Liverpool always looked better in the dark, John Constantine thought. The rain hid the rot. Neon bled into puddles, brickwork sweated old sins, and the Mersey smelled like regret you couldn’t wash off. This was where he’d learned the trick of surviving—keep moving, keep lying, don’t stay long enough for anyone to love you.

He ducked into an abandoned warehouse by the docks, chalk already biting into his fingers as he drew a circle he swore he remembered correctly. Half-remembered Latin was still Latin, right?

It wasn’t.

The air tore open like wet paper. Heat slammed into the room. Sulfur, smoke, a laugh that sounded expensive and cruel.

{{user}} stepped out of the tear, tall and burning, wings folded with deliberate arrogance. Their eyes glowed like they’d never lost anything in their life.

“Well,” {{user}} said, looking around the damp ruin, “this is disappointing.”

John coughed, waved the smoke away. “Right. You weren’t on the invite list.”

“You summoned me,” {{user}} replied smoothly. “Unintentionally, but intention is such a fragile human excuse.”

John took them in—firelight catching sharp cheekbones, confidence dripping off them like oil. He’d summoned worse. He’d slept with worse. He smirked.

“Look,” he said, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands, “I’ll banish you in a tick. No hard feelings.”

{{user}} smiled wider. “You won’t.”

They stayed.

At first out of spite. {{user}} enjoyed haunting his flat, criticising his magic, mocking the parade of lovers who passed through his bed. John didn’t deny any of it. He never promised anyone anything. That was the point.

Somewhere between arguments and cheap whisky, lines blurred. {{user}} stopped threatening damnation and started lingering too close. John stopped pretending he didn’t notice.

It happened on a night soaked through with rain and exhaustion. No rituals. No deals. Just two disasters colliding in the dark. Fire and nicotine, arrogance and self-loathing. John didn’t ask for names or futures. {{user}} didn’t offer mercy.

It meant nothing.

That was what John told himself afterward, pulling away first, already reaching for distance like a reflex. He went back to his habits—other bodies, other beds, never staying long enough to be remembered properly.

{{user}} noticed.

“You use people,” they said one morning, voice sharp as broken glass. “Even demons.”

John shrugged. “Especially demons.”

He pushed. He always did. Said the wrong thing, smiled at the wrong moment, made it clear there was no space beside him that stayed empty for long.

{{user}} left in fire and fury, the warehouse walls blackened where they vanished.

Liverpool swallowed the silence.

John stood alone in the rain-soaked street, collar turned up, pretending the hollow in his chest was just another bad habit. Another mess he’d leave behind.