bigapplesauce | this was never meant to feel good [closed]

Current Location: Gabriel's house of aggrieved biseuxals
Current Music: September 18th (a little after midnight)

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this was never meant to feel good [closed]

[follow-up from here]

Tim's last kick to his stomach did him no favors. He staggers home, weak, sore, and shaking - scared as all hell by what he's done, what he had to do. Tim might be bleeding out in the park and it's his fault. He's not doing too well himself, he feels like that kick may have broken something, but at least he's heading home to a an angel. Not scrambling around the park halfway out of his head.

He gets to the building after what seems like an interminable struggle southward, and climbs the stairs automatically, no sense going into his own apartment at this hour, where Lilly's (hopefully) sleeping. As much as he needs this, he's dreading it, too. Gabe can put him back together, but at what cost? What questions is he going to have to field, what lies will he tell, and will Gabe believe any of them. He can't give up Tim, not until he knows more about - everything, all of this. Like he can actually make a difference. Such bullshit.

He might know it's bullshit but he's resolute all the same. He gets to Gabe's door and lets himself in. "Gabe," he murmurs weakly, unable to focus on Scout as the dog comes running to greet him.

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Gabriel is still up, wanting to be available in case there are any problems with Lilly. When he hears someone outside the door he expects it to be something like that. He doesn't expect anything like this.

"Johnny-" He's on his feet as soon as he sees him, and a few moments later has his arm around Johnny's waist to guide him back over to the couch. He's confused about how this happened and worried about how hurt Johnny seems to be. He'll have to check him over more thoroughly once he's sitting.

"What happened? Why didn't you call? Is Lilly alright?" Probably a couple too many questions there, but he can't keep himself from asking them. Each seems as important as the others.

He can't focus on the barrage of questions, just leaning on Gabe with relief and gratitude, letting him help him onto the couch. Once he's sitting he curls over, an arm around his middle.

"I - I'm fine," he lies, transparently. "It's okay. Lilly's fine, she's still asleep as far as I know. I just - I may have fucked up a rib, can you..." He winces, looking up at Gabe and wishing, hopelessly, not to be asked questions.

"You are not fine." Gabriel sits down next to him and brushes the back of his fingers against Johnny's cheek. He realizes as he lifts them up that his fingers are trembling a little bit. Why does Johnny never call him when he needs him? He's afraid that one of these days Johnny will be too hurt to come home and he'll never be able to find him before he's lost entirely.

There's a cracked rib. A little bit of internal bleeding. Blood on his face. This wasn't nothing. This was something, somebody pretty fierce. He heals Johnny entirely and cleans away dirt and blood while he's at it.

"There." He still feels incredibly worried, but he also feels hurt that it seems Johnny only came to him when he knew that he had to. What about this doesn't Johnny trust him with?

Scout comes running back to see Johnny, jumping up to prop his paws on the edge of the couch. Gabriel pushes a hand back through Johnny's hair before pulling it back entirely, not sure what Johnny wants from him. He'd already asked what happened and Johnny didn't seem too acknowledge the question. "Is that all you wanted?"

Johnny shakes his head distractedly, feeling much better now that the pain is gone but still trembling a little, still freaked as fuck. "No, no," he murmurs, and leans in, resting against Gabe's shoulder. "No, it's not all, I - I'm sorry I didn't call."

He is sorry. Part of him is. He stands by that decision but he can't make Gabe understand that, not right now.

"It was nothing, honestly," he says. "Just a really aggressive mugger. I fucked him up pretty good." He tries to ignore the twist in his stomach at the ease of the lie, and the truth of it as well. "I got away and I was just like, running on adrenaline, you know, I just wanted to get here on my own two feet. I'm sorry."

Please, he thinks, please just let Gabe accept that. He curls up against the angel, resting his head on his shoulder. He wants to be here with him, not have to hash out bullshit. "It's not all," he says again.

Gabriel wraps his arm around Johnny and takes a few steadying breaths. He's willing to accept Johnny's story because he's here now and he's in one piece. That doesn't mean that he likes it. He absolutely doesn't like being sitting in his apartment while Johnny is out somewhere getting his ribs kicked in. "Where were you? You could have at least gotten a cab if you didn't want me to..." He huffs a sigh. That's not what Johnny had said, but it's probably closer to the truth. "-If you didn't think to call me. You could have really gotten fucked up trying to get yourself home like that. You're lucky."

Scout comes around towards Gabriel, jumps up onto the couch and licks his hand until he lifts it to pet the little dogs head. He's a little too distracted at the moment to recognize the dog's attempt at comfort.

"This can't happen again, Johnny." He dips his head to rest it against Johnny's, wanting another point of contact. "I would have come. I could take care of a mugger no problem. If you let me know."

"Okay, okay," he says in an effort to sound light, nodding absently at what come pretty close to sounding like demands. Gabe's right to ask it, he knows that, much as he doesn't want to go along with it, it's the sensible thing, the obvious thing. The thing Gabe wants to do for him, ~~because he loves him~~.

"I knew I'd be okay," he says in a really, really shoddy attempt at humor. "See, good as new." He pats his own stomach gently. This is not much of a comfort and he knows that. It's shitty and he knows that. He can't deal with all these things right now, not while Tim might be dying out there because of him, he can't do this. He just wants to lean against Gabriel with his eyes closed and feel him there, holding on.

"You were not okay, you doofus." Gabriel gently headbutts Johnny and buries his nose in his hair. It's hard to find any humor in Johnny walking home past midnight with a cracked rib and blood on his face. For a minute or so, Gabriel just holds him and lets himself calm down from seeing him walk into the apartment like that.

"Just-" He's already told Johnny to call him when he needs him. More than once. No need to rehash that again. If Johnny doesn't contact him for something like this, it's not because he forgot. Johnny is too smart for that. It'll be because he thinks no one else should be involved, or because he somehow thinks that he's not deserving of the aid. He wishes that he could convince him that neither of those are true, but it's a slow process convincing someone of their own self-worth.

He sets his fingers under Johnny's chin and nudges him until he backs away from the cuddle. He wants to look him in the eye for what he's going to say next. "I don't want to lose you before I have to." He dips a kiss to Johnny's lips. Whether by death or the rift, Gabriel knows that he will eventually lose him. That's what he agreed to when he let this relationship keep going.

When he pulls back he has a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Johnny's here and he's alright. That's enough for now. "Because I love you." His smile shifts into a smirk, remembering how Johnny had explained his love in the last dream they'd shared. "Like, in a weird, gay way."

Johnny meets Gabe's eyes a little nervously, but he manages a faint smile and a nod. It's hard to hear, the before I have to - it's not really something he thinks about, that there is an expiration date to this, but the reaffirmation of feeling is even harder.

Johnny Truant doesn't deserve anyone's love. Much less an archangel. Gabe can't understand that and it's not fair to ask him to. Johnny isn't gonna hurt him again, not like that. But it digs at him, the sentiment so effortlessly offered. He is a lying, damaged piece of shit who got one friend killed and may have just killed another himself. He reduced himself for so long, so easily, to nothing more than a bundle of burned, torn pages. And that made sense.

The afterthought, mercifully, makes him smile more genuinely and even pulls a laugh out of him, dropping his face into his hands, hugely embarrassed by the memory. "Oh, god," he says. "I almost forgot about that. You were so fucking weird."

He presses in to kiss him again, because the physical stuff always makes sense, it's easier to act on, and it's comforting to fall back into. He's about to say something else, maybe try and shift things in another direction because they are long overdue, but he's stopped by his phone buzzing in his pocket.

Immediately he snaps back up, pulling it out and looking at it feverishly. It's not Tim. It's not Tim. He feels a defeated slump come over him, that the question still exists, Tim might be dead, might be dying, and Johnny is sitting here fucking cuddling.

"Um..." He frowns at the text for a few moments. "Uh. Eliot's outside." He looks up at Gabe. "He wants to know if you can help him."

He's not sure if the slump to Johnny's shoulders means he's disappointed or relieved. The way that Johnny pulled out his phone was way too indicative of someone waiting for bad news, and Gabriel has the uncomfortable feeling that Johnny is keeping him in the dark about something important here. Adding Eliot of all people into the mix only serves to confuse things for him further.

"Eliot," He draws out the name, as if there might be some other Eliot that he doesn't know of who is asking for his help. The last time Gabriel had seen Eliot, he'd been under the impression that in the future Eliot would cross the street rather than walk past him on the sidewalk. To have him come here is strange. It means something is definitely wrong with Johnny's story.

He nudges Scout aside and stands, frowning.

"I'll go get him." Part of him is frustrated at the interruption, but maybe Eliot will be able to tell him more about what Johnny is hiding. He walks out of his apartment door, then teleports down to the first floor. When he unlocks the front door and pulls it open, his face is fixed in the expectant and slightly annoyed expression of someone who really doesn't want any of this to be happening but is bearing it regardless.

Eliot both looks and feels like something the cat dragged in, and he's not proud of the fact that he's here, asking for help. But his shoulder is killing him and he's walking with a limp and he feels like he's been in a cement mixer, so here he is. Pride and his apprehension of angel power have taken a backseat to the necessity of the situation.

He barely has time to fumble the phone back into his pocket before Gabe is there, opening the door. Eliot staggers a little, off balance; he was feeling dizzy beforehand, he can handle being around the angel for now.

"Um," he says, a bit confused. He wants to ask why Johnny didn't come down but any way he could phrase it would sound rude, and this is already an imposition. "So, hi, this is probably not the best time but uh, I'm kind of fucked up right now, and," he sighs, and stretches his jaw to get his ears to pop. "And I could use your help. Sorry."

"No, I'll-" he's saying just as Gabe pops out of the room. Scout lifts his head, tilting it at Johnny, and Johnny stares back, feeling an instant well of dread pooling in his gut, feeling fucking sick and scared. He tries to tell himself there are a ton of reasons Eliot could just show up like this but there aren't. Eliot wouldn't come here if he wasn't in a really bad way and Tim's message was fucking public and it's just too much of a coincidence, he doesn't believe for a second that this isn't related, and now they are downstairs talking without him and Eliot might be about to tell Gabe everything and fuck fuck fuck. He curls over with his head gripped tight in his hands, and Scout crawls over to nose at him, whining softly.

He moves one hand to the dog's head, scratching behind his ears gently, trying to find comfort in the contact as he peeks at the dog from under the hair falling into his eyes.

"What am I gonna do," he murmurs, feeling wholly, intensely pathetic. "He's never gonna fucking trust me again, what am I gonna do?"

Scout doesn't have any answers, wouldn't even if Daine were here to translate, but he nudges forward into Johnny's lap all the same. Johnny rubs a hand aggressively across his eyes and forces himself to sit back up, petting the dog, sitting stiff and calm and waiting.

"I can see that," Gabriel answers when he takes in the sight of Eliot practically falling apart on his doorstep. He gestures behind him and steps aside so that Eliot can limp his way in, watching and assessing him as he does. The shoulder is dislocated- that'll have to be put back in place because he heals anything else.

"And it is the best time because you're going to tell me who or what it was that attacked you, because the same thing got to Johnny." He locks the door with a wave of his hand and then waits for Eliot to explain. "He's fine," he adds as an afterthought. "But he wasn't." He's not feeling very charitable at the moment, but he will help Eliot once he tells him what he wants to know.

What Gabe wants to know and what Eliot is capable of telling him are two different things, but Eliot is too worn out to even take much note of Gabe's tone, beyond appreciating the concern.

"Shit," he sighs, "I don't know what the fuck it was, other than some guy." He leans back against the door; he has absolutely not lost his balance, it is just somewhere else at the moment and Eliot can't find it. "Some guy in the park, like a mugger, but also very definitely not like that at all. Never said anything, just fucking tackled me and..." He raises his good hand to his neck, but doesn't touch the skin where his attacker's hands were. He doesn't want to think about how close a call that was. "If I'd seen him coming I could have taken care of it and you wouldn't have to endure this intrusion on your evening, but as it is, shit, I'm lucky I got away." Eliot looks at the floor as he says this last bit. He knows, distantly, that this is more sharing than he feels comfortable with, especially with Gabe, but he aches all over and he still feels dizzy and he's forgotten what comfort even is, so he might as well tell Gabe everything he knows. Which isn't much. He looks back at Gabe, dead serious. "And Johnny ran into something tonight too? What the actual fuck."

"Seems like it was the same thing." That's more than enough information for Gabriel to confirm that Johnny is lying to him about what happened for some reason. He stands, scowling in Eliot's direction for a moment before walking up to him and grabbing his good arm. When he transports them both up to his place, his grip keeps Eliot from falling over.

"Eliot got attacked by a mugger too," he says, his voice deadpan, without looking up from his task. He makes sure that Eliot's not going to keel over immediately, then helps him to one of the kitchen chairs. "Sit down. I'm going to fix your shoulder first." He takes Eliot's arm and slowly pushes it upward. This definitely hurts now, is going to hurt like a bitch when it pops back in. He could probably keep it from hurting, but he doesn't bother.

Eliot's startled and feels (slightly) nauseated at the sudden change of location, but he's not going to give Gabe the satisfaction of being violently sick from the process. At least, that's the plan.

"Hi," he says weakly, giving Johnny a little wave before sitting down heavily in the chair. "Some kind of a night everyone is having, isn't it?" Even through the pain and disorientation Eliot can tell that the mood is tense. "So wha-HAAAAAAAA! FUCK!" His efforts at asking Johnny what happened are, naturally, curtailed by Gabe's resetting his shoulder. His throat already hurts and now he's reduced to shrieking attempts to express his displeasure when he feels like he's on fire and yes, there goes his vision again, dark and spotty, and he can't even curse at Gabe so much as utter a raw inhuman wail that leaves him burning, every part of him is burning.

"fhhhhhhhhhhhgh," Eliot hisses through his teeth once it's done, trying to remember how breathing and air work. "If, if I throw up on you it's not gonna be my fault."

Scout jumps off the couch when Gabe and Eliot appear, immediately wandering over to them and then scurrying away just as quickly when Eliot screams. Johnny can only stare at them, wincing at Eliot's obvious pain and disorientation, but mostly keeping his eyes on Gabe.

He knows exactly what Gabe is implying, doesn't know how much Eliot said, whether Gabe has only suspicion or actual details. He swallows on a dry throat. He has to say something.

"Oh," he says. "That's. That's weird."

Nailed it.

Rather than answer him, Gabriel's eyes flick up to meet Johnny's only long enough to communicate that he's more than aware of the complete bullshit that Johnny is spouting. His lips compress into a tight line, and a moment later his attention is back on Eliot.

He sets his index and middle finger against Eliot's forehead, and he lets his eyes slip closed. There's a lot of bruising, some scrapes, a minor concussion, and the obvious strain to the shoulder joint. Not too much to heal, so he does. His eyes open and he looks over Eliot, then brushes his hand roughly along his shoulder, cleaning and repairing his clothes as he does.

"Ta da. You're healed." He pulls out another chair and sits down across from Eliot. A moment later he materializes a couple cold bottles of beer and pushes one across within his reach.

Scout carefully pads his way back to the table, and Gabriel leans over and picks him up so that he can settle down in his lap. "Anything else you can tell me about the guy? Height? Weight? Hair color?"

Edited 2015-07-26 17:38 (UTC)

"No," says Johnny abruptly, standing up. "Don't tell him shit." To Gabe he says coldly, "You leave him out of this."

This is fucking terrifying. The way Gabe was looking at him just now, it's a look he never wants to see again, he doesn't know what's going to happen to him, if he's finally wearing out his welcome with this, or what. But he's not willing to give up Tim, he's just not, not over something he doesn't understand yet. Gabriel is - and he hates to think this, but he knows it's true - too dangerous for that.

"There is a reason I am keeping this from you," he says, half angry and half desperate. "I know you don't want to fucking trust me right now, I know I'm hard to trust, but you have to, this time you just have to. I'm sorry. That's the way it is."

"You are not hard to trust, Johnny. Fuck." Gabriel huffs out a breath and scrubs his hand along Scout's side, comforting the dog, but Scout wiggles out from his grip and heads for the bedroom. "I trust you. But it feels like you trust me less than someone who could have killed you tonight."

Gabriel frowns down at the table for a moment before looking back up at Johnny. His fists clench and his voice is tight as his continues. "What do you think those marks on your ribs mean? I have to trust you." He lifts an arm and gestures roughly past Eliot towards the other side of the room. "You walk ten feet away from me and I can't feel you, not your mind, not-" Not your soul, he doesn't say. He can feel himself breathing faster, his whole facade crumbling. "-not anything. Do you think I'd do that for anyone else? Anyone?When you leave I have to put my faith in you."

"I ha-" His breath hitches and he knows that he has to stop this now before he completely falls apart. If his hands weren't balled into fists he knows they'd be shaking.

He forces his voice rougher, because there's no other way he can finish what he was going to say. "I have to trust you to come back."

He pushes himself up from the table. He has to leave now. Johnny could have died tonight and whatever reasons that are going to come out of Johnny's mouth next, he knows he needs time before he react to them with anything but emotion. "I'm gonna take Scout for a walk. Eliot, always a pleasure. Please feel free to fuck off at your earliest convenience."

He walks into the bedroom, and a few moments later Scout's leash disappears from the hook by the front door.

As Eliot catches his breath and starts to feel maybe, almost like a human being again and not something that got caught in a storm drain, the evening continues to take a turn. A further, shittier turn. Eliot looks back and forth between them like this is a tennis match. This is the fucking Wimbledon of third wheeling, and he says nothing, just feels more and more uncomfortable by the second. His irritation sharpens into a hard point at Johnny telling him what to do--like he can't judge a situation on his own? Fuck that. Whatever personal shit he's got going on, it's not Eliot's place and he doesn't have to be here for this.

Except he can't even move, transfixed as he is by all the emotional...whatever Gabe keeps dumping, holy shit this is way too much information, and Eliot stares resolutely at the table, the beer frozen in his hand halfway to his mouth.

When Gabe leaves he blinks for a moment, sets the beer down, and clears this throat.

"So," he begins, not even attempting to make eye contact with Johnny, he can't right now. This was too much. "So uh, I'm gonna...get out of here, give you some space, I just...yeah." He makes his way to the door, and finally looks at Johnny, earnest. "Sorry about all this." And Eliot means it, he does, and maybe part of him feels like it would be the right thing to stay, but the rest of him wants to go the fuck to sleep.

"I'll talk to you later," he says, giving Johnny a little grimacing smile before he goes.

Well, shit.

He stands there, stunned, hands buzzing and hanging limply at his sides, as Gabriel falls apart. He feels like the floor is coming out from under him (a feeling altogether too potent). Gabe isn't wrathful, isn't tired of his bullshit - he's folding under the fear of losing him. And Johnny still stands there motionless and quiet, unable, unwilling, to sell out his friend, and no idea how else to fix this.

He can't speak even as Gabe brushes past him, disappears, taking Scout with him.

The silence is agonizing. Eliot is barely a movement in his periphery. The apology is just confusing, what is that supposed to mean, sorry for what. Johnny is the one who's sorry. He's made two people he cares about what out on him in short order. No one left.

When Eliot is gone he drops back down onto the couch, wraps fingers like claws around his head and loses his shit for a while, crying angrily until his head hurts and he has no idea how long it's been. He wants to tear at his hair and his skin, wants to put his fist through a mirror or a window. He does nothing. He can't ask Gabe to heal him again tonight, he can't go back to Lilly with blood on him.

Finally he pulls himself back together, gets up, shaky-legged and dizzy, and sweeps Eliot's abandoned beer off the table. He drinks it slowly as he heads back down to his apartment, entering as quietly as he can. Lilly is conked out under the bed, Yarrow cuddled up beside her. Good.

He steps into the bathroom and takes a cold shower, doing nothing but standing in the water for a while, his head resting against the tiled wall.

When he finally crawls into bed he feels like he's already asleep, and mercifully he doesn't dream at all.

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this was never meant to feel good [closed]

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TW: horrendous joint pain

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tw: thoughts of self-harm