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setaripendragon · 1 year ago

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Cress - Part 5

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 I think this was probably my favourite part to write, honestly. I did so much unnecessary research into Constantine's family tree to make the timeline make sense. I now have the entire Constantine lineage plotted out in a notebook somewhere. I'm probably never going to use it for anything, but I have it! =D John Constantine does not want to deal with this shit.

John is not having a great day. He’d started it hungover, and then his ex had dropped the spawn off round at his apartment because she had some emergency come up, so he’d been forced to turn down a job of his own. Which was not ideal, given his finances were not in the best of states. Then he’d panicked because Joanna was getting into all his magical tomes and cursed shit, and getting his daughter cursed would just be the rotten cherry on top of the already shitty cake of his life.

So having the doorbell ring out of the fucking blue right when he’s trying to convince the spawn to lie down for a fucking nap is perfectly in line with how this day is going. That is to say; bad. It makes him want to lie face-down on the floor and never get up again. “Right,” he tells Joanna. “You stay there, I’ll be right back.” He says it out of wishful thinking more than any real expectation of her doing what she’d told. She is, after all, his daughter.

He goes and opens the door – because he might as well get the next awful thing over and done with – to find some random bloke on his doorstep. He’s wearing a smart dove grey blazer over a t-shirt and fancy jeans, which makes him look like both a rich businessman and an asshole. It does not endear him to John at all. Neither does the fact that he’s actually kind of handsome when John looks past the rich asshole clothes. “Wot?” he asks, very flatly.

“Uh, are you Constantine?” the guy asks, which is not good. People who ask for him by just his last name are always looking for some kind of magic shit, and John is trying not to do too much magic shit around Joanna. It’s dangerous, for one thing, and also he’d rather his daughter didn’t follow him into this shit line of work.

“Not today,” John says flatly, but then adds, “come back next week,” because he can’t turn the fucker away entirely. He needs the money. Even if rich twats and magic are never a good combo. He’d suggest tomorrow, except Dani didn’t say how long this supposed ‘emergency’ of hers is supposed to last. Better to make it a week.

The man on his doorstep sighs like the delay of a mere week is enough of a disappointment to crush the air from his lungs, his eyes falling closed and shoulders slumping in tired resignation. John’s stupid fucking bleeding heart decides now is a good time to remind him it exists. And he’d been doing such a good job at forgetting it was there, too. “Oh, fucking fine,” he huffs, crossing his arms and leaning against the jamb. “What is it?”

“I’m looking for someone,” the man begins hesitantly, like he’s not sure how best to go on.

John narrows his eyes. “Someone that don’t wanna be found?” he challenges darkly. “Cause I’m gonna need a lot more convincing before I agree to that, mate.”

The man shakes his head quickly. “No, he’s a friend. He missed a date last week, and- Well, I’ve had reason to wonder if he might be in trouble, these last couple of years, and this was the last straw. I just want to make sure he’s okay, that’s all.”

Well… Finding people with magic is generally pretty easy these days, what with most everyone forgetting magic is even a thing that might need to be guarded against. And it’s not usually dangerous to do a quick bit of scrying. At least, not unless you’re trying to peek in on Hell or the Fae Courts or something. So it should be okay to just get this done quick and get paid, even with Joanna in the house.

“I charge an hourly rate plus the cost of any components used in the requested spells, plus hazard pay if whatever you want doing results in potential loss of life or limb,” John informs the guy as a warning, even as he steps back to hold the door open wider; an invitation, just not a verbal one. Just in case.

He crosses the threshold without missing a beat, and none of John’s wards go off, so he’s not possessed or in any kind of magical disguise. Good enough. John herds him into the living room, ignoring the bland reassurances spilling out of the guy’s mouth that money isn’t a problem. As if John hasn’t figured that out for himself, thanks.

Joanna peeks over the back of the couch at them. John raises his eyes to the heavens. “I told you to stay in bed,” he chides. “It’s nap time.”

“No it’s not. It’s work time,” she corrects officiously. “I can help!”

“Sure you can,” John agrees, crouching down in front of the couch to look up at Joanna very seriously. She looks back, wide-eyed and triumphant. “You can help by going and having a nap so you’re not cranky later.”

Joanna scowls fiercely. “I’m not a baby,” she insists.

“No, you’re not. Don’t see what that’s got to do with having a nap. God knows I’d much rather be napping than working, and I’m all grown up and everything.”

“Then you go nap,” Joanna suggests slyly, “and I can do the magic.”

“Not a chance, squirt,” John informs her. “Go on, get. If you’re good and actually get some sleep, I’ll let you see one of the magic books at bedtime, alright? Just one!” he interjects before she can try to wheedle for more.

“Fine,” Joanna sighs, sliding off the couch to stomp back off to the bedroom.

John rolls his eyes again and shoves back to his feet, biting back a groan as his back complains at him. He’s only thirty, for god’s sake, and yet he feels so fucking old. “So, who are we looking for?” John asks as he drops unceremoniously into his favourite armchair, refusing to allow his customer any room to comment on the scene he just saw.

The bloke sits down on the newly vacated couch with a grimace. At first, John thinks he’s just being snotty about the ratty old couch, but then he says “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me,” in a very sheepish sort of voice, and he realises it’s in answer to the question.

“You don’t know your friend’s name?” he demands. Suddenly, he finds himself wondering exactly how much of that sob story the guy spun back on the doorstep was a lie specifically designed to get him through the door.

“He never told me!” the bloke protests, making a very good show of wounded innocence. “And after the fifth time we met up, it seemed a little rude to ask again.”

To be fair, John has admittedly gotten himself caught in a trap like that a time or two, so it’s not entirely implausible. He’s still not sure he believes it, but… God, he just wants this over and done with so he can get paid, and then maybe go have a nap right alongside Joanna. “Alright. Do you have a photo?” he asks.

The guy shakes his head.

“Some clothes of his?”

He shakes his head harder.

“Anything that’s been on his person?”

He hesitates, thinking, before shaking his head again.

“A lock of hair?”

That one wins him a snort and a very droll look.

“Do you have anything I can try to track him with?” John demands, at the very end of his rope and about two seconds away from being entirely done with this farce.

“I was hoping you would,” this fucking guy replies.

Yeah, John’s done. He stands up, and this fucking guy has the nerve to raise his hands in a placating gesture. “What the fuck is your game?”

“No game,” this fucking guy assures him. “I just assumed that, since you’re in the same business as ol’ Lady Jo, you might have some family stories of him. Maybe some family heirloom he gave her for that job he asked her to do? I honestly don’t know, but I’m grasping at straws here, and you’re the best lead I’ve got.”

“Old Lady Jo?” John echoes, not liking where this is going.

His fucking customer gives him a wary look. “You didn’t know your ancestor liked to muck about with the supernatural, too? She made a bit of a name for herself in the late seventeen hundreds.”

John had known that, actually. It was old stories about her, the ones his dad had passed down to him, that had inspired him to start playing with magic in the first place. And even though sometimes he regretted it more than anything, he’d still apparently had enough awe left in his heart to name his daughter after her.

But most of those stories had been set in the eighteen hundreds. The only one he could think of that was supposed to be that early in her life was the one about how she’d won a boon that set her on her course to make the Constantine name one to remember in the world of the occult.

“You’re looking for the Sandman?” John demands incredulously.

“The-” his customer begins, his eyes going very wide in a look of dawning, and faintly outraged, comprehension.

John snorts before he can help himself. “Jesus, you’re clueless,” he mutters, dropping back down into his chair reluctantly. To his surprise, his customer laughs at the comment instead of getting offended. It wins him a little bit of John’s good will back, but he can hardly dwell on it, because he’s coming to an unfortunate set of realisations of his own. He’s re-examining their whole conversation through this new lens of family history coming back to haunt him, and going cold right down to his fucking bones as the pieces click into place.

After all, it’s mid-July right now and the story of how Lady Joanna met the Sandman said that she’d ambushed him at a meeting with his immortal not-Jewish friend at the beginning of July every century. Hells, it’s the right year, too. And this man called the Sandman friend, and said he’d just recently missed a date, and knew about the job he’d tasked John’s ancestor with.“Jesus fucking Christ, I’m clueless,” he breathes in genuine horror at his own carelessness. “You’re him, aren’t you? The Wandering Jew.”

The asshole rolls his eyes. “I’m not-”

“-Jewish,” John finishes for him. “I know, but it’s not like you’ve introduced yourself, either. This time or the last.”

That gets a blink, and then a burst of startled laughter. “Oh, I’m picking up his bad habits now. Sorry. I’m Robert. Gadling, originally, but it’s Golding right now. My friends call me Hob.” He leans forwards to offer John a hand, which he shakes with a distant sense that this might just be the most normal weird thing to ever happen to him. It’s very surreal. “So, back to the issue at hand; can you find him? I mean, ‘the Sandman’ is more of a title than a name, isn’t it? Would that be enough?”

John can only stare at him helplessly. Gadling – should probably think of him as Golding, he probably wouldn’t appreciate his cover being blown by a careless word – stares back, desperate enough that John’s silence doesn’t even deter him. It’s a bit tragic. This blessed fucking idiot really doesn’t fucking know. The Dream Lord’s infamous immortal companion really is just as clueless as your average mortal moron.

“Mate,” John says, with emphasis enough to make Golding’s face fall. “Everyone’s been looking for the bloody Sandman. No one’s had any fucking luck for the last seventy years. What do you think the sleepy sickness is?”

Golding goes pale.

“Seventy years…?” he breathes in horror.

John nods, feeling pretty bad for the guy who’s just figuring all this out now, instead of having grown up with these facts like John did. Every Constantine from his grandfather down to his daughter knows that the sleepy sickness coincided with the disappearance of the Sandman.

“Fuck. Fuck!” Golding swears, punching the arm of the couch, before pressing that fist to his lips to stifle any further cursing. John personally thinks he’d feel a lot better if he just yelled for a bit, but he does appreciate the restraint, given there’s a – hopefully – sleeping kid in the bedroom just down the hall. Then he drops his hand and fixes John with a look that makes him want to stay very still until the threat passes.

John swallows hard and tries to wait it out, the hard calculations he can see going on behind Golding’s eyes. “Don’t make me regret this, Constantine,” he says direly. John doesn’t answer, because he can’t fucking know if he’s going to regret it, but he’s sure as fuck going to try not to get on this guy’s bad side. Golding is fucking immortal, after all, but John certainly fucking isn’t. “You said,” Golding begins, voice measured and cold, “that you could use a lock of hair to track someone.”

“You implied you didn’t have one,” John replies, just as measured.

“How about blood?”

John stares at this man. “You have the Sandman’s blood?” There’s no way, no possible way that he took it, right? So it had to be a gift. And here John had been thinking the Sandman hadn’t given Golding his name as a matter of trust. Clearly fucking not.

“After a fashion.”

John doesn’t have to be a genius to put that one together. After a fashion. After a fucking fashion. No wonder Golding opened with a fucking threat. John swallows hard and reaches out, fumbling blindly across the side-table for a pack of fags. He really rather desperately needs a smoke right now.

Because if word got out that this man has the Sandman’s fucking child in his keeping… John doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about it, but he is doing. It would be a fucking bloodbath. Occultists, magicians, exorcists, the ones with bad intentions and the ones with good – arguably worse, in John’s opinion, the sanctimonious fuckers – they’d all want a piece of this kid. It’s horrifying to think about, and it’s not the worst of it. At least, not for John personally.

Golding saw Joanna.

It doesn’t need to be fucking said that if John puts Golding’s… Ward? Kid? Adoptee? If he puts this kid in danger, Golding would pay him back measure for measure. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he breathes, hands trembling as he fails and fails to get his lighter to spark. “Fuck,” he swears, hands dropping. Golding reaches out slowly, gently takes the lighter from his lax, still shaking fingers, and sparks a flame for him.

John fatalistically accepts the help and leans forward to light his fag. He takes a deep drag as he sits back again. “You… you have the-” he tries, but he can’t actually bring himself to say it out loud.

“Yes,” Golding says flatly, turning John’s lighter over and over. “Can you find him?”

John breathes out a cloud of smoke. “I can fucking well try.”

#The Sandman #Hob Gadling #John Constantine #Joanna Constantine #kid fic #next gen oc #Hob is NOT HAPPY about having to tell anyone about Cress #John is NOT HAPPY to be TOLD about Cress #No one is happy in this chapter #Except the author >w>

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