Title: A Night of Blood and Iron.
Rating: I'd give it a 14A for the swearing and suicidal themes.
Disclaimer: I wish they were mine, but sadly we all know they aren't.
Summary: Ever wonder how John and Chas met? Me too.
The whiskey left a fiery trail down the throat of the young kid who was sitting alone in the park. He was staring off into the distance as the moon slanted through the chain linked fence and onto the pale face leaning against the slide.
"'s my birthday," he said as if he had come to the conclusion to a hitherto unsolvable philosophical question, then let out a rancorous laugh that startled a pigeon into flight. His hands shook as he took another swig of the alcohol, stolen conveniently from his father's supply. It wasn't like it was going to be missed anyways; the old man would be too piss drunk to notice it was gone.
"Like father, like son," he slurred out and laughed again, causing the pigeon to glare balefully at him. Besides, it wouldn't matter if the old fucker got sober enough to see that some of his precious comatose inducers were gone, not after this.
He hadn't always seen them either, not until the old man came home one night completely shitfaced and beat him within an inch of his life. Then he started seeing things. A flickering of wings at the edge of his eye, or someone's face i melting /i , but he'd blink and everything would be back to normal. It became his mantra, normal, he'd think, Normal, normal, normal, as if repeating it over and over would make it true.
It was like watching a horror movie that scared the shit out of you, then waking up the next morning to find that the people you cowered from in the movie were real, that you could see them. And they could see you.
One day he blinked, and the face was still there, melting. His breath came in little stuttering gasps and he felt something warm running down his leg. It was the second grade substitute teacher, the one you're suppose to make fun of, and play tricks on like switching names with your best friend. You still trusted them though, with a child's innocence. Mr. McKauly, Mr. McKauly and his melting face. The boy screamed.
He was still crying and gasping out that insane story when his mother came down to the school to pick him up. It was an insane story that stayed with him until he learned that it was better to just not tell anyone about the person they're sitting beside. But by then, it was too late. His mom would cry in her room at night, praying for her little boy, and his dad… His dad would drown out his sorrows in the nearest bar. Their money drowned too.
Ten years. Ten years of priests coming to bless him and psychologists picking his head apart. All of them figured that he was insane, and if everyone believes that you're insane, even if you're not, you will be.
Except that last priest, a corner of his mind said, he was different.
What he wanted was silence. To silence his wailing mother, to silence the roaring drunk he called dad, to silence the people picking apart his brain and the priest who would stand there and fucking chant until his head hurt.
The teen held something metallic that threw the moon's light back at it, refracting around a barrel, a trigger. Something else conveniently stolen from his dear old dad. He caressed it in the moonlight, letting his fingers slide over the smooth surface like it was a lover. In a way it was, he was courting death.
With a sigh, he put the gun aside and picked up the knife he had bought years ago – just in case. He didn't like the thought of his brains smeared all over the place, especially since this was a kid's park. A surprisingly lucid thought considering how little was left in the whiskey bottle. He liked the look of blood. It was real, something of his that he'd be able to see leak out of his body bit by painful bit.
What he meant to say was: I hope you get some peace now, mother but it came out as "I hope you'll shut up now, you stupid bitch".
Metal gleamed as his wrist and the knife were brought clumsily together, two lovers who hadn't seen each other in years meeting in the park, relearning how to touch. He hissed at the pain as a line cut right over the spot it needed to. The blood began to pool.
He'd missed the footsteps coming closer and the slight inhalation when his knife pierced the skin. What he couldn't miss though, was the voice right above him saying, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
The man scowled at the paper in his hand and turned to see if he was on the right street. Father Hennessy had called him in the middle of the night, saying there was a sixteen year old kid missing, and his frantic mother had called him, begging for help.
"I'm not the fucking lost and found, I work with demons. What the hell does this have to do with me?"
"John," he paused, "I saw him once before, when his mother asked me to. She said he was insane and asked me to bless him. When I went to see him, he seemed like a normal teenage boy, but he claims to see angels," here he paused again, "and demons. His father's gun is missing."
There was silence commuting its way across the phone line, and it was deafening.
"Fuck. Alright, I'll come. What's the address?"
John snarled as he slammed down the phone and his past jumped on him in a smothering heap. Not again. Humanity is a pile of stinking horse shit, but he wasn't going to let another kid be damned for the same reason he was.
He saw the bulky form of Father Hennessy walking towards him at a hurried pace.
"His mother said that he spends a lot of his time at a park near here, down that alleyway a couple blocks," he managed to gasp out when they were close enough for hearing. "She's guessing that he'd be there."
"Nice to know that I'm a retriever then," John muttered with just the barest touch of sarcasm as he pivoted towards the back street the Father motioned him towards.
"Be careful John," Hennessy, wheezing, called after him.
It was quiet in the back street, or, at least as quiet as it gets in LA. John could hear his shoes hitting the ground in quick succession as he made his way to a possibly – no, probable - suicidal boy. The wind hissed around him, lifting his coat, ruffling his hair and bringing the sound of far off rancorous laughter. His steps now created a cacophonous din as they echoed off the buildings around him, picking up their pace.
Off to the left side, the buildings disappeared as a small park took their place. John strode towards the dark shape huddled near the slide and inhaled sharply at the sight of the boy's knife slicing through flesh.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
The kid jumped slightly and the knife clattered next to him in the gravel. His face turned up towards the voice and he sucked in his breath at the sight of the man standing above him. There was a light shining on his pale skin and seeping through his dark hair; it created such a contrast so as to make him look like a fallen angel. The kid flicked his eyes over the man's shoulder, checking for the telltale sweeping wings, and let out a breath when there were none.
"Who th'hell are you?"
"John Constantine," he said as he crouched down beside the teen. "Chas, right?"
"Yeah. Chas, Chas Chandler asshole."
John smirked slightly and pulled out the piece of cloth he used whenever he started coughing blood.
"C'mere kid," he said darkly in an effort to thwart the teen's attempts to fight him off, "I didn't come halfway across the city in the middle of the night so you can die."
"Go to hell," Chas snarled as John caught his bleeding arm and tied the cloth around it.
"I've already been there you prick, and you'll be having a lovely chat with the fuckin' devil if you don't stop fighting me."
He raised Chas's arm above his head none too gently, and pulled the kid to his feet. Scrawny, he thought, He needs to eat way more.
"We're going to my place. No point in taking you back to people who think you're insane." With that, they startes their slow, shambling walk back to Constantine's black car. Pausing occasionally for Chas to get back on his feet or for him to fall to his knees and vomit up the alcohol. All the while, Constantine held the kid's wrist above his head to keep the pressure even.
"I'm not going to die, am I?" Whispered Chas hoarsely, after his face had a pleasant chat with the concrete.
"No kid, you're not."
"Fuck."
There were three things that Chas noted in quick succession when he first woke up.
The first thing he noticed was the light.
The second thing he noticed was that he was in a bed, and it wasn't his own.
The third thing he noticed was the blinding pain in his head that made him want to die.
A groan escaped his lips, and left him wondering why he'd do this to himself, then remembered that he hadn't planned on being alive to feel this awful.
So where am I then? Hell? He opened his eyes to see the fallen angel guy who'd saved him last night, who was wearing an incredibly pissed of expression on his face. Yeah, he thought, Gotta be Hell.
"You're awake."
"No shit, Sherlock. Mind closing those blinds there? The sun's making my head feel like a soccer ball used in a game of God vs. Satan."
He sat up a bit and took a look around the dingy flat. It wasn't half bad really; it sure as hell beat his mom's place. He liked the wood. He'd always been fond of wood, ever since his parents took him out to a log cabin one summer. That was before his dad started drinking.
John took a long drag on his cigarette and considered the boy lying in his bed. His hair was long, it looked like no one had cared enough to cut it for a good long while. It curled around the edges and framed his pale, and slightly green (no doubt from the massive hangover he was suffering) face, making him look like an angel, albeit a sick one. Do angels get sick? He brushed the random thought aside and got up the close the blinds.
The kid groaned again. "Oh God, don't walk so fuckin' loud," he said in a tortured voice as he buried his head under the pillow.
"It's your own fault kid."
"I wasn't exactly planning on being around to feel like shit, you know," came the muffled voice.
"Go back to sleep. We'll talk when you're not trying to stuff your head into a fucking pillow."
"How'd you find me anyways?"
"Father Hennessy called."
"The fat guy?"
"Yeah."
"So what exactly do you do?"
"Hunt demons."
"Yeah, I kinda figured that. What'd you do after you find the little fuckers?"
"Send their asses right back to Hell."
"Can I help?"
"No."
"Can I watch?"
"No."
"Can I—"
"Shut up and eat your fuckin' cereal."
"Why did you try to kill yourself?"
"Why not? Everyone thought I was crazy. It made sense at the time."
"You're a fucking moron kid."
"Hey!"
"How's your wrist?"
"Itching like a fucking demon is under the scab."
"Good."
"Good? What the fuck man, this is driving me insane."
"Itching means it's healing."
"Great, just great. So I have to deal with a bloody mosquito bite thing…probably has Satan possessing it too."
"You tried to kill yourself didn't you?"
"When I was fifteen."
"And you did, so now you're damned to Hell."
"Such powerful intelligence. I'm blown away."
"That's why you came after me, because you couldn't deal with another insane kid killing himself."
"Go read a book Chas."
"You're asking me to stay here. Why the hell would I want to stay in this fuckin' shit hole?"
"No you asshole, I'm asking if you want to be my apprentice. Staying here comes along with that, otherwise you're back with your parents."
It had been a week since John had dragged Chas unceremoniously from his car and dumped into his bed at three AM in the morning. He even surprised himself by liking the kid; he was intelligent and learned quickly. He'd been considering offering him an apprenticeship for a couple of days now and finally got around it to.
The kid liked the idea of kicking demon ass, he considered it payback for all the years they'd scared him shitless when he was younger. He was still young though, naïve and innocent in spite of events that led him to be mature for his age.
He wasn't half bad either. Didn't bother him too much, besides the fact that while the kid was sleeping in his bed, he had to make do with the couch. He wanted his bed back.
"Fine."
John snapped open his lighter and lit the cigarette in a practiced motion.
"Good. You can start by reading those books, I'll get some more from Beeman in a couple days."
Chas looked at the pile of books stacked hap hazardously in the corner. "Shit man, that's going to take me ages, and you said there's more coming?" He let out a groan which would have rivaled the one he used so often during the hours he had been hung over.
John smiled. A feral smile that told so much and yet so little at the same time.
"You'd better get started."