kore_logs | consumed by either fire or fire

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consumed by either fire or fire

Who: Balthazar, everyone and anyone! (Balthazar's vessel may also make appearances!)
Where: Memories, mindscapes, and dreams.
When: Days 83-88
What: An orgy, the Titanic, Heavenly angst, and Art. The city is also an option, I just didn't write a blurb for it.
Warnings: Sex, angst, potential violence, possible deaths depending on scenario.

The room is a mess. Blankets and cushions are strewn about the floor, a lamp has been knocked over, and someone has spilled liquor across of the piled clothing in the corner. The scent is overwhelming in the humid heat: sex, incense, sweat, alcohol.
It’s hard to tell how many bodies are entwined together here. A dozen? More? There are four on the bed, one person clinging so hard to the headboard that it creaks with every movement. Three more are clustered around a chair, the occupant’s whines and moans muffled by the close press of nude bodies. In a corner, a young woman is giggling as another girl licks drops of wine out of her cleavage.
Somewhere amidst the knots of slick bodies, there is an angel. He may be hard to track at first, but his voice winds its way through the gathering, burning through the noises of panting and the smack of skin against skin, a litany of soft endearments and reverent curses. There, good, yes, don’t stop, don’t stop…

The sky is black overhead, dotted with frosty stars, and the water rolling beneath the hull of the ship is the color of gray pearls. Titanic is far from shore, and her passengers are cheerfully oblivious to the danger drawing near. Balthazar rode this ship once before, as a faux-first-mate. This time, he’s a stowaway, a dark figure leaning against the railing near the bow. Only an observer to a history irrevocably written down.
“Pretty night,” a man pauses to greet him, on a stroll around the deck. “Cold as hell, but pretty.”
“It is, isn’t it?” The angel agrees, looking up at the sky. “I daresay it’ll get colder before the morning comes, though. We’ll see if you still think it’s pretty then, shall we?”
The stranger laughs. “Or I could just go inside.”
“No. Enjoy the beauty while it lasts.” Balthazar gives a small, deadened smile. There’s ice close ahead. The tragedy will begin and end in only a few short hours.

Balthazar’s not sure why his mind works so selectively. He can remember vivid flashes from his first days in existence. Comets sailing past the earth, the bubble of the primordial sea, and laughter, from an archangel, that seemed too big and bright for the skies that echoed its refrain.
After Lucifer’s Fall, the memories get dim and tangled. Heaven went darker, quieter, but how quickly did it happen? How soon after the clash did Gabriel go, too? He can’t be sure, and it’s unsettling for a being that isn’t supposed to suffer from age.
Still, the young angel has his own recollection of the moments after Gabriel was gone, when it felt like Heaven itself had a gaping wound.
He’s in a garden drenched with dew, like a morning in late spring. There are no flowers, only bare lily stamens left after petals fall away. It’s quiet, and gray, and Balthazar can feel his Grace aching, trembling on the edge of collapse. Can’t you bring him back, Father? Can’t you bring them both back?
There’s no answer, but he’s not sure he expected one. God doesn’t talk to the youngest angels. Perhaps they’re too frail to hear the Divine Voice directly. Thy will be done, he adds as an afterthought, but he doesn’t mean it, and he knows it.
Still, if God isn’t hearing his prayer anyway, there’s no harm in lying. A thousand angelic eyes blink rapidly, as if to clear themselves of tears they weren’t even designed to shed.

Dead. Castiel: dead. Uriel: dead, along with the siblings he murdered. Anna: locked away, untouchable, maybe soon to die, too.
Cas. Dead.
The walls of the Heavenly armory are thick, and Balthazar is the only one inside it now. The snap and ripple of energy from a thousand enchanted weapons dances over the walls, casting shadows of his own wings that seem to shiver in constant motion. His Grace is clenched into a dense, dark knot in the center of his being, a core of emotion drawing tighter, tighter, until everything outside it feels numb. Floating.
One by one, he closes all of his eyes, and time twists away from him. He’s not sure how long he blacks out, but when he’s sensible again, the wards are smashed, the weapons strewn all over, and both vessel and trueform ache, blue with bruises.
Balthazar looks blankly at the mess for a long moment, then moves to pick things up, piece by piece. It’s not until his arms are full that he realizes he has no intention of putting them back in their proper places.

Everything is light and fire and eyes. The human within the angel feels the pressure of power and age, burned to cinders and crushed into diamonds by the being within him (or is he within the angel now?). He’s died a hundred thousand rapturous deaths, cried in pain until his voice is transmuted into something ethereal and sharp as an ofan’s wing. But he’s still there, here, everywhere the angel is, and he remembers, and dreams.
Ink slices across a page. A fine gray haze of graphite dust hangs in the air. Paint drips and rolls down the shaft of a brush, stains his hands and sleeves, rich and sensual. If he could erase his mistakes and paint himself over, he would use shades of blue and gold; he would rip himself off the canvas and re-stretch to his limits and beyond.
He curls and uncurls his fingers, and suddenly his hands are wings, fine-boned and light, brittle and soft at the edges and heavy all the way down his arms.
“I promise, you’ll have Heaven,” the angel told him. “Someday.”
“Fuck it,” he answered. “I don’t need Heaven.”
Levi has what he needs: a half-wild brainfever, an infinite blend of Paradise and Perdition where the Muse is the only God that matters. Being a vessel hasn’t taken that away. Nothing ever will.

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That hurts. It hurts a lot. There's an audible snap as Balthazar dwindles into his vessel once more, this time holding onto the shape, hiding within it like he hopes to use it as a mask. "Of course," his voice, stripped of the angelic resonance, is almost a monotone. "No point in running away from the Host and then letting us follow you, I suppose."

Rising, he moves away from the touch of Gabriel's wing in a way that's meant to be tactful, but his vessel's posture screams anger and insecurity. "I wish there had been something to stay for. For you, for Anna, for Cassi..."

There's a moment's pause, and he adds almost inaudibly, "I wish I were worth staying for. By the time I thought to follow, there was no one left to catch up to."

He sighs, a little huffy. It's himself he's frustrated with, not Balthazar, but being the tactful kind of person that he is it doesn't occur to him to articulate that. He wants to follow Balthazar's movement, to try to provide some kind of comfort, but comfort hasn't been his thing in a while. He's scared he'll just mess up and make things worse - that, if anything, is his thing these days. He withdraws as well instead. He should've known better than to expect to waltz back into his siblings' lives and be welcomed with open arms. They've already forgiven him for more than he deserves, and he's gotten careless with boundaries.

"You know that's not how I meant it. I didn't want to hurt anyone, I didn't think anyone would--" 'care', he'd been going to say, but that makes it sound an awful lot more self-pitying than he wants it to. "I guess I just didn't think. I'm sorry, for what little it's worth."

Not that it changes anything, and frankly it doesn't make it much better. Honestly, he hadn't considered the effect on anyone else. He'd just known that he needed to go, and when he'd seen the opportunity he'd taken it. There hadn't been a great deal of consideration of the consequences, and there should have been.

"We all would have stayed if we could. It wasn't that we didn't care. I love this family more than anything, all of you, I do, but I couldn't stay. I just wish there could've been another way. For all of us. Seems like in the end we all got screwed over."

He accepts, though, that that is in some part his fault. There was so much he could've done differently that would've saved lives, or spared feelings at the very least. He's not trying to shirk responsibility for it, least of all for how Balthazar feels: he understands, and he knows that had he been unselfish enough to just stay, things might have worked out differently. Perhaps everything would have been better - perhaps Raphael would be less broken and Heaven less cold and, here and now, Balthazar less hurt. He can't regret it though, not truly, and he can't (won't try to) deny that he's selfish. He can despise himself for it, and sometimes he does - more and more often here, now that he's faced with his siblings every day and the individual packages of guilt they all come with - but he can't say that, if he were given the chance to go back and change it all, he would have stayed. He'd still leave, even knowing the pain it'd cause, just to save himself the misery they'd all stayed and dealt with. But hey, not everyone can be a good person. He's come to terms with that.

"And you deserved a lot better than you got. If I could change it for you I would, but..." he shrugs helplessly. "Even my powers only go so far, kiddo. I'm sorry."

"No! I don't know that's not how you meant it at all!" He turns abruptly, arms flung out in a helpless, very human gesture. "How am I supposed to know what you meant? It's not like you could leave a note on the refrigerator. And let's be real, Gabriel; you're not exactly an open book, even now."

"And anyway, what am I supposed to think, when time after time my closest brothers and sisters demonstrate I'm their lowest priority? You and Anna walk away, Castiel jumps ship and-and ends up throwing me away like rubbish--I just..." The rant trails off, energy oozing away slowly.

"I can't make sense of any of it. I suppose I'm being selfish. I want to understand. Maybe I'd rather it be about me not being worth enough than about something I can't even comprehend, let alone control." Slowly, he drops back into a sitting position once more, as if saying all this aloud has sapped his strength.

There isn't a lot he can say, really. He has various explanations and excuses, but he can't decide which he finds least unbelievable, and that is a great big neon sign he shouldn't be using any of them.

"Castiel's a moron." Which, as comfort goes, is worth fuck all. "What do you want me to say? I can't speak for Anna, but when I left, it wasn't about anyone except me."

Not that he hadn't cared about anyone except himself. For the most part, it had been because he'd cared too much, but that's not what this is about. The truth of the matter is that Gabriel thinks Balthazar might not be too far wrong - he'd never been anyone's lowest priority, Gabriel doesn't doubt that, but he clearly hadn't been top of the list either, and that was never a pleasant feeling. He could relate, in a way - their Father leaving had been a betrayal to all of them, as had been Lucifer turning against them, but he thinks they might be comparable. He hadn't been either of their priorities, nor had he expected to be, and he certainly hadn't been the only one (or even the worst) affected. Still, it had hurt that he clearly hadn't meant anywhere near as much to them as they had to him; they must have known (they couldn't have not known) how much it would hurt him when they left but it hadn't stopped them. He wouldn't put his leaving on the same level as God or Lucifer, of course, but he can imagine how Balthazar must feel all too well. It hurts to know that he's responsible for that, even if he couldn't have done otherwise.

"Sometimes there's things that mean so much to someone that nothing can change their mind. Michael, Raphael, Lucifer - they mean the world to me. Always have, always will, and I'd do damn near anything for them - die, kill, anything, but not one of them could've got me to stay." He's not sure that that's helpful, exactly, but he hopes Balthazar understands what he means by it. Sort of, at least. "I guess it was the same when Anna and Cas left - hells, you left too, didn't you? Or-- you will."

He pauses for a split-second and frowns, trying to figure out the timelines. What on earth are they both doing here? They can't be here if this is after they'd left - Gabriel can't be here at all if he knows about Balthazar's death because that had been after he'd died-- his mind stops him, and the dream logic reinstates itself. He forgets that he'd wondered about it, and returns to his previous train of thought with a vague and inexplicable feeling of dissatisfaction.

"It wasn't about hurting anyone. Sometimes, though, there's no decision you can make without hurting someone, however little you want or mean to. I know I'm not the most trustworthy of people, believe me, I know, but you have to believe that none of us meant to hurt you when we left, especially not Castiel. And when he-- well, when he did what he did to you, I don't know why he did it, I don't know what was going through his mind, but I know he feels like hell over it. He'd give anything to take it back. You know that, right? That the last thing he'd normally wanna do is hurt you?"

He's not entirely sure that Balthazar does know that. In fairness, given that Castiel had killed him (and that really is the extent of Gabriel's knowledge on the subject) it's reasonable that Balthazar has his doubts. As for himself and Anna, well, they do love him, of course they do, but they'd never been as close to Balthazar as Castiel had, and given their family's way of expressing itself, maybe it doesn't just go without saying. It's for that reason that he approaches, more cautiously than he usually would, and sits down beside his brother. He leaves a good foot of space, though, and doesn't try to make eye contact at all.

"It doesn't matter that we didn't mean to, though, because we did. I don't regret leaving, but I do regret that. I'm sorry. I really am." It's one of the few things Gabriel always means when he says it, even if people tend not to believe him when he does. "Not that sorry makes any difference. You've got every right to be furious - if you want me to go I will."

He's not sure where. He has the vague feeling that he has no choice in being here - if he did he would be anywhere other than Heaven. Still, it doesn't make sense for him not to be able to leave, so it must be possible.

"Don't go!" He blurts the plea out loud before he can analyze the rest of Gabriel's explanation. "Please. Don't leave."

That's the bottom line, really. He may feel hurt, unwanted, even betrayed, but he would always rather have his brothers with him. He's very still, watching Gabriel in his peripheral vision, but tense, like he's trying to decide whether he's allowed to reach out. He's quiet for a long moment, then murmurs, "I love all of you. I left because I couldn't stand to watch us all die. I regretted it the moment I left, but I couldn't turn back."

"...Did you really feel that helpless?"

He nods, and stays where he is. He won't reach out himself, he forfeited that right a long time ago and he's wary right now of boundaries. Normally it wouldn't bother him but he doesn't want to cross any lines permanently, and he's concerned that if he was ever going to, it'd be a scenario like this that'd tip the scales. He tries to relax, instead: it has to be Balthazar's decision, but he wants to make it clear that he's comfortable with whatever he does choose.

"Yes, really. Leaving... I'm not gonna lie, it took a while to feel anything approaching right, but honestly? I couldn't have stayed. Everything was going - well, I guess it wasn't really going to shit, but it was only getting less like home. If I'd stayed I couldn't have changed that. All I coulda done was made it worse. Made me worse, too."

He'd been more or less as miserable when he'd left, at least at first - he'd felt treacherous and guilty and, more than anything else, terrified. Apart from the knowledge he'd probably be counted a traitor and killed or cast down if he were ever found, and the nagging little voice in his head that said he'd probably deserve it for deserting, he'd found himself alone for the first time in, well... quite literally forever. He hadn't been at all used to being alone, and it had taken a very long time and a lot of bad choices (sex and alcohol and fighting and a replacement family just as dysfunctional) to adjust to that but at least he was miserable because of his own choices. And even if nothing he did ever quite managed to fill the gaping hole left by everything he'd lost, the pagans and even the humans were great for taking his mind off it, unlike his brothers. It wasn't so much Heaven itself that had been the problem: even after everything had gone downhill it wasn't unpleasant there, but it was impossible to forget how much better it had been before and could never be again. On Earth at least everything wasn't a reminder, and it was much better to try to start over than to descend into total bitterness and resentment.

"Maybe I should've tried. I don't know what would've happened. Perhaps I could've made a difference, but..." He shrugs. He's not Castiel and he doesn't have the Winchester fortitude. He's certain he couldn't have stayed himself, not through staying in a home that didn't feel like home and pretending that it did, not through pretending to be loyal and obedient and doubt-free, and definitely not through being forced to turn against - let alone pretend not to love, let alone outright hurt - his siblings, even if it was for the greater good. He'd have broken completely sooner or later. As it is, he's ended up bitter, spiteful, vindictive and more or less hopeless, but he still feels and cares and loves intensely. Had he stayed, he'd have had to close himself off to survive at all, and he can't stand the thought of being that cold. "I doubt it."

"I suppose taking other angels with you would have just turned into another fight." Balthazar sighs, anger draining away. It hurts, still. It's always going to hurt. And he'd still give his right wing for an explanation that made sense. Some reason they all had to suffer like this.

Maybe there's no reason good enough.

"No. You're right. Whatever it was that broke, it broke before you left. I don't know, maybe it even broke before Lucifer...left." It's a careful concession to the fact that he's talking to an archangel. Bringing up Lucifer at all is risky. 'Left' is a lot less accusatory than 'Fell' or 'Turned' or 'Was Cast Down'.

He falls silent then, a long still moment while the gray sky ripples with unseen wind, and dew gleams on the bare flowers. At last, he looks up at Gabriel again, really looks, and moves close enough to touch, placing his hands on the archangel's shoulders. "I'm sorry. It's not really you I'm angry with."

"I considered it." Not when he eventually did leave, but when he'd just been entertaining the rebellious little fantasy of it. He hadn't wanted to be without his family, after all, and even if Michael and Raphael would never have agreed to come with him it had been tempting to take his garrison and leave. But it wouldn't have worked. Even if they'd all been happy to go with him, he couldn't have stayed hidden with that many other angels with him, and that would've gotten them into trouble as well as ruining any chance he had at freedom. Not to mention the potential infighting between them, and the inability to hide what they were from everyone else. Even with only a few other angels, it wouldn't have been feasible.

That's all he says on the topic of the past, though. He's done emoting, more or less, or at least he's done venting. A little healthy emoting, well, he might be able to make room for that. It's easier with Balthazar than with a lot of the others, and the minute Balthazar makes the first move, Gabriel doesn't hesitate to reciprocate. Hugs aren't exactly his thing, but he figures if he just sort of pulls Balthazar into the hug with one arm instead of outright clinging, it doesn't count as a chick flick moment.

Balthazar feels as though he's run out of words for the moment, but the embrace, tentative as it is, is more than welcome. He doesn't have the hangups about chick flick moments Gabriel does; he leans into the contact wholeheartedly, tucking his chin over Gabriel's shoulder.

There's a silence that drags out as the younger angel slowly winds down from the storm of emotion, but at last he murmurs, "This isn't actually real, is it? It's a dream or something. Are we going to be all awkward about this when we wake up? I'd rather not be."

Gabriel's not entirely opposed to a little emotion here and there. Anything too sappy will just make him laugh, but his attitude to tolerable levels of emotion tends to depend on the other person. Being in this situation with Castiel is unthinkable, but since Balthazar is actually capable of expressing emotion without using sarcasm, it's a lot easier to just relax and not-quite-cling.

"Me? Awkward? Please. I've never even seen a sense of shame."

But - a dream, yes, that would make sense. He's not sure how he hadn't realised earlier, though now that he thinks about it, he suspects he had. Just never for longer than a few seconds at a time. He hates dreaming, especially when it's a dream with such potentially awkward consequences. He is going to be awkward about it, but at least now that Balthazar has said so he can pretend not to be.

"Oh? Good. In that case I can continue to be sappy." He straightens a little, backing off so that his side of the hug is one-armed, as well. But he's given a legit warning.

"You ought to know, I missed you as much as I did mostly because I always admired you." It's true. He'd grieved Lucifer's departure, and if Raphael or Michael had walked instead of Gabriel, he'd have grieved for them. But not the same way. He loves all his siblings, but some feel more important than others.

He makes a little grumbly noise into Balthazar's shoulder when he announces he's not going to stop being sappy, but doesn't really protest. Even if he's awkward about it himself, he doesn't object to it in other people, and it is helpful to know how his siblings feel. He'd rather know than be left to speculate.

"Guess you backed the wrong horse there, huh?" He's not convinced any admiration of him is merited, unless it's admiration of his sense of humour, style, stunning good looks, talent in bed... what was he saying again? Oh, yes. He was being modest. Well, it was nice while it lasted. In all seriousness though, he wouldn't call himself admirable at all. Impressive, perhaps, but hardly a role model, and he hasn't repaid Balthazar's admiration very well - all it seems to have done is hurt him. He knows how Balthazar feels though, for all that he wouldn't admit to it unprompted. When one has as many siblings as they do, no matter how much one loves each and every one of them, it's difficult not to play favourites to some extent. And with their family's tendency to be a little homogenous, those who are markedly 'different' are bound to feel closer to each other than to the rest. "Thank you, though. And congratulations on your excellent taste."

"I don't think that's necessarily true. Obviously there are some things you've done I wish you hadn't...but that's true of all of us. And you're here now."

Here, in Kore, making canned vegetables for a Leviathan and propositioning the entire network at once. It's all coming back to Balthazar now, which makes him feel more awkward about the previous confrontation, but also strangely satisfied. "I do have impeccable taste," he says wryly, looking away. "I don't really live up to the rest of you. My idiot mistakes don't have the dramatic flare of Castiel's, my pranks are a poor shadow of yours, and I'll never get humanity and free will the way Anna does."

He's not sure what to say about Raphael, although the feeling holds true there, as well. "But away from our own world, it does seem to work out in an awkward sort of way. Makes me wonder if the fault wasn't in us so much as our environment." But he doesn't really believe that, either.

"Yeah, shame on you, imagine never having nearly ended the world. You're not any of us. You don't need to copy us to be worth anything."

He doesn't know a great deal about Castiel's idiot mistakes, though, only that they were made and apparently involved Leviathans... and Balthazar's death. The latter isn't something he's inclined to dwell on. He's not even sure if Balthazar's been through it - he thinks not, but he can't really know, not for certain, and it's not the sort of thing one asks about.

"I think we were at a disadvantage." It's the first time he's said it, really. The first time he's been quite so honest with anyone who knows he really is about how he feels about their Father. "If He wanted us to think for ourselves instead of guessing and getting it wrong, He should've told us we were allowed to. If there's a fault, it's not in us, it's in Him."

After all, no matter how much he loves and understands and agrees with God, he can't forgive Him. Not entirely. And for all the flaws the angels have as individuals, he's certain there are none that are inherent to them as a whole - some that they almost all have in common, but those are their Father's fault, for the most part, not their own. It doesn't mean he thinks that they're faultless, far from it, but just like the humans, their flaws are their own, not those of the species.

That's about as much as Balthazar knows about Castiel's idiot mistakes, too. Samandriel likely has more information there, but hell if Balthazar wants to pester him after what he's been through. Besides, he suspects he wouldn't like the answers he might get. Still, one has to acknowledge when Castiel screws up, it's on a grand scale, like a Shakespearean tragedy to the nth power. He's like Lucifer that way. He wouldn't be happy to hear that comparison.

Balthazar nods in response to Gabriel's observation. "Like a girlfriend in a romantic comedy who gets mad and won't tell the boyfriend what he did wrong. Because the apology won't mean anything unless he figures it out for himself."

He pauses for a beat, then says, "That was a bizarre analogy, but you know what I mean." Sighing, he tilts his head to rest it on the archangel's shoulder.

"Best kind of analogy there is, kid."

The fewer people who completely understand a metaphor, the better - right? ...well, perhaps not, but it has been a while since he was The Messenger, cut him some slack. Personally he's of the opinion that that particular analogy was nowhere near harsh enough on God, but then, he's well aware that he's not being objective.

"But yeah. I know what you mean."

He'll pass up the opportunity to bitch about their dad, just this once. He's done enough ranting for one dream, he thinks. His appearance shifts a little so that he's almost entirely in his human form, the one exception being a single pair of wings that fold around Balthazar - loosely and lightly enough that it's nothing like constrictive, just a gesture of protectiveness.

Balthazar will let him bitch about Father any time. Balthazar finds it strangely reassuring to blame all their problems on an entity he's never met and assumes at this point he never will. Maybe rocks fall and everyone dies, but at least he doesn't have to worry that there was much of anything he could have done to prevent the landslide.

The light cocoon of wings makes him melt subtly, flattered and comforted by the attention. Still hiding within his vessel, his Grace nevertheless flickers warmly in response to the gesture. "Didn't you say you'd teach me how to make mead sometime? Let's do that. Soon."

He huffs a laugh at that, a little more open and a little more relieved than he'd like it to have been, and pulls back slightly from the hug, shifting his grip to Balthazar's shoulders for a moment before he withdraws to only just inside his personal space - manly, see! - though he doesn't move his wings at all. He appreciates the closeness, but he's not used to it, and even if he were he doesn't think hugs will ever be his style.

"I will. Sometime soon, I promise." He grins up, part genuine enthusiasm and part mischief. "And you'll tell me some of what you got up to while you were on earth, alright? Not all that drama with Heaven, the fun stuff - the more sins the better."

Good enough. Balthazar's had his moment of desperate clinging and settles contentedly into the subtler closeness. "I'm holding you to that," he chuckles softly, and nods.

"Mostly Lust, Greed, and Gluttony, I'm afraid, but I tried a variety of subsets under each heading. It was fun while it lasted. Shame there's not more opportunity here."

"Good choice. They're the fun ones."

And Wrath, he's a big fan of Wrath, but that's cathartic more than fun, and that's not something he likes to discuss. Especially not with his siblings.

"Alas, not everyone here is quite as" promiscuous? "... open-minded as I'd like. It's a real pity."

Wrath doesn't seem to be Balthazar's vice. Envy, maybe.

"I will say, Ellen seems content to enable my drinking habit. That helps with the gluttony, I suppose." He tilts his head at Gabriel. "So when you propositioned the network way back when, were you just trolling or would you have gone along if someone had taken you up on it?"

"Glad to hear you have such helpful friends."

His tone might be a little wry, but it's not as if a drinking habit is likely to harm an angel. Not in the quantity available in a bar, at any rate, and even if Balthazar does end up getting smashed, it's better to do that with Ellen than on his own. Besides, he's always got Gabriel to look after him if he does stagger in drunk - and that, no doubt, is reason enough to keep him from drinking too much.

"I would have, of course." He's a little surprised Balthazar even has to ask. "It's not as if there's a health risk, and I'm not exactly picky. It's a shame no one did, really. Other times they have - but I suppose Kobra was busy pissing off Lucifer, and Elle must have been gone by then. But, y'know - the trolling was fun too. Not as fun, but I suppose one night stands are trickier to arrange in a population as small as ours."

Alcohol is very much his vice, and were the supply as extensive as he'd like, even Gabriel might start to worry about the quantity he can burn through on any given day. Part of the problem is his vessel was hooked even before he possessed him, but mostly it's just Balthazar seeking distraction. Ellen may be enabling him a bit, but no single still is going to produce enough to keep him more than slightly buzzed, on a temporary basis.

He smiles wryly, nodding in understanding. "That's why I've been hesitant. An entanglement here would be hard to get away from. I'm not looking to break hearts. Too bad; there are a lot of people around I'd be delighted to sleep with."

There's a beat of silence, then he adds, "I guess I should have taken you up on it then." Because that wouldn't be a risky entanglement at all.

Gabriel probably would be worried, if he knew. The angels, possibly as a result of those darn daddy issues, tend to have quite addictive personalities. With access to enough intoxicants (of whatever kind), even they can develop quite a problem. He's mostly got that behind him now, but for a few centuries after he'd left, self-control and moderation had been pretty much the only things he hadn't experimented with. He'd been in a position where he could afford that luxury - the Cape, however, doesn't allow for that, and nor does being on the minority side of an angelic civil war.

"You could always try commitment. Y'know, if you're into that sort of thing."

Evidently he's not - he says it as if it's the filthiest kink he could imagine. He's not so much concerned about hurting anyone's feelings himself, but if there were some kind of misunderstanding about Feelings, and the existence thereof, things could get awkward. Breaking someone's heart he could deal with. Awkwardness, not so much. That's no fun at all - at least, not when he's directly involved.

"Otherwise - well, it's a standing offer, if you're interested." The wry little smirk suggests he might not be serious: he seems to be well aware of just how badly wrong that could go. Still, there's no telling with Gabriel. He's not usually one to turn down sex, after all. "If you ever find yourself in the neighbourhood, feel free to look me up."

Balthazar has a few wild stories about harder drugs, himself. Wild enough that they've scared him away from some of them. It's not as much fun blowing coke and jumping on the bed after you've watched a few humans overdose and die from it.

"Commitment." He says flatly, knowing Gabriel's more or less joking. "In a place where people vanish at random? No, I don't think so."

He raises en eyebrow at the standing offer, unable to tell whether Gabriel means it or not, and equally uncertain whether he'd want to take him up on it. "I'll keep it in mind," he says after a moment, and smiles. "I'm sure you know how to show someone a good time."

They'd better start with making mead, though.

consumed by either fire or fire

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oh my god there are so many words, i'm very sorry, i tried to cut it down but i gave up halfway :|

words are good!

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Who knows who, that should've said (I just took a few minutes trying to figure out what I meant)

I didn't actually notice the missing 'who' anyway!

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