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[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Date: December 25, 1999
Setting: Manor Library
Status: Private - Belial and Gabriel (Complete)
Summary: Belial makes his decision.
Rating:



The yellowing pages and musty smell of old leather reminded him of nothing so much as Aziraphale's bookshop. The memories seemed tarnished now, tainted around the edges with the garish haze of Hellfire, but still he could not help but remember his occasional teas with the other angel fondly. His eyes trailed over the chocolates Aziraphale had left him before settling instead on the glass of brandy at his side.

He flipped the page with shiftless thoughts.

A puff of dust, and a familiar passage: 'But for corruption thou hast made Belial, an angel of hostility. All his dominions are in darkness, and his purpose is to bring about wickedness and guilt.'

Well, he'd certainly been doing well enough on that account.

Gabriel sipped again at his drink, staunchly ignoring the warmth in his stomach that stemmed partially from the alcohol and even more from the intrusive memories of Belial's lips on his skin. He skimmed over the words analyzing the passage from the Dead Sea Scrolls, grew suddenly bored, and turned the page once more. Hundreds of scholars and theologists, believers and disbelievers alike, had spent centuries of man trying to describe Belial, and none of them seemed to have been able to pin him down any more easily than Gabriel could in his befuddled thoughts. They called him Lucifer's Crown, detailed how he was a seducer with a smile like poison for the soul or a fierce warrior with the head of a bull.

Not a single entry mentioned glitter.

He turned to another page, his gaze wandering idly over the faded text as he sifted through the words of others as well as his own reeling consciousness.

Comments

[lordofthesouth.livejournal.com]

Belial let his senses guide him to Gabriel when he felt he was ready to confront the archangel. Ellie's advice weighed heavily on his mind, bearing down with the burden of the sorrow he had seen in her eyes, and the decision that needed to be made.

Gabriel's head was tilted down, eyes seeing something further than the pages of the book he clasped.

Belial approached from behind, feet light and soundless on the floor, and brushed a finger delicately over the nape of Gabriel's exposed neck.

"I do hope I'm not intruding," he murmured, bending down before the Gabriel could react to his touch. "Very interesting reading material, you've got there. I find this book does no justice to my beauty." Sarcasm, light, just enough that he was sure the angel would catch it.

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Gabriel tensed at the touch, sinking into his chair away from the demon and cursing himself that Belial had managed to get so close without him noticing. His skin felt hot where Belial had stroked it so tenderly, seared with the memory of that touch.

He blinked once against the dry weariness in his eyes before glancing cautiously up at Belial. Hearing the edge to the demon's voice, he remarked dryly, "That doesn't sound like the pride befitting a Prince of Hell."

And you are beautiful.

Gabriel shifted the tome uncomfortably in his lap, and focused blearily on clearing a bit of the alcohol from his system. It had obviously begun to take its effect.

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"Would you have me to proclaim my numerous wonders to the skies for you?" Belial asked softly. "Perhaps it is not vanity that stills my tongue, but a sense of propriety, fair angel."

He moved to the side of Gabriel and perched on the arm of the angel's chair, taking the book away gently and paging through it.

"This is a lot of garbage, anyhow. Humans have an endearing measure of ignorance," he said thoughtfully. Looking down at Gabriel made him want to breathe and hold his breath at the same time.

He set aside the book and thumbed a finger across Gabriel's lower lip, smoothing away a droplet of brandy that had escaped the angel's mouth. A blossoming warmth filled his chest, a change in his mood and manner, like he'd taken a hard swig of Gabriel's drink, and he tilted Gabriel's head up towards his.

His hand drifted to Gabriel's neck, feeling for the angel's pulse.

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With a sense of weary resignation, Gabriel leaned into Belial's touch, despising himself for the weakness. His guilt over their last encounter had melded into a physical pain somewhere between his ribs, had haunted him, torn at him, and left him exhausted from the fray. He was tired of fighting, with himself, with Belial.

He was tired of wanting what was wrong.

"There are many inaccuracies, I'll admit, demon," he said, fully aware of Belial's dark eyes on his lips. "But one of their conclusions that I'd have to agree with is that you have little sense of propriety."

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Belial's cheek twitched, pushing down a smile. The acceptance of his touch, though obviously reluctant, sent giddiness spiraling through him.

"Never was my forte. Especially with you about," he whispered. He grazed his fingers down Gabriel's collarbone, exploring the angel's skin as thoroughly as he dared. His touch was slow, gentle, and he knew he would move no further than the angel wished him to. Gabriel's scent was intoxicating, mixed with the heady scent of the brandy.

"I posed a question to you, before," he said, hand dipping lazily to Gabriel's hip, biding his time. "In different circumstances, in a different world, could you bring yourself to want this?"

He canted his head down and placed a chaste, safe kiss against Gabriel's lips, shaking faintly.

It was vital that he know.

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Desire mingled with alcohol in his blood, and he gasped against Belial's lips, his heart pounding out a thousand warnings that he could not bring himself to follow.

He caught Belial's hand where it rested on his hip and held it away from him, not daring to break contact with the demon's dark eyes.

"We met in a different world," he murmured, trembling with the intoxicating proximity, "In a time before Creation. Before the first sunrise, before the moon and all the stars, before all else that is lovely, there was your beauty."

The words came from some place inside him that he feared to name, and he felt tears welling in his eyes as he spoke them. A single tear spilled from the corner of his eye and began to work a slow path downwards along the curve of his cheek. His grip on Belial's wrist tightened.

"You are present in so many of my worst memories, but so many of the best as well, and I've tried... I've tried to forget, but you are too much ingrained in me."

His vision was blurred now with his own tears, but it did not matter: he knew the face that looked down into his own, the eyes that burned into his and the lips that seared his own with even the faintest kiss.

His mind racing, he leaned forward just enough to touch his lips to Belial's, to whisper his answer against them, "You already know that I could."

The tear traced the line of his jaw before falling into Belial's open palm between them.

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Belial could feel sadness brimming his own eyes, and let himself drown in it. The library was a distant thing, books and musty corners far away, all taken away by Gabriel's simple admission.

Each word hooked in his gut with curved barbs, catching him between the curves of syllables and the spaces of breath as his heart tripped and fumbled about.

Love, unrefined and wild in him, was unlocked with the touch of Gabriel's lips against his, with the heat of his breath. It grew until he felt it might nigh burst through his chest, unfettered by doubts and the fear of being scorned.

Still, he kept his body in check. Lust could do him no good with the angel weeping so prettily beneath him. His pulse stuttered, overwhelmed by sensation.

"What do you want? Anything," he gasped against Gabriel's soft mouth. "I'll give you anything."

He knew what his decision would be when Crowley asked.

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Gabriel shuddered, one hand reaching up to stroke Belial's cheek, as though cautiously reassuring himself that this was real and not some flight of weary, half-drunk fancy. He had said more than he should, he knew blearily in the back of his mind: the admission seemed to tear him in two, the sinking feeling in his abdomen in sharp contrast with the dizzying lightness in his head.

"Why?" he asked suddenly, countering the demon's question with one of his own. "Why do you ask this of me above all others?"

The salt of Belial's kiss mingled with the taste of brandy on his lips, and Gabriel did not pull away.

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His hand came up to hold Gabriel's touch to his face and he turned into the angel's grasp, nuzzling wrist and palm with broken tenderness. Gabriel's simplest touch tamed his fears, soothed the dark wounds in him. There was no rescinding his adoration, no taking back his decision to bind his heart to Gabriel's visage.

Lucifer's cruel eyes looked down on him from a throne of twisted bone. He could feel them on his back, pressing him to the floor with nothing more than the madness that they held. Fear roiled his mind; would he become like this? To look upon so much madness would surely beget it in his own mind.

Belial thought of Gabriel when Lucifer reached down and touched his shoulder with leering intent.

"You've been my greatest downfall and my only savior," he whispered. It was his hope that Gabriel would not puzzle out the entire truth of the matter until the spell had been completed.

He kissed Gabriel until he felt breathless, though he needed none. His tongue slid against the angel's lips, begging entrance with the tip. Kept both of his hands in Gabriel's, letting the angel set the pace of this, content with losing himself in Gabriel's mouth.

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Gabriel's brow furrowed at the words, but though he did not fully understand them, their meaning thrummed deep in his core, an unidentified but powerful urge resonating in his chest. He gripped Belial's hands as though the demon's hold on him could save him from his own hectic thoughts, could soothe the guilt that surged in him alongside his desire.

Could make sense of all that had come to pass.

His lips parted beneath Belial's without a second thought, and he wanted it, could no longer deny wanting it. Drawing the in the gently probing tongue, he wondered how such a creature as this could have learned to touch with such tenderness, to kiss as though...

As though it stemmed from something much more than lust.

Gabriel pulled away from that kiss with the faintest of moans.

"This," he whispered, gazing into the dark eyes, fearing what he might find there, "this is no game to you."

[lordofthesouth.livejournal.com]

Every sound Gabriel made left Belial straining to hear more, starved for this affection. Flowers left in the dark had no thirst for light aside his want for the briefest gasp from Gabriel's lips.

"No, it's not," he breathed. "It never has been."

Cupping the angel's hands together in his, he brushed his lips lightly over each palm, and kissed both wrists, inhaling deeply Gabriel's warm scent.

"Do what you will with my heart, Gabriel. Lucifer could not break it where you could make it into nothing more than shards of shaken glass with your kiss." He let himself languor in the angel's touch, so close to the warm body. The skin about his shoulders tingled, wings itching to be free in response to the adrenaline this crafted body pumped through him. Heart rushing.

This was the core of him. So in love. Pieced together awkwardly. So like a human. How could any of them be wrong, then, to want such a wonderful thing, if He had purposefully made Man this way?

Kneeling before Gabriel, stooped over, he pressed his face to the angel's chest.

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Thousands of years of sorrow and suffering, of elation and laughter, of rushing darkness broken by breathtaking light fell in upon him with crushing strength, and Gabriel was suddenly, painfully sober. He gingerly freed one of his hands from Belial's to bring the demon's face up to meet his own. For all he had never listened, never wanted to believe, he could see it etched in the very lines of Belial's countenance, ingrained in him. A part of him.

Love.

A hundred questions, worries, wonders vied for prominence in his mind as he gazed at the demon, but, carefully brushing a loose strand of the demon's dark hair from his face, his lips formed only a single word.

"How?"

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A choked answer bubbled on Belial's tongue, but he had no words to put to the meaning. His jaw ached with the overflowing emotion. It was a journey of footsteps, one after another, spanning the sandy, desolate wastes of his existence. A trail through the desert, droplets of water drying, clumped dun pearls, in the sand; he could hardly explain to Gabriel how each memory and hope had kept him sound and sane for so long.

"Gabriel," he said, a name more beautiful in their milk-tongue than any mortal language. It was painful to heave the celestial sounds from his throat, his body and being unable to grasp the task it undertook, but they were melodious and flowed like oozing honey. "The Father created hate, created avarice, created death. Lucifer did not invent sin."

Closing his eyes, he shook at Gabriel's touch. His knees dug uncomfortably into the floor and his mouth was dry. Shoulders hunched. "There can be no suffering that does not make the bite of happiness more keen."

Belial bit his lip, weighing his words carefully. "Love was the one balm granted to me for what pain I needed endure. Lucifer could not remake me, in that, no matter how he tried, with all his strings and wires and nimble fingers. It is my blessing and burden to know this love."

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The celestial language on Belial's lips hurt, took hold in his heart and wrenched in ways that he could not have expected. Fresh tears stung his vision at the sight of Belial, lost to him for so long, with such Heaven in his eyes; the demon's words inspired in him such sweet madness, and Gabriel felt as though he was drowning in darkness and, with movements stiff and painful from inactivity, had only just taken the first, faltering steps towards an unknown light.

He placed his hand along Belial's jaw, sweeping a thumb gently over the lips that spun such words of silk.

"And how long - " he began, but found his voice too weak to continue. It felt childish, having no response but wondering questions in the face of such epic words, but it was too much to comprehend, too much to wrap his thoughts around so quickly. He took a shuddering breath, asked quietly, "How long have you felt this - this burden?"

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"Since Creation began," Belial gasped with the truth of it against Gabriel's hand.

He sounded as music, throat limbering as he remembered how to speak. "I have loved you since the first mote of light was spun from the Creator and all was bathed in its fair light."

His heart did not--could not--suffer spilling forth to Gabriel quietly. It thrummed in his ears, staccato, terrified that he might be cast down again for his sins.

Little kisses; he placed them all along Gabriel's hand. His emotions were surreal to him; six thousand years of desperation and denial had left him somewhat disconnected. Detached. Watching himself love through his own eyes.

Gabriel brought his mind hurtling back to where it belonged. Everything seemed brighter, sharper, and he groaned with it.

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His fingers traced the line of Belial's jaw gently, bringing his forehead down to rest against the demon's.

Since Creation began.

Then it had been the angel that had loved him. He thought briefly of Michael and Raphael, of Uriel, of fellow archangels who had been lost in the Fall, but suddenly nothing seemed to reconcile the face before him with that of the angel he had known. It stung him to think that the angel Belial had ever looked at him with that intensity of emotion in his eyes, but what crushed the breath from his lungs was the thought that it had been there all along and he had just never seen...

"Belial." The angel's name fell from his lips, sounds once so harsh and discordant flowing like music without thought. It was on blind instinct that his lips sought the other's, desperate, seeking to smooth over his wrongs with a kiss that he should not have wanted so. But Belial's lips pressed fiercely against his, and he melted against the close heat of the demon's body, lost in his own chaotic rapture.

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A fear in Belial melted at the willingness of Gabriel's kiss. His hands quavered as he explored the angel's face lightly, reverently. With tense fingers he trailed his touch down the column of Gabriel's throat, down his torso, touching whatever skin he might reach.

His hands found Gabriel's hip and he realized that the ache he felt low in his torso was not entirely one born of love.

Pulling the angel with him, Belial sat back, tumbling Gabriel effortlessly down to straddle his lap. Both hands caressed all along the angel's back and sides with slow, comforting strokes. Their lips together made heat seem like a shallow, lifeless thing.

His angel. It was happiness, this feeling that he felt, that he could scarely put meaning to.

Slowly, letting Gabriel adjust to his touch, he brought his hand across the angel's groin, brushing, asking permission without words.

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Gabriel arched as Belial's gentle touch drifted low on his body, a hitch in his breath as memories of their last encounter ignited a pulsating fire in his veins. Belial was so close, and his heat so achingly inviting. The angel was drunk with his touch, the dizzying intoxication of the demon's need for him.

The demon's love for him.

He moaned, the small sound absorbed by Belial's lips over his, as the demon worked the clasp on his pants, working them delicately down his hips until his hands found bare skin. Gabriel broke the kiss with a shuddering cry, clasping Belial to him. His torso grazed Belial's as the demon brushed his lips lightly across Gabriel's cheek, purring soft reassurances in his ear.

"Belial," the angel gasped, "Belial..."

Belial shifted to cup Gabriel's erection, and he rolled his hips forward eagerly into the demon's hand, panting against Belial's ear. Wanting him, wanting this, even as much as he wanted the sweet temptation to stop.

With soft, even strokes, Belial seemed to draw forth his deepest desire.

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Shuddering with pleasure by proxy, Belial gasped, rigid and constrained by his own clothes. His own body hardly mattered against the shadowed muscles of Gabriel's abdomen and thighs. The way the light played over the angel's body was entrancing.

He lifted Gabriel up with awe at the beauty before him, setting him on the edge of the chair.

Gabriel's hard cock was at the perfect height, and he pressed his lips against it, laving at the heated flesh with the broad of his tongue. His fingers searched wetly between the angel's thighs, sending searing shocks of pleasure through his own body with each new small countour of the Gabriel's sensitive flesh that he discovered.

Belial cupped his hand against Gabriel's groin and, mouth sliding wetly about the angel's erection, sucked. His tongue slid masterfully along the underside of the cock in his mouth then twisted, swirling around the head with smooth, wrapping strokes.

Gabriel slid deeper into his mouth, enough that the head of the angel's cock burgeoned at the back of his throat, his jaw loose and working to pleasure the angel.

Deep in his chest, he moaned.

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Being engulfed fully in the soft, wet warmth of Belial's mouth sent shudders up Gabriel's spine, and he clutched desperately at the arms of the chair as a tense desire began to coil itself low in his abdomen. The demon's tongue traced teasing circles around his cock, making him cry out with the pleasure of it.

Timidly, cautiously, like one reaching wonderingly towards an open flame, he pressed a hand to Belial's face, enamored with the haunting sight of his length disappearing past eager lips. Stroked Belial's cheek, brushed a strand of dark hair from his forehead. All the while, Belial's eyes smoldered on his own, pupils expanded until only a faint ring of dark color was left around each. He looked drunk, Gabriel thought. Intoxicated with his own administrations to the angel's body.

And then Belial's low moan reverberated around him, and he shut his eyes tightly against the sight that threatened to finish him.

Gabriel wound his fingers in the hair at the nape of the demon's neck, shoving forward his hips, whimpering, "Please, Belial. Please..."

He shuddered as the demon seemed to take even more of him into his mouth, until the angel could feel the head of his cock rubbing against the back of Belial's throat along with the featherlight touch of Belial's fingers over his inner thigh. He tensed, the demon's name falling from his lips over and over again in a heated mantra. He begged, hating himself for it.

When he came, there were stars behind his eyes.

He threw his head back, his grip on Belial's hair wrenching, as he shuddered, arched, and felt himself spill into the eager suction of the other's mouth.

In the next breath, it had passed, and a wordless weakness overcame him. He slid from the edge of the seat, landing hard on the floor, where he sat, a trembling, gaping mass, something akin to fear in his eyes.

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Belial could feel the world crashing down about his ears, all his doubts and denials shivered to powder.

Tongue still coated with Gabriel's spill, he wrapped his arms tightly around the angel, cradling him carefully close.

"Be still, be still," he whispered soothingly against Gabriel's shoulder, sticky lips pressed to the angel's skin. Purring wordless, comforting sounds with heavy-lidded eyes. Could only imagine how strange and utterly terrifying it must be for Gabriel. His voice was raspy from the motion of Gabriel's cock in his throat, and his body stung with the guilty pleasure of it.

"I won't hurt you, I won't break you," he murmured, not sure of his own meaning. "I love you, I love you, I love you. There's nothing wrong with this." Angel flesh shook beneath his touch, limbs tangled in a mess of cloth and muscle. He ran his hands down Gabriel's back, over his shoulders, petting his hair and his chest and holding him so very close.

"Don't be frightened, please, don't," Belial said sweetly, sadness a staccato refrain in his tone.

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Belial's touch was suddenly cold, whispers across his skin, and the words he spoke nothing more than the insensible utterance of shadows. His hands lay limp at his sides; he could no longer bear the firm feel of Belial's flesh under his fingers.

His head bowed, came to rest on Belial's shoulder. Seeking forgiveness from the demon even while desperately avoiding his eyes. Frenzied thoughts had come to a stuttering standstill when Belial had finished him, and now the backlash left him breathless.

It was with a vague sense of horror that Gabriel realized just why Belial's kiss was so sticky against his skin.

His grip on the demon's shoulders, he pushed Belial away, meeting the other's dark eyes despite the fear that he knew showed through his own. "I can't," he murmured, and the words seemed as shaken and odd to him as if he were drowning as he spoke them. "I can't."

He trembled with all he had done.

His heart beating a frantic admonition against his rib cage, Gabriel rose, made some attempt to straighten his clothing, and left without daring meet Belial's gaze again.

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Belial slumped to the floor, lying with his face obscured by his black hair. Eyes part closed, drained, he could do no more than rub weakly at the drying remnants of Gabriel's pleasure from the corner of his mouth.

The floor was hard and cold and unforgiving, cheek to polished wood, a chill seeping into his skin where it pressed against his body. His torso lie nigh flat, slats of paneling digging into his hip painfully.

His body crawled with the ghost of ecstasy, overshadowed achingly by a haze of despondent sorrow.

He pushed himself to his hands and knees and, for the first time, held himself in confession to his own conscience. Hair drooping about his face in a silken cowl of a condemned supplicant, he gave a sob of release, of relief, of agony. Gabriel wanted him.

John Constantine would be getting a part of his soul back.