The city is still swarming with life, despite the late hour. There are people hurrying on the streets, cars rushing by, and not even the cloudy sky, threatening the coming of a huge storm, seems to be enough to dissuade the crowd from carrying on its business and head home. No one even cares to look up, perhaps too blinded by the millions neon lights and screens that cover the buildings and flash along the roads.
Despite all the years he has spent living in the USA, John Constantine can’t help comparing the view that plays before his eyes not with the image of Atlanta, but with the gloomy, foggy atmosphere of London’s nights. His old city knows how to be alive, these days perhaps even more than it did back when he was still living there, but it has never been this noisy, this full, this chaotic after a certain hour. Not that he is complaining. He can use the distraction, watching others’ lives flooding on while he sits on a stool in one of the many, anonymous street restaurants, a half-eaten plate of Soup Dumplings and one too many glasses of whatever strong alcoholic drink the house had to offer. He’s starting to get tipsy, but his brain still works far too well, which means that he hasn’t drunk enough just yet.
His lips curl slight, his expression darkening. He isn’t even sure of how he has ended up in Shanghai. The place is too busy for his liking and his thick accent makes interacting with the locals very hard and very frustrating for him. However, after what had happened in Los Angeles, he had felt the need to flee, to break away, even if just for a while, and the news of the oddities that had been terrorising one of the neighbourhoods of the city had offered him the perfect chance to do just that. Now that it’s dealt with, however, he is back not being sure of what to do with himself.
He poked at his food for a moment, glaring at the chopsticks. He has already found something else to chase, but it’s a complicated kind of work and he needs to work out the details before diving into it. Which means that he is left with spare time for his head to go down memory lanes he would rather not revisit.
“Bugger!” John hisses under his breath, dropping the chopsticks and reaching out for his last refill. He should probably finish there and call it a night.
He finds himself freezing mid-gesture, though, as his eyes catch the sight of long, blond hair among a crowd of raven heads. The woman is talking to one of the waiters, perhaps looking for a seat. Or maybe information. Not that he cares that much in that moment. He stares, because, what are the odds of them both being there, considering how big the world is and how many other dimensions exist? And yet, at times, Fate plays obscure games and makes certain coincidences happen. And Constantine knows far too well that one has better be wary of them.
He is on his feet before he can realise it, gesturing his server that he’ll be back, her name already on the tip of his tongue.
“Lance? Cor blimey! Woh th’ 'ell yeh doin’ all th’ way across th’ bloody ocean?”