The seraph blinks, once, twice, and the expression on his face may be unreadable to Michael, but anyone else not in such a stressful situation like sudden 'divine' conception can see that Zachariah's thinking he doesn't get paid nearly enough to deal with Michael's shit."Er... what?" he asks, eyebrows raised in disbelief.Michael repeats himself, clearly exasperated "I'm pregnant. You know. Expecting. With child. Parturient. I've got a bun in the oven -- whatever you want to call it."
"How?" is the next question out of Zachariah's mouth, and Michael's pinching the bridge of his nose in order to keep his temper in check.
"Gabriel thought it would be funny to play a prank on me," Michael tells him through gritted teeth. "And now he's gone somewhere and I can't find him."
Zachariah tries his hardest not to laugh, really he does, but the inevitable starts to happen. First it starts out with a simple twitch at the corners of his lips, and then he's stifling low chuckles which grow into louder snickers, and pretty soon he's waving his hands and cackling at the situation, tears welling up in his eyes. Michael, stony-faced, doesn't find any of this funny.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Zach tries to apologize through hiccoughs, laughter at the back of his throat threatening to start up again. He takes a deep breath, exhales slowly, does that a few more times. "I'm sorry. I am. Sorry. Really."
"Do you need anything?" Zachariah asks, as if that'll make up for him laughing at Michael's predicament.
He narrows his eyes in response. "No."
Zachariah makes a face that tells Michael he doesn't believe him, but nods regardless. "Alright. If that's the case, then I'll get started on your baby shower. Who knows? Your baby daddy, Gabriel, might even show up."
And Zach's laughing again, while Michael resists the urge to choke the life out of him.
"We'll get you something for all those hormones, too," he comments, waggling his eyebrows and shaking his head. "They're all over the place, I can tell."
The urge to smite Zachariah grows with each baby-related comment, but he decides to save that forever. Pickles and ice cream does sound delicious right now.
This had been the fifth time in a week that they’d ended up arguing. The first through the fourth it had been about Michael’s work ethic, how he’d never seem to be there when Jo needed him the most — a constant problem he’d had in Heaven, as well; and the fifth time had been about Michael forgetting their anniversary.
Supposedly.
He hadn’t actually forgotten, but, fearless leader of the formidable Heavenly Host be damned, he was nervous. He’d planned this for about a year now, and it was just his luck that everything would fall to shit right before his plan could come to fruition…“Michael!” and Jo’s snapping her fingers in front of his face, calling him back to attention. He furrows his brows at her, but says nothing. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Yes.”
The petite blonde rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest and shoving past him. “Yeah? And why don’t I believe that?” she mutters, and Michael manages to reach for her arm just before she’s completely past him. That only further enrages her, causing her to wheel around and glare at him, eyes blazing.
Michael wants to think of something, anything to say to rectify this, his own sky blue eyes searching Jo’s for a hint of understanding, and in a split second decision, he decides to go for it, before he makes things any worse. Which is pretty inevitable, by this point.
And so he drops to one knee.
Jo’s eyes widen and he sees them glistening with unshed tears before he’s even spoken a word. So he breathes deeply, taking the ring box out of his pocket and opens it before taking Jo’s hand in his again. “I didn’t forget,” he begins softly, shyly. “I just didn’t know how to do this.”There’s a long pause and tears are rolling down Jo’s cheeks now as she bites her wobbling lip to hide a smile. The notion causes Michael to smile, too, and suddenly encouraged, he presses on. “Jo, I… I love you. More than the sun and the stars and the moon, more than Heaven itself. And I truly have no intentions of upsetting you; I only wish to make you happy. Always.“And so, if you’ll— if you’ll marry me,” Damn his stuttering; he could give an inspiring prebellum speech to thousands of angels, but couldn’t tell one woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. “I promise to do that, no matter what the cost may be.”
And when he heard Jo answer, a whispered, nearly imperceptible yes, Michael knew that he’d have no problem keeping his promise, this time around.
"No."
There's a pregnant pause that fills the air, broken only by Meg's soft voice, so silent that her words are nearly carried away with the wind whipping violently around them. No one speaks. Somewhere next to her, a demon blade clatters to the ground. Footsteps, away from her, behind her to where Sam and Castiel wait, quiet in triumph while Meg stands, speechless with grief.
Rayek lies before her, motionless. Silent. Too white, too much of a contrast to the spreading pool of crimson underneath him. She moves forward, dropping to her knees at his side, uncaring of the denim of her jeans soaking up her friend's blood, weighing her down and keeping her closer to him, to the lifeless figure of the only person Meg had fully trusted since Azazel had died, since she'd parted with Alastair in Hell and Lucifer had no need for her.
"No..."
She hears someone move towards her, realizes it's Castiel, but she doesn't turn around, doesn't pass this off with a snarky comment or a witty remark about letting sleeping dogs lie -- (because that's all Rayek is doing, right? He's sleeping; and the way his face is contorted into a wordless grimace of pain is just a trick of light)...
...(but her hands and her clothes and everything, everything around them is so red, so red and so cold...)
Dean.
The name bolts through her brain like a firecracker shooting through the atmosphere into the sky, causing her vision to turn a shade of red that matches what's leaking out of her only friend, her best friend, onto the once pure-white snow beneath the two of them. Dean's taken everything away from her; everything that's ever served to make her happy has been ripped out of her clutches by either or both of the Winchesters, and for what? To save this two-bit, second rate planet they call their home. To save their friends, their family, and in the process, destroy Meg's own.
The first few she could take, she could tolerate and grin & bear. But this -- Dean's gone too far as to killing Rayek, "hound that dragged him to hell" be damned. They'd essentially done the same thing to her when she'd been exorcised, but she hadn't killed them for it, had she?
Not yet, anyway. That came soon.
There was no balance in this world claiming to function in the tropes of good and evil, yet actually functioning in justification and self-righteousness, which Team Free Will seemed to be at the forefront of. She blamed them -- them for everything terrible that was happening: the apocalypse, global warming and the fiscal cliff... Too bad none of that mattered to Meg. All that mattered was the loss of a life, an innocent life so dearly to her own...
Rayek was gone. Never would she see the way his eyes lit up when she told him stories about Hell, or the way he'd snicker silently to himself when Meg finished snarking at someone. There would be no more crappy moviefests, or feeling safe and happy because she'd finally found someone to trust, to confide in that wouldn't stab her in the neck with a demon knife the first chance they got...
Her sense of security, however false and unnecessary it may have been is gone and Meg feels vulnerable, cold and so angry and vulnerable.
She wants to tell Rayek to wake up, wants to scream at him to not leave her alone but she won't allow those behind her the satisfaction, nor herself to indulge in the sheer cheesiness of such actions. It's a demon's life cycle, she tells herself, repeating it like a mantra in her head, but it still doesn't ease the pain of the fact that when she squeezes Rayek's hand, he doesn't return the gesture.
And he never will.
The thought enrages her beyond belief, and it's not long before she's plotting her revenge. But that's for another moment, another time when she can find her words, and her closest friend isn't so freshly dead.
The Winchesters are leaving now, and Cas as well, after some initial hesitance -- but it's clear that Meg isn't moving and Castiel has a more "profound bond" with Sam and Dean, anyway. Of course he does. Another thing they've managed to take from her.
He couldn't believe he was doing this. This wasn't for real. There was no possible way--
Okay. Yes. The Archangel Michael, former viceroy of Heaven and commander of the host, next in line to the Throne was in love. With a Winchester, no less. With his brother's former and/or future vessel, no less. And after a tumultuous year or two of trying to push past the whole "attempting to inhabit his brother Dean and actually inhabiting his brother Adam", plus every cage matter they could think of, the two of them had hit a smooth patch in their relationship, for which Michael was incredibly glad.
But along with this smooth patch brought other things -- namely, marriage. It was what humans did when they loved each other, right? And Michael was incredibly sure that he loved Sam, as much as was physically possible, actually, and Sam at least tolerated him, had the courtesy to smile and nod when Michael told him of his affections, expressed his love. And that was all he could ask for, really, it was more than enough to keep him happy. After thousands of years of dealing with nary a word from his absentee father, a tight-lipped smile instead of an 'I love you, too' was still like Christmas morning for him.
But an engagement ring seemed too cliche, and why should he promise earthly things if he could promise Sam the entirety of heaven? A ring paled in comparison to his homeland, anyway, where both the streets and the skies were made of glittering gems and gold.
So with his stomach flip-flopping unstably as he approached Sam, giving him a small wave before gripping the younger man's hands in his own (determined to keep Sam from seeing how much they were shaking), the archangel took a deep breath before speaking.
"Sam, I... love you. You know that, right? I'd like to spend the rest of my life with you--" he felt the need to leave out the part that he was, for the most part, immortal. No need to scare Sam away. "And so I wanted to ask if you'd marry me. I can't promise you a ring, no, but I can promise you all of Heaven and everything in it, if... if you'll just be mine."
That was it. The ball was out of his court, now, but everything inside of him hoped with a frightening passion that Sam would say yes, that maybe, just maybe, Michael would receive one more chance to make things right.
It wasn't much of a secret that Meg hated being alone. And ever since Tom, Alastair and Azazel had been killed, that was all she'd felt. A consuming loneliness that may have been crippling had she been a human, but for a demon, it had simply been part of life. You loved, you lost, and you never loved again. Meg was fine with that; had been fine with that for the longest time now.
But then it had changed. Some tall, dark, handsome and bearded stranger had waltzed into Bigfork, and had the nerve to get all starry-eyed when he was near Meg like she was some natural-born celebrity, and had the damn nerve to be as loyal and as loving to Lucifer as she was. They'd bonded easily, and Meg had felt far too comfortable around him far too quickly. She'd even taken to lovingly calling him 'Pup' and making dog jokes whenever it was most convenient.
One night, during a particularly bad storm in the never-ending tsunami wave that was Bigfork's weather, the two of them had been lazing around, watching B-list horror movies and laughing at crappy reality shows when Meg finally took the initiative to rest her head on Rayek's shoulder, curling in against him with a quiet, yet content sigh.
He raised his eyebrows, looking away from the crapfest movie they'd been watching and laughing at, (ironically enough -- it was that whiny, preteen movie about vampires and werewolves) to her. "Scared or something?" he asked, though there was an undercurrent of amusement in his voice. "Didn't think much could scare you, especially not terribly CGI'd werewolves."
"Scared? As if," Meg scoffed, but did not make nor exhibit any effort of moving. "As it turns out, motel rooms in Montana are incredibly drafty, and hellhounds happen to be a very good source of heat. You don't mind, do ya, pup? I had to put you to good use somehow, and something tells me you wouldn't be up for being turned into a rug."
Rayek snorted lightly, the both of them knowing fully well that demons didn't get cold. Not that easily, at least.
"I would've preferred being the rug," the male joked, earning a soft jab in the ribs, via Meg's elbow.
"Shut up or I won't give you your Kibbles and Bits," the brunette threatened, equally as joking. Nonetheless, Rayek wrapped an arm tightly around Meg's shoulders, pulling her closer to him as they turned their attention back to the medium-sized television, and outside, the sleet droned on.
A false sense of security, sure, an unneeded sense of security, certainly, but it was a sense of security nonetheless and Meg would be damned if she'd let this one go for a while.
Dean was asleep, and per usual, Castiel had been left to his own devices, wherever he may be at the moment. That left Sam and Meg, researching aethyrs in brooding silence, until a quarter past 3 o’clock AM, when Sam shut his laptop, stood up and announced (to Meg only, really) that he was making a stop at the town’s nearest convenience store, and complained — but only marginally — when Meg announced she was tagging along to pick up a few magazines. Begrudgingly, the two set out on their small journey, careful not to wake Sam’s sleeping brother when they shut the door quietly behind them.
If Meg would’ve known what she was signing herself up for when she’d started playing for Team Free Will, she would have let Crowley capture her long, long ago.
Or… Maybe not.
I see you looking, yeah, you looking over my wayI'm gonna leash you up and put you into my cageTeach you how to touch me, baby, how to say my nameBet that you never had nobody that'd give it you this way
"We're lost, douchebag," Meg chided Sam for the fifteenth time in five minutes, and the long-haired Winchester had just about had it with the damn demon's sassy mouth and know-it-all attitude.
"For the last time, Meg, no, we aren't."
"Then why in the Hell have we passed that same building four times, Moosechester?"
Slamming the heel of his palm into the steering wheel of the car -- which, had been a 'temporarily borrowed' car from the parking lot of their motel, and unfortunately, had not been the Impala; Dean didn't trust anyone with his Baby and Sam didn't like Meg enough to let her ride in the front seat of their precious Chevy -- Sam pulled to the side of the road, letting the car idle as he glared daggers over at the demon. "First off, shut up. And second, I have a name. Use it."
"That's cute," Meg returned instantly, quirking an eyebrow and crossing her arms over her chest. "You think I give enough of a shit about you to use your name."
Calmly, almost too calmly for someone who was usually annoyed out of his mind by the woman riding shotgun, the younger Winchester shut off the car, staring straight ahead at the empty expanse of road before them. "Call me Sam, Meg."
"What are you going to do if I don't, Bullwinkle? Punish me?"
And with speed like lightening, which could be attributed only to his new powers, Sam had Meg pinned against the passenger door, faces only inches apart from each other. Meg curled her lip in disgust, sheer instinct, really, when she realized she could feel the man's breath against her face, shallowed and quick as if he were angry, yet attempting to keep his temper under wraps. His grip on her wrists tightened, not enough to hurt, but just enough to ensure that Meg wasn't going anywhere. And right now, did she really want to?
"Say it." he breathed, eyes locked on hers with a hint of something that wasn't Sam, something feral that both frightened Meg and turned her on, just the slightest bit. She'd always been one who was attracted to power. The brunette allowed a small smirk to tug at the corner of her lips, leaning forward so just the tip of her nose was touching his, teasing him, challenging the power and authority he was so desperately trying to exhibit over her.
"Why don't you try and make me, Sammy?"
That was enough incentive for him. The smirk he offered her in return served to demonstrate that he accepted her challenge.
And the kiss that followed was not a loving one, there was nothing loving about any of it. It was passionate, yet at the same time, cold, calculated; a clashing of teeth and a tangling of tongues, all the while a fight for dominance and control. Then Sam was fisting at the hems of Meg's shirt, tugging them over her head and tossing them, wadded up into the back seat of the car. It wasn't long that Meg was following suit with Sam's own shirt, only half-aware of what was happening, but remembering that this had to be some form of cardinal sin, nonetheless.
Long nails against the smooth skin of the hunter's back, blunt teeth marking the demon's shoulder and neck over and over (as if that'll make her say it), strong hands making their way downwards, to unbutton, to slip into pants and tease through fabric. Her smirk grew into a grin when Sam made a soft noise against her jawbone, length hardening at her touch. She was incredibly tempted to push him back into his seat and take full advantage of the situation, but thank Lucifer, managed to remember her self-control and stay where she was.
And when Meg's head may or may not have tipped back against the cool, glass window of their joyride, Sam took that opportunity to mark his territory there, as well, teeth biting against soft flesh and licking apologies immediately after. Either he was far too good or it had been far too long; either way, Meg was far too close already, eyes fluttering shut as she allowed herself a moment -- just a moment -- of white-hot bliss.
"Say it," Sam hissed against the skin of her collarbone, and with the heat of lust fuzzing her brain, she allows his name to escape from her lips in a nearly imperceptible whisper.
Sam.
Everything ends abruptly after that, and Meg was both disappointed and glad. On one hand, she had to allow herself to calm down, to mask any form of longing that had been on her face just moments before. She couldn't let Sam see that he'd gotten to her, even though the demon was more than sure he knew.
And on the other hand, she'd never have forgiven herself had she actually had sex with Sam Winchester.
But now, everytime she calls him Sammy, there's a mischievous glint in her eye, as if inviting him to come and try to make her say his name again.
