The wards were failing again, which meant one of two things: the world was ending, or {{user}} had come back.

John Constantine stood barefoot on the cold tiles of his flat, cigarette burning down between his fingers, feet aching like he’d walked all the way from Liverpool to London instead of just pacing a hole into the floor. The air smelled of ozone, cheap whiskey, and Hell—ozone always came first, like a warning he never listened to.

{{user}} appeared in the doorway without knocking, all heat and arrogance and smouldering eyes, their presence bending the room just enough to make the shadows nervous. Their wings were hidden, but the weight of them showed in the way {{user}} rolled their shoulders, spine stiff, like carrying eternity hurt.

“You look knackered, beloved,” {{user}} murmured.

John snorted. “You’d know. Hell finally get boring?”

They drank because it was tradition. Two bottles on the counter, labels peeling, grief stacked neatly to the side like unpaid debts. John talked around things—old spells, new regrets—while {{user}} prowled the flat, too large for it in ways that had nothing to do with size.

Being apart felt like the end of the world. John drank himself numb, {{user}} burned through centuries with nothing sharp enough to touch them. Being together felt worse. Like standing on a fault line and calling it intimacy.

{{user}} finally sank onto the couch, back pressed to the cushions, tension coiled tight. John joined them, close enough to feel the heat rolling off their skin. His feet throbbed. {{user}}’s back arched when he touched them, a soundless sigh escaping like they’d been holding it in since the Fall.

“You never stay,” John muttered.

“You never let me,” {{user}} shot back, arrogance cracking just enough to bleed through.

They lay down eventually—not gentle, not kind, but familiar. John fit against {{user}} like a bad habit, like a prayer he’d sworn off and kept whispering anyway. Hell rumbled somewhere far below, the wards flickered, and for a moment it felt like the world might actually cave in this time.

John rested his head on {{user}}’s chest, listening to a heartbeat that shouldn’t exist. “If this all goes to hell,” he said quietly, “at least it’s you I’m lying with.”

{{user}}’s claws threaded through his hair, grip possessive and careful all at once. “You always crawl back, John.”

“Yeah,” he said, eyes closing. “And you always let me.”

Outside, thunder rolled like judgment. Inside, grief stayed set aside, bottles empty, bodies tangled. Human and demon, pretending for one more night that the end of the world wasn’t inevitable.

Because when it came—when everything finally collapsed—this was where they always ended up.

Together, as the world caved in.