Gabriel/Dionysus ficlet

[icarus_chained]

Again, from a prompt on comment_fic . Gabriel ... gets around. Heh.

Title:  Mysteries
Rating:  PG-13/R
Wordcount:  366

The archangel is slow in coming to him, slow in following his steps, slow in falling. A stilted tumble of limbs, so watchful, so wary, for all his laughing, for all the dancing of his eyes. A shyness hidden in the provocative sprawl of his body, a fear curled in the shaking of his limbs. Hiding behind his eyes, as if he hopes Dionysus cannot see him, cannot know. As if his mask is all his face, and he hopes the world may never see behind it.

And deeper, hidden even from himself, where the wine slips silken tendrils of truth around his heart ... as if he hopes Dionysus will find him anyway. So fragile a hope. So tender a mystery. Truth sung in sweet-song beneath the fear, bound and constrained, and ready, so ready, to be freed.

Dionysus laughs softly. Slips sweet as wine along flung limbs, whispers soft as dreams across wide, fearful eyes. Curls his hands in an archangel's hair, laughs as he rolls them, as they turn and turn on silks and pillows and the soft clouds of intoxication. As tension spills wine-dark from a terrified form, and slips soft secrets, sweet mysteries, into Dionysus' hands.

"Let go," he whispers, hands dancing, luring, wringing cries from an archangel's throat. "Let go," he commands, as he pulls the threads higher and higher, as he tugs lust and love and hope and fear all to the surface, as he plies his craft to that one and only end. To break constraint. To wring truth. To give life. "Gabriel," he says, as an archangel cries, as terror trembles on the brink of understanding. "Gabriel, let go!"

And the Gabriel screams, and the world screams, the haze of intoxication wrung to that brutal, savage clarity, that sweet and terrible surrender. Gabriel screams, and Dionysus laughs, and crushes his mouth, drinks the screaming from him, drinks away the pain, soft as a sigh, sweet as wine, and leaves only the long, languid stretching of the truth. Leaves only Gabriel, staring up at him in fear and awe, and the laughing behind his eyes.

This, his mystery. This, his secret. This, his task.

In wine, truth. In truth, freedom.

And in freedom, joy.