A/N: Well here's the first chappie, guys! Hope y'all enjoy! Make sure to R&R! Advanced critique (or any sort of critique, really ;-) ) encouraged!

Before She Goes

Several Months Earlier

It was strange, really, although not exactly unexpected. Chas, Chas Kramer, an angel, or technically, a half-angel. A half-breed. God really did have one hell of a sense of humor.

Walking across the crisp green grass of the graveyard towards the exit, the infamous John Constantine popped a fresh stick of nicotine gum into his mouth, musing. It made sense, really; if anyone deserved it, it was that kid. Always there, always wanting in on the action, always "apprenticing" to the greatest extent that John would allow. Now, he'd always be just where he'd always wanted to be: smack dab in the middle.

"You did good, kid," he'd said to Chas, to his grave, and now the words held an even deeper meaning. The kid hadn't just done good; he'd done very good, very very good, good enough to be promoted to the ranks of angel on Earth.

And it was one less ghost following him around, one less death to prey on John's conscience, mind, and heart. At least Chas had ended up perfectly fine. He'd received God's grace to the greatest extent possible, although at the cost of death, it almost wasn't worth it. Almost.

That kid should've stayed up in heaven, John thought, but only halfheartedly. If this was what he wanted to do, all power to him.

Besides, now, with Gabriel gone both psychotic and human, he'd need another "in" from Heaven to clue him in now and again. The kid would work wonders.

The kid could assure him Beeman and Hennessy were up in Heaven, right where they belonged.

Constantine drove up to the front of his building in the school-bus-yellow taxicab that had once been Chas's. The taxi's medallion, the taxi itself, Chas had bought it all himself. And in the Will he'd had the foresight to make, he'd left them both to John.

Constantine got out of the car and shut the door, not even bothering to acknowledge the irony of the words "City of Angels" written across it.

Of course they'd forgotten the "Demons" part.

He spit the gum out of his mouth, off to the side into the gutter. He then made his way onto and along the gray asphalt sidewalk, black leather shoes clacking softly against the ground. As he made his way around the cherry red front of the building, the blue, yellow, and blue again "Bowl, Bowl, Bowl" written along the right side of the wall wasn't even acknowledged. Had he been able to see the neon "Bowl, Bowl, Bowl" flashing from above him, he wouldn't have taken any notice of that, either. He'd seen this same exact sight countless times before.

John rounded the corner, moving past the establishment's original, catchy title, and entered. Up the stairwell he went, and ta-da, here we was. Home sweet home. It wasn't a suite, but it was fairly large and it wasn't a shithole either. It was a decent place to live.

Beeman had once been here too, his office in the guts of the institution, behind the bowling alleys. The memory of his death by Balthazar's hand was still fresh in Constantine's mind.

He came up the creaky steps to the second floor, the one on which he lived. And here was his apartment door, brown with protective markings and words carved into the rim surrounding the door. Through the dark wood, he could hear the phone ringing. For just how long it had been ringing, though, he had absolutely no idea. For all John knew, it was the Pope calling for the seventeenth time to officially declare him a saint, and with this call, it was it. Bye, bye immortalization and worshippers. Right.

Damn, he really needed to get a cell phone.

Taking his key out, he quickly unlocked the door, shutting it behind him and moving to his right towards the wall that served as a kitchen, with shelves coated with things like plastic cups, containers, glass jars, paper napkins, pots, pans, and a metal lamp, a stove, and a large white refrigerator. There, directly beside the door, on the very wall of which the door was a part, was a white, corded phone.

Without so much as opening the shades of the windows that spanned the length of the entire apartment, water cooler bottles of holy water lining the wall underneath, John picked up the phone, although who was calling him, he had no idea. His latest escapade saving the world from Mammon had put a severe damper on his list of friends.

"Hello?" he said into the phone, picking up the receiver just before the answering machine would have spoken for him.

"John?" Was it Angela?

"Angela?"

"Yeah, I just wanted to call and tell you I'm back from, you know."

"Don't say anymore. The rules-"

"The rules, yeah."

There was a silence then, one in which both Angela and Constantine had a plethora of things to say, and one in which neither could say any of them.

"So," Angela began, "do you want me to stop by? I have work tomorrow, and today's probably the soonest I could manage for a while."

"Sure," John replied.

"Okay. I'll be over in an hour or so?"

"All right. See you then."

"Bye."

"Bye."

He hung the phone up, but then he looked at it contemplatively as it sat silently in its cradle. To his own surprise, he found himself with a small smile on his face as he did so.

John stepped away from the phone and turned, walking on the brown and white tiled floor, past the old, dark brown wooden table directly beside the wall that was his kitchen, past the entrance to the bathroom, past the short dresser, and past the large, wood-supported sliding screen door behind it.

Soon, he was there, in his "bedroom," not really a room of its own but a part of the giant room that was the apartment when the sliding door wasn't extended across. His bed, currently covered by a burnt caramel coverlet with creamy white designs, was there, its head and the bedside table next to it obscured from view by the sliding door. John completely ignored the short, red armchair in the far left corner of the apartment, across from the bed, but moved past it, to his bed. He ignored the wide variety of books on the shelves on the wall. Instead, he lay down on his back, his head resting on his hands atop his pillow.

Although the memories of dead comrades nagged at him, pressed at his mind and heart, for just a few minutes, he let himself reminisce about a happier time:

It had been three days since Angela and John last met on the roof of John's building, the one in which John had given Angela the Spear of Destiny, and Angela had finally figured out what to do with it. She'd already called her the Department and informed them of her immediate 2-week leave of absence to mourn after her sister; she'd already called the Airline and booked her flights. No, not one flight; she would be far too easy to trace then. She'd booked multiple ones to multiple places in order to throw off anyone trying to find the Spear. After all, for all anyone knew, every single one of these flights was a diversion, and she'd hidden the thing in L.A.

She'd called her friends and told them she was going away, and had her parents still been alive, she would have called them as well.

Now there was only one thing left to do: bid John farewell, at least for a little while.

After all, she couldn't have him thinking a vicious half-breed had killed her in his quest for the blood of Christ.

True, she could have called him; after all, she was a cop. It wasn't exactly difficult to acquire his phone number; she'd found where he lived, after all. But for some reason, she preferred the face-to-face approach.

Parking her black SUV in front of the Bowling Alley atop which Constantine lived, behind the taxicab that she'd been told once belonged to Chas Kramer—the boy who'd been killed trying to save her and prevent hell on Earth—Angela got out of her car, shutting and locking the door behind her. Today she wore simple blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black leather jacket, her cell phone in her pocket. Her badge and gun were in places of easy access. Her auburn, subtly highlighted hair was up, out of her way. On her feet were black Nike sneakers, the same ones she'd gotten soaked in John's bathtub during her "crash course" in hell, and in her hands was a purse of Earth-colored designs, one that her hands clutched over-protectively. In this purse was an object, a dagger, covered by a cloth.

After taking a deep breath, she made her way into the building, up to John's apartment.

Why was her heart beating so fast? Why was she nervous? This was ridiculous. Yet it was also somehow thrilling and amusing and new and old all at once.

Chuckling at herself, she made her way up the stairwell, the purse clutched tightly in her hands. However, when she reached Constantine's door, all signs of mirth vanished. This was it.

After taking another deep breath, she knocked on the door.

Inside, Constantine had just finished a bath; the tub was only recently fixed after Angela's return from hell had demolished it, and he was in the middle of drying off his hair with a towel. Of course, this was the exact moment when someone came a knock-knock-knockin' at his chamber door.

"Perfect," he muttered, loving the timing just ever so much. Who'd be here now, anyway? The top three people to ever visit him were dead, and half-breeds from heaven didn't come to visit.

Constantine threw his blue towel onto the floor. He made his way over to the bureau right outside the entrance to the bathroom, and took out a pair of boxers and a pair of black pants. He proceeded to slide them both on quickly, and just then the knock came again.

"All right, all right, Jesus," he said, loudly enough to be heard through the door, and moved towards the front door as he finished doing up his pants. The moment he was done, he walked to his door and reached for the doorknob. He opened the door a crack. "Angela," he said in surprise. He hadn't been expecting to see her there, that was for sure.

"John, hi," she smiled. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, and stepped back, pulling the door open.

Angela stepped inside, and only now did she realize that he was shirtless.

Now Angela wasn't exactly a naïve and innocent babe, but this was still awkward. Her gray eyes, at times green or blue depending on the lighting, glanced down and then back up.

"If this is a bad time…"

"No, it's fine," he assured her, and although a part of him felt like asking her whether she really wanted him to put on a shirt, he decided not to say anything of the sort. "I'll just get a shirt on." John walked again towards his bureau, pulled out the left middle drawer—there were six drawers in total, three on the left, three on the right—and took out a white cotton shirt. He placed his left arm in the sleeve. "So what brings you here?" he asked, turning to face her as he got the second sleeve on.

"I'm going away for two weeks," she informed him, her right hand resting on her purse. "The Spear-"

"I don't need to hear anymore," and Angela didn't continue. John now had four buttons done up, and he continued on to the fifth.

"I just thought I'd tell you, so you didn't think I'd been kidnapped again, or that someone stole the Spear of Destiny."

"Well thanks for the info," Constantine said, and he finished buttoning up his shirt. "I'd offer you something to drink, but I don't really have much. Haven't really had much time to go out shopping."

"It's fine; I'm really not that thirsty."

John moved over to his kitchen table, pulling out a chair and sitting down. He motioned to the seat opposite himself, and she moved to sit down. "So, what time's your flight?"

Angela got herself settled in the chair, pulled it up to the table and placed the purse on its smooth surface.

"Early tomorrow, at seven. It seemed to me I'd be safer in the daylight."

"Probably," he agreed.

For a while, the two just talked. Not about anything in particular, really; a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

"When we were little, my sister and I would play a game with cards," Angela told John at one point. "She'd take a card or I would, and we'd guess what card the other had. We never guessed wrong. Sometimes our parents would try, but they never guessed right, and Izzy and I would just laugh. Izzy and I were never wrong with them, either. They always thought we peeked."

Constantine shared a story of his own.

"My parents never really did know what to do with me, but they weren't always bad. When I was a kid, really little, they'd take me out for drives out of the city, away from people. I don't really remember where we went, but I could almost forget what I saw every day when they did that; there weren't any half-breeds around to remind me."

He didn't mention his sister.

However, as always happened, all good things had an end. This was no exception. Although she'd come over at five, it was already 10:40. When John had turned on the lights because of the growing darkness outside, Angela had known she should leave. When he found them something to eat and drink, she'd known it even more. Now she it was a definite necessity. She just didn't feel comfortable carrying the Spear of Destiny around at night, and that was just what she'd have to do now.

"I have to go," Angela said at last, getting up to leave. "It's getting late, and I need to make sure I have everything together for tomorrow. Some sleep would be good too."

"Sure," John replied, and he got up and moved to the door, opening it. His jet-black hair had dried in a rather ruffled mess, although not that badly.

He turned to look at Angela, just as she was approaching. Once again, they ended up within mere inches of each other as she stepped forward, over to the door, she looking up at him as he looked down on her.

Angela said quietly, "So, I'll see you when I get back, then."

Just as quietly, John responded, "Sounds like a plan."

A moment in which the two did nothing but stare into or at each other's eyes and lips and faces came again. Angela explored Constantine's stoic features, the brown eyes, soft pink lips, and the bristles of a beard growing back. What was this, 10 o'clock shadow? He examined her expressive eyes and lipsticked red mouth, her cheeks with the permanent slight blush.

Angela turned her face away first, moving her right hand towards the edge of the door to pull it out farther.

Suddenly, Constantine grabbed that arm, pulling it gently away from the wood and towards him, up near their chests.

"John?" Angela asked softly, looking up at him again, her visage the picture of puzzlement.

What the hell am I doing? he asked himself, but since when did he listen to himself, anyway?

He said nothing for a moment, only continued to stare at her.

And once more. "John?"

And this time he did do something. This time he angled his face down; this time he kissed her.

Angela's shock lasted only a moment before she returned the embrace in full. The arm he'd grabbed, she slid it down and replaced her mid-arm with her hand, linking their fingers together. Her left hand moved to his back, and his right did very much the same to hers, pulling her close.

As they pulled back for breath, their foreheads pressed together, Constantine said, just above a whisper, "I don't really want you to go."

"I don't really want to leave," she answered, her voice the same volume as his.

But she had to, and she knew it. So did he.

And so, she walked out the door.

"I'll see you when I get back?" she said, looking at him from the hall, her right hand resting on the purse slung over her shoulder.

Constantine stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe with the door obscuring a good part of him.

"It's a date."