#put devil went down to georgia in the queue

[nomaishuttle]

sometimes u put yr playlist on shuffle a song comes up and you have to put another song in the queue immediately as soon as it comes on bc it makes you think of that song

[ghostsandmirrors]

( @battletrio liked for a starter and got Joker for Olivia )

There was a song about the Devil going down to Georgia, but Joker wasn't here for a soul. They weren't that useful for him, honestly; he couldn't put the fear of him into the hearts of those who wanted to run Gotham's crime scene with souls even if it would give him a very interesting reputation. Enough people thought he actually was the Devil that maybe he already had that reputation.

That reputation wasn't doing him much good, though, so he'd gone down to Georgia with the information for a contact. The trouble is that the contact in question backed out of their meeting, so Joker--clean faced with sunglasses and an air of anger about him--was walking the streets and looking for something or someone to take this anger out on.

That's when he noticed a figure on the other side of the road, so he straightened up and hurried over like he was trying to be a decent person.

Licking the corners of his lips, he sucked in his bottom lip before saying, "interesting weather we're having." It wasn't interesting in the slightest, but it was something to say so he'd take it.

[spookyrps]

top ten songs, bich

some r old faves, some are current faves, dont look at me thanks10. groceries by mallrat9. bad guy by billie eillish 8. almost (sweet music) by hozier7. in too deep by sum 41 (i am so sorry 4 this music video)6. don’t stop me now by queen5. send my love to your new lover by adele4. all these things that i’ve done by the killers3. piano man by billy joel2. don’t be so hard on yourself by alex lahey 1. twin sized mattress by the front bottoms

bonus, fave weird meme songs that i know all the words to and put in the spotify queue when no one wants them there: the devil went down to georgia, murder on the dancefloor, you can call me al, untouched, what about me, the penis song, the entire shrek soundtrack

[words-writ-in-starlight]

"#someday i should write a brief fic in the constantine movie verse titled 'none of us are getting out of here alive'#and basically just have it be john having a Talk with hellboy" Holy shit YES that would be the best thing ever

Anonymous said:

yooooo,, previous constantine anon here,, just read your tags on the keanu reeves quote,, and i would totally be down for reading constantine and hellboy whenever that gets posted

Fine, FINE, you twisted my arm, HERE is like 3K of just John and Hellboy TALKING AIMLESSLY in a CHURCH.  It’s also on AO3.  I’m drinking rosé out of a literal chalice right now and still will be when it gets spat out of my queue fifteen minutes after I queue it, so, like, at least I’m really embodying the self-indulgent lifestyle here.

getting out of here alive

John shrugged deeper into his long coat—New Jersey wasn’tcold, not really, but it was damp at night, and he missed Los Angeles with itsperpetual warmth.  This clammy chillgnawed sullenly at his bones, and the concrete step was cold under his knee ashe knelt beside the door.  He swore underhis breath and gave his tension wrench a frustrated twist, and—there.  The lock gave, and he pocketed his lockpicksas he stood, pulling his coat around him and scowling as he slipped through thedoor.

The side door opened into a small office, papered withdrawings by a small child’s hand, dark and quiet.  Well, it was past midnight on a November Tuesday,hardly peak work hours.  The door on theother side of the office was propped open, and John shoved both hands deep intohis pockets and walked as quietly as he could over the tile and into the narthex.  He paused there, beside the font.

Saint Benedict’s was a small church, neither well-attendednor well-appointed, but the stained glass over the altar was pristine, blue andclouded white wreathed in red and gold. The colors were dim at night, only visible as shifting glints when theclouds parted to let the moonlight through. The lights in the sanctuary were still off, impenetrable shadowscluttering in the corners where the faint glow from outside couldn’t reach.

John patted the edge of the holy water font, like someonedismissing a suspicious cat, before he walked into the sanctuary, toward thefigure in the fourth row.

“Hey, Johnny,” the figure said as John sat down.  He tipped his head to the side, glancing atJohn out of the corner of one eye, his left hand resting on the back of thenext pew up, the beads of a rosary between his fingers so that the cross drapedover the curve of his thumb.  His righthand was propped on his knees, graphite-grey in the light and scrawled withshadows that seemed to writhe.  “Beendown to Georgia lately?”

“Still not a good joke, Red,” John said dryly.  “How’s Moscow?”

“Hm,” Hellboy said. His voice was the same subterranean rumble it had been last time Johnsaw him, the same it had been when John was twenty-five and so determined toget into trouble that he almost got killed in Atlanta.  Hellboy wasn’t quite static, not likeGabriel, he was just…slow to change.  Helooked older than he did twenty years ago, but only barely.  It was probably even the same coat he’d beenwearing then, meticulously repaired. “Moscow’s fine.  Cold andwet.  Heard about that, huh?”

“Heard about that,” John confirmed.  “I was in the area, thought I’d come say hi.”

“Sure you were.”

John shrugged.  “Gladto see you’re feeling yourself, is all.”

Hellboy’s teeth flashed for a brief moment in themoonlight.  “You weren’t this diplomaticlast time.”

“Last time I was about three days post-mortem, and in a realrush to get that spear off my hands.” John patted absently at his coat pockets, wishing he had a cigarette,and came up with a lighter instead.  Heflicked it open, then closed, and watched the eyeshine that flashed back fromHellboy’s gaze in the short-lived flame. “Really though,” he said.  “Shookus up pretty good, seeing that end days shit pop up and then go away likethat.  You should be glad I got herefirst.  Everyone else is sprinting off toMoscow, or else building bunkers.”

“Always glad to see you,” Hellboy drawled, and his teethflashed again in the flicker of John’s lighter, open-close.  “Sorry for the scare.”

“I was thinking you’d finally managed to get that big headof yours bashed in.  Figures that youmanaged to just civilly turn down the Apocalypse, though, you always were astubborn fuck.  You know how hard us meremortals have to work to shut down that kind of shit?”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” John sighed, flipping his lighter thoughtfully over his knuckles.  “Your involvement isn’t exactly commonknowledge, Red, but seriously.  How areyou doing?”

Hellboy waved his right hand dismissively, still passing therosary through his left one bead at a time. The silken wooden beads glowed when John’s lighter flicked on.  “Good learning experience, to the tune ofwatching my step.”

“Mmhm,” John murmured, and dropped the subject.  “I heard about your old man, too.”

“Yeah,” Hellboy said quietly.  His lips twisted.  “You wanna hear a good joke, Johnny?”  He didn’t wait for an answer before hecontinued, a deft flip of his hand switching the cross onto the front of hisknuckles, where it dangled loose.  “He’dhave died of lung cancer if that puppet fuck hadn’t murdered him.”

John—winced.

It had been a long time since John winced.

“Jesus, Hellboy.  I’msorry.”

“He kept it a secret,” Hellboy went on, with a fatalisticnote in his voice.  “Because he didn’twant to worry me, see.  Because I’m goingto live a long, long time, and he wanted me not to worry over him until Ididn’t have a choice.  But after--”  Hellboy hesitated.  “His will ain’t exactly a long one.  All finances to support the Bureau, on thecondition that I always have a place here. All books to remain in the library, under the care of AbrahamSapien.  All personal effects to his son,and please could I make sure his headstone says something nice.  I got his medical records, too.”

Hellboy’s hand dropped from the back of the pew and hepropped both elbows on his knees, his head bowing down as if in prayer as heshook it slowly.  John nodded in thedark—Hellboy’s night vision was some of the best he’d ever encountered, hewould see it—and tried not to give in to the sudden black swell of rage underhis ribs.

“Lung cancer,” Hellboy said to the rosary in his fist.  “All that shit he survived, Nazis andmonsters and—goddamn, me, and he was gonna die from lung cancer.  He never even smoked.”

“Fuck,” John said with feeling.  “I’m—fuck me, Red.  I’m so sorry.”

It wasn’t fair.  Johnhad met Doctor Trevor Bruttenholm once and only once, delivering the Spear ofDestiny into the care of the BPRD.  Heand Hellboy had been on good terms, at the time, and it had been almost funny,watching the hulking red demon with his broad military-brat drawl and thesophisticated old man with his cane and his stern eyes.  They looked nothing alike, their mannerismswere like night and day, but—Hellboy always lingered by his father’s chair whenhe was rising, waiting to offer his hand to help him up, and Doctor Bruttenholmkept a stock of chocolates in his desk to toss to his son.  

The professor had been a good man, was the thing.  Really a good man, the kind of man whodecided to raise a demonic child as his own son, the kind of man who heard outJohn’s story about his acquisition of the Spear with calm interest and thenoffered him coffee, the kind of man who gave a shit.

The kind of man who deserved to be saved from an unfairdeath he hadn’t earned.

What must it be like, John wondered, to sit next to a manwho half-cheated his way into the miracle Hellboy must still crave for hisfather?

John flicked his lighter, open-close, and wondered if heshould leave.  The silence dragged onlike tar, heavy and dense, the only sound the rapid click-click of the lighterand the slow, swelling tide of Hellboy’s breathing.

It was almost five minutes later when Hellboy broke thesilence with the inevitable question.

“How’d you do it, Constantine?”

John let out the breath he had been holding.  Hellboy never called him by his lastname.  “I don’t--”

Hellboy shook his head. “No, I—I know you told us the Devil saved your life.  But how’d you do it, really?  A bargain? Pentacostal silver?  Shit, did OldScratch just let you walk the hell out? Too obnoxious to put up with?”

“Pentacostal silver?” John asked quietly.  “Been doing some reading on how to get out ofHell?”

“It’s my job.” Hellboy paused.  “And—no.  I’m not planning to try anything.  He’d never forgive me.  I just want to know.”

“I handed Mammon in to Lucifer,” John said flatly.  “He offered me a reward—an extension on mylife, more time to buy a ticket to Heaven. So I--”  He broke off and sighed,turning his lighter over in his fingers.

“So you took it,” Hellboy finished.

John’s lips quirked into a rueful smile, and shook hishead.  “Actually, no.  I—there was this girl--”

“Always a girl.”

“Fuck you, you can’t lecture me,” John said,good-natured.  “There was this girl, apsychic.  She saw what was coming, so she--”the good humor faded and John cleared his throat.  “So she jumped off a roof and left her sistera message for me.  She saved the world,y’know, and she was damned forever—suicide.”

“Ah,” Hellboy murmured. “I gotcha.  Save the girl.”

John nodded.  “And—sacrifice,the old rules and all that shit.  TheDevil’s a sore fucking loser.”

“So here you are,” Hellboy said.

“Here I am,” John agreed. He hesitated, flicked the lighter. “Your old man—the professor couldn’t have pulled that cheat,” he saidquietly.  “Hell was never getting itshands on him.”

“Yeah.”  Hellboy letthe rosary slip through his fingers, one bead at a time, until he had the crossin his fingers, rubbing the smooth wood thoughtfully with his thumb.  “Yeah, you’re right.”

They subsided back into silence, thick and cloying.  John turned his lighter over in his fingers,the quiet sound of his skin brushing the metal loud in the quiet sanctuary, andHellboy’s eyes with their faint shine of reflected moonlight fixed on the dimglint of silver.  

“The priest here knows me,” Hellboy said abruptly, and Johnblinked in surprise but didn’t fumble his lighter.  “Closest parish to our base, so this priest Iknew what I was a kid—really a kid, three or four—pulled some strings to getone of his friends he trusted placed here and then they made him sign about athousand NDA’s.  He gave me a spare key,so I could come in at night when I wanted to. Good guy, Father Wesley.”

“Sounds—level-headed,” John remarked.

Hellboy chuckled, a little wry.  “More’n some, I bet.  So how’d you get in here, Johnny?”

“Picked the lock.”

“You just picked locks until you found me?”

“No, I asked Liz,” John said with a shrug.  “She gave me a few places to try, but--”  John cracked a smile, flicked hislighter.  Open-close, open-close, andeyeshine.  “I’ve known you since I wastwenty-five, Red, I tried the church first.”

“Fair enough,” Hellboy said. He unwound the rosary from his fingers and palmed it in his stone hand,and then held out his other hand to John. “Gimme that thing, you’re gonna give me a migraine.”

John flicked the lighter on vengefully, and the light fromthe tiny flame glowed bright in the dark room, turning Hellboy’s hand from greyto brilliant red and throwing a shadow across a scar marring the meat of hispalm.

“I thought you were fireproof, you smug son of a bitch,”John said, closing the lighter and tossing it blindly across the space betweenthem.  Hellboy caught it and opened it,setting it carefully on the pew in front of him so that the flame glowed againstthe dark.  “Thanks,” John added dryly.

“Spend all my time with people who can’t see fuck-all,”Hellboy said.  He opened his flesh andblood hand, palm up, so that the light fell on the fresh scar—a cross, Johnrealized.  It was a small thing, not eventwo inches tall, squared off on the ends, with the distinctive shiny look of aburn scar recently healed over, and it must have been a deep burn, because itresisted stretching when Hellboy spread his hand for John to see.  

“Damn,” John said, almost awed against his will—it was moreimpressive, somehow, to see scars on Hellboy’s pristine red skin than on hisown.  Hellboy wasn’t invulnerable, forall that he was sturdier than most people, but he never scarred.  Except for the deep-scored coils creeping uphis arm from the stone hand, Hellboy didn’t have a mark on him.

But now he did.

“The rosary,” Hellboy said, brushing his palm with the tipof one stone finger.  “Meyers—you mighthave met Meyers, he’s a Boy Scout, you’ll hate him—he threw it to me.  Wanted me to remember…a lot of shit.”

John normally prided himself on his poker face, but he felthis eyebrows jump at that.  “The cross onyour rosary did that?”

“Father’s rosary,” Hellboy corrected.  “And—yeah.” He touched the scar again, apparently fascinated, mouth set andgrim.  “Holy stuff never burned mebefore.”

“Yeah, I know,” John said. “I dumped holy water on you once.”

“Thanks, Johnny,” Hellboy said.  Watching him roll his eyes in the small flameof the lighter was strange—two shining gold coins set deep into his face.  “But while I was—out of it.  I caught the rosary and it hurt.”  He sounded offended, almost like a kid who’djust discovered pain, and John wondered, again, just how old Hellboy was by thereckoning of whatever, exactly, his species was called.  When John was twenty-five and stupid, Hellboyhad seemed older and experienced in a way that John, mortal as he was, couldn’thope to match.  Now, John was forty-five,and Hellboy seemed still young and wide-eyed and ready to get into trouble.

John had never been good with kids.  He’d always been pretty good with Hellboy,though, so he kept his voice absent and considering when he spoke again.  “Out of it like what?”

“Hm,” Hellboy rumbled. “Out of it like you don’t wanna see. Full demon.”  He reached out andheld his flesh and blood hand over the flame, so that the gold licked along thecrease of his palm and clung to his skin like honey, or holy oil.  “Learned my real name.  Don’t like it much.”

“What is it?”

Hellboy shook his head, lingering over the fire and turninghis hand to watch the small tongue of flame coil around his fingertips.  It took a long moment before he spokeagain.  “Father would be so disappointedin me.”  He shook his head.  “I could have destroyed…everything,Johnny.  He would have been sodisappointed.”

“You didn’t, though,” John said, stretching both legs out infront of him.  “I could have fucked theworld up pretty good too, in my time, and I didn’t.”

Hellboy smiled, and in the light of the single small flameit looked terrifying, his teeth and eyes flashing, the harsh craggy lines ofhis face throwing shadows darker than ink over the gold- and silver-touched redof his skin.  “Don’t tell me you don’tfeel guilty, Johnny.”

“I do,” John agreed.  

“So,” Hellboy said. “Share your worldly wisdom.”

John considered, watching the delicate flame part aroundHellboy’s palm, below the burn, and the shadows that shifted slow and sleepy onthe ceiling, cast by his hand.  “Ithink,” John said, “that good people don’t turn down the Apocalypse becausethey like humanity too much to destroy it.”

Hellboy chuckled, pulling his hand back.  “And what’s that say about you?”

“That I’ve put a lot of damn work into this planet and I’mnot about to watch some smug fucking archdemon turn it into an ashtray,” Johnsaid flatly, and Hellboy threw his head back and laughed properly, deep andringing as a bell.  John let one cornerof his mouth tick up at the sound.  Forall that Hellboy looked out of place in a church, with his blunted red hornsand inhuman yellow eyes, his laugh lived in the vaults of the roof and therecessed windows like he was born there.

“That’s why Father liked you,” Hellboy said, stillsnickering to himself.  “Said you weredirect.”

John shrugged, reaching out to flick his lighter closed andpalm it.  “He was a good man.  Not many of those around in the world.”  He stood, pocketed the lighter.  The church was darker than before, withoutit, the dim moonlight shining through the stained glass not quite enough forhis eyes anymore, but Hellboy was still unmistakable, cast in shades ofgrey.  Red turned grey faster than anyother color on the spectrum, in low light—Hellboy had told him that fact thefirst time John accused him of being less subtle than a fire engine.  Then he’d followed it up with a smirk and“besides, they don’t bring me places to be subtle,” and, in fairness, Johncould hardly question that one.

“Not many,” Hellboy agreed, his smile fading a little.

“Good thing your father raised one,” John added, and clappedHellboy on the shoulder as he left the pew without looking back to see hisface.  “Come on, Red.  Liz said to bring you back in time forpoker.”

There was a moment of quiet, and John walked up the aislewith his hands in his pockets without pausing. Then Hellboy sighed and rose to his feet, his steps heavy on the flooras he followed John outside, and he was chuckling again when he caught up.

“I don’t want to take all your money, Johnny,” Hellboy said.

John grinned, idly missing a cigarette as he pushed open thechurch doors and stepped out into the clammy night air again.  “You’ve got a shit poker face.”

“Yeah, and you’re a fuckin’ cheat,” Hellboy saidcomfortably, pausing to lock the doors behind him.  “We play poker with a ref.  Blue’s gonna close you down the second youstart, so enjoy it while it lasts and all that.”

“I’m not a cheat.  I’mjust better than you.”

Hellboy scoffed, and when they started walking, he hummedunder his breath to the old song.  

…a fiddle of goldagainst your soul…

“I’ll give you mymoney to cut that shit out right now,” John said.

Hellboy switched to whistling.