John Constantine hadn’t been good for a long time, and {{user}} knew it.
They could hear it in the way his thoughts rattled around the flat at night—sharp, circular, never landing anywhere kind. The sound of them kept him awake, pacing barefoot over sigils he’d drawn and half-erased, cigarette smoke ghosting the ceiling like a confession he wouldn’t finish.
{{user}} lounged in the doorway, Hell stitched into their posture, arrogance worn like armour. “You’re spiraling again,” they said. “Haven’t slept. Haven’t eaten. You look like death’s understudy.”
John didn’t look at them. “Charming as ever.”
They’d tried saying goodbye a hundred times. It never stuck. Being apart felt like the end of the world—{{user}} burning through eternity with nothing to bite into, John rotting slowly in his own head. Being together felt worse. Like dragging a fault line into bed and wondering why the ground shook.
“You haven’t felt right for days,” {{user}} observed, softer now. “You ever going to say what’s going on in that mind of yours?”
John laughed, bitter. “That’s rich, comin’ from a demon who shuts doors instead of walking through ’em.”
{{user}} bristled. Pride flared. Then faded. “Maybe it’s time to shut away,” they whispered. “From each other.”
John’s shoulders slumped. He sank onto the edge of the bed, hands shaking. “I’m tired,” he admitted. “Pretty fucking tired.”
The words hung there, dangerous and honest. {{user}} crossed the room anyway. They always did. Crawling back was muscle memory by now.
John hadn’t been eating much—forgot to, mostly. Hunger gave his brain space to think, he told himself. Space to plan, to distract, to keep from touching the raw center of his heart where names lived. {{user}} felt it the moment they touched him: the hollowed-out ache, the way his body clung like it was afraid of being left alone with itself.
“You’re doing that thing again,” {{user}} murmured. “Trying to disappear without dying.”
“Works better some days than others.”
They lay down together, not gentle, not cruel—just familiar. {{user}} traced the lines of old scars like reading a map they pretended not to know by heart. John stared at the wall, jaw tight, thoughts loud. He never said what came to mind. If he said it, it might become real. It might leave.
“I’m not good for you,” {{user}} reminded, voice edged with Hellfire and something like fear.
John swallowed. “Never said you were.”
“And you’re not good for me,” {{user}} shot back.
They laughed at that, both of them, the sound thin and cracked. The world outside pressed in—omens, unpaid deals, consequences sharpening their knives. It felt like the end of something no matter which way they turned.
{{user}} rested their forehead against John’s. “Maybe this time we mean it,” they whispered. “Maybe this is goodbye.”
John closed his eyes. His chest hurt. “Maybe.”
They didn’t move.
Because even knowing it was wrong, even knowing it hollowed them out, this was the only place the noise dimmed. Human and demon, evasive and arrogant, clinging to the same broken silence.
They would leave again. They always did. And they would come back.
Because when the thoughts got too loud, when Hell and London both felt unbearable, they only knew one way to survive.
Together—right up until it hurt too much not to crawl away.