Fic: Rogue (Gabriel/M, Gabriel/F, PG-13) 6/36
For full notes and other chapters, please see the Masterpost.
Notes: This is the third part of the Missing an Angel series. It is recommended that you read the first two before reading this one.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 3,388
Chapter Summary: Musings on angelic masturbation, the creation of godly relationships, and how things are meant to be.
CHAPTER 6:
Meant to Be
Gabriel stood atop the little cottage, his feet not even bruising the thatched roof. His wings were uplifted and his eyes half-closed as the night breezes swept off the cliffs and rustled through his feathers. He was still and silent in the night, invisible to mortal eyes, watching over this family.
He could fly. His wings twitched and stretched further at that thought, angling into the wind. He could leap from this roof and take to the sky, winging his way up to the stars. Part of him yearned for that height, that freedom. There was no danger here, no threat to the MacLeods or even to Canisbay. He could fly.
But he didn’t.
He could enter Fergus’ dreams, or Brody’s, or Issobell’s. He could close his eyes and step sideways, slip into their undefended human minds with the same ease as blinking. He could walk among their imaginations, or change them. He could spy upon their dreams and intrude upon the privacy of their innermost thoughts without them ever knowing or being able to stop him. He could enter their minds.
But he didn’t.
Gabriel flexed his wings once more before reluctantly folding them in closer. He respected the MacLeods too much to invade their minds without permission, and he loved Fergus too much to leave him alone, even for an hour as he slept, without letting him know. Even a short flight over the sea was too far to go while Fergus expected his sleep to be guarded.
The angel turned his gaze downward, blinking twice to look past the solid materials of the house. Issobell and Brody had their own little beds, box frames filled with straw and covered with blankets. Fergus lay on the floor, curled up with a little down pillow between his head and arm. Thorn slept on his feet, snoring faintly in the darkness.
Fergus was awake. His eyes were closed tightly and there was a faint flush to his skin, but the way the boy bit his lip or moved his free arm beneath his blanket could not be attributed to a good dream. Or perhaps it could, a dream so good that Fergus had been awakened and needed to take care of some bodily demands. Gabriel smiled faintly before blinking again to give the boy his privacy. He knew exactly what Fergus was doing.
Angels as a whole did not masturbate. The very concept behind the act was foreign to most of the Host. Self-pleasure? There wasn't even a word for it in Enochian. No angel could bring pleasure to himself.
Even Gabriel, by now the most educated angel when it came to humans and all of their oddities, did not masturbate, though he did understand why humans did. For all the similarities between God's firstborn children and his greatest creations, there was one glaring difference.
Angels were not meant to be alone.
The Host was not a true hivemind, like colonies of ants or bees, but they were the closest thing to it while still allowing for individuality. Every angel was connected to every other angel, their minds linked together, a constant hum of song spread between the multitudes and recording the story of Heaven. They were designed to share every experience, to fight as one body, to love as one heart. For an angel to find pleasure, he needed to come together with a brother, or several, pressing graces together until it was almost impossible to tell where one angel ended and the next began. There was nothing overtly sexual about this sort of angelic embrace. Rather, it was a confirmation of belonging.
You're here.
I'm here.
We are together.
We are not alone.
For angels, something as simple as a hug, a touch, or even just standing close enough to brush graces together could bring glimmers of this pleasure. Lying side-by-side, wings and grace entangled, was the closest two angels could come to sex without a physical body. Envesseled, sex itself brought great pleasure to angels, providing a physical aspect to the mingling of grace that could even break the barriers between angels. Gabriel remembered fondly the first time he had ever indulged in sex, with Michael and... well, with two of his brothers at once. They had so thoroughly loved each other that when they reached their physical orgasms, their graces had merged together, and for several long minutes the three genuinely were one angel, whole, complete, perfect.
Gabriel had tried masturbating a century into his self-imposed exile when the silence in his head from his tuned-out brothers had grown too heavy. While the physical sensations had been pleasant, the lack of another's presence had only served to leave him all the more lonely and frustrated. He had eventually turned to the gods that had taken him in as one of their kind. He could lie with them and feel a sense of being connected to another again, but he always feared losing control and revealing the truth of his identity. Loki was a powerful god, but Gabriel was capable of crushing even the great ones like Kali, Zeus, or Odin. He always had to be careful around them.
The closest Gabriel had come to masturbating was to create puppets, living dolls infused with just enough of his power to act vaguely independently. They were rarely good for conversation, parroting only his own thoughts or memories, but the extra body allowed him to pretend he was with a brother or sister... who happened to be exactly identical to him in every way.
Sometimes, Loki's spirit struggled awake beneath the pressing weight of Gabriel's. When that happened, the god was able to break apart enough to completely control one of the puppets Gabriel created. Those times always provided Gabriel with the most relief from his loneliness, as Loki knew all his secrets and Gabriel didn't have to hold anything back. Even with Gabriel allowing his consciousness to surface, an hour or two of freedom for Loki took an enormous toll on the god's energy. After such sessions, Loki would fall back into the soul-sleep of a vessel, resting for a century or two before trying again.
Gabriel hadn’t felt so much as an itch to find someone else to connect to ever since Fergus had found him. Fergus' voice never resonated in Gabriel's mind like the songs of the Host once had, and his soul never escaped the confines of his body to mix with Gabriel's grace, but he allowed Gabriel near and delighted in his presence. For the lonely Archangel, it was enough to wrap his grace around the boy and feel the echoes of Cariel. It was enough to touch his skin and feel the heat of his life. It was enough to watch over him as he slept, hearing the rhythms of heart and lungs confirming the boy's health.
It was enough.
The door below eased open and shut with the barest creak of old wood to catch Gabriel's attention and draw him out of his reverie. The angel watched as Fergus slipped out of the house and out to the privy, a book clutched to his chest. The young man huddled behind the little structure on the far side from Gabriel. Undeterred, Gabriel leapt across the gap between the two roofs with one push from his massive wings. He leaned forward to catch himself as he landed, crouched on top with one hand braced against the thatch.
Fergus had the book spread open across his legs, flipping through the pages with a frown. Gabriel froze when he recognized the ancient writing of one of Brody's grimoires. Fergus had no reason to be studying the spells by the light of the moon.
The angel glided off the roof on wings quieter than an owl's and crept up beside Fergus, still invisible. He arranged himself on the ground to the right of his friend before releasing his hold on his veil and materializing himself. "Whatcha up to?" he asked, looking over Fergus' shoulder.
Fergus jumped about a foot away from Gabriel, slamming the book closed hastily. "Nothing! I'm not-it's nothing!"
"Uh-huh." Gabriel snapped a bowl of strawberries into existence and picked the top one out, taking a bite. "Because you snuck your uncle's book out from under his bed for the fun of it. Hungry?" He offered Fergus the bowl.
Fergus sighed, his shoulders slumping. "I can't hide anything from you," he muttered, reaching over for a strawberry of his own. "Were you...watching?" This was coupled with a furtive glance and a reddening of Fergus' face, suggesting to Gabriel that he wasn’t asking about the book-stealing.
Gabriel shook his head, taking pity on the young man. For some reason, humans, especially this one, were excessively concerned with their nakedness and Gabriel seeing. "Nah. Was on the roof, heard you come outside. So. What are you up to?"
“I was just… studying.” Fergus took a big bite of the strawberry. He always tried to fill his mouth when he didn’t want to talk, Gabriel had noticed.
The angel leaned over Fergus to take the grimoire out of his fingers. As his hands brushed over Fergus’, the youth tried to swallow his strawberry and started coughing, the tiny seeds sticking in his throat. Gabriel abandoned his hold on the book to reach for Fergus’ throat instead, pressing his hands against both sides of his neck and smoothing his thumbs along the front. “Shh,” he soothed, reaching out with his grace to mimic the outward caress inside, helping Fergus relax and swallow properly. “Shh, it’s okay, you’re okay.”
Fergus coughed and swallowed a couple more times, pulling away from Gabriel’s hands with his cheeks bright red. He scrubbed his arm across his face and pulling up his right leg until his knee was nearly pressed against his chest. “Er… thanks…”
“Food is for eating, not for breathing,” Gabriel chided teasingly, reaching around Fergus’ leg to steal the grimoire. Fergus practically jumped out of his skin at the sudden movement from the angel beside him, before groaning and pressing his forehead to his knee.
Fergus did some odd things that Gabriel had become accustomed to over the years, but this seemed unusual, even for him. “Fergus?” The angel cocked his head to the side, then reached out to brush his fingers across Fergus’ forehead as he’d seen thousands of mothers do over the centuries, checking for a fever, a fairly obvious sign of human illness. “Is everything all right?” The boy continued to be flushed, and his skin felt warm to Gabriel’s touch, but it wasn’t fever-hot. Unfortunately, that exhausted Gabriel’s diagnostic skills without resorting to grace.
“I’m fine!” Fergus insisted, reaching up to push Gabriel’s hand away. He didn’t push it far, though, his fingers twisting between the angel’s. Gabriel looked at their linked hands and curled his own fingers gently, squeezing Fergus’ reassuringly. Fergus gave a fragile smile, squeezing back, his eyes turned to their hands as well. “I’m fine,” he repeated, the tension already bleeding out of his voice. “Do you watch over me every night?”
“Every night,” Gabriel repeated quietly. “Every night I’m here, and when I’m away, I listen for you.”
“Listen?” Fergus asked, his voice dropping to a murmur to match Gabriel’s. “Even when you were in China?”
Gabriel smiled-as if distance mattered to him, an Archangel of the Lord. “If you ever call out to me, Fergus, I can hear your voice. I’m a god. Listening to prayers is part of the job.”
“Do many people pray to you?”
There was a sneaky sort of innocence in the question, an obvious tell that Fergus was trying to steer the conversation away from the earlier subject. Gabriel smiled indulgently. “Not as many as used to, but enough.” The constant whisper of prayers to both St. Gabriel the Archangel and Loki the Trickster God was an ongoing susurrus through Gabriel’s mind, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, always pleading. “Your voice will always rise above the rest. If you pray, I’ll answer.” Gabriel squeezed Fergus’ fingers between his once more before withdrawing his hand and turning to the grimoire now in his lap. “Where were we… ah, yes. Where were you?”
“Loki, don’t!”
Fergus’ protest was too late, his hands flying out to try to stop the book from opening as Gabriel snapped his fingers. The pages turned out their own, flipping to a section just past the middle, and Fergus groaned, pulling both knees up and hiding his face in his legs. “Look, it was just an idea…”
“Chimeras?” Gabriel brushed his fingers over the ornate black letter title of the page. Honestly, he had no magic, pagan or angelic, that could open the book to the place Fergus had been looking at last without knowing what it already was. He had just used some of Loki’s reality-bending power to make the book page through itself impressively. “Fergus, if you’re thinking of grafting Thorn’s head onto Gabrielle’s body…”
“What? No!” Fergus uncurled and reached for the book, trying to pull it away from Gabriel, but Gabriel easily held on to his side. “It was just…”
“Just…?” Gabriel encouraged, giving the book a playful tug to keep Fergus’ attention. If he didn’t want to let go, no amount of human pulling would make the book budge.
Fergus gave up and sagged into a ball around his knees again, mumbling something into his legs. “I’m sorry,” Gabriel said, putting the grimoire on his far side and curling an arm around the young man’s shoulders. “What was that?”
“A love potion!” Fergus wailed, pulling his head away from his lap so his words were clear. “I was looking for a love potion, okay? Satisfied?” And then he was curled up again, his shoulders hunching away from Gabriel’s touch.
Gabriel looked at the grimoire, then back to the distraught youth beside him. He shifted closer, lowering his arm to wrap around Fergus’ back and pull him close. “Fergus, you don’t need a love potion.”
“Not for me, moron. For Gabrielle.”
Gabriel bit back a smile at the insult that had no sting behind it. “Gabrielle doesn’t need a love potion either. They aren’t real.”
“They are too.” Fergus slowly lifted his head enough so his words weren’t quite so muffled. “I remember reading about one in there last winter. Everything else in that book is real, so why not the love potion?”
Gabriel sighed, rubbing Fergus’ back. “That’s… not what I meant. The potion’s real, yes, but it wouldn’t make Gabrielle fall in love with you.”
“Then why is it called a love potion?” Fergus asked, shooting Gabriel a dark look out of the fold of his arms.”
“Because it would make Gabrielle into a doll that would pretend to love you. Trust me. I’ve been around this great big world a couple of times. Love potions are always a mistake. If you made a love potion and gave it to Gabrielle, she’d lose all of her fire and verve. She’d placidly follow you around like a lifeless cow, bleating constant reassurances that she loves you, Fergy, you’re so amazing, Fergy…” Gabriel poked Fergus in the side, making him twitch and smile unwillingly. “And she would be as mindless as a cow, always doing everything ‘because she loves you, Fergy,’ and not understanding when you get upset because ‘don’t you love her too, Fergy?’” Gabriel looked solemnly at Fergus. “She will never stop calling you Fergy.”
Fergus squeezed his eyes shut, another little smile darting across his face. “I hate that name.”
“Then why do you let her call you it?”
“Because…” Fergus groaned, tipping his head back. “Because it’s her! Because we’re meant to be together!”
“If you’re meant to be together, you won’t need a love potion to make it work,” Gabriel pointed out.
“Oh, what do you know?” Fergus snapped.
“Married, remember?” Gabriel reminded the young man with a finger pointed at his chest.
Fergus shook his head. “Humans made you married. You didn’t choose Sigyn. Humans decided you would be married to her, and that’s how your mythos evolved. You didn’t have a choice. Have you even talked to her since you’ve been staying with me?”
Truthfully… no. No, Gabriel had been rather neglectful of Loki’s wife lately, but that was okay. She much preferred the company of Coyote these days, anyway (Sigyn had a real thing for Tricksters, apparently). Fergus was correct-the pagan gods lived their lives at the whims of their human believers. The gods didn’t create the myths with their actions so much as the myths created the gods with their stories. Loki had tried to explain it to Gabriel once, and Gabriel had in turn tried to explain it to the MacLeods. Fergus, it seemed, had remembered the lessons. Loki hadn’t fallen in love with Sigyn, and he didn’t really remember the pregnancy or birth of any of his children (not even Sleipnir, who he had carried himself as a mare). The children had simply come into existence when the humans started cementing their myths, one day fuzzy concentrations of belief, the next, full-fledged godlings in their own rights, with Loki knowing their story as if it had never been any different. Though that was a fairly standard creation of most gods’ offspring, sometimes, the gods did have physical pregnancies. The Greek god Zeus was especially noted for his fantastic childbearing stories, carrying Dionysius in his leg or Athena in his head.
Gabriel was grateful that Norse mythology had settled down and he wasn’t likely to become impregnated again. Nor did he have to spend much time at Sigyn’s side. Once the mythos was cemented, gods tended to drift away from the established routines, crossing pantheons and mingling with their comrades from different cultures.
The angel sighed, letting his hand drop, dangling it over his knee. “All right, you’re right. My relationships aren’t like human ones. But that doesn’t change the fact that in order for something to be meant to be, it has to be meant to be. You can’t meddle to make something meant to be.”
“But what if my meddling is meant to be?” Fergus asked, turning an innocent face up to Gabriel. The angel simply shook his head.
“Then you’re not meant to be with Gabrielle, but meant to meddle.”
Fergus closed his eyes and rested his forehead against his knees. “I hate this,” he mumbled. “I hate being all…” He fisted his hands and circled them around his stomach, trying to communicate his feelings.
Gabriel understood the gesture, even though he had no better words for it himself. He had felt the same way when sitting in his Father’s presence in the Garden, knowing that there was no easy fix to stop the fighting between his brothers. That feeling of despair and uncertainty, of knowing what needed to be done but not seeing any way to do it… the angel sighed and turned to press a kiss to Fergus’ temple, ignoring how the young man twitched at the gesture. His soul brightened within him. That was the reaction Gabriel stayed attentive to. “What is meant to be is meant to be,” he murmured, unfolding one wing to wrap it around Fergus, cradling him in warmth and grace. “It cannot be forced. It can only be endured.”
“I don’t want to endure,” Fergus muttered. “I want it to happen.”
“Well,” Gabriel looked up at the moon and the stars above, then back over to Fergus, “whatever is going to happen won’t happen tonight. You’ll have to endure till morning no matter what.”
Fergus shifted on the hard ground, hesitantly leaning sideways until his head was against Gabriel’s shoulder. Gabriel tightened his wing and arm around the young man, holding him close. “I need to put the book back before Uncle Brody finds it missing.”
“Let me worry about that,” Gabriel murmured, running intangible feathers along Fergus’ arm. “You go back to sleep, Fergus. I’ll guard your dreams.”
“Loki?” Fergus asked, sounding uncharacteristically childlike as he nestled against the angel’s side. “Are you and I meant to be?”
Gabriel smiled, warm and sad and ancient, and he tilted his head to bump it gently against Fergus’. “Always, Fergus. In every life, every time, you and I are always meant to be.”
Next...
Notes: This is the third part of the Missing an Angel series. It is recommended that you read the first two before reading this one.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 3,388
Chapter Summary: Musings on angelic masturbation, the creation of godly relationships, and how things are meant to be.
CHAPTER 6:
Meant to Be
Gabriel stood atop the little cottage, his feet not even bruising the thatched roof. His wings were uplifted and his eyes half-closed as the night breezes swept off the cliffs and rustled through his feathers. He was still and silent in the night, invisible to mortal eyes, watching over this family.
He could fly. His wings twitched and stretched further at that thought, angling into the wind. He could leap from this roof and take to the sky, winging his way up to the stars. Part of him yearned for that height, that freedom. There was no danger here, no threat to the MacLeods or even to Canisbay. He could fly.
But he didn’t.
He could enter Fergus’ dreams, or Brody’s, or Issobell’s. He could close his eyes and step sideways, slip into their undefended human minds with the same ease as blinking. He could walk among their imaginations, or change them. He could spy upon their dreams and intrude upon the privacy of their innermost thoughts without them ever knowing or being able to stop him. He could enter their minds.
But he didn’t.
Gabriel flexed his wings once more before reluctantly folding them in closer. He respected the MacLeods too much to invade their minds without permission, and he loved Fergus too much to leave him alone, even for an hour as he slept, without letting him know. Even a short flight over the sea was too far to go while Fergus expected his sleep to be guarded.
The angel turned his gaze downward, blinking twice to look past the solid materials of the house. Issobell and Brody had their own little beds, box frames filled with straw and covered with blankets. Fergus lay on the floor, curled up with a little down pillow between his head and arm. Thorn slept on his feet, snoring faintly in the darkness.
Fergus was awake. His eyes were closed tightly and there was a faint flush to his skin, but the way the boy bit his lip or moved his free arm beneath his blanket could not be attributed to a good dream. Or perhaps it could, a dream so good that Fergus had been awakened and needed to take care of some bodily demands. Gabriel smiled faintly before blinking again to give the boy his privacy. He knew exactly what Fergus was doing.
Angels as a whole did not masturbate. The very concept behind the act was foreign to most of the Host. Self-pleasure? There wasn't even a word for it in Enochian. No angel could bring pleasure to himself.
Even Gabriel, by now the most educated angel when it came to humans and all of their oddities, did not masturbate, though he did understand why humans did. For all the similarities between God's firstborn children and his greatest creations, there was one glaring difference.
Angels were not meant to be alone.
The Host was not a true hivemind, like colonies of ants or bees, but they were the closest thing to it while still allowing for individuality. Every angel was connected to every other angel, their minds linked together, a constant hum of song spread between the multitudes and recording the story of Heaven. They were designed to share every experience, to fight as one body, to love as one heart. For an angel to find pleasure, he needed to come together with a brother, or several, pressing graces together until it was almost impossible to tell where one angel ended and the next began. There was nothing overtly sexual about this sort of angelic embrace. Rather, it was a confirmation of belonging.
You're here.
I'm here.
We are together.
We are not alone.
For angels, something as simple as a hug, a touch, or even just standing close enough to brush graces together could bring glimmers of this pleasure. Lying side-by-side, wings and grace entangled, was the closest two angels could come to sex without a physical body. Envesseled, sex itself brought great pleasure to angels, providing a physical aspect to the mingling of grace that could even break the barriers between angels. Gabriel remembered fondly the first time he had ever indulged in sex, with Michael and... well, with two of his brothers at once. They had so thoroughly loved each other that when they reached their physical orgasms, their graces had merged together, and for several long minutes the three genuinely were one angel, whole, complete, perfect.
Gabriel had tried masturbating a century into his self-imposed exile when the silence in his head from his tuned-out brothers had grown too heavy. While the physical sensations had been pleasant, the lack of another's presence had only served to leave him all the more lonely and frustrated. He had eventually turned to the gods that had taken him in as one of their kind. He could lie with them and feel a sense of being connected to another again, but he always feared losing control and revealing the truth of his identity. Loki was a powerful god, but Gabriel was capable of crushing even the great ones like Kali, Zeus, or Odin. He always had to be careful around them.
The closest Gabriel had come to masturbating was to create puppets, living dolls infused with just enough of his power to act vaguely independently. They were rarely good for conversation, parroting only his own thoughts or memories, but the extra body allowed him to pretend he was with a brother or sister... who happened to be exactly identical to him in every way.
Sometimes, Loki's spirit struggled awake beneath the pressing weight of Gabriel's. When that happened, the god was able to break apart enough to completely control one of the puppets Gabriel created. Those times always provided Gabriel with the most relief from his loneliness, as Loki knew all his secrets and Gabriel didn't have to hold anything back. Even with Gabriel allowing his consciousness to surface, an hour or two of freedom for Loki took an enormous toll on the god's energy. After such sessions, Loki would fall back into the soul-sleep of a vessel, resting for a century or two before trying again.
Gabriel hadn’t felt so much as an itch to find someone else to connect to ever since Fergus had found him. Fergus' voice never resonated in Gabriel's mind like the songs of the Host once had, and his soul never escaped the confines of his body to mix with Gabriel's grace, but he allowed Gabriel near and delighted in his presence. For the lonely Archangel, it was enough to wrap his grace around the boy and feel the echoes of Cariel. It was enough to touch his skin and feel the heat of his life. It was enough to watch over him as he slept, hearing the rhythms of heart and lungs confirming the boy's health.
It was enough.
The door below eased open and shut with the barest creak of old wood to catch Gabriel's attention and draw him out of his reverie. The angel watched as Fergus slipped out of the house and out to the privy, a book clutched to his chest. The young man huddled behind the little structure on the far side from Gabriel. Undeterred, Gabriel leapt across the gap between the two roofs with one push from his massive wings. He leaned forward to catch himself as he landed, crouched on top with one hand braced against the thatch.
Fergus had the book spread open across his legs, flipping through the pages with a frown. Gabriel froze when he recognized the ancient writing of one of Brody's grimoires. Fergus had no reason to be studying the spells by the light of the moon.
The angel glided off the roof on wings quieter than an owl's and crept up beside Fergus, still invisible. He arranged himself on the ground to the right of his friend before releasing his hold on his veil and materializing himself. "Whatcha up to?" he asked, looking over Fergus' shoulder.
Fergus jumped about a foot away from Gabriel, slamming the book closed hastily. "Nothing! I'm not-it's nothing!"
"Uh-huh." Gabriel snapped a bowl of strawberries into existence and picked the top one out, taking a bite. "Because you snuck your uncle's book out from under his bed for the fun of it. Hungry?" He offered Fergus the bowl.
Fergus sighed, his shoulders slumping. "I can't hide anything from you," he muttered, reaching over for a strawberry of his own. "Were you...watching?" This was coupled with a furtive glance and a reddening of Fergus' face, suggesting to Gabriel that he wasn’t asking about the book-stealing.
Gabriel shook his head, taking pity on the young man. For some reason, humans, especially this one, were excessively concerned with their nakedness and Gabriel seeing. "Nah. Was on the roof, heard you come outside. So. What are you up to?"
“I was just… studying.” Fergus took a big bite of the strawberry. He always tried to fill his mouth when he didn’t want to talk, Gabriel had noticed.
The angel leaned over Fergus to take the grimoire out of his fingers. As his hands brushed over Fergus’, the youth tried to swallow his strawberry and started coughing, the tiny seeds sticking in his throat. Gabriel abandoned his hold on the book to reach for Fergus’ throat instead, pressing his hands against both sides of his neck and smoothing his thumbs along the front. “Shh,” he soothed, reaching out with his grace to mimic the outward caress inside, helping Fergus relax and swallow properly. “Shh, it’s okay, you’re okay.”
Fergus coughed and swallowed a couple more times, pulling away from Gabriel’s hands with his cheeks bright red. He scrubbed his arm across his face and pulling up his right leg until his knee was nearly pressed against his chest. “Er… thanks…”
“Food is for eating, not for breathing,” Gabriel chided teasingly, reaching around Fergus’ leg to steal the grimoire. Fergus practically jumped out of his skin at the sudden movement from the angel beside him, before groaning and pressing his forehead to his knee.
Fergus did some odd things that Gabriel had become accustomed to over the years, but this seemed unusual, even for him. “Fergus?” The angel cocked his head to the side, then reached out to brush his fingers across Fergus’ forehead as he’d seen thousands of mothers do over the centuries, checking for a fever, a fairly obvious sign of human illness. “Is everything all right?” The boy continued to be flushed, and his skin felt warm to Gabriel’s touch, but it wasn’t fever-hot. Unfortunately, that exhausted Gabriel’s diagnostic skills without resorting to grace.
“I’m fine!” Fergus insisted, reaching up to push Gabriel’s hand away. He didn’t push it far, though, his fingers twisting between the angel’s. Gabriel looked at their linked hands and curled his own fingers gently, squeezing Fergus’ reassuringly. Fergus gave a fragile smile, squeezing back, his eyes turned to their hands as well. “I’m fine,” he repeated, the tension already bleeding out of his voice. “Do you watch over me every night?”
“Every night,” Gabriel repeated quietly. “Every night I’m here, and when I’m away, I listen for you.”
“Listen?” Fergus asked, his voice dropping to a murmur to match Gabriel’s. “Even when you were in China?”
Gabriel smiled-as if distance mattered to him, an Archangel of the Lord. “If you ever call out to me, Fergus, I can hear your voice. I’m a god. Listening to prayers is part of the job.”
“Do many people pray to you?”
There was a sneaky sort of innocence in the question, an obvious tell that Fergus was trying to steer the conversation away from the earlier subject. Gabriel smiled indulgently. “Not as many as used to, but enough.” The constant whisper of prayers to both St. Gabriel the Archangel and Loki the Trickster God was an ongoing susurrus through Gabriel’s mind, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, always pleading. “Your voice will always rise above the rest. If you pray, I’ll answer.” Gabriel squeezed Fergus’ fingers between his once more before withdrawing his hand and turning to the grimoire now in his lap. “Where were we… ah, yes. Where were you?”
“Loki, don’t!”
Fergus’ protest was too late, his hands flying out to try to stop the book from opening as Gabriel snapped his fingers. The pages turned out their own, flipping to a section just past the middle, and Fergus groaned, pulling both knees up and hiding his face in his legs. “Look, it was just an idea…”
“Chimeras?” Gabriel brushed his fingers over the ornate black letter title of the page. Honestly, he had no magic, pagan or angelic, that could open the book to the place Fergus had been looking at last without knowing what it already was. He had just used some of Loki’s reality-bending power to make the book page through itself impressively. “Fergus, if you’re thinking of grafting Thorn’s head onto Gabrielle’s body…”
“What? No!” Fergus uncurled and reached for the book, trying to pull it away from Gabriel, but Gabriel easily held on to his side. “It was just…”
“Just…?” Gabriel encouraged, giving the book a playful tug to keep Fergus’ attention. If he didn’t want to let go, no amount of human pulling would make the book budge.
Fergus gave up and sagged into a ball around his knees again, mumbling something into his legs. “I’m sorry,” Gabriel said, putting the grimoire on his far side and curling an arm around the young man’s shoulders. “What was that?”
“A love potion!” Fergus wailed, pulling his head away from his lap so his words were clear. “I was looking for a love potion, okay? Satisfied?” And then he was curled up again, his shoulders hunching away from Gabriel’s touch.
Gabriel looked at the grimoire, then back to the distraught youth beside him. He shifted closer, lowering his arm to wrap around Fergus’ back and pull him close. “Fergus, you don’t need a love potion.”
“Not for me, moron. For Gabrielle.”
Gabriel bit back a smile at the insult that had no sting behind it. “Gabrielle doesn’t need a love potion either. They aren’t real.”
“They are too.” Fergus slowly lifted his head enough so his words weren’t quite so muffled. “I remember reading about one in there last winter. Everything else in that book is real, so why not the love potion?”
Gabriel sighed, rubbing Fergus’ back. “That’s… not what I meant. The potion’s real, yes, but it wouldn’t make Gabrielle fall in love with you.”
“Then why is it called a love potion?” Fergus asked, shooting Gabriel a dark look out of the fold of his arms.”
“Because it would make Gabrielle into a doll that would pretend to love you. Trust me. I’ve been around this great big world a couple of times. Love potions are always a mistake. If you made a love potion and gave it to Gabrielle, she’d lose all of her fire and verve. She’d placidly follow you around like a lifeless cow, bleating constant reassurances that she loves you, Fergy, you’re so amazing, Fergy…” Gabriel poked Fergus in the side, making him twitch and smile unwillingly. “And she would be as mindless as a cow, always doing everything ‘because she loves you, Fergy,’ and not understanding when you get upset because ‘don’t you love her too, Fergy?’” Gabriel looked solemnly at Fergus. “She will never stop calling you Fergy.”
Fergus squeezed his eyes shut, another little smile darting across his face. “I hate that name.”
“Then why do you let her call you it?”
“Because…” Fergus groaned, tipping his head back. “Because it’s her! Because we’re meant to be together!”
“If you’re meant to be together, you won’t need a love potion to make it work,” Gabriel pointed out.
“Oh, what do you know?” Fergus snapped.
“Married, remember?” Gabriel reminded the young man with a finger pointed at his chest.
Fergus shook his head. “Humans made you married. You didn’t choose Sigyn. Humans decided you would be married to her, and that’s how your mythos evolved. You didn’t have a choice. Have you even talked to her since you’ve been staying with me?”
Truthfully… no. No, Gabriel had been rather neglectful of Loki’s wife lately, but that was okay. She much preferred the company of Coyote these days, anyway (Sigyn had a real thing for Tricksters, apparently). Fergus was correct-the pagan gods lived their lives at the whims of their human believers. The gods didn’t create the myths with their actions so much as the myths created the gods with their stories. Loki had tried to explain it to Gabriel once, and Gabriel had in turn tried to explain it to the MacLeods. Fergus, it seemed, had remembered the lessons. Loki hadn’t fallen in love with Sigyn, and he didn’t really remember the pregnancy or birth of any of his children (not even Sleipnir, who he had carried himself as a mare). The children had simply come into existence when the humans started cementing their myths, one day fuzzy concentrations of belief, the next, full-fledged godlings in their own rights, with Loki knowing their story as if it had never been any different. Though that was a fairly standard creation of most gods’ offspring, sometimes, the gods did have physical pregnancies. The Greek god Zeus was especially noted for his fantastic childbearing stories, carrying Dionysius in his leg or Athena in his head.
Gabriel was grateful that Norse mythology had settled down and he wasn’t likely to become impregnated again. Nor did he have to spend much time at Sigyn’s side. Once the mythos was cemented, gods tended to drift away from the established routines, crossing pantheons and mingling with their comrades from different cultures.
The angel sighed, letting his hand drop, dangling it over his knee. “All right, you’re right. My relationships aren’t like human ones. But that doesn’t change the fact that in order for something to be meant to be, it has to be meant to be. You can’t meddle to make something meant to be.”
“But what if my meddling is meant to be?” Fergus asked, turning an innocent face up to Gabriel. The angel simply shook his head.
“Then you’re not meant to be with Gabrielle, but meant to meddle.”
Fergus closed his eyes and rested his forehead against his knees. “I hate this,” he mumbled. “I hate being all…” He fisted his hands and circled them around his stomach, trying to communicate his feelings.
Gabriel understood the gesture, even though he had no better words for it himself. He had felt the same way when sitting in his Father’s presence in the Garden, knowing that there was no easy fix to stop the fighting between his brothers. That feeling of despair and uncertainty, of knowing what needed to be done but not seeing any way to do it… the angel sighed and turned to press a kiss to Fergus’ temple, ignoring how the young man twitched at the gesture. His soul brightened within him. That was the reaction Gabriel stayed attentive to. “What is meant to be is meant to be,” he murmured, unfolding one wing to wrap it around Fergus, cradling him in warmth and grace. “It cannot be forced. It can only be endured.”
“I don’t want to endure,” Fergus muttered. “I want it to happen.”
“Well,” Gabriel looked up at the moon and the stars above, then back over to Fergus, “whatever is going to happen won’t happen tonight. You’ll have to endure till morning no matter what.”
Fergus shifted on the hard ground, hesitantly leaning sideways until his head was against Gabriel’s shoulder. Gabriel tightened his wing and arm around the young man, holding him close. “I need to put the book back before Uncle Brody finds it missing.”
“Let me worry about that,” Gabriel murmured, running intangible feathers along Fergus’ arm. “You go back to sleep, Fergus. I’ll guard your dreams.”
“Loki?” Fergus asked, sounding uncharacteristically childlike as he nestled against the angel’s side. “Are you and I meant to be?”
Gabriel smiled, warm and sad and ancient, and he tilted his head to bump it gently against Fergus’. “Always, Fergus. In every life, every time, you and I are always meant to be.”
Next...