![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Companion (and slight prequel) to Remnants of an Old War.
Title: A Heaven for Fallen Archangels
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Good Omens, Supernatural
Continuity: Set after 5x22 SPN, and a few weeks before Remnants
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel, Aziraphale, Crowley. Aziraphale/Crowley/Gabriel
Summary: Twenty feet away, a very stunned ex-celestial agent crouched, and stared at the archangel who'd just fallen from death and the sky onto his doorstep.
Wordcount: 3811
Spoilers/Warnings: Post SPN season finale. You'll need to have read Remnants to understand it.
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Title: A Heaven for Fallen Archangels
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Good Omens, Supernatural
Continuity: Set after 5x22 SPN, and a few weeks before Remnants
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel, Aziraphale, Crowley. Aziraphale/Crowley/Gabriel
Summary: Twenty feet away, a very stunned ex-celestial agent crouched, and stared at the archangel who'd just fallen from death and the sky onto his doorstep.
Wordcount: 3811
Spoilers/Warnings: Post SPN season finale. You'll need to have read Remnants to understand it.
Disclaimer: I own nothing
A Heaven for Fallen Archangels
He hit the ground hard, feet first, almost managing to stand for a second before the world spun around him, and his knees met the earth. One hand sprawled out, dug into grass and soil, and kept him vaguely on all fours, not face-first onto the ground. Gabriel swallowed desperately around the surge of bile up his throat, and concentrated on figuring out what in Dad's name was going on. Well. Concentrated first on not throwing up, or letting his brains dribble out his ears, but after that ...
The last thing he remembered was ... the explosion of something in his chest, a burst of agony and then ... emptiness? The last thing he remembered feeling was the sensation of something important, something fundamental, rushing free of him, in one terrible burst, and a grey hollowness reaching up to claim him in its wake. Death, he realised dimly. The last thing he'd felt was Death, come to collect him. Because ...
A flash before his eyes, a rotting face and a blade between his ribs, and the familiar expression in those eyes. So familiar, so pained. The only thing so many of them remembered of what had once been the brightest and most joyous of his brothers. Lucifer. The last thing Gabriel remembered seeing had been Lucifer. Had been the cold, tired hate in his brother's eyes.
The last thing he remembered seeing ... was his killer.
His stomach heaved again, violent and dizzying, and Gabriel clung closer to the earth in desperation, trying to ride out the rush of reaction. His brother had killed him. His brother had killed him. He was dead, and Lucifer had killed him, and now ...
Wait. Now? There was a now. A now full of earth between his fingers and under his nails, of dampness squelching around his knees, of the sick upheavals of his stomach and the memory of pain. A now with air in his lungs, and the pulse of a Grace that had been ripped from him in his heart, and the distant brush of wings that had incinerated themselves against his back. A now full of things he really, really shouldn't have, if he was dead ...
He looked up, slowly and very, very painfully, fighting dizziness and his gorge the whole way. It took a second or twelve for the blur of colour around him to resolve itself into anything recognisable, took a second for the world to make sense again. And then ... then he realised it was more than just recognisable. Or that one thing, anyway, was more than just recognisable.
Twenty feet away, behind a low garden wall and about sixteen layers of protective warding, two stunned, fearful blue eyes stared out at him. A broad, cheerful face, marred by scars under blond hair, currently wobbling between worry, terror and recognition, watched him from the safety of a cottage garden somewhere, Gabriel knew, in England. Twenty feet away, a very stunned ex-celestial agent crouched, and stared at the archangel who'd just fallen from death and the sky onto his doorstep.
Twenty feet away, recognition and realisation flared in Aziraphale's eyes, followed very quickly by concern and no small amout of fear, and the scarred angel pulled himself fully to his aching feet, reaching out towards Gabriel.
And Gabriel, dizzy and bewildered and not at all well, promptly keeled over into the dirt in a rush of relief and vague concern, and lost consciousness.
---
He came to a couple of minutes later, damp and muddy and oddly warm, curled on his side in the dirt with something warm and heavy draped over him, muttering frantically to itself over his head. Gabriel blinked blearily, managing to turn his head enough to look up.
"Crowley, dearest, I need you here right now!" Aziraphale hissed painfully into a slab of black plastic pressed to the side of his face. Phone, Gabriel thought fuzzily. Not talking to himself, then. "Hurry, dear, I can't move, you need to ..."
"Angel!" Another voice behind them, with not even a rush of incoming air to warn them, but Aziraphale didn't even start above him. Gabriel wasn't quite so calm about the demon's sudden entrance, but Aziraphale's arm wrapped comfortingly around his waist as the angel smiled up at the figure suddenly looming over them. "Bloody hell, angel, what are you doing out in the open ..."
Crowley stopped, coming around Aziraphale to stare down at him, fear, anger and shock layered over each other in his expression, a strange and sort of fascinating blend of emotion. The demon dropped silently to his haunches beside them, eyes wide and almost afraid. Gabriel had the strange impression that Crowley was resisting a powerful urge to poke him and see if he was real.
"Is that ...?" the demon whispered, softly. "Gabriel? Aren't you ... aren't you supposed to be dead?"
Gabriel considered being offended by that, considered being angry, but there was no malice in the demon's voice, only a sort of stunned amazement, and Crowley was still looking at him like he wasn't quite real.
"I'm ... sorry to disappoint you, asshole," he managed, almost affectionately, grinning up at the demon. Not that he was completely sure he had, mind, not that he knew for sure he wasn't actually dead, and having a very, very nice dream in whatever Heaven archangels went to when they died (not the usual one, anyway - someone would have noticed), but Crowley at least seemed alive, and in Gabriel's idea of Heaven, Aziraphale wasn't bearing quite so many scars.
"He just appeared, dearest," Aziraphale explained softly, watching Crowley over Gabriel's head. It was weird, looking up at them like this. Weird to be curled between them, possibly-dead, possibly-alive, damp and warm and more than a little bewildered. Aziraphale was frowning, worrying at his lower lip, his arm tight around Gabriel as if afraid someone was going to tear him away. "He just fell from the sky, over there, and collapsed. I was ... I was trying to get us behind the wards, but he's heavier than he looks, and my leg ..."
The scarred angel grimaced, the limb in question shifting a little behind Gabriel's calf, and Crowley's confused, wary features shifted instantly to concern and growling exasperation. And belated fear, swimming uneasily just below the surface as he looked warily around, but Gabriel knew that one. He understood that one. He remembered, too well, carrying the angel down from Heaven, remembered blue eyes blurred with pain smiling dazedly up at him in bewildered gratitude. He remembered the demon flying frantic and furious behind him, remembered Crowley landing beside him and simply wrapping himself around Aziraphale, not even waiting for Gabriel to get out of the way. He remembered that.
And remembered that Aziraphale, stupid stubborn idiot that he was, had apparently limped out into the open to check on an unconscious archangel that as far as he knew could have been sent as a trap. And then stayed there, wrapped around him, helpless if anyone ...
Well, he could fix that, anyway, closing his eyes and getting two fingers together to snap. Flying was a bad, bad plan right now, if his stomach was anything to go by, but he didn't need to fly. All he needed was to make here and there the same, just for one second, and make sure the other two stayed with him when it let go again ...
They landed with a soft whump, and a gasp of pain from Aziraphale as something got jostled badly, but before Gabriel could do anything about it a hand sealed itself viciously around his throat, and his eyes flew open to meet Crowley's furious, panicking gaze. His furious golden gaze, and oh, that was bad, that was very bad. Crowley had drowned himself completely in his new vessel, in his new role as Crossroads King (Mephisto had apparently been really (and really briefly) upset about being evicted from his vessel and killed, but Crowley had been riding a lot of adrenalin at the time, and hadn't been in the mood to care), and those eyes hadn't shown through since ... since Aziraphale had been taken ...
"Urk?" he managed, eyes wide as he stared up at the demon. Crowley only hissed at him, looking frantically from side to side as he made sure that they were, in fact, just a few yards from where they'd been, just inside their own house, on the bed, where Gabriel had put them. Safe behind wards that still let him through, still let him pull stunts like that, and Gabriel took a moment in between shock and annoyance to feel a little warm about that. The wards still let him in. Even knowing he was dead, even -knowing Crowley- having made damn sure of it ... they had left a space for him here. For whatever reason, and Crowley would probably say it was just laziness or lack of time, but Crowley was far too paranoid for that these days. No. There was a still a space for him here because ... because Aziraphale had a strange abundance of faith, and Crowley was ridiculously soft at heart once you actually got to his heart ... and they cared about him. Enough to leave him somewhere to go, if maybe he wasn't quite so dead as it seemed ...
"Warn somebody before you do that!" Crowley growled at last, cutting across the thought, his hand growing slack around Gabriel's throat. Thankfully. Demon had a hell of a grip when he was pushed. Behind him, Aziraphale let out a soft sigh of relief, very soft, and let himself ease out along the bed, stretching his damaged leg carefully. He hadn't let himself move before. He'd been waiting for Crowley to let him know it was safe.
"That bad?" Gabriel asked quietly, swallowing carefully around the nascent bruises on his throat. Crowley looked back down at him, still crouched half-across him where he'd lunged for Aziraphale as they'd moved. A strange series of emotions flickered across the demon's face. Pain and fear and odd defiance, and a whisper of hope. More than a little anger. Gabriel blinked at him.
"You died," Aziraphale whispered, while Crowley seemingly couldn't speak. The battered angel curled the arm he'd somehow managed to keep around Gabriel's waist a little tighter, and pressed his forehead into Gabriel's shoulder. Watching him, Crowley's face twisted. "You died," Aziraphale murmured again. "And we couldn't ... we had to do something, and ... And we won, or somebody won, and the world is still here, but ... Well. They took it badly enough the first time. Two apocalypses on ..."
Gabriel blinked some more. "You ... You went and ... Please, tell me you didn't actually go and interfere! Please tell me you didn't, not when you're ..." He stopped, trailed off, and watched Crowley look away, watch the demon's face tighten as his hand drifted over to Aziraphale's and clung tight. "Crowley?" he growled, more than a little pissed off himself. Aziraphale, he could understand, because the angel never could stop himself if someone was getting hurt, but he'd thought the demon had learned from the last time he'd gone up against Luci armed with nothing but terror and a tire iron. He'd thought the demon, at least, would be sensible about things. Giving the Winchesters a weapon was one thing. Actually getting involved, when he had Aziraphale to look after ...
"You died," Crowley hissed at last, his head coming back around so he could glare, golden-eyed and vicious. "You sodding died, you bastard, after all that bloody talk about being sensible. You walked right up and spat in his bloody face! If you're going to be getting an attack of conscience and getting bloody killed for it, you can't blame me for finishing your bloody job and actually doing it right! I ..."
Aziraphale moved, levering himself up behind Gabriel and reaching out to rest one hand on Crowley's cheek, partially lying on Gabriel to manage it, and they shut up. Both of them. Crowley in his rant, Gabriel opening his mouth to start his own. They shut up.
"We had to do something," the angel repeated gently, looking down at Gabriel, his face ... very close. "We lost you, and we had to do something. And I couldn't, not really, but Crowley could, and you shouldn't yell at him. Not when ... not when you'd done the same, my dear. You really ... you really shouldn't yell at him for that."
Gabriel opened his mouth. And then closed it again. This close, he could almost trace the pale lines that dug into Aziraphale's cheeks, made his smile permanently a little lopsided. This close, he could see the quiet burning behind the angel's eyes, the strange Grace that someone upstairs had done something very twisted to in trying to tear it out, and only managed to bind it close instead, into a sort of soft intensity that Gabriel would bet, with a certain degree of vindictive pleasure, had frightened the snot out of the torturing bastards. This close, he could feel the desperate caring of this angel, for him, and feel his own heart twist in response. This close ...
"You ... you shouldn't do that," he murmured eventually, trying for joking and coming out more than a little strangled. But he was blaming Crowley and the bruises around his neck for that, nothing else. Absolutely nothing else. "You'll make Crowley jealous."
Aziraphale blinked at him, for a second so perfectly, innocently baffled, so bewildered, and Gabriel had just started smirking in relief (and ignoring the tightening in his chest, the ache) ... when the expression changed. When Aziraphale smiled knowingly, and a soft, almost mischievous twinkle appeared in blue eyes that should never, ever have held such a demonic expression. Never. He was blaming Crowley, that had to be Crowley's fault, all of this was entirely ...
Aziraphale, very softly, very carefully, leaned in and brushed his nose over Gabriel's, touched their foreheads together for a tiny moment while he smiled, and dipped down to press his lips, so very gently, to Gabriel's own. So gently it was almost more a benediction than a kiss, a kind of pure, burning blessing for a long, long second, and then ... then it was burning for an entirely different reason. Then it was searing, and a kiss shouldn't do that to him, shouldn't be able to do that to an archangel, but kissing Aziraphale meant touching that thing inside him, that faith and strength and bound Grace, that love, and Gabriel was not able for that, he wasn't, Father protect him, he wasn't able ...
"No, I won't," Aziraphale whispered softly as he pulled back, that lopsided smile flickering again, a flash of amusement and the pale gleam of scars. Gabriel blinked at him, hopelessly lost. Heaven, it had to be. Whatever strange Heaven archangels went to when they died, because he was still dead, he had to be, that was the only possible explanation.
"Won't ..." he swallowed, still caught in that warm blue gaze. "Won't what?"
Aziraphale grinned, then. Rich and wide and deeply, happily amused, and the angel looked up and across him, up at the demon lurking half-forgotten at their side.
"I won't make Crowley jealous," the evil bastard smiled, laughing gently as Gabriel froze in panic, and looked over at the demon's face. At Crowley's face, and if he hadn't been dead up until now, he was certainly going to be in a minute ... no-one touched Aziraphale, not now, not after ... after everything they'd done, and the demon had shown him, in that brief, terrible raid on Heaven, exactly what the Serpent of Eden considered fair punishment for harming the angel, for touching the person he loved ...
Except. Except. Crowley wasn't looking at him, not yet, and his expression wasn't that hard, savage glee, wasn't the vengeful, pitiless mask that had looked at angels with reptilian cold. Crowley was looking at his angel, looking at the laughter in Aziraphale's eyes, and the deeper thing beneath it, the warm thing Gabriel had tasted, and it was amusement in his golden eyes, rueful and warm, and a dark, ravaged love, and a long, slow ... appreciation ...
That was too much. That was so not doing anything for Gabriel's mental health.
"You're a right bastard sometimes, angel," the demon purred, slow and deadly, leaning over to touch Aziraphale's face softly, to curl his fingers against one scarred cheek and smile ruefully. "A right bloody bastard ... did you even think to ask first?"
Aziraphale leaned into the caress, smiling wickedly. "I don't think he minds," he whispered softly, looking down at Gabriel again, and suddenly, yes, Gabriel was in complete agreement with the demon, because this angel was a bastard of the first order, and the fact that Aziraphale was right only made it worse. So very much worse. He flinched unconsciously, pressed back into the bed away from those warm blue eyes, and Crowley looked down at him sharply, at the shame and longing on his face. Crowley looked down at him.
"He minds," the demon said suddenly, hoarsely, shifting in his crouch to lean almost protectively over Gabriel. "Not for the reasons you think, angel, but ... he does mind." His lips quirked, sympathy and pity, and he shook his head ruefully at Gabriel, touching his hand to Gabriel's cheek in turn. "You need to be more careful when you're tempting people, angel ..."
Aziraphale flushed, suddenly sorrowful, and hugged Gabriel to him, mouth twisting a little in apology. "I'm sorry, Gabriel," he murmured, and Gabriel just blinked at him, because any minute now, this was going to make sense, this was going to be more than some really, really weird dream resulting from Luci killing him, and maybe his dream-Aziraphale and dream-Crowley would just disappear and take their confusion with them ... except he didn't want that, he realised, with maybe more than a little twinge of irony, for a Trickster who had lived so long with only illusion. He didn't want them to disappear, to be a dream, and maybe that was why one hand tangled itself desperately in Aziraphale's shirt, and the other locked frantically around Crowley's wrist and tried, perhaps foolishly, to pull the demon down to him, to lie alongside him like Aziraphale, where he could cling ...
Crowley resisted, gently, pulling himself back up away from Gabriel, and Gabriel flinched, panicked a little as his brain woke back up and he remembered who the demon was, what the hell he'd been trying to do, but then ... Then Crowley knelt beside him, knelt close while Aziraphale watched him, and took Gabriel's face between both his hands.
"Understand this," the demon warned, dark and golden. "Understand me, Gabriel. You ever die on me again, you bloody idiot, and I will pray to the Lord Almighty to bring you back so I can kill you myself! You understand that? You understand it?"
Gabriel nodded, quickly, hastily, and blinked up at the demon, at the strangely desperate expression in his eyes, at how oddly fierce he was. He blinked up at the pain in Crowley's face, and silently promised anything at all that would make it go away. Silently, because Crowley wouldn't appreciate the sentiment, and Gabriel didn't think he could give it without making a joke out of it, a taunt like so many that lay between them, but he promised it silently to himself.
And then Crowley kissed him.
It wasn't like Aziraphale. It wasn't pure and deep and near-painful, wasn't the simple, inexpressible fact of love it was with the angel. Crowley's kiss was darker, more savage, something rich and flawed and clinging desperately to love, hovering over an abyss of sin and darkness and hate and fire, and clinging with ferocious determination to that purer, more gentle thing. Crowley's kiss was a demon's kiss, and a sinner's kiss, and the kiss of a creature in love with something he was never meant to have. Crowley's kiss was a kiss that promised the world in exchange for the touch of darkness, and made it worth it. So very worth it.
And for all the flaws of humanity, all their sins and foolish choices, and all the trouble they'd caused, two apocalypses down the line ... kissing Crowley, Gabriel had to admit that it wasn't their fault. It wasn't their fault. Crowley's kiss was temptation incarnate, the Serpent in the Garden, and poor Eve had never stood a damn chance. Between the scarred and beautiful angel at his side, and the laughing, desperate demon in front of him, even Heaven's tricksiest archangel had to surrender. What chance had humanity ever had?
"Gabriel?" Aziraphale asked softly, when his demon had pulled back a little, when Crowley had pulled back from the kiss to lean into his angel's caress and shake softly, enough that Gabriel could at least breathe again, if not think. "Gabriel? Dear? Are you ... do you want ... I mean, are you alright? With this?" And the question was tentative, nervous, while the remnants of Aziraphale's wings fluttered agitatedly behind him, as if the angel honestly thought Gabriel could say no after that, after this ...
"Do I have a choice?" he asked, roughly, quietly, grinning a little as soon as he regained enough feeling in his mouth to manage it, snuggling down between them and feeling something expanding in his chest, wiping out the hollow feeling Lucifer's sword had left there. They looked at each other, blue eyes to golden, hopeful and unsure and, in Crowley's case, more than a little exasperated. Gabriel grinned stupidly at them.
"Yes," the demon growled, emphatic and annoyed, and darkly smiling. "Yes, you stupid archangel, you have a choice. But if you don't make up your mind in the next two seconds, me and my angel here might just shuffle off to the next room and ... entertain ourselves while you're busy." He smirked, bright challenge, and if you didn't know him you'd never see the nervousness lurking behind it, the Temptor afraid his temptation would fail, the lover afraid he would be refused. If you didn't know Crowley, you'd never see it.
Gabriel sort of adored that he did. That he could. That he could see his demon's insecurities, and his angel's wicked edge, and their shared fear and hope ... and his own. Always, his own, and here, at least, was some small answer.
"Then yes," he smiled. "Whatever the hell the question was, yes. And if you dare leave this bed, demon, Aziraphale will be praying for someone to resurrect you! Understand?"
And Crowley grinned at him, flushed and shining, and Aziraphale caught his cheek in one scarred hand to pull him around, to smile gently into Gabriel's eyes and press another kiss to his lips, a small one, softly smiling.
"Yes," Aziraphale whispered, happily. "We understand, Gabriel."
"We understand."
He hit the ground hard, feet first, almost managing to stand for a second before the world spun around him, and his knees met the earth. One hand sprawled out, dug into grass and soil, and kept him vaguely on all fours, not face-first onto the ground. Gabriel swallowed desperately around the surge of bile up his throat, and concentrated on figuring out what in Dad's name was going on. Well. Concentrated first on not throwing up, or letting his brains dribble out his ears, but after that ...
The last thing he remembered was ... the explosion of something in his chest, a burst of agony and then ... emptiness? The last thing he remembered feeling was the sensation of something important, something fundamental, rushing free of him, in one terrible burst, and a grey hollowness reaching up to claim him in its wake. Death, he realised dimly. The last thing he'd felt was Death, come to collect him. Because ...
A flash before his eyes, a rotting face and a blade between his ribs, and the familiar expression in those eyes. So familiar, so pained. The only thing so many of them remembered of what had once been the brightest and most joyous of his brothers. Lucifer. The last thing Gabriel remembered seeing had been Lucifer. Had been the cold, tired hate in his brother's eyes.
The last thing he remembered seeing ... was his killer.
His stomach heaved again, violent and dizzying, and Gabriel clung closer to the earth in desperation, trying to ride out the rush of reaction. His brother had killed him. His brother had killed him. He was dead, and Lucifer had killed him, and now ...
Wait. Now? There was a now. A now full of earth between his fingers and under his nails, of dampness squelching around his knees, of the sick upheavals of his stomach and the memory of pain. A now with air in his lungs, and the pulse of a Grace that had been ripped from him in his heart, and the distant brush of wings that had incinerated themselves against his back. A now full of things he really, really shouldn't have, if he was dead ...
He looked up, slowly and very, very painfully, fighting dizziness and his gorge the whole way. It took a second or twelve for the blur of colour around him to resolve itself into anything recognisable, took a second for the world to make sense again. And then ... then he realised it was more than just recognisable. Or that one thing, anyway, was more than just recognisable.
Twenty feet away, behind a low garden wall and about sixteen layers of protective warding, two stunned, fearful blue eyes stared out at him. A broad, cheerful face, marred by scars under blond hair, currently wobbling between worry, terror and recognition, watched him from the safety of a cottage garden somewhere, Gabriel knew, in England. Twenty feet away, a very stunned ex-celestial agent crouched, and stared at the archangel who'd just fallen from death and the sky onto his doorstep.
Twenty feet away, recognition and realisation flared in Aziraphale's eyes, followed very quickly by concern and no small amout of fear, and the scarred angel pulled himself fully to his aching feet, reaching out towards Gabriel.
And Gabriel, dizzy and bewildered and not at all well, promptly keeled over into the dirt in a rush of relief and vague concern, and lost consciousness.
---
He came to a couple of minutes later, damp and muddy and oddly warm, curled on his side in the dirt with something warm and heavy draped over him, muttering frantically to itself over his head. Gabriel blinked blearily, managing to turn his head enough to look up.
"Crowley, dearest, I need you here right now!" Aziraphale hissed painfully into a slab of black plastic pressed to the side of his face. Phone, Gabriel thought fuzzily. Not talking to himself, then. "Hurry, dear, I can't move, you need to ..."
"Angel!" Another voice behind them, with not even a rush of incoming air to warn them, but Aziraphale didn't even start above him. Gabriel wasn't quite so calm about the demon's sudden entrance, but Aziraphale's arm wrapped comfortingly around his waist as the angel smiled up at the figure suddenly looming over them. "Bloody hell, angel, what are you doing out in the open ..."
Crowley stopped, coming around Aziraphale to stare down at him, fear, anger and shock layered over each other in his expression, a strange and sort of fascinating blend of emotion. The demon dropped silently to his haunches beside them, eyes wide and almost afraid. Gabriel had the strange impression that Crowley was resisting a powerful urge to poke him and see if he was real.
"Is that ...?" the demon whispered, softly. "Gabriel? Aren't you ... aren't you supposed to be dead?"
Gabriel considered being offended by that, considered being angry, but there was no malice in the demon's voice, only a sort of stunned amazement, and Crowley was still looking at him like he wasn't quite real.
"I'm ... sorry to disappoint you, asshole," he managed, almost affectionately, grinning up at the demon. Not that he was completely sure he had, mind, not that he knew for sure he wasn't actually dead, and having a very, very nice dream in whatever Heaven archangels went to when they died (not the usual one, anyway - someone would have noticed), but Crowley at least seemed alive, and in Gabriel's idea of Heaven, Aziraphale wasn't bearing quite so many scars.
"He just appeared, dearest," Aziraphale explained softly, watching Crowley over Gabriel's head. It was weird, looking up at them like this. Weird to be curled between them, possibly-dead, possibly-alive, damp and warm and more than a little bewildered. Aziraphale was frowning, worrying at his lower lip, his arm tight around Gabriel as if afraid someone was going to tear him away. "He just fell from the sky, over there, and collapsed. I was ... I was trying to get us behind the wards, but he's heavier than he looks, and my leg ..."
The scarred angel grimaced, the limb in question shifting a little behind Gabriel's calf, and Crowley's confused, wary features shifted instantly to concern and growling exasperation. And belated fear, swimming uneasily just below the surface as he looked warily around, but Gabriel knew that one. He understood that one. He remembered, too well, carrying the angel down from Heaven, remembered blue eyes blurred with pain smiling dazedly up at him in bewildered gratitude. He remembered the demon flying frantic and furious behind him, remembered Crowley landing beside him and simply wrapping himself around Aziraphale, not even waiting for Gabriel to get out of the way. He remembered that.
And remembered that Aziraphale, stupid stubborn idiot that he was, had apparently limped out into the open to check on an unconscious archangel that as far as he knew could have been sent as a trap. And then stayed there, wrapped around him, helpless if anyone ...
Well, he could fix that, anyway, closing his eyes and getting two fingers together to snap. Flying was a bad, bad plan right now, if his stomach was anything to go by, but he didn't need to fly. All he needed was to make here and there the same, just for one second, and make sure the other two stayed with him when it let go again ...
They landed with a soft whump, and a gasp of pain from Aziraphale as something got jostled badly, but before Gabriel could do anything about it a hand sealed itself viciously around his throat, and his eyes flew open to meet Crowley's furious, panicking gaze. His furious golden gaze, and oh, that was bad, that was very bad. Crowley had drowned himself completely in his new vessel, in his new role as Crossroads King (Mephisto had apparently been really (and really briefly) upset about being evicted from his vessel and killed, but Crowley had been riding a lot of adrenalin at the time, and hadn't been in the mood to care), and those eyes hadn't shown through since ... since Aziraphale had been taken ...
"Urk?" he managed, eyes wide as he stared up at the demon. Crowley only hissed at him, looking frantically from side to side as he made sure that they were, in fact, just a few yards from where they'd been, just inside their own house, on the bed, where Gabriel had put them. Safe behind wards that still let him through, still let him pull stunts like that, and Gabriel took a moment in between shock and annoyance to feel a little warm about that. The wards still let him in. Even knowing he was dead, even -knowing Crowley- having made damn sure of it ... they had left a space for him here. For whatever reason, and Crowley would probably say it was just laziness or lack of time, but Crowley was far too paranoid for that these days. No. There was a still a space for him here because ... because Aziraphale had a strange abundance of faith, and Crowley was ridiculously soft at heart once you actually got to his heart ... and they cared about him. Enough to leave him somewhere to go, if maybe he wasn't quite so dead as it seemed ...
"Warn somebody before you do that!" Crowley growled at last, cutting across the thought, his hand growing slack around Gabriel's throat. Thankfully. Demon had a hell of a grip when he was pushed. Behind him, Aziraphale let out a soft sigh of relief, very soft, and let himself ease out along the bed, stretching his damaged leg carefully. He hadn't let himself move before. He'd been waiting for Crowley to let him know it was safe.
"That bad?" Gabriel asked quietly, swallowing carefully around the nascent bruises on his throat. Crowley looked back down at him, still crouched half-across him where he'd lunged for Aziraphale as they'd moved. A strange series of emotions flickered across the demon's face. Pain and fear and odd defiance, and a whisper of hope. More than a little anger. Gabriel blinked at him.
"You died," Aziraphale whispered, while Crowley seemingly couldn't speak. The battered angel curled the arm he'd somehow managed to keep around Gabriel's waist a little tighter, and pressed his forehead into Gabriel's shoulder. Watching him, Crowley's face twisted. "You died," Aziraphale murmured again. "And we couldn't ... we had to do something, and ... And we won, or somebody won, and the world is still here, but ... Well. They took it badly enough the first time. Two apocalypses on ..."
Gabriel blinked some more. "You ... You went and ... Please, tell me you didn't actually go and interfere! Please tell me you didn't, not when you're ..." He stopped, trailed off, and watched Crowley look away, watch the demon's face tighten as his hand drifted over to Aziraphale's and clung tight. "Crowley?" he growled, more than a little pissed off himself. Aziraphale, he could understand, because the angel never could stop himself if someone was getting hurt, but he'd thought the demon had learned from the last time he'd gone up against Luci armed with nothing but terror and a tire iron. He'd thought the demon, at least, would be sensible about things. Giving the Winchesters a weapon was one thing. Actually getting involved, when he had Aziraphale to look after ...
"You died," Crowley hissed at last, his head coming back around so he could glare, golden-eyed and vicious. "You sodding died, you bastard, after all that bloody talk about being sensible. You walked right up and spat in his bloody face! If you're going to be getting an attack of conscience and getting bloody killed for it, you can't blame me for finishing your bloody job and actually doing it right! I ..."
Aziraphale moved, levering himself up behind Gabriel and reaching out to rest one hand on Crowley's cheek, partially lying on Gabriel to manage it, and they shut up. Both of them. Crowley in his rant, Gabriel opening his mouth to start his own. They shut up.
"We had to do something," the angel repeated gently, looking down at Gabriel, his face ... very close. "We lost you, and we had to do something. And I couldn't, not really, but Crowley could, and you shouldn't yell at him. Not when ... not when you'd done the same, my dear. You really ... you really shouldn't yell at him for that."
Gabriel opened his mouth. And then closed it again. This close, he could almost trace the pale lines that dug into Aziraphale's cheeks, made his smile permanently a little lopsided. This close, he could see the quiet burning behind the angel's eyes, the strange Grace that someone upstairs had done something very twisted to in trying to tear it out, and only managed to bind it close instead, into a sort of soft intensity that Gabriel would bet, with a certain degree of vindictive pleasure, had frightened the snot out of the torturing bastards. This close, he could feel the desperate caring of this angel, for him, and feel his own heart twist in response. This close ...
"You ... you shouldn't do that," he murmured eventually, trying for joking and coming out more than a little strangled. But he was blaming Crowley and the bruises around his neck for that, nothing else. Absolutely nothing else. "You'll make Crowley jealous."
Aziraphale blinked at him, for a second so perfectly, innocently baffled, so bewildered, and Gabriel had just started smirking in relief (and ignoring the tightening in his chest, the ache) ... when the expression changed. When Aziraphale smiled knowingly, and a soft, almost mischievous twinkle appeared in blue eyes that should never, ever have held such a demonic expression. Never. He was blaming Crowley, that had to be Crowley's fault, all of this was entirely ...
Aziraphale, very softly, very carefully, leaned in and brushed his nose over Gabriel's, touched their foreheads together for a tiny moment while he smiled, and dipped down to press his lips, so very gently, to Gabriel's own. So gently it was almost more a benediction than a kiss, a kind of pure, burning blessing for a long, long second, and then ... then it was burning for an entirely different reason. Then it was searing, and a kiss shouldn't do that to him, shouldn't be able to do that to an archangel, but kissing Aziraphale meant touching that thing inside him, that faith and strength and bound Grace, that love, and Gabriel was not able for that, he wasn't, Father protect him, he wasn't able ...
"No, I won't," Aziraphale whispered softly as he pulled back, that lopsided smile flickering again, a flash of amusement and the pale gleam of scars. Gabriel blinked at him, hopelessly lost. Heaven, it had to be. Whatever strange Heaven archangels went to when they died, because he was still dead, he had to be, that was the only possible explanation.
"Won't ..." he swallowed, still caught in that warm blue gaze. "Won't what?"
Aziraphale grinned, then. Rich and wide and deeply, happily amused, and the angel looked up and across him, up at the demon lurking half-forgotten at their side.
"I won't make Crowley jealous," the evil bastard smiled, laughing gently as Gabriel froze in panic, and looked over at the demon's face. At Crowley's face, and if he hadn't been dead up until now, he was certainly going to be in a minute ... no-one touched Aziraphale, not now, not after ... after everything they'd done, and the demon had shown him, in that brief, terrible raid on Heaven, exactly what the Serpent of Eden considered fair punishment for harming the angel, for touching the person he loved ...
Except. Except. Crowley wasn't looking at him, not yet, and his expression wasn't that hard, savage glee, wasn't the vengeful, pitiless mask that had looked at angels with reptilian cold. Crowley was looking at his angel, looking at the laughter in Aziraphale's eyes, and the deeper thing beneath it, the warm thing Gabriel had tasted, and it was amusement in his golden eyes, rueful and warm, and a dark, ravaged love, and a long, slow ... appreciation ...
That was too much. That was so not doing anything for Gabriel's mental health.
"You're a right bastard sometimes, angel," the demon purred, slow and deadly, leaning over to touch Aziraphale's face softly, to curl his fingers against one scarred cheek and smile ruefully. "A right bloody bastard ... did you even think to ask first?"
Aziraphale leaned into the caress, smiling wickedly. "I don't think he minds," he whispered softly, looking down at Gabriel again, and suddenly, yes, Gabriel was in complete agreement with the demon, because this angel was a bastard of the first order, and the fact that Aziraphale was right only made it worse. So very much worse. He flinched unconsciously, pressed back into the bed away from those warm blue eyes, and Crowley looked down at him sharply, at the shame and longing on his face. Crowley looked down at him.
"He minds," the demon said suddenly, hoarsely, shifting in his crouch to lean almost protectively over Gabriel. "Not for the reasons you think, angel, but ... he does mind." His lips quirked, sympathy and pity, and he shook his head ruefully at Gabriel, touching his hand to Gabriel's cheek in turn. "You need to be more careful when you're tempting people, angel ..."
Aziraphale flushed, suddenly sorrowful, and hugged Gabriel to him, mouth twisting a little in apology. "I'm sorry, Gabriel," he murmured, and Gabriel just blinked at him, because any minute now, this was going to make sense, this was going to be more than some really, really weird dream resulting from Luci killing him, and maybe his dream-Aziraphale and dream-Crowley would just disappear and take their confusion with them ... except he didn't want that, he realised, with maybe more than a little twinge of irony, for a Trickster who had lived so long with only illusion. He didn't want them to disappear, to be a dream, and maybe that was why one hand tangled itself desperately in Aziraphale's shirt, and the other locked frantically around Crowley's wrist and tried, perhaps foolishly, to pull the demon down to him, to lie alongside him like Aziraphale, where he could cling ...
Crowley resisted, gently, pulling himself back up away from Gabriel, and Gabriel flinched, panicked a little as his brain woke back up and he remembered who the demon was, what the hell he'd been trying to do, but then ... Then Crowley knelt beside him, knelt close while Aziraphale watched him, and took Gabriel's face between both his hands.
"Understand this," the demon warned, dark and golden. "Understand me, Gabriel. You ever die on me again, you bloody idiot, and I will pray to the Lord Almighty to bring you back so I can kill you myself! You understand that? You understand it?"
Gabriel nodded, quickly, hastily, and blinked up at the demon, at the strangely desperate expression in his eyes, at how oddly fierce he was. He blinked up at the pain in Crowley's face, and silently promised anything at all that would make it go away. Silently, because Crowley wouldn't appreciate the sentiment, and Gabriel didn't think he could give it without making a joke out of it, a taunt like so many that lay between them, but he promised it silently to himself.
And then Crowley kissed him.
It wasn't like Aziraphale. It wasn't pure and deep and near-painful, wasn't the simple, inexpressible fact of love it was with the angel. Crowley's kiss was darker, more savage, something rich and flawed and clinging desperately to love, hovering over an abyss of sin and darkness and hate and fire, and clinging with ferocious determination to that purer, more gentle thing. Crowley's kiss was a demon's kiss, and a sinner's kiss, and the kiss of a creature in love with something he was never meant to have. Crowley's kiss was a kiss that promised the world in exchange for the touch of darkness, and made it worth it. So very worth it.
And for all the flaws of humanity, all their sins and foolish choices, and all the trouble they'd caused, two apocalypses down the line ... kissing Crowley, Gabriel had to admit that it wasn't their fault. It wasn't their fault. Crowley's kiss was temptation incarnate, the Serpent in the Garden, and poor Eve had never stood a damn chance. Between the scarred and beautiful angel at his side, and the laughing, desperate demon in front of him, even Heaven's tricksiest archangel had to surrender. What chance had humanity ever had?
"Gabriel?" Aziraphale asked softly, when his demon had pulled back a little, when Crowley had pulled back from the kiss to lean into his angel's caress and shake softly, enough that Gabriel could at least breathe again, if not think. "Gabriel? Dear? Are you ... do you want ... I mean, are you alright? With this?" And the question was tentative, nervous, while the remnants of Aziraphale's wings fluttered agitatedly behind him, as if the angel honestly thought Gabriel could say no after that, after this ...
"Do I have a choice?" he asked, roughly, quietly, grinning a little as soon as he regained enough feeling in his mouth to manage it, snuggling down between them and feeling something expanding in his chest, wiping out the hollow feeling Lucifer's sword had left there. They looked at each other, blue eyes to golden, hopeful and unsure and, in Crowley's case, more than a little exasperated. Gabriel grinned stupidly at them.
"Yes," the demon growled, emphatic and annoyed, and darkly smiling. "Yes, you stupid archangel, you have a choice. But if you don't make up your mind in the next two seconds, me and my angel here might just shuffle off to the next room and ... entertain ourselves while you're busy." He smirked, bright challenge, and if you didn't know him you'd never see the nervousness lurking behind it, the Temptor afraid his temptation would fail, the lover afraid he would be refused. If you didn't know Crowley, you'd never see it.
Gabriel sort of adored that he did. That he could. That he could see his demon's insecurities, and his angel's wicked edge, and their shared fear and hope ... and his own. Always, his own, and here, at least, was some small answer.
"Then yes," he smiled. "Whatever the hell the question was, yes. And if you dare leave this bed, demon, Aziraphale will be praying for someone to resurrect you! Understand?"
And Crowley grinned at him, flushed and shining, and Aziraphale caught his cheek in one scarred hand to pull him around, to smile gently into Gabriel's eyes and press another kiss to his lips, a small one, softly smiling.
"Yes," Aziraphale whispered, happily. "We understand, Gabriel."
"We understand."
