bigapplesauce | Upon them be peace [closed]

Current Location: Iman's apartment - Greenwich Village
Current Music: September 28th

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Upon them be peace [closed]

Well, those texts were weirdly spaced out and not quite the responses she was expecting, but the good news is Gabe's coming and he's bringing booze. And that's what she needs right now. She told Rush she'd see him today but she is not ready, and he's gonna have to deal. She's still reeling after everything yesterday was, she's drained and still liable to get into fights, so yeah. Booze. Booze is what she needs.

She sighs and sets her phone down without answering, instead wandering around and making a cursory effort to clean the place up. Not that it matters. Just something to do.

She runs out of things to do pretty quickly, and is left just standing in the middle of her apartment staring at the floor for several moments before she resigns herself to slumping over at her worktable, dragging her arm up to set it on the table, all normal-like. Now there's just waiting.

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Gabriel doesn't bother with knocking. He shows up in the middle of Iman's flat and holds out both of his hands. In one hand is a red wine of exceptional quality and startling vintage. In the other, a bottle of tequila of equal quality.

"You have choices." He sets both bottles down on the workbench and then dips to kiss her cheek. "I have just had so much sex. Lots of sex. Me and Johnny were so overdue." He waggles his eyebrows at her, then chuckles. "If you want to ravage my body you'll have to give me some recovery time first."

Oookay then. Well that explains a few things.

Iman decides to play along with his totally oblivious mirth because it's a hell of a lot more fun than her misery. She kisses his cheek back, and smirks up at him. "Since when do angels have refractory periods?" she says, and wordlessly takes the tequila, gesturing for him to sit. "You and Johnny been okay?"

'So overdue' makes it sound like there might be some kinda story there. And Iman will take Gabe's stories. She'll take anyone's drama over hers right now.

He sets aside the bottle of wine and comes around to sit beside Iman, then pops a couple shot glasses into existence and nudges a couple bits and bobs aside to set them on the table.

Iman's question makes him pause for a moment. He and Johnny have not been okay, and it might only be because something unthinkable almost happened that they aren't still arguing about the mysterious figure that Johnny is protecting. He taps the side of the glasses and fills them without having to open the bottle.

When he speaks again, his tone stays light. "Well. He almost died twice in the past month, that's been a bit of a strain." He smirks in her direction. He does appreciate talking about this, but he doesn't want to let on how much Johnny getting hurt really pains him. "I'd say he attracts trouble if that wouldn't imply some completely false things about yours truly."

Edited 2015-08-11 07:03 (UTC)

"Shit." She says this bluntly and with feeling, looking at him as she picks up her magically filled shotglass. "That's rough, buddy."

She downs her shot and sets the glass on the table. "He seems like the kinda guy who's shit at asking for help."

Not that she's speaking from experience or anything.

"He is." Gabriel follows Iman's lead and downs his shot, then refills both. He's not exactly sure what the goal of this evening is yet, so he doesn't go to drink the second shot yet. "He never prays. Like, ever." Johnny's refusal to ask for help has had some frightening side effects. He thinks of Johnny waking home late at night with a cracked rib and he huffs a sigh. There are so many times that he could have helped, but Johnny just wasn't having it.

"You think Greta and Mr. Grumpy will?" That's why she asked him here, after all. Or something. He' hadn't paid very much attention to those texts.

"Um." She takes her second and hesitates, wincing around the pleasant burn. Well, she can't blame Gabe for not picking up on the tenor of her communications, what with all the sex. She sighs heavily and sets her glass down, reaching up to rub at her face. The other arm remains limp on the table, dragging slightly when she sits up a little straighter.

"That's Dr. Grumpy to you," she says, attempting to sound light and managing only to sound tired. She lets out a faint, brittle laugh. "They, um. They might. Actually I really doubt Rush ever would. He's like Johnny." She frowns moodily at the table. "I just had to give them something. I can't protect them from your brother. I don't know if you can, but..."

She curls inward a bit, shifting her gaze from the table to her arm, staring at it balefully. "They were both pretty pissed," she murmurs, "to find out about his, uh. Interest. In me. 'Cause I never said anything. 'Cause how do you casually mention you're chill with Satan."

She pushes her shot glass over to him in a firm, wordless request for more.

"I usually say 'hey, i'm the archangel Gabriel' and people fill in the rest." He pushes his still-filled shotglass towards her instead of refilling hers. Her change in tone (or maybe it's just that he's only now noticing?) is a little bit worrying. He doesn't want her drunk before he figures out if there's more too this than just Lucifer being himself. If she wants another drink she can open the bottle herself.

"I can't guarantee their protection, but if they call I'll show up and give Lucy a more interesting target." He shrugs. He wishes that he could give her more reassurance than that, but Lucifer is never going to start listening to him. Reason doesn't work. The best he can do is distraction.

"Well, that's something." She takes his shot but doesn't drink it, studying it instead. She sets it down after a moment and shoves her hand up through her hair, pushing her hijab back a bit, letting out a heavy sigh.

"I didn't tell them," she says. "I didn't want to tell anyone about it, Lucifer treating me like a bro, leaving me gifts like a fucking cat. I didn't want them to worry about me, cause like, I know he's not gonna hurt me, but-" On second thought, better take that shot. "He popped up to check on me, on my arm, in front of Rush, and Rush told Greta, and everything fell apart so fast, I just couldn't-"

Her momentum dies and she lowers her head onto the table. "And now he knows - he knows if he wants something from me, something I don't want to give, he has two really great methods of motivating me."

Gabriel is ready to quip- she doesn't know what it's like to be Lucifer's bro, that at least Lucifer is bringing her things that she likes, but all of those thoughts come to a halt when she mentions her arm. In that moment, all of the little things that had been subtly bothering him about her mannerisms and attitude suddenly coalesce into an actuality. He realizes then that her arm looks completely different to his senses. Before, there was energy, and an interesting otherworldly aspect. Now, the physical object is there but not the energy.

He sets his elbows on the table and leans forward to look over her. He has missed so much that's going on with her, and it seems like she needs something from him that he doesn't know enough to give. He's very worried that way more is wrong than she's even hinting at and suddenly, selfishly, wonders why she hadn't come to him with any of this earlier.

He pauses for a moment before speaking. "Iman," His tone is soft and lacking his earlier playfulness. He's attempting to sound caring, but it comes off as vaguely threatening because he feels hurt about not being included before now. "What happened to your arm?"

Edited 2015-08-25 02:10 (UTC)

She's fully expecting some speech about her terrible life choices, or how she should never have trusted Lucifer to play fair, or something - not this. She blinks at him a moment, the full weight of the tequila starting to really sink down on her, and then she blinks down at her arm.

"Oh," she says, and reaches out with her good hand to tug it off the table, settle it into her lap, out of the way. She stares numbly at the table, thinking back to the day it happened, Greta's hand, Rush's eyes.

"I was testing the rift's barrier," she says softly. "Just feeling it out. Nothing aggressive. A little bit of hands-on research." She huffs a weak laugh at the extremely unfunny pun. "It pulled me in. Fried the arm. Rush and Greta pulled me out, and Rush had to sever the arm's circuitry. Could have been brain damage. Could have killed me. Now it's dead, totally destroyed."

She looks down, idly tracing the knuckles of her dead hand. She can't feel the sensation at all - it's just like she's touching someone else.

"That's all," she murmurs.

"That's all." He leans back again and rubs a hand over his face. "I'm an angel, Iman. You know more than one superhuman entity, and you didn't think to call one of them before jamming your arm into the rift?" He drops his hand and reaches out to grab his shot glass back from her, refilling it in the process. Being angry is probably the wrong reaction to this news, he thinks. Iman is hurt and probably scared, but all the same, he can't help but be upset about her getting hurt by something that could have been avoided if only she'd asked him.

He drinks the shot, then keeps the glass in his hand. Iman probably doesn't know about his jump into the rift, probably hasn't seen the video of what he looked like when it spit him back out, but this is a subject he knows intimately. She's very lucky that she only lost her arm. "I've spent more time inside the rift than anyone else in New York. I could have told you it was a bad fucking idea."

And just like that, she's gone from mildly uneasy to full-throttle flight mode. She feels herself shrinking under his harsh tone, pulling in defensively. She can imagine herself extending spikes, like a fucking porcupine. She gets why he's angry. She knows he probably doesn't mean to sound angry. It doesn't matter. This is not what she wanted and she's not in the business of being scolded.

"I'm not Johnny," she snaps. "You can't expect me to run every stupid thing I do by you first. I know it was a mistake, okay, I'm kind of walking around with the mistake hanging off my shoulder. Thanks so much for the fucking hindsight."

She grabs the bottle and drinks straight from it, making herself cough as it burns her throat. "I just wanted you to drink with me, fuck, I don't need another lecture."

Gabriel groans and slowly lowers his his head until it's resting on the tabletop. After almost losing Johnny again, it's both hilarious and a low blow to hear her saying that Johnny listens to him. "Okay. Fine."

"Look. Okay." He lifts his shot glass and sets it on the table without lifting his head. "I have no clue where you got the idea that anyone runs anything by me. I'm five billion years old. You'd think people would at least consider consulting me before running off and almost dying. Or pray once they're in trouble. But nope. Doesn't happen. I don't wanna be Mr. Go-To, but I wouldn't mind the call if you're walking home with broken ribs or your arm just zapped off." So, the ribs thing it very specific to Johnny. And in fact, Most of this is very specific to Johnny, but Iman has pushed a button for him and he's going to talk about this whether she likes it or not.

He sighs. "Getting involved with humans is bullshit. I can guarantee you Uriel never had this problem. I'm the fucking Rodney Dangerfield of archangels over here."

She settles a little at his abrupt shift in demeanor. She touched some kinda nerve there, probably Johnny-related, whoops. But at least he's moping instead of yelling at her. She can deal with that. She sighs heavily.

"I'm sorry," she says. "It's not personal, I don't really run anything by anyone. I didn't think just checking it out would be so freakin' offensive, but now I guess I know it'll be up my ass if I so much as sneeze on it."

She slumps, feeling the heavy curtain of drunkenness draping over her. "Rush and Greta saved me," she reiterates. "And Rush is adamant he's going to fix the thing. The outlook is not good but he's... him." Ugh. She doesn't want to think about that. "Your brother is very invested in it getting better too, cause apparently I am his best fucking hope, and Rush saw fit to piss him off, cause, you know, he's him!" She lets out a loose, fuck-it kind of laugh. "So. I'm sorry for promising your... whatever help you can offer, it's just, I owe them. They saved my life and all I have to offer right now is being this massive ungrateful fuck-up."

She decides Gabe has the right idea and leans forward to rest her head on the table as well. She imagines they must look ridiculous.

"I am bullshit," she mumbles. "We're all bullshit. We probably don't deserve you."

Christ, she must be hammered, saying shit like that. Wasn't there something important that happened a while ago that she didn't quite register? She struggles to wind back in the conversation.

"Wait." She sits up, too quickly, now the room is spinning, good, great. She hesitates, furrowing her brow at the table as she struggles to metaphysically steady herself. "What did you... Did you say you were in the Rift? When did that happen?"

He groans at her question, then slowly pushes himself up from the tabletop. "I did, yeah." He's not drunk enough for this conversation, or for how much it has the potential to reveal about him.

"Hold on." He holds up a finger, grabs the tequila and chugs down the rest of the contents of the bottle. If he's going to talk about the rift and his jump into it with Iman, he needs to be as drunk as possible. With a small shake, he refills the bottle, takes another sip, then settles it back on the table. "That'll do it for now."

He pulls his phone out of a pocket and chuckles to see the screen absolutely shattered. He runs his thumb fondly over the glass, repairing it as he goes. "He threw it across the room when I kept texting you."

He smiles in her direction, but it quickly sours as he pokes around on his phone. "Can't believe you haven't seen it. Guess it was before you showed." He pulls up a video on his phone and sets it in front of her. Instead of watching it himself, he pours himself another shot.

The video is taken from a phone. It opens shakily on Gabriel lying on Bethesda Terrace, his wings visible, covered in blood and surrounded by his own shed feathers. Unconscious and injured, there is very little about him that seems human. The frame quickly closes in on him, and a hand nudges him awake. He startles back, his eyes unfocused, and the voice behind the camera says Shit, he's alive then backs up quickly. A finger briefly covers the scene of Gabriel flapping one massive wing in surprise and panic, then the video cuts out entirely.

The video stalls for a moment, and Gabriel takes his phone back before it can segue into an ad or whatever video is next in the playlist. "That was the end of June. I spent a week in the rift."

"Wh- oh." She blinks at him as he downs the entire goddamn bottle, refills it, and has a little more on top. Well. That bodes entirely well. She manages a faint smile at the thought of Johnny hurling Gabe's phone across the room, but it's hard to smile about anything right now, what with the haze of drunk and the intense foreboding of whatever he's about to show her.

She stares at the screen, brow furrowed, eyes wide, as the scene plays out horrifyingly - Gabe's wings are huge, and they'd be beautiful except they're so fucked up, oh god, he looks so-

The video ends and she shifts away, putting her face in her hand. She wishes she had both available for the motion.

"What was that," she whispers brokenly through her fingers. "Why did it - how did you-"

She's not sure she should be asking. It rings so familiar with what she experienced, and accounts for his initial reaction, and she wasn't prepared for how affecting it would be to see him like that. Like seeing a felled mythical creature. Something.

"I jumped in," he says, without explaining why. As much as he enjoys Iman's company, he doesn't really feel ready to talk to her about a suicide attempt. Let her assume that he tried to kill himself, or let her think that he was trying to get back to his universe. Either way, he's not going to talk about the truth.

"It kept me. I think as a punishment. It was like..." He shrugs and sets the phone down on the table and leans back in his chair, removing his face momentarily from Iman's line of sight. Any metaphor he can think of doesn't really capture the extremes of being inside the rift, and describing what it really felt like is too much for him to say. It was like being in a living thunderstorm. One with mass and body and a terrible temper. It was like he was being punished my God."You wouldn't have survived as much."

She levels a slow, unsteady gaze at him. But why. Did he think he could push his way back out? Not an unreasonable assumption, given his extremely powerful nature, but - that doesn't feel right, exactly. She doubts he'd just leave Johnny or the TARDIS behind like that. She doubts a lot of things right now. Punishment, he says.

She's not going to ask.

"No, I wouldn't have," she says quietly. "It gave Rush and Greta the opportunity to pull me out. It let them have me. It was a warning shot." She sighs heavily, staring at the table, trying not to think about it, failing entirely. "I know it would have killed me, and it almost did. But I'm okay. Nothing to do now but move forward, I guess."

Weirdly optimistic. She doesn't feel it, not really. She wants another drink, but she resists. She's had enough.

"I'm sorry," she says, abstractly, and rubs at her face with her hand, like trying to wake up. "Ugh. No more serious shit for now, okay? I'm fun. I swear." Oh, good, that doesn't sound desperate at all. Maybe he'll understand. "Can we move this to the couch and just cuddle or something. Or we could find something stupid to watch. I'm game for whatever."

She says it casually, because who cares, right? But now that she's said it, holy shit does that sound good. She hopes he doesn't mind. She needs something to take her mind away from his broken wings, her broken arm, Lucifer, and all of this.

"You are very fun," he reassures her, then pushes himself to his feet. The little head rush he gets is unexpected, and he sets his hand down on the table for a moment before standing up all the way. Something of that tequila hit him it seems, though he hadn't felt any of it while he was still sitting down. This presents more of a challenge in actually getting to the couch than he'd been expecting, but they'll manage.

"And yes, we can move this to the couch. C'mon Asadi, I'll help you." He moves around to Iman's good side, then hefts her up and, with some effort and a fair amount of wobbling gets them both over to the couch.

He props himself in the corner against the armrest and opens his arms theatrically, allowing her room to settle in against him. "Cuddle time is a go."

"Thanks, Jibra'il," she mumbles with a dopey smile as she curls up next to him. That is much more like it. She sighs, letting herself drift for a bit, listening to his heartbeat.

"I really needed a fucking break," she says after a moment. "Thanks for coming over."

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Upon them be peace [closed]

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