Just To Watch Him Die. | John & Stanley

laughingmagus:

He reached through the bars, flicking his ashes onto the ground before pulling his hand back and taking another drag, all the while keeping his gaze focused on the other man.  His eyes are emotionless, empty.  John’s spent what feels like lifetimes hiding emotion when he needs to.  

He always needs to around Stanley.

“Do ya think this is a game, then?  Is tha’ what you’re goin’ for here?  Because ya know I love to play, Darling, but the pawns, they all have to be legal, see?” he commented darkly.  ”So who do you ‘ave doin’ your dirty work for you now then?”

Ashes, ashes well all fall down. 

The gun clicks in his mouth and he smells the smoke and knows how well he’s been played. How skillfully. How artistically. How dire this game of theirs is and how small yet intrinsically important a piece he truly is in the magus’ game. 

“I wouldn’t be fun if I was legal.” He’d learned. How love and hate lived inside of one another, how to twist words and reality at the feet of the master. A slick grin that shimmers like oil acrossed the only drinking well in town. “I wouldn’t be having fun if it was legal.” 

Just To Watch Him Die. | John & Stanley

laughingmagus:

“I did him in, mate.  Fredo.  ’ad him hang himself,” John informed the prisoner.  ”Was easy.  Nearly as easy as gettin’ you to believe I was gone.”  It’s a harsh blow, the continued lie that it was all a con, but he had told the other man to leave the kids alone.  Instigating the murder of children while behind bars won him no favor in John’s eyes, and was nearly enough to make him forget what he actually liked about the man and focus on the half he hated more.

Nearly.

“Don’t think that you bein’ behind bars will stop me from doin’ you in too,” John adds.  

“Fredo?” Stanley leaned forward just enough for his face to be thrown into a light that would be spooky for any child around a campfire, his mouth opened in a knowing and taunting grin. There was always an edge of pain to his features, even smiling during the best of times there had been. Every line, every expression was haunted by the knowledge of death that had been gained far too young, and left too deep a scar. 

“Weren’t you supposed to throw him off of a fishing boat?” He tutted. “Seasickness is no reason to ignore poeticism, John.” Chiding his prized pupil, his favorite little one, who with the talent of all ungrateful children, had managed to wound him more deeply than he ever thought himself capable of feeling. 

Just To Watch Him Die. | John & Stanley

laughingmagus:

He steps forward, face nearly against the bars, but the cold lines of his emotionless expression never soften.  This close, he can see into the shadows now, the skeletal form of a face he’s seen a thousand times over security monitors and in courtrooms—where no one noticed John was even there—but to see it up close like this is just as startling as Stanley’s voice was.

“I told you no more kids,” John comments, his voice sharp where his expression won’t be.  ”You couldn’t even honor me last dyin’ wish?” 

Pay their dues, they both have to pay their dues and say the right lines so they can go on believing in this version of themselves. Nothing is true without a bloody kiss to follow it and the gulf between them is full of stories and the detritus of petty reassurances that they can live with themselves. They can look at the man in the mirror and face the world. 

“Doesn’t seem like we’re good with repecting dyin’ wishes, John.” 

Just To Watch Him Die. | John & Stanley

laughingmagus:

It was startling to hear his voice.  Startling the way a ghost walking through a wall was, or a child nearly getting run over by a car only to be snatched out of traffic and into the safety of their mother’s arms at the last possible moment.  It was startling, because in his dreams—his nightmares—the accent was always very thick, always prominent in the way Stanley spoke to him.

“They tend to do that when you attempt to eat lead,” he commented dryly, expression emotionless as he continued to stare into the shadows.  ”Give us a look then, Manor, I’ve not got all day.”

His face twists in rage, dark eyes made ugly by the scrunch of features that wrings fury out of his skin and bones until the air is thick with it, until it’s all wrung out of him and you’d never know how deeply the barb hit by his face now. Serene, placid and smiling in a closed way only the man acrossed from him can quite read. 

“I do. All day and four-hundred-and-ninety-nine years.” The last is a salacious tease, a little tap in their game. Something he’s held onto, turned over in his hands in giggling amusement and now shows off as if it’s a conversation piece picture that looks just a touch naughty if you stand just off to the right. 

Just To Watch Him Die. | John & Stanley

laughingmagus:

He was silent, standing there, watching the shadows.  After a moment the Englishman turned his head and nodded towards the Officer—who left, but hesitantly so and with a passing comment of how he’d be nearby and there were cameras for security reasons.

John didn’t reply, he simply looked back towards the cell at the sound of the door swinging shut behind the guard.

“You look like shite,” he finally commented, blowing smoke carefully from the corner of his mouth where his cigarette rested.

Officer Extra, officer Nobody beat his retreat with unmistakable relief. The world had been reduced to a sea of nobodies since meeting John Constantine. From target practice and struggling animals, mewling creatures to pull the legs off of to stave off ennui, they had become simply irrelevant in the shadow of the gaunt man standing before him. 

Stanley let in a bit more Irish twang, just for him. “An’ no mint on my pillow, don’t think I’ll be coming back here.” 

Just To Watch Him Die. | John & Stanley

laughingmagus:

Three years.  A lot could happen in that time.  A lot could change, a man could grow old, hell a man could fucking die.  But this particular man hadn’t.  A constant thorn in his side, John had kept away from Stanley for as long as he could.  Three years.  A bleedin’ lifetime.

He wasn’t fond of prisons as a general rule.  His time spent at one had been entertaining but ultimately a waste of time, and making his way through this one now it took him right back.

“You can’t smoke in here..”

He ignored the janitor and continued walking down the isle.  The Officer walking near his side hadn’t said a word about it, and John wasn’t about to put it out unless he absolutely had to.  

They knew him here.

It was the first time he was seeing Stanley face-to-face in three years, but that didn’t mean it was John’s first visit here.  He’d come close before, dangerously close, but always managed to walk away.  Not this time.

He paused, eyes focused on the cell in front of him, and waited in silence.

He could see why John had fun with a place like this. Could see why the other man insisted the experience be shared. Stanley laid down a nine under a jack and grinned to himself. They could bend all the rules they wanted, not take him down to interrogation, leave his shackles on, but nothing in the whole wide world could disguise the sound of those shoes in the hall. 

They squeaked with wear, with city gunk and cracked leather love. A goose stepping prig kept pace beside them, and Stanley rose for neither. He stayed seated, in the center of his cell that they liked to think was the extent of his domain these days. He tried not to look up, but the temptation was too much and his mouth split into a grin as he stole a look at the door. Three years was an awfully long time to be missing the taste of your lover’s dick.