(Author's note: Thanks to all you who reviewed! I live for those reviews. I send out love and hugs to all you who said nice things.)
John didn't gush or worry or even smile when he saw Chas awake for the first time since the Mammon incident. He seemed to drift in the door, silently, and looked his old friend up and down, a glint of affection in his eyes.
"Hey, kid," he rasped. "You look like hell." The humor was plain in his eyes and voice, but not on his face. Chas understood, and grinned.
"Good to see you too, John." He pushed himself up on bed, surprising himself at his own weakness. He had only been out for a few days, but he had already lost several pounds and his muscles were unused to moving. He was a little on the thin side anyway, but now he just looked scrawny and a little boney.
"You feeling better?" he asked gruffly, trying to maintain his manly exterior. Chas shrugged.
"Not bad. I probably just needed a chance to sleep a full night without being woken up to chauffer for an exorcism," he said pointedly, smiling. He tried to stretch out his underworked muscles, and ended up tangled in his IV and electrodes, which he pulled off, easing the needle gingerly from his skin. The heartrate monitor flatlined as he disconnected himself from it. He laughed gently.
"Check it out, John, I'm dead!"
"Not funny, Chas." John was suddenly serious. It was hard to tell the difference, but Chas had figured it out. He leaned forward conspiratorially. "You were dead, for a minute there." Chas couldn't think of a thing to say. "What do you remember?"
"Remember?" Chas thought for a moment. "I remember… saving Angela, then something grabbing me… a hell of a headache… and then it just all went black." His brows were furrowed in concentration. John let out a breath impatiently.
"Yes, and then?" he asked.
"There's nothing after that. Nothing until I woke up, I mean. But there's this… its stupid, it was probably a dream."
"What?" John asked gently.
"I remember music. Not like normal music, like… a chorus of surreal voices. No human choir could have sounded that beautiful. I don't think human ears could even hear it right, actually. It was… indescribable." His eyes lit up as he remembered, and a smile of wonderment played at his lips.
John really smiled this time. It was a rare occurrence.
"Good," was all he said. They were silent for a time, until Chas shook himself out of wondering reminiscence.
"So when am I gonna get out of here?" He said with a hint of whine in his voice. He would have walked out the door an hour before if not for his lack of real clothes and the forceful persuasion of some of the larger nurses.
"They want to run some tests before they'll let you out. It shouldn't take too long." John suppressed a small smile. "While you were asleep I'd forgotten how annoying you were."
"Yeah, yeah," Chas drawled. "Lets get the hell out of here."
John was about to remind him of the tests, when he realized how much he hated hospitals. "Fair enough. Lets go."
"Um… hey John, you didn't bring me any clothes, did you? There's no way I'm going out there in just this paper thing," Chas said, gesturing to the flimsy hospital gown. John rolled his eyes and tossed his long trenchcoat to him. Chas threw it around his shoulders and followed John down the hall to the elevator.
"Hold the elevator!" called John futilely. The doors were already starting to close, and no one made any effort to keep them open. The woman standing at the front smiled shyly and looked down.
Chas knew that face. It was a feeling akin to déjà vu, and equally as unsettling. She was about his age, he thought. Maybe she had gone to school with him or something. He knew instinctively that this was not the case. Something had been… different about her, too. He couldn't quite put his finger on it.
As the doors closed completely, John smacked his hand against them angrily.
"Would it have killed them to squeeze two more on?" he raged to no one in particular.
"Hey, John, did you notice that woman standing at the front? The one with the red hair?"
"Huh?" Constantine grunted. "I didn't notice anything but the closing damn doors, Chas."
"Its just that she seemed… different…" he murmured inarticulately. "Sort of… unreal-looking." John just grinned and rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, well you just recovered from a major head trauma, Chas. Don't think too hard."
When they reached the parking lot, John gestured to a certain, very familiar, car.
"You got my cab?" Chas said, surprised. He glanced up at the elder man, who looked expectant.
"Oh no. No, you can't be serious," Chas breathed. "I just came out of a goddamn coma, John!"
"You told me you felt fine."
"I don't have my license with me."
"Then don't get pulled over," John grinned, forgetting himself and reaching for a non-existent cigarette.
Grumbling to himself, Chas got behind the wheel. "I was crazy to think anything would change. I only helped save Angela's life!"
"Yes. And then you were killed temporarily and sank into a coma for four days." John drawled, throwing himself into the passenger seat. "They cancel each other out."
When they reached John's place, he offered to let Chas stay for a few days until he got himself together, but he waved it off. He needed to go see his landlady anyway, and explain why he hadn't been home in four days. Besides, it would feel good to be back at his own place, in his own bed. No matter how much of a shithole it was.
Chas' apartment consisted of a main room and a bathroom. The main room contained a fridge, a microwave, a bed, a small T.V. set, and shelves upon shelves of books. The floor creaked and the ceiling leaked. He strongly suspected rats or mice inhabited the building. But on a preoccupied cab driver's salary, it was pretty good.
The first thing he did upon stepping out of the car was swear the filthiest obscenities he knew, loudly and repeatedly. On the curb, drooping dejectedly, sat three big cardboard boxes full of books, both ancient and modern. Another box contained all his notes. It had rained while he had been out. The book pages were wrinkled and floppy, and the ink had run on all his notes. Thankfully, however, the garbage truck hadn't come to pick them up. This didn't make Chas feel any better.
After an angry screaming match with his landlady he found that she had also pawned several of his belongings and put out an ad for a new tenant. Fuming, he began lugging his books back into his place. One of the boxes had grown too flimsy from the wetness and tore like tissue paper under the weight, spilling onto the dirty street. Chas swore even more vehemently and bent to pick them up.
A delicate hand joined his, picking up a particularly valuable copy of Dante's Inferno, and helping him collect the scattered volumes. He grunted a thanks to the stranger without looking up. As he struggled to collect all the volumes, his hand met with his benefactor's over a copy of Nostradamus' prophecies. He glanced up at the owner of the hand, and found his gaze transfixed.
He was staring into the ocean-coloured eyes of the woman from the hospital elevator. They met his with polite distance at first, which gave way to uneasiness as he studied her face mutely, transfixed and fascinated, as déjà vu chilled his insides as it had at the hospital. She broke his gaze hastily with a hint of panic, and shoved the books she had collected into his arms, turning and walking at a fast clip in the opposite direction.
"Wait!" he called to her, but she turned into an alleyway and disappeared, leaving him standing stupidly in the middle of the street with an armful of soggy books. Her image was burned into his mind, teasing him with a mixture of fascination and nervousness. Her red hair had been slightly damp from the rain a few hours before, coming just below her shoulders. She had been wearing a halter top, despite the chilly gray afternoon. Barebacked. Odd.
He spent the rest of the day rebuilding his ravaged apartment and salvaging the books as best he could. He borrowed a hairdryer from a neighbor and painstakingly dried eack book, preserving most of the print. Most of his notes were completely illegible. He cursed his landlady to the deepest circle of hell.
His efforts took him well into the night. Despite his yearning earlier in the day, his bed didn't feel as good as he had imagined. Sleep was reluctant coming, and he resisted it a little, thinking of the long sleep he had recently endured. At five thirty, when he finally lost consciousness for a few tentative hours, his last thought was of the gentle faced woman with the auburn curls and eyes the colour of cloud-teased sky.