Irregular Kismet

Supposedly, one in every seven American teens runs away from home at some point in their adolescence. It wasn't as though Chas really cared what the police reports he'd heard via radio were saying about him, but the term 'runaway' seemed almost derogatory in its finality. Like that was all he ever would be in life; just another statistic, another loser with a sad story to tell.

I'm not running away, he told himself – assured himself – for the tenth time that day, as he climbed back into his father's 'borrowed' old Nova and set his prize of fast-food on the passenger seat. I'm running towards something. I just haven't figured out what that is yet.

It would probably help more if he actually believed in that.

He set off again in his customary no-direction-in-particular and tuned in to the first Illinoisan station he could find, as was routine now – best to stay well informed. The reports he'd been following had gradually dwindled over his four day absence; the Chicago police department were looking for a seventeen year old boy, five foot seven, with brown eyes and distinctive brown curls, last seen dressed in black Vans and casual attire following an argument with his parents on March twenty-fourth. His mother was sick with worry, his father distraught, and both wanted nothing more than for their only son to come home safely.

He might have laughed over that last part had he not been so consumed with bitter fury at the lie. Worrying his parents? He was probably just pissing them off. He'd been surprised that his absence had been noticed at all, let alone so soon.

And he was five foot eight, for Christ's sake.

There was nothing on him at all today, which came as no great surprise given the sheer size of his ex-hometown and its crime rates; and about time, too, since the misshapen sock that proudly concealed his cash supply was now so alarmingly skinny that in comparison to a lumpy motel bed his back seats hadn't looked so uncomfortable for the past two nights. Getting some kind of a job now could and would be his number one priority.

Not yet, though. For now he had time to enjoy his fries at the roadside, the towering trees of some vast coniferous forest on one side and open, uncultivated plains on the other. Yes, Montana certainly seemed a nice enough place to start a new life.

He wasn't particularly bothered when the clouds that had been roiling and churning in the distance began to twist in and hide what had been promising to be a pretty sunset. He was no poet, after all. The rain that soon followed was of no concern to him either. He sort of liked how cosy it felt to be shut up away from it as it pounded on the roof, ran down the windscreen in little snaking rivers. And whoa, you'd never get lightning like that in Illinois. What a show. It looked pretty close too, the thunder barely half a second behind the flashes.

It was when the howling wind began to rattle the car, and those brilliant flashes became blinding, the thunder directly overhead, that Chas's exhilaration curdled into fear. Did Montana get tornados? His overactive imagination was quick to provide visions of the Nova being carried fifty feet in the air, him trapped and screaming inside as they were spun higher and higher before the earth rushed up to meet them...

Holy shit, he was not going to die in a tornado.

Within an instant the engine was on, the fog lights at maximum intensity, and he was gripping the steering wheel racing through what looked and felt like a waterfall. The windscreen wipers were squeaking rhythmically – and badly, for it was audible even over the pounding of the rain – whipping backwards and forwards over the interminable sheets of water that blocked all but three feet in front of the bonnet. By the glow of the dashboard his finger found the radio's switch, but all that came through this time was static.

Best freaking storm warning I could ask for, he cursed his stupidity, shutting it off and returning his eyes to the circle of lit tarmac ahead of him. How had he let this happen? How did a clear evening sky turn into the thunderstorm from hell within so short a time space?

One second there was nothing but the asphalt ahead of him, the repetition of the wipers across the windscreen, his own white-knuckled hands clutching the chunky wheel.

The next there was a moose. Not a little deer, not even a stag. A nine-hundred-pound, two metre tall, antler-clad moose.

Chas had all of about half a second to register the sudden, gigantic bulk ahead, to catch the languorous raise of that massive head, even less to jerk the wheel.

And jerk it did. Before he could so much as open his mouth to scream, he was flung across his seat towards the right hand side of the car, then yanked back with neck-breaking force as the seatbelt did its job whilst the Nova spun a full 180 degrees over the slick road surface. The tree came out of nowhere; with a second heart-stopping jolt that smacked him face first against the steering wheel the two collided, the car's nose crumpling itself around its trunk with sickening metallic screeches and the shriek of shattering glass.

The tree and the car reached a stalemate, and, settling for a compromise, both held their positions, managed to cease their battle, and settle into a silence that the storm ignored.

Chas came around slowly, then with a startled cry as recollection dawned, a cry that was almost instantly strangled off by the burning rawness in his throat. He forced his panicked, convulsive body to still before twitching one wrist experimentally, then the other, and both his legs. It hurt, fuck, it hurt, but nothing felt broken or – bile rose in his mouth, ferrous and salty with the taste of blood – severed. The steady drumming of the rain above him helped restore some sense of orientation, of which way he should place his feet so that they would find solid ground. The odd sense of vertigo was strange, new, and crippling.

With a click, he released himself from the snares of the seatbelt, only able to weakly hiss out a scream of agony as its edges recoiled from the depth of his skin. There were little crystals of glass everywhere that tinkled to the floor as he moved, but amazingly, he seemed relatively unharmed. Fighting dizziness and aiming a kick in what he thought was the general direction of the door to open it, he limped out into the rain, gripping the twisted frame to steady himself as the mossy forest floor threatened to make friends with his face. He turned to survey the extent of the damage.

Oh. Shit.

It was pretty much totalled. The front bonnet was so deformed that the rusted Vauxhall insignia on its tip was almost in contact with one of the crooked wing mirrors. On circling the wreck, incredulity frozen on his bloodless face, it looked like just about every piece of metal that could have been bent was bent – and what wouldn't bend had been broken into a thousand pieces that glittered and sparkled in the torrential downpour.

Chas observed all of this very calmly, very distantly. Took a deep breath through his nose. And another. He listened to the clinking of the rain on the crumpled roof, felt the water in the saturated soil seep through his shoes and slowly up his socks and trouser legs. He heard the now distant thunderclouds clashing, bit down on his lip and squeezed his eyes shut. Then, with a roar, and speed that sent an undulating ribbon of water droplets flying from his soaked jacket, he whacked the crinkled car body with all the fury he possessed and screamed a string of profanities to the laden, miserable night sky above him, cursing every moose, every cloud and every Nova in existence to an eternity of endless pain and suffering in the innermost circles of Hell until he swayed where he stood.

His eyes stung – from the effort of his exertions, of course – and his vision blurred – only from the rain – and there was an odd sound coming from somewhere inside his chest that was convulsively wracking his body. Sort of like a sob. How ridiculous.

Up ahead were two little pinpricks of illumination bobbing and wavering on the slick surface of the road, dilating. Dancing.

So now he was seeing stars. That was great, just fucking great.

They were getting closer, and stronger, whatever they were. Since when did imaginary orbs of light physically hurt your eyes? It was then that Chas regained some grip on reality and realised, belatedly, how stupid his first assumptions had been. They were headlights! He was saved!

"Hey!" he cried, stumbling forward in the darkness and trying to lift his arms. "HEY!"

It was a black, nondescript sedan, he could now see – and he really, really hoped it was just the spiralling of colours across his vision from the head rush that was making it look like it was travelling faster than it actually was. It had to stop, it had to!

"HEY!" he broke into a feeble jog and limped forward as fast as he could. "Stop!" he tripped and fell, but shoved himself back on his feet and pushed away the pain of his now grazed knees, staggering onwards against the glittering sparks that filled his sight. The blood pumping in his ears was so disorientating! "STOP!"

He reached the edge of the road just as the sedan did, rolling up next to him and coming to a standstill with the artful creak of a machine that's seen at least thirty good years of asphalt. Chas, spluttering and gasping, gripped the cool slippery metal of its bonnet to steady him and pulled himself along to the driver's window. He caught a glimpse of his pitiful reflection in the glass, the sopping curls matted to his forehead, the cuts and scratches on his cheeks, the blood caked down his temple, before the window was stiffly and mechanically wound down. The driver gave up half way, and settled for just glaring at Chas over the top of it.

Glaring. Glaring. Like Chas was inconveniencing him by having survived his horrific, traumatising ordeal and now being well on the way to hypothermia.

"Sir," Chas was almost too winded to get the words out. "Thank you, thank you... I didn't think... I thought... I..." Some combination of the lack of oxygen, the multiple bashes to the head, and the impatient, contemptuous dark flints of the man's eyes had him unexpectedly tongue-tied. He made to try again, but the sedan driver beat him to it, in a voice that was low and brooding, interlaced with some underlying arrogance.

"Car trouble?"

It wasn't said with concern, or sympathy; in fact, there was almost some sadistic impatience amongst the otherwise hostile physiognomy of his features. Chas attempted to compose himself.

"My car, it– there was this moose, or– or something, and it just came at me out of nowhere, and I tried to swerve to avoid it but I skidded, and then suddenly there's this tree in front of me, and I couldn't stop it and we hit..."

The man raised a sardonic eyebrow.

"I'm lucky to be alive," Chas added, with instinctive adolescent defiance before he could stop himself, irritated and maybe a little petulant at the stranger's lack of heart. Then he sighed, remembering his gratitude, and moulded his expression into what he supposed was just the right balance between sheepishness and vulnerability, continuing before the man had a chance to get a word in. "Look, sir, I'm sure you've got somewhere to be and all but I'd really, really appreciate it if you could just run me into town or something, please?" As the man continued to look indifferent and unswayed, he added on the same breath, "I'll pay you, or something. Anything. Please, I'm begging you here, man, seriously."

For one terrible moment Chas feared his imploring words had left the stranger unmoved, but then, with a resigned huff and a glance in the boy's wet, miserable-looking direction, he caved, and Chas smelled victory.

"Get in, kid."

The upward curve of Chas's lips was only a facsimile of his usual sparkly-eyed grin, but given the night's circumstances it was enough to restore some cheer into his heart. "I'll be right back!" he called, then, ignoring the man's irascible muttering to himself, jogged back to the wreckage of the Nova to retrieve what little he had that was worth retrieving. He popped the trunk – one hard punch was suffice – and located the rucksack he'd more or less been living out of, slung it over one shoulder. The sock where his pathetic cash supply had been living in luxury was stowed under the curling protective lining of carpet; he tucked it into his jacket pocket, then raced back to the old car before its owner could change his mind – which, given the grim look on the guy's face as Chas got in and slammed the door behind him, could have been a definite possibility.

He didn't really care. He was out of the rain in a warm shelter, and his chances of being in dry socks before dawn seemed far more likely. His outlook on life was considerably improved.

"Thanks again for the ride, I'd've been stuck there all night," he flashed his rescuer a wide grin, to make up for the man's obvious discomfort – an understatement – with the situation, though it fell a little when he realised that the guy's attention was elsewhere, focused on coaxing the idle old engine back to life. The storm continued to roil overhead, still sending lashes of rain across the windshield, though now there were intermittent periods where moonlight shone through, casting the man's face in pale, delicate illumination. His eyes were dark, Chas noticed, appearing as black in the insufficient light, like his hair, as dishevelled and unkempt as the simple black-suit-white-shirt attire he sported. His skin was sort of sallow, sickly pallor, with dark circles ringing those haunting eyes. He was striking, really.

"I'm Chas, by the way, Chas– Kramer." He caught himself just in time, risked a quick look in his companion's direction to check he hadn't picked up on the slip. He doubted many people this far out would have heard of the story of his disappearance, even less likely have remembered his name off the top of their head, but it wasn't worth the risk. His mother's maiden name was no trouble to remember anyway.

If the dark-eyed man had noticed his hesitation, he didn't comment. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, picking up speed, then glanced at his passenger.

"Constantine," he offered, reluctantly, it seemed to Chas. "John Constantine."

Fitting. A strange name for a strange stranger. "Then thanks, John."

Disclaimer: I own nothing, and I make no profit from this.

With hugs and thanks to my Beta, KsandraMallan!

Thank you for reading, and please leave a review if you have any comments or constructive criticisms. Chapter Two is on it's way...