beast's limited mass was forcefully pulled off his hands, painfully taking those desired hairs with him. He could feel a strange cleansing with it, every bit of debris and microbe having festered on his flesh pulled away with the creature after having sunk into every aged crevice of skin. No oils, no dead cell. He had the cleanest hands he'd ever have in awhile, but they were tender and sore from having every single hair cleared off it. 
 
He violently shook his aching hands. "Cori, you daft twat! Get it out of here!"

"I'm trying," he growled, wrestling with the thing that seemed to have waxed and cleansed John's hands in one sitting.  The nightmare forced the steak knife down the drain then turned the faucet towards the hottest temperature.  He vigorously tried to pull the compound off his own flesh.  His own (clean and relatively hairless) skin could take the heat; scalding water didn't make glass. 

Speaking of... he grabbed one of the finely chiseled pints from the dish rack and turned it upside down to scrape what he could off the knife then 'cap' the drain should the ravenous jello rear its ugly head.

The creature was water, but it was a new being, not used to the strange untainted liquid barrage on its own. The heat made it solidify in defense, making prying it off all the more easier. Steam filled and fogged the stainless steel, their creation sinking away into the drain, caught.
 
Then it was silent.

"..............."

As horror flicks suggested, the dead guy always jumps back up for a final scare.  So the Corinthian kept his hand firm on the glass, and on the knife in the other.  He glared at the drain, daring the blob to come out for one last attack.  Fortunately Cori didn't voice that desire lest they tempt fate.

"..... I think it's gone," he nodded to John while slowly, slowly removing the pint to let the hot water do the rest.  "Better use the drain cleaner," suggested the nightmare.

John was on it, more than willing to permanently dispose of the creature that embodied Rosiel in the most simple and grotesque ways. It had to have it all, but unscrewing the cap and pouring, it could bloody well have the bottle's contents as the liquid sank its way down. So far, the creature wasn't coming back up. 
 
Constantine curled his lip. "That makes strike two."

"You tried," he said as if that might comfort the Englishman somewhat.

When it seemed the Rosieling wasn't coming back up for more Cori tossed the knife into the sink.  "Let me see your hands."  He wasn't asking for them kindly, he was demanding to inspect Constantine for injuries.

Constantine was not comforted, feeling like a child again. On top of that, he fucked up. He subconsciously rubbed them, shaking his head, then briefly flashed them at Cori. "They're fine, mate."

But they still had around half the bottle left to work with, later.  The nightmare grabbed a dishtowel to dry his own pair then lashed out to snatch at least one of John's hands before he could put them away.  "You could have a fucking chemical burn," Cori countered, concerned.  Not only could the blonde's skin be corroding, he did not want acidic fingers going anywhere near below the waistband.

Insistent Cori. John let him, the rough flesh in its most purest form, free of grime and debris on a microscopic level. The human skin was an ecosystem on its own and the creature had completely wiped it all out. The skin where the hair used to be was tender and perhaps just a little red. "It touched you too."

"It's not real skin," he countered again, a bit of a somber thought but one with which the nightmare had long come to terms.  "I'm not a fucking yeti either," Cori added with a smirk, to lighten the mood although he didn't seriously think John's body hair rivaled that of a Himalayan myth.

"We'll put some lotion on it," he nodded then kissed the back of the magus' palm, "that shit's not going to come back demanding some fucking blood right, is it?"

Didn't Constantine touch on the time he had stopped at their hidden monastery? Unless Cori didn't believe him. In turn Constantine did not believe in the fact that the nightmare's skin wasn't "real." Cori bled like him, warmed himself like he did despite his overall indifference to temperature, felt like him to the touch without the small mortal nicks and damages that aged.

Cori was no less human than Constantine was at times, despite his origins. He still kissed like the mum he never had.

"Bugger me if I know, mate." Constantine frowned, eyeing the drain. "Bugger me if I know."

Hidden monastery?  Oh right, John had been around the block far more than anyone could think.  Name a place, the man had been there.  Cori vaguely recalled the irony of a congregation of yeti in the Caribbean.  It wasn't that he didn't believe the magus, he just didn't believe the yeti could tolerate such warm tropical weather.

"The City can take care of it.  They'll be tossing out their glow sticks soon enough, that shit ought to be toxic to the little fucker," Cori smirked, expressive as any mortal man.

He pet John's clean palm, then tugged him along to the bathroom.  What he didn't seem to realize was that toxic mutation worked both ways.  The creature could shrivel up and die... or it could grow.

John would have giving him a playful punch, then corrected the Egyptian depreciating cunt that the gentle beasts (hardly) spent their time in Tibet, or so he thought. Somewhere high up and bloody cold, hard to recall when his tracks had indeed crossed the world and layers above and below. He got around.
 
"It would have taken care of the crocodile problem down there," purred Constantine, for a moment wishing for a finger behind his furred ear instead of his palm (bloody lycanthropy). He never went down to check, but with the nature of the City, he would not have been surprised. Probably something even nastier than crocodiles. Bloody alligators in Houma were snappy buggers. 
 
Growth, but what could grow in poison?

The cleanest smoothest softest punch he'd ever through in his life.  Cori's thumb settled over his hairless knuckles, fascinated by the lack of golden sprouts there.  It'd be a temporary novelty, the nightmare didn't think he could adjust to a permanently waxed Constantine...  That was just unnatural.

"There's no croc, it's just an anaconda," the Corinthian returned in an almost serious manner, but he was anything but.  "You'll have your hair back in about a week," he nodded once, perhaps the voice of... experience.

What could grow in poison?  Famous last words.