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Gabriel felt the stones of Beelzebub’s back patio under his fine shoes. The sun was not so low in the sky, here. He could hear the music from the house party down the street. It had changed to something loud, angry, and screechy.
That must be Pollution’s doing.
The little courtyard that he has landed in, however, was lovely. He hadn’t seen this part of Beelzebub’s home. A beautiful fountain, floral in theme, burbled in the rose-gold light of the late afternoon. An orange cat basked there, and others clustered around a fluff of cat grass and catnip planted around a statue of the Sacred Virgin.
Beyond the fountain, he saw the apple trees, potted and small, but he knew them. He’d know them anywhere. They grew at Beelzebub’s shrine in Aomori. They probably grew in every place that the little prince loved.
He knew that his demon planted them, tended them, and kept them. They dearly loved the flowers and fruit of that tree.
Beelzebub landed not far away, just beside their beautiful fountain. They slipped their hands on the lip and lifted themselves up. The orange cat allowed for a couple of gentle scritches before he leapt to the ground. Gabriel noticed that one of his ears was docked.
They smiled at the retreating feline, as he lumbered up the fence, and then disappeared over. He was quite graceful for an animal of his size.
A lazy hand fell on their belly, and they gasped.
Gabriel hurried to them. Their eyes were wide and their mouth was a small, tight circle.
They closed their eyes as Gabriel knelt between their knees. As he laid his forearms on the warm concrete of the fountain on either side of their thighs.
“Beez, what’s wrong?” he asked.
“I lost him...” they said, and their voice was as thin and translucent as tissue paper. “Raphael...Israfil...It was the Hellfire...” They sobbed. Just once. “I didn’t ward myself against the Hellfire. I...my only thought was you. I assumed...but my flesh was not enough to protect him.” Their hands went to their face, and the tears leaked through their fingers. “I didn’t notice. I didn’t even notice...”
Gabriel burned with shame at how relieved he felt.
He did not think that a different upbringing would have changed Raphael overmuch. God made every angel and Archangel precisely what they were. Could a paltry few years with Gabriel and Beelzebub fix that? He didn’t think so. Beelzebub said that Raphael wouldn’t have remembered anything, but that’s theoretical, isn’t it? They said themselves that nobody had ever tried.
Gabriel was quite certain that all the time in the world and all the love of his demon would not make him ready to try to be Raphael’s father. He’d be too suspicious of him. He knew precious little about child rearing, but he assumed that waiting for a boy to turn violent, practically from the moment of his birth, would not result in a healthy adult.
Yet, his demon was grieving. Sweet Beelzebub might be the only creature who would truly grieve Raphael.
God must know, Gabriel had no love for Raphael.
Ah, but Raphael was a brother. He felt that he ought to feel some grief, but all that Gabriel felt was that horrible relief. There was a dark satisfaction in knowing that this creature was gone from his life, and away from Beelzebub.
Gabriel’s thumbs stroked the outside of Beelzebub’s thighs through their pants. Slow little circles. What could he say? He had nothing to say.
Their hands dropped from their face, and fell on his shoulders. For a moment, they smiled. That smile was as sweet as the first light of dawn. But there was sadness there as well. Pain welling like blood from a sharp slice.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Something painful and old,” they said. “I’ll tell you. If you really want to hear it.”
“I do.”
For a moment, they paused. Taking a few deep breaths, swiping the tears from their eyes, and collecting their thoughts.
And then, “There was an oak tree in Eden,” they blurted. “New as anything, I suppose, but it looked like the centurion oaks that they have here...”
Beelzebub gestured at the neighbor’s spreading oak tree.
“That oak tree...that’s where Raphael brought me...to teach me...” The tears came, and their voice was weary. So very weary. “Raphael...He never saw fit to dull the pain, and the lessons became predictable after a time. He’d start over if I squirmed or made any sound at all. So, I counted the leaves as he pulled me apart.”
“God...She must have known.”
“She set him to the task, Gabriel. I was Raphael’s, always his, to train or use or hurt or anything that he wanted. Until she gave me to Lucifer, I was Raphael’s.” More tears fell, from their eyes, over their cheeks, to drip on their lap. “So much of my blood watered that tree...and when I was weak from the loss of blood...Raphael liked me tractable.”
“Tractable?”
“Weak and helpless. Barely awake, sometimes. So, when I’d given my blood to the tree, I’d give my flesh to his appetites. He called it a lesson, and I thought it was. Now...I think the only thing it taught me was that God did not love me.”
They sighed.
“He raped me,” they spat the word. The word for what happened to them. “Raphael tortured me and he raped me, and I counted those leaves the whole time.”
Gabriel did not know what to say. Were there words to comfort someone after something like that? Apologies seemed inadequate. Everything else felt trite and inappropriate. Silence was the only possible response.
“Raphael demanded my gratitude for his lessons...losing consciousness from the pain meant that I wasn’t paying attention...meant I was ungrateful. Maybe I should be grateful.” They chuckled, and there was no humor in that sound. “I survived Sandalphon, didn’t I? He and Nuriel were worse. So much worse.”
Gabriel had wanted this. Their trust and their story. And he was happy to receive it, even though he had not anticipated that it would be this painful to hear. He ran his hands along the outside of their thighs. Smooth strokes, a motion to soothe their hurt, if he could.
“There were ninety six million, fifty nine thousand, six hundred and one leaves on that tree,” they said, and then laughed softly. “I counted them. Many, many times. It was always the same number, perfectly ninety-nine cubed.”
“Everything in the Garden was built to be perfect,” Gabriel offered, hoping it was the right thing to say.
“Almost everything...we’re flawed. So terribly flawed,” they replied. “I kept Raphael in my flesh to seal him away. Because I was too afraid of God to destroy him. I made a fool’s promise to raise him with love and kindness. But...all the love in the world and he would have been just the same, wouldn’t he?”
Gabriel swallowed hard, “I think so. I think...we’re all just...us, you know?” He reached around them, and hugged them tightly around the waist. “Raphael already had you, Beelzebub. All of your love and all of your compassion and EVERYTHING...he had YOU, and it didn’t change him. Raphael was still just what he was.”
He felt Beelzebub’s fingers running through his hair, pausing to scratch at the back of his neck.
“I had hope for him...” They paused. “I loved him, once. Raphael, as flawed as he was...he was my world.”
He never deserved you, Gabriel thought. Though this was neither the time nor the place to voice that sentiment. He wondered, briefly, how his life would have been different, had God given the little Archangel to him for mentoring.
He wouldn’t have surrendered them to a rigged coin toss, he knew that. He knew he would brave Hell for them. He would have Fallen, gladly, to be by their side.
“You did the best you could for him,” Gabriel said. He looked up at them. “Frankly, a lot better than he deserved.”
“Nobody deserves compassion,” they said, with a roll of their eyes. “That’s part of its magic. Compassion is a gift.”
“Alright, well, he never appreciated it.”
“No, he never appreciated it.”
Gabriel stood up, and sat on the lip of the fountain, to the right of Beelzebub, and very close. His left arm went around their waist, and he pulled them to him.
“Would you be mad at me if I said I was relieved?” he asked.
“I’d be grateful for your honesty,” they said.
“I’m relieved.”
Beelzebub curled into him and sobbed. The first sob was two words, two blessed words that made him very happy to hear.
“Me, too.”
He held them, and stroked their hair as they wept. As they grabbed his jacket in their fists and loosed their wracking sobs into the fabric. He hummed as they wept. A hymn that had been composed in the great temple to Ba’al ze Bul, and had later rung out from the throats of a choir of castrati beneath the painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The old song was simple and lovely, and soothing in its familiarity. He knew the original words, and so he sang. The new lyrics made it a hymn to the Virgin Mother. But the old words spoke of the gentle rains of summer, and the kindly God of plenty that the Babylonians worshipped.
The kindly God that Gabriel placed his faith in now.
The last words fell from his lips, and their tears had stopped. Gabriel smiled down at his Prince. He handed them the damask handkerchief that he kept folded in a neat pocket square. The one that they’d hidden inside of in Heaven.
They wiped their face, used a miracle to clean the handkerchief, folded it and tucked it back into his breast pocket. The music from the house party changed tracks, and in the moment of silence, Gabriel heard the water falling down the fountain. Heard the birds chirping from the shrubs and trees around Beelzebub’s patio.
Beelzebub leaned against him, and he shifted them into his lap. They allowed him to do it, curling into him as he wrapped his arms around them.
Gabriel looked up. The sky looked as it had. The ruddy light fading into the twilight, and a few clouds scudding overhead.
There was no indication of the war above. None that Gabriel could see.
“When will we know, do you think? About how things are going for Dagon?” he asked Beelzebub.
“When she texts me,” Beelzebub replied.
“What’s next, Beez? After?”
“After?” they asked. “I’d like to see my son...my Azziraphale. I owe him an explanation. Crowley, azz well. I suppose.”
Gabriel nodded.
The dark was coming, and coming quickly.
“It’s going to get cold,” he said.
“Not so bad, this far south,” Beelzebub said. “But...”
They reached up and wrapped his tie around their hand and pulled him down. Their face rose up, and they caught his mouth with their own. He wanted this. He wanted them, in his arms, as close as skin and flesh allowed. He wanted their tongue slipping between his lips and finding his in the warm dark that was theirs. One arm supporting their back, and the other holding their neck. He wanted the heat of their little body pressed against him.
The kiss broke, and the dying light of day caressed their beautiful face. They smiled at him, fist still clenched around his necktie, and eyes wet with tears in spite of their smile.
“Please, Gabriel, find it in your heart to forgive me...” they said.
Gabriel was confused as their hand, the one not entangled in his necktie, reached up and found the flesh of his cheek.
He felt the miracle, like a flower unfolding in his mind, petals exploding from a bud and reaching deep into the meat of his brain.
Gabriel sighed with the pleasure of it.
And then...
A night as cold and clear as ice, his breath freezing in the air. Beelzebub dazzling in the pale light of the moon, their kimono black in the night. Their face, painted and lovely. Their laughter, and the wet burble of a fountain of carved stone.
He remembered his ploy, and how it worked. Gripping their wrist and pulling, the clack of their wooden sandals against the paving stones of the pavilion, and the way that they had fallen into him. He remembered the feel of them in his arms. Light as a bird, fragile against his chest, his arm around their waist. He remembered their scent, the scent of green springtime. And the smell of the cherry blossoms that swirled around them.
He remembered the hunger that he felt in that moment, how much he wanted. How desperately he had desired. A thing that he had finally given a name to. His love. Gabriel remembered how much he loved them.
He remembered the sweet words, and the feel of their hand on his face. His lips on their palm, that sweet flesh, warm in spite of the chill of night. And he asked them to stay with him.
They’d said yes.
That first kiss, a meeting of lips and breath and something deeper. He remembered it.
He remembered lifting them up, over his shoulder, and fetching the parasol that he’d forgotten by the fountain.
And Gabriel remembered unlocking the door and carrying his prince inside. To the bed, where he’d set them down carefully as a paper crane. He remembered kneeling in front of them and sliding their sandals from their feet. Gabriel remembered not knowing what the next step was, and how smoothly they’d risen from the bed. He remembered their small hands, as they began to pull his clothes from him.
How their lips had found his, how they tasted. The miracle that they used to remove their makeup and take their hair down.
He remembered their beauty, the sweet face that he’d known for six thousand years and loved nearly as long.
He remembered them shoving him down on the bed. They laughed as they did it. And how they turned away from him to drop their silks to the floor.
And then they were on him.
“Please,” they’d breathed into his ear. “Please, Gabriel, find it in your heart to forgive me...”
That was nearly a year ago, and until Beelzebub gave him back his memory, he’d believed that he’d drunk an inadvisable amount of sake and passed out, alone, in his room of the Goddess Suite.
“Why?” he asked.
“I wasn’t ready,” they replied. “Aziraphale and Crowley were staying at the same place that we were. And...I thought if you saw them, you’d want a fight.”
“So...you seduced me?”
“A few kisses does not a seduction make,” Beelzebub replied.
Gabriel scoffed. “You distracted me, then?”
“Yes.”
“And you took my memory?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’d have wanted more, wouldn’t you?” they asked.
“Yes. I would have.”
“I would not have. Not yet.”
“I loved you!” he said. “I loved you. I would have left the traitors alone! I would have.”
“I know that now,” they said, and their tone was fragile, wounded. “But...I didn’t know how I felt about you. I didn’t know if God would use you to punish me, as She has used everything I have ever cared for.” They looked down, untangling their hand from Gabriel’s necktie. “I loved you then. But...I had to get to the point where what we might build together would be worth what price She might exact from me. I needed to know that...if all She left me with were memories, those memories would be worth the pain.”
“Beez, they’re destroying Heaven! We’re safe!”
“And She might bring it all back tomorrow!”
They reached up and looped their thin arms around his neck. Their embrace was tight, crushing. A reminder that the little prince was a great deal stronger than they seemed.
“I had to know that you were worth the pain, and you are,” they whispered. “But it never came down to that. It came down to need. I need you.”
“I need you, too.”
“Can you forgive me?”
“For keeping me out of a fight with a former Starhanger who can stop time and breathe Hellfire, I guess,” he said, and he grinned at them.
They kissed him, and he smiled inside the kiss. They loved him. God had not broken them.
And he loved them, as he loved the sunrise and thunderstorms and the stars in the sky. He loved them as he loved cherry blossoms and spun sugar and as he had once loved God.
The kiss deepened. He needed this. This closeness healed the wounds of this horrible day. This dreadful, monstrous day. The soft sounds that they made as they kissed him were like a prayer, need given the form of words. He felt his blood creeping to his cheeks, and lower. Need given the form of flesh.
Maybe they needed the same thing that he did? That closeness. The comfort that the body of a lover could provide.
They broke the kiss, staring at him with their particular mix of curiosity and sweet anticipation. Just as he was about to ask them if they wanted to go back inside, they spoke.
“Take me to bed,” they said.
They did not have to ask him twice.