Chapter Text
Gabriel faced Beelzebub across an expanse of white linen tablecloth, frowning at the small confection ze held in zir hand.
“Come on, angel. You never did get around to trying the food last time. We had a deal.”
Gabriel had half-hoped that with everything else that had happened, ze’d have forgotten that small detail. But he should have known better. Beelzebub never forgot anything.
He’d burned a few miracles to restore Claridge’s. It turned out they’d only been gone for about a day. The staff had managed to clean up the broken glass, but the bar still looked like… well, it looked like 30 feet of archangel wing had smashed straight through it. Beelzebub watched, smirking, while Gabriel snapped his fingers to repair the broken mirror and shelving and replaced all of the smashed bottles. The electrical system of the building had burned out completely. Gabriel didn’t know a blessed thing about wiring, and so the electric at Claridge’s now functioned without any actual wires to run through, which should be a exciting discovery for the building inspector on his next visit.
The humans needed no miracles at all; Claridge’s training prevailed. The staff was well-practiced at not noticing all manner of things. An angel manifesting wings, blowing out the building’s electricity, destroying the bar, and then vanishing into the aether was a bit outside the usual boundaries, but nothing they couldn’t handle. And the bar seemed to have, er, repaired itself, so that was all… fine.
And now Gabriel was supposed to eat. “What’s this called, again?” he said, wrinkling his nose.
“Macaron. Put it in your mouth or I’ll shove it there for you.”
Gabriel leveled a look at zir, then sighed theatrically and opened his mouth. With a smirk, Beelzebub pushed the macaron into it.
“Huh,” he mumbled from around the mouthful of pastry. He chewed, swallowed, looked thoughtful. It was… okay. “That was less disgusting than I thought it’d be.”
Beelzebub grinned. “Have another.”
“You’re tempting me, demon.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a piss-poor thwarter, angel.”
*~*~*~*~*
They were well into their second postprandial bottle of merlot when Gabriel cleared his throat and set his glass down on the table. Beelzebub, sprawled in zir chair across from him, lifted an eyebrow.
“I, uh,” he said. “Asked for a transfer. To Earth. Since, you know, our previous operative is out of commission.”
“Did you,” Beelzebub said, giving zir glass a lazy swirl.
“Seemed like a smart move.”
Ze smirked. “A first for you, then.” Before he could react, ze went on. “Funny that, though. Home Office is transferring me to Earth as well.”
Gabriel’s heart skipped. He’d not allowed himself to hope. “Guess I’ll have to work on my thwarting, then.”
“Guess you will.” Ze grinned like daggers.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, working their way through the rest of the wine. After a time, Beelzebub shot him a glance over the lip of zir glass. “Zzo, did you ever figure it out?”
“Figure what out, Beez?”
“I told you not to call me that. Figure out what you are, you nitwit.”
He met zir eyes across the table and remembered with perfect clarity the moment he'd seen zir across the clearing dust of the airfield.
I’m your bloody angel, he thought. Until the end of all days.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m the archangel fucking Gabriel.” And he grinned.
Beelzebub’s laugh rang through every dimension, and Gabriel was exactly where he wanted to be.