The annoying thing is that I actually believe there’s a very real possibility of Tommy coming back at some point, and I can see all sorts of ways it could be an incredible storyline, it’s just that 911 loves to look incredible storylines dead in the eye and keep walking. So.
@ironicapathy requested a breakup/makeup with stoic!m!Gabriel and Aelius. Special appearance by Israfel.
Aelius should have known better than to trust an invitation from an angel, and an archangel no less. He shouldn’t have accepted it.
But he is weak. The contact from Israfel had filled him with such a surge of excitement that he couldn’t help himself. A masochist, Iro would tell him. He must be to enjoy inflicting more wounds on his broken heart.
The chance to hear something about Gabriel from a source so near to him was too much to resist, and so here he is, sitting and waiting in a bar. He wished the meeting had been at his place, or the Garden, but he could understand why an archangel wouldn’t want to frequent an establishment that was demon-owned.
He refused to visit the uptight atrocity run by the werewolf alpha either, though, and they couldn’t meet in the cop bar. So they’d found a dark water-front bar, with oversized round booths and so few patrons it is a wonder the place remains open. Though, if the occasional sounds he hears when a door opens somewhere are any indication, this place is a front for some sort of illegal gambling hall. Probably fae, if he had to guess. They love gambling and secrets, and you couldn’t throw a shoe without hitting one in this city.
The perspiration from the glass has formed a thick ring of water on the table, making it look like his glass floats on the surface. Israfel is late. He should leave.
The door opens and his head jerks up, giving away his anticipation. It’s not the tall archangel though, just a random human who looks already past his limits. Sighing, he slumps back against the booth.
Only to jerk upright as a familiar figure slides in.
“Hey.”
Aelius tries to get out of the booth, only to run into another figure. There’s the blasted archangel who had invited him here, blocking his escape.
“Please stay,” Israfel pleads, hands held upright in supplication. “I am sorry for the deception, but I feared if I told you of the truth you would not come.”
The angel is damned right he wouldn’t have come if he had been told the truth. Demons and angels didn’t belong together. They were natural enemies, oppositional forces. Dating one was a new level of foolishness, even for him.
It had imploded, like it had to. They were too different. Not that Gabriel seems to care. The man was never good with emotions, and Aelius had grown tired of the guessing game. It was a game he could never win, because even if he guessed right, he was reminded of how ephemeral this relationship had to be. The lifespan of a single mortal, if that. Once the boy was grown, once Gabriel had done his duty, he would go back to Heaven. Back to Heaven and back to killing Aelius’ kind.
“What do you want?” he demands. Israfel had never said to begin with, and because Aelius was a fool, he hadn’t asked.
“To talk,” Israfel explains. He doesn’t move from blocking the booth, so Aelius sighs and scoots further back from the edge.
“Well, I am here. Go ahead and say what you came to say.”
Israfel glances over to Gabriel, who hasn’t taken his eyes off of Aelius. He can feel the man’s gaze burning into the back of his head, and only petty satisfaction stops Aelius from staring right back at him. Let him look. Aelius will not grant him the satisfaction of peering back, of getting lost in those eyes he knows so well, of tracing those lips with his gaze in lieu of his fingers…
He catches himself before he turns further in the seat, staring steadfastly straight ahead, not looking at either archangel.
A small smile flits over his lips. What do you get when a demon walks into a bar with two archangels?
“The meeting was for you and Gabriel to meet,” Israfel explains. “A necessary deception if the two of you were to talk.”
Aelius is a demon. Deceptions are part of his daily routine.
“Job accomplished then,” he murmurs. It shouldn’t sting, but it does. He knows firsthand however that even angels are liars.
“Aelius.” The low rumble of his name sends heat washing through him. He closes his eyes tight, removing the temptation to look at him. His name said like that conjures memories of warm hands on him, holding him like he’s precious. Lips skimming across his neck, moving lower as Gabriel showed him that he knew Aelius intimately.
“What do you want?” he demands, voice barely audible. To cut open the jagged wound, to line it with salt and make sure that nothing would grow in his heart again? If so, Gabriel is doing a fantastic job of it, the dull edges of his words sawing through the remains of his defenses. He’d been the one to let the enemy in, to give him the keys to the gates.
Of course, it would be nearly impossible to remove him.
“You.”
A single word. Gabriel isn’t a verbose man, isn’t ready to pour his heart out to the demon like most humans. The man keeps everything close to his chest.
“Too bad. That’s off the table.” If only his words didn’t shake and tremble like he was some hellmutt coming face-to-face with the terrible light of an avenging archangel.
“Well, the only thing on the table is a drink that looks like you’ve abandoned it to a slow demise by evaporation.”
That startles a laugh out of him, today’s brown eyes opening. Fool. Embracing his own destruction. The pull is too strong, and he turns, meeting Gabriel’s gaze.
“What are you doing?” he whispers. The obstacles between them haven’t changed. Gabriel is still one of the heavy-hitters for an entity that sees demons as little more than cockroaches.
“Getting the love of my existence back,” Gabriel answers.
A sob leaves him, his hand pressed in a fist to his lips. Don’t say that. Do you like pain so much? Are you so determined to make both of us suffer?
But he’s always been weak. He’s always been susceptible to offers too good to pass up. It was how he got where he is now.
“This doesn’t fix everything,” he tells his angel, even as he slides into the man’s lap, grateful now for the size of the booth. Israfel clears his throat but he ignores the sound. “I’m still a demon, and you’re still an archangel, and I—”
He doesn’t finish, lips descending on his and interrupting his words. Aelius grips the side of Gabriel’s head in an unforgiving hold, nails making crescents along his temple, all gentleness discarded. The anger, the fear—he hasn’t let go of it yet.
“Take me home,” he hisses against those rough lips, tongue flicking over the indents he’d left with his teeth. “I’m not sharing you tonight.”
If God existed, David was sure he was fucking with him.
Info: 8.4k | General | Getting back together, angsty
Notes: Canon divergent story where David and Matteo didn’t get back together...yet. This is angsty but I love the relationships and the hopefulness.
Sneak Peak:
He was twenty now. Realistically, nothing has changed – he was still a picky-eater, he still left his bed unmade, he still didn’t know how to cook, but at the same time he felt older, maybe not wiser, but changed. He was no longer a sad and angry teenager.
No, David was a proper adult now. He had a job, he was in his second year of university and he was even living on his own now.
He was an adult and he was happy. Well, almost happy. But, he thought whatever he was feeling was normal, because who hasn’t been bit lost while they were in their twenties? He wasn’t sure who told him that. It was either Laura or his therapist.
Huh. Normal. He didn’t think he would ever feel like that.
