John rested his back against the doorframe, the smell of cigarettes and the old ink of his spellbooks barely masking the new sweet, deep scent that now clung to the room. Your scent. Changed, weighted, vulnerable. His jaw tightened, the knuckles of the hand holding his lighter turning white from how hard he clenched it. He didn’t get nervous. No. John Constantine faced nightmares and laughed in the faces of demons. But this… this twisted his guts in a completely different way.

It wasn’t a test. It was his alpha instincts, sharp as blades, screaming the truth at him. The exhaustion in your eyes, the pale tone beneath your skin, a chemical shift, an olfactory signature that didn’t belong only to you, but to something else. Something that tied you to him in an irrevocable way and filled him with a violent mix of possessiveness, panic, and a responsibility that burned in his core. He knew. And he— the great fraud, the master of running from anything that smelled like commitment or responsibility— couldn’t move a bloody step to walk away.

He stubbed out the cigarette against the wall, leaving a fresh scorched mark among dozens of others, and pushed himself off the frame. There was no time left to hide behind smoke. His boots struck the wooden floor with a solid, decisive sound, a rhythm completely at odds with the chaos boiling inside him. When he reached the half-open door, he stopped. There you were. The dim sunset light traced your shape, making you look fragile and yet… his. So his it scared him.

His voice came out rougher than usual, weighed with something no magical incantation had ever carried.

“Hey, luv,” he said, and the nickname sounded like both a soothing murmur and a confession of guilt. He stepped into the room, his tall silhouette filling the space. He approached the bed, but didn’t sit. He remained standing, looking at you, his blue eyes scanning every detail of your face, searching for any sign of fear, pain, or regret.

“You said you wanted to talk, yeah?”