tampered | Log: Complete

Log: Complete

When; Feb. 20 (night)
Rating; PG13 (languages)
Characters; Cassidy

bitingnightmare
Summary; Eventually progresses to now as the nightmare decides to confront an old new arrival.
Log;

All he had to do was grab his belongings. The Corinthian still had a copy of the key to the apartment, one he intended to turn over to Cassidy once he had gathered all his affects... Those didn't include Constantine's and the nightmare wasn't sure if this one--the newly arrived one--would want the old one's possessions. They were the same man to an extent, what belonged to John had belonged or would belong to this Englishman. Hell, it was just as likely that the magician had come into the possession of such items because of his time in the City. Shit that wasn't a time loop Cori cared to rationalize at all.

No nut on a cord hanging from the knob; it meant Faye wasn't around or he wasn't home. Now that the apartment was more Cassidy's than his own, the nightmare gave him the courtesy of knocking first.

"Hey," he called casually, "it's me."

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Cassidy was pleasantly drunk. That wasn't to say he wasn't always like that - it was his favorite state, after all - but tonight he had good, decent company. A whiskey man, a fellow Islander (even if he was a dirty bleeding faggoty Brit) and on the besides, one who pissed Elle Driver off.

He heard the knob turn, but before that he caught the nightmare's particular sandy smell, and he swore, "Fuckin' shite."

But before he could warn John, the white nightmare was knocking. Cassidy stood from his inebriation and flung the door open. "Hey, motherfucker! Here for yer crap?" He grinned like an idiot. At least it wasn't Faye.

Of course, moving from the door wasn't exactly an option, either.

In all fairness, John wasn't always a whiskey man. Just when he wanted to get really drunk really fast. But let's face it: tonight was one of those nights. (On the plus side, though, for all that he's a dirty, dirty Brit, he actually tended to prefer the Irish to his countrymen.)

"'kinell?" He was just drunk enough to be slurring if he wasn't careful--which he wasn't, at least not yet. "What bastard'd interrupt a good drink like this--"

But then Cassidy was flinging the door open, and John got his answer.

"...bloody fuck."

"....."

The scent wasn't as surprising as his company. Which of their common friends had said the Irishman would be a moron to house the Englishman again? Right, his woman. He could have bet money on this. Nevertheless, the Corinthian maintained his cool, shades straight on his pale nose. He pinched the metal frame out of habit.

"Cassidy," said the nightmare, "Constantine."

Okay, so a little apprehension snuck into his tone. He reached out to politely brush the vampire aside to enter the apartment.

Cassidy wasn't a lightweight, but even he knew when to step aside. "Oy, Cor," he said with a slight tone of worry to his voice (only a little!) "It's just ye know how much of a bitch Elle can be, and she was fuckin' around, guy knows how to drink. Ye know?" He paused.

The nightmare seemed to be on track straight for the Brit, who looked like he was going to get sick. They did have a lot of whiskey; but then, that wasn't saying much. Cass would get sick too if Tulip had shown up with her eyes full of rage like Cor's. Alright, that was a lie, because technically Cassidy couldn't see Cor's eyes, but the sentiment was there. "Oy," he interjected again. "Er. John, meet Cor."

"Oi. The Corinthian, right?" John still hadn't gotten up from the couch, but now he made to do so, albeit in a slightly wobbly fashion. Not too wobbly, though--the man had a tolerance.

He lifted his hands, empty save for the cigarette in one of them. "Hullo. Nice to meet you. Don't kill me, mate."

"I know," he said to Cassidy with a brief side glance to the man. Of course he knew, and he'd been the one to not break under pressure when they came for information on Boy Blue. Cassidy was true to his word, to an extent, but the one who might've known that was no longer here. He attributed Constantine's presence to the loss of another as well.

His teeth weren't full of rage per se, but they weren't particularly relaxed either, all things considered.

"I know him," the Corinthian remarked, giving the Irishman another look: Don't play stupid, stupid.. "I'm not here to kill you," he shook his head, "I'm here for my stuff. But now that you've brought it up..."

Cori hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Cassidy. Get some fresh air."

Cassidy was super-fast, and super strong.

If Cor got violent, it was only a matter of speeding in and tackling the nightmare. Cassidy, even in his inebriated state, could probably manage. "Ye don't know this John," Cassidy pointed out in a moment of brilliance. "Just remember that much."

He pulled out a pack from his pocket. "Should probably let Faye know I'm still breathin', and shite." he grabbed a Network communicator that looked like it had seen better days. "John, ye need me, holler."

Sure, he missed Custer. Sure, that probably influenced him to let the magician in. Was that fucking crime? What the hell else was he gonna do?

Unlike the Corinthian, John couldn't actually talk with his eyes. Nevertheless, right now they were rather clearly saying, 'Oh, shit.' Sure, he could put on a good pokerface most of the time, even while drunk--but not tonight.

"I'll give a call if I need it, mate," he said wanly as he watched Cassidy go.

Then he just looked at the Corinthian, his expression utterly woeful. "Look, just don't do any permanent damage, all right? I don't know about everyone else here, but I'm only human."

"Fuck you, Cassidy, I know that." The Corinthian spoke in mild irritation, more so for the implication that he didn't know this John was different. It couldn't have been more obvious to him of all people. As soon as the Irishman made his exit, Cori raised his foot and kicked back, shutting the door.

"......."

At first he just stared at the blond. John Constantine probably couldn't smoke or eat with his eyes either, at least not without some supernatural assistance. Christ just seeing them reminded him to blacken his lungs. The nightmare tapped out a Mild Seven and slipped it between his lips (normal mouth), sparking the edge then taking a calm pull.

"You were here for over a year, in this apartment, with me." Smoke drifted from his teeth eyes.

"Shit," John muttered involuntarily at the effect. He didn't sound particularly horrified or shocked--just mildly startled. He'd seen so much worse, after all.

"No," he said. "I wasn't." He took a pull off his cigarette before thinking to clarify with, "Another me was, I guess. Similar bloke, same face, same name, same bloody idiocy. Probably just as much of a bastard. But it wasn't me. I don't remember any of it."

A beat, and he added, "And I'm younger. Elle says I was fifty-three when I was here. Bloody hell, I'm not even forty-two yet. This doesn't make any fucking sense," he added, his voice gone petulant with drunkenness and frustration.

"You do look better," the nightmare quipped over the stated age difference.

John looked as if he'd yet to see his children with Rosacarnis or the soul of his sister in Hell. He'd never been privy to the actual events, but the other Constantine had told him, and it showed in his aged magician's face. Cori shrugged, streaming the smoke through just his nostrils this time. He'd caught that involuntary sound. He kept his visual attention off the Englishman by going through items on the shelf farthest from the door. His 'stuff'.

"Maybe you'll find a way out but forget you were ever here, and find yourself back when you're fifty-three."

Time space paradox.

"Could be," John said. He still didn't look entirely steady, but then, it was hard to tell how much of that was the alcohol and how much of that was the hammering angst of his new situation. "But I don't like to think it. Bloody fucking gods or whatever the fuck they are, playing with people's minds like that--"

And that outburst, that was pure Constantine, that sudden burst of genuine anger at the fucked-up state of the world even in the midst of his own petty, drunken self-pity.

Speaking of which: it was time for the pendulum to swing from righteous heroic anger back to said pettiness. "I'm sorry, you know," he muttered. "Even if I don't remember any of it. I'm sorry I left you--however I did it."

"They do it at home too," he remarked on gods and Endless and other entities who manipulated the fabric of reality, but he figured John already knew that. Maybe the magician harbored a subtle hope that not every plane was as screwed as Earth-One. Was he less of a cynic at forty-two too? The Corinthian mentally sneered at the thought that this Constantine might be better off than the previous visitor to the City.

The nightmare looked at him when he apologized. John Constantine fucking apologized, and it wasn't even this one's 'fight' to begin with. Christ. He felt infuriated, the same problem as Blue had mentioned before; he had no one to blame.

"Don't apologize," the Corinthian insisted as he approached John, looking down at that familiar face, younger and still just as clueless but devil-may-care as the last one when he first dropped in.

"Don't you think I fucking know?" Maybe he did have that hope. After all, behind every proud cynic is a bitterly disillusioned idealist. If John didn't still have that scrap of purity and hope submerged somewhere in the black morass of his soul, he wouldn't keep fighting. "But I don't have to bleeding like it."

Then he was silent, fumbling with the end of his cigarette. He tossed it into an ashtray and looked studiously away from the approaching nightmare. It wasn't that he was horrified by that face--he'd seen worse. It was just that he didn't know how to deal with this one guilt that wasn't really his fault. Or was it? He wasn't sure, and he wasn't exactly sober enough to think on it much, either.

So instead he pulled something out of his coat pocket and thrust it in the Corinthian's face. A picture: a young woman, very pretty, with green eyes and black hair. "This picture. Why's it here?"

"Wait till you meet people who stay here by choice," he said to John without adding that the Corinthian was one of them.

Earth-One was fucked right and proper (weekly it seemed, fifty-two times) and the Dreaming no better. It was a haven in some respects, for those who could live beyond death, like Matt Cable, and a cage for others who were nothing more than functions personified. His Lord was a good king, but the Corinthian had a will, and his escape had cost him twice.

He could see that John didn't want to look him in the eye, and that was for the better. Cori didn't think he could stare into his familiar blue eyes again without feeling angry and frustrated, because they weren't necessarily familiar at all.

"Miss Ireland. You--" he corrected himself, "he kept it in his Silk Cuts. I guess he didn't take it back with him." The Corinthian watched John out the corner of his teeth. "Don't get me wrong, we weren't fucking engaged. I knew about her, and Zee."

"I'm not sure I blame them," John said. "This isn't the worst world I've ever seen, is it?"

His Earth might have been a rotten place, but it was his rotten place. Same with London. He wasn't sure he could ever choose to stay anywhere else. No, scratch that--he was sure he couldn't.

He shoved the photograph back in his pocket. "Good for him," he said bitterly. "Maybe he was over her, eh? Her and all the others. Lucky old bugger."

Yeah...he was drunk, all right, if he was pining jealously over his own future self's theoretical lack of attachments.

He noted how John kept the photo and briefly entertained the paradox again, that farther down his own time this would be how it would find its place in the Englishman's pack. It was a pipe dream; this Constantine didn't even recognize him, and Cori didn't want to drudge up the only other possibilities... leave Charles, the Family Man, and the Bogeyman out of this.

"I couldn't tell," the nightmare replied in all honesty. He liked to think their relationship had had a foundation despite all imperfections. Cori looked around the apartment again, there were other things he wanted to pick up, his cooking utensils for one (before Cassidy could ruin them), but not at this hour. He ground his cigarette out in the ash tray and looked to John again.

"I think he valued good company over everything else."

And as the Corinthian put out his own cigarette, John took out his own pack and shook out another. Symmetry.

"Yeah," he said, once he was finished lighting it. "Good company's nice, innit? More than nice. Fuck me, but I keep letting myself have new friends and loves because of it."

Despite everything that happened to them.

The gesture practically mirrored, or it was a subconscious expression of the need to chainsmoke. The nightmare slung his bag over his shoulder then reached out to Constantine, hand to his chin if he was even allowed to touch the bad luck magician.

John did nothing to stop him--suddenly too bitterly lonely in his drunken self-pity to turn down a touch, even if it wasn't with someone he'd normally think of that way.

"It's not going to happen again, mate," was all he said. "I hope you've found yourself someone better instead."

That made the Corinthian smirk, it was the closest to a smile he could muster with a familiar stranger. Despite the bitterness and self-pity, and the apologies, John Constantine still had ground. The white horror remembered that distinctly, enough to turn the man's profile for better inspection. John didn't have the scar on his cheek.

"Shit happens," said the nightmare, the words of his day as it was turning out. He let go of Constantine and shrugged again. "There's a box in the closet. It's locked, but some ring from some blackhole in fucking Calcutta's in there." Cori suggested as he picked up his clock, tucked it in his bag.

"Rent's due in a week."

The bitterness and the self-pity had always been there, leaping ever more easily to the surface under the influence of angst and alcohol. Even the apologies--just another manifestation of that maudlin wallowing. But that sudden gleam of the iron will and determination? That was always there, too. Even if sometimes it seemed hidden.

"I brought that shite here last time?" John marveled. "I must've been a bit mad."

So he remembered it--and more importantly, he was accepting that what was here before really was him. Who knows--maybe it was the picture of Kit that did it.

"Keeping shiny crap and never cleaning it up," he complained in a casual manner. The Corinthian looked to Constantine again, then offered his hand for a civil shake. "I'll see you around." He would've mentioned Cassidy's penchant (and necessary diet) of rare steak, but the last one couldn't cook for shit. He wouldn't make any assumptions about this one.

"That thing's just as scary covered in dust as it'd be clean, so why bother?" John said with a shrug.

"Yeah," he added as he took the offered hand. And then he did look up to meet the Corinthian's eyes, such as they were. No startled exclamations this time--just that sharp blue stare suddenly breaking through the fog of inebriation. "Cheers, mate."

He gave John a firm shake, teeth eyes over the rims of his sunglasses to blue ones. And while his ivory might have been unreadable to most, right now they appeared pleasant and content, with a touch of the Corinthian's usual sharpness.

"Call me Cori."

"Cori it is, then," Constantine said easily enough. "Are you going to let Cassidy back into his flat, or do I have to drink all his whiskey for him?"

He released John's hand to run his fingers through white hair, thinking thinking thinking. Letting the Englishman finish up that whiskey would've been proper punishment for harboring the magus without notice, but again it wasn't even the nightmare's apartment anymore. He looked over his shoulder then walked to the door, paused, took the knob then swung it wide open.

"Hey Cassidy."

In hopes of toppling an eavesdropper over.

Cassidy's hearing was good enough that he could eavesdrop without pressing his ear against the door. He stared at the Corinthian long enough. "Ye didn' kiss him, right? Yer golden boy wouldn' like that." He grinned. "'sides, if he's my new roommate I need him in one piece to pay the fuckin' rent, you great wanker."

He pushed his way back in the apartment.

The commenta bout kissing earned a big smirk from John. "I'm not that drunk, mate," he called to Cassidy as he walked back over to pour himself some more whiskey. "Not yet, anyway. He probably shouldn't stay to see me when I am."

A beat, and he added, "At least not if he wants to keep his shoes clean."

Just ask the Phantom Stranger!

No birthday parties, please, though the weed would be appreciated.

For Cassidy's remark the Corinthian simply raised his middle finger. "Bite me." Without hesitation he upnodded to the two, "don't get evicted, okay. I still have shit to move."

The nightmare continued down the hall, lighter in step.

Cassidy looked back at the nightmare's retreating figure and snorted. He flopped back on the couch and grabbed the whiskey, pouring himself another glass. "So." He looked up at John. "Now that's outta the way."

He poured John another full glass. "Drink up, motherfucker."

It was looking like the start of a great night.

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