Hell and highwater- constagreen.
Thank you so much for the prompt :)
After the death of his father, young John Constantine moves to the small town of Granage-over-Sands, in Cumbria, where his grandmother lives and owns a tiny boarding house that smells of salt and mold.
Nothing happens for many long months, and John spends his time cleaning the stinking rooms and reading a bunch of books on magic that he found by chance in a drawer. The books fascinate him, and one night he decides to go to the beach, alone, to try to find out if magic is actually real, and if he can do it.
Much to John’s surprise - as much as he had wanted to believe in magic he had not believed it would be real - he manages to summoun blue flames in the middle of the night, without the aid of wood, flints or lighters. It’s an exhilarating feeling, and after that first night John keeps sneaking out of the house while everybody sleeps, in order to practice magic.
John, however, is well aware of the consequences that this practice can have on his soul, especially when he starts to call upon the forces of hell to perform particularly hard spells.
Yet, summer comes, and with that arrives also more work for John to do at the boarding house. For the entire month of July the rooms have been rented by an American family, the Green, who have a son slightly younger than John, Gary.
At first, John does not like Gary. At all. The boy is spoiled by his dentist father and by a doting and loving mother, and that is enough to light a jealousy in John’s heart that he doesn’t want to acknowledge. Worst of all, Gary keeps following him like a lost puppy, and sneaking out at night becomes basically impossible for John.
After a couple of weeks, John goes to the beach at night anyway, hoping that the terrible weather will keep Gary from following him, or even from realizing that he is gone in the first place. After a couple of hours of much craved freedom - John is really starting to think that magic is all he can do, what he actually is and is meant to do - he notices, close to a boat overturned on the sand, a dark mop of hair that can only be Gary’s. John’s anger flares out before he even realizes, and his mood affects the already stormy sea, that becomes even more wild and untamable.
Realizing he has been spotted, Gary comes out of his hiding place, and walks to go where John is standing. Before either of them can realize what is happening, a particularly strong wave reaches Gary, who loses his balance and falls on the sand. A second wave, aided by the houling wind, overwhelms Gary again, and once it’s gone, so is the American boy.
Fear and guilt run in John’s veins like a fire, and one second later he finds himself running towards the sea, acting rather than thinking. Before he even knows it, he is calling upon all the gods he has learned about, all the demons from hell that can help him placate the storm. In that moment, he would do anything to save Gary.
The wind becomes quiet. In the darkness of the night, John can see the waves become smaller and smaller, and one of them returns to him the boy he thought he had lost.
John falls on his knees, exhausted, and Gary, somehow completely conscious, runs towards him and hugs him, yelling how glad he is that John has saved him.
John is not sure about how to react to that, because he is the one who put Gary in danger in the first place. He is about to say so when Gary does something completely unexpected, or at least something that John had not thought he would ever do. He kisses John, light as a feather, and John knows that it’s meant to be just a thank you, that it’s a result of adrenaline, that it does not imply anything more, but it leaves John wanting and craving for more.
They part quickly, and Gary starts babbling about how amazing John was, how brave, how he wants to learn magic as well and wouldn’t John please teach him, and the poor boy from Liverpool can’t really say no when Gary’s eyes gleam like that and he sounds just so excited and admiring (and has anyone ever looked at John like that? Or complimented him that much?).
So John starts to teach Gary some of the spells he knows - minor ones, simple ones, ones that won’t lead Gary to be involved with higher powers and otherworldly dangers. The boy is going away soon anyway, how’s a little bit of magic going to harm him?
Some days pass, and John is lost in the little, proud smiles Gary gives him when he manages to light a fire, or create flowers out of thin air. It’s almost too much, he thinks, because Gary will have to go back to the US and there’s no way John’s heart won’t break but maybe it will hurt less if the only kiss they have is the one they shared on the beach, if he never tells Gary all the things he feels when he’s around, if he pretends that Gary is the most annoying person he has ever met, and not the cutest.
Things get even worse when one night a man shows at John’s grandma’s boarding house asking for him. He looks like an old fisherman who has lived all his life on a boat, and he smells like one too. Once they’re alone, the man introduces himself as Poseidon, the god of the sea, the one John asked help from to save Gary. The god explains to him that he granted him this favor only to have something back in return: he needs an enchanted mirror that is currently in possession of the one and only Hades, god of the Underworld, and John has to retrieve it for him, or he will take back what he had given to John.
John prepares for a journey through hell - to steal from bloody Hades, of all things - because there’s no way that he will let anybody take Gary away, not like that, not even if they’re a god. And Gary, sweet, naive Gary, insists on going with John, who knows that the boy will follow him anyway.
Will their journey be successful? Will they actually be able to steal from Hades, of all people, and not suffer the consequences of this action? Will Gary be safe, once they get Poseidon the bloody mirror? Can they trust the god of the sea, or is he as erratic as the body of water that is his domain?
