Arrangements Part IV

[icarus_chained]

And now, for something completely different. Angst. Also, possibly some actual plot. *shrugs helplessly* Turns out Gabriel does that to a room.

Title:  Challenging Archangels
Rating:  PG-13
Fandoms:  Good Omens, Supernatural
Continuity:  Direct sequel to Temptation
Characters/Pairings:  Gabriel, Sam, Dean, Cas, Crowley, Aziraphale. Crowley/Aziraphale, Dean/Cas, possible future Sam/Gabriel
Summary:  Gabriel breaks up the party, after a brief moment of distraction-by-pastry. What? An archangel can't have a sweet tooth?
Wordcount:  3248
Disclaimer:  Still not mine
A/N:  Moving up through season five, probably. Also adding in some backstory for Gabriel, Crowley and Aziraphale. That 1000 years on Earth, guys, with all three of them wandering around. I was gonna do something with it.
A/N2: For those wondering who Aribert Heim was: here

Challenging Archangels

He'd meant to make a more impressive entrance. You know, some bells and whistles, a little intimidation, maybe a threat of smiting or two, since he was outed and all and could go to town. After all the effort he'd had to go through to get in here in the first place (seriously, there was paranoia, and there was paranoia), he'd meant to work out his frustration with a creative threat or two, taunt the Winchesters, maybe make baby bro cry. That's what he'd meant to do.

It was hardly his fault they had pastries. He got a little ... distracted. They had cream buns. Obviously very good ones, too, if the noises Cas had been making were anything to go by. And they were. Oh, they were. There were two of them, just lying right there.

Very shortly, there were none.

When he looked up, busily licking the last of the cream off his fingers, he was surrounded by two glaring humans, two staring angels, and one very, very nervous demon. One of said angels had cream smeared all over his cheeks, which went very oddly with the protective fury in his eyes. The other was clutching a cup of tea with one hand and a demon with the other, which was hardly any better.

At least the humans looked the same as always. Mostly pissed off.

"Hey guys!" He tried out a little wave, smirking as Castiel flinched automatically towards the Winchesters, and the demon gave a very unmanly little squeak. Hey. Maybe his entrance hadn't been wasted after all.

"Tri.. Trickster?" Aziraphale asked, faintly. Gabriel grinned at him. He recognised the guy, of course. No angel who spent any time on this little mudball wouldn't. Not that he'd ever actually met him, mind. Heaven's agent on Earth, and him incognito? Not a wise plan. But now that he had the chance ...

"Gabriel," Castiel cut in, two steps above a growl. "What do you want?"

Aziraphale's eyes widened comically, his tea slopping over his wrist, and oh, that was gratifying, but it was nothing compared to the demon's reaction. Crowley shot a stunned look over at Castiel, took in the complete lack of surprise in Sam and ole Deano, took one look at Gabriel's carefully blank expression, and threw up his hands in terror.

"I didn't tell them!" he squawked, backing up until he bumped into Aziraphale's knees. "I swear, Gabriel, I didn't tell them!"

Suddenly, every eye in the room was on the demon, and all Gabriel had to do was sit back and watch the show.

"Gabriel?" Aziraphale whispered, stunned. "The archangel? Gabriel?" Poor boy seemed a little hung up on that.

"You know him?" That was Sam, all adorably befuddled. Followed rapidly by Dean:

"Demon, you best not be telling me you've been working for this bastard." And that, Gabriel did find amusing. That, he thought he should answer.

"Not for, Deano," he drawled, smirking at the rapidly reddening human. "With. He works with me. Sometimes." They stared at him, the three of them instinctively bunching together against him, and away from Crowley, and wow, that little alliance didn't take much to cave in. "Me and the Serpent, we go back a ways."

"You are not helping here," Crowley hissed, coiled in a low crouch beside his angel like a cobra readying to strike. The look he shot Gabriel was positively venomous.

"Wasn't trying to be," he grinned, waving a cheerful hand. "But hey, I can shut up if you'd like. Let you dig yourself out of this. If you can."

The glare he got for that would have knocked a lesser angel dead. Who knew Crowley had that dirty a mouth? Gabriel hadn't been cursed that virulently since Phoenician was a living language, and he thought he might actually have to be impressed by that.

"Hey!" Dean again, cutting across the vicious flow of demonic invective. "Hate to break up this little reunion, but any time you want to start explaining yourself, demon ..."

Crowley sent him a very bitter look. "What happened to 'Crowley'?" he asked, soft and sibilant, the hiss building under the words. Dean looked back stonily.

"You get a name when I'm sure you've not been screwing with us for a guy who gets his kicks by repeatedly killing me," he growled, coming forward a step, fists clenched. Straight for the offense, that was Dean. No wonder Michael wanted him. Sam, on the other hand, was looking more than a little doubtful. Castiel ... Cas looked outright torn. And Crowley ...

Damn. Gabriel'd forgotten how hurt that demon could look when he wanted to. More to the point, he'd forgotten how weirdly affecting it was, given that he shouldn't give a shit for the guy. They were what? Work acquaintances, at best? Occasional drinking buddies, sure. And, alright, the demon had given him the heads up that time back in Niems when Raph had been due a swing by ... Well, bugger. There went his fun. Maybe he should ...

"That is enough!" There wasn't an ounce of angelic power in that command, not a hint of Grace. Instead, it pulled up every last drop of guilt-inducing reserve the British Empire had ever laid claim to, and packaged it in a tone cold enough to make ice in Death Valley at summer's noon. And Gabriel may have been the Messenger of God, and one of the most impressive Voices in creation (if he didn't say so himself), but for a moment he felt a little thrill of envy.

Then he mostly felt very wet, and more than a little gobsmacked.

Aziraphale, dainty as you please, lowered the hand holding what had recently been a cup of tea, and stared down into Gabriel's drenched features. The Principality looked shaky, and somewhat terrified at his own daring, but when Gabriel tried to glare at him, he found himself stared down with complete impassivity.

"I think," Aziraphale said, very pointedly. "That you should explain yourself like a good little archangel, and stop trying to get Crowley in trouble."

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Even Dean, and Father knew that boy had done enough threatening greater powers in his lifetime, not to mention having personally stabbed Gabriel about twenty times all by his lonesome, looked stunned. Crowley looked like he was trying to swallow a goldfish whole. Then, as Gabriel continued to do nothing (truth be told, he was still trying to get over the sheer affront to try anything), Castiel and Crowley took one long look at each other, nodded once, and stepped in unison in front of Aziraphale, gently guiding the angel back a step away from the potentially explosive archangel.

"He didn't mean it," Crowley said, making desperate placating motions with his hands.

"I'm sure our brother was just ... upset," Castiel tried, shifting to keep his body constantly in front of the other angel as they forced him to back up. "He's had a troublesome day, with Zachariah and his angels. He's just ... upset."

"Drunk, too!" Crowley grinned, voice high and worried. "Drunk as a lord! Don't mind him!"

Gabriel stared at them. Tea dripped slowly over his forehead, into his eyes. He didn't blink. "He just ..." he said, slowly. "He just ..."

"And he's very sorry about it," Crowley begged, desperately.

"No, I'm not," Aziraphale spoke up, very determined. Castiel reached behind him to clap a hand over the other angel's mouth without even looking. Little brother was learning.

"Will you sssshhhut up, angel," Crowley hissed.

"No," Gabriel said, very quietly. "No. Let him speak."

"Ah, no," Dean obviously decided to step in, looking worriedly at his angel standing right in the line of fire. "Maybe that's not such a good idea ..."

"Come on, Gabriel," Sam tried his best winning smile. Which, actually, wasn't half bad. "We're all just a little ... I mean, torture has this tendency to make us ... antsy. I'm sure Aziraphale was just ..."

"Acting out?" he cut in, dry as dust. As one, they flinched. And then, of all people, Castiel decided to grow a spine.

"You are one to talk," the lesser angel spoke up, halting his retreat and holding his ground, chin tilting up and back stiffening in cold fury. "After all you have done in anger, Gabriel, do you dare condemn another for the same!"

Gabriel blinked at him. Aziraphale was one thing, but for Castiel to stand up to him, an archangel, given what had apparently happened the last time he'd tried that ... "Beg pardon?"

"I do not know why you are here," Castiel said quietly, levelling a long, intense look his way. "I do not know what you want, Gabriel. But whatever it is, you will not get it by trying to force us into division. You will not get it by goading us into challenging you. Or each other." He paused, blue eyes fierce and burning with tattered Grace. "Whatever this is, this trick, this game ... it will not work. So either leave, or strike us down, but do not blame our brother for having the courage to do what you have wished to do for yours so many times!"

Gabriel stared at him for a long, long minute. Long enough for the Winchesters to get nervous and move in, Dean in front of Cas, Sam looming large and defiant behind him. Crowley and Aziraphale frowned, confused and concerned, but bunched in close themselves. All five of them, renegades and rebels and misfits to a ... sentient being ... standing firm against him. Against him, and against everything. Threatening each other to standing together in two seconds flat.

Father in Heaven, how he missed that, missed having that, missed feeling it. Missed standing with family and knowing they had your back, and not just to line it up for the knife.

"I ... I don't think a cup of tea to the head is going to cut it with Mike and Lucy," he said, very softly. "I don't think there's much of anything that will cut it, now."

Aziraphale smiled at him gently. "A moment ago, I wouldn't have thought it would cut it with you," he pointed out. Crowley grimaced a little.

"We've no proof it's worked now," he muttered, elbowing his angel in the ribs. Gabriel felt himself snicker. Just a little.

"Gabriel?" Castiel, again. The most battered of his brothers. The most reduced. The most faithful and brave. He bit his lip, fighting the urge to smile at the little guy, to reach out and reassure. He couldn't. He couldn't do this, not again. He couldn't reach out to a brother and watch them try to kill him, not again. Not ever again. And these brothers ... just a few words, and they were ready to turn on each other. Just a little suspicion, and they were leaping for the throat.

Then again, Crowley was a demon. The Winchesters just couldn't trust him right off the bat, after everything. But once they figured it out ... Of all the fallen, this one they could trust. A demon of his word, every time. And Aziraphale, well. The boy hadn't a malicious, untrustworthy bone in his body, to coin a human phrase.

And if you had to be on anyone's side, in this stupid little family squabble ...

He raised a hand, watching them flinch, watching Crowley grimace with bitterly vindicated suspicion, watching Sam and Dean Winchester glare tired hatred, watching the fathomless sadness in Castiel's and Aziraphale's eyes. He raised his hand, and clicked his fingers.

And grinned at them through suddenly dry hair, holding out a tray with six steaming cups.

"Anyone want a refill?"

There was a long pause where no-one did anything. Then ... well. Crowley might be the master of the filthy mouth, but Castiel was undoubtedly champion of the dirty look. Though Sam was giving his best effort, something he could hear Dean automatically classifying as 'bitchface #49, you are so dead'.

It was a very cute look on him, actually.

Aziraphale, by contrast, beamed at him like a proud parent, and swooped over to appropriate the nearest cup. Gabriel grinned at him a bit, keeping a wary eye on the liquid to make sure it stayed in the cup and not on his head, watching him take that first sip and sigh happily.

"I am sorry, my dear," the fussy angel smiled, reaching out to pat his free hand. Gabriel blinked at him, beginning to wonder if he'd stepped into one of his own illusions. No-one was that cheerful naturally.

"No you're not," Crowley muttered, sidling up next to his angel, taking a cup gingerly between careful fingers, and giving Gabriel a squinty look. Gabriel gave him his best innocent expression, and waited until the demon had taken his first sip of almost raw single-malt with just the faintest flavouring of tea before snickering gently. Crowley shot him a sour look, but obviously appreciated the belt.

"Yes, I am, dearest," Aziraphale smiled at his surly companion, before turning back to him. "But really, you shouldn't have hurt Crowley like that. Archangel or no."

Gabriel stared at him, sending the others a faintly baffled look. "Is he always like this?"

Crowley grunted. "You have no idea."

"It is not ..." Castiel said reproachfully, moving cautiously forward. "It is not a bad thing." He shied nervously as Gabriel turned to him, and inside a second his human watchdog was beside him and glaring. The archangel grinned at Dean challengingly, and smirked at the red flush that spread up his neck.

"You should have some too, Deano," he sneered. "Do wonders for that disposition of yours."

"What's that supposed to mean!"

"Stop it!" And, this time, it's Sam growling at them, appearing beside them like the world's largest ninja and landing huge hands quellingly on his brother's shoulders. It looked like if he'd dropped them any harder, Dean would have been walking away the same height as Gabriel. "Please," the younger Winchester asked. "I've spent most of today getting turned inside out by Zach. Can we please not kill each other now?" His face twisted in genuine pain, a human pushed too far, too fast, too many times, and just desperate for a break. For just five minutes when the people around him aren't killing each other. Which was not fair, because Gabriel had had enough of empathising with people for one evening, but even still ...

He found himself growling slightly. "Someone should teach that little pipsqueak a lesson," he muttered. Leave Heaven for just a thousand years, and look what idiots they put in charge!

Then, surprisingly, Dean grinned. At him. "Oh, no worries there," the hunter rumbled. "Someone already did. Someone really did."

Gabriel blinked at him. "Oh?"

As one, all of them turned to look at Aziraphale, who blushed bright pink. "Um."

Gabriel looked at him for a long minute, idly wondering why it was all his little brothers who'd turned out to have actual spines, then sent Crowley a long, sideways look. "I don't know why you sent me after Aribert Heim on his account, you know," he mused. "He can obviously take care of himself."

Crowley went still. Still as death, a human would say, barely even breathing as Aziraphale turned slowly to face him. All colour fled from both their faces.

"Crowley," the angel breathed. "Crowley, you didn't."

The demon shuffled uneasily, looking anywhere but at the angel. "Deserved it," he said, at last. "Deserved worse. But the cancer ..." He looked over at Gabriel, nodding slightly. "That was a good touch. That was very nice." Something flashed in golden eyes, something that reminded them, so very suddenly, that this was a being who had known Hell from the Fall, and had carried some of it away with him. Behind Gabriel, Dean shivered suddenly, and drifted closer to Cas.

"Hey, guys?" Sam asked, very hesitantly. "What ... what's going on?" He looked at Gabriel, hard. "What is it between you two. You still haven't explained ..."

Gabriel tilted his head at the demon, passing the question, but Crowley was moving to Aziraphale, wrapping himself gently around a suddenly shaking Principality, and he realised he was going to have to take this one himself. He frowned, watching them. He was also going to have to ask about that later. Obviously something deep there ...

"Gabriel?" Cas interrupted his thought, very gently, sad eyes watching the angel and his demon. "Perhaps we should ... step over here a bit, and you can explain?" Gentle, deferential, but with just a hint of steel. Little brother had gotten a mite protective about the only other angel in the spheres to stand beside him and his humans.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, sure." He snapped a finger, and they were in the next room, the kitchen, leaving Crowley to explain to his angel. For a second, Gabriel just stared back, through the wall, wondering what he'd obviously missed in the last few centuries of acquaintance with the only demon in existence who'd help hide an absentee archangel.

Thinking about Heim, though, and what he was known for ... maybe he'd already known when he'd taken the job. If ever there was a human deserving a Trickster's attentions ...

"So," Dean growled, and Gabriel turned to see him lightly curling fingers into fists. "Gonna fill us in now, Gabe?"

"Dean," Sam muttered, warningly. "Please," he added, face worn and tired as he looked at the archangel, a far cry from the brief flare of contentment Gabriel had caught a glimpse of as he'd flashed in. All because of him. And fine. Fine. He was going to do this. He was going to take a bloody side, and try to keep it together, and try to ... to keep them together, to keep Sam together.

Not because he'd gone soft. Just because he was tired, he was fucking tired, of watching people he might, possibly, care about spend their last days trying to rip each other to shreds.

Mike and Lucy, they were lost causes. Maybe always had been. But Gabriel didn't have to let them drag anyone else down with them. Not Dean, asshole little snot that he was. Not Castiel, already so battered and torn by this, but hanging in there. Still hanging in there. Not Crowley, the stubborn, snakey bastard, and no, Gabriel didn't owe him a thing. Archangels don't owe anybody. Not Aziraphale, not what was quite possibly the one remaining angel touched by their Father's grace.

And not Sam Winchester. Not ever Sam Winchester. Lucy could go screw himself. Or, possibly, Michael. It wasn't like those two hadn't done everything else already.

"Settle in, boys," he said at last. "This is a long story, so you might as well get comfortable. We're going back almost a thousand years here, after all." A faint grimace, and he shot a challenging look at the elder Winchester. "And before you ask, yes. You really can trust him. In fact ... that's pretty much what this whole thing is about. Has been from the start." He stopped, looking at them, at Dean's dark confusion, Sam's desperate hope, Castiel's wary faith. "Who you can trust," he said at last, distantly, thoughtfully. "Who's on whose side, and who in all that you can trust. Not Hell. Not Heaven. Certainly not humanity. But maybe ... a little bit of all of them."

And now that he thought of it ... this little team of theirs, this little alliance ... wouldn't it be just like Father to have fixed it? As Michael was so fond of saying, you can't fight City Hall. (No, he wasn't stalking his little brother back and forth through time just to make sure he made it, why do you ask?)

The thing Michael seemed to have forgotten, the thing all of them seemed to have forgotten, with the possible exceptions of Cas and the two boys in the other room, was who City Hall was.

Tell you something for nothing? It sure as Hell wasn't Heaven.

Contd. Making Deals With Devils