bigapplesauce | the cure for what ails ya [open]

Current Location: gabe's place
Current Music: October 2nd

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the cure for what ails ya [open]

(slight sickness related grossness in the following)

He wakes up sore, and not in a fun way. He groans, and every muscle in his body protests as he swings his legs around the edge of the bed and sits up. What the hell is this? He stomach feels wrong and his head is pounding like he's got the worst hangover imaginable. Actually, worse than imaginable because when he attempts to heal himself, nothing happens.

There's something on his face- he lifts a hand and "Ughh-" that's definitely snot on his face. There is snot where it definitely should not be. At least when he goes to wipe it away, it disappears.

Whatever this is, he clearly needs help. A moment later, he arrives lying face down on Johnny's bed.

He groans. "Johnny, I've been cursed. Probly the rift. You need to-" He waves a hand vaguely then coughs, and for a moment he feels like he might just keep coughing forever, but it passes. "-call Aziraphale. He needs to come'n do something." He's ill. Surely this is what it feels like to be deathly ill, and if Aziraphale can't heal him, maybe he can reverse whatever curse the rift or whoever has put on him.

(He'll be with Johnny for a while, but later he'll be up at his place again, likely flopped in bed. Anyone is free to visit then)

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"It should get better with each day," she reminds him. "You'll know when you start feeling better."

She smiles faintly. It sounds a bit too much like a thinly-veiled plea for help, which, given Gabe's current state, she can understand.

"I'm not doing anything else today," she says with an even shrug. "I don't mind it - if you don't mind, I mean." She directs the last half of the statement at Gabe, as if asking permission. It feels practically required, still, the habitual defaulting to authority, and an angel landlord feels like the nearest thing to it.

Gabriel considers this for a moment. Johnny very clearly wants Mako to stay. Part of him doesn't want to embarrass himself any further in front of her, but once someones seen you face-down on the floor begging for a pillow maybe the embarrassment just lasts forever. Also she made him tea. That's nice. Mako is nice.

"Meh," he says, and gestures vaguely with the hand not currently fisted into Johnny's shirt. "Okay. But. No soup." Soup sounds like the worst.

"You're having soup," says Johnny sternly, and looks at Mako again. "It's probably ready by now, but I don't think he's gonna let me go." He pats Gabe's hand gently. "I promise it'll help, okay?"

He can already tell there's going to be bargaining and extensive cajoling involved in this. He's morbidly delighted by the thought, as well as immensely relieved Mako is going to be sticking around.

"It's not sweet, but it's good for you," she says, quietly insistent in a tone she hopes is adequately far from directly scolding. She retreats to the kitchen to switch off the stove and obligingly dish up the soup. Johnny must not be that bad a cook; it smells very good, and hopefully Gabe will agree.

She returns, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling at the faintly ridiculous panorama that greets her. Gabe hasn't seemed to have relinquished his grip on Johnny. She offers the bowl to the pair of them, spoon and all, uncertain whether she should be presenting it to Johnny or to Gabe directly, as the angel still seems rather adamant upon not eating it.

"I'm not human-sick, I'm rift sick. You don't know if anything'll help." Still mostly horizontal, Gabriel looks up at the soup with a frown, then slowly makes his way upright, losing his grip on Johnny's shirt along the way. Once he's sitting up, he grabs for the tea from the coffee table instead of the soup.

"Johnny can eat his soup. I'm having this." He still has yet to actually drink any of it, but he's taking baby steps here. The important bit is getting Johnny to sit down next to him so that he can lean against him while he thinks about drinking the tea.

Johnny gives Gabe a truly unimpressed look and takes the soup from Mako. "You're eating the soup, Gabriel." He sets the bowl briefly on the table and pulls himself up onto the couch, nestling himself in alongside Gabe's legs. He picks up the bowl again and dips the spoon in, blowing gently on the spoonful before holding it out expectantly. "Are you going to make me feed you or are you going to behave?"

He's doing this partly to tease and piss Gabe off, because it's fun, and partly because he hopes it will actually work. Poor Mako continues to get a really weird window into their relationship. He never thought he had this much natural domesticity in him but having a god who is acting like a toddler for a boyfriend will do that, he supposes.

He feels momentarily caught up by the idea, again, that he's dating a fucking god, that he's dating period, that.. this is a moment that is happening in his life. Who could have seen this shit coming, that he'd go from emaciated city rat to whatever the fuck this is.

Okay he's not getting emotional while trying to force-feed an archangel chicken soup. He's not. This is so stupid.

"You could probably drink it," she suggests, again feeling sorely out of place in relation to the pair of them and their easy familiarity despite Gabe's plight. She hovers at their periphery, unwilling to settle in to witness such an intimate scene but equally unwilling to simply leave when Johnny was so openly relieved to hear she would be staying. "Like tea, but instead, soup."

She compromises. She sits on the floor across from the couch with a safe distance stretched between herself and the pair.

"You will feel better once you eat it, you know."

When Johnny uses his full name, the sense of him being called plus Johnny's closeness feels like a chime going off in his head. He closes his eyes for a second, and when he looks back up, Johnny is holding up bowl and spoon like he's going to start making airplane noises at any moment.

He glares in Johnny's direction while he lifts the mug to his lips and takes a sip. It feels alright- the warmth is good. It could be sweeter, but it'll do for now. He doesn't want to test the theory that more sugar will make him sicker. He can't even imagine what 'more sick' would feel like. "I know how soup works," he says to Mako. "I'm drinking the tea. You wanted me to drink the tea. If this even counts as tea."

He takes another sip, slowly getting used to it. "An' dont-" he gestures vaguely at Johnny with one hand. "Don't do the name thing. Normally I'd be over the moon but now it's..." He's not entirely sure how to describe the feeling of his name being said with intent. He tips his head to the side a fraction, as if he's still hearing his name being called. In a way, he is. "It echoes. It's noooo good."

"Gabe," says Johnny in exasperation just as he registers 'the name thing', which gives him immediate pause. He hesitates, looking at him in mild confusion. "What are you talking about? You mean like... when I call you Gabriel? It echoes?"

He knew that he had to use that name specifically to pray, but he didn't know it actually sounded different all the time. This is turning into a big damn learning experience. For him and for Mako. Lucky Mako.

He's finally drinking the tea, which certainly counts as progress of a sort.

Mako's knowledge of angels is desultory at best, but the power of a name is a more universal concept. She only ever referred to him as 'Gabe,' mimicking Johnny. It raises an interesting question.

She says nothing and chews on the inside of her lip as carefully avoids looking at either of them, but simply thinks very slowly and deliberately: Gabriel.

Gabriel grunts when Johnny uses his full name again. "Echoes is...I can't think of a better way to say it. You don't have the sense for it. Maybe like-" He coughs suddenly, and it surprises him enough that he nearly drops his mug. After a quick moment of making sure it's alright, he settles back again. "-like a ping. Doorbell. Handshake." He shrugs, giving up on trying to find an appropriate metaphor. "S'Angel thing."

When Mako thinks his name, it comes to him as clearly as if she had said it aloud. It's a bit better than when Johnny had said it, maybe because it was only in her mind. He didn't have the jumble of hearing his name aloud at the same time that he heard it in her mind.

"It's usually... It's nice. Sick ruins everything." His gaze slides over to her, and he gestures to her for Johnny's sake. "Do like Mako. That was better."

"No, I... I think I understand," he says doubtfully. How is it this never came up before? This makes the act of simply saying his name so much more intimate than Johnny ever realized. He's distracted immediately by Gabe's instruction to 'do like Mako', which, at a glance, seems vaguely insulting on top of making zero sense.

"Do like Mako what?" he says. "You mean like say nothing?" Without leaving room for a reply, he barrels on indomitably: "Gabe, please eat your soup. I made it for you."

"I just - thought his name," she says, her patience dissolving under the mild alarm that her hypothesis turned out to be true. She almost says his name aloud, but bites back the urge. If Gabe is as sick as he says, having multiple voices in his head isn't likely to help.

Not like you'd know how that feels, says her brain in Raleigh's voice, dryly, am I right?

She gives herself a small shake. She isn't talking to herself, especially not now.

For a moment Gabriel doesn't understand Johnny's question, but what Mako says clarifies it for him. Johnny hadn't heard Mako thinking his name at all. It's reasonable he'd be confused. And a little bit funny.

He raises an eyebrow at Johnny over his mug of lukewarm tea, entirely missing whatever internal dialogue Mako is having. "Does adding one ingredient to canned soup count as making soup now?" He takes a moment in which he contemplates whatever ungodly thing his stomach is doing before he sighs and nods. Maybe he'll survive the soup. He can't stand Johnny sitting there frowning at him. "Okay." Instead of taking the bowl, which seems unwieldy, he switches the contents of the mug and bowl.

He looks down into the mug like it might contain something poisonous and mumbles out, "Bu' only because you're cute an' I love you."

He takes a little sip of the soup. Even with the pepper it still tastes a little bland to his tongue, but it doesn't immediately kill him, so maybe it's alright. And maybe they'll stop pestering him about the fucking soup now that he's had some.

"Oh," says Johnny, feeling kind of dumb for not considering that, though there's no reason he should have. That makes sense though, of course, that's how prayer works, he knows that. He supposes it's like Gabe's hearing it twice, thought and spoken, if Johnny's right here. Fucking weird. He shakes his head slightly as though to dislodge the notion, and watches Gabe finally try the damn soup, not before getting a little jab in, of course.

"Yeah, well-" he starts just as Gabe mumbles out the next thing, and he falls abruptly, awkwardly silent. He feels his face and his ears getting hot. Great.

It's still weird, hearing him say it like that, and it still gives him this kneejerk desire to recoil and push away. But it's getting easier to restrain that reflex. He dips his head down, trying to compose himself.

"Well, sorry I can't spin shit straight out of the ether," he says wryly, as though nothing happened, (studiously avoiding Mako's gaze), "and also that you don't have any raw ingredients."

Mako grins as he starts eating at last. Victory.

Almost immediately, the triumph tides into hesitation, then puzzlement.

"Did you switch them?" she asks, looking between mug and bowl and noting the shift in hue of the contents.

Gabriel curls over a little bit, keeping his hands wrapped around the mug and looking up at Johnny through slightly bleary vision. It's no fair that this is happening now. Any other time, having Mako and Johnny here would be a good time. He could get Mako to talk more about herself. But right now he doesn't have the energy for questions or the attention span to listen to the answers.

"Mako, lookit him blush." Well, he can still embarrass Johnny. That doesn't take much effort at all, and it makes Johnny blush more, which is is like a bonus for putting in the effort.

"He does that kinda shit all the time," says Johnny, doggedly ignoring that comment, and how he's very obviously blushing even more now. "And then this one time he made candy and he was freaking out about it like he doesn't do weird physics-breaking bullshit every day. It was adorable."

See, two can play at this game. And Mako's gotta be more interested in how Gabe works than how Johnny's face is a little flushed. Shut up Gabe.

She has to bite the wall of her cheek to keep herself from making a vaguely amused sound that would probably end up irritating two-thirds of the people in the room. She keeps her focus locked firmly on the concept of angelic power, which serves as both an intriguing topic and a useful distraction.

It does not escape her notice that Johnny is indeed blushing, all the more luminously now that Gabe has actively pointed it out.

"It might be a little less wise to do that sort of thing while you're sick," she remarks, her eyes a little too innocent and her tone a little too controlled to not be wavering under the strain of maintaining a straight face.

"My powers aren't effected. Just my gorgeous body. So." He sniffs and then scoots down far enough that taking another sip of his soup would be a dangerous proposition. He's getting tired again, but he doesn't really want to get back up and go to the bedroom.

He pouts. "I can put my soup anywhere I want."

"You sure can, buddy," says Johnny, not even bothering to not sound a little patronizing as he reaches out to rest a hand gently on Gabe's stomach. He always feels a little oversensitive to touch when he gets the flu, and since Gabe seems to have been gifted with every symptom, he wants to be careful. "You know a great place to put it is in you. It's good for... your fake immune system. Or something." He hesitates, then looks at Mako. "Right? Or is it just like a psychosomatic thing?" How does he not know this? Why would he know this.

"It clears sinuses," she says with a small shrug, leaping onto Johnny's question to keep herself from the temptation of laughing at the absurdity of Gabe's pouting. "And it's good to eat when you're sick. Gives your body nutrients."

She doesn't know if there's a psychological element to it, or if such a thing would even work on a superhuman being that has no previous experience in being sick.

Gabriel makes a noncommittal noise somewhere between a groan and sigh. He likes having company, but they're both so tiring. Why can't they just talk about something normal, like sex, or the latest season of Downton Abbey?

He shoves the mug in Johnny's direction until he takes it from him, then scoots down again until he's completely horizontal. This feels better.

"I had a dog named Buddy," he mumbles out, as he reaches out for the hand settled on his stomach and links his fingers with Johnny's. He moves both hands up to rest on his chest instead because his stomach feels like a precarious place for any sort of weight to be resting right now, but he does like having the point of contact. His eyes slip closed. "He was kinda like Scout. Different colors. Shorter hair."

Johnny sighs in surrender and sets the mug aside. He had one sip. That'll have to be the victory. He smiles faintly at Gabe's rambling, rubbing his thumb gently over his knuckles. He seems like he's starting to drift off, which is probably for the best.

"Yeah?" he says quietly, not wanting to give him anything new to think about. Let him doze off thinking about his old dog.

She's not sure when the conversation made the transition from debating the merits of soup to reminiscing about dogs, but she lets it happen since it seems to be succeeding in getting Gabe to lie down and rest. She thinks of Max, and smiles.

Mako sits back and lets Johnny take over. She doesn't want to jar Gabe awake.

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the cure for what ails ya [open]

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