Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It started, as most things in Midnight do, with a bump in the night.

Or more accurately – a loud bang, like an explosion but louder, followed by the sound of a car backfiring, and the yowling of a ginger cat as it beat a hasty retreat into a gloomily lit alley. The stillness of the early hours was shattered irreparably; the town’s sleep-deprived residents pulled themselves from their beds, grabbing jackets and shoes as they wandered out into the streets looking for the source of noise, all without a single person reaching for a phone to call the police. No, the citizens of Midnight grabbed guns and wooden stakes and silver bullets instead, because nothing was surprising to them after a were-tiger.

Or so they thought.

When they found a crater the size of a house in the centre of the street, cracked and smoking vaguely, a burn mark spreading out from a human-sized indent in the center there were a few murmurs among the crowd, who finally admitted that this might be a little strange. Of the assorted, pyjama-clad citizens, one made his way out of the thrum of bodies and approached the edge of the crater to look inside, the sparks from the fire lighting up faded blue bottoms and a t shirt that read I sold my soul to rock and roll. Unfortunately, this man had forgotten to grab a pair of shoes as he left his house.

“Jesus!” Manfred cursed, hopping away from the pit. Holding his scorched foot with a hiss, he heard a low chuckle behind him, feeling another person join him at the edge of the pit.

“That’s not a name you should throw around lightly.”

Glancing over his shoulder to see who the speaker was, Manfred did his best to look suitably abashed.

“Sorry, Pastor.” Dropping his foot, although he was careful not to stray too close to the boiling road surface again, Manfred turned his eyes back to the pit. There was something about it - something that made it hard to turn away. “What do you think did this?”

“Nothing good,” Reverend Emilo Sheehan replied. The words were as ominous as an approaching storm. Like thunder announcing it, the others arrived at that moment. First were Lem and Olivia, scantily-clad in lingerie and looking entirely unbothered by it. Joe and Chuy were slightly more clothed, but still unashamedly standing half-naked in the street, Joe’s hand on his boyfriend’s hip protectively as he stared into the fires, eyes far away. Then behind them came Fiji, eyes wide as she took in the pit, something panicked in her gaze for a second before the arrival of BoBo a step behind her, taking her hand comfortingly but still managing to look like a stoic caricature of a old-western cowboy.

That was their team. All the freaks together.

“There’s some serious bad energy coming off this place, do you feel it?” Fiji said, self-consciously rubbing her arms against the night as she looked around them. Her eyes lingered for a second or two longer on Manfred, though. Long enough for him to see the fear reflected there. “It looks almost like – like what we saw in the mirror. The other place.”

“The other place is gone,” Manfred said aloud. He’d intended for it to sound firm, sure, but it fell flat. Feeling the other’s eyes on him, he added, “We got rid of it, severed the connection.”

“I don’t know. This . . . this feels the same.”

After a heartbeat, a soft voice broke the silence.

“It’s Hell.”

They all turned to Joe. Although he had spoken, he was not able to lift his eyes from the pit, something lost and far-away swimming in them. The flames danced in his eyes – and despite the muscles, and the power, and the fact he towered over everyone but Lem, his shadow cast by the flames looked small. Even as Chuy put an arm around him, a fear remained as Joe unblinkingly stared into the pit.

“Hell?” Olivia repeated, blunt only by nature. “As in this is bad, or capital-H Hell? The flaming pit version?”

“Hell.”

Joe’s weary eyes rose to meet them. He only repeated what he had said before, but none of them had to ask which he meant.

“O-kay,” Manfred said apprehensively. “So whatever crawled out of this pit . . . not good news?”

“Decisively not,” Lem murmured. Blue eyes turn away from their small group and out across the gathered people, then further, into the depths of the shadows, the alleys and homes out of the reach of the flickering streets lights, before returning to the shape in the pit that whatever had caused the crater had crawled out of. “We need to find this thing. Fast. Midnight is like a beacon for the supernatural – but it also has strong protective boundaries, ones that are supposed to ensure anything too . . . dangerous, cannot get in. In this case-”

“It might be keeping the demon in, so we need to find it-” Olivia finished, in synch with him. She hummed thoughtfully as she turned her eyes back to the pit, and Manfred copied her movement, thinking that he should at least try to spot something useful.

What he saw was a lot of smoke and rubble, and a man-shaped hole. There was a slight indent to one side, indicating it had exited at the left of the pit, but nothing aside from that – no footprints, no blood, no trace where it had got to. It was almost as if –

“It’s like it vanished into thin air-” Bobo said. Then, decisively, “I don’t like this. Not one bit.”

There was a communal murmur of agreement. The fire crackled, and they remained glued to the pit until eventually, Fiji spoke up. “I could try and track it.”

“You won’t be able to-” Joe replied. Seeming to realise that sounded offensive, he ducked his head and added, “- Something powerful enough to break into Midnight this destructively? We’re talking big power here. You’d need help, or a much stronger mage to do it alone – stronger than anyone already here.”

Manfred waited for someone to speak up – oh, I’ll call a friend, or hey I know a witch who practically farts magic – because that was the precedent these people had set with their weirdly prepared for any disaster attitude. But the group was woefully silent. It was about that time that he realised that everyone they knew probably was there already. It was a small town, and from what he could tell – a lot of people never left it.

Internally, Manfred sighed. Externally, he said: “I know someone who can help.”

Seven sets of inquisitive eyes turned to him, and Manfred felt himself blush as he rubbed a hand over tired eyes.

“I used to know them. They can – they can help with stuff like this. They’re a – a friend. Sort-of.”

Fiji blinked, “Sort-of able to help?”

“Sort-of a friend,” Manfred amended, wry smile working its way onto his lips. “An asshole, if I’m being generous – but they can do this. I’ve seen them take on things . . .”

He waved a hand, indicating something huge, but not elaborating. And then, because he could tell they wanted to ask more but it was four am already and he was not looking forward to this at all, Manfred shrugged and began to walk away, adding over his shoulder. “There’s nothing else we can do tonight. Go home. I’ll call them in the morning.”

Seven sets of eyes continued to watch him until Manfred disappeared into his dark little house, but he was only thinking of the person he was going to have to call in the morning. It wasn’t going to be the most comfortable call to make. Not by a long shot. With that in mind, he downed a beer, tried to put it out of his mind, and promptly passed out on his bed.

He’d deal with John in the morning.

*

The next day, a man in a trenchcoat walked down a street in New York City. There was something about the way he walked – a swagger, an attitude, a glint of something dark behind the eyes – that made the crowds part for him to pass, and every street-preacher in a mile want to save his soul. What they don’t know is that this man’s soul had been marked for somewhere else for a long, long time.

The man paused on a corner as his phone beeped in his pocket – his actual phone, not the burner in his shoe or the phone he kept for clients – very few people had that number, none of whom he had seen recently. Still, he answered.

“You’ve reached John Constantine. Make it snappy, it’s nine in the morning and I’ve not had a ciggy yet.”

“John-” the voice on the other end said. Nothing else for a moment, just his name. And then John doubly-wished for a cigarette, because he’d still recognise that voice anywhere, even if it had been years since he heard it.

“-Manny?”

“Manfred,” the voice corrected grumpily, and John barely managed a smirk at it, he was so shocked at the caller. “I – I know we haven’t spoken in years, and we didn’t leave it on the best of terms – but I – I need your help, John.”

“It must be bad, if you’re calling me.”

“John-” On the other end of the line, John heard Manfred take a deep breath. “Listen- you have no reason to help me. And I have no right to be calling after all this time. But I am, and I’m hoping you will. This is bigger than us. Whatever is going on, whatever crawled out of that pit – this town doesn’t deserve to get burned because of how we left things-”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down-” John cut him off, “Slowly. What pit?”

“Woke up to a sound like a bomb going off and a crater the size of the grand canyon in the middle of town last night. There was – fire, and apparently something demonic present – but it was gone by the time we got there-”

“We?”

“Me and the – well, we sort of . . .” Manfred trailed off. When he spoke again, there was an almost embarrassed hurriedness to his tone. “People. Who live in the town. They’re – my friends, I guess. It’s – I know you always said I was running from ghosts, but I finally stopped. It’s my home now, Johnny.”

And damn him for bringing up the past in a name. Closing his eyes, John pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling twice before he made a decision. “And does this town have a name?”

“Midnight,” Manfred supplied. “It’s in Texas. Will you come?”

“Demons, red-necks, and a rockstar psychic? Sounds like my kind of party.”

John hung up the phone, already feeling his lips itch to smile. It might not be the best of circumstances, but he was going to see Manfred Bernardo again. Somehow, he couldn’t twist that into sounding like a bad thing. Even if the last time they saw each other, it had been raining, and John had been drunk, and the night had ended with him sleeping alone in the gutter and not hearing from Manfred again – until now.

As he swept through the streets, a preacher holding a sigh announcing the end of the world in one hand and a megaphone in the other pointed a finger right at John.

“You’re going to Hell!”

“Nah, mate-” John replied, casually tossing a cigarette into parted lips, “Texas.”

Chapter Text

It took a flight and a taxi for John to reach his destination.

On the plane to Texas, he tried to doze off and get a few hours rest before whatever shit-storm Manfred was about to pull him into, but found himself too restless to sleep – it wasn’t every day his past came calling. More like once a fortnight, if he was unlucky and stopped running for long enough for some demon from his past – literal or otherwise – to catch up. But Manfred wasn’t a demon; just someone else he let down. Memories stirred vaguely behind his eyelids as John sat, forehead pressed against the window pane as a storm cracked outside, giving him a headache and too much to stew on to fall into anything but a vague and fitful nap.

Then was the bump of wheels on tarmac, sliding into the backseat of a taxi, and receiving a dirty look when asked where he wanted to go.

“Town called Midnight, mate-”

“No.”

John blinked at the driver, sitting forward in his seat. “What do you mean, no?”

“No, I will not go there,” the driver insisted. He flicked his vacant light back on and gestured for John to exit the car. “No one will. That town is . . . bad news. Nobody from this firm will take you there.”

“Then who the bloody hell will?”

“Someone crazy. Goodbye.”

Cursing under his breath and lighting up, John got out of the taxi with a scowl, flipping off the driver for good measure as the bastard drove away, leaving him stranded. The airport was barely that – a landing strip and an abandoned convenience store, with nothing but the wide open landscape surrounding it. There were no other taxis, and the only other person on the small plane with him was the pilot, who had already taken off again. It was dry, dusty, and made John’s coat cling to him uncomfortably in the heat.

Texas. He knew he hated it here for a reason.

As he stress-smoked, John stood outside the airport and tried to look for signs of a town – there was a road, long and straight; but the convenience store was covered by a thin layer of dust when he pressed his head to the glass to look inside, so he doubted anyone had been there in months. It seemed an unlikely place for anyone to pass-by out of luck and offer him a ride – not that John’s luck was the best, lately. That left him with two choices: try to call another taxi and hope this one didn’t run a mile at the name of the town Midnight, or call for help.

After a moment, he fumbled with his phone, sending a text to the number that had called him that morning.

I hate texas

john?

Who else texts you?

Lots of people!!

Sure

Ass

You love it

Listen, I need a lift. Stupid taxi driver wouldn’t take me to your hick-town.

Its not a hick town

Where are you?

Airfield by San Antonio. Come get me?

Although it was a message, John could practically hear the sigh in Manfred’s reply.

Be there in a few hours. You better be worth this, Johnny.

I always am, aren’t I?

John finished his text message with a winking emoji, something he had never done before – but he knew it would either piss Manfred off or make him laugh. If he were honest with himself, he wasn’t sure which reaction he wanted. He could still see Manfred’s smile in his mind: the small way his lips crept up, although he always tried to keep a straight face, teamed with the unassuming way he rocked on his heels as the laughter cracked out on him. Or the soft laughter, the belly-laugh that rumbled as they lay some mornings, the quiet way in which Manfred seemed shocked to be laughing at all, like it was something to be guilty about.

That, John could understand. It wasn’t like he was much for laughing himself – a smirk and a wink, a wry smattering of chuckles, or a self-deprecating laugh that touched only lips half-curled in disgust were his usual ways of laughing – but it was true that he had smiled and laughed genuinely for a while. With Manfred. For a few weeks, a few months, they had holed up in a shitty little apartment and tried to hold one another together, playing music too loud and joking about raising the dead among other things, and half of the time their laughter held back tears, but it was real.

It was . . . half a lifetime away. Back when Manfred saw the dead everywhere he looked, and so did John. Back when he still had hope that his soul could be saved. Back when he still had hope, period. Now, as John finished his cigarette, stamping it out and slouching against the wall in the shadow of the convenience store for a quick kip, he was left to wonder what his life would have been like today, if he had made a different choice all those years ago.

“We could run away. I mean it – we could just leave. Find somewhere. Forget the dead and the spirits and the shit we didn’t ask to carry and go. We could live, Johnny. Really live. Not like this – not constantly running and drinking ourselves into an early grave to deal with the stuff we see, but actually feel alive. Come -come away with me.”

He’d said no.

Every other day, John would change his mind about whether that was the right decision. In the five years since they had saw one another last, a lot had changed: John was fighting a war, Xylda had died, and Manfred had stopped running. And now, all that separated them was the state of Texas, and a car ride.

John slept, and dreamt of him.

*

On the way to pick up John, Manfred let his mind wander as he drove the camper-van, fingers drumming against the wheel absent-mindedly. The road was filled with ruts and holes, leaving him uncomfortably jolted every time he missed one, teeth slamming together followed by a curse and his dead grandmother tutting beside him.

“Language,” Xylda chided, knitting in the passenger seat. She looked up at him in a way that he wasn’t supposed to see, curiosity and concern mixed in her expression, but Manfred noticed it in the mirror anyway. “I don’t know what’s got you so riled up. I taught you how to drive better than this-”

“I know, I know,” Manfred agreed. Raking a hand through his hair, he sighed aloud and shrugged, not able to meet his grandmother’s eyes. “It’s just – it’s John. You know how it is.”

Xylda hummed in a way that left no doubt how she felt about John Constantine.

“That man used you-”

“And I used him back!” Manfred snapped, quick and sure. “I needed him just as much as he needed me, and it might not have been the healthiest thing, but we both were as bad as each other. If John was using me for my gift – I was using him for his, too. You know I was. So please, Xylda, don’t start now.”

His words were harsh, and he regretted them almost as soon as they parted his lips. An old flare of anger blazed up in Manfred – the small part of him that used to argue in John’s defence back then, the part that always would – and he clenched his jaw and closed his eyes for a second.

The truth was, the months he had spent running with John was the only time he had ever argued with his grand-mother. She had never said it, but she resented him trying to break away from their life of conning people; had missed him as her partner as well as her family – and she didn’t like John. It was a sore subject. Those months . . . when Manfred had come back to her, heartbroken and tired, Xylda had taken him back in without hesitation, but it lingered between them, the fact that he had left.

Even now, she pressed her lips tightly together at the mention of John and visibly bristled as Manfred spoke about him, an infuriatingly superior look upon her face as she pretended to focus on her knitting. Manfred knew better. It was an act, and a good one – but she was pissed, and it wasn’t about to change anytime soon.

Manfred sighed and apologised, “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. But I just don’t understand – every other thing in your life, you always listened to me. Even now, coming to Texas, you trusted my judgement . . . he is the only exception.” Xylda frowned, noticing her grandson’s hand clenched around the wheel, knuckles white. “What’s so damn special about John Constantine? I know he’s attractive, and you liked him-”

“I loved him,” Manfred corrected quietly, “-thought I did, anyway.”

“Still,” she said, giving up on her knitting. Placing it on the dash, Xylda turned to her grandson and watched him closely, folding her hands calmly in her lap. If death had brought her anything, it was perspective. She was still aware of the hurt of Manfred leaving to run off with that bastard for a while, but it was . . . not as raw as it once was. “You were young. And you’ve been with other people. So why were you always so blind when it came to him?”

“Because he’s John. You don’t – when you walk with John, you see the world differently than everybody else does. Even us – and I was far from normal when I met him – it’s a whole different level of weird. This whole other world that nobody else knows about. And it’s scary, and dangerous, but it’s also wonderful. The things I saw him do . . . he changed everything, Xylda.”

“How?”

“Being with John made me want to use my gift to help people, like I do now. I saw him save lives. He saved people, and half the time they didn’t even know it – and then he walked away. John was enigmatic, this rock-star psychic, and I fell right into his world like getting sucked into a black hole.”

From where she sat watching, Xydla saw her grandson’s face change as he spoke of the other man. The creases on his forehead smoothened out, and a spark lit behind his eyes, hands moving without thought as he told the tale. It was like watching Manfred wake up. Just speaking of John Constantine seemed to lift the long years off his shoulders.

But a worry for him still lingered, so she reminded him, “Black holes are hardly good things, you know.”

Manfred gave a breath that could have been a laugh, a sappy look tugging the corner of his lip up on one side, and Xydla had time to think oh no, we’re in trouble before he shrugged easily and replied: “Black holes are just dying stars. And if Johnny’s one, then you’ve got to believe that he’s taking down the people who deserve it with him.”

“Like you?”

Manfred didn’t reply, just returned his attention to the road. He still had miles to go.

*

By the time the roar of an approaching car engine woke John, the sun had climbed down low in the Texas sky, hanging orange and pregnant just above the horizon. Seeing the change in light and temperature, the heat no longer oppressive now as John stood, a breeze picking at the sleeves of his long trench coat, he realized that it must have been hours since he closed his eyes. This idea was confirmed by the aching of his limbs as he took a few steps forward – looking for the source of the sound, it took him only second to spot the familiar camper-van approaching down the long and lonely road, kicking up a trail of sand and dust a mile high.

Manfred.

In the blink of an eye, the van went from an approaching speck to pulling up in front of him; only the brightness of the headlights in his eyes kept John from seeing Manfred right away. The engine died. For a moment, there was silence, as John blinked into the headlights, raising a hand to shield his eyes and try to catch a glimpse of his . . . ex-something. The creaking of the door opening and the thud of boots against the pavement preceded the arrival of Manfred by only a moment, and then he was standing right in front of John, a headlight either side spilling out light around him as Manfred shuffled awkwardly, one hand shoved deep into his pocket as the other nervously raked through his hair.

. . . He hadn’t changed a bit. There were still black earrings in his ears and rings on his fingers and something electric about Manfred Bernardo, and it took John longer than he would care to admit to swallow hard and find his voice.

“You look good.”

In the dark it was hard to tell, but he would swear that Manfred blushed slightly before replying. “Yeah. You too – you look good too. Healthy, I mean. Better.”

Better. The word lingered for a moment, the unspoken better than you did the last time I saw you ringing in both of their ears.

John cleared his throat, nodding. “Right. How about you? Last I heard, you were turning tricks for old ladies in Dallas.”

And then Manfred snorted, the laugh breaking free before he could stop it as his face lit up, all stiffness forgotten for a brief second, and John got his answer to his earlier question – he really wanted to make Manfred Bernardo smile again.

“I was working as a medium-” Manfred replied, the laugh still in his voice, even though he had managed to get control of his face again, “not ‘turning tricks’, and I was a damn good one. You know how many so-called psychics are actually psychic?”

“I bet I could count it on one hand,” John agreed, tilting his head. “But then again, you are Xylda’s grandson. It’s in your blood. She wouldn’t happen to be around, would she?”

Manfred waved a hand behind him, relaxing more with each passing second. “She’s in the van.”

John directed his attention towards the van. Manfred’s grandmother had hated him unashamedly, which was a loss because she was just about the most powerful psychic on this seaboard in her prime, save for Madame Xanadu. Still, even dead, it wasn’t worth pissing her off-

He aimed a wave towards the van: “Xylda, I’m sure you’re looking ravishing this evening-”

Manfred tilted his head towards the van as if listening to something, barked once with laughter, and then turned his gaze back to John.

“She says to go to hell.”

“Trust me, I’m on my way.” John directed this towards the van, under his breath, but forced a weak laugh for Manfred’s sake. Dropping his eyes for a moment, he winced at the truth as he rolled on his heels, but was soon drawn back to looking at the other man, and John couldn’t help but to add – “You really do look well, Manny.”

The old nickname fell so easily from his lips – at the same moment John flinched at it, Manfred’s head flicked sharply up – and that gaze had always been a hard one to drop. No, instead John met it as honestly as he was able, hands in his pockets itching for a cigarette to distract him, for something to do other than look at Manfred. For a second, there had been warmth in his eyes, a nostalgic sort of glaze – then Manfred shook his head, and his eyes turned cold, and yeah, John reckoned that he deserved that.

“John,” he said, more curtly. “Thanks for coming. We’ve got a long drive back to Midnight, we should get going.”

With that, Manfred turned and walked back to the camper-van in long, quick strides, putting as much distance between them as possible. Blowing air out of his mouth loudly and doubly-damning himself for not knowing when to stop talking, John followed him. Soon, they were on their way, with an uncomfortable silence and a dead woman that John couldn’t see, but was sure was making comments about him all the while, from the almost imperceptible flicker on Manfred’s face every few minutes.

The van rattled on, eating up the road, and John wondered what he would find at the end of it.

Chapter Text

Manfred took what little speck of petty pleasure he could from breaking too hard as he pulled into Midnight, causing the slumbering John’s head to bang against the window pane it was resting on. It woke him abruptly. As John blinked into the bright Texas sun, looking around in confusion and swearing under his breath as a hand went lazily to his forehead, Manfred pressed his lips together tightly in an expression that could have been a smile or a snarl.

“Sorry-” Manfred said, unbuckling his seatbelt. The edge to his tone revealed too much, however, because John caught onto the glee tucked into his voice and promptly flipped him off. Fighting a smile at that, Manfred stood and made his way towards the door of the camper van. “-We should get going. Demon to catch, remember?”

“Wrong!”

Outside, Manfred paused. He turned back to John in the doorway of the camper, to see his old friend struggling to his feet – John’s clothes were rumpled from sleep and long wear, and he swiped a hand over his face, but his eyes were sharp as ever when he looked up at Manfred. It was all he said. John stood and looked at Manfred, unmoving, and Manfred looked right back. After a moment, he gave in: John was content to stand there all day until he asked, but Manfred knew they didn’t have the time to waste.

“What’s wrong?”

“We don’t know that we’re looking for a demon yet. We suspect. I won’t know for sure what we’re looking for until I’ve seen the scene.” Rolling on his heels, hands in pockets, John gave a smug grin and brushed past Manfred out of the camper door, throwing over his shoulder - “So we’d best get moving, sunshine.”

Biting down that he’d been trying to do just that, Manfred made a face and followed the sauntering trench coat into the daylight.

“So where are we going?” John asked as he caught up, glancing over. There was an amused quirk to his lip, and Manfred wanted to wipe that smile off his face – by either killing him or kissing him – but he matched him stride for stride, biting his lip before he answered instead.

“Main Street. I’ll show you the crater; then we can meet up with the others.”

John smirked. “Introducing them to the ex?”

“More like what the cat dragged in,” Manfred countered. “And be . . . not you, when you meet them. Be nice.”

“I am nice!” John argued, sounding more offended than Manfred expected. “I am a ray of bloody sunshine, mate, I’ll have you know. I’ll be nice. I’ll be so nice they’re begging me to stay ‘stead of you.”

“I’m serious, John. I like these people,” Manfred said. He paused, hands on hips. Obediently, John stopped walking and turned to face him, the crinkles at the edge of his eyes telling of his curiosity. At least he was listening, or seemed to be. “I want to stay here – I need to. They’re important to me. Please don’t . . . ruin this, for me.”

There was a quiet moment in which something that could have been hurt flashed over John’s face. It was fleeting – a tightening of his lips, a crease in his brow, a glint of something dark and desperately lonely in his eyes – then it was gone as soon as Manfred noticed it, smoothing out as John plastered a grin upon his face. It was as if the expression had never been there at all.

“Got it. I’ll be on my best behaviour,” John promised, giving a little salute with crossed fingers, “Scout’s honour.”

Before Manfred could even open his mouth to reply, the other man was turning on heel, hurrying down the street. An uneasy feeling settled in Manfred’s stomach as he jogged to catch up – he had hurt John, then. He could tell. After years apart, he could still read the other man like an open book; and what he had said had upset John. Not that he’d ever say that out loud. It wasn’t intentional this time: Manfred’s words came from a place of fear, of loosing Midnight and its people, not of spite. He hadn’t meant – he hadn’t meant to imply that John would destroy what he had built here.

But as much as John was a cock-and-bull story drunkenly told at a pub, a cloud of smoke and a wink, all dark alleys and fistfights and grinning through bloody teeth – he was also flowers left on his mother’s grave every year on her birthday, and lips on the back of the neck and the smell of eggs cooking in the morning – or at least he was to Manfred.

The legend of John Constantine was an easy one to believe in, both for the people around him, and for John. It made him seem larger-than-life. For the most part, that kept people at arm’s length, and Manfred knew that most of the time, that suited John just fine. But having seen the other side of it changed things. Now, Manfred knew the man behind the myth, in all his shades and all his broken-ness, and it was harder to shake the feeling that John needed him, not the other way around.

“I didn’t mean that-” Manfred said quietly as he caught up to John half a heartbeat later, already regretting his words. “-Not the way it came out.”

The reply came through gritted teeth. From his place at his side keeping pace, Manfred could see the locked line of John’s jaw as he replied. “Yes, you did.”

“I didn’t. I- I didn’t mean that you would ruin things for me on purpose, I just – I’m scared that I will. I have been since I got here.” Manfred sighed, rubbing a hand through his hair. Vaguely, he noticed that it was getting long underneath his fingertips. There was a time that would mean sitting as Xydla cut off his hair with an old pair of iron scissors, but now he was alone, and would have to get used to the shaggy, uneven mess nesting around his head. “I’ve always been running, you know that. The only time I ever stopped was-”

With you.

“I know,” John said, not unkindly. He cut off the lump in Manfred’s throat. “I know.”

“I have a home here. I don’t have to run anymore, John, and you of all people know what that means to me. I just . . . I don’t want to lose them. But I’m scared that I will. I’m scared that something will go wrong and I’ll do what I always do and run.”

John was silent for a minute or two as they walked, but his jaw unclenched, and his face became pensive instead of brooding. After a while, he offered in a weak tone: “I’m looking forward to meeting these people. They’ve had quite an effect on you, it seems, and I’d like to meet anyone who can change the ways of Manfred Bernardo.”

Manfred choked a laugh, raw in his throat, but genuine. “You can talk, Con-Job. I learned all my best tricks from you.”

“Including running away.”

There was a tight smile on John’s face. Manfred nudged their shoulders together, grinning, until John looked over.

“Eh, I had a pretty good start on that before I ever met you. You can’t take credit for everything,” Manfred told him, “Perhaps just perfecting the art.”

And John laughed, the tightness being erased and eventually replaced by a dogged grin, as a weak chuckle escaped them both. The only choice in the world was whether to laugh or cry at it. Most of the time, Manfred chose to laugh, for the simple fact that he had already spent too much time trapped inside of his own misery. He knew all too well that John felt the same way. So despite the weight of everything between them, heavy words unspoken in the small gap between their bodies as they walked side by side, hands in pockets, they still managed to laugh at their own fucked up lives.

It was better than crying, any day.

“So, anyone in particular you’re trying to impress here?”

John asked the question conversationally, eyes determinedly ahead; but Manfred could hear the sly edge to his tone, and knew exactly what he was talking about.

“You asking if I’m single?”

“I’m asking if I’ll be sleeping in that bloody camper van tonight,” John laughed in reply. He was never ashamed of anything – but Manfred still felt his cheeks colour at the implication, seeing John’s smile widen when he noticed. “Or somewhere warmer.”

“You can take the couch,” Mandfred told him. “And only the couch. And . . . there was someone here, a while ago, a girl – Creek. Her name was Creek. We were-” Breaking off with a loud exhale of frustration, Manfred waved a hand, “-It’s complicated. We were together for a while, but then things happened, and now we’re just friends.”

John hummed in reply. It was a thoughtful sound, but whatever his thoughts were, he didn’t voice them – and Manfred was grateful. It had been a month since Creek had broken up with him. While it didn’t change his mind about Midnight, and he still had friends here – for a while, he had wondered what his place would be here without her.

But then Fiji invited him around for dinner with warm smiles and old stories, and Bobo tried to teach him how to shoot properly with a fence and tin cans, and Olivia announced that he had to learn to fight better and she would be teaching him, and Joe tried to convince him to get a tattoo while drinking at the bar, and Lem stood with him under the stars and filled the silence –

They were his family, odd as it sounded. Somewhere, somehow – along the way, he had started to care about them all; and they took him in. They loved him back.

It meant more than he could ever say.

Manfred blinked hard, breaking free of his thoughts as the crater came into view. They had put yellow tape around it and managed to direct traffic around it, but it still smoked vaguely, and everyone passed by it as quickly as they could. There was something evil about it. Even the non-supernatural’s in town could feel it. So like holding your breath as you passed a graveyard in a car, they all walked quickly and averted their eyes as they passed the crater, and it was only when it was firmly behind them that the sun seemed to shine again.

“We’re here.”

John perked up at the words, having the opposite reaction to everyone else – he raced towards the crater instead of away from it. Coat flaring behind him as he increased his pace, John reached the edge and let out a breath, crouching a moment later; as Manfred caught up, John was swiping a finger at the black, tar-like substance that coated it.

“Hey, maybe you shouldn’t-”

But Manfred was too late. John’s finger touched the substance, but it didn’t burn him as it had Manfred the other night – instead, John rubbed his fingers together, sniffing at the oozing fluid as he stood again. As Manfred watched, John put the finger in his mouth. Although he flinched, John on the other hand looked invigorated, moving the substance around in his mouth for a minute before spitting it out onto the pavement. Manfred did his best not to look disgusted.

“Was that really necessary?”

“Yep,” John replied, popping the P. Shrugging, he straightened his back as he looked back at Manfred, eyes darting back to the crater every few seconds. “Well, it’s definitely demonic. Tastes like brimstone.”

Manfred scoffed, “Now I know you’re making that up.”

“I would never,” John argued. He pointed towards the middle of the crater, “Look at the indentation in the middle. Looks like something fell, no?”

“I guess so.”

“Which usually means it’s coming from the other place – but this is different. The brimstone, the burning; the faint smell of ammonia – it’s from Hell. But it flew to get here.”

Ignoring half of what John said, because taking his words with a pinch of salt but going with them anyway had proven to be the best solution, Manfred frowned: “So it’s a demon . . . that can fly?”

“Plenty of ‘em-” John replied, cocking his head to one side. “Just gotta work out which one.”

A grin spread across his lips then, flirty; challenging. John was like gravity in that way. It only took a heartbeat or two for Manfred to catch up, feeling his own lips moving into a mirror of the expression. It was all too easy with John, to get pulled in – to the mystery and the intoxication of it all, his smiles and attitude, the spike of adrenaline; the way John made hunting demons look as fun as lying on the beach. Even standing at the edge of a hell crater, heart pumping loudly, Manfred grinned back until his cheeks ached, as John stood close – close enough to feel his breath on his face, close enough that it would take less than a step to close the difference between them –

All thoughts of kissing John Constantine were driven from Manfred’s mind, however, when a pale-knuckled fist plunged into his vision and caught John square on the cheek, knocking him down in a single punch.

Chapter Text

Upon finding himself in the dirt, blinking up at bright sunlight with a cracking pain in his jaw, John Constantine had precisely two thoughts: that it had hurt, and that he had probably deserved it. All that was left to determine was why, exactly.

It took a few blinks for the forms towering over him to come into focus. The first face was Manfred’s, his jaw slack in shock as he winced down at John, but it wasn’t until the second face leaned over him that John worked out why he had just been blindsided.

“Oh,” he said, lying on his back. “It’s you.”

A woman scowled down at him. “Yeah, it’s me.”

Her hair was blonde this time, tied into a braid that fell over one shoulder, but he recognised the angry line of her jaw, and those furious, blazing eyes. The hair had changed – her whole look had – but her face had not. Neither had the anger on it. It had been years since John had seen the woman, but apparently she still held a grudge over it.

Manfred blinked between them, “I’m confused. You two know each other?”

“Unfortunately,” she said, at the same time John replied. “In a sense.”

It clicked on Manfred’s face. The tips of his ear’s coloured pink. “You slept together.”

“Unfortunately,” the woman repeated, rolling her eyes. She still made no move to help John up. “I knew John here for a few days, a little adventure south of the border – until he robbed me and left me alone in a hotel room in Mexico.”

John dropped his hand from his jaw, holding them both up. “Hey! I needed the cash, it was an emergency – I had to get to Michigan to stop a spirit from murdering an entire family. Desperate times, luv – I meant to pay you back! But when I tried to look you up, it turned out Penny Fletcher didn’t exist.”

When he levelled a questioning, almost accusatory gaze at her, the woman seemed undisturbed.

Crossing her arms, her scowl deepened, “If you’re stupid enough to fall for an alias that obvious-”

“You’re the one who lied, then-” John sat up, brushing the dirt off his elbows from where he had fallen, “Not me. I told you I was a world class bastard.”

“You weren’t wrong,” she snapped back. Apparently deciding that he was no longer worth her attention, now she had gotten her free shot in, the woman turned to Manfred, jerking a thumb in John’s direction. “This is your idea of help? A dodgy con man who knows a few parlour tricks?”

“-Hey!” John interrupted.

“John might be a con man,” Manfred replied, “But he’s also the best mage I know. If anyone can help us-” breaking through the sunlight John was blinking against, Manfred reached over and offered him a hand. John took it; in a moment, he was back on his feet, arm locked in Manfred’s as something warm spread through him at the praise. “It’s him.”

“And you trust him?” the woman demanded. Manfred glanced back at John. He considered it for a heartbeat or two, biting his lip, before turning back to the woman.

“Yeah, Olivia. I trust him.”

“Your funeral,” she snorted. With her crossed arms and the way she refused to even look in his direction, John began to feel like water and gasoline, and couldn’t help but needle her.

“Olivia?” John asked, catching the name and looking over. He tried it against her and found it fitting. “Is that your real name – or just another lie?”

Olivia turned her gaze back to him, shark-like smile playing on the edges of her lips. “You’re asking the wrong question.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s the right question then?”

“What do I need an alias for?” she leaned in, and this woman was dangerous. With flames for eyes and sharpness instead of skin, Olivia was something explosive. John couldn’t help but grin back, but it was half a grimace, and wonder what the hell Manfred had gotten into with people like her. “I’m an assassin, luv-” she mimicked his tone dryly, “- I’d watch your step, if I were you.”

Before John could reply, Manfred had stepped between them.

“Enough-” he said, tone commanding. Gone was the young man John had met, who had to shout to be heard above the voices in his own head. Now, Manfred stood taller, spine steel as he stood between them with hands outstretched, separating John and Olivia with a cool command. Surprisingly, the woman obeyed and stepped away, although she muttered something under her breath as she did, and it was nothing kind.

As soon as his eyeline was broken, John felt the flash of anger - the part of him that was a bar-brawler, always ready for a scrap – cool to something more controlled. He took a breath. Manfred’s hand remained on John’s chest, steadying; when John looked up, the other man’s eyes were silently begging him to let it go.

With a sigh, John stepped away, holding up his hands in peace. “Alright, alright-”

“Thank you,” Manfred said quietly. Then, he turned back towards Olivia. “-Whatever history you and John have, he has come to help us now. So put it to bed and get over it. Both of you.”

His eyes swept back to John, who nodded and crossed his arms. “I’ll behave if she does.”

“I’m not dignifying that with a response,” Olivia drawled. “But I won’t punch him again until we’ve worked this thing out. Good enough?”

Manfred sighed. “For now.”

“So what now, fearless leader?” John asked, stepping forward. Although his initial flash of irritation had cooled, he was still bristling from the encounter, and found that the only way he could breathe easily was by looking at Manfred; remembering why had had come here in the first place. It wasn’t for Olivia – whoever she was – it was for him.

“Now we go to see the others-” Manfred replied, a new edge of worry in his tone, “-and hope that you haven’t got any more ex-lover’s with a grudge in the crowd.”

John couldn’t help but ask: “Are you counting yourself in that?”

Manfred didn’t reply as he snorted dryly and began to walk away. Olivia’s eyes flicked between them, a small frown appearing at the crease of her lips, before she turned and began to follow. With no other option, John gave his sore jaw one last tentative rub and trailed after them, towards the chatter and smell of a bar.

*

When Manfred walked into Home Cookin’, there was no heads turning at his arrival, no celebration – the diners continued eating, those at the bar continued drinking, and Madonna barely looked up from her work before jerking her head to one side and telling him: “They’re in the back room.”

He didn’t need to ask who.

After nodding his thanks, he headed over, hearing Olivia and John following a few paces behind. When Manfred stepped through the low wooden doorway, then he got a reaction – all heads turned his way, some looking tired (Lem, who was awake in the day because a demonic presence in town required everyone’s full attention) and some wary (Joe, eyeing up John with a surprising lack of tact), and some – as always – were happy to see him (Fiji, fixing them all with a smile and a warm welcome, because she was good to her bones). And of course also sitting around the table were Creek and Chuy and the Rev, but he couldn’t read their expressions.

Either way, they were his family. Manfred found himself shuffling from foot to foot, suddenly strangely nervous as to what they might say of John – and who he was to him.

“Hey guys,” Manfred said a little awkwardly, “this is-”

“Constantine-”

The growl came from Lem. A second later, the vampire was flying across the room with a blur, so fast Manfred only had enough time to blink once before Lem went from sitting calmly in a chair to driving his fist into John’s face.

After a dazed moment, in which Lem returned to his seat as it nothing had happened and Olivia joined him, smirking in a satisfied way, John had pushed himself up on his elbows and shouted at the group.

“Will you people stop bloody hitting me?!”

“You know what that was for,” Lem replied curtly. All eyes were flicking from Lem to John with a degree of discomfort now, but the vampire looked entirely unfazed by this. He took a sip of his drink and crossed his arms. Nobody spoke for a moment.

“Right,” Manfred said eventually. And really, he had been joking about someone else punching John – but from the sheepish look John shot him as Manfred helped him to stand once again, they had just found another dissatisfied ex. “As Lem knows, apparently – this is John Constantine. He’s here to help.”

“Actually, I’m thinking twice about that now,” John griped, hand still on his jaw. He turned an accusatory gaze on Lem. “Really, Lemuel? Aren’t you too old to be holding onto grudges?”

“You tried to stake me,” Lem replied, “while I was sleeping, like a coward.”

“How was I to know you had a bleedin’ soul?” John argued back, “In case you forgot, you’re a vampire, mate. And I was tracking down a killer, one of your kind who was leaving a trail of bodies a mile wide – I stopped once I realised what you were!”

Lem snorted into his drink. “And seducing me to kill me was just part of your plan, I suppose?”

“Well, as you know, I make one tasty piece of bait-” John smiled, but there was no warmth in his expression. It twisted up his face, making it sour and angry; this was not the gentleness Manfred had seen, not the real happiness. “And I’m an equal opportunities lover. There’s enough of me for everyone.”

Manfred tried very hard not to blush at John’s crassness, as Fiji and Creek looked to be holding back laughter, and Olivia turned to Lem with a shocked expression.

“Wait – you too?”

Lem’s expression hardened even more, “You mean-”

“Yep,” she replied. “Me and John are old friends. Manfred too, apparently.”

A few curious gazes turned towards Manfred. He was really starting to wish that the ground would swallow him whole, just to get out of this conversation.

Lem turned to him thoughtfully, “I had no idea you were-”

“I’m bisexual,” Manfred cut in quickly, shoving his hands in his pockets. Although the town was accepting of Joe and Chuy, he had kept this information to himself when he arrived, because it was a small town in Texas, and although he could sometimes see the future – you never knew when you were going to run into homophobes. “I didn’t say anything because I figured that’s my business. John and I were . . .”

He trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence. John saved him from answering by squaring up to the room defensively.

“Right – anyone else want a free shot? Because you might as well start forming a line to have a pop at me at this rate.”

Manfred placed a hand on his friend’s arm, silencing John’s complaints. “Nobody else is going to hit you,” he promised, looking out at the group. “Right, guys? Understand this – John is here as my guest. He came to help us. So whatever . . . whatever he was to some of us, he is a friend now. Any attack on him is an attack on me.”

Olivia hummed loudly, but nobody argued. Manfred waited for somebody to say sometimes before remembering that John was his guest, so cleared his throat quickly.

“John, this is –Olivia and Lem you know – Chuy, Joe, Creek, Fiji, and Rev Sheehan.”

John nodded as each name was called out, eyes sizing up the crowd. They widened a little at Creek, seemingly recognising her name from their earlier conversation, and narrowed slightly at Joe. But he said nothing, keeping his thoughts quiet for now. Manfred really wished someone other than him would do this talking thing.

“Okay, so now we’re all acquainted – what do we know so far?”

“We found two bodies while you were away,” the Rev supplied. He was a great pacifier, with his steady tone and words that were clear but never blunt. It was easy for Manfred to rub his sweaty palms on his jeans and focus on the Rev, although the news was disturbing. “One was just outside of town – Mark Goodman. From the launderette.” Manfred nodded. Although he had not known the man well, he could just about put a face to the name as the Rev went on. “Died in his car; we found it stalled on the road.”

“And the other?”

“Antoine Carlisle. We found him on the other side of town, killed on a night shift doing road maintenance.”

Manfred sucked in a sharp breath. “How long were they there for?”

“They didn’t smell too badly yet - probably killed last night,” the Rev replied. “We don’t know much yet. But the bodies, they were strange-”

“Strange how?” John cut in. The glazed look was gone from his face; the sourness wiped clean by a spark of curiosity behind his eyes. He took a step closer, almost as if he didn’t realise his feet were moving, until he stood level with Manfred.

“They were . . . both staring. Their eyes were wide open; as if they had died in a state of great fear.”

John pressed his lips together in a thin line. Manfred’s eyes were trained to him, and he could practically see the gears turning inside John’s head.

“You know what it is?”

“Not for sure. I have a hunch, but I’d like to take a look around first-” John replied, shoulders turning to Manfred, like the words were only for him; like the other’s faded away. “See the scenes; speak to the relatives, get a feel for the men. Tell me,” he looked back towards the crowd, hands in pockets, “Was there anything notable about them? Strange pasts? Perhaps a stint in a satanic cult? Any weird fetishes?”

“Well, I don’t know about any of that,” Fiji said, shrugging as she looked around the group, “And I hate to be a gossip, but – Mark was steppin’ out on his wife. Every Thursday. My guess is that’s where he was heading when he got-”

Fiji drew a line across her throat, making a face.

“So he was a serial cheater?” John asked. “Interesting. There has to be a connection between the victims – they were both men, killed in secluded areas. It’s hunting away from crowds. Anything else? What about this other guy, this Antoine?”

“He came to me a few months back at the shop-” Joe supplied. Until then, he had been silently assessing John. “-had some tattoos removed. Old gang symbols.”

“Right, I remember-” Olivia held up a finger, face cast in thought. “He was here on witness protection, Antoine wasn’t even his real name – he was testifying against a gang he used to work for.”

Manfred frowned. “You think it could just be garden-variety murders? The wife and the gang?”

“Not with that fear on their faces,” the Rev shook his head, “Nothing human did that.”

John spoke up, “It could be going after unfaithful men, then.”

“Sounds almost like a Woman in White,” Manfred mused. “But if it were a vengeful spirit like that, I’d have felt it. This is different. Demonic.”

“I agree,” John said. “This is no mere spirit out for revenge. But I do think it’s targeting people, and that there could be more deaths tonight.”

“Do you have a plan, or are you just being cute?”

At Manfred’s sarcasm, John grinned. “I’m going to need some things. Weapons and the like: I didn’t have time to pack. Where would I find something ancient and deadly around here?”

Manfred groaned internally. His least favourite place in town. “The pawn shop.”

John spread out a hand - “Lead the way.”

Chapter Text

The Midnight Pawn Shop looked the same as it ever did: cluttered, dusty, and the scene from Manfred’s nightmares. Piled high on the shelves were artefacts screaming with psychic energy, weapons and uniforms of long-dead soldiers, curses, and hexes, and honestly: some really creepy dolls that freaked him out a lot. Overall, it was not a place he often visited voluntarily.

Now, he had to grit his teeth and enter as he showed John in; the other man perked up at the sight instead of being repulsed, off and wandering around in seconds with wide eyes, muttering about curses and old owners and “hey I won this in a card game with demons once”.

That was almost enough to make Manfred crack a smile, if not for the blinding pain that assaulted him the second he set foot in the shop. Although dimly aware of the bell chiming behind him as the others entered, the railroad spike being driven through his skull was taking most of Manfred’s attention as he stumbled forwards a few steps, eyes on the back of John’s coat disappearing into the murkily lit shop, and all but collapsing onto the nearest counter. Trying to make it look intentional so that nobody worried, Manfred attempted to hide his pain as he leant, white-knuckling it against the countertop but forcing a grin onto his face.

“Horrifying, huh?” he said jokily, aiming the words towards John. Although his vision was blurring at the edges already, he was sure he said them in the right direction, if the snort of laughter he received in reply is anything to go by.

“One man’s rubbish is another’s treasure, Manny. To me, this is a gold mine.”

Lem’s voice cut through warningly before Manfred could reply: “And gold-digger as you are, you will take only what you need, Constantine.”

“Yeah, yeah,” John said. Manfred could not see nothing but a blur of tunnel-vision, spotted with black marks, the screaming from the shop driving out anything else – but he didn’t need to be able to see to know that John had rolled his eyes at that. “It’s not like I’m taking time out from fighting the rising darkness to help your ungrateful arses, go ahead; keep talking down at me, mate.”

Manfred frowned, the words hitting home. With every second in the shop, the pounding in his head was getting stronger, until it was like a physical sensation – a hammering at his skull, as the room blurred in and out of focus; Manfred’s temperature spiked as he felt sweat cling to his sides, head spinning, but the words still managed to strike a chord through his distress.

“The rising darkness?”

“La Brujería. Nasty business – fate of the world, an’ all that.”

Despite himself, Manfred frowned at that. “And you have to fight it? On your own?”

There was a stilted half-second of silence before John replied, “Not always. Mostly. But you know me – never needed anyone else, did I?”

Worry surged through Manfred, but it was far-away. Everything was. He felt distinctly like he was watching the scene from above, like looking into a fishbowl, before his vision blacked out completely and the next thing he knew, he was lying on the hard wooden floor, John crouched over him. John’s lips were moving quickly, drawn into a firm line, and there was a hand on his head, cradling it; Manfred closed his eyes, leaning into the sensation.

“Whoa, whoa – keep your eyes open, you daft bastard, comin’ in here and pushing yourself like that.”

The voice was John’s, and Manfred stirred awake long enough to glare at him for it. John smirked.

“That’s right, you heard that. ‘Course you did. Let’s get you home, Manny, you need to rest.”

“But the murders,” Manfred said, his voice slurred. His vision still danced, John’s face moving from far away to close enough that Manfred could pick out the flecks of green in his irises, and there was still a sharp pain in his head, but he persisted in arguing. “We hav’to stop ‘em. Promised, Johnny.”

“I know; we will. But this thing hunts at night, and its mid-day. You need to sleep for now.”

“Jus’ for a bit?”

“Yeah,” John said, eyes darting to someone above him. “Promise. Come on then, mate. Up you get.”

John put his hands under Manfred’s arms and pulled, stronger than the other man remembered. Soon, Manfred found himself unsteadily on his feet, mostly held up by John, and finding that the others were still gathered around, and were looking at him with concern. Manfred tried a smile for them; from their reactions, it came out more of a grimace.

“Manfred, are you alright?” Fiji asked, stepping forward. She placed a motherly hand on his forehead, frown deepening. “You’re burning up.”

“He’ll be fine, I’ll get him home-” John said before Manfred had to, trying to move forward. The others did not move. Clustered around him, they formed a protective barrier – which was sweet in theory, but all Manfred could think about was how they were blocking the door to this blasted store.

“Maybe I should take him,” Bobo said, crossing his arms. Lem stood a fraction taller.

Olivia hummed in agreement. “I think that’s a good idea.”

Beside him, John bristled. His entire body went tense, close enough that Manfred felt it, and although he did not shout, considerate of Manfred’s headache, John’s next words were heated and angry in tone.

“Listen, I’ve known Manfred a long time, and I’ve dealt with his episodes before. Besides which, I know what a bloody psychic overload feels like an’ what to do. Now, you can hate me all you want – call me a bastard, a con-man, a liar – but I would never do a thing to hurt Manfred. Do you understand?”

And with that, John all but pushed the taller men out of the way, half-carrying Manfred out of the shop. Outside, the sunlight pierced his skull after the dimness of the pawn shop, but it was still a sharp relief from the screaming of inside; Manfred let out a happy sigh. He all but fell home, John holding him up and muttering words of encouragement that blurred into a single happy tone, taking Manfred to his house and fumbling with the keys that flashed silver for a second before muttering a spell and sending the door swinging on its hinges.

Later, Manfred would care about that. Now all he wanted to do was collapse into his bed.

He did so, and heard John swearing out loud as he tried to catch him – arms caught Manfred before he could fully fall, and lowered him more gently into bed. Pulling back the covers, John grabbed Manfred’s shoes before he tucked him in, checking his temperature briefly before he left the room. Manfred lay with a hand over his eyes and may have slept for a few minutes before John returned: putting a glass in his hand and telling him to drink, which Manfred did, only pouting slightly at the taste.

The spell did its work in seconds. As Manfred drank, the stabbing pain faded until he was left in a dream-like state, still sweating and clammy but no longer in pain, staring up at John, who was resting the back of his hand against his head to guess Manfred’s temperature.

“Still warm,” John mused aloud, “But better. Get some sleep and you’ll be fine.”

“John,” Manfred replied. It was an effort just to say that much; his eyelids were so heavy with sleep. Still, he managed to catch John’s sleeve in a daze, holding his wrist for a moment before saying, “Thank you.”

Manfred fell into a dreamless sleep, seeing John’s lips quirk up just before the blackness took him.

*

Evening fell cool in Midnight, the desert temperature dropping to a bitter chill that shocked out-of-towners as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon, bringing with it night-time and shadows as long and deep as the town’s shady history. The street-lights were just glowing into use when John stepped out onto Manfred’s front porch – the man in question was inside, still resting, but was breathing fine the last time John had stepped in to check his temperature – babbling vaguely and holding John’s hand, but getting better. His temperature was almost back to normal now, and Manfred’s eyes had lost their feverish sheen last time, so John felt confident enough to leave him for a few minutes, stepping into the cool air for a cigarette.

It sparked up in the blue light as John took a drag, leaning against the rails of the wooden house to close his eyes for a second. As long and exhausting as the day had been, the simple fact that Manfred was improving left John able to relax for the first time since he step foot in Midnight, feeling the breeze revive him as much as the ciggy did.

Naturally, because it was him and sod’s law existed to flip him off, John’s mood was ruined the second he opened his eyes again.

In the time he had taken a drag, the entire bloody town of Midnight had assembled, it appeared. Lemuel and Olivia stood side by side, glaring at him; the cowboy was judging from afar with Fiji the witch; the Reverand stood passively in the corner; the ex stood close to Olivia; and even the bleeding angel had showed up. John sighed aloud. With a glance over his shoulder, wary not to wake Manfred, he walked down the porch steps to meet the assembled group.

“Alright then Scooby Gang, what can I do for you on this fine evening?”

John smirked in a way that bared his teeth, holding his hands apart, a lit cigarette still perched between his fingers. Sarcasm was the defence of the damned; he endeavoured to make it an art.

“We need to talk,” Lemuel said, voice low and gravelly. “About Manfred.”

“What? All of us? Because you see, it’s rather simple – when a man likes another man, they go for drinks and on date and-”

“Constantine-” the vampire replied through obviously gritted teeth. He gestured around the assembled group, “Enough of this. You may think the world a joke, but I assure you, we do not take this matter lightly. As long as you are here in good faith to help rid us of this entity, you are welcome, but-”

“But what??” John said, stepping to him. “Sunshine.”

“But you’re dangerous-” Olivia said, moving to block John’s approach. She tapped her fingers against the gun at her hip and stared him down. “-and we don’t want to see him hurt. He doesn’t deserve that. And we might not know you well, but I’ve seen enough and heard enough to be wary of you, John Constantine. People close to you die.”

John started to laugh. It was all all-out belly laugh, leaving him rocking on his heels and grinning like a madman at the crowd.

“This is a shovel talk? Are you kidding me?”

“We’re serious. Listen, I don’t know you, but I do know Manfred-” Fiji said, “- and he’s a good person. Obviously you guys have history,” she gestured between John, Lemuel, and Olivia, “- but I just want to know that he’s alright. I don’t want you to break his heart.”

“He’s fine; he’s resting,” John grit out. “And if you’re worried about me hurting him – it won’t happen.”

“You hurt him before-” Lem spoke up, “I felt it, when he was speaking today. The emotion rolled off him so strongly I could taste it across the room – love, and pain. You already did break his heart, Constantine.”

“And what about you lot, ay?” John said, leering at them. The laughter fled his face, replaced with cruel, angry lines. In the dark, the glittering of his eyes looked dangerous. “You see, I don’t know you either – old flames aside. But I do know that Manfred is one of the most powerful psychics alive today, and that kind of power . . . if you use him-”

“We could say the same to you,” Joe spoke up. He seemed to realise his mistake quickly, as John rounded on him and Chuy.

“No, you don’t get to talk to me – especially not you. Angels: you’re all the bloody same. Divine power this and destiny that, never mind the person whose life it is on the line! And don’t think I don’t know about your little prophesy-” John spat out spitefully, shook his head and took a drag, “- you see, I went for a look around your shop about an hour ago – you need better locks, by the way. Saw your little painting, and a prophesy written on a scrap of paper: ‘a man with the power of vision who can bridge the gap between the living and the dead’.”

“You broke into my shop-”

“You think it’s Manfred; don’t deny it. An’ I know what your lot are like with prophesies – I’ve had my own fair share of that with another one of you winged bastards – and I know what you do to people. Use them, burn ‘em out if needs be, as long as your bloody prophesy is fulfilled.”

Bitterly, John clapped his hand as he finished his cigarette, stepping away from them.

“Let me make one thing clear: I’m a bastard. I really, really am. But he isn’t, and I will do everything in my power to see that Manfred doesn’t end up like me.” John retreated to the door, “I’m watching you too, all of you. As long as we understand each other, ay?”

With that, he returned to the dark house, leaving them standing in silence. He did not slam the door; but shut it quietly, walking into the house to find Manfred appearing from the bedroom, looking bleary-eyed but more alert than he had earlier.

“I heard voices – is something happening?”

“Nah,” John lied, forcing a smile. “Jus’ having a ciggy, and some of your friends popped by to see how you were doing.”

Manfred’s eyes flicked to the door, and then back to him. He sighed quietly, “Johnny-”

“How’re you feeling?” John asked, ignoring him. “That was quite a fall you had today.”

Raking a hand through his hair in a way that left it ruffled and sticking up in all directions, his clothes rumpled from sleep, Manfred stumbled to the sofa and plopped down beside him. In response, he gave a non-committal half-shrug that John didn’t believe for a second.

“It was nothing. I was just tired, or something – did you get what you need from the shop?”

“I’ll go back for it when we leave later, and don’t avoid the question: how long has it been getting worse, Manny?”

“I don’t know,” Manfred admitted, biting his lip. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, evasive; “- a while, maybe. It’s the shop, and this town . . . it’s old, you know? Things are always stronger in a place like this.”

“Then maybe it’s not the best place for you to be, mate.”

“Don’t,” Manfred said, softly, “I’m supposed to be here, Johnny. I know it. I can’t leave now.”

“You could.”

A wry smile curled the edge of Manfred’s lips, and his still-glassy eyes were tinged with sadness as he looked over at John in the half-light. “Regretting not running away with me, Johnny?”

The joke hid a real hurt, and it was scarred over and yet still raw, so John barked a laugh and went with it, adding his own half-truth. “Every damn day.”

Manfred chuckled at that, but it soon faded out to a quiet that gripped the room. Light from the street lamps outside flooded in through the windows, leaving them half in shadows; John and Manfred sat beside each other on a sofa that creaked with every breath, the weight of the hurt between them stifling and joking all at once. After a few minutes, Manfred stood.

“I should go change, if we’re hunting this thing tonight.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it? You don’t have to be there.”

“What, and have you and Olivia murder each other by dawn? Not on my watch,” Manfred smirked, heading back towards his bedroom. “Get ready, con-job. It’s monster hunting time.”

Chapter Text

The pit still smouldered as night took a hold of Midnight by the throat, and squeezed. Dull sparks kindled amid the rubble, but were choked and died as soon as they sparked – the listless death-rattle of a stomped out fire. The grey-ash smoke drifted into the air, tingeing the entire town with a faint spell of hellfire.

“Ah, I love the smell of brimstone in the morning!”

Eight heads snapped in John’s direction at his poor American accent – and the words. Hands shoved deep into his pockets as he stood at the edge of the pit, he made a face and rolled his eyes.

“Apocalypse Now? Anyone?” he asked, defending his impression with a pout. “Bloody culture-less deadzone.”

“John -” Manfred said, pleadingly. “Shall we go take another look? Check we didn’t miss anything?”

At the quiet worry in his friend’s tone, John held up his hands in submission. The last thing he wanted was to cause Manfred any more grief. As he followed the other man into the pit, John pulled a cigarette from the packet in his pocket, eyes watching not the flames – but his friend.

 Manfred had dressed quickly in the little wooden house he owned, while John waited in the living room, emerging in worn-in jeans and a black t-shirt that clung distractingly to his hips. Although there were dark circles around his eyes, which were still slightly blood-shot from the afternoon, he had slept for a few hours while John kept watch – it was enough of an improvement from his sweaty, pale face after collapsing at the pawn shop that John felt comfortable enough for Manfred to be there tonight. Not that Manfred would have listened in the slightest, had John told him to stay at home to rest.

At least this way, John reasoned, he could keep an eye on Manfred rather than leave him alone.

When they reached the bottom of the pit, flames licking at their heels as the pair walked towards the human-shaped hole in the center, Manfred turned suddenly to John, stepping close. His eyes darted between John and the people assembled on the edge of the pit above them – the entire gang of supernatural’s in the town, who had regarded John with silence and mistrustful stares when they saw him again. Not that he blamed them. It was the smart thing to do, and John felt relieved that Manfred had people who could see right through bastards like him watching his back. John caught Manfred’s look of concern in the moonlight, the other man’s skin translucent in the pale light as he leaned closer to whisper.

“I’m sorry that they don’t trust you yet, but I – I can see that you’re trying. Thank you.”

Yet.

John caught the word, and had to bite his lip to stop from smirking at Manfred’s optimistic view – as if he was ever going to earn their trust. Nine times out of ten, people learned the hard way that trusting him was right up there with drunk-texting your ex and well, smoking, when it came to bad decisions. But Manfred was earnest in the low light, edges of his lips twisting upwards with the last two words; he put a hand on John’s shoulder to turn him away from the watching faces and towards the crater – and if his hand lingered a moment too long before falling away, neither of them commented on it.

“Don’t mention it, mate-” John managed, after a few raced heartbeats. His shoulder burned where Manfred’s hand had been a second before.

“So, what is the plan? You do have a plan, right? You’re not just going to -”

Manfred clamped his lips together, but John caught the words anyways, looking to him sharply.

“I’m not just going to what?”

Sighing through his nose, Manfred closed his eyes tightly and replied: “Pull a Constantine.”

The sound of John’s low laugh filled the pit, momentarily holding the darkness at bay. Manfred unpeeled his eyes at the sound, and John nudged his shoulder against Manfred’s, showing that he understood it wasn’t intended offensively. Relief flooded the younger man’s gaze, which John held, the night air going still around them. It was so easy to fall back into old patterns; routines of joking at the end of the world.

 From above, there came Lem’s voice: “Are you two planning on standing down there laughing down there all night?”

With a smirk, John bent low to the ash – first using a lick of the flames to light his cigarette, and then grabbing a handful of ash.

“‘Course I have a plan-” he replied, taking a drag and motioning with a tilt of his head for them to ascend the pit again, “- I’m John bloody Constantine.”

“You did not just say that.”

“Say what?” Fiji asked. She offered a hand to John as he reached the edge of the pit, which he accepted after holding his cigarette between his lips; offering the same hand to Manfred a moment later. Wrapped up in a long cardigan against the night breeze, Fiji looked between him and Manfred without the accusatory gaze of the others, and John felt a surge of warmth that at least two people in this town didn’t hate him on sight.

In response to her kindness, he flashed her a smile and answered: “The magic words.”

There were several groans in response to his words, including Manfred. With that, John tucked his cigarette behind his ear and stepped away, closing his eyes. Cupping his hands together with the pit ash between them, John focused on feeling the energy in the flames below him as he worked a spell, lowly muttering in Latin under his breath. He moved his hands left, and then right in a circular pattern, eyes still closed until he opened them at the moment he threw the ash into the air. Dispersing like a strange cloud, the ash hung hesitantly in mid-air for a moment, before clustering like a flock of starlings and rushing ahead of him, out towards the edge of town.

Glancing back towards the group, he found Fiji watching the magic intently as if mentally making notes to try herself later; Lemuel and Joe warily recognising his skill; and Olivia with a hand on her gun. It was the usual way. People were either impressed or afraid when it came to magic, depending on how much they knew about it already.

The only reaction that he truly cared about was Manfred’s. John’s eyes wandered over the others briefly, but stopped when they reached him. Manfred was watching him quietly, expression different than the others – there was no fear, but his gaze was also casual, like there was nothing new to see; aware that John was a crowd-pleasing show-off ready to pull out his best cards to win the house.

When he noticed John looking, Manfred met his eyes with a familiar smile tugging faintly at his lips, as if to say nice try, but I’ve seen your tricks before.

“Well,” John said, pulling his ciggy from behind his ear to point at the disappearing cloud of ash, “I know it’s not exactly the yellow-brick road, but I reckon we should get to following that.”

*

Manfred’s eyes stung; he tried to rub away the tiredness itching at his eyelids with his palm, pressing down until he saw stars before blinking hard. It was getting harder to stay focused, the longer they followed the cloud of ash through the night. John’s locator spell was using the point of origin of whatever being had landed in the town – the ash from the crater – and following it back to the source, but it wasn’t going anywhere fast.

He walked at the back of the group, keeping his head down and trying to shake away the headache. If anyone glanced back to check on him, Manfred forced a smile to hide the pain – John looked back more than once, his eyes softening in a way that made Manfred feel transparent as a window pane. But John always could see right through him. For the time being, Manfred just hoped that the others couldn’t; he noticed Lem and Olivia share a look every time he fell into their eye line, and even Bobo kept furtively looking between him and John.

The ash cloud flew ahead, and he stumbled along after it, praying his head would stop pounding. If it came to a fight tonight, Manfred wasn’t sure how much use he would be. After collapsing at the pawn shop, the little voice in his head that whispered that he was only wanted as long as he was of use was screaming at Manfred to do something, do something or they’ll realise you don’t have a clue what you’re doing, that you’re a fraud, a coward –

“Hey there-” Fiji’s voice cut through the noise, and Manfred did his best to hear her as she drew alongside him, keeping pace. “How are you doing? We were all worried today.”

A flash of panic galvanised his tongue into action, and Manfred replied hurriedly.

“I’m fine – it was a one-off thing, I promise. I was just tired. It won’t happen again. I can still help; I can still beat this thing -”

“- Manfred. Breathe.”

He did. Sucking in a breath, Manfred noticed the crease of concern between Fiji’s brows as she looked at him, missing a step as he forced air through his lungs. After a moment, Fiji held out a hand, linking her arm through his. Out of everyone, she was perhaps the first person in Midnight that Manfred would have called a friend. He relaxed into her touch as they fell behind the others further.

Fiji kept pace, step for step.

“I’m sorry,” Manfred said, when he felt sure enough of himself to speak again. “I’m fine, really. It’s just been a long week. Month. Life.”

He laughed self-deprecatingly, and the hand around his arm squeezed.

 “You need to start looking after yourself too, you know-” Fiji told him, “- And I’m not talking about your power. I’m talking about you.”

“Yeah, I know-”

“Do you?” she asked, cutting off his empty words. “We care about you, Manfred. This is your home now, and we’re you’re family – but that means letting us help you back. After everything you’ve done for us in these past months . . . its okay to need us, too. That’s what we do around here. We help each other out.”

Slowly, Manfred found himself nodding. It wasn’t in his nature to need people. For most of his life, it had been just him and his grandmother: they were a team, they were family – they didn’t need anyone else. Not that they stayed in one place long enough to know anybody that well in the first place. After Xlyda had died, her ghost had been there for him, lingering on.

Without her, he was alone.

Manfred had learned a long time ago that in this life, you usually ended up alone – or in his case, with a dozen ghosts in your head who wouldn’t shut up. But Fiji leaned across to tuck a strand of hair behind his ears with a smile and maybe, just maybe – home wasn’t such an abstract concept anymore.

“And you need a haircut,” she said softly, “- this is starting to get out of hand.”

Manfred managed a low laugh, blinking to hide the wetness in his eyes. He was content, for a moment. It might have been the middle of the night, following an ash cloud as it made its way to the outskirts of town, towards the forest – but he was with family. Manfred’s eyes scanned across the people walking through the darkness with him. It was a path often taken alone.

At that moment, John glanced over his shoulder.

In the half-light, his eyes skimmed down to Manfred and Fiji’s crossed arms. And although they held a permanent air of sadness, something akin to the dimness of seeing somebody that you used to know through a smoke-filled room, when they found his, a small smile found its way onto John’s lips. He understood better than anyone how lonely this life could be.

Despite himself, Manfred found himself mirroring the expression back. A heartbeat or two later, John turned back towards the night, stalking after the cloud: with his coat flying behind him, fire of the chase in his eyes, he really did look like some kind of hero.

“And you know you’re gonna have to tell me that story at some point.”

Manfred started at Fiji’s words, almost forgetting that she was there for a minute. When he looked over, she was watching him with amusement, smirking at his expression.

“What?” he asked.

“You and the magician. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other – there’s a story there, I can tell.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

“Somehow, I find that hard to believe. Or maybe that’s just the romantic in me.”

“Definitely the second one,” Manfred replied wryly. His smile became a little more forced, a little more sad as he kept his eyes on his feet and decidedly not straying back to John. “Me and John, we were . . . we were young, it was messy. It would never have lasted.”

“What happened between you two?”

Manfred could picture his time with John as a handful of memories cast into the wind. Dukebox music in bars. A string of latin words. The smell of cheap whiskey. Motel bedsheets. John’s band. Ghosts and demons and learning how to pick a lock. And laughter, too. Then at the end – an offer. Rain. Neon lights reflected in a puddle as he walked away, leaving John alone and drunk in the gutter.

None of that was simple enough to put into words. Instead, Manfred gave a half-shrug and answered.

“Life. Or should I say, death.”

Fiji shook her head a little, “. . . I don’t understand.”

“We both had too many ghosts. It was no way to live – no way to build a future, when we both were stuck in the past.”

For a long moment, Fiji fell quiet beside him. They continued to walk a little way behind the others – the terrain became muddier, the road became a path which was soon just a flattened area among the grass. Ahead, the forest waited silently. Still, the cloud travelled on, and Fiji kept pace, arm in arm with Manfred. It was a companionable sort of silence – Manfred noticed in the quiet that his head too made no noise, the voices of the dead left behind in the town, and even his headache had receded to a distant throb. His feet struck the earth in a consistent beat, and it gave him time to think, for a moment or two.

While literally chasing a demonic monster through the woods at night, Manfred thought about John Constantine.

Even after all these years, his voice still sounded wistful when talking to Fiji about a relationship that was doomed before it even began, years-old and all but gone – but then – then he saw John again. It had only been a day, and it was like old times: John smirking, cigarette perched between his lips. Gallows humour about the end of times. The hand holding his before he fell asleep – or had he dreamed that part?

“It sounds like a tragedy.”

“What?” Manfred replied, turning to Fiji as his friend spoke again. It felt like hours since they had lasped into silence, but it could only have been a minute or two. The teasing look had fallen from her face, replaced by something more sombre as she looked at him gently.

“The two of you. Who you are, what you can do . . . if you had been anyone else, you might have made it. Being driven apart by the ghosts you see . . . it sounds like a tragedy to me.”

“If we had been anybody else, we would never have met-” Manfred disagreed. “We might not have made it, but Fij – we had something. Even if it was just for a while; it was real. I’d take a day with John over all the time in the world.”

Fiji’s face changed again, then. The sombre reflection softened, as her eyes lit up, a smile tugging at her lips –

“You still love him.”

“No I don’t! John and I are just . . . we’re –”

Manfred was saved from his stammered denials by a screech which cut through the knife like a hacksaw through bone, and the rush of wind as something plummeted through the air towards them.

*

It was an uphill battle, not to look back. John tried to keep his eyes forward, fixed on the cloud of ash leading them further into the dark embrace of the forest, but it was a fight that he was losing. His feet dug into the ground, fingers fumbling with an unlit cigarette to distract himself – but he found himself looking back at Manfred too often, checking that the other man was still standing. Although he knew that he needed to be focused on the ash, the reason he was here to find this bloody monster so he could get out of this hick town where almost everybody hated him, John felt his attention drawn back, every time. 

Then Manfred looked back, leaning against Fiji in the dim light, and pressed his lips together in an attempt at a smile. Damn him. Orpheus was a sad sod, and John wasn’t much better.

“I didn’t think it was possible.”

John flinched at the proximity of the words; attention averted away from his ex and to . . . another. Lemuel was walking beside him now, and the smile on the vampire’s lips was very different than the one on Manfred’s had been. It held none of the affection - but the bite was lessened, now, than it had been earlier in the evening.

John regained his composure, pretending to look at the ash ahead and not Lemuel in his peripherals.

“You didn’t think what was possible?”

“That you felt human emotion,” Lemuel replied. The words were cutting, but the tone was casual – even amused. Those blue eyes of his were piercing, especially in the dark; John felt exposed under that gaze.

“Yeah, well-” John shrugged, hoping that the shadows were doing a good enough job at hiding his expression, “- it’s Midnight. Stranger things have happened, vampire.”

Lemuel hummed, deep in his throat. The smile on his lips grew wider, as he tilted his head to one side, like he knew something that John didn’t. It was infuriating. Knowing that it was a bad idea, John added.

“Don’t think that you know me, old boy. I’m not what any of you think.”

“You’re right there. You’re not what I thought you were at all-” Lemuel replied calmly, “- or what you pretend to be. I’m starting to see that now.”

“Do they teach you to be this bloody cryptic at vampire training school? Is it a requirement to get into the supernatural club?”

At John’s snark, Lemuel laughed. “I see you now, John Constantine.”

With that, he stalked ahead in a burst of super-human speed, leaving John to fume and huff in the dust. He saw him? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Cursing under his breath about bloody Midnight, John lit up between his cupped hands and bitterly thought that he could be in a bar in Dallas right now, warm and on his way to being drunk but no, Manfred Bernardo called and now he’s tramping through the woods in the middle of the night with a dickhead vampire talking in riddles. John took a drag, feeling the burn in his lungs. It was the only warmth to be found there, aside from –

And then, he remembered why he was there. John’s gaze turned back to Manfred, walking steadily behind him, eyes on Fiji and stuttering something, from the way his lips were moving and his ears had turned violently pink, and –

“Bloody hell-” John breathed.

In the next heartbeat, he was running.

The shadow was growing in the sky as it got closer, approaching Manfred and Fiji like a thunderbolt thrown from the heavens. Although he couldn’t work out what it was just yet – it was a menacing dark shape, wings spreading out to encompass the world – John didn’t hesitate. He ran towards Manfred with an outstretched hand, aware that his voice was shouting his name even as an almighty screech shattered the night irreparably. In the midst of that noise, and chaos, John screaming Manfred’s name was utterly lost.

John hit Manfred and Fiji just as the creature struck. Crashing into them, hard, he shoved them out of the things path at the moment it reached them – bodies colliding, John saw Fiji fall slightly to his left, as he slammed down into Manfred. The ground met his hands, rocks digging into his palms as he tried to stop his fall to no avail; he saw Manfred’s face widen in shock for a moment, then the force of the fall took hold and John let the inevitable happen. He fell down, Manfred’s knee catching him in the shin as they landed chest-to-chest in the dirt.

There was a moment or two of shock, after that. Face hovering just an inch in front of Manfred’s, who blinked in confusion, John felt the surge of adrenaline that had fuelled him to move roar once more before calming to relief, seeing that Manfred was okay.

In the darkness, John grinned from atop of Manfred.

“We’ve been here before.”

It took that to break Manfred out of the daze that lingered in his eyes, as he flushed red. John rolled off of him, looking up towards the sky as he lay on his back. The thing let out another screech at being beaten to its prize, disappearing into the night as fast as it had arrived. John didn’t blink or breathe until it was out of view.

They were safe, for now.

He blinked, and the world refocused around him. The assembled Midnighters were surrounding them now, in varying states of disbelief – some looked down towards him, others towards the thing in the sky. Olivia was shooting at the night, and Lemuel was a blur on the horizon, chasing after the being; followed by an airborne Joe, wings pale in the moonlight. The Reverend seemed to be praying towards the heavens in disbelief.  John noticed that although Fiji was sitting now, dust from the ground in her hair as Bobo knelt beside her, holding her face tenderly and asking if she was okay, that Manfred was still lying where he had fallen beside him. Their arms were touching, and John glanced over to see his eyes were wide and on the sky, shock rooting him there.

Silently, John felt for Manfred’s hand in the darkness. The cold bite of a metal ring confirmed that he had found it, and he squeezed it tightly. After a second, Manfred returned the pressure, the almost unnoticeable tremble of his fingers going still.

“What the hell was that?” Manfred panted, voice shaken.

It drew all attention to them; when everyone’s gaze turned to him for answers, John let go of Manfred’s hand quickly. From the way his head turned sharply in John’s direction, Manfred noticed. Feeling a kick in the gut, John sat up in the dirt, seeing his cigarette on the ground an arm’s length away, still lit in – picking it up, he took a drag before looking everyone except for Manfred in the eye, and answered.

“Ladies and gents and everything in between: it looks like you’ve got yourself a soddin’ Fury.”

Chapter Text

A book landed on the wooden table with a dull thud, sending a cloud of dust into the air. It was bound in pale leather, without a title – the pages visible from the side were cracked and yellowed, and it carried with it an aged smell which permeated the room alongside the dust. Manfred looked up at the noise, seeing John stand back from tossing the book onto the table and stand self-satisfied; hands on hips and excited in the way he always got when he was hunting something.

There was a part of John that enjoyed all of this, Manfred knew. John lied and bitched about what he did whenever he was drinking or feeling particularly self-pitying, but it was just a front. John was revitalised when he had something to fight; something to save. It was in the other moments that he sunk into episodes of depression: when he stopped fighting, when he was lethargic and thinking too much. John lived for the distraction of a good fight, and having seen him both with and without demons to fight, Manfred knew the difference.

The truth was: John needed this.

The truth was: it scared him how much.

Now, John clapped his hands together and flipped the book open, flicking through the well-thumbed pages quickly until he came to rest, tapping the hand-drawn picture on the page he had chosen with a smirk.

“There’s your monster of the month-” John announced, “- an Erinyes. But you might know it better as a Fury.”

“Like from the myths?” Fiji asked, pulling her chair closer to the book.

They were in Home Cookin’ for breakfast. Their monster-hunt had ended when the Fury disappeared. Lem and Joe had followed it for a while, but there was no blood for Lem to track by scent, and even Joe couldn’t fly fast enough to keep up with it. The Fury had flown towards town and vanished by the time either of them got there. It left them exactly where they started: with a killer loose in town.

But at least it had a name now.

Assembled at the table was everyone who had been on their trek the night before: weary and red-eyed, like some inverted last supper. Lem sipped at a glass of blood and struggled to stay awake as the sun rose outside, Olivia keeping a protective hand on his back; the Rev paced, one hand on his Bible; Joe stood thoughtfully in the corner of the room behind Chuy’s chair, wrapped in an oversized sweater; Bobo gratefully accepted the coffee Creek offered him as she leaned on his chair to peer at the book; only Fiji looked even slightly energised, eagerly reaching out to touch the page. Manfred personally felt like he could sleep for a month straight.

Since yesterday – the world had tilted strangely, and never quite righted. The ghosts screaming down at the pawn shop and up at the hotel could have been just across the room, not a street away. Even the rim of light spilling from beneath the closed curtain for Lem’s sake was too bright for him to handle, so Manfred sat with his back to it pointedly. Not even swallowing a fistful of pills with his breakfast had helped. And between the screaming voices and the light, there were the flashes –

In between heartbeats, Manfred found himself cast into a dim half-light; a place made of silhouettes. But when he blinked, there they were: Olivia and Lem, lying facing each other with unseeing eyes; the Rev, impaled by a cross; Joe, wings slashed and torn with Chuy at his side, black blood streaming from his eyes; Bobo and Fiji, hand in hand as a tide of blood swept towards them.  Creek – in the house she hated, dead, all of them dead –

And always, the most frequent ghost in his head: John. John, with a dead-man’s grin and bloody teeth. John, with a nettle crown. John, with all the gusto of the smoking pit – somehow still burning. Even when he blinked again, hard enough to see stars, when Manfred opened his eyes and found himself back in his chair, wood stiff against his back, the images were burned onto his retinas like the image of the world between strikes of lightning.

It was just exhaustion, he told himself. It had been a long night, and he wasn’t well, and seeing John again had brought back a lot of emotions he had buried a long time ago. His headache and these – visions – they were just a result of his tired brain and useless worry.

But complaining about his headache wasn’t going to solve anything so Manfred took a gulp of coffee and swiped a hand over his tired eyes, looking from the book to John, and soldiered on. “I thought the Furies were just that – stories. Not real things.”

Ever enigmatic, John’s smirk widened to a shit-eating grin as he placed a hand either side of the book and leaned closer, replying: “says the psychic who chats with the dearly-departed on a regular basis. We’re all stories here, luv.”

Manfred rolled his eyes. “So how do we beat it?”

“First – we know the enemy. What do we know about Furies?”

It was Chuy who spoke up first. He often sat so contemplatively in their get-togethers that it was easy to forget that he was there. But when Chuy spoke with glazed-over eyes, Manfred shuddered, thinking that maybe Chuy stayed quiet because he had already seen enough violence.

 “In Greek and Roman mythology, there were spirits of vengeance. Truth was – they were demons who came to Earth; and when they were down below . . . they were the best torturers.”

John cocked his head and nodded, “That explains the smell of brimstone. Anything else?”

“The Furies were called down by victims to curse men with madness as retribution for some transgression – murder, infidelity, broken promises . . .” Lem added, gesturing with his glass as he spoke towards John, “Are you sure it wasn’t after you last night?”

John grimaced at that, hiding it as a smile and forcibly swallowing back a retort, from the way his jaw locked. Quietly, Manfred suspected that John had thought the same thing himself. But then, as he watched, the same image of John was cast into the dark-place of his visions – but this time, the smile was edged with blood, the eyes completely black. Manfred blinked again - and John was as he always was; letting out a low chuckle, nodding at Lem. 

Fiji broke the awkward silence. “Weren’t there three of them? Sisters?”

“Good point-” John’s eyes turned down to the book, scanning the page. “There was only one last night, so it stands to reason that figuring out which Fury in particular we’re dealing with is a good idea. Here-”

John’s spine straightened as he stood, reading out from the book.

“Each Fury dealt with a certain kind of retribution: Tisphone punished murderers, Alecto sought out those who committed moral crimes, and - I think we have our girl – Megaeara was the hunter of infidels and oath-breakers.”

Silence fell. The words were leaden with weight. Everybody around the table felt the truth as it was spoken, looking around or shifting closer to their loved ones at the name. Even the Rev stopped his pacing. It was Olivia who spoke, her hand trailing from Lem’s back to subconsciously take his hand, lacing her fingers through his.

“Guess we found our bitch.”

Bobo pursed his lips briefly, head bobbing from side to side as he mused. “It fits the pattern. One of the dead guys was stepping out on his wife, the other turned against his gang.”

“And it explains why they looked so afraid,” the Rev said solemnly, “- not only were they seeing a – a Beast, for lack of a better word – the Fury might have driven them to insanity before they died.”

“What I don’t understand is how it’s here,” Fiji said. She was sitting, but put her hands against the table and leaned back in her chair. The gravitas of the situation had fallen short for her, it seemed – not impressed with a mythical monster, her brow creased instead as she puzzled, “- the Furies had to be called down, right? So who’s summoning them?”

“The wife and the gang. Could be as simple as that,” Bobo replied with a shrug. “People have done nastier things for less. I’ve seen it.”

“Yeah, but human things-” Fiji disagreed with a shake of her head, “- not this. It’s not like they could google how to summon a Fury. How would anyone know how to control it?”

In the questioning quiet, all eyes slowly drifted towards John, who still stood at the head of the table with the book laid out before him. Not everyone at the table trusted him, but they expected him to know things that nobody else did. Manfred included himself in that – he looked at John almost immediately, but noticing their gazes, John shook his head.

“Not a bloody clue, mate. How to call down a Fury is old knowledge, not exactly something your average housewife or gangbanger would know. They’d need a text, a spell – a ritual, maybe.”

“Besides, you’re asking the wrong question,” Olivia said to the group. She turned back to John, eyes hard: “How do we kill it?”

“We don’t,” he answered. John rolled his shoulders and dropped his gaze to the book, searching for an answer there, “- in all of the stories, only heroes could hold off the Furies – and nobody ever killed one.”

It killed him not to know. Manfred noticed tick in John’s jaw, and the way the fire left his eyes as it rested on the dry page. He didn’t have a clue how to stop the Fury. A strange feeling filled Manfred’s gut with lead at the sight: John knew everything, he was the magic-man, a living encyclopaedia of all things bizarre and evil – if he didn’t know, nobody would. If John didn’t know . . . how could they stop it?

Half-desperate, Manfred caught the other man’s eyes and asked the question on everybody’s mind.

 “So what do we do?”

Leaning back on his heels, one hand absent-mindedly scratching his earlobe to stall for time to think, John made a face. “I reckon Lemuel here was right. I’d say it has a feast of broken promises right here. So we wait. See if it takes a bite.”

After the heartbeat it took for him to process the words, Manfred’s blood ran cold. He didn’t remember standing up, but found himself pressing one hand to the table to stay upright by the time he managed to organise his scattered thoughts into words.

“You’re going to use yourself as bait?”

John shrugged, lips turning downwards in comedic expression that was betrayed only by the lines on his brow. “Don’t worry, Manny. If it kills me it’ll just save ‘Livia the job later.”

Although John played the words off as a joke, forcing a light tone and a grin as if the world couldn’t touch him, nobody laughed. Not even Olivia commented. Manfred shook his head, walking across the room before he was even aware that his feet were moving until he was standing face-to-face with John.

A blink, and John was dead. A blink, and they all were. The voices of the dead rang in his ears and Manfred tried to shake them loose enough to hear his own thoughts, but his voice was distant as he found himself arguing against the idea.

 “No, you can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

“Almost everything I do is.”

“You just said that there’s no way to kill it! If it does come for you – what are you gonna do?”

“I’ll figure something out,” John replied, leaning closer. The forced levity was starting to crack on his features, eyes flicking down Manfred worriedly as he replied, slapping him on the shoulder lightly. “I always do, don’t I?”

“No, I won’t let you.”

“You won’t let me?”

“You’re damn right!” Manfred shouted. His head was pounding again – each throb another intrusive thought: the screech he had heard last night, John reaching for him, the look of terror on the dead men’s faces. Shaking his head, Manfred waved a hand in John’s direction. “No, John – without a plan, without knowing how to stop it – it’s too risky. It could kill you! I can’t-” Manfred wasn’t entirely sure why he was so angry, hands shaking; his vision tunnelling until it was just him and John, and all the ghosts inside his head. “I can’t lose you. I asked you to come here, and if you die . . . that’s on me. And I could do this just as well as you.”

“Manfred, no-”

“I’ve broken just as many oaths, made as many messes – I left a girl at the altar! I broke my promise. The Fury would come for me, too.”

Now it was John’s turn to panic.

“No, no bloody way-”

“Because my life’s worth so much more than yours?”

“Yes!” John yelled back, hands balling at his sides, twitching for a cigarette that wasn’t there. “You’re worth ten of me, Manny. You’re a better man than I could ever be. Always have been.”

Manfred could no longer speak. When he swallowed, his throat felt full of desert sand, and all he could do was shake his head and try to stay standing. It wasn’t true. John was so much more than he thought. He saved people. It wasn’t in a loud, heroic way – a candle in a storm rather than a lighthouse – but he saved them, nonetheless. Manfred didn’t want to see a world without him in it.

 “If you boys are done arguing about who gets to sacrifice themselves . . . ?”

Olivia’s curt tone cut through the fog; Manfred blinked, feeling warmth spread down his cheek as he looked around to find a roomful of concerned gazes on him.

“We’re not-” John spoke, breaking off before pressing a hand to his lips for a second. Although the room was full, and the silence of the Midnighters filled the room thickly, John never took his eyes off of Manfred. “This isn’t a sacrifice play. We both know that’s not my style.”

Now it was Manfred’s turn to shake his head.

“Liar.”

John closed his eyes for a second exhaustedly, “Manny-”

“Liar!” Manfred repeated, louder this time. Right then, he didn’t care that he was over-reacting and that everybody was watching him. “You might have them all fooled, but me? I know you better than that, John. You know that I do. All this-” Manfred waved a hand to John’s general presence, head tilting to one side; “- you call yourself a self-preserving bastard loud enough that everyone believes you. But we both know that you’d be first in line to sacrifice yourself if the time came. I don’t – I don’t care if you don’t care if you survive. I do. I won’t watch you die, okay? So stop trying to.”

John had been trying to die for as long as Manfred had known him. But he wasn’t going to let it happen today.

Manfred lifted his gaze until he and John were eye-to-eye. “I’ve got enough ghosts without adding you to the multitude.”

Voiceless, John’s mouth fell open, but no words found their way through. John talked so much – all of the time, this constant stream of bullshit that equalled a whole lot of nothing – his silence now spoke louder. Manfred was close enough to see the confusion in John’s eyes. The other man wasn’t used to anybody valuing his life – especially when he felt unworthy of their love.

“Fine-” After a beat, John threw his hands up and backed away to the window. Not looking anyone in the eye, he leant against the sill and plucked a cigarette from behind his ear. “It was just a bloody suggestion – I’ll let you figure out how to stop another poor bastard from dying, then?”

John stood with a jerking movement, spinning the unlit cigarette between nimble fingers as he headed for the door.

 Manfred called after him: “Where are you going?”

Tapping the ‘NO SMOKING’ sign in response as he passed it, John left without a word. The crease in the back of his coat revealed hunched shoulders as he walked away, leaving silence in his wake. Manfred watched him go, feet moving towards John’s retreating figure until his thigh bumped into the table, the sudden jolt averting his attention downwards to find the source of the pain. He hadn’t even realised that he was moving.

By the time Manfred looked back up, the door was swinging closed behind John. Although he didn’t slam it behind him, the door clicked into place with finality, cutting off the stream of sunlight that had begun to pour in. Blinking against the light which he suddenly found dim in comparison to the brief brilliance of the outside world encroaching on their back room at John’s exit, Manfred kept his eyes squarely on the doors wooden panels for a while longer. He was half-expecting the door to slam open, banging into the wall in a way that would leave a mark; for John to reappear, ignoring the smoking sign in order to come back with an argument, and an attitude that both stung and sang.

But the door remained closed. Light spilled from underneath it, and Manfred lowered his gaze to that for another heartbeat, hoping to see it blocked by a familiar figure any second . . .

Chapter Text

“Manfred?”

Creek’s voice. When Manfred shook himself, tearing his gaze away from the door and back to reality, he found Creek standing a few feet away. From the expression on her face, it wasn’t the first time that she had said his name. As he turned to her, Creek’s expression changed – her brow unknitted itself, transforming into something akin to pity; she reached out a hand to touch his shoulder –

“We need to find out more, anything we can about the Furies-” Manfred spoke quickly, moving away from Creek before she made contact. Disguising it as a sigh, he grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, tucking it over his elbow before surveying his troops, so to speak. The team were watching him in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand stiff. Uncomfortable, Manfred tried to sound like he had a plan, squaring his shoulders as he addressed them: “- there has to be a way to stop it somehow. Between all of our books and with all our combined knowledge, there’s got to be something to help us – a weakness, a way to exorcise it from our world. Find it.”

Hoping that speed would be confused for purpose, Manfred headed for the exit– but paused with his hand on the door handle when Joe’s voice followed him.

“Where are you going to be while we’re doing that?”

Biting the side of his cheek, Manfred kept his body facing towards the door as he answered. “It seems to only attack at night, so that gives us about fourteen hours for you to find a way – and me to talk to John. We can’t do this without him.”

“We have done this a thousand times before, Manfred,” Lemuel’s voice said, warning. Manfred couldn’t see his face, but he could picture it clearly – not judging, but calm in a way that suggested wisdom; nudging him towards the answer that Lem believed was right. “We’ll do it a thousand more. With or without John Constantine. You can be of use here – he’s made it quite clear where he stands.”

Underneath his fingertips, the metal door handle was cold to the touch. Manfred felt his hand clench and unclench around the shape at the words, tension resting heavily on his shoulders as he paused, laden with the weight of all of the eyes on him. Manfred took a moment at the threshold to consider the warning. He felt the overriding opinion in the room was that John wasn’t worth the trouble and that they could do it without him – and that may well but true.

He let go of the door handle.

“Yeah-” Manfred found himself saying, finally turning to face the group again without meeting their gaze. There was a smile on his face, but his head shook at the same time: a contradiction of logic and emotion, in which the latter won out. His smile cracked wider, exposing teeth as Manfred ran a hand through his hair, remembering. “But you see, the thing is – John, he said this thing to me once. That the world doesn’t give a shit. Not about me, or you, or . . . or what’s fair. It just – it just happens. The only choice we have in the matter is what we do with it. And John, he – he’s just trying to make up for a lot of it; thinks he’s doomed to be alone because he’s as screwed up as the rest of us.”

Finally, Manfred blinked away from his memory, eyes sharp as they met everybody in the room. Nobody interrupted him, and he continued:

“We don’t get a say in this world that doesn’t give a shit. All we can do is choose our fight and . . . our place to make a stand. I never understood it until recently. But I guess this is mine-” Manfred looked around the room, thinking about Midnight and all it encompassed to him now; a home. “Here, in Midnight. I choose this place to make my stand. We all did. And - if we’re lucky, we have people to stand with us.”

“You have us.” Fiji stood. Her hand twitched and hovered, as if to reach out to him. “You know that.”

“I do.” Manfred replied. It wasn’t a lie. “Really, I do – but I also have him. I called John after years and asked for his help with . . . nothing for him to gain from it. But he came anyway. He came, and thats . . .”

For all the voices in his head, Manfred was never great with words. They failed him. Trailing off, he waved a vague hand and finished in a way that felt lame.

 “- it means something. So yeah, Lem. John has made it clear where he stands. I’m gonna go stand beside him.”

With a smile that hinged on a realisation, Manfred nodded to his friends before turning and leaving the room.

*

“There’s something wrong with Manfred.”

Lemuel’s voice was deep in a comforting way, most days. His tone on that particular day changed the cadence, and suddenly the depth of his voice was the gravel of a shallow grave. At his words, there was a general murmur of agreement, until his partner’s voice cut through them all like a hot knife through butter.

“Yeah, no shit-” Olivia agreed. She was pacing by the window, and had been for the past hour. “Did you see him this morning? The way he’s acting . . . he’s not himself.”

After their failed night-time hunt, breakfast had gone rapidly downhill when Manfred and Constantine had started the Midnight Dramatics Society. Figuring out what the beast was had been promptly derailed by Constantine offering himself up as bait, and Manfred all but making the room shake with his voice as he argued against it. The town psychic had been choking out an argument; he only seemed to notice Constantine, and it was only when the two left that anything of use could be discussed calmly.

John Constantine stalked out in a huff – but Manfred was only a few steps behind, following him. It worried Lemuel to an extent: but others, it concerned more.

“And leaving him alone with that – with that crook right now?” Olivia demanded, her heels clicking as she resumed her pacing. “Are we sure that’s a good idea?”

 “I don’t trust John Constantine either, but I do not believe he would hurt Manfred. Us, maybe. But him?” Lemuel shook his head solemnly, serious face supporting his judgement. “I think that Manfred is the first person I have ever seen that man care about. I can hear his heartbeat, remember. His concern was no lie.”

Olivia huffed, all but throwing herself into an empty chair. She pulled a switchblade out of her pocket before beginning to pick her nails with it.

“Whatever. I vote we feed him to the bitch vulture and hope she chokes on him.”

“Olivia!” Fiji chided. She alone had kept reading after Manfred and Constantine left them, devouring the old book in the back room of the diner. Looking up now, she shook her head at Olivia and continued, “I know you don’t like the guy-”

“Like has nothing do with with it!” Olivia argued back, “I don’t trust him. John Constantine is a liar and a thief, and my being nice wouldn’t change that. He’s trouble, Fij. You don’t know him like I do.”

“And you don’t know him like Manfred does.” Fiji left no room for doubt in her tone. It bounded from her firmly, loud enough to be certain as she looked around the room; out of them all, she had been the most moved by Manfred’s speech that morning. “You heard him. For whatever reason, Manfred trusts John Constantine. And I trust Manfred. There’s obviously more history there than any of us know, and after all we’ve been through . . . Manfred is our friend. I trust his judgement.”

Fiji’s disapproving gaze was enough to quash any leftover rebellion.

In truth, there had been a shift in the room since Manfred’s exit. His voice had reverberated through the space, words about choosing their fights ringing true; something like guilt held them in a reverent silence after he had left, each thinking about the home they shared. All of them had laid down their life for Midnight at one point of another. So had Manfred. Slightly ashamed at asking him to abandon his friend for their fight, the team had sunk into seats and cast their gazes downwards, silently retreating to their own thoughts until Lem had spoken.

Now, a different quiet fell at Fiji’s words.

It was Reverend Sheehan who finally rose to his feet, “I agree with Fiji. If Manfred says that John Constantine is here to help, then I say we go with that, and start looking for answers like he said to.”

“Fine. I’ll go search the web for anything on Furies, see what sticks-” Olivia stood briskly, stalking towards the door and throwing over her shoulder, “- we better pray he knows what he’s doing. Because if he doesn’t . . . we’d all make a feast for a Fury.”

*

There was dirt under John’s nails.

It wasn’t an important piece of information. It didn’t get him any closer to figuring out how to defeat a Fury and keep Manfred safe. But the half-moons at the edge of his nails had been turned into eclipses with the dirt from last night, and after he noticed it while taking a drag of his cigarette, the thought kept coming back into his head. So he picked at the dirt and gravel; bit his nails until he tasted blood and bitter dust; tried to work the edge of his lighter under the cracks, all to get the dirt out –

There was dirt under John’s nails, and he couldn’t focus on anything else.

“Bollocks.”

Leaving the shade around the walls of Home Cookin’, where he had been hiding to smoke and escape the claustrophobic room filled with people he had no answers for, John stubbed his cigarette out on the wooden wall at his side, crushing it satisfyingly. It fell apart to ash and a stub, which he dropped onto the ground. It would be covered in sand in minutes. Gone without a trace, as if he were never there at all.

Pushing away from the wall with his shoulder, John walked briskly away from the diner. Everything in Midnight was in eye-sight – but he headed for Manfred’s small house, right across the street. As he got to the RV, John paused. He looked between it and the house for a moment, weighing his options: in the RV, he was less likely to be disturbed by anything living; but Xylda was in there someplace and he didn’t like the idea of a voyeuristic ghost judging him, especially when he couldn’t even see or hear her to argue back.

The house it was then.

John turned his attention to the wooden house, jumping up the step to the front poor before realising the fundamental problem facing him: he didn’t have a key.

Bollocks, indeed.

Glancing over his shoulder, John checked that nobody was watching before lifting up a hand, intending to use a quick lock-picking spell. All magic had its cost, but it was worth it to avoid Manfred a little while longer. The other man’s eyes in the diner . . . Manfred had been frantic and angry, scared in a way that was only born of worry, not true anger. It was worse in a lot of ways: rage, John was used to. Rage he could take. There were plenty of people in the world waiting with fire in their eyes to take a pop at him, and nine times out of ten, he deserved it.

The kind of anger in Manfred’s eyes wasn’t something that could be solved by taking a punch. Not that Manfred would throw one – it wasn’t in his nature.

Anger born from fear was only solved with words or actions. And John wasn’t in the bloody mood to talk about his feelings or god forbid, act on them, so he planned to avoid Manfred for the day until the memory had passed, and ditch town as soon as they fried this bloody Fury. Manfred could turn those worried eyes on someone else, then – someone who deserved it. John knew that he didn’t.

Just as he lifted a hand to tut the spell, a gust of warm desert wind which itched as it kissed the back of his neck shook the door in the lock. The way it moved was suspicious. Squinting, John reached out a tentative hand, feeling the cold of the door handle beneath his fingers.

He turned the handle.

The door swung easily open, and John was forced to press his lips together and remember that Midnight was one of those small towns where nobody locked their doors.

John entered the house, leaving all of the lights in the house off so that nobody would be able to tell that he was inside, and making a point to turn the blinds inside the doorway too. Then he made a beeline for the bathroom, finally feeling comfortable enough to flick on the light now that he was further into the house. The exposed bulb hung in the middle of the room – there was a tub in the corner, a toilet, and a sink with a cabinet hanging over it – one that was currently open, revealing shelves of orange bottles and scattered pills inside.

The sight made John recoil. Manfred was self-medicating to manage his condition again, then.

Walking over to the sink, John shut the cabinet door with a bang that echoed through the silent house, desperate to hide the pills inside, as if that would be enough to drive them from his mind. Flinching at the sound and looking towards the front door, bordered by light, John breathed a sigh of relief when it stayed closed; his hands had found the edge of the sink, gripping it tightly as he leaned against it to stand. John closed his eyes and gave himself ten seconds to stay that way. Ten seconds to take a deep breath and release it. Ten seconds to push all of the worry about pill containers with fake names and Manfred’s migraines into a corner of his mind, to be returned to later.

Ten seconds was all he gave himself, because there was a Fury on the loose and an hourglass turning inside of him, trickling away sand and drowning him like quicksand, dragged ever closer to hell the more he struggled against it.

Then John opened his eyes, and Manfred was standing behind him, reflected in the dirty mirror.

It was funny – out of the two of them, Manfred was the one able to conjure spirits, yet there he was, standing in the empty house as if he haunted it, tethered by John thinking of him. Except John’s eyes were bloodshot and he blinked hard, expecting the image to distort and to find himself alone between blinks. But Manfred stayed. He looked small in the reflection, framed in the doorway but hesitating at the threshold to his own bathroom, just looking at John steadily in the reflection. For a heartbeat longer, they just looked at one another.

John turned the cold tap on, twisting it until the water sloshed into the basin loudly and messily. “I didn’t break in. The door was open.”

As he spoke, he shoved his hands under the freezing water, which turned a dull grey almost immediately, swirling darkly down the drain as it took away the cracked layer of dust clinging to him. Keeping his eyes on the contrast between the dirt and the white basin, John scrubbed at his hands, trying to work the gravel and dirt from beneath his nails.

“I didn’t say that you did-” Manfred’s voice wasn’t shaking as it had been in Home Cookin’, now it was muted in a way that spoke to true exhaustion. “And even if you had, I wouldn’t have cared. You’re welcome here, John.”

He was so understanding. Manfred’s steady tone and calm acceptance was worse than the dirt under his nails, which still wouldn’t come out – John grunted and scraped the cracks between his nails and skin, half-laughing at the words. His hunched shoulders shook as he leant over the sink, working on the dirt – he had to get it out. He couldn’t even explain why, anymore.

“The house is inhospitable to the dead, not the damned, right?”

The words were supposed to hurt. Forced out through a skeleton’s grim grin, John’s eyes flicked up to the mirror to see them hit; he wanted to see Manfred’s face fall, to see the last dregs of idolisation slip from the other man’s eyes. John needed to see them go cold. It was the best way to protect Manfred – hate was a much more manageable emotion than love – easier to control, easier to maintain.

John felt a split-second of triumph, as Manfred’s eyes closed at the words in pain. It made him sick to his stomach a second later. Tearing his gaze away from the reflection, John turned his attention back to his hands – scrubbing, picking at the dirt left behind – expecting to hear Manfred’s footsteps and the door slamming.

He heard a footstep, but then – Manfred’s voice, a step closer than before. The psychic had crossed the threshold, and when John quickly looked back up, was standing just behind him now.

“Why do you do that, John? You push people away; try to make them hate you-”

“Maybe I just don’t care what people think of me,” John replied, cutting him off. He couldn’t stand Manfred’s reflection, so looked down at the water circling the drain again, although he made no effort to continue washing away the dirt. “- have you considered that?”

“I know you better than to believe that, so just – just stop it, John. Stop this act of being the biggest bastard you can be because you’re afraid this will go badly.”

“I am a bastard-”

“You pretend that you feel nothing now, and try and make the pain bearable if you lose people later. Because you can’t lose someone if you don’t love them in the first place, right?” Manfred ignored John’s bristling comment as if he hadn’t spoken. “Except it doesn’t work, John. You can’t just compartmentalise yourself like that – I know, I tried. I ran for years thinking that if I didn’t stop, none of it would ever catch me.”

Manfred stepped closer again, until John could feel his presence just an inch or two behind him, close enough that if he stood straight from the sink, they would be touching. John was white-knuckling the sink, unable to look away from their reflection. Something about Manfred had changed; the anger was still there, a current beneath still waters – but now it was channelled into a voice that spoke with words that felt old, spoken in a thousand different languages, with a hymn of voices inside one chest.

He wasn’t the man that John had met all those years ago. The same Manfred Bernardo who had asked John to run away with him wasn’t the same one standing in that bathroom, but he still had rings on his fingers and some in his ears, and candlelight eyes worn down by the spirits he carried. When John turned around slowly, still gripping onto the sink he leant against but forcing himself to turn away from the reflection until he and Manfred were face-to-face, he could see both the boy he knew and the man he wanted to standing before him.

A time for honesty it was, then.

 “I don’t know how to stop this, Manny. That thing, last night it almost . . .” John’s voice didn’t crack, but it wavered as diverted his gaze down to his hands. There was still dirt under his nails, and he had rubbed the skin raw with his washing; John pressed down until a spot of blood welled up, mingling with the dust and dirt. “It could’ve killed you.”

“It’s okay-”

“No – no, it’s not, so don’t say that. Alright?” John snapped. He hated those words. It’s okay. Life wasn’t bloody okay – it was violent and unfair and in the brief moments between one blow and the next, thinking that things were okay only led to being caught off guard when you remembered that it wasn’t. “You called me for my help and what bloody good has it done you? I can’t stop the Fury, I can’t even make your headaches go away.”

“I never asked you to do that.”

“You didn’t have to. You were in pain and I – I’m useless. Again. I can’t stop it.”

There was a constant stream of people in his life that John had let down. His mother. His sister. Astra. Gary. All gone, probably to the same place he was headed, because he couldn’t do enough.

“Fine. It’s not okay. It’s shitty, is that what you want to hear? But you came-” Manfred replied. A pair of hands came into John’s view, grabbing a towel from the bathtub and wrapping it around John’s own bloodied hands. There was pressure a moment later, as Manfred slowly rubbed the water and blood from John’s hands, close enough now that when he moved closer to turn off the tap behind John, the weight of his body rested for a heartbeat against him. “You came and you stayed. And we’ll find a way to fix it.”

John wasn’t sure if Manfred was talking about the Fury or him anymore, and he wasn’t sure that it made a difference.

“I’m sorry about back there – I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just-”

“Trying to save everybody except yourself?” Manfred supplied. His features arranged themselves into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, and he let out a breathy laugh. “You? Never.”

“I was just trying to think of a way-” John corrected, although a wry smirk of his own matched Manfred’s sarcasm, “- using me as bait made sense. It makes sense. But the last thing I want to do is hurt you anymore than I already have, so – like you said, we’ll find another way.”

Looking away quickly, John looked down at his hands – at the prompt, Manfred wiped the last of the blood away from John’s hands, throwing the towel haphazardly into the bathtub when he was done. His bare hands replaced the towels pressure instantly; warm as Manfred’s eyes worriedly flicked over John’s bleeding nail beds, softly running his fingers over the sorest areas, circling his hands.

Manfred’s eyebrows drew together, “You should really put some antiseptic on this. It could get infected.”

“I should have loved you better.”

Manfred’s hands went slack, ceasing in their movement as the words fell from John’s lips. The words seemed to surprise them both – John himself didn’t quite know what prompted them, only that they were the truth, loosed onto the world. A thousand heartbeats could have passed for all John knew; the world was far away, locked behind the front door – all he knew was that one minute he was looking at Manfred, and the next the psychic had reached a hand, grabbing John by the back of his next and pulling their faces together until their lips met.

It was a brief moment of impact. Manfred’s teeth clashed into John’s lips in his hurry to kiss him, indecision lingering in the quaver of his bottom lip as he pressed it into John’s; it was a messy attempt, and Manfred broke contact after a moment. Eyes downcast, he took a small step back but kept a hand on the back of John’s neck – uncertainly, his eyes flicked up to John’s eyes from his lips a few times before they settled. That close, Manfred’s eyes were softly glowing in the tender light. He was so beautiful.

After a heartbeats hesitation, Manfred stepped closer and kissed John again. He did not rush, and there was no hesitation in the way he pressed his lips into John’s, opening the other man’s mouth with his lips a moment later, the hand on John’s neck fisting its way into his hair as Manfred edged ever closer. There was no hesitation this time. Manfred’s lips were sure, and certain, firmly taking possession of John’s mouth until everything but Manfred felt worlds away.

There was still dirt under John’s nails, but as he leaned against the sink and kissed Manfred back, hands falling to the other man’s hips and a metal ring digging into his neck, the fact seemed to matter less and less.

Chapter Text

Midnight looked a ghost town. There wasn’t a single light on in any of the houses as Manfred walked down the street, eyes straining against the night to make out the empty bones and frames of the buildings that he knew were surrounding him. Despite there being no light, Manfred knew exactly where he was – he could see the silhouettes of the buildings, like two-dimensional drawings on a piece of paper around him. Over his right shoulder was his own home, tucked between the taller buildings; when he looked back, he could just make out the sign of the pawn shop. On his left were Home Cookin and the hotel: the two biggest buildings in town. He could find his way around Midnight in darkness – after all this time, he knew it blind.

 But where was the light? Manfred looked up, arching his back and turning in a circle. There was no moon to be found in the entire starless sky; it opened up like a void, endless. A spike of fear paralysed him as he stared too long into that abyss – after half a dozen heartbeats railed against his ribcage, he bit the inside of his mouth until it bled; the taste of copper in his mouth and sharp pain broke him free, and he looked quickly away, for fear it would consume him.

Manfred quickly walked a little further down the high street, out-running that thought.

 Sand blew across the street where the pavement should have been. Manfred noticed this fact at about the same time as he felt his feet sliding on uncertain ground, feeling the sand between his toes and discovering that he must be shoe-less, too. Strange. Patting himself down, he felt a thread-bare t-shirt and soft bottoms instead of jeans – it was almost as if he was sleepwalking.

“Hello?” Manfred called out. “Is anyone there?”

His voice echoed down the street, scraping like steel against stone in the silence. Nobody answered. Not a single light turned on.

If he was sleep-walking – where was everyone? And why was it so dark?

Manfred shook himself, pressing his palms against his closed eyes until he saw stars. A constellation against his eyelids, he slapped his cheeks gently, looking up and craning his head around, searching for someone, anyone –

“Come on, Manfred-” he murmured aloud, pinching the skin of his arm “- wake up. This is just a dream. All you have to do is open your eyes. Wake up.”

The words weren’t meant for anyone but himself, to comfort whatever panicked part of his mind had conjured his spectral shell of his home in his dreams. But out of the darkness, a hollow laugh rang, followed by a familiar voice.

“Come on, old boy, you know better than that.”

Manfred’s head snapped up, squinting immediately against the dimness. His pulse jump-started as relief flooded his system. Even here, in whatever nightmare he had landed in, that voice was enough to lend him hope.

 “John?”

The darkness swirled like smoke down a drain, and in between blinks John appeared, shrouded in it: a cloak of shadows clinging to his body. Manfred took half a step towards him, feeling his face stretch into a relieved smile - before it froze on his face. All of the hope that had sparked in his bloodstream went cold. It was John’s form standing in front of him: the trenchcoat, the angle of his cheekbones, the way he stood with his hands casually in his pockets, the voice – but it was wrong.

 Manfred took a step away, holding out a hand protectively. “You’re not John.”

His voice was colder than the night-time desert around him. The thing wearing John’s face laughed louder this time, removing his hands from his pockets to clap them together, an amused grin on his face. As ‘John’ blinked, his eyes turned as black as the space they were trapped in – and turned even emptier than the real John’s eyes. Completely devoid of the fight, the fire, the rage against an unfair world . . . the secret heart he hid so well that bled for everyone he couldn’t save. John Constantine’s eyes were missing his soul.

Shuddering at the sight, Manfred recoiled away from him as the thing laughed.

“Clever boy. Shame you don’t put that head of yours to good use, Manfred Bernardo – all those voices rattling around in there . . . the things you could learn-” John’s face was enraptured, eyes gleaming sickeningly as he spoke – then they turned dull as he paused, coldly turning back to Manfred with something akin to disappointment. “But you’re too good for that, too weak-”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Manfred replied, crossing his arms. If he was going to have a nightmare mouth off to him, he didn’t intend to take it lying down.

“On the contrary, I know everything about you.”

Nightmare John moved like silk, sliding as he began to walk, encircling Manfred in his web of shadows and slowly walking around him in an anti-clockwise direction.

“I know that you did your first piercing by yourself in the school bathroom when you were fourteen. You did it with an old safety pin, and it bled like a bastard until Xydla fixed it days later. You were hiding from bullies in there – they knew that there was something about you, even back then. That you were strange. That you saw things that they couldn’t. Just how long have you seen ghosts, Manfred? How long did you lie to yourself about the things in the corner of your eye-”

As he spoke, he leered over, black eyes boring into Manfred as if he was transparent – and he looked so much like John, with the accent and the way his face moved – but alien, and inhuman where John was all bottled-up emotion. There was nothing human in the body. Manfred kept him in his peripheral vision, fists clenching at his sides as ‘John’ wound ever closer, mirroring his own words.

“- and the whispers in your dreams.”

“Long enough to know bullshit when I hear it-” Manfred ground out.

‘John’ hacked out another laugh, sauntering around Manfred’s right shoulder. “I know that you never stayed in one place for more than a year growing up. And that you hate driving at night because it reminds you of running away. I know that you had your first kiss at twelve with Mandy Hopper – and your first kiss with a man at eighteen – it wasn’t me, but-” ‘John’ leaned over Manfred’s shoulder, so that his ice breath slithered down Manfred’s neck “- I do know exactly how you like it.”

“Get away from me!”

Flinching away, Manfred put distance between himself and the spectre with John’s face. Careful not to let it get behind him this time, he stared it down as best he could, but felt his hands shaking at his sides, even as they clenched tighter into fights. The things it knew . . .

“This is my nightmare. You’re in my head.” Manfred spat at the figure, shaking his head, “-that’s how you know all of this. You know it because I do.”

“I know a lot more than that, luv.”

Manfred was pissed off enough now to jerk up his head and challenge. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“I know that some days you swallow a fistful of pills in the morning and don’t care whether or not you wake up-”

“Stop it! Stop that-” Manfred took a step closer, holding up a finger at the demonic figure. A part of him knew that he should have been afraid all along – but it was only at the words that he felt his guts turn to lead, and his knees almost give in, struggling to hold up his trembling frame. Hollowness emptied him out at the accusation – but rage was easier to fill the space than facing it, so he squared up to ‘John’. “The real John wouldn’t say any of this – you’re not him, and this isn’t real. At least stop being a coward and show your own face!”

“What? Is this too difficult to see?” the thing sickeningly taunted, gleeful. “This is my real face! I’m what he’s going to become.”

As if very far away, Manfred felt his head shake.

“ . . . no. No, that’s not true-”

“You know you love a damned man. This is his end.”

“No-”

“All the hate and rage you see inside of him – don’t lie, you know what I mean – that’s all that will be left of him. Anything human, anything that feels – it will blow away like smoke.” Black-eyed and crookedly grinning, ‘John’ held up his hands, stepping close enough now that Manfred tried to step away – only to find his feet were stuck in the sand. Looking down, panic welling up in his eyes, Manfred found quicksand had encased his feet to the spot; as he began to struggle against it, he looked desperately back at John for help – but it wasn’t John. “He’s damned, and you’re already a ghost. Stop fighting it, Manfred. You’ve lost.”

Manfred woke up screaming.

Sunlight assaulted him as he bolted upright in bed, ragged throat making an inhuman noise of fear of its own accord as he was suddenly cast out of the darkness, right at the moment the quicksand threatened to swallow him whole. Every muscle in his body felt like an electric current was being run through it – tensing up even as he sat upright, desperately looking around the room for shadows, Manfred felt the deeply entrenched dread run through his veins, poisoning every part of him. He screamed, the panic at waking lasting until he blinked, seeing his familiar room around him, and light streaming from the window and the door –

Light was enough to calm his heartbeat, but the hand on his back a moment later sped it up again.

“Whoa – hey, Manny – you’re alright. I’ve got you-”

John was by his side, woken by Manfred’s screaming in an instant and carefully touching his back and shoulder, moving on the bed until he was in Manfred’s field of vision. As he appeared, Manfred felt a jolt of fear at the voice, remembering the other John and his words – but he blinked, focusing on the face in front of him; the crease of John’s brow and warmth of his hands, and a brighter light still behind his eyes as he looked at him with worry. There was no mistaking his John.

“John – Johnny. It’s you.”

Manfred closed his eyes, relaxing at the sight. As his eyelids fell shut, tears fell from them involuntarily, warmth rushing down his cheeks until he tasted salt at the corner of his mouth. A hand moved to cup his face a second later, wiping away the tear gently, as John’s voice spoke again.

“Yeah, I’m here. I’ve got you, Manny – you’re safe.”

The words were simple ones – reassurances of reality and safety that in truth, were lies – they weren’t safe. They never really were: there was a Fury on the loose, and with their lives, safety was an illusion greater than any mage’s feat. Never were they safe – only safe for now. It was enough for Manfred. Reaching out to grab John’s arms like a ship in a storm to a lighthouse, he let himself believe the lie for a minute, gradually feeling his mind return. His breathing slowed alongside his heartbeat, and when he opened his eyes again, John was still kneeling on the bed in front of him, hair a mess from sleep and hands on Manfred’s face.

Finding his hands on John’s elbows, nails digging into the other man’s skin with how desperately he was holding on to him, Manfred let his hands relax and apologised.

“I’m alright now, I – I’m sorry John, I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” John cut him off, the hand on Manfred’s face moving to his neck as John carefully looked him over, “- you’ve seen enough of my bloody nightmares. You never have to apologise for your own – not to me.”

Not believing that, Manfred tilted his head to one side and winced. Slowly, he moved back and sat with his back against the headboard, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to make sense of the dream – did it mean something? Or was the nightmare just that – a nightmare; a manifestation of his worries and feelings over seeing John again after so long?

John followed him, sitting beside him and sparking up, mimicking the way Manfred sat as he smoked contemplatively for a moment. Tentatively, he asked after a minute:

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Despite himself, Manfred managed to crack a smile at that, peeking over at John through barely-opened eyelids. “You want to talk about feelings? Is this a pod-person situation?”

The joke was well-intended as he said it, but something about the image of John being replaced by something else with his face hit too close to home – before John could reply, Manfred flinched away, shaking his head as he stumbled to his feet.

“It’s nothing – just a nightmare. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Manfred’s bare feet hit the wooden floor, and he steadied himself by laying a hand against the wall before heading for the door. Although he could feel John’s eyes on him, following his movement, and could picture the look on John’s face: concerned in a way he’d hide through his smoke and a mask, but betrayed by his eyes – Manfred didn’t stop until he reached the doorway, and John spoke.

“‘Course I do. Always will. And whatever you need me for – I’m here, Manny.”

Hand against the threshold for support, Manfred closed his eyes as he paused. Just standing was taking too much of his concentration, without facing whatever this was between them: after a brief but intense  make-out session in his bathroom, he and John had slept together in the most innocent sense of the word. Between them, there was an exhaustion that needed more than sleep, but they tried anyway – just lying beside John in his bed, Manfred had fallen quicker than he had in days with John’s arm around him, feeling the soft air of his breath on the back of his neck lulling him to sleep.

Even despite the nightmare, it was the best Manfred had slept in days – if not weeks.

But then he dreamed of John with black eyes and although it wasn’t real, the quicksand rising around them was. It couldn’t last. John would leave as soon as the threat of the Fury was over. So Manfred forced his eyes to stay ahead of him, not looking back at John on the bed because if he looked back, he’d go to him and let himself believe the lie for longer, and it would just hurt more when it inevitably ended. It seemed like he could take a bearable amount of pain now, or a greater one later. So he swallowed the pill and took the pain that he could stand, like he always did.

Steeling himself, Manfred crossed the threshold of the doorway and left the room. That day, he had given in for just long enough to break his own heart, believing for a second as his lips touched John’s that stolen moments like that could be enough. But the truth was a crueller thing than any brief happiness could beat: John couldn’t stay – and he couldn’t leave.

Aching and tired, Manfred closed the door behind him.

*

“Help! Please, somebody help me!”

A voice rang down the street, distraught and quaking with fear. It wasn’t controlled in any manner: the man’s voice was raw as he begged, pitch shrill and cracking. He was causing enough of a scene in the late afternoon to drag people from their homes or Home Cookin’ to see what was happening – Olivia included. She walked from her home onto the street to see a suited man running, banging desperately on every door he passed and looking out with a glazed, panicked look in his eyes, reaching out to people as they arrived before moving on, all the while shouting for help.

Olivia had been at home, researching on the web about Furies. After a whole day of nerdy bullshit websites and no real knowledge of the strange and impossible, she could cite only the basic myths that had been repeated and dissembled until they took on a life of their own, and could not be relied on to hold any truth. A grain, maybe – all of the lore she found seemed to suggest that the Furies were punishers or jailers as Lem had suggested, and that they could induce some kind of madness – but nothing concrete.

Things more or less fell into conjecture and theory from there. Some websites proposed that Furies could be killed by a weapon of the gods or demigods: ancient swords or spears gifted to other mythological figures. Others suggested that Furies were immortal but bound to the underworld, and could not exist on a mortal plane for too long. Most websites included weird art of bare-chested women much younger than the Fury in Constantine’s book and seductively holding a set of scales like a stripper version of lady-liberty, though, so Olivia wasn’t entirely sold on their information.

The long and short of it was that there wasn’t much to be found. Thrown into the deep end and facing something from literal myth, there was too much information out there to find the truth from the speculation.

She was kind of glad for the distraction when she first heard the cries from outside. Now, as the man approached her with wild eyes and grasping fingers, Olivia took half a cautious step away before catching herself, and choosing to step towards the man to help. This is what they did now: they helped people. Or at least they tried.

“Please . . .”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, tilting her head to one side and checking him out as he moved towards her. Olivia still kept one hand loosely in front of her, not trusting the wildness on the man’s face or the frantic way he moved – if he attacked, she wanted to be ready. “What do you need help with?”

Hearing someone respond to him, the man looked up at her sharply. From this close, she could see the sheen of sweat on his face and the dirt on his ragged suit – it appeared as if he had been wearing it for days, most likely slept in it – but from the dark circles around his eyes, this man had not slept well recently. He had the distinct air of a deranged man, never quite focusing on her as he spoke, twitching and looking all around him.

“Oh, god, help me. She’s coming for me-”

“Who?” Olivia pressed, although she suspected the answer grimly. “Who’s looking for you?”

“She can’t be outran she can’t be stopped she always comes and comes and comes-”

Garbling his words out, spewing them with violence at Olivia as he finally grabbed her by the arm, so tightly his nails dug into her skin, the man collapsed as soon as his words stopped. Eyes rolling back into his head, he collapsed even as Olivia tried to hold him up – once he was on the pavement, he began to convulse – Olivia held onto his arm, but all she could do was watch. It seemed that her only role here was a spectator to his demise. The man convulsed, his limbs violently thrashing even as she tried to hold him steady.

Desperate as he had been a second ago, she looked up to the people looking on from the street:

“Someone call for help! Now!”

Her words were futile: by the time help arrived, it would be too late. The dread in her gut told her that. Olivia could feel the fever-heat of the hand’s skin and his racing pulse; none of which was a good sign. But she had to at least try, right?

As she looked, two figures emerging from the crowd caught Olivia’s eye – Manfred – and Consantine. They were coming from the direction of Manfred’s house: John in his usual clothes, although they were rumpled and his hair was flat against his head, looking like he had just woken up – as did Manfred. Wearing an old t-shirt and emerging in his boxers, although he didn’t seem to notice this fact, it was painfully obvious where the two of them had come from, together, and Olivia had to fight the kick of worry that flooded her system at the sight.

But although she still didn’t trust him further than her own eyesight, Olivia knew that John Constantine might be her best chance in this situation – and would begrudgingly admit that he had come to help, after all. Even if Manfred did apparently have as shitty a taste in men as she did.

“Something is wrong- he was rambling about someone being after him, then he collapsed -” she told them, making eye contact with John as he and Manfred sped over. “- Is there anything you can do? Can you – you know?”

She waved her fingers a little, indicating magic. Olivia knew it was a big ask – magic often didn’t work when it came to things like this, and she had seen Fiji try similar things in the past. There was always a point near the end where magic wasn’t enough. A person passed into death’s hands, and not even the most powerful magic had found a cure for that yet.

John met her gaze warily, a weight settled into his dark brown eyes. He looked from her to the man, hesitating for just an instant – then he knelt beside her on the pavement, holding out his hands. John placed a palm flat on the man’s chest and muttered something that sounded like a prayer, focused entirely on his task. Behind him, Manfred seemed to be physically holding himself back, one hand clenched so tightly that it had to hurt; Olivia didn’t think he was even blinking, he was watching John so intently. She returned her attention to doing the same.

As John’s hands hovered above the man’s chest as if he was about to start chest compressions, they shook slightly. He didn’t press down. Instead, John held them as steadily as he could, constantly speaking in a language that Olivia didn’t recognise; his eyes were pressed shut with concentration. The effort was clear on his face – but it wasn’t enough.

After a minute, John leaned back on his heels. When his eyes opened, his gaze flicked up to her temporarily, and Olivia could see the strain in them. Slowly, he shook his head.

“I’m sorry, love. He’s gone.”

“Damn it-” Olivia cursed. She looked down at the man’s body, finding that she had been holding his hand the entire time. But his eyes were now vacant; the hand was slack in her own. He was just a stranger, but this man had died looking for help she couldn’t give, and it felt like a knife between her ribs.

“I tried, really I did, but it was too late -”

John’s voice didn’t crack, but it wasn’t the usual self-assured drawl, either. When she looked back up, she saw a mirror – he hated loosing people, too. Olivia shook her head.

“I know you did everything you could,” Olivia said. She held John’s gaze. She still didn’t trust him – not in so many words – but she believed him. It was a start. Pressing her lips together in an approximation of a smile, she inclined her head towards him. “Thank you for trying anyway.”

John grit his teeth in a way that screamed that he felt responsible anyway, so she reached over – just for a moment, letting her hand fall onto his arm. Head snapping up in shock, John’s eyes widened as they settled on her. She could see the hesitation in his eyes, before he nodded once, settling onto his heels and covering her hand with his own for a heartbeat.

“You can’t save them all,” Olivia told him sincerely.

“I can bloody well try-” John replied, but there was the grace of his old smile twisting the words. “Someone has to, right? Might as well be us.”

“I think we do alright.”

Olivia let go of John, carefully shifting her weight to get a better look at the body.

Having already noticed his distressed clothing and the desert dust on his white shirt, she quickly went through the man’s pockets, searching for I.D. Finding a wallet, she leafed through it until she found a driving license – holding it up to John and Manfred, she read aloud.

“James M. Wright. His address is listed as being in Midnight – the outskirts, by Creek’s old place-”

Realising her mistake, Olivia winced as she looked up at Manfred, expecting to find an expression of hurt at the mention of his ex. But Manfred didn’t even react to the name – in fact, he looked out of it, spaced out as he remained standing while they knelt by the body, eyes not quite focused on the scene in front of him. Frowning and making a mental note to check on him, Olivia turned back to the body.

There wasn’t much else to see – until she shifted the body to check the back pockets, in case there were any more clues to be found.

Olivia made a face: “What the -”

As she moved the body, the man’s sleeve moved up, exposing his forearm – and a black handprint burned into his flesh. It was dark, seared in like a brand, a hand mark with fingers too long to be human, wrapping around his arm.

“I’d say that was the touch of death, ay?” John agreed. Leaning closer, he picked up the man’s arm to get a better look, pulling it in a way that almost made Olivia hate him again in order to audibly sniff the dead man. She tried not to make a face, but John obviously noticed, turning to her with a smug look and justifying it. “Brimstone. This mark is from our friend the Fury.”

“You think it’s a way of choosing the victims?”

John nodded. “Or of tracking them. Marked for death, so to say-”

“It could help. If we find anyone with a mark-”

“- we find the next victim.”

“- and then we set a trap,” Olivia finished. She couldn’t believe it, but she was agreeing with John Constantine, and found a grin on his face when she looked up at him.

John grinned at her. “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

“God-” Olivia rolled her eyes, but found a chuckle escaping her – five minutes ago, she wouldn’t have thought it possible. There was a death she felt responsible for and ice in her veins and yet – here she was, laughing. She could understand the magic of John Constantine a little better now. It wasn’t all about the spells and the knowledge; it was about the attitude, the confidence to face the darkness, baring his teeth in a grin at whatever was coming next. Olivia would never admit it out loud, but that was the moment she understood. Instead, she laughed and said, “I hate you again now.”

John sprang to his feet, holding out a hand to help her up. She took it.

Olivia stood, stretching as she glanced around – there were people around, looking in horror at the body. “We should cover him and call an ambulance. Scared people is the last thing we need right now. Manfred?”

She turned to the younger man. Manfred was still standing, eyes fixed now on the exposed black mark, transfixed. He wasn’t blinking. When she spoke, he flinched away, wiping a hand through his hair and physically taking steps away from them.

“Yeah?”

Olivia was definitely worried, now. Something was clear up with Manfred: hoping it would help him to focus, she asked.

“Are you okay? I know this can’t be easy, but maybe you could – do your thing, see if he can tell us anything about how this happened to him.”

She knew it was a lot to ask, but they needed answers. Manfred balked at the suggestion, paling slightly as he looked down at the body – but he nodded a second later, rubbing his hands together as he began to kneel. He took his gift very seriously, she knew. Manfred had carried death with him for so long that Olivia noticed the way he jumped at any chance to put it too good use here in Midnight, and put spirits to rest, even at the cost of his own sleep.

John, evidently, felt a similar concern. “You know you don’t have to, Manny. We’re already pretty sure it was the Fury. There’s not much else to learn-”

“It’s not just about that-” Manfred replied, quickly. From beside the body, he looked back up at John, squinting against the sunlight and swallowing audibly. “Everyone deserves a chance to say goodbye. I should at least see if he has any last words.”

From the twitch of John’s lip and the way he lit up a cigarette as Manfred returned to the body, Olivia guessed there was something between the lines of Manfred’s words. The last thing they needed was Constantine’s relationship drama, Olivia thought, glancing between the two with worry. Whatever was going on between them . . . she hoped that they sorted it out, and soon. Love in a place like Midnight often left people bloody and in danger, especially the turbulent kind she could see playing out between the two.

Whatever they felt for each other would either make them fight harder, to have each other’s backs – or get themselves killed, fighting stupid.

Wearily, Olivia sighed. She was going to have to talk to Fiji about this first; she was not having a chat about feelings with John bloody Constantine without getting a second opinion. But clearly, from the kicked-puppy look John was wearing as he watched Manfred’s turned back, they had to do something about it.

As Manfred touched the body, he jerked back. Standing quickly, he faced what looked to Olivia like an empty stretch of street – but from his wide eyes and the fact he was talking to it, she guessed that James’ ghost was apparently still around. Sharing a look with John as they both stood more alertly, each at Manfred’s shoulder, she tried to follow the half of the conversation that she was hearing.

“What do you mean ‘visions’? What did you see?” Manfred asked thin air. His brow was creased, head tilted to one side in the usual way it did when he was speaking to the dead; but the glaze of fear in his eyes was new. As he listened to something, Olivia saw him gulp, eyes darting down to the ground momentarily. Then: “and how long after did-”

He broke off, listening again. As Olivia watched, Manfred went very still. His shoulders slumped, but his back went straight as a rod, tense like he was a livewire. She could see the tension in the line of his back through his t-shirt. Staring fixedly at empty space, Manfred shook his head in disbelief, shaking –

“Wait! How did it find you? What happened? James? Come on! God damn it-” Manfred kicked up dust, walking away a few steps into the space he had been staring at. Cursing under his breath, he glared accusingly at the body, pissed that James’ spirit had dared to leave before giving all the answers, before waving a hand in their direction. “He’s gone.”

“What did he say?” Olivia asked.

Manfred shook his head, all the while keeping his gaze averted from both her and John.

“Not much useful. Listen, I uh – headache, with the spirit . . . you know how I get. I’m gonna . . .”

With that, Manfred walked off into the bright sun back towards his house. He didn’t run exactly, but he sure was in a hurry to get away from them, not looking back once as he disappeared through his front door. Between that and the evasiveness with which he answered, there were sirens and red lights flashing in Olivia’s head that said DANGER.

“Something’s up-” she said aloud. It was even to John, really, but he stamped out his cigarette in response and looked up at her. “He’s hiding something.”

“I know.”

“It feels dangerous.”

“Yeah,” John agreed. There was a rawness in his voice that neither commented on. “I know that, too. Whatever it is . . . Manfred survives this. No matter the cost. Even if it means giving the Fury what it wants-” Unspoken: even if it means sacrificing me. “- Deal?”

It felt like a deal with a devil. But at least it was one she knew – and one that shared her worry for their friend. Olivia nodded at him, once.

“Deal.”

*

Manfred sat on the edge of his bed. He was still wearing yesterdays t-shirt, his biker boots were thrown in the corner, and his right sock lay against the hardwood floor.

The covers still smelled faintly of John’s cigarettes, and he half-wished that the other man would be waiting for him in bed, should he turn around. It would be easy – Manfred would turn with a smile, and John would be slouched against the headboard, lit cigarette between his teeth and some bad innuendo on his lips which Manfred would try to silence with his own. It was a simple dream, and a quiet death as Manfred blinked to dispel the illusion.

Dreams were hopeful, fragile things.

Manfred looked down at his bare foot. For the last hour, he had stared at it, as if blinking enough times would make it vanish. But it remained, and he had to face the truth.

Reality was a scorched black mark on the sole of his foot where he had stepped into the pit, the night that the Fury had crashed into Midnight. It was exactly the same colour as the one on James arm – like a burn on the Earth, blackened ground rather than the red of burned skin. It didn’t have the handprint of the Fury – that was enough to give him hope, to let him lie to himself that it was just a burn and his brain was making a connection where there wasn’t one, except –

Except, James’ spirit said that he had visions like Manfred’s. Dreams of his worst fears realised. Visions of everyone he loved, dead or dying. Visions of a dark world.

Except the dread in Manfred’s stomach said that this was true.

He was marked by the Fury. The visions were just the start of the madness – she would come for him, and then he would lose his mind and die. Maybe in the street like James, hunted down like a dog. Maybe taken by the Fury to feed on his fear, the energy of his despair in some lonely part of town, maybe, maybe, maybe –

He was going to die.

“Hey-” There was a soft knock on the door, and John’s voice. “Can I come in?”

Carefully, Manfred pressed his foot to the floor, hiding the mark.  “Sure.”

The door opened slowly. John leaned against the frame, looking at Manfred through slanted eyes.  Although he tried to play nonchalance in how he leant, right down to the cigarette perched behind his ear, there was something in the way he was looking at Manfred that showed his concern. Like looking through glass, Manfred saw the guilt there.

“How are you feeling? Earlier, you looked -”

“Yeah, I know. I’m feeling better now.” Manfred lied, “- I was just tired from channelling James’ spirit, that’s all. You of all people understand how much energy physic connections can take. I just needed to rest.”

“And did you? Rest?”

Manfred pressed his lips together. He didn’t want to lie, and was fairly sure he looked like shit anyways, so saying he had slept wouldn’t fool John. Not a lot could. After all this time, he and John knew each other down to the colour of their blood, and it was hard to hide anything.

That meant a misdirection was needed.

Manfred stood, walking over to the door and standing just before John. Putting one hand against the wall to lean on, he hovered just in front of John – who was fractionally shorter than he was – putting them on level ground as Manfred settled. For a moment, John looked away, uncertain; then Manfred reached out with his free hand to grab John’s hip, letting his fingers settle there.

John’s eyes sharply returned to him, and Manfred put on his best, tired smile.

“About earlier . . . I shouldn’t have walked away like I did. You were trying to be honest and I - I was distancing myself. From you. From . . . us. Because all I could think about was that you were going to leave again, and I thought it would be like a band-aid – quick pain now, rather than-” Manfred swallowed, looking down at the hand touching John rather than the other man’s face, “- rather than more pain later.”

Now, he knew, it was going to be painful either way.

His black-painted nails rubbed circles into John’s side, and Manfred could feel the warmth of the other man’s skin through his skirt. After a quiet during which Manfred didn’t dare lift his gaze from his hands, John leaned into the touch; feeling safe enough, Manfred looked up to see the concern in John’s eyes had changed into something more vulnerable.

“And now?”

“And now . . .” Manfred bit his lip. He was going to die. The last thing he wanted to be was another burden to John – but it was much too late for that. They had loved each other too long for any distance now to make any difference. So he leaned closer, talking an inch away from John’s face. “And today reminded me that none of us have forever. But that’s okay. As long as the time we have means something.”

Manfred leaned forward, kissed John briefly but fiercely. He felt John reciprocate, and there was a hand on the back of his head a moment later, buried in his hair as Manfred dug his nails into John’s hip. Pulling John with him, Manfred backed up towards the bed.

 “Manfred – Manny, wait-” John breathlessly stopped. Putting both hands on Manfred’s shoulders to keep him at bay, John shook his head as if to clear it, asking one more time. “Are you sure that you’re alright? There’s nothing you want to tell me?”

This was the moment. The one where Manfred had to decide: he could come clean to John now, and spend whatever time he had left searching for an impossible answer of how to stop a mythological beast that hadn’t been seen on Earth in centuries. Or he could hold his tongue, and spend whatever time he had left how he chose – in this case, with the man he loved, and probably always would.

Manfred was tired of fighting. For once, he was going to be selfish.

“I want to have this time with you. For however long that lasts.”

It was enough. John’s lips met his in an instant, and Manfred was dying, but lips on his neck as his back hit the mattress sent electricity shooting through him, and he had never felt more alive.

Chapter Text

Dawn broke in Midnight.

Most days, Manfred preferred to sleep in late, warm in his covers until the sun grew too bright to ignore or somebody came knocking for him, usually bringing the trouble of the day for them to solve together. It was strange how used to that routine he had grown. Reasoning that one of the few job perks of being a psychic was that he didn’t need to be up at 9am every day, Manfred was quite happy with how it worked out – but today he made an exception.

He was sitting on the church porch, waiting on the sunrise. For most of his life, it had been something that he missed – the fleeting moment between night and day, the precise second that the edge of light appeared on the greying horizon – today he was chasing it.

In the silence of the morning, with only the sound of birds to break the quiet, he easily heard the person approaching. Manfred remained sitting, one leg bent at the knee as he stared at the horizon, barely even blinking in case he missed it. He didn’t need to look to know the figure, anyway – he knew the sound of those steps, and the cloud of cigarette was a giveaway.

John jumped up the steps at Manfred’s side, leaning against the white-painted porch instead of sitting.

Although he stayed silent, Manfred could feel the question hanging between them in the air. For John, he must have woken to empty sheets and panic. It was enough to stir Manfred to break the silence, even if he continued to look dead ahead.

“I didn’t leave because of . . .” Manfred started, stopped. “I can’t remember the last time I saw one.”

“Saw what?”

“A sunrise. The sun rise-” Manfred shrugged, clearing his throat to shake away the emotion. It would do no good to worry John any further. “It’s dumb, I just – I just wanted to see it, that’s all. It felt important.”

There was an exhale behind him, then: “I thought it might have been because of . . . y’know-”

The edge of a smile perked up Manfred’s lip. It was a challenge, making John blush, especially when he wore his love shamelessly and openly. But when it happened – it was cute, and made Manfred half-laugh.

“It wasn’t because we had sex-” he confirmed. Patting the step beside him, Manfred said, “Come on, Johnny. You’re going to miss it.”

After a moment’s hesitation, there was a dull thump of wood as John sat down next to him awkwardly, trench coat tucked beneath him and bony knee knocking against Manfred’s own. Slowly, Manfred reached without looking and took John’s hand. It was slack only for a heartbeat before John squeezed back, thumb rubbing against the back of Manfred’s hand. It was clear that he didn’t quite understand why Manfred had dragged himself out of bed at the crack of dawn to sit there, but he sat beside him anyways, and it meant something.

Manfred’s eyes were burning, itching to blink, but he held on a moment longer, something in the wind telling him to wait –

And there it was. A glimpse of gold.

The sun cracked over the horizon line and bled into the world, breaking across the dawn sky and bringing light to the darkness, shattering its grip on the world in an instant. The grey turned to gold, amber, orange hues – burning, illuminating. It breathed life into the world.

“It’s beautiful,” John said, voice quiet with awe.

Manfred didn’t reply. He couldn’t. Instead he nodded, feeling warmth on his cheeks as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, draining down his face until they hit the peeling paint of the church steps. Later, he would blame it on not blinking.

For now, he held onto John tightly as they watched the sunrise, dreading the moment that he would have to let go.

*

“So we have no way to kill it?” Bobo asked, looking around the table. “No way to stop it? Not even an idea of how to hold it off long enough to save people?”

The mood in Home Cookin’ was sombre. Outside, the lunchtime rush bustled, but there was whispering among the ranchers about deaths in town, and the rustle of heads constantly looking over their shoulders. Nobody felt safe in Midnight anymore. In the back room, the locals kept their ritual meeting and tried to find a way to change that – although from their untouched food and downturned gazes, it didn’t appear like hopeful.

At the responding silence, Bobo wiped a hand over his eyes. Standing at the head of the table, his tall presence filled the room, and he was about the only person trying to take charge.

Everybody else sat dejectedly around. The paired couples – Lem and Olivia, Joe and Chuy, Manfred and John – they sat close together, hands entwined beneath the table, holding on as if they expected the door to cave in at any moment, brining the Fury to drag them away. Creek hovered by the door, empty tray in one hand; the Rev held onto his bible. Even Fiji seemed defeated, sitting in the chair in front of Bobo, whose hand drifted to squeeze her shoulder at the defeated sighs that answered his question. They had all given up already.

“I don’t say this very often, so don’t repeat it-” John said aloud, not quite looking anyone in the eye, “- but I’m sorry. You brought me here to help. And I’m bloody useless.”

“No, you’re not,” Manfred replied immediately. From his place beside John, he was perfectly positioned to angle his head enough to force John to look at him, arguing, “- nobody could fight this. You can’t give us an answer that doesn’t exist.”

From her place on Lem’s lap, Olivia spoke up to agree, “You tried.”

“We all did,” the Rev said. Looking up from his bible, he said what they were all trying to avoid. “But it seems we have run out of road, here. Maybe it’s time we consider our options.”

“What options?” Lem asked, “We can’t kill it – we can’t even fight it. What choice do we have here?”

“To leave-” Rev Sheehan said. “Or to fight anyway.”

Silence met his words, seizing the room again. It was suffocating. A collective urge to say screw it, to dig in their heels and fight anyway was the gut reaction of everyone sitting there – Midnight certainly wasn’t a place for quitters; it bred a hardy bunch who tried to outlast every storm. It played out across the assembled faces, until one spoke –

“He’s right,” Joe agreed, “- from what we’ve seen, the Fury hasn’t left the town. I think that it could be trapped within Midnight’s protective boundary. Maybe it can’t pass the leylines.”

“Makes sense-” John tilted his head, “- most dark energy can’t last long in this plane of existence. It needs to be replenished, fed – if it didn’t have anybody to feed on . . . it might go back to Hell of its own accord. Eventually.”

“Eventually? How long could that take?” Creek asked.

“I don’t know, luv. We’re all just guessing here.”

Suddenly, Fiji banged her fist against the table. There were tears in her eyes and a thickness in her voice, as she looked around them desperately, frustration bleeding into anger. “We can’t just leave! Midnight’s our home. How can you even be considerin’ abandoning it?”

At her outburst, Olivia closed her eyes. Then, she replied: “Because the Fury can’t kill anybody else if there’s nobody left here for it to kill. This is how we save lives.”

“At what cost? This is our home.”

Seeing her friend’s distress, Olivia got up and crossed the room. Taking the empty chair next to Fiji, she took her friend’s hands; clearly trying not to cry, Olivia leaned close to Fiji’s face and told her.

“We made this our home. All of us. Midnight isn’t a place – it’s us. It’s wherever we go, wherever we make our stand. As long as it’s together . . . Midnight is wherever we all are.”

Tears rolled down Fiji’s face; the knuckles of Bobo’s hands on her shoulders were white. Olivia looked from her around the room, taking them all in with stained glass eyes, and seeing understanding mirrored back. Lem gave her a gentle smile. Joe nodded back, as Chuy held her gaze. Even Creek, with one foot out of the door, looked determined.

Only Manfred remained pale-faced and weary, although he gave her a pained smile when she looked at him.

“Okay?” she asked, looking at all of them.

“Okay,” Fiji replied. Holding on for dear life, she clung to Olivia’s words, leaning forward until their heads bumped together. “You’re right. If it means saving people, and we’re all agreed . . . then we go.”

“It will have to be soon,” Manfred finally spoke. It seemed like a plan – one that could save his life. Glancing around, he added, “- we know that the Fury attacks at night. If this is what we’re doing, if this is the way – then we have to go by tonight.”

“So soon?” Bobo asked. There was a note of desperation in his voice.

“I know that it is hard letting go. But it will be alright,” Chuy said. “We should go pack. We don’t have much time before nightfall.”

“It doesn’t seem long enough to pack our entire lives.”

“It isn’t,” Lem said, voice old. “No time will ever be enough for that. But it’s enough time to take what’s important.”

“We’re really doing this?” Fiji asked, sob cracking her voice. “Leaving Midnight?”

“We have to-” Olivia told her. Squeezing Fiji’s hand and standing, she looked around the room, determination filling her eyes. The old fire was back. “Go, boys and girls. We’ll meet tonight at 8 on the main road, just after sunset, for Lem’s sake. We go together - or not at all.”

*

Manfred was used to living out of bags, and packing his life up at the change of the wind. He had lived that way for most of his life. Between the house with wheels and moving around with his grandma, he’d seen a hundred towns and a thousand roads, each through a car window as he passed through. Engraved into his memories were all those first days in new schools, standing at the front of class and being told to introduce himself: he’d mumble “Manny”, knowing that he wouldn’t be there for long enough for anybody to remember it. Keeping the world at arm’s length because he was just passing through was in his nature - but this time, it felt different. Putting his things in boxes and filling up the RV, his feet felt like lead, and his gut railed against his reason.

Midnight was the first place he had ever wanted to stay. To leave was breaking his heart.

“Manny-” John said, placing a hand on Manfred’s shaking arm as he tried to lift the last box, “- let me. I can carry this one for you, love.”

John took the weight of the box, but it did little to lift Manfred’s burden. Footsteps left as John took the box to the RV, and Manfred lingered despite all reason telling him to run for his life. He stood in the middle of the room, eyes wandering around the space, desperate not to leave his empty house – his empty home. The first one he ever had.

“It’s time,” said John’s voice, from the door behind him.

The world felt slowed, and Manfred’s heart beat an unusual thud in his chest, a funeral march for one as he looked around for the last time. Breathe in, breathe out. His heartbeat slowed with his breathing, which echoed hollowly through the room; beneath his feet, the wooden floorboards groaned and creaked, begging stay, stay, stay -

Swiping a hand under his eye to brush away a tear he didn’t want John to see, he straightened his back and walked out of his home. Manfred’s steps were hurried and frantic, as he knew that if he didn’t do it all at once like a torn off band-aid, he would never leave. Swallow the pill, take the pain: the Manfred Bernardo way. The door clicked shut behind him, the noise deafening to Manfred as he forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and walk away, into the street.

John had pulled the RV onto the road, and it was surrounded by other vehicles – Joe’s orange truck, Olivia’s SUV, Bobo’s old bike – all brimming with memories. It was really happening. Even standing there, watching his friends load the last of their worldly possessions into the backs of their trucks, Midnight dark around them; the homes empty without lights on inside, Manfred could hardly believe it. Midnight seemed untouchable. He would have thought it would still be standing there at the end of the world – it certainly felt like it was ending tonight.

A hand took his in the darkness. John’s calloused fingers wove their way between his, wordlessly telling him that it was all right. That this was for the best. That whatever happened – he wasn’t alone.

Manfred squeezed back.

“Are we all ready?” Joe shouted, drawing everyone’s attention as they congregated around the vehicles. Half the town was already gone, leaving only them – the chosen few, the freaks with packed up flags. It had been easy to convince the rest of the town to go; an angel arriving telling them to flee usually had that effect. That, at least, had caused a laugh in dire times, as Joe arrived with wings out to clear the town.

Nods and murmurs met him now in the hazy street light, no one quite willing to be the first to say they were ready to go. Truthfully, none of them were ready to leave, not really. But they were willing to. For the good of the group.

“Yeah, we’re ready-” Olivia said finally, taking the burden so that nobody else had to. She turned, looking down the main street at the deserted town. Nodding to the space, she said under her breath, “For Midnight.”

The words were picked up, as the group echoed: “For Midnight.”

And just like that, it was decided. Car doors slammed as they crowded into the trucks, moving in groups as engines hummed to life, and their strange procession began their last journey out of town.

Manfred’s RV was heaving, with half of the pawn shop and Fiji’s library packed tightly into the back – there was no room to live in, just enough to carry them to someplace new. It had been used to transport things instead of people, and Manfred was half-relieved that only John was with him as he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned over the engine. With one of the larger, more study vehicles, they were taking up the rear of their procession – if they were attacked on the way out, it stood to reason that the RV was the safest vehicle. As the engine idled, Manfred drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, watching the red tail lights of all the cars and trucks ahead lead the way. They pulled away one by one, until the moment finally arrived – with his foot on the wheel, engine throbbing beneath him, eager to eat up the road, Manfred hesitated with one hand on the stick shift.

The RV edged forward, groaning under the pressure to pull away and escape – but Manfred’s eyes swerved around, through the driver’s window. His little house stood in darkness. The porch was engulfed in shadows. There was a small patch on the front lawn, where the RV had been standing since he got there. Green shoots had started to grow through the sand. It would be waiting for him to come back, for a long, long time. It was such a lonely sight that his heart ached, and he turned off the engine.

“Be right back-” he said, rushing back past John, who had cracked open the window and was smoking, but dropped his cigarette in surprise at Manfred’s exit. Although he heard a shocked ‘what’ follow him, Manfred swung open the RV door with enough force that it banged against the metal body of the vehicle, running headlong back towards his home.

Manfred leapt the porch steps. As he raced, his heart kept pace, rising with each step closer to the front door. By the time he reached it, his heart was hammering, and although didn’t remember picking it up from the dash, Manfred found the key ready in his hand. Sliding it into the lock, he couldn’t fight the determined smile licking at the edge of his lips; the stolen kiss of hope.

He couldn’t save the town. He couldn’t stop the Fury. But there was one thing that he was going to do, for himself more than anyone.

Opening the door, Manfred hit the light switch on the left. It flooded the room with bright yellow light. Casting out the shadows, banishing the howling darkness at the door – it was just a light, but it was enough that when Manfred shut the door for a second time, locking it and turning to walk away, it no longer felt as if the world was ending.

Turning, he saw that John had followed him from the RV and was standing a few feet away, looking at Manfred with a creased brow.

“What the bloody hell are you playing at? We need to get out of here, it’s not safe.”

“I know-” Manfred held up his hands; in peace or conceding the point, he wasn’t sure. Walking closer to John, he explained, “I’m done now, we can go. I just needed to do that.”

“What? Turn on a light?”

Despite himself, Manfred couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Yeah.”

Half in shadow, illuminated by the light that Manfred had just turned on through the windows of the house, John looked at him for a moment, expression unreadable. His dim eyes squinted, trying to figure out a reason, and his brow pinched between the eyes – to John, it must seem a stupid thing to do. A pointless risk. A truly dumb decision. Manfred expected confusion, or anger, or a mixture of the both at leaving the safety of their plan to do something so meaningless –

What he didn’t expect was John’s quiet question: “Why?”

 Manfred rolled his shoulders as he walked down the porch steps, feeling lighter and lighter with every one, as if something heavy had been lifted from him. Almost-high, elated, he grinned simply as he approached John, pausing arms length away – just close enough that should he reach out, he could touch the other man.

“I run away from everything,” Manfred started. “I always have – it’s in my blood, I guess. I just – I’ve spent so much of my life running. Whenever things got tough, or messy – I cut ties, and I run. It’s what I do. I spent my childhood running away with Xylda from place to place; I ran away from Violet at the altar; I left y-”

I left you. Manfred was barely able to cut himself off, before he said something that he couldn’t un-say; once it was out there, it was in the world forever. He and John stood on old foundations that had crumbled once before – he didn’t want to risk pushing either of them too far. But it was true. Of all the things he’d run away from, it was the image of leaving John in the gutter and walking away that burned most of all.

“The point is: I’ve never stopped running. Until here. And I just – I just needed to leave a light on, so I could find my way home. So I knew that I was coming back.”

Although a smile stretched his face, aching at the corners of his dry lips, Manfred felt like crying. He wasn’t sure if he was talking any sense at all anymore, or just rambling, betraying any facade of cool he had remaining for the sake of an electricity bill he could hardly afford to keep a light running in an empty house.

But John seemed to understand.

“It’s a promise.”

Manfred nodded, trying to reply but finding his voice failed him. He mouthed ‘yeah’, head bobbing up and down, as if that was an adequate enough explanation for it. It was a promise, yes – but it was more than that, too. It was every moment from the time his wheels passed across the Midnight border until now. It was his blood on this sand; his messy home and messy life; it was Midnight sun.

Memories flashed across Manfred’s mind vividly: the taste of Fiji’s cookies, and the way Bobo was never concerned about hugging him in public; Joe giving him a new tattoo just after he got to Midnight, while Chuy sat in the corner making jokes about how they should give him something ‘spooky’; Lem’s eyes; the Rev giving him holy water when they had no reason yet to trust him; the first time Olivia genuinely smiled at him – really smiled, the kind where it reached her eyes; the time Manfred got scared and drunk and couldn’t get the spirits to quiet, and so Lem sat at his bedside all night, holding his hand to leach the pain away.

It wasn’t just a promise to come back. It was a promise to come home.

As he blinked hard, the memories overwhelming, Manfred felt a hand on the back of his head as John tried to steady him. Leaning forward, Manfred kept his eyes closed and let it all wash over him, forehead against John’s, wind pulling the other man’s coat around them both. After a minute, Manfred opened his eyes, scattering the illusion to find John in front of him, close and safe. As the memories faded, it all felt like an over-reaction, as the emotion drained right through the soles of Manfred’s shoes and buried themselves in the sand.

Pulling back slightly, Manfred felt his cheeks flush, waving a hand at his temples. “I, uh – I’m sorry about that. I guess with all the spirits and headaches recently I’ve got a lot going on up there.”

There was no judgement on John’s face, although it twisted slightly, “I’m sorry you’ve got to leave this place. I can see how much it means to you.”

 Manfred nodded, laughed once – he was going to make a joke, break the mood, throw the weight of his emotions off with a lighthearted crack – but as his gaze shifted, he lost all hope. The light left his eyes as they focused on something behind John’s turned back. His giddy heart all but stopped, slowing, as if it knew its beats were numbered and wanted to stretch out time – but it caught up with them all. It was here.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to have to-” Manfred said aloud.

The Fury approached from behind John, dark wings blocking out the stars – it was coming. It was too late to run – it was time he finally stopped, and stood his ground.

“What?” John asked.

Carefully holding back the panic, Manfred controlled his expression and leaned closer to John, grabbing the man he loved by the shoulders and gripping him tightly. The wind still bit at them, but Manfred felt nothing but warmth as he began to speak, throwing out words desperately, hoping that they meant something, that he could at least leave this world without causing any more harm. What do you say when you know your time is up? What words do you choose to fill the space between your last breaths?

If you’re looking at somebody you love – really love, the kind of love that tears you apart from the inside, the under-your-skin, end of the world but at least you’re together kind of love – and know that you’re going to die, what do you say to them?

“Listen to me, Johnny-” Manfred said, thumb brushing John’s face clumsily, keeping the other man’s gaze on him and away from the approaching fate. “This is my fault, you hear me? Mine. I had a choice and I chose to keep this from you, and whatever happens next, that’s on me. Not you, not Midnight, not anybody.”

John blinked, “-What are you . . . Manfred, what’s going on?”

Manfred’s eyes flicked over John’s shoulder. The Fury would be on them in minutes at most.

“She’s coming for me, the Fury. I stepped in the pit, the first night it arrived – it was an accident but -I’m marked, John. We both know I’ve got enough things on my soul to be damned for.”

Now, John’s eyes widened in panic. Immediately, he came to live, pulling away from Manfred and calculating already, “- we need to get you out of here, then.”

“It’s too late-” Manfred resisted when John tried to pull him along. Planting his feet firmly in the sand, Manfred nodded towards the approaching Fury. John turned, finally seeing the Fury. It was almost to them now. Cursing loudly, John turned back to Manfred wildly; grabbing him and trying to drag him back towards the RV, frantic –

“We have to run, now – we can still make it out-”

“No,” Manfred said, shaking his head slightly. Refusing to be moved by John’s attempts, he instead grabbed his hands and held them, forcing John to meet his gaze one last time, “No more running.”

John froze, for a second. Then he was going again, pulling his lighter from his pocket and pouring oil in the sand.

“Then we’ll fight.”

“John, stop-” Manfred chased after him, grabbing John by the arm and turning him around. “Stop.”

“You’ll die-”

“I know.”

“I won’t let that bloody happen! I can’t-” John’s voice cracked. He shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t lose anyone else.”

John would die, not giving up. Manfred could see it happening. He’d kick up sand and spit in the Fury’s face and take a talon to the heart before he ever stopped fighting.

So Manfred fought back for him.

“I did this, John! Me. I chose this – I chose not to run, this is my choice.”

“I don’t care!” John roared.

“Yes, you do-” Manfred replied, choking back tears. “You care so much that you spend half of your life numbing the pain enough to survive. But Johnny, listen to me-”

 Manfred took him by the head, pulling him closer. “That’s why I need you now. Just listen. I’m gonna be gone, and you’re gonna be angry. We both know how you can be, and what you’re capable of. You’re going to be sad, and rage, and destroy things – but John, I need you to be more than that. Midnight is gonna need you now. And you don’t do well alone . . . stay here. Heal. Help them to fight this – tell them not to run. Bring them home.”

“Manny . . .” ugly, desperate tears tell down John’s face. “Please.”

Just then, the Fury let out an almighty screech that cracked the earth. Both of them looked over at the sound. It was close now – the Fury’s wings tilted, and it began to plunge down towards them, swooping in for the kill.

There was no time. God, he wanted more time.

Manfred turned back to John, “I love you. God, I love you. And I’m sorry. Give the others my love.”

Kissing John hard, desperately, putting everything there was no time to say onto his lips, Manfred kissed before turning them around suddenly and stepping backwards with his arms outstretched. The Fury struck. Talons dug deep into Manfred’s back, and suddenly he was airborne, lifted off his feet and into the night sky–

But John was fast, and grabbed onto his hand, anchoring them to the ground.

“No!” John shouted, hand on Manfred’s sweaty and already slipping, but his jaw was set in determination and there was fire in his eyes.

With John gripping his hand and the Fury trying to fly away, Manfred was literally being torn in two. He saw John struggle – his feet were lifted off the ground for a few seconds as the Fury gave a strong burst of energy, and with each second, it was becoming more likely that they both would be taken if John didn’t let go.

“John, let go-”

“No-” John replied, through gritted teeth, “I won’t. Not ever.”

“You have to.”

“No-”

“Johnny, please . . .” Manfred sobbed. There was blood in his mouth, the taste making him gag, although the pain from the talons ripping through his back felt far away. The only thing that mattered was the trembling hand in his, and the soles of John’s shoes hovering above the sand.

“I can’t . . .” John said. He was crying, too. Tears streamed down his face, hitting the sand somewhere below, and as he looked up at Manfred, he could see the hopelessness in John’s eyes. “Manny, I can’t . . .”

“You can. You have to. I need you to look after them.”

John hung his head, and Manfred felt his sobs shake through his hand, still holding on tightly.

“Johnny, look at me-” Manfred asked, gently. Slowly, John lifted his head, until they saw only each other. “Promise me.”

They were rising now, gaining altitude. Soon it would be too late for John to let go and survive. Manfred coughed weakly, knowing that there was blood and sand and sweat across his face, and seeing the cracks form on John’s – deep lines of worn-in grief, wearing thin.

John blinked up at him, hand shaking, and said clearly, “I love you too.”

It was a promise.

Manfred smiled through pink teeth, tasting blood. Then he let go –

Chapter Text

There were drops of blood in the dirt. Absently, John stared at the red, on his knees with his hands hanging uselessly by his sides. He let go. Playing the memory over and over in his mind, John saw the Fury grab Manfred. He saw them rise into the air, and himself grab onto Manfred’s hand. He saw Manfred pleading with him; the teeth stained pink, the strain of holding on in his eyes. And John had let him go.

It didn’t make any sense. Although he knew it was the truth, John hadn’t risen from where he had landed in the ground, unable to look away as the Fury took flight, taking Manfred with him. John hadn’t blinked until they had vanished up above the clouds. Even when tears stung his eyes, he refused to look away, keeping Manfred in sight for as long as possible . . . why? It did nothing to change the situation. But he felt . . . honour bound, somehow, to watch Manfred disappear, knowing that it was his fault.

The ignorant and the innocent had the luxury of looking away. They did it often, and apparently without prejudice to the dark, unpleasant things in the world that were inconvenient to them. Looking away was easy, for most people.

John thought that such people had to be guilty, to turn their backs on the suffering.

Maybe it was his curse, to bear witness. Heaven and Hell would probably get a right laugh out of that. It was almost biblical. John Constantine: cursed to do nothing but watch as the people he loved died in front of him, over and over and over.

It was a wonder Manfred had ever been able to stand in the same room as him, with the ghosts of his mother and Astra and Gary and every other poor sod he’d gotten killed, hanging on John’s shoulders. And now Manfred was added to that number.

John was numbly aware of the cool night air chaffing at his skin, lined with bitty dessert sand. He could feel the ache in his knees where he had landed, but it felt insignificant. Distantly, he could head the sound of thudding footsteps, growing closer.

“Constantine! Are you okay?”

There were hands on his shoulders, and a face in front of him. The back of his mind knew it was Joe, but he couldn’t muster the energy to respond. The angel hovered in his vision, with more dark shapes joining him in a shadow that encompassed John. Although he had expected rage, after all, he’d let Manfred go, he’d failed – Joe’s hands were gentle on his shoulders, and the angel’s eyes were wide with concern.

“I think there’s something wrong with him,” Joe said, looking up towards the dark shapes, “Maybe the Fury or the fall?”

“He’s in shock,” said another voice. John placed it as Fiji. The witch stood at Joe’s side, leaning closer, “Hey, John, can you hear me? If you can hear me, please nod.”

Somehow, John managed to slump his head in response. With a dessert tongue, he stammered out, “Manfred . . . he-”

“We saw,” Fiji said, “I’m sorry we were too far away to help. John, there has to be a way to get him back.”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“A tracking spell! A psychic connection, even. There’s got to be ways, and then we can deal with the Fury when we get there.”

“I don’t know what to do,” John finished. Blinking, the world swam violently into focus. The numbness seeped out of his body and into the sand, leaving a shell behind that thought it was a man. John’s hands were shaking, and his heart was thumping dangerously in his chest, beating a march of terror that consumed all other functions in his body. His mind began to take up the march, striking with the thought that would swallow him: Manfred was gone. He was gone, he was gone, he was gone – “Manfred’s gone. I don- I don’t know what to do.”

The labyrinth of his mind shifted. Walls moved, doorways closed, and all signs and markers of the way out found themselves suddenly overgrown.

“Let me get to him,” another voice said, as John hyperventilated on the floor. Joe and Fiji were replaced by Olivia, who knelt in front of him. She appraised him for a moment, eyes swooping over him and squinting, assessing what to do. She was always cleverer than people gave her credit for, that one –

Olivia slapped John across the face.

“Oi,” he said in instinct, “whatya do that for?”

In front of him, her lips pressed into a small, worried smile.

 “Snap out of it. You’re John Constantine, right?”

“Really wish people would stop sayin’ that like it means something,” John griped, rubbing his cheek.

“It does! People know you, they know what you do. You like . . . a demon’s version of a bogeyman. That means something.”

“A lot of bloody good it does me-”

“That Fury has taken Manfred. You understand that? Not just anyone. Him.” Olivia’s own voice caught, reminding John that he wasn’t the only one there who loved Manfred. They all did. She shook her head, leaning closer with a dangerous look. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe that you stand for something. Manfred does. He believes in you – so get up off your ass, and save him.”

A spark could start a forest fire, under the right conditions. A flame caught across John’s face, growing as he nodded to himself.

“I’m John bloody Constantine.”

“Damn right.”

“I’m John-”

“- Don’t wear it out,” Lem said, cutting him off. The Vampire looked down from above, and John resisted the urge to make a face. “What are you going to do?”

John pulled out a cigarette, lighting it. “Same as always, luv. Something stupid.”

*

Show me . . .

The voice pulled Manfred from unconsciousness. He wasn’t sure how long he had been out, but a sinking feeling of dread filled his stomach as the world became real again around him. From the smell of dirt and hardness beneath him, he was lying face down on the ground somewhere. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence. The agony in his back was.

Memories kicked their way out of the depths and surged, a current into his brain – he had been with John, he could remember that. They were running. And then – the Fury.

Manfred was aware that he should be dead. He fully expected to be dead. But he was fairly sure – or at least hoped – that the dead didn’t feel pain in the way that he was now. Tentatively, he peeled his eyes open.

Sunlight hit him from above, washing out the space around him into a white light. The sudden light sent a jolt of pain through Manfred’s skull. He winced with an audible gasp, a hand lifting hazily to shade his eyes from the light . . . he still had arms, that was good. He also still seemed to have an aching body, and two legs. And he could think. It was a running start, compared to some situations that he had woken up in.

Show me.

The voice was a bucket of ice water over the head. Manfred flinched, looking around for the source. Every movement brought a fresh reminder of claws in his back, and the metallic smell of his own blood in the air, but he strained to lift his head. He appeared to be in some sort of basement, with sunlight leaking in from a set of stairs, but no other visible exit. Around him were . . . Manfred squinted, trying to make out the looming shapes around him. The shadows looked like large tanks of some kind.

One looked strange. Twisting, Manfred tried for a better angle, lying on his back – and wished that he hadn’t.

The Fury perched atop of one of the tanks. Later, he wouldn’t know how to describe it in words. It was . . . grotesque. Leathery wings stood out from a hairy body, with squat little legs ending in wicked talons. Its eyes glowed red.

“Mothman?” Manfred asked, laughing weakly at his own joke. They could take his life, but never his humour.

Show me, the creature repeated.

“Show you what?” Manfred asked. If he could keep talking, he could keep breathing. He’d chat all day for a chance to see John’s face again. “I uh, I guess I have a couple bucks in my pocket. You want me to do a little dance for you, ‘cause I might struggle with that right now-” he sniped. “Oh, wait – I got something to show you. Let me just look, ah, found it-”

Manfred pretended to pat down his pockets, looking for something, before bringing out a hand with his middle finger extended.

“If that’s not good enough – hey look! I found another one!”

A second hand joined the first. Manfred barked out a laugh cracked by a wet cough, tasting blood.

Fool, the Fury replied. You waste time on childish endeavours. How human of you.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

You’re so very small.

“Maybe. But at least I feel something.”

Sentimentality. I see. It will kill you, you know.

“I’m okay with that.”

The Fury stretched its wings. It stood before launching itself into the air, swooping down towards Manfred. The red eyes bored into him. Manfred closed his eyes and thought of home, not wanting that horrific thing to be the last he saw –

There was a thud as the Fury landed a few feet away. Manfred opened his eyes to find it looming over him, shaking with a guttural sound that could have been a laugh.

As you wish. Show me your regret, little human. Your fears. The oath that you broke.

A feeling of panic washed over Manfred. He tried to shuffle away, but the wounds in his back screamed in protest. “No, no – get away from me-”

SHOW ME.

Manfred was pulled back into darkness.

*

 There was blood on the towel, the red staining the white material in a way that couldn’t be ignored anymore.

“Shit,” Manfred cursed.

Pulling the towel away from his face, he put the bloodstain under the hot tap and hoped that it would wash out, with the other hand grabbing a wad of tissues to press to his nose. It was the third time this week that he’d had a nosebleed. He held the tissues to his face and caught a glimpse of his pale, sweaty face in the mirror. It was too hard to face, so he looked down instead, watching pink water circle down the drain.

It was getting worse. Since he was young, he’d had the headaches – blinding, splitting things that left him with his head in the toilet. The amount of times he’d fantasised about cracking open his own skull to relieve the pressure and let all of the voices inside out should have frightened him more. The headaches he was used to, after all these years seeing ghosts. But the nosebleeds were new. They had started a few months back, somewhere in Ohio – or was it Nashville? A life lived on the road had left him with little to go on but interstate signs and crappy roadside restaurants. He was sure that he’d had the first nosebleed in one, panicking as he cleaned it up and hoped that Xylda wouldn’t notice.

Working with his grandma was all that Manfred knew. They drove around, pulling the odd con to make ends meet and giving out fortunes to people desperate enough to pay them. She had a gift for fortune telling. Manfred was cursed to see the dead. Xylda could do it too, channel spirits, it was a Bernardo family curse – or a family gift, in her words. But she had learned to see past the dead, into the present. She had years to hone her craft, and her gift.

Manfred just had nosebleeds and couldn’t keep the voices at bay.

He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a white pill box. Tipping a few into his palm, he swallowed them with a handful of tap water and grimaced. Migraine tablets, sleeping tablets, sedatives . . . they took the edge off, for a while. He was so good at faking signatures and documents by now that getting a prescription wasn’t a problem. The nosebleed stopped. Wiping away the evidence as best he could, Manfred stumbled from the bathroom of the RV and into the main building. Xylda was sitting in the driver’s seat, reading a crappy romance novel that they’d picked up at a gas station, but looked up when he exited.

“Everything alright?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Manfred lied. He hadn’t told her about the nosebleeds yet, because he knew what her answer would be: that he was getting them for trying to keep the voices out, instead of letting them through. She wanted him to embrace his ‘gift’ to see the dead. He just wanted some peace and quiet. “I’m going out,” he said, not wanting to meet her eyes. “We don’t have any appointments tonight, do we?”

“No, not until Mrs. Chapman tomorrow.”

“Right. The one with the daughter?”

“Sister.”

“Sister, right, that’s what I said-” Manfred said. “Died in a boating accident. I remember now.”

“Drowned in the pool,” Xylda corrected. She narrowed her eyes, seeing right through him in a way that only people who had spent most of their lives living in a ten foot tin can could. “Where are you going?”

“Just into town. I thought I’d see if there was anything going on, maybe get a drink. I am 21 now, grandma.”

“And you know I want you to have a life,” Xylda said, sighing. “Go on, off you go. But be careful, Manfred. You know there’s a reason-”

“- we live in a house with wheels, yeah,” Manfred finished. He was halfway out the door.

The familiar words set off a fire in him, and he tried not to slam the RV door, failing as it sharply cut off her reply. He hated it some nights: all of the moving around, town to town, with nothing but the dead and half a dozen people they’d ripped off following. Manfred turned his back on the RV and set off at an invigorated pace. They’d rolled into town a few days ago, and would be leaving in another day or two. New Jersey. In the distance, Manfred could see the lights from the bigger city across the water, and was quietly relieved not to be there. The bigger the place, the more dead it held.

As it was, they were parked not far from a part of town that came alive at night. There were people in the streets, several bars and clubs, and somewhere, he could hear music. It was . . . loud. He could hear the clashing of cymbals and guitars from streets away. Curious, Manfred followed the sound to its source, feeling lighter as the pills kicked in and he got further from the RV.

The music was coming from a dingy looking club at the end of the street. There was a bouncer on the door smoking a cigarette, and a hazy red neon light proclaiming that the place was open. Manfred got asked for his ID, and tried to hold back the bite in his smile as he handled it over.

Manfred walked in to a wall of motion. The club was relatively busy, and seemed like his kind of scene: there was a band on stage that sounded vaguely punk and a pit of people jumping erratically in front of them. Manfred intended to go to the bar to order a beer, to add another layer of numbness between himself and reality, but was pulled into the crowd. Eyes on the stage, his feet moved of their own accord as he stumbled forward, the heat of bodies pressing all around him until he found himself standing in the middle of the crowd. The floor thumped, sending a new pulse through the soles of his shoes and echoing through his entire body. His head began to nod, picking up the beat. People surged as a current around him. A man bumped into him, holding up his hands in apology. The music was so loud that his words were stolen by it. Manfred nodded back to him, whooping and beginning to jump.

It was chaos. His ear drums were splitting. Manfred couldn’t remember the last time he felt so peaceful.

As he let himself go, lost in the crowd and the noise, Manfred’s eyes drifted up to the stage. The band didn’t really matter: they were loud, and that was enough. There were a few skinny guys on stage, in ripped jeans and cut off t-shirts. The lead singer had a shock of blonde hair standing up like he professionally stuck his fingers into electrical sockets. He wore a tank top and black jeans, but strangest of all was the black tie around his neck. As the singer shouted into the microphone – an English accent coming out – he looked out into the crowd, and caught Manfred’s eyes.

A pair of dark eyes locked onto Manfred’s. Danger danced in them, drawing him in; for just a second as the crowd pulsed around them, they shared a look.

Then the singer looked down, a smirk lighting up his lips on the next line.

Manfred couldn’t remember what the music sounded like, later. It possessed him entirely, but he couldn’t even recall a line from a single song. He just moved, one with the crowd as his heart poured out into the noise, and there was nothing – no ghosts, no voices – it was all drowned out. He jumped, and he shouted, and he danced a little. Manfred wondered if normal people felt that free all of the time. When the music died, a cord was snapped inside of him. The crowd cheered as the band dispersed backstage and recorded music began playing through the speakers. Some people stayed dancing, but Manfred pushed his way through the bodies towards the bar. Without the band, he could already hear whispers in the air, like there was somebody trying to get his attention from just behind his shoulder.

Firmly ignoring the noises, Manfred grabbed a stool at the bar and ordered a beer. He was nursing it while rubbing his temples when the singer slumped down into the stool two down from him.

“‘Gis a whiskey. Neat.”

Manfred couldn’t quite place the region of his accent, but he knew that it was from far away. There was a mirror just behind the bar, giving him the opportunity to watch the stranger. When the drink was placed in front of the singer, he drank it in a gulp and put it back down in front of the bartender.

“And another. Ta.”

There was a sense of crassness to his smile. It was forced onto his lips, thinly pressed together with a tilt of his head. It was the expression of somebody who wanted to be in anybody’s shoes but their own. Manfred would know. He wore that fake smile well. Manfred froze as a pair of eyes locked onto his own in the mirror. Caught snooping, he dropped his gaze a moment too late down to his drink. A second later, there was a bump against his knee and sudden heat, as the singer moved into the seat next to him.

“You coulda just said hello, luv,” the singer said. Words perfumed by alcohol hit Manfred, who blushed into his beer and lifted his eyes to the stranger watching him with amusement.

“Good set,” Manfred replied, lifting his beer in salute before taking a sip for something to do. The stranger scoffed a laugh at that.

“Some people might say that, yeah. Others might not agree.”

“You don’t like your own band?”

“I think we’re piss,” said the singer. “But it’s something to do, innit?”

Manfred couldn’t help but laugh at that. The singer grabbed his second whiskey, and Manfred felt his neck redden with a flush under the other man’s hungry scrutiny. People didn’t often see Manfred. They came to him looking for other people, hoping to see their dead relatives, and often looked right past him in the process. Being looked at so intently was shocking to him.

“What about you?” the singer asked. “You sing?”

“Only badly in the shower. I’m uh – I move around a lot for work.”

“Cheers to that,” the singer replied. He clacked their glasses together. “Maybe we’ll end up in the same town again. What is it that you do, to keep you on the road with the rest of us weary travellers?”

The man’s flavour for dramatic language reminded Manfred vaguely of his grandma when she was telling a fortune, and he did his best to cram that thought far, far back into his mind.

“I . . . work in public engagement. I give advice to people.” Manfred thought that he had lied smoothly, but the stranger made a noise that indicated otherwise. Wincing, he explained. “Don’t laugh. Just – I’m a physic, okay? I travel around and people pay me to try and contact people that they’ve lost. I know it’s strange-”

“You’re a con man, then?” the singer said. Suddenly sour, the man leaned away, sipping his whiskey with a snort.

“No,” Manfred replied, feeling defensive. “I really am a psychic!”

“Yeah, right.”

“Oh, screw you!” Manfred spat. “You try spending every god-damned day with a hundred voices in your head; all trying to use you, like you’re nothing, like you’re just some shell-”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on, mate-” the singer held up a hand, reaching towards Manfred. He didn’t know when he’d started shaking, but the hand that gripped Manfred’s beer bottle shook as his head spiked with pain. Pissed off, he shrugged the man off, finishing his bottle and moving to go. A hand caught his arm –

“Fuck off, Englishman!”

“Prove it.” The singer’s words stopped Manfred. He half-turned, and the singer pulled something out of his breast pocket and handed it over. It was a business card. “What does that say?”

Manfred looked down at the white business card. It read:

Johnny C.
Singer, mucous membrane.

Just as Manfred opened his mouth to demand what the asshole was playing at, the words swam and changed. He squinted slightly, and the card re-arranged itself to read:

John Constantine.
Exorcist, demonologist, master of the dark arts.

“Master of the dark arts?” Manfred echoed mockingly, looking from the card to it’s owner.

John Constantine’s lips drew into a wicked, sharp smile. “Bloody hell. You really are a psychic.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Some would call it a gift.”

“Those people are idiots. You try not being able to hear yourself think.”

John’s hand was still warm on Manfred’s arm. Noticing this, he looked down, letting it go. John’s fingertips wandered down to the black bracelet around Manfred’s wrist, a silver charm dangling off the black cord, carved with an occult symbol.

“Does it work?” John asked, looking at the charm.

“No,” Manfred replied. “I’ve tried everything to keep it at bay. Nothing works for long.”

“Sounds like we’re both here for the same reason, then,” John said. “To get away from it all. S’why I play music.”

“It’s why I listen.”

Smiling slowly, John tilted his head towards the bar. “Buy you a drink – I didn’t get your name.”

“Manfred.”

“Buy you a drink?” John asked, “Manny.”

Manfred didn’t know how long they sat at that bar, trading war stories. They talked, and talked, and talked, as people passed by and the world revolved beneath their feet. Manfred had never really talked to anybody but his grandma about his gift, worried that anyone else would either not believe him, or laugh at him. John did neither. He listened.

When they started kissing, Manfred couldn’t be sure. He remembered being in the alley outside the club underneath a half moon, pressed against the wall with John’s lips on his neck, his tie wrapped in Manfred’s fingers. The neon light bathed them both red.

“Please,” Manfred breathed into John’s mouth, “Please, make it go away. Make it all go away.”

Maybe this would be the thing to make it stop, Manfred guilty thought between motel sheets. Maybe throwing himself into John, into the feel of his skin and the circle scars on his arm and his dangerous, dangerous eyes would keep the dead away. Maybe feeling this alive would give him peace.

*

There was hot breath on Manfred’s ear, and he woke to quiet words.

“Manny? Hey, Manny, wake up.”

“John?” Manfred mumbled. He opened his eyes, seeing the red numbers of a motel clock and the warm sunlight on the other side of a thin pair of curtains. It was 11am.

Turning, he lay on his back to see the singer from the previous night dressing beside the bed. There was a suitcase on the chair, and John was pulling a pair of black suit trousers over a white shirt, a change from the clothing he had torn off hours earlier. John looked up at him and grinned.

“You got any plans for today?”

Manfred thought about Mrs. Chapman and her poor drowned sister for a heartbeat. Then he said, “No.”

“Good. You wanna help me with something?” John asked. “I got a job. Sort-of, anyway. There’s this possession a town over, spirit in a house trying to kill the family. I thought that you could come with me.”

“You want me to . . . channel it?”

“Only if you have to,” John shrugged. Fully dressed, he sat down on the bed, leaning closer to Manfred. “C’mon, it’s not passing along some dull departing words of some ditty’s dotty husband for petty cash. What have you got to lose?”

John’s lips were close, and distracting. Manfred was lulled into them, nodding, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“Brilliant,” John said. Then he kissed him. Manfred was half-tangled in bedsheets and the kiss was all too brief as he tried to pull John closer, but the man pulled away. Slamming his suitcase shut, John headed for the door. “I’ll meet you in the car.”

Manfred drove to the next town over in the same clothes he’d worn the night before, smelling of sweat and beer. John drove, fingers drumming the steering wheel. They put on a classic rock station, and without seeming to notice it, John sang along every few lines. When he wasn’t intoxicated and screaming, he had a nice voice. It was a little rough, a little low, but it suited him well. It made a small smile creep along Manfred’s lips. When his favourite song started playing, he sang along too, and shared a shotgun smile with John.

The day passed in between blinks. There was a house with a red door that creaked, and a little girl playing outside without a smile, looking fearfully at the windows. Her mother wept, watching her. John talked to the mother a lot, kind in a strange way, before sending both out into the garden and opening his ‘tool kit’. Then, there was an exorcism. John shouted a lot, throwing around holy water and asking the spirit what it wanted.

The house shook in answer. Voiceless, the spirit had no choice to rage.

Manfred stepped in, and the spirit spoke with his tongue. “I want to be free.”

There was a basement, with a hollow wall. John had a crowbar and hacked away at it, until Manfred could pull away wooden beams to expose the body inside. They burned it in the garden. As the body burst into flames, a figure appeared to Manfred in the spoke. A woman with a slit throat nodded at him, gratefully, before disappearing. There were warm tears on Manfred’s cheeks as he turned his head towards the sky.

“S’okay,” John said, beside him, “she’s free now.”

“I know,” Manfred replied. He felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “I’ve never . . . really helped anyone before. Not like that.”

“Not quite the same as channelling dead spouses, eh?”

“Is this how you feel all the time?” Manfred asked, turning to John. The other man looked at him for a moment, eyes darting as he searched Manfred’s face. Eventually, John shook his head.

“No, luv. It’s not always like this. But today was a good day.”

Manfred missed his appointment with Mrs. Chapman, and had never felt better.

*

The Midnighters gravitated towards Manfred’s house. The light on inside drew them in, first John, and then the rest of the assembled group as they followed him towards the house. Behind them, their cars and trucks sat idle on the road leading out of town, all thoughts of fleeing gone. A few still had engines running. In their haste to get to Manfred as they saw the Fury descend, the Midnighters had jumped out of their vehicles without a second thought.

Either all of them left, or none of them did. They weren’t going to leave Manfred behind.

John paused, just inside the doorway. He stared at the empty house – most of Manfred’s stuff was packed into the RV, leaving only what was unnecessary or too large to move in the house.  Eyes drifting across the barren space, John tuck in the bones of the bed frame through a doorway, and the hastily scattered piles of books around as they had guessed which ones were the most useful to take. On the table in the living room there was a half-burned down trio of candles from some ritual or another. A cold cup of coffee stood beside them.

“Hey,” Fiji said. Appearing at John’s side, she touched his arm tenderly, moving them both forward into the space. “We’re gonna get him back.”

“I know, luv.”

“He’s coming back.”

John felt his lips crease up, turning to look over at her kind eyes. “That’s why he left the light on. Came running back to turn it on, the daft sod. Said it was because he wanted to leave a light on for when he came home.”

A lump in his throat stopped John, as he shifted uncomfortably, looking away. There was a cigarette tucked in its usual spot behind his ear, and his fingers itched to pull it out. Fiji’s hand stopped him, grabbing his between two of her own and squeezing it lightly.

“You really care about him, don’t you?”

John swallowed hard, throat like ash. With a shrug, he shared a secret smile with the woman and hoped that nobody else saw.

“Yeah, but don’t go telling anyone though. I got a reputation, innit.”

She beamed back at him, “It’s our secret.”

“So what are we doing?” Bobo said, walking into the living room. He turned and looked over at John, who really wished people would stop doing that. Looking at him like he knew what he was doing. Like, god forbid, he had an answer.

“An old Tibetan ritual. If Manfred was marked by the Fury, it stands to reason that he’s somewhere between life and death, right?” John explained. Scanning the room, he grabbed a fork from the table, from beside a plate with crumbs on it. Then he dashed into the bathroom and emerged with Manfred’s toothbrush, brandishing it like a sword. “So I’m gonna connect myself psychicly to him, and see if I can work out where he is.”

Bobo raised an eyebrow. “And you do that with a toothbrush?”

“You need, ah, a little bit of the person you’re trying to find. And a spark.”

“A spark?” Fiji asked, too late.

John shoved the toothbrush in his mouth and uttered a spell under his breath. Then he charged at a plug with the fork it. He connected, jamming the fork into the socket.

John Constantine was thrown back across the room by the electrical charge -

*

Most people would turn their noses up at motel rooms. The cheap sheets, the tacky curtains, the static televisions – in dim rooms with bad air-con, most people would think that they were in Hell. But there were no wheels on a motel. Manfred loved them.

He and John lived in motels on the road, from city to city, town to town. Some were better than others, but Manfred slept better than he had in years in a real bed with a warm body beside his own, on most nights. John laughed at Manfred swinging the motel keys happily on his fingers.

“Most people would call this place a ‘shithole’,” John said, looking around their most recent room. There was a disturbing picture of a cow on the wall. It looked right out at them.

“I like it,” Manfred argued. Walking into the room, he threw himself on the bed. 

“There’s no way you like this. Look at this cow. It can see into your soul.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Manfred laughed. “Old Bessie up there is fine.”

“There’s something wrong with your head.”

“Yeah, it’s called being an antenna for any dead people within a hundred miles.”

Manfred said the words lightly, but his voice couldn’t make the words any less heavy. There was a dip in the bed as John lay down next to him. A hand reached down and grabbed his own.

“You alright, Manny?”

“I’m fine,” Manfred replied. Rolling over, he leaned closer to John and spoke onto his lips, “Even better now.”

For the first time, Manfred learned to live in a home without wheels, but where he still didn’t own the keys.

*

And, of course, they fought demons. Wherever they went, there was some kind of ruckus, and John could be found at the centre of it. While Manfred thought he knew a lot about the occult from Xylda and his family’s old books, he began to realise that he knew nothing at all. Since meeting John he had saw vampires and hellhounds and even Frankenstein, who was shockingly a nice guy. He soaked up the information, learning as he went. Mostly, Manfred helped by speaking to the dead. It was the same as he’d done with Xydla, except – it was different. Yeah, he was still seeing ghosts everywhere he went. Yeah, he felt like a puppet with someone’s hand up his ass making him dance and speak. But now it had a purpose. It wasn’t just for cash; he was using his gift to help save lives, to put the spirits to rest with John’s help.

His nosebleeds had stopped. The headaches remained, but Manfred reasoned that you couldn’t have it all. What he did have now was enough.

“Watch out!” John’s voice called. A body slammed into Manfred’s a moment later, knocking him to the ground as something primal screamed in the air above them, surging past in a dark wave.

John looked down at him, face only a few inches away. There was blood on his forehead. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Manfred bit out. “Fresh as a daisy. That’s been trodden on.”

“Sorry-” John said, rolling off him. He offered a hand, and helped Manfred to his feet. Ignoring his groaning joints, Manfred stood by John’s side. They both looked worse for wear. John smelled of smoke – he always smelled of smoke, but this was hellfire instead of fag ends – and his coat was battered. There was blood on the white of his shirt.

“We have to stop this now,” Manfred said, looking at him. They had been fighting the entity for what felt like hours now. He could feel the exhaustion sinking into his bones, and John looked how he felt. They wouldn’t last much longer. “Any ideas?”

“I can’t get the bloody thing to stay still long enough to exorcise it! If I could just . . .” John trailed off, seeing the look on Manfred’s face. Quietly, he said. “You don’t have to. You can say no.”

They both knew that he wouldn’t.

Manfred turned to look up at the thing. The entity had turned around in the air, ready to make another pass at them. It hovered for a moment, a deep dark cloud polluting the air around it. Then it swarmed.

Manfred stepped into its path and let the demon in.

Smoke filled his lungs. Choking, he dropped to his knees; they hit the concrete hard. As the demon possessed his body, sending every nerve screaming, Manfred’s vision turned dull and grey. In agony, everything felt far away. Time passed like mud through an hourglass. He was dimly aware of John’s voice, shouting something in Latin, followed by fire, and more shouting. His body shook. So did the room. When the demon was dragged from his body, Manfred collapsed onto his hands and knees, gasping.

The sound of thudding feet echoed strangely in his head, before John appeared in his line of vision. Everything was far away still, and his vision blurred as John consumed it, kneeling down in front of Manfred and putting his hands on either side of Manfred’s face. He could feel the pressure of John’s hands, numbly, through a face full of anaesthesia.

John’s lips were moving. Manfred focused, trying to make sense of them.

“-ou okay? Manny, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Too tired to speak, Manfred nodded. John’s eyes closed at the moment in a moment of relief, before his cupping hands rubbed circles on Manfred’s head as he leaned closer.

“I’m gonna get you out of here, okay? You’re gonna be fine.”

Manfred wasn’t sure which one of them John was trying to convince. He did his best to stand as John supported him, taking a few dragging steps towards the door. As time passed, Manny felt his body return to him. His hearing cleared, bringing with it a clanging headache that made him wince. His feet took their own weight, moving when he told them to push forwards. He was okay. He was okay.

“Did we . . . do it?” Manfred asked, when he had found his voice again. “Did we stop it? It’s . . . safe?”

“Yeah, Manny. You did it. It’s safe now,” John replied.

“Good.” Manfred’s arm was slung around John’s shoulder, so he twisted his head to look up at the other man. “Johnny?”

“Yeah?”

John was so focused on getting them out of there that he didn’t look over. His eyes were determinedly fixed on the exit, and he looked beautiful. Manfred smiled. He could taste blood on his teeth.

“Today was a good day.”

John paused. Finally, he looked down at Manfred, who did his best to stand alone, swaying unsteadily on his feet. John’s arms caught him and held him firmly. The world kept spinning. John looked as though he wanted to say something; his mouth opened to form the words, but neither of them were good with that.

Manfred kissed him briefly with bloody teeth.

*

They were somewhere in Montauk when he woken in the middle of the night by shouting. Blearily sitting up, Manfred squinted in the darkness and found John beside him, talking in his sleep. The sheets between them were damp with sweat, which gleamed on John’s skin by the moonlight streaming through the window.

“No. . .” John murmured, face screwed up with pain, “No, no, you can’t have her! NO! Astra!”

“John!” Manfred shook John’s shoulder. “Wake up. John-”

“Astra!”

John sat bolt up, the name dying on his lips. His chest panted, and he shook as he looked around in a panicked state; seeing his distress, Manfred put a hand on John’s arm to steady him.

“Hey-” he said, “hey, John. It’s just me. You’re alright, you – you were having a nightmare.”

“Manny?” John said. They both pretended not to hear the crack in his voice.

“Yeah, hey,” Manfred replied, cupping John’s face with his hand. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

John’s breathing slowed, and he went slack under Manfred’s fingertips. With a shudder, he tried to stand, detangling himself from the bed sheets.

“M’sorry if I woke you up,” John said. “I’m alright, I just-”

“Its fine, I get it. John, where are you-”

“Bathroom. I’m fine. Go back to sleep, Manny.”

The light came on with an echoed ping, and the door shut a moment later. Light flooded out from underneath. Manfred sat in bed, looking at the shape that John had left in the bed, ringed by perspiration. He could hear John shuffling about in the bathroom, with the water running. He could go back to sleep. It would be easy to drift off and not talk about it, but Manfred had done that alone too many times before.

His bare feet touched the cold floor with a hiss as he padded his way to the bathroom and opened the door.

“Manny, I told you I’m fine-”

“You think that you’re the only one who has nightmares?”

John’s eyes met Manfred’s in the dirty bathroom mirror. With a sigh, he turned around and leaned back on the sink.

“‘Course not.”

“You don’t have to tell me about it. But don’t lurk in here feeling sorry for yourself, thinking that you’re alone.”

John pouted slightly. “I wasn’t.”

It was a lie. John laughed a second later, shaking his head, but there was no humour in it. He sagged against the sink, hanging his head.

“I’m tired, Manny,” he said quietly. “I’m getting tired.”

 Manfred walked over to him. John didn’t look up as Manfred pressed into him, arms looping around John’s waist as his lips pressed into a blonde hairline. It wasn’t smothering, but a persistent present-ness. “I’m here,” Manfred said. “I understand.”

They stood that way for a while.

*

The diner was some roadside joint that Manfred usually did his best to avoid. The seats were plastic, striped blue and white, and it had the commercialised fake ‘hometown’ feel that made his skin crawl. Naturally, John loved it. He was sprawled across the opposite bench, legs apart and sunglasses pushed low on his nose to recover from the night before.

“What’s up with your face?” John asked.

“Nothing.”

“Just a regular ray of sunshine this morning, aren’t you?”

Manfred scowled and took a sip of his black coffee. It was lukewarm, if he was being generous. He knew that pulling faces was juvenile, but it was too early in the morning to care. Manfred hadn’t wanted to stop. He and John were heading west that day, across towards Arizona, and they had a long way to go through desert before they reached their destination. After packing up at the motel, he hadn’t expected to stop for a few hours, so was surprised when John pulled into the diner on the outskirts of town not half an hour later. He didn’t understand John’s obsession with breakfast. Manfred had offered to drive instead, said that John could get something to take away, but the other man had refused. Trying to hide his frustration, he sipped his sour coffee and glared out of the window.

John kicked him under the table.

“Ow!”

“Stop pouting, Manny. Or tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong, I just-” Manfred huffed. “I think that we should have kept going. It’s a long drive today. I don’t understand stopping for no reason now.”

“It’s not for no reason,” John argued. A plate heaving with eggs was placed in front of him with two slices of toast, and he grinned a mile wide. “It’s for breakfast. The most important meal of the day, don’t you know. You should have ordered something.”

Manfred rolled his eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

There was a peculiar way in which John ate his breakfast. With the plate of eggs in front of him, he closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply. His entire body well still, and his face smoothed out from worry lines to blankness. Then he picked up a fork and tucked in.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“That . . . meditation thing with the eggs,” Manfred said, jerking his head towards the plate. “You eat greasy eggs like they’re something special.”

“I like eggs,” John pouted, mid mouthful. Eating for another minute or so in silence, he carefully looked at his food instead of Manfred and continued. “It’s – it’s just a habit, that’s all. Every morning, I take a minute and imagine that the worst has already happened. I picture everyone I – that everyone I love is dead. And once I’ve done that, whatever happens that day can’t be that bad, right?”

John’s voice caught halfway through, and stumbled through the rest with the precision of somebody who expects to be judged for their words. He put pepper on his eggs, and did not look up. Manfred almost dropped his coffee. Putting the cup down gently, he reached out and grabbed John’s hand, holding it until the other man glanced up.

He should say something serious, Manfred knew. John was . . . the most desperately lonely person that Manfred had ever met. It was like a mirror, sometimes, looking at John. He was so lost in everything that he should have done and every little bit of darkness that the rest of the world could safely tuck away under beds and into dark attics because of people like John.

John spent his life imagining the dead. Manfred couldn’t stop seeing them. It was a curse, in any other words.

“I think maybe you should lay off the eggs-” Manfred said with a grin, stealing John’s fork and taking a mouthful off the plate. “- it doesn’t sound like they’re very good for you.”

“Oi!” John made a grab for the fork, and Manfred kept it out of reach for a minute before relenting. They were both laughing, and John made a face as he went on with his breakfast, as they smiled instead of crying.

It was a missed moment, the kind that happened every day. People saw a pretty stranger on a bus, but didn’t say hello. Someone thought about calling their mother, but forgot to make the call. Another put off seeing a movie they wanted to. Planes landed with nobody waiting at the gate. Dates were skipped, and trains were missed, and people took steps away from one another.

The weight and shape of the things he should have said stayed on Manfred’s mind all day.

*

Mucous Membrane played small gigs in shitty bars, and Manfred went to every one. Standing in the middle of the crowd, he felt the world melt away. He could sing along to half of the songs now.

“Two whiskeys,” he said to the bartender after. Manfred sipped his own, and an arm snaked around his shoulder a few minutes later and John slid into the seat beside him and picked up the second glass.

“What’s a pretty boy like you doing in a place like this?”

Manfred barked a laugh at the voice in his ear, and John pecked him on the neck as he sat down properly. It was strange to feel so happy.

“I heard there was a band playing,” Manfred said, playing along. “Thought I’d check them out, see if they were any good.”

“Oh?” John’s eyebrows crept up. “And?”

“Eh, they’re okay,” Manfred replied. “Lead singer thinks he’s Sting, but-”

“Oi, shut up!” John said, but he was laughing. He shoved Manfred away, but there was no real harm in it. When Manfred rocked right on back into him, John didn’t move away, but drew him closer. “I’ll show you thinks I’m Sting.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I – I don’t bloody know,” John admitted. “Stop laughing!”

Manfred didn’t. He laughed and drank with John until he noticed his phone buzzing against the table. Flipping it over, he saw the name on the caller ID and his smile faded. Xylda.

“You gonna get it?” John asked. Manfred looked, and saw that John’s eyes were on the phone. With a weary sign, Manfred quit his seat.

“I better, in case she’s in trouble. I’ll take it outside.”

Leaving behind the warmth of the bar, Manfred headed out into the chilly night air. He leaned against the brick wall with a shoulder and answered the call.

“Trouble?”

“Is that any way to greet your grandmother?” said a voice on the other end of the line. “Look at you, assuming there’s trouble. It’s not the only reason I call, you know.”

“Is there?” Manfred asked again.

“No. I mean, the Clantock gang found me again, but I gave them the slip in Omaha-”

Manfred closed his eyes. Banging his head against the wall, he rested his forehead on the cool stone, he felt better. There was always trouble with Xylda. It had been over a month since he split to go with John, and one thing he didn’t miss was running away from people they had conned.

“But that isn’t why I called,” Xylda said. “I wanted to see how you are. I miss you, Manfred.”

“I’m fine. I’m doing really well, actually,” Manfred replied. “The headaches happen less and less now.”

“That’s because you’re using your gift, instead of hiding from it. I always told you-”

“Yeah, yeah, you always said so, I know. Well done, you were right. Except instead of using my gifts make cash off old ladies, now I’m saving lives.” Manfred didn’t mean to snap. Years of unspoken words lept in his chest, but he squashed them down into the pit of his stomach to bubble. “I – I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did.”

The line was silent for a moment. Manfred heard his own breathing, and Xylda’s, and the rush of traffic nearby. He loved his grandmother. She was the only family he had ever known, she had raised him as best she could but – it was never going to be easy, raising a kid who could see dead people. Add to that a family business of scamming and running, and teenage years in an RV, and things were bound to wear thin.

“You could come home,” Xylda said. “You know now that using your gift helps you. You don’t need to . . . stay with that con-man anymore.”

“We’re con-men, grandma.”

“But he’s bad news, Manfred. I know it in my bones,” Xylda replied. “Constantine messes with things beyond his power and control. It will damn him, and if you’re not careful, he’ll take you down with him.”

“Don’t-” Manfred begged. “Please don’t. I’m happy.”

“Ask yourself what he keeps from you. How well do you know him?”

“Well enough. I trust him. I’m staying with John, Xydla, I-” Manfred shut his mouth, and took a breath. “Goodnight.”

He hung up. Groaning, he ground his forehead into the wall until a voice behind him pulled him away.

“That bad, eh?”

John was waiting for him, cigarette between his lips. Manfred dragged himself from the wall and over to his boyfriend, stealing it to take a drag. He inhaled with eyes closed, and John’s arm pulled him closer, sharing smoke.

“Worse,” he said, opening his eyes. “Let’s go home.”

John went slightly pale at the words, but obliged. When Manfred woke up to an empty motel room and a note about hunting a wendigo the next morning, he tried to ignore the empty feeling in his chest.

*

“I think he’s waking up.”

The voice came from somewhere above. With all of the braincells that he had remaining, John thought that it sounded like Fiji. Her voice broke through blissful unconsciousness, and brought him back to screaming reality.

John sat bolt upright. Finding himself laid out on Manfred’s couch, he saw the Midnighters around him turn from various positions that they had taken up and face him, a sea of mixed concern and interest.

“How long was I out?”

“About two hours. You hit the socket, got shocked, and broke the coffee table.”

John glanced over to see the broken glass that had once been a nice table beside him, and nodded. An ache in his back seemed likewise to confirm the story. Tilting his head in a seems-about-right gesture, he rolled to his feet and only wobbled for a moment.

“Are you okay?” Fiji asked. “We thought about calling an ambulance, but . . .”

“I’m fine. Better than fine. I saw-” John tried to think. During the spell, he had seen out of Manfred’s eyes for a moment, and felt what the other man was feeling. Trying to put it into words when the images were falling out of his memory like sand through an hourglass was difficult. “I was in some sort of large room, a warehouse maybe. I saw . . . big things. Metal.”

Olivia raised an eyebrow, “Meaning?”

“I saw through Manfred’s eyes!” John shouted, “Just for a moment, just – I saw and felt what he did.”

Lemuel sat up beside Olivia, alert. “How is he?”

“Fading,” John admitted through gritted teeth. “He . . . ached. But not a physical pain, more like . . . his heart ached.”

He fell silent. Dejected, John tried to catch his breath, as the memory of that feeling overwhelmed him. Manfred had felt like he was being hollowed out. Like he was feeling too much of everything that it was draining him, stealing emotion and leaving behind . . . nothing. A void. It was awful.

“What else did you see?” Joe prompted, breaking the quiet. “These metal things you mentioned . . . cars? Boxes? Refrigerators?”

“No, no, it was more like-” John broke off. Fumbling for the word, he waved his hands for a second before snapping his fingers. “- Tanks! Big metal tanks with temperature dials on the side.”

“What about the warehouse?” Lem asked. “Anything specific?”

John tried to think. He really, really did. “Uh . . . it was big. At least eight of the tanks, nothing else. It looked . . . dusty, like it hadn’t been used in a while. Any ideas?”

“Sounds like a distillery,” Bobo supplied. “There’s a few in the area – or at least a few legal ones.”

“Any that have gone out of business recently?” Olivia asked.

“I don’t know,” Bobo said, right as Fiji supplied, “Bulldog Brewery.”

All of the Midnighters turned to look at her in surprise. Shrugging, Fiji raised her eyebrows. “What? They made this amazing elderflower cider.”

“How far is it?” John asked, “How quickly could we get there?”

“A few miles into the dessert.”

“Let’s go-”

“Wait!” Olivia’s said. Her voice stopped John short. He paused in the doorway and turned, finding her standing behind him. Despite every nerve screaming in his body to go, to run to save Manfred, her expression head him steady. “We need to get ready first. We still have to kill the Fury – it’s time to raid the pawn shop.”

She grinned a feral, dark grin. John matched it back in nastiness.

“Alright,” he said, turning to the door. “Let’s fry this bitch.”

I’m coming, Manny, he thought, running down the porch steps. Just hold on a little longer . . .

*

 The lights buzzed, and the tacky nylon sheets at the motel left static clinging to their skin. Manfred ran a finger down John’s arm, leaving tiny static shocks that made the other man shiver. Fingertip resting over an old scar, Manfred looked over at his partner.

“Where did you get these?” he asked.

Manfred’s voice was soft. It was a gentleness born of understanding the nature of such scars, not pushing too hard, just asking. In the bed beside him, John shifted uncomfortably for a moment, but he didn’t pull away. There was a lit cigarette between his lips and the kind of vulnerability on his face that could only be seen on quiet nights between dusk and dawn, when there was nothing to fight, just a bed and Manfred. Tender, like an open wound.

“Me old man,” John replied, eventually. “Used me as an ashtray when he was feelin’ particularly nasty. Mostly when he drank. Sometimes . . . just when he was angry.”

Manfred didn’t say anything as empty as ‘I’m sorry’. He knew how hollow those words could sound. Instead, he pressed his lips to the scars and murmured into John’s chest. “I’m going to stay with you. I’m not leaving, not this time.”

“What are you talking about?”

Manfred leaned up and looked into John’s eyes. His breath smelled of alcohol, but his eyes were sober.

“I’ve spent my whole life on the road. No home, no place to be. I- I . . . don’t have any roots. I’m not doing that again.”

“Er, love,” John said, half a smirk on his lips, “We move around all the time. It’s what we do.”

“But I’m not running away from anything this time. I just mean – I love you,” Manfred said the words, and didn’t want to regret them. A kick of emotion in the gut screamed that this was too soon, too fast, but he bit his lip and repeated the words again, louder, hoping it would give them definition. “I love you. I’m not running away again.”

I see, said a voice. That was your oath.

Manfred gasped. A stab of pain shot through his back, and his hands clutched at dirt on the floor. At once he was both lying on cheap sheets with John and in the dirt, with a fog around his head. He saw John’s eyes widen in shock before turning a bright, burning red. The two Manfred’s felt the ache of that moment. One was a fresh cut in the half-light of the motel room as John opened his mouth but remained voiceless, and the dead air filled the space between them.

Another was an old, faded scar.

How did it end?

“Badly,” Manfred said, his voice barely a whisper.

Show me.

*

Manfred and John were happy. For a while.

They lived a liminal life between places – towns, sheets, cheap whiskey, and things that go bump in the night. A neon haze tinted Manfred’s memory of the time. There was singing, and the feeling of not being quite so alone. He loved waking up with John next to him.

How well do you know him? Xylda had asked, and Manfred wanted so desperately to believe his answer. But her words came back to him on the nights were John went out alone, or he came home with takeout to a hastily scrawled letter about a ghost and an empty bed. Neither of them wanted to admit it, but it had been happening more and more often since Manfred’s confession. He shouldn’t have said I love you. He knew that he shouldn’t have said it, that he wasn’t even sure if he meant it, but he thought that he did and he just wanted something to hold on to with both hands. It was a careless thing to say. He was smarter than that.

Manfred paced in a motel room. John had been out all day; Manfred guessed that he was hunting something, his worry growing as the clock ticked on and the sun sank outside. If John was hurt, if he had gone alone . . .

The thought was too dreadful to stand. Cursing, Manfred began to ransack the room, looking for any clue as to where John could have gone. There had been no note that morning. Searching through old books for a folded down page, tearing through John’s suitcase for a name or address, Manfred grew more and more frantic with shaking hands, finally throwing the suitcase down with a snarl. There was nothing.

If he could just get rid of this god-damn headache . . .

Manfred’s head felt like it was about to implode. Pressing the heels of his palms against his eyelids so hard that he saw stars, he screamed in frustration and pain – until the click of the door broke through.

John stumbled into the room as Manfred dropped his hands, eyes tearful as he took in John. The other man was haphazardly dressed, tie loose around his chest and unsteady on his feet – but there was no blood. John’s eyes were hazy.

“Where have you been?” Manfred demanded, taking a step closer. “I was worried, John. You were just gone! There wasn’t even a note!”

“I was out,” John replied.

“You were out?”

“S’what I said, innit?”

Manfred felt his blood turn cold. Anger boiled in his stomach, hot and building. “You’re drunk.”

“Not a crime, is it? What’s wrong with you, Manny?”

Closing the door, John staggered over to the bed and sat against the headboard, putting his hands behind his head after lighting a cigarette. In this time, Manfred tried to hold himself in check. He took a breath, but it did nothing to make the raw anger inside of him calm. He had been so worried . . . and John didn’t care.

“You left, John. I thought that you were out hunting, and when you didn’t come home – you could have been dead!”

John sniggered. “I wish.”

Manfred frowned. For the last few nights, John’s nightmares had been more frequent and getting worse. John woke shouting and shaking, and didn’t stop trembling until daylight. They didn’t talk about it when the sun was up. But now . . .

“Who’s Astra?” Manfred asked.

In the bed, John froze. He looked up with bleary eyes, and spoke with a dead voice. “What?”

“Astra,” Manfred repeated. “You’ve been saying that name in your sleep. When you’ve been having nightmares. Johnny, whatever it is – you can tell me.”

For a minute, John said nothing. His face twitched in pain, and he took a drag, while Manfred felt his heart sink with every second. After a minute, John shook his head.

“Piss off, Manny.”

The words were dismissive, cold. They froze the air in the room. Manfred felt his lip curl up in anger as he nodded, body bristling with energy fuelled by worry and anger, which was always a dangerous combination.

“That it? That’s all I get?”

“It’s nothing to do with you-”

“I spent all day thinking you were dead!” Manfred shouted, stepping closer. He could feel the tears in his eyes, but furiously refused to let them fall. “I tried your stupid meditation, and it didn’t work! I thought you were dead, and you know what? I wouldn’t know the difference. I see dead people all the time, John. You’re starting to look like them.”

“Then piss off and stop looking!”

“Fuck you-” Manfred spat. He slammed the door on the way out, leaving John in the bed, half a ghost.

Getting into the car, the radio spluttered into life with the engine, and Manfred hesitated with his hand over the stick. Fuck John Constantine and his guilt and his drama and his stupid fucking cigarettes stinking up the room. Fuck him. Manfred took a breath. He shouldn’t have said what he did back there.

Half of him wanted to go inside and apologise, to try and understand what was driving them further and further apart. The other half reached for the glove box and pulled out a pill box.

Manfred’s hands trembled as he dry-swallowed the pills, head roaring. He fumbled the box, dropping the rest into the car. “Fuck!” he shouted, because it felt good. The pill box cracked against the window when he tried to throw it away, ricocheting around the car as Manfred slammed his fists against the steering wheel, screaming the curse word over and over until his chest heaved.

That night, he slept in the car. The next day, John got in and they drove to New York. The radio played, and neither of them sang along.

*

There was blood on his hands, and Manfred wasn’t sure if it was his own or someone else’s.

John always got particularly riled up when there were demons involved in a case, and this one was no exception. He’d flown in half-cocked and Manfred had followed, and now they were standing in an abandoned warehouse outside of Dallas, trying to lure a hulking demon into a binding circle. If they had a plan – it probably wouldn’t have gone well, either way. As it was they were well and truly fucked.

The demon looked like molten lava shaped into the form of a man, some cracked golem gone wrong along the way. It smacked John across the room with a hand. Manfred followed the movement, hearing boxes smash as John flew into them, disappearing from sight. Hoping that John was alright, Manfred turned to the demon. He had picked up half a dozen spells in the past six months with John. All vanished from his mind at this crucial moment.

“Shit-”

Manfred’s words were stolen by the hand around his throat, as the demon lifted him into the arm by the neck.

“So you’re the vessel? The one who can hold multitudes?” it said, voice like a cracking fire. “I thought that you’d be . . . more.”

“I – get that – a lot,” Manfred choked out.

“Such a small being, from such an ancient bloodline. A pity it will end with you.”

“Now, there’s no need to be hasty-”

“Will your loss break the conjuror’s heart, I wonder.”

Manfred didn’t have an answer for that, as his throat tightened under the demon’s grip. He didn’t know. Maybe if he died that night, John would mourn him. Maybe the other man would just have a drink and move on to the next case.

There was a time he’d thought . . . it didn’t matter now.

The demon’s grip tightened. “Shall we see?”

“NO!”

John’s voice drew both of their attentions. The other man had stood, facing the demon with a palm glowing gold and darkness in his eyes.

“You can’t have him! Not him! Not-” John’s voice cracked, and he shook his head furiously. “Not anyone else. Not again. You want to take someone, you take me.”

“As you wish.”

The demon dropped Manfred, who fell to his knees gasping. Then it raced at John. The other man stood with his arms out and his eyes closed, facing his death with apparent peace. Manfred tried to cry out, but his voice was gone. After a blinding light, so bright that he had to look away and hide his head behind a hand, Manfred blinked away red spots. The glow faded behind him. Indecision gripped him as for a moment; he didn’t want to look back. His heart lept into his throat at what he would see if he did.

But such people never hide from the truth. Steeling himself, Manfred turned.

John stood in a circle of ash. Apart from his earlier injuries, he was unhurt – he was breathing, standing tall with light fading from his eyes, which was more than Manfred had expected. He expected to see a corpse, and found . . . something else.

“Johnny?”

John turned to look at him. With a performed smug grin, he sauntered forward to help Manfred to his feet.

“No bother at all, old son,” he said, in response to the unspoken how the hell are you alive, “- I’m too important for the bastards up high to let me die that easily.”

“But-”

“Best not to worry about it,” John interrupted him. “Not today.”

The earth that they left was scorched, and Manfred would never admit the fear in his chest when he looked at John that night. It went away after a few days. It was just John after all – a self-proclaimed bastard who ran into burning buildings for children, jack of all trades, the saint of lost causes.

Manfred ignored the sharp, angry glint in John’s eyes for weeks after that.

*

Weeks later, Manfred woke up to the distant sound of a radio playing. Blinking, he looked around, recognising a motel room and remembering that they were somewhere in Nebraska. Outside the window, he could see snow.

Stirring, Manfred looked around for the source of the noise.

“It’s in the next room,” John’s voice said. “Bloody thin walls. I can go get them to turn it off.”

“Oh,” Manfred said, waking up. He looked towards the voice to find John sitting at the end of the bed, smoking a cigarette. ‘Walking in Memphis’ was playing. “No – it’s alright. I like this song.”

John nodded. Manfred shifted, sitting up in bed where a hand on the sheets beside him told him that they were cold. He wondered if John had slept at all that night. Silence stretched thinly between them, wearing thin as more time went on without breaking it.

John was the first to relent.

“Astra was a girl in Newcastle. It was a few years ago now, I was younger and . . . stupid. Her dad, he was mucking about with the occult, doing-” John sucked in a sharp breath. “-bloody terrible things in the basement of the club that he owned. And then I walked in.”

Breaking off, John shook his head bitterly. Manfred didn’t want to risk talking, in case it put the other man off speaking. He could only watch in quiet, stunned silence as John swiped a hand under his eyes and continued.

“I thought I was so bloody clever. I thought – I thought I could save her, Manny. But I mucked it all up. I thought bigger meant better back then, so I – the great John Constantine, master mage with absolutely no clue what I was doing – I summoned a greater demon to try and outmatch the one already there. Thought that having a bigger dog meant winning the fight.”

“What happened to Astra?” Manfred asked.

“I damned her soul to hell as well as my own,” John said. “Biggest mistake I ever made, and she’s – she’s paying the price for it.”

In the morning light, John turned around to finally look at Manfred. His eyes were rimmed red. “I mean it when I say that I’m no good, I really do. There’s no future with me. The only place I’m going is downwards.”

“That can’t be true,” Manfred argued, sitting up and moving closer. “John, there has to be a way to save you. You were trying to save her-”

“An’ we all know what the road to hell is paved with,” John laughed bitterly. “I can deal with my fate. I’ve known its coming for a long time, now. But I can’t take you with me. Not you.”

“John-”

“Don’t argue, Manfred. Just don’t. I’m not telling you this for your pity, I just – you deserved to know.”

Although he could quite make sense of the words, or convince himself to believe that they were true, Manfred could hear in John’s voice that he believed them. No wonder he walked around with such hell in his heart. Shaking his head, Manfred shuffled down the bed to sit beside John, grabbing the other man’s forearm.

“I’m not leaving you,” Manfred told him. He meant every word as he said it. This time he was sure. “Whatever you’ve done, Johnny – you don’t deserve to go to hell. And I know you won’t believe me. It’s okay. I’ll believe it for the both of us. And I won’t give up on finding a way to save you.”

When he looked over, John’s eyes were shattered. “Don’t start believing in me, love. I don’t deserve it.”

When John kissed him, Manfred could taste the salt of his tears on his lips.

*

 For the next two weeks, Manfred spent every day researching ways to save John. He read Wikipedia pages and grimoires that were over a hundred years old, poring over every source of information he could get his hands on about Hell. He even called Xylda for help. She had nothing to tell him that he hadn’t already read – that a damned soul was almost impossible to redeem.

He didn’t believe that. He couldn’t.

Manfred read, and read, and read. John drank nightly, and flinched when he saw Manfred reading yet another book on soul bonds. They argued about it a lot. John wanted him to give up, claiming that he was done for and determined to take as many of the demonic bastards as he could down with him. Manfred refused to give up hope, and John seemed to resent him for that, in a strange way.

Manfred wondered when John had given up searching for himself. His hope must have died long ago. There wasn’t even an ember of it left in his eyes.

When Manfred showed up clutching a scrap of paper to the bar John was at, John sighed. Putting out his cigarette on the wall outside the bar, he turned to Manfred with extended hands, “Manny, not tonight-”

“I’ve found something!” Manfred said, ignoring him. Holding up the scrap of paper torn from a book, he tried to show John the writing on it, walking to stand in front of him. “Look, it’s an old piece from a demonica dated 17-something. It says that like Jesus forgiving the thief on the crucifix beside him, that the blessing of an angel or such can save the damned-”

“Nah,” John said, shaking his head. “Those lot are as bad as the others. Just as big bastards; different direction.”

“But if they could help you-”

“S’not worth it, I promise.”

“Why won’t you even try? Johnny, this is your life we’re talking about.”

“Yeah. Mine.”

John turned away, and Manfred was left clutching at his last hope. So many times, he had let John just walk away in moments like this. Let it slide, don’t argue, it will all be better in the morning. Manfred was good at avoiding conflict. He was starting to realise that it was just a different way of running away.

Reaching out, he caught John by the arm and spun him around. Manfred stepped close, hand moving to the back of John’s head as he kissed him. It was a foolish, desperate act. He kissed John, hoping that it would tell him without words that he cared what happened to John, that he didn’t want to lose him, that the thought terrified him. The kiss was hard, and desperate, reciprocated by John with just as much ferocity. There was nothing careful about the kiss. It was a last ditch effort, a car crash waiting to happen, a chapel in a hospital.

“I love you,” Manfred said between breaths. He was so close that he could see the sparks in John’s eyes. “I don’t want to lose you, but I need you to be with me on this. I will try, for as long as it takes, to save you. But I can’t do it alone, Johnny. You – you’ve got to want to live.”

 Against all sense, Manfred still had hope. It was a stubborn streak running in his veins that never gave up. He hoped that John would wake up, and say he was ready to fight. He hoped that John might just this once use some of the fire he had for saving others, and use it to save himself. He hoped that loving him was enough.

John said nothing, breathing heavily against Manfred’s lips. This close, his eyes were unavoidable. They said everything Manfred needed to know.

He stepped away.

“Manny-” John said, reaching for him. “Come on, it doesn’t have to be like this-”

“I see enough dead as it is, John. I can’t live with a ghost.”

The truth was a dagger between the ribs. Manfred saw John gasp, and step back. Despite it all, Manfred still loved him. And maybe John wouldn’t fight for himself, but maybe – Manfred made one final attempt, speaking clearly despite the tears forming in his eyes.

 “We could run away. I mean it – we could just leave. Find somewhere. Forget the dead and the spirits and the shit we didn’t ask to carry and go. We could live, Johnny. Really live. Not like this – not constantly running and drinking ourselves into an early grave to deal with the stuff we see, but actually feel alive. Come - come away with me.”

If John said yes, Manfred would have left in a heartbeat. Run away one last time. Risked it all with the time they had.

Something dark crossed John’s face. Manfred knew him well enough to read the shift that flickered across his features, as John’s open, vulnerable expression hardened, turning up into a snigger. Honesty slunk away into the darkness, and a performer stepped out of John’s hardened features.

He laughed. Brass and cruelly, John Constantine laughed. “Oh come on, Manny, you’re not really that stupid,” John said. “I mean, that’s not you and it’s certainly not me. What would we do? Live some soddin’ domestic life in some shithole of a town? Raise chickens? You’ve been useful to me, these last few months. Your . . . talents have helped. But if you don’t want to do this anymore-”

John waved a dismissive hand, indicating that Manfred could leave. “You’re no use to me if you won’t help.”

Seeing red, Manfred launched himself forward. His fist connected with John’s jaw with a clack, sending the other man sprawling into the gutter. Rolling in a puddle, John laughed from the floor as Manfred seethed over him.

“You’re a coward, John Constantine.”

“That’s what I keep telling ‘em, but no one ever believes me.”

John’s dark eyes were dead. Inside of Manfred, a great dam broke. The tears threatening to spilled over his eyes as he shook his head, bitterness filling him up as he turned and began to walk away. The sound of John laughing in the gutter followed him down the alley.

Manfred ran away again. Maybe that was his real curse.

*

That’s it? A voice said. That was the oath you broke. You left him.

“Yeah,” Manfred said through gritted teeth. The fog felt thicker in his head, as past and present merged. That night in the alley was five years ago, but the feelings it stirred up bled like an open wound. All the time in the world and no time at all had passed. John had still walked back into his life like he had always been there, like he belonged.

This must be how the Fury kills people, he vaguely thought. Manfred felt beaten up, as if he had been hit by a bus. His back ached and he couldn’t even make sense of what he was seeing, let alone what was real. However, all of that was nothing compared to the ache in his chest.

It breaks their heart.

He wondered if dying always hurt this month. Lying in the dirt, the memories hitting him over and over in waves, each time dragging him further into the past to be slammed back into the shore of how it ended, Manfred felt himself begin to fade.

If he could see John’s face again, though, he could die smiling.