THE FIRE WITHIN
Why can't we?
Everything started with that question for them. The point isn't really the question itself but the fact that Tommy has to ask that question, and most of all, him failing to understand why it is a problem if he does.
He started when he was very young, five at most, and Gabe was a grumpy nine years old, who had just arrived at the Institute and wanted nothing to do with it. Tommy would run around the training room, wielding a sword that was too big and too sharp for him, asking “Why can't we be friends, Gabe?” over and over again and Gabriel would tell him that there was no point in them becoming friends because he was going to be gone soon. But Gabriel had stayed. And Tommy, who made friends with everybody, still wanted to spend all his time with him. So they became friends.

Later, when it was time for Gabriel to ascend, Tommy had started asking, “Why can't we be parabatai, Gabe?” And Gabriel would tell him that he didn't care about being a shadowhunter, let alone being tied to another one for the rest of his life, through such a complex ritual that made you co-dependent and forever connected. But they were so in tune – like two strings of the same harp, his father would say – that becoming parabatai had been kind of inevitable. They already moved and thought and killed like one, two different souls in one body. Everybody thought it was a pity to keep them apart.

Tommy had been used to sleep in the same bed with Gabriel since he was a kid, but now he was twelve and suddenly restless. “Why can't we kiss, Gabe?” He would ask in the dark, his lips already a few inches from Gabriel's. And Gabriel would not answer, because his voice had dried out as those lips were tempting, even if Tommy was still a kid and his parabatai. He had fought and resisted for months, and then he had capitulated. Tommy's lips had tasted like defeat and defeat was sweet.

When Tommy was fourteen, kissing had stopped being enough and if Gabriel had thought that it was going to be, well then he was a fool. “Why can't we do it, Gabe?” Tommy would ask, laying siege to his body with his own every night; and Tommy was still young, but not a kid anymore. Gabriel had been tired, then, of holding himself back, because desire was painful and longing made him weak. At some point he gave up, and the surrender broke him.

“Why can't we? Why can't we be together, Gabe? Tell me!” As Tommy asks him one more time, screaming his rage in his face, Gabriel thinks that if they are here now it's only because he hasn't had the courage to give him the right answer when it counted, when it would have changed everything. Instead it allowed this thing between them, he let it grow and eat Thomas alive from within. And now he can't stop it, unless he makes him suffer.

“You know why.”

“No, I don't! I don't know why, Gabe!” Tommy keeps screaming, his voice strained. He repeats Gabe's name like a spell as if saying it three, nine, twelve times, then Gabe could be his and their problem could be solved. “You tell me because I can't understand!”

“It's the Law.”

“The Law is wrong!”

Gabriel looks at him in shock. He fixes his eyes on Tommy's face for the first time since they started fighting and he finds no trace of regret in it. Somehow saying those words aloud is more blasphemous than anything they have ever done before. They might have thought it, they might even believed it, but saying it aloud is forever crossing a line. How fucked up it is that they have been so indoctrinated that they fear words more than physical pain? “Thomas, shut up.”

“No.”

“Shut up.”

“No!”

His body moves before he can even think, and quickly in a way that wouldn't be possible even a few months ago. He's been gaining speed and strength lately, but he's losing his mind. “I said shut up!” He growls in Tommy's face, his voice suddenly darker and rising from the pit of his stomach, from the mouth of the beast inside of him that lies dormant no more. He slams Tommy against the wall, one, two, three times, the plaster raining on them like snow, and he pins him against it. He knows it's a mistake the moment he makes it, but he has no other choice, really. Tommy's rage calls to his own and his body is trained to respond to it.

“You want me, Gabe.” Tommy says it like he knew it for sure, and Gabriel hates him because it's true. He hates that he says it aloud so he has to face it. “And I want you. I want you more than anything in the world. So why can't we have each other? What's wrong with it?”

“It's changing us.”

“I don't care,” Tommy says, shaking his head. Oh, but he should. These flames will consume them both until there will be nothing left of them, and who will be still alive in the wake of their madness, then? “The curse means nothing as long as you're with me.”

“No!” Gabriel screams and his hands are on Tommy again. He throws him across the room as if he weighed nothing and he's only satisfied when he sees him slam against another wall and make a hole in it. He wants him to stop talking, he needs him to be quiet for once in his life. He runs and the impact of his body against Tommy's is hard and merciless, it seems to make the whole room shake above their heads. They are going to bring the house down and he doesn't care. “We're turning into something else,” he hisses on his mouth.

“We are always the same to me.” Tommy pushes him away using the strength in his legs. Gabriel falls back and lands hard on the floor, his head bouncing twice on the stones. Tommy is on him right away, pounding his face with his fists, savagely. Gabriel feels the weight of Tommy's body on his crotch – his hardness rubbing overbearingly against his own – and he tastes blood in his mouth, the familiarity of it all scares him to death. That is what they are, rage and blood and sex and lust, and he can't remember a time where they weren't like that. Have they ever been tender with each other? Has this love ever been a quiet sea to navigate, instead of a raging storm ready to sink their ship?

He can't think clearly anymore. He feels the darkness inside of him – inside both of them, actually, but in different forms – rising and filling him up, and he can't stop it. He tried and he failed, as he's been doing for the past six years. “You don't understand!” He makes one last desperate attempts before giving in to the energy within that's reclaiming his body. “We could destroy everything and everyone we love!”

Tommy grabs him by his hair and pulls it hard, forcing a moan of pain out of him. “No, you don't understand, babe. I don't care,” he smiles, satisfied. Then he leans forward and licks him slowly along the line of his neck, up to right under his earlobe. “Now fuck me, Gabriel, or I swear on the Angel, I'm going to kill you first.”

A wave of Tommy's power washes upon him and leaves him breathless. He can't dam it, let alone oppose to it and send it back where it came from, so he gives himself to it completely and accepts to drown. He tears Tommy's shirt off his shoulders, shredding it, feeling the skin underneath. Tommy's body is firm and strong now, but Gabriel has felt it changing under his fingers over the years, from the softness of youth to the powerful killing machine that it is now. Small and compact, but lethal. He kisses his chest and he thinks that he could never get lost on the land of Tommy's body because he himself mapped it out with the tip of his tongue and with his hands. It's a country that he owns and that has willingly surrendered to him in exchange of his soul.

While Gabe's hands find their way inside his pants, Tommy reclaims his mouth, biting his lips hard to part them. He lures him into a wet and violent kiss, forcing his tongue down his throat the same way he wants Gabriel to force himself inside of him, “Quick,” he orders, the moment he comes up for air, a shiny string of saliva connecting his mouth to Gabe's. “I want to feel your cock inside me, now.”

There's no arguing with him and no will in Gabe to do it. He tries to upturn their positions and have Tommy on the ground underneath him, but Tommy shows his teeth at him like a wild animal, stubbornly refusing to comply. “No,” he barks again, getting rid of his own pants. “Like this.” He frees Gabe's erection and he holds it firmly in his left hand, squeezing it almost painfully, before impaling himself on it. Gabriel's hands close around his hips almost immediately, his fingers digging viciously into his stomach to try and contain him, but Tommy can't be stopped now. He moves frantically on him, taking him in deeper every time he sits down. Gabriel can feel himself forcing him open, digging room for himself in his body.

“Yes, like this,” Tommy throws his head back, his eyes roll to show the white as he rides him, holding himself to Gabriel's shoulder with one hand, the other reaching down to pump his own cock. “More, Gabe! Harder!”

It's always harder and faster and bloodier with him. Tommy is hard to satisfy – having Gabriel buried ball-deep in him doesn't seem enough, he wants him closer, deeper inside, together as if he would only be happy if they were truly just one single body experiencing this burning energy. Gabriel does the best he can. If he can't stop this madness, then he can very well go with it. He sits up, holding Tommy to his chest, pumping in him as if he could break him. Their bodies slamming against each other make an obscene sound, the same that has been ringing in their ears every single day of their life since Tommy was fourteen and took down Gabriel's defenses.

He comes, biting down on Tommy's neck hard enough to draw blood and to tear meat away from it. Amidst Tommy's screams, he feels the energy leaves his body with the long, hot shots of his cum and mix with that part of itself that's inside Tommy. For a moment, his eyes glow golden and, in the dark, Tommy looks like an angel, beautiful and lethal and burning with heavenly fire. His skin heats up to the point that it hurts to touch him, and then the fever breaks and Tommy falls on him, breathless and worn out.

Gabriel welcomes him in his arms with sad but satisfied sigh. He combs Tommy's hair away from where they stick to his face with sweat. “Are you alright?” He whispers against his temple.

“Can we stay like this for a little longer?” Tommy asks, avoiding the question. He's tired and sore and he's struggling to move a body he usually never keeps still. “With you inside of me, I mean. Can we stay like this, Gabe?”

Gabriel knows what he should say and he decides not to. After all the no he said to him and with all those he'll have to say soon enough, he needs a yes to give him and this one seems harmless enough.