Chapter Text
Your hand slapped down hard onto the cold glass of the over sized mirror in your parent's front hall.
The Sigils painted on its surface seemed to glow for a split second, but you couldn't be sure. You were 4 beers and at least as many shots into your normal Friday night depression drinking binge, which was enough to affect even your battle hardened liver. The deep cut on your arm, where the blood from the Sigils had come from, had dulled to a background hum of pain.
For a few heartbeats, nothing happened. You sighed, not surprised, but irritated that you wouldn't be able to return the copy of "Supernatural Summoning for Dummies" now that you'd gotten blood all over the pages. But as you leaned back, pulling your hand away from the mirror, you realized you were holding onto something. Something heavy. The rough cloth of a jacket flexed under your fingers, and without pausing to think too closely about your horrible life choices, you braced a foot against the wall and hauled whatever you were holding back and out of the mirror.
A choice you rapidly came to regret after smacking into the hardwood floor of the entry hall, the weight of another person crushing the air from your lungs. You groaned out a sound not unlike a dying whale, blinking rapidly to keep from tearing up at the pain lancing down your ribs and spine. Whomever was on top of you let out their own pained grunt, lifting themselves enough for you to get your hands between your bodies, pushing them all the way off.
"Wow, wild ride! Let's not do that again, EVER, 'kay?" Breath from an impossible voice ghosted over the shell of your ear and you froze, arms up and still extended, like a dog begging for belly rubs. You were just gathering up the courage to turn your head towards that impossible voice, when motion from the mirror caught your eye and you shrieked. Instead of the opposite wall of the entry hall, the mirror showed a man, closely resembling Michael's vessel from Apocalypse World, standing in some sparse woods on the other side. He was holding an archangel blade, and was obviously uber-pissed. His hand shot through the mirror, gripping the wood frame tightly as he seemed to fight for the leverage needed to pull himself through what was evidently still a functioning portal.
Scrabbling against the smooth floor, you pushed upright, ignoring the flares of pain your body was sending you in favor of attempting to get to your feet and run like a scared rabbit. Thankfully, your new guest was adept at thinking quickly, and between one blink and the next, he was there, holding that wooden alpaca statue your mom had picked up last year on your parent's 40th anniversary trip. That stupid thing had to weigh at least 50 pounds, but he swung it like it was as light as an aluminum baseball bat, hitting the glass so hard your hands automatically flew up to protect your face, sure thousands of tiny shards would soon be flying through the air.
From behind the protection of your arms, a bright flash of light stung your eyes, along with a dull "crunch" and a smell of ozone. After a moment, you risked peeking and felt your stomach do a queasy flip-flop. The mirror had shattered all right, but a fading red light seemed to be holding the pieces in place. It was rapidly dimming, and as it did so, the shards started to break free, but instead of dropping they seemed to dissolve into a fine gray powder that floated in the air. What did drop to the floor was the hand and half an arm from Michael's vessel, hitting with a sickening thud that made you wince. Your eyes jerked up and away, brain determining that was a situation to deal with when sober and not before.
You winced again as noticed the alpaca statue was now broken, head and neck separated from the body and nowhere to be seen.
"Awww, man. My mom loved that dumb thing. She's gonna be so pissed." Yeah, you could feel your body struggling to sober up as quickly as possible, but if that was the first thing out of your mouth, then evidently you still had quite a ways to go.
The Archangel Gabriel gave you a flat, unimpressed stare as he dropped the statue to the floor, arms crossing in front of his chest. "That's what you're focusing on here? Not the incredibly, stupidly dangerous blood magic you pulled off that could have unleashed a power-mad Archangel on your world?!"
Shrugging, you let your hands flop open in a dismissive motion, "Eh, I got the Archangel I was aiming for, so all's well that ends well." Then you blinked, replayed what you just said in your head and sighed. "By all that's Unholy, I am not drunk enough to deal with this." Leaving Gabriel and the mess in the hall, you shuffled into the kitchen, opening the freezer for a bag of peas before diving into the fridge for another beer. As you were withdrawing with your prize, an arm reached past you and snagged the last of the six-pack. You wanted to gripe about that, but figured that a beer was the least you owed the angel for ripping him out of his own...err, well, one of his own dimensions without asking first.
Peering blearily down at the kitchen island, you searched for the church key hidden among the empties and their caps, while holding the peas to your aching head and idly wondering if it would be worth raiding your parent's bathroom to find some IcyHot patches for your back.
Deceptively gentle fingers wrapped around yours, tugging the cold bottle from your hands. Gabriel's other hand reached up, and you simply weren't quick enough to move away before his fingertips touched your forehead, and your eyes closed and you let out a whimper as a feeling of warmth and peace suffused your body. It lasted barely a moment, but when your eyes opened you were completely pain free...and completely sober.
"Aw man, why?" You whined, not at all ashamed at how squeaky your voice got when you were offended.
"Sorry," Gabriel said, sounding not at all sorry. "But it's called Healing for a reason. Booze is a poison, gets flushed out along with all the other chemicals and hormones making you feel like shit." He flicks the caps off both beers without any effort and hands yours back.
"But in any case, seems pretty obvious we need to talk. Best if you're at least mostly sober for that. After that though..." He gestured to the open and mostly empty bottle of vodka, and the as yet unopened bottle of Southern Comfort waiting next to the empty beer bottles. "You want to get wasted again, I won't stop you."
You take the bottle back, narrowly avoid brushing his hand with yours as you turn and lead the way through the kitchen and out the other side, where a smaller doorway leads into the family room, which has 3 large, overstuffed couches. Currently they're staggered, like a mini theater, all facing the front of the room where the projector screen is down and the purple Roku logo is gently wafting across it. You flop into the closest couch corner and motion for Gabriel to make himself comfortable. Not needing any further encouragement, he sits at the other end, feet up on the cushions. You can hear your Mom's voice yelling in the back of your head "NO SHOES ON THE COUCH!", but you'll be damned before you attempt to tell an Archangel of the Lord where he can or can't put his shoes.
Now that the comforting veil of false courage has been lifted from your shoulders, things are starting to take on a surreal quality that is weighing on your brain. The book was just a dumb fan book, fake and harmless. At least it should have been. Even mostly wasted and drawing on a mirror in your own blood you knew what you were doing wasn't going to work. But yet, it did and here you are. Staring at the freaking Archangel Gabriel, who is taking a long pull of his drink, eyes fixed on the bright yellow cover of the Dummies book on your coffee table.
You downed a couple long swallows of your own as he picked it up, flipping through the pages until he came to the chapter that was pretty obviously the one you had used, judging from the amount of still damp blood splatter gracing the pages. You saw when he reached the page with the diagram. His whiskey gold eyes flicked over the directions, and he glanced up at you, question obvious.
"Yep, I suppose most people don't have access to mirrors large enough to hold the all the Sigils, let alone one encased in a frame of White Ash wood." You shrugged. "I wasn't 100% positive it was White Ash, but that's what Dad said it was when they brought it back from one of their crazy trips."
He huffed a laugh, turning the book around so you could see the page. Not that you needed to, you're pretty sure you'd stared at it so long it would be burned into your brain forever. "Not just that, but this configuration isn't right. Mostly right, but if you followed it exactly, that never would have worked."
"Huh," Was the most intelligent response you could come up with to that statement.
"In your drunken state, you must have messed up the Sigils, but in exactly the right way to make a viable spell. Million to one odds there, cupcake."
"Yay!" You fake whispered, fingers fanning out into Jazz Hands. Pretty sure he didn't miss the sarcasm.
"So, what was the thought process that got you this far? Not that I'm not grateful to be, you know, not dead. But how'd you even know enough to find me?"
Silently, you reached behind yourself and grabbed the remote control from where you'd left it on the arm of the couch, hitting the "OK" button by muscle memory. The screen saver cleared, returning to the point in the episode you had paused on. The episode you had been watching over and over again for the past few days since your parents left you alone house-sitting. To the moment when your favorite TV show had finally succeeded in ripping out your heart and crushing it to a pulp. On the screen, the actor who played Gabriel lay splayed out against the leaf strewn ground, playing dead, echoes of once great wings scorched into the ground beneath him.
You hadn't moved your head, eyes locked onto the actual angel, waiting to see his reaction. He stared at the screen for a long moment, taking in every detail, the similarities and differences between the fantasy and his reality. Then he swore, viciously and creatively before downing the rest of his beer in one go. Standing up he reached down, hauled you to your feet and headed back into the kitchen.
"I hope you have more booze in this house, because we are going to need all of it." He voice breaking at the end.
"No issues there. If we make it through my stash, there's always Dad's liquor cabinet. I learned how to pick the lock years ago."