Johnny sets the brush aside and picks up the feather carefully and with clear reverence, holding it gingerly like he might damage it somehow. Gabe's jokes barely scratch the surface of his thoughts. Gabe has given him many things - a home, to start with; furniture, clothes, and food, a means to practice his craft, trust and support and love and protection like he's never known, and an espresso machine. In his old life gifts were rare and possessions meant little to him, less and less as the book wormed its way into his life and ate it from the inside out. It's been easy to coast along with this new status quo; Gabe makes it easy. It would be ludicrous for even his hardened rat bastard ass to resist stability handed to him on a platter, something he once mocked as an absurd improbability in his additions to the book. Berated any readers who were taken in by it, that imaginary dream life of being rescued and healed by sudden do-gooders dropped into his story like a weak trope, the hand of god. An irony he tries to avoid. Generally he avoids all of this introspection.
The offer to keep the feather is somehow apart from all that, a proverbial spanner in the works of his carefully cultivated avoidance. His life was forfeit and now he's here, caring for and being cared for by an actual hand of god. Gabriel's wings have always been a bit of a wake-up call for him, he can never look at them as casually as he looks at the rest of his life, and now, being able to keep a piece of that with him always - it's too much.
He doesn't want to let go of it, but he forces himself to set the feather down gently, resting it on the couch with a pointed glance at Scout that implies his old dedication, this is not for you. More affectionate now than it ever was.
He turns back and steps over to Gabe, leaning down to kiss him, hands cupped warmly around his cheek and the back of his neck. The kiss lingers, and he corrects his position accordingly, settling instead onto Gabe's lap, curling around him. He filled his corners of the book with lurid descriptions of his trysts, all those women dispassionately, anonymously fucking him, women he didn't know how to talk to, how to treat, who were never going to fill the hole in his miserable life, and if someone had ever accused him of a future where he would give his heart to a celestial being wearing the body of a charmingly ordinary man he'd have punched them.
But this is it, all of it, right in front of him. He breaks the kiss and wraps his arms around the archangel, resting his chin on Gabe's shoulder.
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The offer to keep the feather is somehow apart from all that, a proverbial spanner in the works of his carefully cultivated avoidance. His life was forfeit and now he's here, caring for and being cared for by an actual hand of god. Gabriel's wings have always been a bit of a wake-up call for him, he can never look at them as casually as he looks at the rest of his life, and now, being able to keep a piece of that with him always - it's too much.
He doesn't want to let go of it, but he forces himself to set the feather down gently, resting it on the couch with a pointed glance at Scout that implies his old dedication, this is not for you. More affectionate now than it ever was.
He turns back and steps over to Gabe, leaning down to kiss him, hands cupped warmly around his cheek and the back of his neck. The kiss lingers, and he corrects his position accordingly, settling instead onto Gabe's lap, curling around him. He filled his corners of the book with lurid descriptions of his trysts, all those women dispassionately, anonymously fucking him, women he didn't know how to talk to, how to treat, who were never going to fill the hole in his miserable life, and if someone had ever accused him of a future where he would give his heart to a celestial being wearing the body of a charmingly ordinary man he'd have punched them.
But this is it, all of it, right in front of him. He breaks the kiss and wraps his arms around the archangel, resting his chin on Gabe's shoulder.
"Thank you," he whispers.