#danstantine

John throws the sheets off and sits up. His long limbs feel endless for a moment as he stretches before he snaps back into his aching, (mostly) mortal body. The smell of the room, of endless visitors and days, has him craving a cigarette. Sometimes he’s lucky enough that there’s a pack on the bedside table. Today is one of them. He peels the seal open and taps out a fag from the pack. The first inhale makes him wistful; this brand went out of business twenty years ago.

He sits there long enough that he has to tap a solid bit of ash into the soot stained ashtray. He wants to stay longer. Schrodinger’s cat and all that.

Maybe he should just go look.

He grabs the pack and the room key from the bedside. The key has a battered plastic tag that feels right in his hand. He thinks the room is number twenty-one, but it hurts to look too long at it. The key itself is different with each glance.

The cigarette is just balanced between John’s lips, stuck there so that he can toss on the robe over the boxer briefs that he has on. He wears it mostly to have a pocket to stash things in. It also helps stave off the chill of the halls.

Every door looks exactly the same—yellowed oak wood set into even more yellow wallpaper. There’s no decoration other than the hall sconces. The way the light pours out of them is fragmented and shifting. Every so often a door is cracked open, held tight by the chain. There’s something there behind those doors. Other ones too, sometimes, when John knows he’s being watched from behind a peephole. John’s careful to never look back.

He just smokes his cigarette, lighting the next off the old butt of the last, and keeps walking down the hall. He’ll get to where he’s going eventually, wherever that may be.

There’s one place he’s hoping for more than the other.

He just keeps walking.

Finally, suddenly, he’s come to a set of brass and glass doors. The thick fog of condensataion on the doors make it impossible to see through. It doesn’t matter, John knows what will greet him as he pushed both doors open. A smile plays on his lips and in his voice. “Hello, handsome, how’s the water?”

“Just about the same as always. Too fucking green and weirdly warm.”

John eyes the pool as he walks around the outside of it. His steps sound sacrilegiously loud against the tiles, but what is his whole fucking life but being sacrilegiously loud?

“It is very green,” John settles for saying.

The other makes a noise that manages to sound sarcastic as he sets his book aside. “Green is sorta its most defining trait.”

“Hum… nah, mate,” John says. He braces his arms on either side of the plastic pool chair as he leans down. “I would go with other worldly first.”

“Everything is other worldly here, Hellblazer.” Those sea-glass green eyes meet John’s steadily. “Including you and me.”

“Yet you won’t tell me your secrets,” John points out. The words are a whisper and nearly cut off by the kiss that follows. It’s as much a kiss John starts as one that John meets in the middle. He lets himself enjoy the taste of it before he pulls back just enough to get a look. “What are your secrets, Dan?”

Dan rolls his eyes, but it’s mostly an excuse to look away. “I’ve told you, you really don’t want to know.”

“Oh but I do, lovely. I’m curious,” John cajoles as he straddles the chair and Dan. Dan is likewise in a robe, but only with swim trunks on underneath.

Tiny, yellow swim trunks.

Dan runs his hands up under John’s robes. He has the calloused hands of of a craftsman, and his thumbs are rough where they rub against John’s hip bones.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Dan says.

“But boredom killed it quicker,” John sings back.

“Oh, well, if boredom is what you wanted to avoid…” Dan purrs. His grip tightens, keeping John held down as he arches up.

John hums happily. He would rather understand what Dan is, but ever visit he learns a little more. What’s so wrong about having some fun at the same time? “I’ll learn your secrets.”

“Not if you want me to keep fucking you.”