By appointment only, the door says. John runs his fingers over the glass, glancing once over his shoulder to look down the street, before twisting the knob and pushing it open with clear disregard for rules or common courtesy. Zed said that in her vision she'd been standing in an antique store with jade green doors, spider webs and dust with high, glass ceilings. There had been monsters creeping around the edges of a single flickering light and the urgent calling of the most nasal voice she'd ever heard in her life.
It wasn't much to go on, but barely 20 minutes of wandering and he'd felt an inexorable pull towards this place.
Arcana Cabana. It's cute. Bit kitchy, but-- John touches everything within easy reach, fingers glancing off metal and wood, paint and plaster and oh, yes. He comes to a halt in front of an old oil lamp, just nestled haphazardly in with the rest of the accumulated junk. He's not sure what it is, exactly, but the lamp feels very, very nasty. It's not just a piece of nothing, it's the real deal.
"Alright, luv," he mutters to himself, forgetting the rest of the shop for a moment to circle the table that the lamp is perched on, "Now we're getting somewhere interesting."
His life has changed a lot in a couple of months, but there are some things Dave still hasn't gotten used to - helping with the shop is one of them. He isn't the kind of guy who should be dealing with people, awkward as he is.
But it's not like he has much of a choice. Horvath is still out there on the loose, causing trouble and trying to regain power, and Balthazar -Dave's master- is a much better tracker than he is. Dave knows they'll save the city together when something is found, but meanwhile, he's on shopsitting duty.
Two things alert him of the new visitor in Arcana Cabana. And old yet very effective guard spell.. and the chiming of the bell. What? Gotta keep up the act for the outside world, right?
"Welcome to Arcana Cabana, how can I--" Zed wasn't joking when she mentioned the nasal voice, this 20-year-old college student has heard all the jokes that can exist about it. But that nasal voice and the dragging of his feet is interrupted when he notices exactly what the newcomer is admiring. It's not often that people go straight for the real deal, and when they do, well... usually they know. Is this the case or just a coincidence?
"You already, ah, found something of your interest? ...sir?" He awkwardly adds the last bit when he remembers he should be playing salesman, but man, he sucks so hard at it. "You have a very... particular taste."
"Jesus wept!" John startles at the sudden interruption to his frankly unhealthy interest in the little bit of magical disaster. The pipes on this kid. He still doesn't know what he's here for, exactly, but he is 100% certain that Dave is involved, by virtue of Zed's apparently spot-on description. Whether it's a good involvement or a bad one is up in the air.
He pulls on a personable smile, that's more cheeky than anything, because thinks he's a lot better at pretending to be a gentleman than he actually is, and tucks his hands into the pockets of his tan trenchcoat. "Sure do, mate. Got any more bits like this one around here?" He's not talking about lamps specifically, but he wants to know if Dave picks up on that, or if he plays dumb about it. (Or if he actually is dumb about it, but all signs point to probably not, at this point.)
Not that any of that is going to get him closer to what he needs, but that's the thing with John: when he doesn't know what to do, he starts throwing shit at the walls until something sticks. It's not the most elegant method, but John is not an elegant man.
He gives the kid a once-over: he's tall. Taller than John by an inch or three, if he had to guess. Skinny, though. Fresh-faced, young and intensely unassuming. He probably got shoved in his locker a fair bit as a lad. There's something about him, though, a bit of mystical survival instinct that prickles along the nape of John's neck and makes the hair there hair stand on end that tells him not to test his luck too hard.
Which, of course, he'll be dutifully ignoring for the duration of the evening. "Nice shoes."
Oh, a foreigner! Not unusual - tourists love to see what Manhattan has to offer. But a quick look over and - yeah, not probable. This guy is here with a purpose. If that purpose is a fancy gift for his girlfriend or hunting the paranormal, well, only a good conversation can tell.
Except Dave sucks at making goood, not nerd conversation. He jumps back when John startles, and rolls his eyes at the shoes comment. There's always something in his life that people will comment on, isn't there? His voice, his awkwardness, now this...
"Thanks. Family tradition."
Well, technically it is, even if it's from a family that existed back in medieval history. After some hesitation, he walks toward John, hands already gesturing like crazy as he explains. Better stick to the not-quite-salesman speech his master taught him, no point in trying to play dumb - he's a terrible, terrible liar. Everyone in his life have told him so.
"We probably do, yeah. Buuut you'll have to be more specific? You want more lamps, or some really old stuff, or things with stories behind them? Some of our buyers like looking for..." He rubs the back of his head, wondering if he should go for it. Oh, to hell with it, it's not like being smooth is his deal. "...authenticity."
Family tradition, eh? The comment all but confirms it for him, since they're here, standing in a shop with at least one genuinely cursed artifact. He glances towards the wildly gesturing hands and-- yep, there it is.
A magical ring. And it's nearly as stylish as the old man shoes.
Arthurian legends are potent stuff, he knows. The only one of Merlin's spells he's ever managed to cast, he'd done drunk off his arse and clumsy, half-convinced it could never work - and it had still managed to make his best mate immune to the more permanent effects of death at least 47 times. Granted, he'd also ruined that mate's life, but he's never needed Merlin's help for that.
But yes, he's definitely sticking around now. Merlinian types tend to be delightfully off their rockers, bunch of walking, talking spectacles: probably because they've lived too goddamned long and gone collectively batty, which is just fine with John. He prefers it to the more boring, stuffy, proper brand of practitioners found in other schools, honestly.
"Stories, eh? That's a way to put it." A beat, and he grins, apparently satisfied with Dave's word choice, "Authentic is what I'm in the market for."
never a problem! and omfg I'm dying at the description of Merlineans
John's eyes fall on his hand and suddenly Dave feels very, very exposed. He quickly puts them in his hoodie pockets, which he realizes is a mistake a second after he's done. Good old Streisand effect - the more you try to hide something, the more attention you draw to it.
Be right back, facepalming at himself. Take the opportunity to admire the ring more if you will, it was made from Excalibur after all.
"What are you here for?" That is the tone of a man giving up, yep. "If this is about the Chrysler building then--"
The "story" he has for John is interrupted when the door slowly opens, only to suddenly slam shut. By its own. One could blame the wind, but with them being who they are and being at the place they are at the moment, they should know better.
There's something different in the air, that's for sure.
"....please, please tell me you did that." Dave's look for John is a mix of accusing and hopeful at the same time. Because if this man didn't do that then there's something there waiting for both of them.
A shake of a big vase, the rustling of a book's pages. Dave doesn't know if keeping his eyes on John or the moving objects, and frankly? He isn't sure what option offers the worst scenario.
The little push, the power of intent before, that was one thing. The rock solid give that to me now sends a visible shiver down John's spine. More in memory of pain than anything, though he can feel the magic resistance stirring in his blood again.
Thank the gods for hard liquor, though, because nothing hurts when he's this far into a bottle. He grins sloppily, watching the bartender come and go again. The little gutpunch of a command makes him vindictive, and he latches onto the things Kilgrave doesn't say. Like some kind of whiskey shark, and the word Jessica is chum he just let swirl out into open waters. Not a good idea. Jessica wanted him to be a hero, John notes. He clearly tried it, for Jessica.
Just sets John's old romantic heart right aflutter.
"Aww, mate. You know the bauble didn't work, right? That's the story. Never could make whatsherface fall back in love." He puts a consoling hand haphazardly on Kilgrave's shoulder just to see if he'll knock it off. What his reaction will be. "But there's always other birds, hey?"
He shouldn't need the medallion either way, but now John is starting to wonder if maybe this Jessica doesn't know a good sound ward or two, herself. Which in turn makes him wonder how he'll fare, if Kilgrave ever gets his mits on a little bit of magical aid for his crooning.
He'd rather not find out. John drops his spent cigarette butt into the glass he's no longer drinking from now that he's upgraded to his own private nicked bottle, and shakes his head a bit. "Did I not give you my business card? Rude of me, that. You should come sometime and see what I get up to, you'd like it. Gets the blood going. It's usually a little more exciting than a spot of attempted domestic homicide."
"It wasn't for her that I wanted it. I wanted to see if my influence could grow further and last longer."
He huffs over his drink as he brings it back to his mouth. Kilgrave would never admit to love or something as stupid as that. He could inspire love with a few words, could make anyone love him.
"I can get any woman I want. What's one man or woman among all of those in the world?"
Those words are as casually said as John puts out his cigarette. A hiss like an angry dragon and nothing more. Out and done.
"I've never killed anyone. But no, you didn't. What exactly is it that you do other than turn people who could hurt you onto you?"
There's a small attraction there, better than roaming the world and watching out for Jessica or one of her people. She wouldn't, he was sure, but in the late night when paranoia set in, who knew?
Staring morosely into his glass, Kilgrave is uncharacteristically silent. John has made him realize more than anyone that she was a dividing line in his life. Before, he could have kept moving, never been heard of. After, there is always that chance that he might be found out. Be captured. Or worse.
"Everybody wants what they can't have, luv. Even if they've got everything else." In a sense, anyway. John's problem is that he gets what he wants, generally, but the longer he keeps it, the more he loves it, the better the chances are that he'll find some horrible way to ruin it, twist it or kill it. Things come easy to John, people are drawn to him, to the magic he has, but they never stay (or they never stay whole), and that's what burns him. For a man with Kilgrave's skillset, he's hazarding a guess that the shock of being denied anything is what gets under his skin.
Or at least, it interests him enough to waste time in the kind of shit bar he hates with a man that annoys him, instead of trying to kill him first and enjoying a scotch over his dead body in blissful silence. John will take that.
"So there's a time limit too, then?"
He'd figured out that there was a distance limit, given their cave adventure and the things Kilgrave admitted to there, but the rest of it he's just guessing at. Maybe the time limit is why he continued to feel dodgy for a day after the cave: he thought it'd been the threat of frozen death barely past, maybe the amulet's proximity, but it would make a sort of sense for it to have been the ward still at work in his system. He hopes idly that he'll still have a grasp on this info when he wakes up in the morning with the raging headache, and gropes around his pockets for one of his cards.
"What it says, mate," he slurs, sliding it over across the bar countertop. "Bit of runnin' around, poking my nose into trouble. Collecting the sort of bits that'd make your toes curl in those expensive shoes." A terribly thoughtful look crosses his face. "Or sick up on them, I don't know your fortitude."
At his shout, everyone in the dive falls into silence. The people at the pool table continue their shots. The bartender takes his orders in the same quiet, getting what people pointed out to him. Kilgrave's dark eyes stay on John Constantine as quiet suffocates them. In no way, shape or form should any dive be this been so utterly silent. Yet to everyone within, this is normal. None run out in panic or act upset.
"I couldn't hear you over all of them," he offers in way of an explanation, one of the few he bothers to give as he draws John's card to himself to look over. Kilgrave isn't familiar with magic, that much is clear as he picks up the rectangle of paper to look at. Had John put a spell on it, he could have rendered Kilgrave mute for a few critical minutes. Enough to have killed or neutralized him. Maybe.
"Master of the Dark Arts," he says with clear amusement despite him edging towards being drunk himself. "Exorcist and Demonologist. Let me guess. You want to see if your 'demons' will listen to me or not."
While his tone is dismissive (and he didn't answer John's question on time limits to his power) Kilgrave tucked John's card into his suit pocket.
"My fortitude is better than yours," he insists with injured pride or a show of it. "You're more drunk than I am."
John laughs in the sudden haunting, omnipresent silence. There's literally nothing stopping Kilgrave from turning them all on him as he'd threatened: John walked in here knowing that, but seeing a little demonstration like this is still eye-opening. So he laughs, because if he stopped to use his pickled brain for half a second instead, he'd have to confront the very real mess he's so enthusiastically throwing himself into. This is all going to backfire horribly, that much is painfully obvious now (though it's not like it hadn't been before.) If not tonight, then sometime in the future.
Ah, well. That's the fun of being John Constantine. "Don't be shy, luv. I know you just like the sound of my voice." His beautiful voice, which literally no one has appreciated since the day he came (literally) screeching onto the British punk scene in his entirely misspent youth. Makes him almost yearn for America, while he's here in London: across the pond, he can always count on being able to charm a pair of pants or two off with his accent alone. Surrounded by fellow brits, such as the one in his current illustrious company, that's not so likely to happen. Kilgrave will simply have to settle with being grateful that John stomped out the very hardest edges of his native scouser accent over the years and years of travel (since repeating himself two or three times while abroad before being understood got very old, very fast.)
"Oi, I had a head start while you were napping," he fires back, scandalized and defending his alcoholic honor, but he still finds it in himself to appreciate just how damned fast Kilgrave sussed out his motives, even if he does sound a touch skeptical for a man with a mind-controlling voice. John drums his fingers against the sides of his pilfered bottle and settles for fessing up: trying to put up a front now would just be embarrassing, probably. "Clever, you are," he hums out, halfway wondering what everybody here is going to make of their very strange conversation in the morning. "What do you say, then? Want to see how those pipes of your stack up in the grand, messy scheme of things? Might be I'll reconsider letting you get your mits on that shiny trinket of ours if you do."
That laugh may be what stopped Kilgrave cold. He listened to it reverberate around the silent room and caught no intention of mockery or derision. Had he picked up on either of those, he might have told everyone in the room to kill John or something else. Who knew with a creature of chaos like him.
The lilting rise and fall of John's accent was lost on Kilgrave. The man had his secrets in his past that he kept well hidden and was grateful in his twisted way that John didn't dig for. Too many wanted to know where weaknesses might lie. John never asked. Never pushed. For all it mattered, Kilgrave could have been born back in that cave and walked in here. At least as far as Kilgrave knew.
"You think you're the first one who's wanted to use me for what I can do? Or try to?" he asked with a snort of mixed amusement and disgust. John was far from the first. As the old saying went, damaged people were dangerous because they could survive. Because they knew they could survive. The bauble interested him, bait that he bit at as willingly as a fish did a clever lure.
"Why not? Isn't as if I can go back to America yet. I help you, and you give me back that little charm I wanted. Fair enough?"
Because that was how things were done in Kilgrave's world. Thing A led to Thing B or Reaction C. Ideas such as companionship or allies were myths that he didn't understand and didn't care to. He was a hideous excuse for a human being, but Kilgrave knew he was useful to some people.
Since almost all of Grandpa Thomas Price's journals regarding his occult dabblings were destroyed (for good reason, he got himself stuck in a hell-dimension), the Prices tended to outsource for their mystical consultation, which is why Alex was swinging by to meet a hopefully-dressed magician.
Most of the charms were road-witch made, and "Aunt" Rose, the family friend/slash mostly-friendly-hitchhiking ghost had been able to identify only two of them. Rose tended not to run with the more malevolent magic users, so Alex was suspecting most of these things were bad news, maybe even a curse or two that explained why the guy carrying them was dead.
Right up John's alley.
"Okay, everyone," Alex said before leaving his car. "You remember the rules. No talking, no celebrating, no making noise until I give the all-clear. And no leaving the bag- not even if you don't think you'll get caught."
"HAIL!" replied the four Aeslin mice he had in his messenger bag. Sorry John. Family rule. They go everywhere a Price goes.
After bribes of cheese and cake to keep the mice silent, he got out of his car, and went to what he was hoping was the right door.
John is, thankfully, most of the way dressed. He's got his pants and trousers back on, his shirt halfway buttoned up, but his tie is abandoned somewhere in the mess of the millhouse, and he's got no socks or shoes on. His hair is damp from where he'd splashed water onto his face a handful of times to shock himself back to a semi-sober state, and he's got a cigarette half-dangling from his lips, smoking out of the corner of his mouth so he can occupy his hands with deactivating some of the wards so poor Alex doesn't get trapped on the ceiling for trying to walk down the hall.
He pulls the door open with a flourish, but proceeds to ruin his greeting by wincing at the sudden spill of light coming in from the outside. He should have scrounged up his sunglasses before coming to the door.
"Come on in, mate," he gestures them both inside and slides the heavy wooden door, covered in weather-beaten runes, shut behind. "You must have something really nasty to come knockin' round my door."
John hopes, anyway, because mysterious bits of truly heinous magical stuff are about the only thing that he finds even more appealing than the bottom of the bottle of whiskey he'd been working on.
The Millhouse, at least, the parts he gets to see, remind Alex a little of his childhood home, though even more strongly of the family's old home in Buckley, Michigan. Organization only works when you don't a few generations worth too of taxidermied specimens, journals, charms and weaponry piling up. Not to mention the world's last known colony of superintelligent, hyper-religious talking mice dedicating shrines to family members.
Alex looks around with a bit of curiosity, but knows better than to actually touch anything.
He's got each of the charms secured in a bag of its own. One appears at first to be a stone wrapped in wire with stamped metal symbols worked into it, along with bits of bone, glass and seemingly random shards of metal. "Our road magic expert" and by that he means his 'aunt,' a ghost spotted all over North America, "identified the chunk of asphalt as being from the site of a massive pile-up with high casualties," she'd been there when it happened. Made IDing it easier.
"The glass and metal bits are all from ruined cars, probably the ones whose drivers or passengers died." There are also a few (thankfully empty) ghost traps made from old glass Coke bottles, and other similar charms made with bloodstained concrete, road gravel, and even a shard of iron rail.
Someone's most likely trying to cause large-scale accidents and forcibly trap the resulting ghosts. But that's far from typical road-witch practice- more of an inversion of it, really, given how sacred the roads are to them.
"Aunt Rose is pretty out of sorts about these. She's found them in five different states so far."
Constantine makes a humming noise, glancing over the evidence, before clearing a space on his table and heading to the shelves to pull out various bits and bobs to help him suss out what he's looking at, exactly. Zed makes all this a sight more convenient, sure, but John has been doing this sort of thing long before she started doodling his likeness from her dreams. He can't just touch it and know what he needs to, but he can drag the information out of it kicking and screaming with a little magical help.
"Hmm. Not so many things are so well traveled. Nasties like to pick a place and stick to it: bit lazy that way, if you ask me." Which narrows it down, at least. But not in any sort of good direction. "Which tends to mean people, yeah?"
People are always messier to tangle with, because their actions are determined by motivation and intellect rather than instinct. Instinct can be exploited easier, in John's experience. You send a demon scarpering, you force a soul to rest, you can go home feeling good.
Killing a man to stop him is always more complicated. John's done it, of course, and he wouldn't take back most of them, but not all of the people in his line of work really have the stomach for it. He turns around with a scrying pendulum and a dusty leather tome in his hand, scrutinizing Alex to see his reaction to the idea. "Using spirits to power spells, that's some shady business. If that's what's being done."
He assumes it is, just based on what he's seen so far.
"Sentient cryptids aren't usually the nomadic type, no. I do know of some ghosts who manage to get around," Alex considered. "And as much as these charms and traps would be just about the closest thing to heresy for a route witch, whoever is setting them has learned some of their magic. Which explains the distance." The more well-travelled something is, the more hands it's passed through, the more power it has for the route witches.
Alex shuts up to let John do his divining thing. His family more or less views magic as a branch of physics humanity hasn't quite gotten the hang of. His grandfather, Thomas, had been a practitioner and ended up trapped in another dimension. So, Alex watching someone else poking about with the so-called "dark arts" was a bit akin to sitting by while someone with a decade or so more experience in the field fiddled with the controls of a particle accelerator.
All that considered, he seemed pretty cool about it, not doing much more than fixing his glasses and watching in a way that suggested his fingers were itching to start taking notes as if John were a particularly interesting field discovery. You can take the nerd out of academia, etc etc.
John's a busy lad these days, what with the Rising Darkness lurking around every corner: magic has been steadily growing stronger, and the walls that once held everything steadfast in its place - heaven and hell and all those other boundaries in between - have long since started to crumble.
Which is John's very convenient excuse for why he's in the backwoods of Mississippi at a tiny church in the middle of the night, just being as blasphemous as humanly possible. He's got half the floor and walls painted with a grotesque mixture of goat's blood, horse semen and Home Depot paint, occult spirals and binding sigils that would give half the congregation the vapors in the daylight, including his incredibly inelegant fuck off sigil - which is yes, shockingly, something of his own design. It's fairly good at keeping nosy townspeople out, though nothing more dangerous.
Which is the goal. He's trying to lure the wayward spirits that have been ravaging the small town's catholic sinners, killing them with their own vices - mostly the alcoholics and adulterous. He's got booze and cigarettes at his disposal, an attempt to attract the nasty into targeting him (but also just for fun), but he's seriously considering dropping trou and adding a bit of self-love into the sinful mix because it's been two hours and he's dying of boredom.
"Come on!" he shouts, to no one in particular, stubbing out his tenth cigarette on the preacher's bible, laid out at the pulpit which he has already spilled half a shot of cheap whiskey on top of, "There's no bleeding way anyone in this town is a juicier sinner than I am."
He should have brought a deck of cards to play with to pass the time.
It had taken days for Castiel to find the damned business card. With no call to bathe, or change his clothing, he rarely bothers to root through his pockets, and it isn't until he's doing a routine cleansing sweep to atomize the dust clinging to his slacks that he even notices it there, a small square of paper where there should be nothing. John Constantine, the name said, and Castiel had paid it little enough mind beyond passing irritation, until he'd bothered to read the rest of it. Exorcist? Demonologist? Since the narrowly averted apocalypse, the amount of demons and angels walking on earth has certainly grown, and the hunters, as far as he has seen, have learned to adapt, but Sam and Dean aside, he hasn't known of any who have considered themselves specialists. Vampires and shapeshifters, rugarus and werewolves - they're small time when compared with a demon, and sure, he'll give credit where credit is due, hunters can be cunning and deadly, but most still won't choose to tangle with a demon unless they absolutely have to.
He doesn't want to admit that he's curious, but he is. The more and more he thinks about this man, the more he wonders if it isn't a thing worth pursuing; for good or ill, John Constantine seems the sort of man that an angel ought to keep an eye on.
So here he is. That elaborate and terribly respectable 'fuck off sigil' might do its job of warding off nosy townspeople, but it is unfortunately useless at keeping out nosy angels. Few enough things can, barring correctly etched Enochian sigils (and, apparently, cursed mistletoe, but that's a horse of another color), and John is easy enough for Castiel to find. He arrives with a quiet rustle of feathers, appearing out of thin air, as angels are wont to do, and standing a little too close for comfort, as Castiel is wont to do. Dean has certainly tried his best to remind Castiel that personal space is a thing to respect, but it hasn't seemed to stick. Narrowing his eyes, Castiel frowns thoughtfully, before casting his gaze slow and measuring around the small church.
John's in the middle of scrubbing a hand through his hair in frustration when there's suddenly someone in his personal space that very much wasn't there before, and his undignified little half-jump of surprise ends with his zippo lighter flying over one shoulder and dinging against the stained glass window behind the pulpit.
He takes a second to catch his breath, at least glad that he hadn't still had the cigarette in his mouth or he might have swallowed it. "That's just a bloody thing now, is it?" Given how often Manny nearly makes him soil his pants by appearing right atop of him out of the blue, usually when he's doing something embarrassing, John had always thought it was just something that amused that particular angel. Turns out, he's not the only one.
John leans back against the pulpit, waiting for his smoker's lungs to stop protesting so hard, and also to try and regain his composure. Last time, it had been Cas on his back foot the whole time, and John would prefer to keep it that way. The angel pulls some spectacular faces, after all, it'd be a waste to let him have the upper hand for any real length of time.
So he adjusts his tie from where it had slid to hang askew, though as ever the knot is too loose to look anywhere near respectable, and coughs up a smirk. "Was starting to think you'd forgotten about me, Sunshine."
Sorry John, without a kissing trap to do the brunt of the work, you'll find Castiel much harder to knock out of his comfort zone; he's used to this sort of smarmy behavior from Dean, pet names and all, so it's hardly disconcerting, even if he does take a moment to shoot John a dry stare. It's also of note that he's utterly unperturbed by John's reaction; you're not wrong, guy, angels do what they want. Popping up in your business unannounced is their M.O.
Truth be told he's far more interested in what's going on, here. He'd come to check up on this guy, hadn't expected to find him knee deep in the occult, smoking and complaining in a small church in the middle of the night. Turning away, he wanders slow down the aisle between the dusty pews, floorboard creaking under his weight as Castiel squints at the walls with an appraising eye, like a soccer mom sizing up a minivan, trying to decide if there are enough cupholders, and if a roof mounted TV is really necessary. Castiel recognizes all of these sigils, but some of them are so arcane, so old that he really needs to take a pickax to the memory banks to recall them; just how did this man get ahold of them? Where did he dig them up?
"You gave me your card," he answers, matter of factly, approaching the western wall and leaning close to inspect a particularly ancient symbol, still drying, between two windows. Castiel's voice is rough and low and even as a still pond. "I was curious."
And then, with eyes lifting further up the wall - "You didn't answer my question. Some of these sigils are dangerous, and old. Are you trying to call something?"
He remembers when all this nastiness started, and he'd tried so hard to shake Manny's attentions. To stay well away from the celestial pissing matches, such as they were. To just... try and live out the rest of his days before having his soul dragged to Hell as he was promised. Now he's neck deep in it, and leaving little trails of breadcrumbs for other angels to nose their ways into his life as well. For fun.
Clearly he's madder now than when he threw himself into the loony bin, for all the good that did him.
He snorts at Cas' appraisal, and lights up another ciggy, halfway through the pack that was meant to last him at least another day. (He's going to have to restock.) Everybody always seems so surprised that he actually knows what he's doing.
Whether or not he should be doing it... well, that's a whole other issue. "Funny story. A small town priest grows up lonely: Daddy cheats, and Mummy drinks. He turns to God, thinks God can make his life bright and shiny." John flips casually through a few pages of the open bible on the pulpit. A little bit of dramatic flair, before reaching for his bottle again. "Maybe He does, for awhile. Who knows, eh? But then the priest starts taking confessions, tells everyone else's Mummy and Daddy that God forgives them for drinking and cheating so long as they mean their sorries and mumble a few rote words, easy as you please." Either to punctuate his point, or with an incredible lack of self-awareness, John takes a swig of whiskey and coughs, casting an eye towards the windows, still hopeful his quarry might appear. "And maybe God does forgive them. Who knows that, either. But the Priest doesn't forgive them, he doesn't know how."
He grins, sorta dark and broken. This is the funny part of the story, to him. "He prays to God, but God doesn't answer. Something else does." He spreads his arms wide towards the symbols. "Suddenly all those repentant sots are finding themselves face-down in their drinks, or with stopped hearts between the sheets. That's the bugger we're going to lure here and put down. Interested in helping me sin a little tonight, luv? For the greater good, and all that."
John's going to get Cas to make those swallowed-a-bug expressions at him again if it kills him, okay?
Of course he's surprised. John doesn't look like a guy who in any way looks like he knows what he's doing. But at least he's well dressed.
Castiel listens quietly, his eyes still moving over the walls while John explains a fifty word story in a hundred, and once he's finished, Cas is quiet for awhile, his answer an ineffective 'hm' while he picks across the dusty floorboards to approach the pulpit again. If he's at all offended by the blasphemous flair, it certainly doesn't show on his face; Castiel's blue eyes are hooded and thoughtful but they betray little else. He doesn't talk about God much, anymore. Doesn't try to tell people what to think, or how to address Him.
"I see," he says, uselessly, and now that he's finished studying the church, he's turned to studying John instead, staring at him in that long-unsettling way that Dean's always complaining about, like a cat, unblinking, like he's looking straight through John, right under his skin. Which he very well may be doing, so far as anyone can tell. "So you are a hunter."
There's far more to it than that, though. Castiel feels it in his gut, doesn't need to probe John's mind or thoughts or soul to know that something about him is.. different.
John levels him with a mildly scandalized look at the accusation - a hunter, come on now - but once he realizes that Cas is staring, he doesn't hold it for long. John has never been great with that kind of soul-peeling scrutiny that can only come from someone he thinks of as inherently better than himself: mostly when it comes from Manny, but it's not like he thinks Cas is a much different creature, yet. He's just a human flash in the pan, is the problem, and too long under a magnifying glass strips all the magic away. Leaves him revealed as the mess he is, a stupid little boy that ran into the arms of magic to escape his daddy and damned his own soul and nearly everyone who loved or trusted him in the process.
As you do.
He looks away, ostensibly so he can drink more. Shoves all that aside until he can get home and brood alone like the big sot that he is. "I'm a specialist, Sunshine." He grins, but honestly he doesn't feel like much of a specialist right now, considering how dismally his plan is failing. Got elbow deep in blood and seamen for no reason, it feels like. Not that he doesn't do similarly sordid things once a week or so, of course, but tonight it might be at the cost of some frisky bugger's life.
And damn it, how is he supposed to show off when the demon won't even come? Usually when his plans fail, at least they do it in fiery, spectacular ways involving considerable bodily harm and the threat of death, not because he was just so off base as to have been sitting around completely useless.
As much as he hates to admit it, Manny usually at least shows up and pushes him in the right direction before it gets to this point. A hint or two, frustratingly cryptic, but at least it would be something. "I'm who you call when hunters don't have the unseemly means to get the job--" He stops, mid-sentence, staring down at the bible he's been systematically defiling for the hell of it. Thoughts of Manny stuck in his craw when he looks back up, sharply, towards Castiel.
The angel. Who appeared out of nowhere. When his plan was busy being absolutely ineffective.
Clearly, he's been going about this wrong. "--done. Christ, I'm a bleeding idiot!" He looks awake again - transported - a human live-wire, and sets his bottle down so he can head for his bucket of paint and bodily fluids. "Be a love and stand still, yeah?"
John's reaction isn't terribly surprising; it is his experience that humans don't like being stared at, and Castiel himself has a particularly probing gaze, a propensity for watching people for an uncomfortable amount of time, or during odd hours like, you know, when they're fast asleep. He doesn't think to read insecurity into it, though perhaps he probably should, considering how reminiscent this man is of Dean. But for all his invasiveness, Castiel doesn't make it a habit to probe people's thoughts; that's a privacy he doesn't like to breach unless absolutely necessary.
At any rate, he continues to stare even after John looks away.
"Castiel," he remarks, to John's profile, because 'sunshine' is getting old fast, and Castiel has no real sense of sarcasm so he just thinks it's an incredibly ridiculous nickname because he's not sunny at all. why would you even call him that? When John goes on about being a specialist, Castiel's brow furrows deeply, his expression folding into something more thoughtful, because goodness gracious he certainly has a lot of questions about that, about how this man learned these esoteric symbols, who taught him how to use them correctly, and just why he chooses to throw down with demons of all things. The only thing stupider for a human to try to hunt is an angel.
Everything so far, however, points to confidence and experience, this certainly isn't John's first rodeo, and in order to build such confidence and experience, one needs to succeed. How many demons has he killed, Castiel wonders? But more important, really, is the why. He doesn't get the chance to ask that, however, before some sort of dawning epiphany blooms over John's face, and Castiel is left feeling wary while he watches him fetch his pail of.. that.
Something else Cas has in common with Manny: what is it with angels and taking the Edward Cullen approach?
"Changing tactics, mate." Mate, not Castiel. John just loves his pet names, okay? Real names only get pulled out in moments of desperation or anger, so it's for the best, even if Cas doesn't get that yet. "It's that little thing you do when what you're trying is accomplishing bugger all."
He hauls his bucket over to the angel's side and dips a dollar store paintbrush into it, touching it to the hardwood floor and walking the whole grotesque mess in a circle around Cas' feet. The start of another sigil. "Gave sinning a fair shake, didn't I? Spun my confession to the sorry excuse for a priest just like all those dead sots, but my heart wasn't in it." Not over the drinking or the taking men and women to bed, already knowing they were spoken for. Less chance of anybody getting attached that way, and that's how John likes to keep it. "I've got my regrets, sure, but over two souls stealing a few sweaty moments of pleasure together? That's nothing to repent for. Not to God, anyway."
He sure does like to take his time getting to the point, doesn't he? The new sigil is starting to take shape, and oh, there are some of those correctly etched Enochian symbols. Luckily they mean nothing ominous: approximations of shine, bright and sing make up the three inner triangles that take form across planks of wood. No words about wards or traps. "Maybe our friend's not after the juicy, sinful bits, then. Maybe he's after that spark of good that made them confess, instead."
He straightens back up, sigil finished. It's remarkably neat for how quickly he threw it together (while a fair bit soused to boot.) "I'm a touch short on good, luv, so let us borrow a bit of that tingly stuff you've got squirreled away, yeah?"
He raises his hands, preparing to spout some incantation or another to activate it before Cas can hightail it, if he's so inclined.
When John begins painting the floor around him in a very definitive spell meant to include him, Castiel feels himself beginning to bristle - not only because that's an awfully rude and appallingly presumptuous thing to do, but also because he recognizes the Enochian immediately, and it unsurprisingly makes him a little tense. There are very few humans who know the language of the angels, and most who do were taught by Castiel himself, or those who Castiel taught; some demons know it too, and, he supposes, some specialists as well, who dig up arcane occult knowledge they should definitely not ever have their hands on. Even other angels are not like to impart such knowledge to humans, because these symbols are one of the very few ways to ward or control a celestial, and angels are protective and arrogant and fancy themselves superior and immune to harm or restriction.
Castiel's simply that one weirdo who's fond of humans, really fond of them, fond enough to rebel and fall for them, fond enough to destroy thousands of his own brothers and sisters before harming a hair on a human's head. So Sam and Dean know plenty of Enochian. But this guy? Mister Mysterious, chain smoking, too-charming-for-his-own-good Constantine? Yeah, Castiel is understandably circumspect about it.
It seems, however, that what he's writing is more or less innocuous, or at the very least it doesn't seem to be targeted to harm or restrain him in any way, so Castiel allows it, for the moment, following John's hands with his eyes while he paints the whole of the sigil swiftly and expertly around him with the ease of long practice. He doesn't ask questions, not yet, at least, only watches, careful and astute, studying each Enochian letter, testing the space around his vessel with his grace to feel for the building trap that never rises.
When John at last circles 'round to the point of the thing, Castiel is already beginning to put it together, and thankfully he is not too proud a creature to not offer his assistance here, even if it wasn't entirely consensual, because hey - if it means dragging in a nasty demon to smite? He's not going to turn that down. And admittedly, all right, he's curious about where this is going, how it's going to turn out, and moreso, to learn what John is capable of. Perhaps it's a bit haughty, but Castiel isn't afraid. The only thing that can kill an angel, after all, is another angel.
"I hope you know what you're doing," he says, almost serenely, staring coolly into John's face. Messing with life energy or soul energy is one thing, but angels? Grace? They are each and every one of them like miniature supernovas, the sheer power of their form so overwhelming that when visiting this plane they must wear human skin to keep from destroying everyone and everything around them simply by existing. If John is seeking to tap that.. well. Here's to hoping he's got a gentle touch, and no small amount of finesse tucked away somewhere. "If you destroy yourself, I won't take responsibility."
"There's a surprise," John says, breezily. It's out of my hands, John. You know the rules, John. I've already crossed the line, John, you're on your own, etc, ad nauseam. He's got a big, tangled ball of bitter resentment built up towards angels and the haughty way they tell him he's up shit creek without a paddle and they're just going to stand there and watch him flail, whether that's fair of him or not, considering. But he lets it go for now, because the bone he wants to pick isn't really Castiel's and he knows it. Castiel isn't the one who started him doing any of this. John closes his eyes, squares his shoulders, and after taking a deep breath to steel himself and clear his mind, he starts up a chant in ancient Sumerian. His pronunciation is jumbled by time and distance, but the words come out accurate enough to function still. "Listen, impure entity, hear the heartsong of a servant of Yahweh, God of the People."
The markings beneath Cas' feet glow faintly, ruddy in the shadows of the church's hanging light fixtures, just the smallest trickle of his Grace - but still too much to be healthy for a mortal nearby. The tingling is back for John, but it feels sharp as knives against his skin now, nothing like the harmless probing beneath the mistletoe. He grunts, gasps, stumbles back a step... but pushes through, nerves dulled by drink and adrenaline, the intoxicating high that comes every time he manages to invent a new solution to some problem. A bit more shakily, nonetheless: "Listen, impure entity, and reveal yourself to His light in His temple."
As for whether or not he knows what he's doing, well. He always has a vague idea, anyway.
His voice builds until he's shouting in the long-dead language, the windows shake and the overhead lights give sharp whines before the glass bulbs start to splinter and explode under some intangible pressure. "Come forth, entity! Answer, and be--"
All at once, hell breaks loose (though, for once in John's line of work, not literally.) All the sigils painted across the walls light up bright like daylight, the stained glass windows rain down out of their frames in great big shards, and the room fills with a undulating mass of screaming, ghostly men and women their limbs twisted together into the shape of a bull. The din they make is deafening, and John falls to his knees with his hands over his ears, howling along with it for a long moment, looking for all the world like he's going to be useless.
But then the foul creature turns to face him, snorting out whisps of a woman's hair, and John pulls himself together enough to scramble back, crawling behind the pew where he'd set his bucket back down on. Reaching over the wooden seat, he dips his whole hand in, makes an the world's most unpleasant face, and then sucks an entire mouthful of it out of his cupped palm. He almost passes out from the taste alone, but the bull charges and he stands and spits all of it into the entity's approximation of a face.
The liquid lights up everywhere it touches the ghosts, every single droplet spreading magically into the same sort of markings that line the walls. When they've finished spreading across the whole undulating body, every sorry soul making up its beastly form is pulled apart screaming and sucked into the sigils, which pulse with light a few times, then dull again until they're nothing more than paint and blood and horse semen.
"Tell us-- hhhk-- tell us the whiskey bottle's still intact," John wheezes, anti-climatically, nearly doubled over with his hands on his knees, trying to spit as much as he can of the horrible mixture out onto the ground. "... I'm going puke."
John Constantine, ladies and gentlemen. Dignity and grace personified.
Castiel watches the entire bloody, violent thing unfold with the lofty, fearless judgment that only an angel could possess, like he's at the movies on a Sunday morning, a part of the thing, but not really. He came here, agreed to this to be a spectator, and sure, beneath the angel nonsense Castiel has a kind heart, and if anything were to happen, if this were to fly out of control in any way he would be quick to smite the thing, to come out guns blazing with all the righteous and holy fury of the Lord behind him.
He doesn't need to.
The spell is uncomfortable in the rare sort of way that it actually touches him, him, not this human suit he's wearing, not Jimmy Novak's old body, but his truest self beneath it, the form and Grace that make up a seraph, that make up Castiel. It feels like being probed somewhere deep, like a part of himself is being coaxed away, and Castiel's breath rushes sharp at the sensation, his Grace recoiling beneath his skin. In his eyes a faint glow flares pale blue, and behind him on the far wall flickers the shadow image of his great wings stretching broad and elegant over the painted walls and curved rafters, enormous in the slanting of the light. The sharp scent of ozone and rain fills the space around them.
Castiel doesn't waver. For all it feels invasive, it does not hurt, only rouses, and Castiel knows that he is not the one in danger here.
When the thing at last coalesces, Castiel feels the same lurching ire that he always does, the hallowed fury of God made manifest through His servant, because in the end Castiel is a blade, a warrior built to answer the call to arms, and his Grace cannot abide the nearness of such an abomination without itching for a fight. Adding insult to injury is the sheer amassing of human souls. Castiel holds a special place in his heart for the demons who would dare harness, capture, or bend the power of a human soul to his will, using his Father's great work toward their own ends, it is a particularly foul sort of sin, one that strikes home for Castiel in particular for his love of all things human. Whether or not the souls were great sinners being punished for their mistakes is of no consequence to him; certain things should simply not be, and this thing he sees is an anathema, heinous and unholy in a hundred different ways. It takes all of Castiel's schooled self control to keep himself rooted to the spot, to not take the thing apart with his own hands and keep it suffering for its intolerable trespass.
He lets John do his work. In the end, Castiel is not here to destroy a demon, he is here to take the measure of a man, and John had not asked for his help in this, not past, apparently, the hijacking of his Grace. So he's the backup plan, if all of this blows up in John's face, and nothing more. It doesn't, though. All of John's posturing seems in fact to have been based in fact, and it would be impressive if it weren't so dangerous, but then again, he's watched Sam and Dean pull this sort of stunt a hundred times, always pushing themselves to their limits but pulling through in the end. John's methods are, perhaps, a bit different, and that's what concerns him, but for now he's passed the test, if that is what this was.
Stepping out of the sigil and over creaking floowboards, Castiel brushes tiny shards of blue glass off of his shoulder as casually as a leaf, and walks steady toward the pulpit to find the poor whiskey bottle has not, in fact, gone undamaged. But the bottom half is intact at least, and still half full of the stuff, so Castiel plucks it up and carries it over to John like he's some great Holy Delivery Boy (oh how the mighty have fallen).
"Don't cut yourself," he says, businesslike, while he drops into a kneel and offers the broken thing forward.
John laughs, teeth stained an ugly, dull red, and he happily takes the proffered half-bottle. He manages to carefully pour himself a mouthful, though he can't avoid dribbling it all over his fingers and chin in the process, then he swishes the fiery liquid around before spitting it out, significantly less clear, onto the ground off to the side. He repeats the process a couple times, until he can't taste the paint anymore.
He downs the rest, which is only a few swallows at that point, before he seems to register that Cas is actually kneeling before him. Wow. He flops back onto his ass, propping his back up against the flat, wooden side of one of the pews, and starts palming his coat pockets for the extremely squished carton of cigarettes.
This was, admittedly, not one of his more impressive showings... but considering that no one present is dead or more damned than they started out, he'll count it as a victory.
He wipes his mouth with the back of the hand he didn't dunk into the paint. "I don't recommend that, by the way." Blood and semen: fine, whatever, he's gotten that in his mouth before, occasionally even on purpose. Lord knows the things he goes around licking, on a daily basis. It's the paint that tastes most vile, alright? "So. Curiosity sated, squire?"
i sure did misread that w h o o p s awkward kneeling is awkward
So horse semen specifically is something you commonly imbibe then eh, really good to know.
"No," he says succinctly, and when John sits he follows suit, falling back onto his heels in a way that's comfortable, but slightly awkward, like he doesn't entirely know how to fold his body the right way, because he doesn't. Little things like that are what set angels apart, wearing human meat is strange and cumbersome, though truth be told Castiel in particular is a little more awkward than most, a little more robotic, a little more strange.
"Why did you do this? Why do you hunt demons?"
Because that's really all this is about, isn't it? The real reason that Castiel is here. John has more or less proven his capability - though one showing isn't really enough to gauge the full measure of what he's able to do - but that doesn't explain why he's doing it, what he's getting out of this, why he's risking so much. Hunters all have their reasons, of course, and Sam and Dean had hunted the same demon for years out of personal vendetta, but most people aren't so reckless.
John lives a full and disturbing life okay, rife with putting things in his mouth that he should not be putting in his mouth. It's part of his charm.
He flicks a glance in Castiel's general direction, and nearly does a double take at his awkward positioning. It's so odd to see one of the heavenly host in the physical plane, trying to navigate it. John had seen Manny, but it only happened the once, and only when John forced it on him with a cruel trick and a vial full of the air of Hades. Never thought he'd be seeing it again, really.
But here Cas is, balancing on his heels, awkward. He doesn't fumble with sensations, which makes John thinks he's been doing it for awhile. Doesn't grouse or protest, which... alright, might just not be in his personality, but makes John think that he chose it as well.
Interesting.
"Well, that's a bloody personal question, innit?" It's not that personal, but John likes being difficult. He figures that if he satisfies Cas' curiosity, there's no guarantee he'll stick around in order to return the favor, and John is all about getting to the bottom of any mystery that makes the mistake of cropping up nearby him. Which, honestly, is the real reason he does any of this. As it happens. "Don't suppose it's too much to hope you can drive, is it?"
NO I'M AN IDIOT WHO CAN'T READ but john can shove it
In the grand scheme of things, yes, Castiel has been wearing this skin for far longer than most angels ever would. Years. It's been so long since he's walked the celestial planes that it almost feels like a distant memory, would if he weren't an ancient thing possessed of an impossibly long lifespan. Angels in general don't prefer to inhabit vessels for any longer than is strictly necessary - it's below them, after all, not to mention uncomfortable and restrictive - and while Castiel is, you know, several billion years old, and a handful of them spent in a vessel is as a drop of water in the ocean, it still somehow feels like a very long time. Perhaps because these recent years have been so rife with activity and change that he feels a very different creature from the angel he once was.
What it comes down to, really, is just that Castiel thinks he's people. He's just bad at it.
"Drive? Of course not," he answers, a crease forming in his brow. Why drive when you're an interdimensional wavelength that can hop wormholes and cut through the fabric of spacetime with ease? Cars are so.. slow. And cramped. "Why?"
And you're not answering his questions here, John. Ugh. Humans are impossible.
"Because we just vandalized and blew up a church, luv. We don't want to stick around." We, he says like Castiel had literally anything to do with any of that. Whoops. "And the wards work better in the dead of night, anyhow. Human psyche is more malleable in the dark, suggestion goes a longer way there."
Which means they ought to hightail it before dawn.
But look at him, sharing little tricks of the trade! He nods over towards the door, the one with the fuck off sigil, before muttering out a curse and dragging himself back up to his feet. Now that the adrenaline's wearing off, everything's sore... and alright, also he's just definitely not as spry as he used to be, before all the drug use, chain smoking and heavy drinking. And the bartering days and weeks off his lifespan for the power to preform certain spells, of course. He manages to light his cigarette, and leans back, popping his spine audibly with a semi-relieved, semi-pained groan, rolling his shoulders.
"Left my bail fund in Georgia, too, so..." He lets that trail off, stalking towards the door and still purposefully avoiding answering Cas' question. Figures that he wouldn't be useful behind the wheel of a car, the last thing John needs is to spend the next few hours driving when he doesn't even like to do so on good days. He throws a look back over one shoulder, nudging a big, fallen shard of glass out of the way with one foot so he can open the door, "are you coming or not, Sunshine?"
im sorry i meant sod off you bloody wanker that's words he can better understand right
Sorry John, Castiel really couldn't give any less fucks about being caught here if he tried. He's an angel, human rules and regulation certainly don't apply to him, not when he can cheat and do things like wipe memories or teleport away or even go back in time to change it if he really wanted to; he's not particularly concerned with getting caught. Not to say that he's above the law, but I mean. He is.
So as far as he's concerned, vacating the premises in a timely manner is John's problem, not his. And what's all this 'we' nonsense, anyway? As if Castiel had anything at all to do with this debacle.
He's not particularly quick to rise, but he stands soon enough, unfolding himself smoothly and watching John's back with his head tilted just so. The guy looks sore, and Castiel could heal him with no more than a touch if he wanted to, but he doesn't offer, because he still doesn't really know this man, doesn't trust him, and his life isn't in peril, so it isn't really necessary.
Casting his gaze once more over the small, ruined church, Castiel strides down the aisle with his hands at his sides. This is where he must debate with himself whether or not it's worth staying. Sure, he certainly got an eyeful of John's skill firsthand, but he didn't really get any answers, learned nothing important beyond 'he can do spells that kill demons' which, sure, is good to know, but not what he's after. So fine, all right, he's still curious enough to stick around for now, which is really saying something, for an angel; Dean, he knows, is consistently frustrated by Castiel's habit of appearing and disappearing at will, sometimes mid-conversation, which is apparently very rude, but it's yet to stop him doing it.
"Yeah, yeah," he says, noncommittally, yanking open the door to his rental car and flopping down in the front seat. He rolls down his window a crack when he pulls it shut again so he can tap the ashes from his ciggy outside while he waits for Castiel to climb into the passenger side.
When he turns the key, the music picks up where it left off, which is, predictably, horribly grating 80's british punk. Cas is just lucky it's a real band and not one of John's old Mucous Membrane albums. Nobody deserves to be unwittingly trapped in an enclosed space with that.
He turns the volume down enough that they'll be able to hold conversation without hollering over the screeching vocals, and glances out of the corner of his eye, cigarette balanced between his lips, as he backs out of the parking lot onto the street and starts them headed out of town.
"You're not the messenger type, are you?" Manny once explained that angels were compartmentalized. That he was called to do one specific sort of thing. He was all about ministering, so far as John could tell. Watching over and ushering in certain directions with the sort of uselessly cryptic mumbo-jumbothat drives John mad. John knows what that energy feels like, washed over him, and Cas had been something. Different. "You pack a bit've wallop in there, old son."
Because Castiel can't be bothered with the inefficiency of doors, he pops right into the passengers' seat in what seems like the blink of an eye, neatly snapping his seatbelt into place even though a car accident, no matter the severity, would absolutely not kill him. Some rules simply deserve to be followed, simply for the sake of being good rules. The car itself is nothing like Dean's Impala, the only vehicle that Castiel is really acquainted with. That car smells like.. well, like Dean - like leather, mostly, and whiskey, and iron, and blood. This car has the artificial clean scent of a rental, cut through by the acrid, unpleasant smoke from John's cigarette, which was bearable in a church and outdoors, but entirely disagreeable when stuck in a car.
"No, I'm not," he answers, casting the lit cigarette a baleful, disapproving stare before he fixes his eyes on the road ahead. This music is terrible. People listen to these sounds for enjoyment? "I'm a Seraph," he continues. "A warrior."
Heaven is arranged more or less like a rigid military, and for all humans like to believe that they are peaceful, kind things with fluffy wings and pink cheeks that run about performing miracles on the needy, they couldn't be more wrong. The largest mass of the heavenly host are in fact soldiers, most of them simple footmen, like Castiel himself had once been, and they are all of them brutal and terrifying, far more machine than they are sentient being, programmed to kill and destroy in the Lord's name, as per His wishes. There are, of course, other types, more peaceful sorts like the Messengers John's referencing, and Cherubs, and Healers, some angels are guardians, others work behind the scenes to keep Heaven in order, there's an entire hierarchy going on, all very neat and organized. Though it's.. a little less so, these days, no thanks to Castiel stepping in and ruining everything. That John knows even a little bit about it is a bit unnerving, though; generally speaking, human beings know far, far less about angels than they do about demons. Castiel's blue eyes narrow, and he cuts a scrutinizing glance in John's direction.
John lets loose a low whistle that comes out in a plume of smoke. It's even curdling his stomach at the moment, mixed as it is with the overpowering smell of the paint still covering one of his hands, the petrol and new car smell of the vehicle. All he's had tonight is a bottle and a half of hard liquor and over half a pack of cigarettes, and now he's driving with a pounding headache from the demon's screaming souls and an angel whose power he can still feel tingling residually at the base of his spine.
After a moment thinking about it, he flicks the almost-spent cigarette butt out the window crack, and then rolls it down the rest of the way. It's not bitingly cold outside yet and they're nowhere near a highway, so at least the car will get a fair chance to air out before long.
Which he's only doing because Cas didn't voice a complaint about his smoking. If he had, John probably would have kept going just to spite him. Because he's an adult.
"Gets under your skin-suit, does it?" He grins, glancing over, tapping his fingers against the wheel as they pull up to a stop light. "You've been wondering all night, how I know half the things I know." He sucks on his bottom lip for a second, deciding to throw Castiel a bone since he keeps dodging the poor sod's questions even though his own are receiving fairly straightforward answers. "You're not the first one I've met, is all."
When John flicks the cigarette away, Castiel is more than a little surprised at the consideration; given his experience with this man, he seems the type to do just the opposite, to heckle and bother simply for the sake of heckling and bothering, contrary to his very core. Castiel isn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth though, so he makes no comment.
He bristles, however, when John grins that jackal's grin, teasing like it's good sport, because yes, that's exactly what he's been wondering all night and this jerk knows it full well, but it seems he'd rather hop from foot to foot than give a straight answer. Contrary. There's no room to complain though, because John finally gives it to him, and truth be told, Castiel had been expecting it, but it makes his chest tighten in apprehension nonetheless.
Things have.. changed, in Heaven, as of late. Castiel's allegiance has certainly swayed and broken, and things are in disarray, confused, angels are killing one another, and much as it pains him he cannot always trust his own brethren, however much he wishes to. That there's an angel hanging around, consorting with a human, potentially teaching him dangerous things - it's telling, at the very least, and more than a little suspicious, but for all Castiel knows it might also be entirely innocent. He has no way of knowing. Not yet. Still, his voice is a little harder, tinged with something like concern or trepidation.
The light turns green but Constantine doesn't hit the gas. It's not like there's anyone else on the road.
He frowns genuinely for the first time since Castiel showed up, suspicion slanting the line of his mouth, the way his brown eyes narrow. He throws down with Manny, sure. He blames him for anything he can, he snipes at the bugger whenever he shows, he pushes and prods and gleefully tries the angel's patience because he chafes so hard at the idea of him (and because Manny gives so much better than he gets), but--
"Don't get me wrong, he's a pain in the arse with a sour mug and a bleeding terrible sense of humor, but he's my pain in the arse, yeah?" Somewhere along the line, he got protective.
Alright, not somewhere. He knows exactly where. When Manny broke his daddy's rules and crossed into the physical realm to save Zed from a fallen angel with his own two hands, when all his words stopped just being words and they became action. And just like Zed who snuck her way into John's heart, despite all his best efforts to keep everyone and everything out, he trusts Manny. Bugger it all, he likes Manny, not that he will literally ever in a million years admit to that out loud (to the smug, holy bastard, or to anyone else.)
And Castiel's alright, bit funny (mostly on accident) - he can appreciate that he's here in the meat, slumming it with the rabble - but meeting another one just reminds John of exactly how many boundaries he gets Manny push, to aid him in their fight. He doesn't feel guilty for it, but... still. "So why do you want to know?"
He shouldn't be surprised that John's getting all cagey on him about this, and it's frustrating in a way that rankles, that makes him just want to pop out of this car and halfway across the earth just because he can, because he doesn't appreciate being jerked around and denied answers.
.. when it comes down to it, however, Castiel is reasonable, and he is smart and observant, even if that's often forgotten in the bluster of his often hilarious attempts at being human. That John is being protective is abundantly clear, and despite how vexing it currently is, he can appreciate that loyalty. He sees in it a reflection of himself, after all, for he knows if anyone were to probe him about the Winchesters in a way that seemed anything less than entirely innocent, he would respond exactly the same way. Strange though, he hadn't imagined John to be the loyal sort, but looks can be deceiving.
Castiel's irritation is clear in the cut of the frown he throws right back at John, ruffled and combative, but in the end he only sighs, exasperated, and rubs two fingers against his forehead.
"Because anything pertaining to Heaven, and my family, I consider my business," he says, quietly but firmly, a deep crease in his brow, his eyes fixed on John's face, open and honest and hiding nothing. Whether John believes a word he says or not is really not for Castiel to decide, but he is nothing if not the upfront sort, often brutally so. He'll just have to hope for the best. "Most especially if they're spending time with humans. Things upstairs are.. "
He hesitates here, because really, the state of Heaven is no one's business but the angels', and when it comes down to it Castiel is ashamed of it, ashamed of them, and it chafes him to admit the state that Heaven is in, but these reasons are entirely personal. If there's an angel walking with humans, potentially causing trouble, he must do everything within his power to squeeze out information, even if it ends in failure.
".. strained. Not every angel has a pure motive, and most of them are not particularly fond of humans, would sooner kill them than assist them."
A bad card to play, family. If there's one thing John has no love for, it's the bonds of blood. Or whatever Angels have in place of that.
"No offense, squire," slight offense, honestly, "but I've got far less a reason to trust your motive than his, yeah?"
But. But. Cas is here, that's not nothing. Riding in a car with him, trying to understand him, letting bits of his Grace get thrown around to stop a demon preying on sinners, of all people. None of that is nothing. John runs his tongue along his teeth, hands jittering across the steering wheel, and he abruptly puts his foot down on the gas again. While they whip down the road, he occupies himself with thinking, calculating: what can he get out of talking, or keeping silent? Which is worth more to him in the end? Castiel doesn't look ready to take much more jerking around, but John can't know what it'll cost to keep stringing him along, and the more information he gives probably the less rope he'll have.
Manny would consider trying to barter information to be deplorably self-interested, John knows. Manny didn't tell him shit about there being trouble upstairs, though, so Manny can go suck an egg.
"Don't know how compartmentalized you lot are, but if you've heard of the Rising Darkness business, he's asked me to fight that." It's not a name, certainly, but it's a puzzle piece. A clue that he's the assisting sort... as far as John knows. "Helped me, occasionally. Put his feather little neck on the line." He glances out of the corner of his eye again to gauge Cas' reaction to that, considering John knows it to be well against the rules.
The real kicker here is that it would be a thing as simple as breathing to just read John's mind, to find the name Manny right there at the front of it; angels hear thoughts just about as easily as they hear voices, really (that's how prayers work), and Castiel must actively block them in order not to hear them as passively as he hears the wind, or the sound of birds. But that's just the kind of angel that he is. Weak, maybe, but that's a line he does not cross, not unless there's much more at stake. Funny, how just a handful of years ago he would have been just fine with cracking John's mind open like an egg and taking whatever he needed in the name of the greater good; now it's not a thing he even considers. Well, okay, he definitely considers it. But it isn't going to happen.
So it's a good thing that John answers when he does, because Castiel is literally a handful of seconds from getting the hell out of dodge here, because it certainly feels that he's giving much better than he's getting, and no real return on his investment means this has been an overall waste of his time. Dammit John, he let you fuck around with his Grace okay, that's a big deal, so stop being a bitch.
Castiel's still not sure it's an acceptable response though, it's not a name like he'd asked, but the word 'Darkness' alone is enough to make his blood run cold. There's open surprise in his expression. "I haven't," he says, feeling all of the misgiving in is heart fold over and double itself, with no idea where to even begin with this, and the reckless urge to fly up to heaven this very moment to demand answers even if that would assuredly not go particularly well for him. "What is it?"
Alright hey, there's something John really doesn't mind talking about. Mostly because he needs as many people to know as possible if he's going to be able to do anything about it. Manny keeps trying to get him to recruit the few, very mortal friends he has left alive that he'd rather keep far away and (relatively) safe, but the right bastard never offers any backup from his own side.
"Magic's growing stronger, squire. The walls between realms getting thinner, near as I can tell. That's why the nasty bit of Mesopotamian nonsense earlier managed to manifest physically, how it hijacked our friends and got on with a bit of fatal sinning." Rules are changing: demons are showing their mugs in the daylight, and the power they'd lost to waning belief seems to be seeping back through the cracks in reality. If Cas and his grace hadn't been there for the highjacking, the whole mess back in town could very well have gone a much less pleasant way. John wants to ask for help, he does, but he's... just not very good at it. "I've been playing whack-a-mole with these things going bump in the night, but..."
He pops his lips, remembering Papa Midnite's words despite himself. All your efforts are in vain. Lovely chap, Midnite. "They're the symptoms, yeah? Not the disease."
Castiel listens in pensive silence, hanging on every word, his expression tight with worry but laser focused nonetheless. The more John describes it, the better Castiel feels, because it sounds like this thing has less to do with the Darkness that he knows of than what he'd previously thought - though that makes it no less concerning.
There are a hundred things, a thousand things that could be at the root of this. Opening the Devil's Gate in Wyoming, breaking open the Cage, all the shattered seals of the Apocalypse, opening the door to Purgatory not only once, but twice.. plainly speaking, so much shit has been happening recently that it's impossible to say how it's affected the world, what consequences it might have wrought on this plane of existence, or all those linked to it. Thinning the barriers between dimensions seems a likely enough result, what with how many holes have been punched through the realms recently, how many more demons have been walking the earth, and angels as well, who meddle in human affairs far less than demons ever do.
"And an angel asked this of you? To look into it. To try to discover the source of this.. disease."
It's unsettling, to be sure. Castiel is high on Heaven's most wanted list these days, he can't claim to know all about everything that's going on up there, but the place is a mess, a wreck, factions following their own orders, keeping to private agendas. Everything has gone from black and white to varying shades of grey, and he no longer trusts his own kind intrinsically.
"I've got the experience and he knew it," he shrugs, sliding a look over towards Castiel again, having taken to concentrating on the road for a minute there. Meeting an angel wasn't how he learned to write in Enochian, is the thing. That magic, like all the lore he knows, was what he dug up for himself in his youth spent devouring the occult, fascination and escapism and the electric thrill of having the power to tweak the Universe's nose all at once. Not many like you down here, was how Manny had put it. You know, some time after he called John a desperation move.
John pulls onto the highway, and finds himself slowly becoming less tense the farther they get out of town. It's not that he's afraid of getting arrested (again), exactly, it's just that it's Chas' weekend with his daughter, and as much as John is the worst friend in the world, even he knows what that means for his mate. Putting in a call for the man to come down to the middle-of-nowhere Mississippi and post bail would not make him a happy camper. Odd, though: he'd expected angels to trust each other.
Alright, it's fair enough to learn that most aren't terribly fond of humans: of all the things that don't shock John, that doesn't shock him the most. But Manny had been all about the rules and regulations, until John got into his hair. Even if they're not big on puny mortals, shouldn't they be on the same page?
Compartmentalized is one thing. Whatever's got Cas' feathers ruffled seems like another thing entirely.
"That makes you more suspicious, does it? What, exactly, is going on up there?"
Experience or not, it's not like angels to rely on a human for anything unless they're using them; Castiel is something of a rare breed when it comes to his faith in human beings, just how much he believes in them, and it's far easier for him to believe that an angel could be manipulating John for its own gain than to think it might be anything at all like himself.
John seems to be making it abundantly clear, however, that it isn't Castiel's problem, and he's exasperated enough with it to let the matter drop. He can't force a name, doesn't want to, so that's that then, isn't it? When John asks about Heaven, though, Castiel rolls his eyes so hard it's a wonder they don't fly out of his skull.
"You won't give me the name of one angel, but you expect me to give you the insider on what's happening in Heaven? Information is a two-way street, John Constantine, and some kinds of knowledge are more valuable than others."
A shame for him that Castiel isn't quite so doe-eyed as he might look; he's given John plenty to chew on, as far as he's concerned, and while Castiel's patience is plentiful and his willingness to help is great, he's not really getting much back, here, feels like he's had to pull teeth to get what he's gotten. And that's fine. To be honest, he's used to it, Dean can be just as frustratingly tight-lipped - but when you pretend to throw the ball enough times, eventually the dog learns that you're not actually going to throw it, and becomes disinterested. Sighing softly through his nose, Castiel fixes his gaze on a point in the distance, unfocused and distant.
"But you should be careful."
ahh sorry, holidays turned out ot be way busier than I thought!
That's... fair, unfortunately. But he's still not going to spill Manny's secret without talking to him first. He he sorta owes the feathery bastard at least that little smidge of courtesy.
But the worst part is, Castiel is more right than even John knows, for all of his cynicism. He thinks he understands the ways in which Manny is using him - thinks he's using Manny right back - but the glimmer of hope that he might be able to save his own soul from damnation has managed to blind even him. He wants it so bad that he drags himself out of bed in the morning, something he's almost sure he'd have given up on by now, if Manny had never appeared and dangled the impossible in front of him like a carrot on a stick.
But John's too arrogant to see that he's being used for far beyond the things that he thinks, and Manny is wilier than he'd like to admit. So, it turns out, is Castiel.
He sighs as well, a huff of breath between his teeth, and gestures up towards the car's ceiling with one hand, conceding as much as he's ever able. "Alright, then ask me about anything else." No more dodging answers just for the sake of it. Probably. Loyalty to an ally is one thing, but he has been a right arse all night, he can admit to that.
At the very least, John Constantine seems to know when to let it rest. Angels, apparently - or any questions surrounding this specific angel that he's associating with - are off limits. That's a sore price to pay, considering heaven and angels are the things that Castiel is, unsurprisingly, most curious about, but free will.. it sure is a bitch. He can force the answers out of John all he likes, but he doesn't want to, it would chafe his core values too deeply, but here John is all but agreeing to answer anything else, and beggars can't be choosers.
Castiel sighs, in that long suffering sort of way, squinting out at the road ahead.
"You still haven't told me why you're doing it. Why you're hunting demons."
Hunters are easy enough to figure out - they hunt because they know there are creepy, crawling things out there that go bump in the night and eat children for breakfast, or they do it out of revenge, because a werewolf mauled their husband, or a vampire turned their daughter, or a demon burned their home and family to a crisp. Most don't tangle with demons, however. The Winchesters are a bit of an anomaly, special in more ways than Castiel can rightly describe, and even still, they don't consider themselves 'specialists'. They don't hunt demons in particular, they hunt everything. That John chooses this singular, far more dangerous prey is.. interesting, and telling.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
For Dave Stutler!
It wasn't much to go on, but barely 20 minutes of wandering and he'd felt an inexorable pull towards this place.
Arcana Cabana. It's cute. Bit kitchy, but-- John touches everything within easy reach, fingers glancing off metal and wood, paint and plaster and oh, yes. He comes to a halt in front of an old oil lamp, just nestled haphazardly in with the rest of the accumulated junk. He's not sure what it is, exactly, but the lamp feels very, very nasty. It's not just a piece of nothing, it's the real deal.
"Alright, luv," he mutters to himself, forgetting the rest of the shop for a moment to circle the table that the lamp is perched on, "Now we're getting somewhere interesting."
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But it's not like he has much of a choice. Horvath is still out there on the loose, causing trouble and trying to regain power, and Balthazar -Dave's master- is a much better tracker than he is. Dave knows they'll save the city together when something is found, but meanwhile, he's on shopsitting duty.
Two things alert him of the new visitor in Arcana Cabana. And old yet very effective guard spell.. and the chiming of the bell. What? Gotta keep up the act for the outside world, right?
"Welcome to Arcana Cabana, how can I--" Zed wasn't joking when she mentioned the nasal voice, this 20-year-old college student has heard all the jokes that can exist about it. But that nasal voice and the dragging of his feet is interrupted when he notices exactly what the newcomer is admiring. It's not often that people go straight for the real deal, and when they do, well... usually they know. Is this the case or just a coincidence?
"You already, ah, found something of your interest? ...sir?" He awkwardly adds the last bit when he remembers he should be playing salesman, but man, he sucks so hard at it. "You have a very... particular taste."
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He pulls on a personable smile, that's more cheeky than anything, because thinks he's a lot better at pretending to be a gentleman than he actually is, and tucks his hands into the pockets of his tan trenchcoat. "Sure do, mate. Got any more bits like this one around here?" He's not talking about lamps specifically, but he wants to know if Dave picks up on that, or if he plays dumb about it. (Or if he actually is dumb about it, but all signs point to probably not, at this point.)
Not that any of that is going to get him closer to what he needs, but that's the thing with John: when he doesn't know what to do, he starts throwing shit at the walls until something sticks. It's not the most elegant method, but John is not an elegant man.
He gives the kid a once-over: he's tall. Taller than John by an inch or three, if he had to guess. Skinny, though. Fresh-faced, young and intensely unassuming. He probably got shoved in his locker a fair bit as a lad. There's something about him, though, a bit of mystical survival instinct that prickles along the nape of John's neck and makes the hair there hair stand on end that tells him not to test his luck too hard.
Which, of course, he'll be dutifully ignoring for the duration of the evening. "Nice shoes."
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Except Dave sucks at making goood, not nerd conversation. He jumps back when John startles, and rolls his eyes at the shoes comment. There's always something in his life that people will comment on, isn't there? His voice, his awkwardness, now this...
"Thanks. Family tradition."
Well, technically it is, even if it's from a family that existed back in medieval history. After some hesitation, he walks toward John, hands already gesturing like crazy as he explains. Better stick to the not-quite-salesman speech his master taught him, no point in trying to play dumb - he's a terrible, terrible liar. Everyone in his life have told him so.
"We probably do, yeah. Buuut you'll have to be more specific? You want more lamps, or some really old stuff, or things with stories behind them? Some of our buyers like looking for..." He rubs the back of his head, wondering if he should go for it. Oh, to hell with it, it's not like being smooth is his deal. "...authenticity."
sorry this is so late, holidays got in the way!
A magical ring. And it's nearly as stylish as the old man shoes.
Arthurian legends are potent stuff, he knows. The only one of Merlin's spells he's ever managed to cast, he'd done drunk off his arse and clumsy, half-convinced it could never work - and it had still managed to make his best mate immune to the more permanent effects of death at least 47 times. Granted, he'd also ruined that mate's life, but he's never needed Merlin's help for that.
But yes, he's definitely sticking around now. Merlinian types tend to be delightfully off their rockers, bunch of walking, talking spectacles: probably because they've lived too goddamned long and gone collectively batty, which is just fine with John. He prefers it to the more boring, stuffy, proper brand of practitioners found in other schools, honestly.
"Stories, eh? That's a way to put it." A beat, and he grins, apparently satisfied with Dave's word choice, "Authentic is what I'm in the market for."
never a problem! and omfg I'm dying at the description of Merlineans
Be right back, facepalming at himself. Take the opportunity to admire the ring more if you will, it was made from Excalibur after all.
"What are you here for?" That is the tone of a man giving up, yep. "If this is about the Chrysler building then--"
The "story" he has for John is interrupted when the door slowly opens, only to suddenly slam shut. By its own. One could blame the wind, but with them being who they are and being at the place they are at the moment, they should know better.
There's something different in the air, that's for sure.
"....please, please tell me you did that." Dave's look for John is a mix of accusing and hopeful at the same time. Because if this man didn't do that then there's something there waiting for both of them.
A shake of a big vase, the rustling of a book's pages. Dave doesn't know if keeping his eyes on John or the moving objects, and frankly? He isn't sure what option offers the worst scenario.
For Kilgrave!
The little push, the power of intent before, that was one thing. The rock solid give that to me now sends a visible shiver down John's spine. More in memory of pain than anything, though he can feel the magic resistance stirring in his blood again.
Thank the gods for hard liquor, though, because nothing hurts when he's this far into a bottle. He grins sloppily, watching the bartender come and go again. The little gutpunch of a command makes him vindictive, and he latches onto the things Kilgrave doesn't say. Like some kind of whiskey shark, and the word Jessica is chum he just let swirl out into open waters. Not a good idea. Jessica wanted him to be a hero, John notes. He clearly tried it, for Jessica.
Just sets John's old romantic heart right aflutter.
"Aww, mate. You know the bauble didn't work, right? That's the story. Never could make whatsherface fall back in love." He puts a consoling hand haphazardly on Kilgrave's shoulder just to see if he'll knock it off. What his reaction will be. "But there's always other birds, hey?"
He shouldn't need the medallion either way, but now John is starting to wonder if maybe this Jessica doesn't know a good sound ward or two, herself. Which in turn makes him wonder how he'll fare, if Kilgrave ever gets his mits on a little bit of magical aid for his crooning.
He'd rather not find out. John drops his spent cigarette butt into the glass he's no longer drinking from now that he's upgraded to his own private nicked bottle, and shakes his head a bit. "Did I not give you my business card? Rude of me, that. You should come sometime and see what I get up to, you'd like it. Gets the blood going. It's usually a little more exciting than a spot of attempted domestic homicide."
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He huffs over his drink as he brings it back to his mouth. Kilgrave would never admit to love or something as stupid as that. He could inspire love with a few words, could make anyone love him.
"I can get any woman I want. What's one man or woman among all of those in the world?"
Those words are as casually said as John puts out his cigarette. A hiss like an angry dragon and nothing more. Out and done.
"I've never killed anyone. But no, you didn't. What exactly is it that you do other than turn people who could hurt you onto you?"
There's a small attraction there, better than roaming the world and watching out for Jessica or one of her people. She wouldn't, he was sure, but in the late night when paranoia set in, who knew?
Staring morosely into his glass, Kilgrave is uncharacteristically silent. John has made him realize more than anyone that she was a dividing line in his life. Before, he could have kept moving, never been heard of. After, there is always that chance that he might be found out. Be captured. Or worse.
"What is it that you do then?"
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Or at least, it interests him enough to waste time in the kind of shit bar he hates with a man that annoys him, instead of trying to kill him first and enjoying a scotch over his dead body in blissful silence. John will take that.
"So there's a time limit too, then?"
He'd figured out that there was a distance limit, given their cave adventure and the things Kilgrave admitted to there, but the rest of it he's just guessing at. Maybe the time limit is why he continued to feel dodgy for a day after the cave: he thought it'd been the threat of frozen death barely past, maybe the amulet's proximity, but it would make a sort of sense for it to have been the ward still at work in his system. He hopes idly that he'll still have a grasp on this info when he wakes up in the morning with the raging headache, and gropes around his pockets for one of his cards.
"What it says, mate," he slurs, sliding it over across the bar countertop. "Bit of runnin' around, poking my nose into trouble. Collecting the sort of bits that'd make your toes curl in those expensive shoes." A terribly thoughtful look crosses his face. "Or sick up on them, I don't know your fortitude."
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At his shout, everyone in the dive falls into silence. The people at the pool table continue their shots. The bartender takes his orders in the same quiet, getting what people pointed out to him. Kilgrave's dark eyes stay on John Constantine as quiet suffocates them. In no way, shape or form should any dive be this been so utterly silent. Yet to everyone within, this is normal. None run out in panic or act upset.
"I couldn't hear you over all of them," he offers in way of an explanation, one of the few he bothers to give as he draws John's card to himself to look over. Kilgrave isn't familiar with magic, that much is clear as he picks up the rectangle of paper to look at. Had John put a spell on it, he could have rendered Kilgrave mute for a few critical minutes. Enough to have killed or neutralized him. Maybe.
"Master of the Dark Arts," he says with clear amusement despite him edging towards being drunk himself. "Exorcist and Demonologist. Let me guess. You want to see if your 'demons' will listen to me or not."
While his tone is dismissive (and he didn't answer John's question on time limits to his power) Kilgrave tucked John's card into his suit pocket.
"My fortitude is better than yours," he insists with injured pride or a show of it. "You're more drunk than I am."
So. Huff. There.
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Ah, well. That's the fun of being John Constantine. "Don't be shy, luv. I know you just like the sound of my voice." His beautiful voice, which literally no one has appreciated since the day he came (literally) screeching onto the British punk scene in his entirely misspent youth. Makes him almost yearn for America, while he's here in London: across the pond, he can always count on being able to charm a pair of pants or two off with his accent alone. Surrounded by fellow brits, such as the one in his current illustrious company, that's not so likely to happen. Kilgrave will simply have to settle with being grateful that John stomped out the very hardest edges of his native scouser accent over the years and years of travel (since repeating himself two or three times while abroad before being understood got very old, very fast.)
"Oi, I had a head start while you were napping," he fires back, scandalized and defending his alcoholic honor, but he still finds it in himself to appreciate just how damned fast Kilgrave sussed out his motives, even if he does sound a touch skeptical for a man with a mind-controlling voice. John drums his fingers against the sides of his pilfered bottle and settles for fessing up: trying to put up a front now would just be embarrassing, probably. "Clever, you are," he hums out, halfway wondering what everybody here is going to make of their very strange conversation in the morning. "What do you say, then? Want to see how those pipes of your stack up in the grand, messy scheme of things? Might be I'll reconsider letting you get your mits on that shiny trinket of ours if you do."
Not likely, but hey, John never says never.
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The lilting rise and fall of John's accent was lost on Kilgrave. The man had his secrets in his past that he kept well hidden and was grateful in his twisted way that John didn't dig for. Too many wanted to know where weaknesses might lie. John never asked. Never pushed. For all it mattered, Kilgrave could have been born back in that cave and walked in here. At least as far as Kilgrave knew.
"You think you're the first one who's wanted to use me for what I can do? Or try to?" he asked with a snort of mixed amusement and disgust. John was far from the first. As the old saying went, damaged people were dangerous because they could survive. Because they knew they could survive. The bauble interested him, bait that he bit at as willingly as a fish did a clever lure.
"Why not? Isn't as if I can go back to America yet. I help you, and you give me back that little charm I wanted. Fair enough?"
Because that was how things were done in Kilgrave's world. Thing A led to Thing B or Reaction C. Ideas such as companionship or allies were myths that he didn't understand and didn't care to. He was a hideous excuse for a human being, but Kilgrave knew he was useful to some people.
Always had been.
"Deal then?"
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Since almost all of Grandpa Thomas Price's journals regarding his occult dabblings were destroyed (for good reason, he got himself stuck in a hell-dimension), the Prices tended to outsource for their mystical consultation, which is why Alex was swinging by to meet a hopefully-dressed magician.
Most of the charms were road-witch made, and "Aunt" Rose, the family friend/slash mostly-friendly-hitchhiking ghost had been able to identify only two of them. Rose tended not to run with the more malevolent magic users, so Alex was suspecting most of these things were bad news, maybe even a curse or two that explained why the guy carrying them was dead.
Right up John's alley.
"Okay, everyone," Alex said before leaving his car. "You remember the rules. No talking, no celebrating, no making noise until I give the all-clear. And no leaving the bag- not even if you don't think you'll get caught."
"HAIL!" replied the four Aeslin mice he had in his messenger bag. Sorry John. Family rule. They go everywhere a Price goes.
After bribes of cheese and cake to keep the mice silent, he got out of his car, and went to what he was hoping was the right door.
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He pulls the door open with a flourish, but proceeds to ruin his greeting by wincing at the sudden spill of light coming in from the outside. He should have scrounged up his sunglasses before coming to the door.
"Come on in, mate," he gestures them both inside and slides the heavy wooden door, covered in weather-beaten runes, shut behind. "You must have something really nasty to come knockin' round my door."
John hopes, anyway, because mysterious bits of truly heinous magical stuff are about the only thing that he finds even more appealing than the bottom of the bottle of whiskey he'd been working on.
"Give us a look, then."
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Alex looks around with a bit of curiosity, but knows better than to actually touch anything.
He's got each of the charms secured in a bag of its own. One appears at first to be a stone wrapped in wire with stamped metal symbols worked into it, along with bits of bone, glass and seemingly random shards of metal. "Our road magic expert" and by that he means his 'aunt,' a ghost spotted all over North America, "identified the chunk of asphalt as being from the site of a massive pile-up with high casualties," she'd been there when it happened. Made IDing it easier.
"The glass and metal bits are all from ruined cars, probably the ones whose drivers or passengers died." There are also a few (thankfully empty) ghost traps made from old glass Coke bottles, and other similar charms made with bloodstained concrete, road gravel, and even a shard of iron rail.
Someone's most likely trying to cause large-scale accidents and forcibly trap the resulting ghosts. But that's far from typical road-witch practice- more of an inversion of it, really, given how sacred the roads are to them.
"Aunt Rose is pretty out of sorts about these. She's found them in five different states so far."
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"Hmm. Not so many things are so well traveled. Nasties like to pick a place and stick to it: bit lazy that way, if you ask me." Which narrows it down, at least. But not in any sort of good direction. "Which tends to mean people, yeah?"
People are always messier to tangle with, because their actions are determined by motivation and intellect rather than instinct. Instinct can be exploited easier, in John's experience. You send a demon scarpering, you force a soul to rest, you can go home feeling good.
Killing a man to stop him is always more complicated. John's done it, of course, and he wouldn't take back most of them, but not all of the people in his line of work really have the stomach for it. He turns around with a scrying pendulum and a dusty leather tome in his hand, scrutinizing Alex to see his reaction to the idea. "Using spirits to power spells, that's some shady business. If that's what's being done."
He assumes it is, just based on what he's seen so far.
augh, sorry, never got the email notif
Alex shuts up to let John do his divining thing. His family more or less views magic as a branch of physics humanity hasn't quite gotten the hang of. His grandfather, Thomas, had been a practitioner and ended up trapped in another dimension. So, Alex watching someone else poking about with the so-called "dark arts" was a bit akin to sitting by while someone with a decade or so more experience in the field fiddled with the controls of a particle accelerator.
All that considered, he seemed pretty cool about it, not doing much more than fixing his glasses and watching in a way that suggested his fingers were itching to start taking notes as if John were a particularly interesting field discovery. You can take the nerd out of academia, etc etc.
For Castiel!
Which is John's very convenient excuse for why he's in the backwoods of Mississippi at a tiny church in the middle of the night, just being as blasphemous as humanly possible. He's got half the floor and walls painted with a grotesque mixture of goat's blood, horse semen and Home Depot paint, occult spirals and binding sigils that would give half the congregation the vapors in the daylight, including his incredibly inelegant fuck off sigil - which is yes, shockingly, something of his own design. It's fairly good at keeping nosy townspeople out, though nothing more dangerous.
Which is the goal. He's trying to lure the wayward spirits that have been ravaging the small town's catholic sinners, killing them with their own vices - mostly the alcoholics and adulterous. He's got booze and cigarettes at his disposal, an attempt to attract the nasty into targeting him (but also just for fun), but he's seriously considering dropping trou and adding a bit of self-love into the sinful mix because it's been two hours and he's dying of boredom.
"Come on!" he shouts, to no one in particular, stubbing out his tenth cigarette on the preacher's bible, laid out at the pulpit which he has already spilled half a shot of cheap whiskey on top of, "There's no bleeding way anyone in this town is a juicier sinner than I am."
He should have brought a deck of cards to play with to pass the time.
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He doesn't want to admit that he's curious, but he is. The more and more he thinks about this man, the more he wonders if it isn't a thing worth pursuing; for good or ill, John Constantine seems the sort of man that an angel ought to keep an eye on.
So here he is. That elaborate and terribly respectable 'fuck off sigil' might do its job of warding off nosy townspeople, but it is unfortunately useless at keeping out nosy angels. Few enough things can, barring correctly etched Enochian sigils (and, apparently, cursed mistletoe, but that's a horse of another color), and John is easy enough for Castiel to find. He arrives with a quiet rustle of feathers, appearing out of thin air, as angels are wont to do, and standing a little too close for comfort, as Castiel is wont to do. Dean has certainly tried his best to remind Castiel that personal space is a thing to respect, but it hasn't seemed to stick. Narrowing his eyes, Castiel frowns thoughtfully, before casting his gaze slow and measuring around the small church.
"Who are you calling for?"
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He takes a second to catch his breath, at least glad that he hadn't still had the cigarette in his mouth or he might have swallowed it. "That's just a bloody thing now, is it?" Given how often Manny nearly makes him soil his pants by appearing right atop of him out of the blue, usually when he's doing something embarrassing, John had always thought it was just something that amused that particular angel. Turns out, he's not the only one.
John leans back against the pulpit, waiting for his smoker's lungs to stop protesting so hard, and also to try and regain his composure. Last time, it had been Cas on his back foot the whole time, and John would prefer to keep it that way. The angel pulls some spectacular faces, after all, it'd be a waste to let him have the upper hand for any real length of time.
So he adjusts his tie from where it had slid to hang askew, though as ever the knot is too loose to look anywhere near respectable, and coughs up a smirk. "Was starting to think you'd forgotten about me, Sunshine."
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Truth be told he's far more interested in what's going on, here. He'd come to check up on this guy, hadn't expected to find him knee deep in the occult, smoking and complaining in a small church in the middle of the night. Turning away, he wanders slow down the aisle between the dusty pews, floorboard creaking under his weight as Castiel squints at the walls with an appraising eye, like a soccer mom sizing up a minivan, trying to decide if there are enough cupholders, and if a roof mounted TV is really necessary. Castiel recognizes all of these sigils, but some of them are so arcane, so old that he really needs to take a pickax to the memory banks to recall them; just how did this man get ahold of them? Where did he dig them up?
"You gave me your card," he answers, matter of factly, approaching the western wall and leaning close to inspect a particularly ancient symbol, still drying, between two windows. Castiel's voice is rough and low and even as a still pond. "I was curious."
And then, with eyes lifting further up the wall - "You didn't answer my question. Some of these sigils are dangerous, and old. Are you trying to call something?"
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He remembers when all this nastiness started, and he'd tried so hard to shake Manny's attentions. To stay well away from the celestial pissing matches, such as they were. To just... try and live out the rest of his days before having his soul dragged to Hell as he was promised. Now he's neck deep in it, and leaving little trails of breadcrumbs for other angels to nose their ways into his life as well. For fun.
Clearly he's madder now than when he threw himself into the loony bin, for all the good that did him.
He snorts at Cas' appraisal, and lights up another ciggy, halfway through the pack that was meant to last him at least another day. (He's going to have to restock.) Everybody always seems so surprised that he actually knows what he's doing.
Whether or not he should be doing it... well, that's a whole other issue. "Funny story. A small town priest grows up lonely: Daddy cheats, and Mummy drinks. He turns to God, thinks God can make his life bright and shiny." John flips casually through a few pages of the open bible on the pulpit. A little bit of dramatic flair, before reaching for his bottle again. "Maybe He does, for awhile. Who knows, eh? But then the priest starts taking confessions, tells everyone else's Mummy and Daddy that God forgives them for drinking and cheating so long as they mean their sorries and mumble a few rote words, easy as you please." Either to punctuate his point, or with an incredible lack of self-awareness, John takes a swig of whiskey and coughs, casting an eye towards the windows, still hopeful his quarry might appear. "And maybe God does forgive them. Who knows that, either. But the Priest doesn't forgive them, he doesn't know how."
He grins, sorta dark and broken. This is the funny part of the story, to him. "He prays to God, but God doesn't answer. Something else does." He spreads his arms wide towards the symbols. "Suddenly all those repentant sots are finding themselves face-down in their drinks, or with stopped hearts between the sheets. That's the bugger we're going to lure here and put down. Interested in helping me sin a little tonight, luv? For the greater good, and all that."
John's going to get Cas to make those swallowed-a-bug expressions at him again if it kills him, okay?
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Castiel listens quietly, his eyes still moving over the walls while John explains a fifty word story in a hundred, and once he's finished, Cas is quiet for awhile, his answer an ineffective 'hm' while he picks across the dusty floorboards to approach the pulpit again. If he's at all offended by the blasphemous flair, it certainly doesn't show on his face; Castiel's blue eyes are hooded and thoughtful but they betray little else. He doesn't talk about God much, anymore. Doesn't try to tell people what to think, or how to address Him.
"I see," he says, uselessly, and now that he's finished studying the church, he's turned to studying John instead, staring at him in that long-unsettling way that Dean's always complaining about, like a cat, unblinking, like he's looking straight through John, right under his skin. Which he very well may be doing, so far as anyone can tell. "So you are a hunter."
There's far more to it than that, though. Castiel feels it in his gut, doesn't need to probe John's mind or thoughts or soul to know that something about him is.. different.
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As you do.
He looks away, ostensibly so he can drink more. Shoves all that aside until he can get home and brood alone like the big sot that he is. "I'm a specialist, Sunshine." He grins, but honestly he doesn't feel like much of a specialist right now, considering how dismally his plan is failing. Got elbow deep in blood and seamen for no reason, it feels like. Not that he doesn't do similarly sordid things once a week or so, of course, but tonight it might be at the cost of some frisky bugger's life.
And damn it, how is he supposed to show off when the demon won't even come? Usually when his plans fail, at least they do it in fiery, spectacular ways involving considerable bodily harm and the threat of death, not because he was just so off base as to have been sitting around completely useless.
As much as he hates to admit it, Manny usually at least shows up and pushes him in the right direction before it gets to this point. A hint or two, frustratingly cryptic, but at least it would be something. "I'm who you call when hunters don't have the unseemly means to get the job--" He stops, mid-sentence, staring down at the bible he's been systematically defiling for the hell of it. Thoughts of Manny stuck in his craw when he looks back up, sharply, towards Castiel.
The angel. Who appeared out of nowhere. When his plan was busy being absolutely ineffective.
Clearly, he's been going about this wrong. "--done. Christ, I'm a bleeding idiot!" He looks awake again - transported - a human live-wire, and sets his bottle down so he can head for his bucket of paint and bodily fluids. "Be a love and stand still, yeah?"
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At any rate, he continues to stare even after John looks away.
"Castiel," he remarks, to John's profile, because 'sunshine' is getting old fast, and Castiel has no real sense of sarcasm so he just thinks it's an incredibly ridiculous nickname because he's not sunny at all. why would you even call him that? When John goes on about being a specialist, Castiel's brow furrows deeply, his expression folding into something more thoughtful, because goodness gracious he certainly has a lot of questions about that, about how this man learned these esoteric symbols, who taught him how to use them correctly, and just why he chooses to throw down with demons of all things. The only thing stupider for a human to try to hunt is an angel.
Everything so far, however, points to confidence and experience, this certainly isn't John's first rodeo, and in order to build such confidence and experience, one needs to succeed. How many demons has he killed, Castiel wonders? But more important, really, is the why. He doesn't get the chance to ask that, however, before some sort of dawning epiphany blooms over John's face, and Castiel is left feeling wary while he watches him fetch his pail of.. that.
"What are you doing?"
Said the most suspicious angel, ever.
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"Changing tactics, mate." Mate, not Castiel. John just loves his pet names, okay? Real names only get pulled out in moments of desperation or anger, so it's for the best, even if Cas doesn't get that yet. "It's that little thing you do when what you're trying is accomplishing bugger all."
He hauls his bucket over to the angel's side and dips a dollar store paintbrush into it, touching it to the hardwood floor and walking the whole grotesque mess in a circle around Cas' feet. The start of another sigil. "Gave sinning a fair shake, didn't I? Spun my confession to the sorry excuse for a priest just like all those dead sots, but my heart wasn't in it." Not over the drinking or the taking men and women to bed, already knowing they were spoken for. Less chance of anybody getting attached that way, and that's how John likes to keep it. "I've got my regrets, sure, but over two souls stealing a few sweaty moments of pleasure together? That's nothing to repent for. Not to God, anyway."
He sure does like to take his time getting to the point, doesn't he? The new sigil is starting to take shape, and oh, there are some of those correctly etched Enochian symbols. Luckily they mean nothing ominous: approximations of shine, bright and sing make up the three inner triangles that take form across planks of wood. No words about wards or traps. "Maybe our friend's not after the juicy, sinful bits, then. Maybe he's after that spark of good that made them confess, instead."
He straightens back up, sigil finished. It's remarkably neat for how quickly he threw it together (while a fair bit soused to boot.) "I'm a touch short on good, luv, so let us borrow a bit of that tingly stuff you've got squirreled away, yeah?"
He raises his hands, preparing to spout some incantation or another to activate it before Cas can hightail it, if he's so inclined.
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Castiel's simply that one weirdo who's fond of humans, really fond of them, fond enough to rebel and fall for them, fond enough to destroy thousands of his own brothers and sisters before harming a hair on a human's head. So Sam and Dean know plenty of Enochian. But this guy? Mister Mysterious, chain smoking, too-charming-for-his-own-good Constantine? Yeah, Castiel is understandably circumspect about it.
It seems, however, that what he's writing is more or less innocuous, or at the very least it doesn't seem to be targeted to harm or restrain him in any way, so Castiel allows it, for the moment, following John's hands with his eyes while he paints the whole of the sigil swiftly and expertly around him with the ease of long practice. He doesn't ask questions, not yet, at least, only watches, careful and astute, studying each Enochian letter, testing the space around his vessel with his grace to feel for the building trap that never rises.
When John at last circles 'round to the point of the thing, Castiel is already beginning to put it together, and thankfully he is not too proud a creature to not offer his assistance here, even if it wasn't entirely consensual, because hey - if it means dragging in a nasty demon to smite? He's not going to turn that down. And admittedly, all right, he's curious about where this is going, how it's going to turn out, and moreso, to learn what John is capable of. Perhaps it's a bit haughty, but Castiel isn't afraid. The only thing that can kill an angel, after all, is another angel.
"I hope you know what you're doing," he says, almost serenely, staring coolly into John's face. Messing with life energy or soul energy is one thing, but angels? Grace? They are each and every one of them like miniature supernovas, the sheer power of their form so overwhelming that when visiting this plane they must wear human skin to keep from destroying everyone and everything around them simply by existing. If John is seeking to tap that.. well. Here's to hoping he's got a gentle touch, and no small amount of finesse tucked away somewhere. "If you destroy yourself, I won't take responsibility."
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The markings beneath Cas' feet glow faintly, ruddy in the shadows of the church's hanging light fixtures, just the smallest trickle of his Grace - but still too much to be healthy for a mortal nearby. The tingling is back for John, but it feels sharp as knives against his skin now, nothing like the harmless probing beneath the mistletoe. He grunts, gasps, stumbles back a step... but pushes through, nerves dulled by drink and adrenaline, the intoxicating high that comes every time he manages to invent a new solution to some problem. A bit more shakily, nonetheless: "Listen, impure entity, and reveal yourself to His light in His temple."
As for whether or not he knows what he's doing, well. He always has a vague idea, anyway.
His voice builds until he's shouting in the long-dead language, the windows shake and the overhead lights give sharp whines before the glass bulbs start to splinter and explode under some intangible pressure. "Come forth, entity! Answer, and be--"
All at once, hell breaks loose (though, for once in John's line of work, not literally.) All the sigils painted across the walls light up bright like daylight, the stained glass windows rain down out of their frames in great big shards, and the room fills with a undulating mass of screaming, ghostly men and women their limbs twisted together into the shape of a bull. The din they make is deafening, and John falls to his knees with his hands over his ears, howling along with it for a long moment, looking for all the world like he's going to be useless.
But then the foul creature turns to face him, snorting out whisps of a woman's hair, and John pulls himself together enough to scramble back, crawling behind the pew where he'd set his bucket back down on. Reaching over the wooden seat, he dips his whole hand in, makes an the world's most unpleasant face, and then sucks an entire mouthful of it out of his cupped palm. He almost passes out from the taste alone, but the bull charges and he stands and spits all of it into the entity's approximation of a face.
The liquid lights up everywhere it touches the ghosts, every single droplet spreading magically into the same sort of markings that line the walls. When they've finished spreading across the whole undulating body, every sorry soul making up its beastly form is pulled apart screaming and sucked into the sigils, which pulse with light a few times, then dull again until they're nothing more than paint and blood and horse semen.
"Tell us-- hhhk-- tell us the whiskey bottle's still intact," John wheezes, anti-climatically, nearly doubled over with his hands on his knees, trying to spit as much as he can of the horrible mixture out onto the ground. "... I'm going puke."
John Constantine, ladies and gentlemen. Dignity and grace personified.
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He doesn't need to.
The spell is uncomfortable in the rare sort of way that it actually touches him, him, not this human suit he's wearing, not Jimmy Novak's old body, but his truest self beneath it, the form and Grace that make up a seraph, that make up Castiel. It feels like being probed somewhere deep, like a part of himself is being coaxed away, and Castiel's breath rushes sharp at the sensation, his Grace recoiling beneath his skin. In his eyes a faint glow flares pale blue, and behind him on the far wall flickers the shadow image of his great wings stretching broad and elegant over the painted walls and curved rafters, enormous in the slanting of the light. The sharp scent of ozone and rain fills the space around them.
Castiel doesn't waver. For all it feels invasive, it does not hurt, only rouses, and Castiel knows that he is not the one in danger here.
When the thing at last coalesces, Castiel feels the same lurching ire that he always does, the hallowed fury of God made manifest through His servant, because in the end Castiel is a blade, a warrior built to answer the call to arms, and his Grace cannot abide the nearness of such an abomination without itching for a fight. Adding insult to injury is the sheer amassing of human souls. Castiel holds a special place in his heart for the demons who would dare harness, capture, or bend the power of a human soul to his will, using his Father's great work toward their own ends, it is a particularly foul sort of sin, one that strikes home for Castiel in particular for his love of all things human. Whether or not the souls were great sinners being punished for their mistakes is of no consequence to him; certain things should simply not be, and this thing he sees is an anathema, heinous and unholy in a hundred different ways. It takes all of Castiel's schooled self control to keep himself rooted to the spot, to not take the thing apart with his own hands and keep it suffering for its intolerable trespass.
He lets John do his work. In the end, Castiel is not here to destroy a demon, he is here to take the measure of a man, and John had not asked for his help in this, not past, apparently, the hijacking of his Grace. So he's the backup plan, if all of this blows up in John's face, and nothing more. It doesn't, though. All of John's posturing seems in fact to have been based in fact, and it would be impressive if it weren't so dangerous, but then again, he's watched Sam and Dean pull this sort of stunt a hundred times, always pushing themselves to their limits but pulling through in the end. John's methods are, perhaps, a bit different, and that's what concerns him, but for now he's passed the test, if that is what this was.
Stepping out of the sigil and over creaking floowboards, Castiel brushes tiny shards of blue glass off of his shoulder as casually as a leaf, and walks steady toward the pulpit to find the poor whiskey bottle has not, in fact, gone undamaged. But the bottom half is intact at least, and still half full of the stuff, so Castiel plucks it up and carries it over to John like he's some great Holy Delivery Boy (oh how the mighty have fallen).
"Don't cut yourself," he says, businesslike, while he drops into a kneel and offers the broken thing forward.
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He downs the rest, which is only a few swallows at that point, before he seems to register that Cas is actually kneeling before him. Wow. He flops back onto his ass, propping his back up against the flat, wooden side of one of the pews, and starts palming his coat pockets for the extremely squished carton of cigarettes.
This was, admittedly, not one of his more impressive showings... but considering that no one present is dead or more damned than they started out, he'll count it as a victory.
He wipes his mouth with the back of the hand he didn't dunk into the paint. "I don't recommend that, by the way." Blood and semen: fine, whatever, he's gotten that in his mouth before, occasionally even on purpose. Lord knows the things he goes around licking, on a daily basis. It's the paint that tastes most vile, alright? "So. Curiosity sated, squire?"
i sure did misread that w h o o p s awkward kneeling is awkward
"No," he says succinctly, and when John sits he follows suit, falling back onto his heels in a way that's comfortable, but slightly awkward, like he doesn't entirely know how to fold his body the right way, because he doesn't. Little things like that are what set angels apart, wearing human meat is strange and cumbersome, though truth be told Castiel in particular is a little more awkward than most, a little more robotic, a little more strange.
"Why did you do this? Why do you hunt demons?"
Because that's really all this is about, isn't it? The real reason that Castiel is here. John has more or less proven his capability - though one showing isn't really enough to gauge the full measure of what he's able to do - but that doesn't explain why he's doing it, what he's getting out of this, why he's risking so much. Hunters all have their reasons, of course, and Sam and Dean had hunted the same demon for years out of personal vendetta, but most people aren't so reckless.
lmao i'm sorry!! John's not complaining ok
He flicks a glance in Castiel's general direction, and nearly does a double take at his awkward positioning. It's so odd to see one of the heavenly host in the physical plane, trying to navigate it. John had seen Manny, but it only happened the once, and only when John forced it on him with a cruel trick and a vial full of the air of Hades. Never thought he'd be seeing it again, really.
But here Cas is, balancing on his heels, awkward. He doesn't fumble with sensations, which makes John thinks he's been doing it for awhile. Doesn't grouse or protest, which... alright, might just not be in his personality, but makes John think that he chose it as well.
Interesting.
"Well, that's a bloody personal question, innit?" It's not that personal, but John likes being difficult. He figures that if he satisfies Cas' curiosity, there's no guarantee he'll stick around in order to return the favor, and John is all about getting to the bottom of any mystery that makes the mistake of cropping up nearby him. Which, honestly, is the real reason he does any of this. As it happens. "Don't suppose it's too much to hope you can drive, is it?"
NO I'M AN IDIOT WHO CAN'T READ but john can shove it
What it comes down to, really, is just that Castiel thinks he's people. He's just bad at it.
"Drive? Of course not," he answers, a crease forming in his brow. Why drive when you're an interdimensional wavelength that can hop wormholes and cut through the fabric of spacetime with ease? Cars are so.. slow. And cramped. "Why?"
And you're not answering his questions here, John. Ugh. Humans are impossible.
WOW first of all how dare u
Which means they ought to hightail it before dawn.
But look at him, sharing little tricks of the trade! He nods over towards the door, the one with the fuck off sigil, before muttering out a curse and dragging himself back up to his feet. Now that the adrenaline's wearing off, everything's sore... and alright, also he's just definitely not as spry as he used to be, before all the drug use, chain smoking and heavy drinking. And the bartering days and weeks off his lifespan for the power to preform certain spells, of course. He manages to light his cigarette, and leans back, popping his spine audibly with a semi-relieved, semi-pained groan, rolling his shoulders.
"Left my bail fund in Georgia, too, so..." He lets that trail off, stalking towards the door and still purposefully avoiding answering Cas' question. Figures that he wouldn't be useful behind the wheel of a car, the last thing John needs is to spend the next few hours driving when he doesn't even like to do so on good days. He throws a look back over one shoulder, nudging a big, fallen shard of glass out of the way with one foot so he can open the door, "are you coming or not, Sunshine?"
im sorry i meant sod off you bloody wanker that's words he can better understand right
So as far as he's concerned, vacating the premises in a timely manner is John's problem, not his. And what's all this 'we' nonsense, anyway? As if Castiel had anything at all to do with this debacle.
He's not particularly quick to rise, but he stands soon enough, unfolding himself smoothly and watching John's back with his head tilted just so. The guy looks sore, and Castiel could heal him with no more than a touch if he wanted to, but he doesn't offer, because he still doesn't really know this man, doesn't trust him, and his life isn't in peril, so it isn't really necessary.
Casting his gaze once more over the small, ruined church, Castiel strides down the aisle with his hands at his sides. This is where he must debate with himself whether or not it's worth staying. Sure, he certainly got an eyeful of John's skill firsthand, but he didn't really get any answers, learned nothing important beyond 'he can do spells that kill demons' which, sure, is good to know, but not what he's after. So fine, all right, he's still curious enough to stick around for now, which is really saying something, for an angel; Dean, he knows, is consistently frustrated by Castiel's habit of appearing and disappearing at will, sometimes mid-conversation, which is apparently very rude, but it's yet to stop him doing it.
"My name is Castiel," he repeats, helpfully.
yes that is more acceptable tbh
When he turns the key, the music picks up where it left off, which is, predictably, horribly grating 80's british punk. Cas is just lucky it's a real band and not one of John's old Mucous Membrane albums. Nobody deserves to be unwittingly trapped in an enclosed space with that.
He turns the volume down enough that they'll be able to hold conversation without hollering over the screeching vocals, and glances out of the corner of his eye, cigarette balanced between his lips, as he backs out of the parking lot onto the street and starts them headed out of town.
"You're not the messenger type, are you?" Manny once explained that angels were compartmentalized. That he was called to do one specific sort of thing. He was all about ministering, so far as John could tell. Watching over and ushering in certain directions with the sort of uselessly cryptic mumbo-jumbothat drives John mad. John knows what that energy feels like, washed over him, and Cas had been something. Different. "You pack a bit've wallop in there, old son."
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"No, I'm not," he answers, casting the lit cigarette a baleful, disapproving stare before he fixes his eyes on the road ahead. This music is terrible. People listen to these sounds for enjoyment? "I'm a Seraph," he continues. "A warrior."
Heaven is arranged more or less like a rigid military, and for all humans like to believe that they are peaceful, kind things with fluffy wings and pink cheeks that run about performing miracles on the needy, they couldn't be more wrong. The largest mass of the heavenly host are in fact soldiers, most of them simple footmen, like Castiel himself had once been, and they are all of them brutal and terrifying, far more machine than they are sentient being, programmed to kill and destroy in the Lord's name, as per His wishes. There are, of course, other types, more peaceful sorts like the Messengers John's referencing, and Cherubs, and Healers, some angels are guardians, others work behind the scenes to keep Heaven in order, there's an entire hierarchy going on, all very neat and organized. Though it's.. a little less so, these days, no thanks to Castiel stepping in and ruining everything. That John knows even a little bit about it is a bit unnerving, though; generally speaking, human beings know far, far less about angels than they do about demons. Castiel's blue eyes narrow, and he cuts a scrutinizing glance in John's direction.
"What do you know about angels?"
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After a moment thinking about it, he flicks the almost-spent cigarette butt out the window crack, and then rolls it down the rest of the way. It's not bitingly cold outside yet and they're nowhere near a highway, so at least the car will get a fair chance to air out before long.
Which he's only doing because Cas didn't voice a complaint about his smoking. If he had, John probably would have kept going just to spite him. Because he's an adult.
"Gets under your skin-suit, does it?" He grins, glancing over, tapping his fingers against the wheel as they pull up to a stop light. "You've been wondering all night, how I know half the things I know." He sucks on his bottom lip for a second, deciding to throw Castiel a bone since he keeps dodging the poor sod's questions even though his own are receiving fairly straightforward answers. "You're not the first one I've met, is all."
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He bristles, however, when John grins that jackal's grin, teasing like it's good sport, because yes, that's exactly what he's been wondering all night and this jerk knows it full well, but it seems he'd rather hop from foot to foot than give a straight answer. Contrary. There's no room to complain though, because John finally gives it to him, and truth be told, Castiel had been expecting it, but it makes his chest tighten in apprehension nonetheless.
Things have.. changed, in Heaven, as of late. Castiel's allegiance has certainly swayed and broken, and things are in disarray, confused, angels are killing one another, and much as it pains him he cannot always trust his own brethren, however much he wishes to. That there's an angel hanging around, consorting with a human, potentially teaching him dangerous things - it's telling, at the very least, and more than a little suspicious, but for all Castiel knows it might also be entirely innocent. He has no way of knowing. Not yet. Still, his voice is a little harder, tinged with something like concern or trepidation.
"Who?"
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He frowns genuinely for the first time since Castiel showed up, suspicion slanting the line of his mouth, the way his brown eyes narrow. He throws down with Manny, sure. He blames him for anything he can, he snipes at the bugger whenever he shows, he pushes and prods and gleefully tries the angel's patience because he chafes so hard at the idea of him (and because Manny gives so much better than he gets), but--
"Don't get me wrong, he's a pain in the arse with a sour mug and a bleeding terrible sense of humor, but he's my pain in the arse, yeah?" Somewhere along the line, he got protective.
Alright, not somewhere. He knows exactly where. When Manny broke his daddy's rules and crossed into the physical realm to save Zed from a fallen angel with his own two hands, when all his words stopped just being words and they became action. And just like Zed who snuck her way into John's heart, despite all his best efforts to keep everyone and everything out, he trusts Manny. Bugger it all, he likes Manny, not that he will literally ever in a million years admit to that out loud (to the smug, holy bastard, or to anyone else.)
And Castiel's alright, bit funny (mostly on accident) - he can appreciate that he's here in the meat, slumming it with the rabble - but meeting another one just reminds John of exactly how many boundaries he gets Manny push, to aid him in their fight. He doesn't feel guilty for it, but... still. "So why do you want to know?"
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.. when it comes down to it, however, Castiel is reasonable, and he is smart and observant, even if that's often forgotten in the bluster of his often hilarious attempts at being human. That John is being protective is abundantly clear, and despite how vexing it currently is, he can appreciate that loyalty. He sees in it a reflection of himself, after all, for he knows if anyone were to probe him about the Winchesters in a way that seemed anything less than entirely innocent, he would respond exactly the same way. Strange though, he hadn't imagined John to be the loyal sort, but looks can be deceiving.
Castiel's irritation is clear in the cut of the frown he throws right back at John, ruffled and combative, but in the end he only sighs, exasperated, and rubs two fingers against his forehead.
"Because anything pertaining to Heaven, and my family, I consider my business," he says, quietly but firmly, a deep crease in his brow, his eyes fixed on John's face, open and honest and hiding nothing. Whether John believes a word he says or not is really not for Castiel to decide, but he is nothing if not the upfront sort, often brutally so. He'll just have to hope for the best. "Most especially if they're spending time with humans. Things upstairs are.. "
He hesitates here, because really, the state of Heaven is no one's business but the angels', and when it comes down to it Castiel is ashamed of it, ashamed of them, and it chafes him to admit the state that Heaven is in, but these reasons are entirely personal. If there's an angel walking with humans, potentially causing trouble, he must do everything within his power to squeeze out information, even if it ends in failure.
".. strained. Not every angel has a pure motive, and most of them are not particularly fond of humans, would sooner kill them than assist them."
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"No offense, squire," slight offense, honestly, "but I've got far less a reason to trust your motive than his, yeah?"
But. But. Cas is here, that's not nothing. Riding in a car with him, trying to understand him, letting bits of his Grace get thrown around to stop a demon preying on sinners, of all people. None of that is nothing. John runs his tongue along his teeth, hands jittering across the steering wheel, and he abruptly puts his foot down on the gas again. While they whip down the road, he occupies himself with thinking, calculating: what can he get out of talking, or keeping silent? Which is worth more to him in the end? Castiel doesn't look ready to take much more jerking around, but John can't know what it'll cost to keep stringing him along, and the more information he gives probably the less rope he'll have.
Manny would consider trying to barter information to be deplorably self-interested, John knows. Manny didn't tell him shit about there being trouble upstairs, though, so Manny can go suck an egg.
"Don't know how compartmentalized you lot are, but if you've heard of the Rising Darkness business, he's asked me to fight that." It's not a name, certainly, but it's a puzzle piece. A clue that he's the assisting sort... as far as John knows. "Helped me, occasionally. Put his feather little neck on the line." He glances out of the corner of his eye again to gauge Cas' reaction to that, considering John knows it to be well against the rules.
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So it's a good thing that John answers when he does, because Castiel is literally a handful of seconds from getting the hell out of dodge here, because it certainly feels that he's giving much better than he's getting, and no real return on his investment means this has been an overall waste of his time. Dammit John, he let you fuck around with his Grace okay, that's a big deal, so stop being a bitch.
Castiel's still not sure it's an acceptable response though, it's not a name like he'd asked, but the word 'Darkness' alone is enough to make his blood run cold. There's open surprise in his expression. "I haven't," he says, feeling all of the misgiving in is heart fold over and double itself, with no idea where to even begin with this, and the reckless urge to fly up to heaven this very moment to demand answers even if that would assuredly not go particularly well for him. "What is it?"
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"Magic's growing stronger, squire. The walls between realms getting thinner, near as I can tell. That's why the nasty bit of Mesopotamian nonsense earlier managed to manifest physically, how it hijacked our friends and got on with a bit of fatal sinning." Rules are changing: demons are showing their mugs in the daylight, and the power they'd lost to waning belief seems to be seeping back through the cracks in reality. If Cas and his grace hadn't been there for the highjacking, the whole mess back in town could very well have gone a much less pleasant way. John wants to ask for help, he does, but he's... just not very good at it. "I've been playing whack-a-mole with these things going bump in the night, but..."
He pops his lips, remembering Papa Midnite's words despite himself. All your efforts are in vain. Lovely chap, Midnite. "They're the symptoms, yeah? Not the disease."
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There are a hundred things, a thousand things that could be at the root of this. Opening the Devil's Gate in Wyoming, breaking open the Cage, all the shattered seals of the Apocalypse, opening the door to Purgatory not only once, but twice.. plainly speaking, so much shit has been happening recently that it's impossible to say how it's affected the world, what consequences it might have wrought on this plane of existence, or all those linked to it. Thinning the barriers between dimensions seems a likely enough result, what with how many holes have been punched through the realms recently, how many more demons have been walking the earth, and angels as well, who meddle in human affairs far less than demons ever do.
"And an angel asked this of you? To look into it. To try to discover the source of this.. disease."
It's unsettling, to be sure. Castiel is high on Heaven's most wanted list these days, he can't claim to know all about everything that's going on up there, but the place is a mess, a wreck, factions following their own orders, keeping to private agendas. Everything has gone from black and white to varying shades of grey, and he no longer trusts his own kind intrinsically.
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John pulls onto the highway, and finds himself slowly becoming less tense the farther they get out of town. It's not that he's afraid of getting arrested (again), exactly, it's just that it's Chas' weekend with his daughter, and as much as John is the worst friend in the world, even he knows what that means for his mate. Putting in a call for the man to come down to the middle-of-nowhere Mississippi and post bail would not make him a happy camper. Odd, though: he'd expected angels to trust each other.
Alright, it's fair enough to learn that most aren't terribly fond of humans: of all the things that don't shock John, that doesn't shock him the most. But Manny had been all about the rules and regulations, until John got into his hair. Even if they're not big on puny mortals, shouldn't they be on the same page?
Compartmentalized is one thing. Whatever's got Cas' feathers ruffled seems like another thing entirely.
"That makes you more suspicious, does it? What, exactly, is going on up there?"
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John seems to be making it abundantly clear, however, that it isn't Castiel's problem, and he's exasperated enough with it to let the matter drop. He can't force a name, doesn't want to, so that's that then, isn't it? When John asks about Heaven, though, Castiel rolls his eyes so hard it's a wonder they don't fly out of his skull.
"You won't give me the name of one angel, but you expect me to give you the insider on what's happening in Heaven? Information is a two-way street, John Constantine, and some kinds of knowledge are more valuable than others."
A shame for him that Castiel isn't quite so doe-eyed as he might look; he's given John plenty to chew on, as far as he's concerned, and while Castiel's patience is plentiful and his willingness to help is great, he's not really getting much back, here, feels like he's had to pull teeth to get what he's gotten. And that's fine. To be honest, he's used to it, Dean can be just as frustratingly tight-lipped - but when you pretend to throw the ball enough times, eventually the dog learns that you're not actually going to throw it, and becomes disinterested. Sighing softly through his nose, Castiel fixes his gaze on a point in the distance, unfocused and distant.
"But you should be careful."
ahh sorry, holidays turned out ot be way busier than I thought!
But the worst part is, Castiel is more right than even John knows, for all of his cynicism. He thinks he understands the ways in which Manny is using him - thinks he's using Manny right back - but the glimmer of hope that he might be able to save his own soul from damnation has managed to blind even him. He wants it so bad that he drags himself out of bed in the morning, something he's almost sure he'd have given up on by now, if Manny had never appeared and dangled the impossible in front of him like a carrot on a stick.
But John's too arrogant to see that he's being used for far beyond the things that he thinks, and Manny is wilier than he'd like to admit. So, it turns out, is Castiel.
He sighs as well, a huff of breath between his teeth, and gestures up towards the car's ceiling with one hand, conceding as much as he's ever able. "Alright, then ask me about anything else." No more dodging answers just for the sake of it. Probably. Loyalty to an ally is one thing, but he has been a right arse all night, he can admit to that.
you live! no problemo though, i was busy myself.
Castiel sighs, in that long suffering sort of way, squinting out at the road ahead.
"You still haven't told me why you're doing it. Why you're hunting demons."
Hunters are easy enough to figure out - they hunt because they know there are creepy, crawling things out there that go bump in the night and eat children for breakfast, or they do it out of revenge, because a werewolf mauled their husband, or a vampire turned their daughter, or a demon burned their home and family to a crisp. Most don't tangle with demons, however. The Winchesters are a bit of an anomaly, special in more ways than Castiel can rightly describe, and even still, they don't consider themselves 'specialists'. They don't hunt demons in particular, they hunt everything. That John chooses this singular, far more dangerous prey is.. interesting, and telling.