Zatanna sighs, and resists the instinct to fold down the corner of the page to mark her place before she replies. She’s fairly sure Kent would actually kill her if she did that to any of his collection.
“In here, Bobo.”
“Oh thank God, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. It’s… Well, it’s John.”
“What’s he done now,” she says, the words out of her mouth before her brain catches up to the fear in Bobo’s voice. “Oh God, is he…?”
“He’s alive. He’s just… Well, I think you’d better come and see.”
She does fold down the corner. She doesn’t have a bookmark handy and it’s been a long time since she last heard Bobo sound this worried. Kent will just have to deal with it.
Hezekiah Wayne’s books are 90% trash anyway, the man was mad as a hatter, and when he did write any effective spells they never seem to work as intended.
One of these days someone is really going to have to suck it up and actually talk to Bruce about that thing where all his ancestors went insane after a certain age, and she’s horribly afraid it might have to be her.
Bobo leads her out into the atrium, and there, standing beneath the dragon skeleton looking horribly small in Nick’s old coat, is John.
A John.
Oh God, this one might even still be a Johnny.
He looks maybe eighteen, big blue eyes ringed in the eyeliner she hasn’t ever actually seen him wear before, for all he’d joked about it all the time, and just a hint of boyish roundness to his face still. His hair is long, longer than she’s ever known it, and desperately in need of a hairbrush.
And he looks terrified.
“John?”
He turns to her immediately, and God help her but she hasn’t got it in her to be angry with him, not even her usual pre-Wintersgate baseline levels of annoyance, not when he looks so lost. “You’re Zatanna?”
His accent’s thicker than she’s ever heard it, but that makes sense. If he’s the age he looks, he only left home a year ago. Hasn’t had time to absorb London into the way he speaks.
“That’s me.”
“Okay, well I hoping you can tell me what the fuck’s going on then, because I was in Camden yesterday, I bloody know I was, and then next thing I know I’m waking up in America wearing some other bugger’s clothes, and the only thing I’ve got to go on is his.”
He pulls something out of one of the many pockets of Nick’s coat, and holds it out to her.
Walking over to him, getting close enough to touch, feels like being in a dream. She’s used to things which aren’t quite real, but this is… this is something different. This is something weird, even by her standards.
She takes the thing he’s holding, which turns out to be a postcard. The front has a picture of the hall of justice on it, one of the ones they sell in the gift shop upstairs. When she turns it over, there’s nothing on a back except a message, scrawled in John’s untidy handwriting. “If it all goes tits-up, find Zatanna.”
“I dunno wha’ it means,” the boy says. “Bu’ I figure wakin’ up on the other side of the world wearin’ someone else’s skivvies prob’ly counts as tits-up.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapter: 2/16 - G&Tea
Fandom: Hellblazer x BtVS
Ships: Spike/John Constantine, John/Zatanna, little teensy bit of Spike/Zatanna, Spike/Personal Growth
Warnings: discussion of past (mostly canonical) unhealthy relationships, about as much blood as you’d expect from a story where the MC is a vampire,
Zatanna’s eyebrows disappear into her fringe. “You want me to invite a Vampire into my house so you can make a cup of tea.”
“Well, you always have the good tea bags."
Spike moves to London, figures out how to actually make friends, and gets a flat, a boyfriend, and a probably-sentient pot plant. Not necessarily in that order.
hello USamericans (and other people who travel in the states), once again i am asking for your yankpicking advice
i am writing a story in which characters take an overnight flight from san francisco to new york, specifically in november 2001, but i have no idea how your internal flights work.
specifically i need to know:
- what level of security checks are there on internal flights (if you know what they were like in the early 2000s great, and if you know what they were like in the months immediately following 9/11 even better). is it all the same just without passport control or is the whole thing more relaxed?
- in the days when in-flight meals were still standard, what was the type of food on offer? i have no idea if it differed from what you’d get in europe or not.
- did you get the little tv screens in the seat backs to watch movies on, or is that more modern/only for international flights?
- i know general day to day friendliness is a thing countries outside western europe actually have, but tbh i struggle to envision that because i’m used to avoiding eye contact and only talking to someone once you’ve known them a decade. would you expect people on your row to try and talk to you on a flight?
(disclaimer for anyone who’s struggling with time rn: it’s not wednesday, i just forgot I was going to do this this week, and since it’s a snow day in lockdown time is doubly meaningless, so I figured why not do it today)
Fic: let me take you by the hand (and drag you through the streets of london) - BtVS x Hellblazer crossover
There’s a little welcome committee waiting on the sidewalk for them when Spike and Giles pull in outside the Magic Box in the stolen car; Anya, Xander and Dawn huddled outside like they’re waiting for alms.
“They’re doing something… weird,” Anya says, like that word has any meaning at all coming from her. “We ran away.”
“We made a strategic retreat,” Xander corrects. “Because magic is creepy and it smells gross.”
“How gross?” Giles asks immediately.
“It’ll air out,” Anya says dismissively. “I wouldn’t let them do anything that would impact sales.”
“Okay, well. Good.”
“Anyway, you’re one to talk. Is that cigarettes I smell?” Xander asks. “You boys been sneaking off to smoke behind the bleachers?”
“It was behind the bike shed, in my day,” Giles says, unruffled.
Everyone turns to look at him, so Spike shrugs. “They still thought it was medicinal in my day.”
“Wow. You’re so oooold,” Dawn says, wrinkling her nose.
“I’m dead, Bit. And I didn’t actually smoke when I was alive.” His mother couldn’t abide the smell, said it brought on her trouble. Darla had been the one to teach him - she’d smoked like a chimney all the years he’d known her. Cigarillos, cigarettes in a holder once they became the fashion, and even a pipe occasionally. She’d had a long-stemmed clay pipe, the one thing from her human life she’d kept, and on rainy evenings when it was just the four of them sitting around by the fire pretending to be a real family she’d lie on the settee in her chemise and drawers and smoke, while Dru or Angel brushed out her hair for her and Spike read aloud the most amusing obituaries and murders from the paper.
“Wait, you didn’t smoke. You.”
Spike shrugs. There’s a lot about his human life he prefers not to think about, but it’s not like his lifestyle was exactly unusual back then, at least not among respectable middle-class families. “I was pretty straight-edge. Didn’t smoke, didn’t drink to excess, never even considered trying opium or hashish. It didn’t last.”
“Clearly.”
They stand around in awkward silence for a bit. Spike rolls another cigarette, to give himself something to do, and then rolls one for Giles as well just to draw it out. Giles takes it without comment, letting Spike light it for him before taking a deep drag, holding the smoke in his lungs for long enough that he coughs a little when he finally exhales.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he says, pointing at Dawn with his fag. “Smoking isn’t cool.”
Dawn, bless her sarcastic little teenage heart, rolls her eyes. “I know. Anyway I get that lecture enough from Spike, I don’t need it from you as well.”
The others turn to stare at him. Spike shrugs. “I’m not getting any deader, but I’m not having her give herself lung cancer.”
“Well I for one am glad Dawn isn’t dying of cancer,” Anya says brightly, like the absolute lunatic she is.
“Me too,” a rough voice says behind them, and they turn to see John, Buffy, and the witches coming out of the shop. John gives Spike a smile that makes something long forgotten shiver through his chest. It’s been a while since anyone looked at him like he was their equal, no animosity or fear or even irritation in his expression. “Tara’s done a tidy bit of spellwork, the blood will keep as long as you need it to.”
“We’ll pick up some more on our way out of town,” Spike says. “It’s on our way.”
“I guess this is it then,” Willow says. She’s still pale, doesn’t sound quite her normal self, but that’s better than he would have expected given what she’s been through. “This is weird. I kind of thought we were going to be stuck with you forever.”
“I’m going to miss you so much,” Dawn says, flinging her arms around him in a tight hug.
Two hugs in one day.
“I’ll miss you too. But I’ve got your number, and I’ll call you, as soon as I’ve got a phone, okay?”
She nods against his chest, her hair making a soft noise against the leather of his coat, and then lets him go. “I’m okay.”
Tara wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close at once. No one had asked her and Willow to be parents, but they’ve done a pretty good job, all things considered.
“Well, I’m not going to miss you,” Xander says. “In case you were wondering.”
“If I ever get this damn chip out you’re first on my list,” Spike tells him, and then, mostly just to be a dick, pulls Anya into a hug.
“X’ttrk,” he says, one of three words of Ashma’har he’s picked up over the years. It only means goodbye but Xander doesn’t know that and Spike can see it’s absolutely killing him, which is all he wanted. “Keep being you.”
“I don’t see how I could be anyone else,” Anya says, and because she’s Anya she means exactly that. “You should… also continue to be you.”
“That’s the plan.”
He’s not going to risk hugging the witches, even though he would if it were only Tara here. He offers her a hand to shake instead, and she takes it solemnly. “Look after yourself.”
“You too.”
He doesn’t try to touch Willow - it wouldn’t be welcomed. He sticks the hand not holding his cigarette in the pocket of his coat, and says, “Look after them. All of them.”
“I do my best.”
He doesn’t get involved in relationship drama that doesn’t involve him if he can help it (getting weekly updates from Dawn on the Chad - Emma J - Emma C love triangle doesn’t count since he’s only hearing about it forth hand) but he’s seen some fucked up relationships in his time, and he’s not stupid. He knows there’s something going on between the witches, and the fact that they’ve been all lovey dovey again the last couple of weeks isn’t enough to make him think they’ve actually fixed anything. “Look after Tara.”
Wide eyes, and Willow looks at John before she looks at Tara. Maybe he’s being a pessimist and it’s just that John cussed her out for it as well, but he doesn’t think so. Which is a damn shame, because they’re bloody cute together when everything’s working like it’s supposed to.
She juts her chin out pugnaciously and says, “I always do.”
So that’s not getting fixed any time soon.
Still, it’s not his problem. They’re adults, technically. It’s up to them to figure out what they’re fucking up.
Which just leaves Buffy, the one goodbye he’s been dreading. “Slayer...”
She cuts him off. “We’ve said everything that needs to be said. Don’t do anything to make me need to hunt you down.”
“No promises, pet. You know that.” For a moment they just stare at one another, but Spike forces himself to be the one to turn away first this time. He wishes that didn’t feel like a metaphor. “Alright, let’s roll.”
“You’re driving,” John says, sliding into the passenger seat. “On account of I never learned.”
Spike slings his bags into the back seat before he gets into the driver’s seat. The one that holds the blood feels cool to the touch, like it’s just been taken out of the fridge, and tingles like magic. “You never learned to drive?!”
John shrugs. “I’m a queer londoner. Plus my best mate’s a cabbie. He’ll generally take me where I need to go when I’m in town.”
“Yeah but this is America.”
“I hitch-hike.”
“Dangerous.”
“For them more than me.”
Spike snorts and twists the screwdriver they’re using for a key. The engine purrs to life under his hands. It’s going to be a bitch to keep it in fuel, but he already knows he’s going to like driving it. Good call, Ripper. “So what exactly are you contributing to this trip?”
“Charm.”
“Lucky me.”
Dawn waves as they pull away, and when he glances in the mirror at them, still standing there, he sees Anya is too.
