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blue_bells» Title: Cognoscere
» Fandom: Supernatural
» Warnings: Angelcest, dub-con, collar play, light bondage, pre-series
» Pairing(s)/Characters: (false!Michael/)Michael/Gabriel, mentions of Lucifer/Gabriel, Michael/Lucifer, Raphael/Michael
» Summary: After the Fall, Michael finds Gabriel on one of the shores in Heaven mourning with false images of their brothers and binds his grace to stop him.
» A/N: Written as a direct continuation of this story for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zekkass who deserves some kind of award for being such an enabler. There is also license taken with angels' natures in Heaven purely for convenience's sake.
Gabriel’s surprised.
He knew about Lucifer and Michael. He believes many knew about them.
And Gabriel knew Lucifer. Lucifer is the reason Gabriel knows how to lean and hold his weight to keep another pinned, where to dig and twist into their wings at such an angle to cause agony. Lucifer also taught him how and where an angel would buckle without pain if he pressed just so, how they could keen and come as close as an angel can to forgetting themselves.
Gabriel learned all these things under Lucifer’s hands. He assumed Michael had, too.
But it doesn’t feel like Michael’s pretending when he pushes up against Gabriel’s sliding weight, his hands pinned beneath him. There’s a shiver that keeps going through Michael, catching on Gabriel’s lips when Michael kisses him and it feels uncertain, hesitant, like Michael wants this, but he’s still not sure how to (if he even can), so Gabriel presses him down with the solid weight of himself and makes the decision for him.
It’s too late not to know what it is to want or need something more than their Father’s perfect love, to fall to his knees in praise, because this… this other thing that Lucifer showed him, it claws and it hurts, and he doesn’t think he should be sharing it with Michael if Lucifer spared him. But Michael keeps pushing back up into him, legs closing around Gabriel to hold him close and Gabriel is too weak to pull away.
He needs something to hold on to. He wonders if he would be stronger if Lucifer had never shared this with him and, with a guilty curl of emotion, he hates Lucifer all over again, but he misses him, too. Gabriel misses him so much, but now Michael will know it, too, and Gabriel hates himself the most.
He drinks the line of Michael’s throat as his brother’s head falls back against the bank. One of Gabriel’s hands tugs the collar at his neck, cord of lightning, flame and stars thrumming at his touch, but it doesn’t bend or yield, so Gabriel digs his fingers into the juncture of Michael’s shoulder and wings instead. There’s a growl building in Michael’s chest, a hungry tremor following Gabriel’s fingers along muscles of his back that makes his wings tremble, body melting against the stones.
“Did he show you this?” Gabriel asks, not really expecting an answer for the glare Michael cuts him with.
All right.
Gabriel drags his pinched grip down the corded muscle beneath Michael’s wings and Michael gasps in surprise, arching into him. Gabriel does it over and over until there are words spilling out of Michael he doesn’t understand, unshaped, groaned, and Michael’s hands wrench free, scattering stones before he grips Gabriel’s sides hard enough to make him wince. Michael pulls him closer, kissing him again, slow and breathy, and Gabriel gently catches his lip with teeth when his brother gasps, tensing against the stones.
He wonders if Michael realizes how close he is, if he’s been pushed to that edge before, but just as Michael’s about to tip over, Gabriel pulls him back, heel of his hands smoothing over the tremors and Michael buckles, sounding pained.
His eyes open, cloudy with lust and frustration, but before the protest can build, Gabriel pushes Michael’s hands to the collar, ignoring Michael’s flinch when it crackles under their hands.
“Take it off,” Gabriel says.
Michael frowns up at him, blinks like he struggles to understand. Gabriel sees the colour of Michael’s desire fading from his grace even as Michael catches his breath, starts pulling himself together.
It’s grating how easily Michael can do that.
Gabriel catches Michael’s left wing, digs fingers hard into the muscle at its base and Michael strangles a shout as Gabriel drags down, the trapped wing flexing in his other hand. He does it again and hides his smile against Michael’s neck as Michael’s grace tangles around him, quick, pulsing and hungry. Michael would probably be cursing him by now, if he knew how.
“Gabriel,” Michael growls, but it’s an empty threat and Gabriel pinches the threads of muscle and skin, feathers catching between his fingers and smirks, shaking his head, when Michael only clutches him tighter and rises up to meet Gabriel’s thrusts.
“Take it off,” Gabriel orders.
Michael’s fingers are around his neck, in his wings, and Gabriel slides down his body until Michael’s hands catch behind his collar and hair. That shudder is back in Michael’s breaths and every time Gabriel moves, Michael’s air shallows, holds, like he has to be careful, or he’s banking himself against sensation. There’s enough heat rolling off him, playing light and shadows in his grace, that Gabriel knows he’s close. He crushes Michael down with another kiss, rides the motion of Michael’s push up against him and covers the hands around his collar.
“Mike,” He growls, urgent and not unaffected. “Michael….”
“I don’t want to see them,” Michael says, fingers curling and uncurling around the halo collar, and Gabriel thinks of them, too.
Lucifer and Raphael, beautiful and dignified. But Gabriel has trouble remembering them as more than what they’ve become: silent, miserable and darkened from war. He had tried and couldn’t sustain the illusion for more than a few moments drawn together.
Gabriel shakes his head. He misses them, but the memory of what they’ve lost just makes him ache and Michael is right here.
“You won’t. No one but us,” Gabriel promises, lips moving against Michael’s wrist.
Michael pushes Gabriel's hair back from his face and Gabriel realizes his hands are slick with oil from Gabriel’s wings. Michael mutters something guttural under his breath when Gabriel turns his head, catching Michael’s palm on its slide to his neck and tastes himself.
“I’m sorry.” Michael’s fingers linger at his mouth and Gabriel pauses.
Does that mean he won’t? Or he’s apologizing for what happened to their brothers?
Gabriel leans a hand into the softer underside of Michael’s bared wing, pressing into the arch’s joint before Michael can stall again, but Michael finally catches on, shuddering as he tears the collar from Gabriel’s neck with a snarl. Michael’s wings beat hard against the bank, pushing himself up to sit, Gabriel smirking and astride his lap, but Gabriel’s only half-formed his next thought when Michael pulls his hands behind his back and snaps his halo around Gabriel’s wrists.
Gabriel glowers at his brother even as Michael’s hands push through the feathers of his wings, tremor threading his body and grace when Michael rakes fingers up the wrong way towards the joint with his back and it takes everything Gabriel has not to crumble forward, boneless.
“Don’t you trust me?” Gabriel asks, breathing carefully when Michael’s hands fist, squeeze and tug experimentally.
Michael searches his face, eyes narrowing suspiciously as his fingers tug again and Gabriel bites his tongue.
“I trust you to hold your station and take your sword. I trust you to fulfill His Commandment and deliver His word. But I can’t trust you to preserve yourself between those commands… what are you doing, Gabriel?”
Gabriel finds his voice with difficulty and it’s rough when he speaks.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to be careful.” Michael’s arm winds around his waist, tugging him closer. “I won’t lose you, too.”
Gabriel looks into Michael’s earnest face and flexes his arms in the binds.
“Raphael is still here.”
Michael looks down and Gabriel doesn’t think he means to when the hand in his wing fists tight again, rippling light, pure and blinding, through his vision. He bows, leaning his forehead to Michael’s with a groan as Michael speaks.
“He loathes me. And he doesn’t replace you.”
Gabriel chooses not to think too long on those last words.
Loathing and hate were strong words seldom heard in Heaven. Even after the war there were probably more angels who still wouldn’t understand their meaning because angels could kill without asking why.
But Michael’s probably right.
“He loathes both of us,” Gabriel murmurs, because he let Raphael take up a sword.
He thinks Raphael will be better than him with weapons in little time.
Michael’s fingers tangle, slick, with his behind his back and Gabriel sees the regret in his face. He brushes his lips across Michael’s cheek.
“Michael. Please.”
His grace kneads against his brother’s, Michael’s breath puffs against his neck and after a few long moments, the halo around his wrists is drawn down, pulled free.
Finally.
Gabriel kisses Michael, cupping his face and finds his hands covered in the oil pressed from Michael’s wings. He leaves slick lines down Michael’s jaw and his neck before taking the hair at his nape. He feels the hands at his waist stroking up his back and slides his grace around Michael’s, wrapping tightly, then tugging it toward him.
Michael’s hands dig beneath his wings, body going limp with a strangled moan. Gabriel buries both hands in Michael’s hair and does it again, pulling more firmly this time and shutting his eyes as the pleasure feeds back through Michael’s grace into his own like a slow, burning flow of lightning, life and something heady, toxic, that Gabriel still doesn't understand.
He doesn’t need to see to do this. But he could use some help.
“What?” Michael gasps when the second body molds to him from behind and Gabriel holds his jaw to stop him from looking over his shoulder into the face of that other Michael that presses his hips to Gabriel’s brother's, nestling between his wings before taking them in hand. Gabriel covers Michael’s mouth with his own as Michael jerks, panting, then Gabriel pulls with his grace again and muffles Michael’s cry between them.
“It’s just us,” Gabriel says when they part, because he hasn’t broken his word and right now he doesn’t want anything more than Michael. “Just you… and me….”
Michael’s barely met his gaze before his grace lashes back around Gabriel with the force of a whip, twisting, constricting, and when Gabriel comes back to himself, shaking, Michael’s mouth is behind his ear with his hands deep in the underside of Gabriel’s wings.
“Was it like this?” Michael asks, breathily, before his fingers find the muscles of his wings in his back and push two burning lines downwards. Gabriel curses and bows away from the hands towards his brother, wings beating wide.
It’s not what he did… it’s almost better.
“Are you sure he didn’t show you this?” Gabriel gasps, raising an eyebrow and he can’t help the smile tugging his lips.
Michael’s reply dies on his lips as Gabriel feeds that move to the other Michael behind his brother with a thought. The look that apparition gives him is dark, knowing and so wrong on his brother’s face it makes him tremble with hunger. Michael’s head drops against Gabriel’s shoulder as the hands of his false image make his entire body tense and shudder. He groans, agonized, the next time Gabriel’s grace clenches around him, sliding and pulling, feeling the low deep ache and heat echo at the core of him.
Gabriel feels Michael’s conflict and confusion that there’s so much sensation it pains him, blurring his hold on their surroundings.
“Is it supposed to feel like this?” Michael asks him, voice wrecked.
Gabriel lets himself smile and kisses him long enough that Michael loses his words. Yes, he’d been drawing this out, it was supposed to hurt. He wanted Michael to know this, to understand the ache in the absence of the one who gave it to him because he loves Michael, but Michael doesn’t know like they did….
The other Michael draws his oil-slick fingers back through Michael’s hair, down his neck, through his wings and the next time Gabriel clenches around him, the other Michael barely touches him, running fingers beneath the juncture of Michael’s back and wings. Michael’s grace winds back around him, so impossibly tight that Gabriel thinks Michael will split him in half, his ears ring, Michael’s light rushes through and into him, and they burn.
The other Michael has faded by the time Gabriel can see again. He’s on his back against the stones, breathing hard, and Michael’s collapsed on top of him. He can feel Michael now, not just the tremors in his body as Gabriel wraps his arms around him, but the flickers still fading in his grace as if they were sparks along his own skin.
He feels the moment Michael realizes it, stiffening when Gabriel deeply inhales the scent of their mingled oil, the water and soil of the riverbed, and Gabriel’s grace settles, smoothing Michael’s with an afterthought.
Michael pulls back to look into his face, shocked, and Gabriel forces a smile on reflex at that expression. Soothe, defuse, that was his role.
“What have you done?” Michael whispers, hushed.
Gabriel thinks about it, searching the concerned lines of Michael’s face and thinks of the last time he was in this position.
Before, it was Lucifer: Lucifer who argued he’d loved God too well, that what he’d asked for in return shouldn’t have been so impossible.
In a terrible moment of clarity, Gabriel thinks he knows what Lucifer asked for – even though Lucifer should have known; God was not like them, God couldn’t love an angel, even his Morningstar, as an equal since that would elevate Lucifer above the rest… and their Lord had no equal.
Gabriel loved him, but even he could see that Lucifer would have been dangerous with that power. He had still rent a schism through Heaven without it.
Gabriel thought he knew what this meant before, but now he understands the price.
“I’ve loved you,” Gabriel says, brushing Michael’s face, but his arms are tired and they sink back to the riverbed after a moment.
Michael is too stunned to stop his grace from instinctively dipping to wind with Gabriel’s when the other angel reaches for him in this ebb and flow that he and Lucifer discovered. Now it was Michael’s to share as well.
“Gabriel….”
Michael must pick up on Gabriel’s growing dread, because in a moment Gabriel senses fear from him, like prickles in his grace. He draws back gently before they form into spikes that lance and gore, but Michael subconsciously follows him.
“What happens now?” Michael asks as Gabriel sits up.
Gabriel sighs. It’s come too soon. He did this.
“Now… one of us has to leave. And it’s not going to be you, Michael.”
Michael shakes his head, fear and loss flashing across his features. Gabriel tries to pull himself back together, legs tucking under him as he closes his eyes to push Michael’s grace back. His chest hitches when Michael holds on, trying to pull Gabriel back with him. He laughs bitterly, his brother probably didn’t even realize he was doing it.
“What are you talking about? Why do you have to leave?”
The look on Michael’s face is devastating. Gabriel almost reaches up to hold his brother again, but he stops himself this time. He got them into this because he had acted without thinking: spite, then desire, and now….
“There’s only one love allowed in Heaven,” Gabriel tells him, clamping down on the brush of grace against his own and shoving it back, more forcefully than he intends, because he needs to say this and he can’t if he lets Michael hold him.
He can already feel it and wonders why it hadn’t struck him so quickly with Lucifer. If he lets Michael learn how much they’ll come to need this thing that was the closest to God’s bliss outside communion and still so different… he can already feel his hunger for it that would rise above rote, above duty, above….
No, it’s unspeakable. He can’t do that to Michael. He won’t witness another battle that he could have stopped.
Heaven needs Michael more than him.
“Only one. Now you know.” Gabriel smiles, falsely, and stands on weak legs.
Michael looks so lost and reaches for Gabriel as if he can draw him down to explain again, explain it better. He can’t. Gabriel doesn’t let Michael touch him, for all the good it does of Michael’s grace clouding around his, dark with confusion and terror that Gabriel’s about to do something terrible.
The stones slide noisily when Gabriel turns his back and walks away without a further word.
“Gabriel—“
He almost loses his nerve and he’s amazed at himself when he doesn’t run. He doesn’t flee to the skies and keeps walking until he’s swallowed by the forest where the hysterical laugh finally escapes him, but strangles into something wretched, choking in his throat.
He’s thankful when Michael doesn’t follow him from that river, but he can still feel Michael bleeding through into his own grace as a sick ache of loss and confusion.
Michael will find Gabriel if he doesn’t take measures. Michael will follow him eventually.
Gabriel can’t let him. He surrenders to his instinct and runs.
» Fandom: Supernatural
» Warnings: Angelcest, dub-con, collar play, light bondage, pre-series
» Pairing(s)/Characters: (false!Michael/)Michael/Gabriel, mentions of Lucifer/Gabriel, Michael/Lucifer, Raphael/Michael
» Summary: After the Fall, Michael finds Gabriel on one of the shores in Heaven mourning with false images of their brothers and binds his grace to stop him.
» A/N: Written as a direct continuation of this story for
zekkass who deserves some kind of award for being such an enabler. There is also license taken with angels' natures in Heaven purely for convenience's sake.Gabriel’s surprised.
He knew about Lucifer and Michael. He believes many knew about them.
And Gabriel knew Lucifer. Lucifer is the reason Gabriel knows how to lean and hold his weight to keep another pinned, where to dig and twist into their wings at such an angle to cause agony. Lucifer also taught him how and where an angel would buckle without pain if he pressed just so, how they could keen and come as close as an angel can to forgetting themselves.
Gabriel learned all these things under Lucifer’s hands. He assumed Michael had, too.
But it doesn’t feel like Michael’s pretending when he pushes up against Gabriel’s sliding weight, his hands pinned beneath him. There’s a shiver that keeps going through Michael, catching on Gabriel’s lips when Michael kisses him and it feels uncertain, hesitant, like Michael wants this, but he’s still not sure how to (if he even can), so Gabriel presses him down with the solid weight of himself and makes the decision for him.
It’s too late not to know what it is to want or need something more than their Father’s perfect love, to fall to his knees in praise, because this… this other thing that Lucifer showed him, it claws and it hurts, and he doesn’t think he should be sharing it with Michael if Lucifer spared him. But Michael keeps pushing back up into him, legs closing around Gabriel to hold him close and Gabriel is too weak to pull away.
He needs something to hold on to. He wonders if he would be stronger if Lucifer had never shared this with him and, with a guilty curl of emotion, he hates Lucifer all over again, but he misses him, too. Gabriel misses him so much, but now Michael will know it, too, and Gabriel hates himself the most.
He drinks the line of Michael’s throat as his brother’s head falls back against the bank. One of Gabriel’s hands tugs the collar at his neck, cord of lightning, flame and stars thrumming at his touch, but it doesn’t bend or yield, so Gabriel digs his fingers into the juncture of Michael’s shoulder and wings instead. There’s a growl building in Michael’s chest, a hungry tremor following Gabriel’s fingers along muscles of his back that makes his wings tremble, body melting against the stones.
“Did he show you this?” Gabriel asks, not really expecting an answer for the glare Michael cuts him with.
All right.
Gabriel drags his pinched grip down the corded muscle beneath Michael’s wings and Michael gasps in surprise, arching into him. Gabriel does it over and over until there are words spilling out of Michael he doesn’t understand, unshaped, groaned, and Michael’s hands wrench free, scattering stones before he grips Gabriel’s sides hard enough to make him wince. Michael pulls him closer, kissing him again, slow and breathy, and Gabriel gently catches his lip with teeth when his brother gasps, tensing against the stones.
He wonders if Michael realizes how close he is, if he’s been pushed to that edge before, but just as Michael’s about to tip over, Gabriel pulls him back, heel of his hands smoothing over the tremors and Michael buckles, sounding pained.
His eyes open, cloudy with lust and frustration, but before the protest can build, Gabriel pushes Michael’s hands to the collar, ignoring Michael’s flinch when it crackles under their hands.
“Take it off,” Gabriel says.
Michael frowns up at him, blinks like he struggles to understand. Gabriel sees the colour of Michael’s desire fading from his grace even as Michael catches his breath, starts pulling himself together.
It’s grating how easily Michael can do that.
Gabriel catches Michael’s left wing, digs fingers hard into the muscle at its base and Michael strangles a shout as Gabriel drags down, the trapped wing flexing in his other hand. He does it again and hides his smile against Michael’s neck as Michael’s grace tangles around him, quick, pulsing and hungry. Michael would probably be cursing him by now, if he knew how.
“Gabriel,” Michael growls, but it’s an empty threat and Gabriel pinches the threads of muscle and skin, feathers catching between his fingers and smirks, shaking his head, when Michael only clutches him tighter and rises up to meet Gabriel’s thrusts.
“Take it off,” Gabriel orders.
Michael’s fingers are around his neck, in his wings, and Gabriel slides down his body until Michael’s hands catch behind his collar and hair. That shudder is back in Michael’s breaths and every time Gabriel moves, Michael’s air shallows, holds, like he has to be careful, or he’s banking himself against sensation. There’s enough heat rolling off him, playing light and shadows in his grace, that Gabriel knows he’s close. He crushes Michael down with another kiss, rides the motion of Michael’s push up against him and covers the hands around his collar.
“Mike,” He growls, urgent and not unaffected. “Michael….”
“I don’t want to see them,” Michael says, fingers curling and uncurling around the halo collar, and Gabriel thinks of them, too.
Lucifer and Raphael, beautiful and dignified. But Gabriel has trouble remembering them as more than what they’ve become: silent, miserable and darkened from war. He had tried and couldn’t sustain the illusion for more than a few moments drawn together.
Gabriel shakes his head. He misses them, but the memory of what they’ve lost just makes him ache and Michael is right here.
“You won’t. No one but us,” Gabriel promises, lips moving against Michael’s wrist.
Michael pushes Gabriel's hair back from his face and Gabriel realizes his hands are slick with oil from Gabriel’s wings. Michael mutters something guttural under his breath when Gabriel turns his head, catching Michael’s palm on its slide to his neck and tastes himself.
“I’m sorry.” Michael’s fingers linger at his mouth and Gabriel pauses.
Does that mean he won’t? Or he’s apologizing for what happened to their brothers?
Gabriel leans a hand into the softer underside of Michael’s bared wing, pressing into the arch’s joint before Michael can stall again, but Michael finally catches on, shuddering as he tears the collar from Gabriel’s neck with a snarl. Michael’s wings beat hard against the bank, pushing himself up to sit, Gabriel smirking and astride his lap, but Gabriel’s only half-formed his next thought when Michael pulls his hands behind his back and snaps his halo around Gabriel’s wrists.
Gabriel glowers at his brother even as Michael’s hands push through the feathers of his wings, tremor threading his body and grace when Michael rakes fingers up the wrong way towards the joint with his back and it takes everything Gabriel has not to crumble forward, boneless.
“Don’t you trust me?” Gabriel asks, breathing carefully when Michael’s hands fist, squeeze and tug experimentally.
Michael searches his face, eyes narrowing suspiciously as his fingers tug again and Gabriel bites his tongue.
“I trust you to hold your station and take your sword. I trust you to fulfill His Commandment and deliver His word. But I can’t trust you to preserve yourself between those commands… what are you doing, Gabriel?”
Gabriel finds his voice with difficulty and it’s rough when he speaks.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to be careful.” Michael’s arm winds around his waist, tugging him closer. “I won’t lose you, too.”
Gabriel looks into Michael’s earnest face and flexes his arms in the binds.
“Raphael is still here.”
Michael looks down and Gabriel doesn’t think he means to when the hand in his wing fists tight again, rippling light, pure and blinding, through his vision. He bows, leaning his forehead to Michael’s with a groan as Michael speaks.
“He loathes me. And he doesn’t replace you.”
Gabriel chooses not to think too long on those last words.
Loathing and hate were strong words seldom heard in Heaven. Even after the war there were probably more angels who still wouldn’t understand their meaning because angels could kill without asking why.
But Michael’s probably right.
“He loathes both of us,” Gabriel murmurs, because he let Raphael take up a sword.
He thinks Raphael will be better than him with weapons in little time.
Michael’s fingers tangle, slick, with his behind his back and Gabriel sees the regret in his face. He brushes his lips across Michael’s cheek.
“Michael. Please.”
His grace kneads against his brother’s, Michael’s breath puffs against his neck and after a few long moments, the halo around his wrists is drawn down, pulled free.
Finally.
Gabriel kisses Michael, cupping his face and finds his hands covered in the oil pressed from Michael’s wings. He leaves slick lines down Michael’s jaw and his neck before taking the hair at his nape. He feels the hands at his waist stroking up his back and slides his grace around Michael’s, wrapping tightly, then tugging it toward him.
Michael’s hands dig beneath his wings, body going limp with a strangled moan. Gabriel buries both hands in Michael’s hair and does it again, pulling more firmly this time and shutting his eyes as the pleasure feeds back through Michael’s grace into his own like a slow, burning flow of lightning, life and something heady, toxic, that Gabriel still doesn't understand.
He doesn’t need to see to do this. But he could use some help.
“What?” Michael gasps when the second body molds to him from behind and Gabriel holds his jaw to stop him from looking over his shoulder into the face of that other Michael that presses his hips to Gabriel’s brother's, nestling between his wings before taking them in hand. Gabriel covers Michael’s mouth with his own as Michael jerks, panting, then Gabriel pulls with his grace again and muffles Michael’s cry between them.
“It’s just us,” Gabriel says when they part, because he hasn’t broken his word and right now he doesn’t want anything more than Michael. “Just you… and me….”
Michael’s barely met his gaze before his grace lashes back around Gabriel with the force of a whip, twisting, constricting, and when Gabriel comes back to himself, shaking, Michael’s mouth is behind his ear with his hands deep in the underside of Gabriel’s wings.
“Was it like this?” Michael asks, breathily, before his fingers find the muscles of his wings in his back and push two burning lines downwards. Gabriel curses and bows away from the hands towards his brother, wings beating wide.
It’s not what he did… it’s almost better.
“Are you sure he didn’t show you this?” Gabriel gasps, raising an eyebrow and he can’t help the smile tugging his lips.
Michael’s reply dies on his lips as Gabriel feeds that move to the other Michael behind his brother with a thought. The look that apparition gives him is dark, knowing and so wrong on his brother’s face it makes him tremble with hunger. Michael’s head drops against Gabriel’s shoulder as the hands of his false image make his entire body tense and shudder. He groans, agonized, the next time Gabriel’s grace clenches around him, sliding and pulling, feeling the low deep ache and heat echo at the core of him.
Gabriel feels Michael’s conflict and confusion that there’s so much sensation it pains him, blurring his hold on their surroundings.
“Is it supposed to feel like this?” Michael asks him, voice wrecked.
Gabriel lets himself smile and kisses him long enough that Michael loses his words. Yes, he’d been drawing this out, it was supposed to hurt. He wanted Michael to know this, to understand the ache in the absence of the one who gave it to him because he loves Michael, but Michael doesn’t know like they did….
The other Michael draws his oil-slick fingers back through Michael’s hair, down his neck, through his wings and the next time Gabriel clenches around him, the other Michael barely touches him, running fingers beneath the juncture of Michael’s back and wings. Michael’s grace winds back around him, so impossibly tight that Gabriel thinks Michael will split him in half, his ears ring, Michael’s light rushes through and into him, and they burn.
The other Michael has faded by the time Gabriel can see again. He’s on his back against the stones, breathing hard, and Michael’s collapsed on top of him. He can feel Michael now, not just the tremors in his body as Gabriel wraps his arms around him, but the flickers still fading in his grace as if they were sparks along his own skin.
He feels the moment Michael realizes it, stiffening when Gabriel deeply inhales the scent of their mingled oil, the water and soil of the riverbed, and Gabriel’s grace settles, smoothing Michael’s with an afterthought.
Michael pulls back to look into his face, shocked, and Gabriel forces a smile on reflex at that expression. Soothe, defuse, that was his role.
“What have you done?” Michael whispers, hushed.
Gabriel thinks about it, searching the concerned lines of Michael’s face and thinks of the last time he was in this position.
Before, it was Lucifer: Lucifer who argued he’d loved God too well, that what he’d asked for in return shouldn’t have been so impossible.
In a terrible moment of clarity, Gabriel thinks he knows what Lucifer asked for – even though Lucifer should have known; God was not like them, God couldn’t love an angel, even his Morningstar, as an equal since that would elevate Lucifer above the rest… and their Lord had no equal.
Gabriel loved him, but even he could see that Lucifer would have been dangerous with that power. He had still rent a schism through Heaven without it.
Gabriel thought he knew what this meant before, but now he understands the price.
“I’ve loved you,” Gabriel says, brushing Michael’s face, but his arms are tired and they sink back to the riverbed after a moment.
Michael is too stunned to stop his grace from instinctively dipping to wind with Gabriel’s when the other angel reaches for him in this ebb and flow that he and Lucifer discovered. Now it was Michael’s to share as well.
“Gabriel….”
Michael must pick up on Gabriel’s growing dread, because in a moment Gabriel senses fear from him, like prickles in his grace. He draws back gently before they form into spikes that lance and gore, but Michael subconsciously follows him.
“What happens now?” Michael asks as Gabriel sits up.
Gabriel sighs. It’s come too soon. He did this.
“Now… one of us has to leave. And it’s not going to be you, Michael.”
Michael shakes his head, fear and loss flashing across his features. Gabriel tries to pull himself back together, legs tucking under him as he closes his eyes to push Michael’s grace back. His chest hitches when Michael holds on, trying to pull Gabriel back with him. He laughs bitterly, his brother probably didn’t even realize he was doing it.
“What are you talking about? Why do you have to leave?”
The look on Michael’s face is devastating. Gabriel almost reaches up to hold his brother again, but he stops himself this time. He got them into this because he had acted without thinking: spite, then desire, and now….
“There’s only one love allowed in Heaven,” Gabriel tells him, clamping down on the brush of grace against his own and shoving it back, more forcefully than he intends, because he needs to say this and he can’t if he lets Michael hold him.
He can already feel it and wonders why it hadn’t struck him so quickly with Lucifer. If he lets Michael learn how much they’ll come to need this thing that was the closest to God’s bliss outside communion and still so different… he can already feel his hunger for it that would rise above rote, above duty, above….
No, it’s unspeakable. He can’t do that to Michael. He won’t witness another battle that he could have stopped.
Heaven needs Michael more than him.
“Only one. Now you know.” Gabriel smiles, falsely, and stands on weak legs.
Michael looks so lost and reaches for Gabriel as if he can draw him down to explain again, explain it better. He can’t. Gabriel doesn’t let Michael touch him, for all the good it does of Michael’s grace clouding around his, dark with confusion and terror that Gabriel’s about to do something terrible.
The stones slide noisily when Gabriel turns his back and walks away without a further word.
“Gabriel—“
He almost loses his nerve and he’s amazed at himself when he doesn’t run. He doesn’t flee to the skies and keeps walking until he’s swallowed by the forest where the hysterical laugh finally escapes him, but strangles into something wretched, choking in his throat.
He’s thankful when Michael doesn’t follow him from that river, but he can still feel Michael bleeding through into his own grace as a sick ache of loss and confusion.
Michael will find Gabriel if he doesn’t take measures. Michael will follow him eventually.
Gabriel can’t let him. He surrenders to his instinct and runs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-03-29 05:50 pm (UTC)And gosh Michael being so powerful but so... I don't know naive, innocent. I liked that. Great fic, never read Michael/Gabriel before but I really liked it. =)
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Date: 2011-03-30 08:49 am (UTC)I'm happy you thought these two worked, especially for it being the first time you've read about them together, thank you for reading! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! :]
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Date: 2011-03-29 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 08:55 am (UTC)Now I need a dose of BAMF angels to chase this down.
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Date: 2011-03-31 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 09:54 am (UTC)[laughs]
I'm glad you enjoyed it, thank you!
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Date: 2011-03-31 09:59 am (UTC)she also got me hooked hard on Dean/Lucifer >.>
also, Michael running after him uiosdgberu9pbvgerbg YUSH CANON NOW XD And Michael explained how he didn;t wanna be alone, and Gabriel caved, because he's easy like that, and Michael agrred to come with him, and there was much stubberness when Michael finally was on earth and he dissaporved of much, but they worked, and it was a little dysfunctional, but it worked.
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Date: 2011-03-31 10:13 am (UTC)There, you see? Instant (sort of happy) resolution! :D
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Date: 2011-03-31 10:15 am (UTC)Castiel/Dean, Dean/Gabriel, Dean/Sam and Sam/Lucifer.
also, no pairin that inclused Ruby, Cassie or Zacharaiah.
Thats it.
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Date: 2011-03-31 10:25 am (UTC)A question: is Cassie Castiel? Or am I forgetting someone important?
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Date: 2011-03-31 10:26 am (UTC)No, Cassie is from route 66 I hated her so much e.e.... she was annoying.
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Date: 2011-03-31 10:33 am (UTC)Aha, I see... no, actually, I still don't remember who that is. ^^; That's okay, I'm sure we both have PLENTY of other characters to keep us occupied!
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Date: 2011-03-31 10:42 am (UTC)there mis not enough Dean/Lucifer out there and it's one of my fav slash pairings, up there with Gabe/Sam and Cas/Sam/Gabe and Bobby/Crowley >.> and Lucifer/Michael. XD
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Date: 2011-03-31 11:11 am (UTC)Yeah, I haven't seen much Dean/Lucifer, if you have any favourite recs feel free to send them my way. :]
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Date: 2011-03-31 11:26 am (UTC)Hush NC-17: Sam's sleeping only four feet away, and Lucifer is making it really difficult for Dean to stay quiet. (Consent Issues, sorta, and collar!Kink, also my fav out of the all >.>) Written By
The Four Times Dean Winchester Failed To Seduce The Devil, And The One Time He Didn't (Chapter 1) - PG: Sam is not pleased with Dean's current living arrangements, and the lack of trust mistakenly gets through to Lucifer who doesn't take it very well. That's when Dean gets desperate.
Written By:
The Angels Fall First PG It didn't happen like everyone thought it would ...
Written By
Sparing Sodom PG-13: Dean was sitting in the junkyard, nursing a celebratory post-Apocalypse beer, when Satan sexually assaulted him. Yeah, he couldn’t believe it, either. Written By
There are more out there, these are just my favs.
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Date: 2011-03-31 11:29 am (UTC)Thank you for the recs! <3
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Date: 2011-03-31 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 11:50 am (UTC)That is one pairing I have never written, but I'm endlessly fascinated by untried or rare pairings. If the muses strike, I'll be sure to share it with you!
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Date: 2011-03-31 11:57 am (UTC)