TEMPTATIONS (SEEK AND DESTROY)

“I'll go.” Words come out of Gabriel's mouth before he even realizes he's thinking them. He doesn't even know what he's agreeing to do, but he doesn't care.

Silence falls on the war room. There are fifteen people around the big table and all of them turn to look at him. He ignores them all. His father, sitting at the head of the table, clears his throat. “Gabriel, at least wait until we have laid out the details.”

It doesn't matter. Anything would be better than staying here. Besides, whatever it is, he can dealt with. And if he can't, even better. Hasn't he spent the past few months trying to find a way to permanently stop this thing that he's becoming? “I can handle it,” he repeats, without even blinking.

The other members of the Council didn't want him here and now they take his words for presumption, as if he needed boasting about something that everybody knows for sure he can do. His father is unnerved. They're breathing down his neck for everything these days and he doesn't need any more problems. Gabriel would like to make his life less hard, but the truth is that he doesn't feel like it. He doesn't feel much, lately. It's like watching other people's lives from behind a frosted glass. The only thing that feels real is the burning energy within himself, and only when it can feed off Tommy's.

“Several Mantids have been spotted in London,” his father says. “They move through the sewers and their number grows by the day, so it's probably a nest. The London Institute requested help because they simply don't have the means to take care of the problem right now. One of the two adult Shadowhunters in charge there has been injured and they have twenty-five children in training to take care of. I have some men to spare in Alicante. I can put together a team that will go with you and Thomas.”

“No need for that. I'll go alone,” Gabriel says.

“The hell you are,” Thomas stands up, immediately.

Gabriel can feel how outraged he is at the mere idea, how in pain. It's not just a connection between them anymore, it's something deeper, something scarier. Thomas' feelings don't emanate from his body anymore, Gabriel can feel them as if they were his own. Sometimes he could swear he can hear Thomas' voice in his head as if he was talking to him. They alternate moments where they are unusually in-tune to moments where they have an hive mind. The moments where they are fully themselves, two separate beings, are fewer and fewer. This has to stop, and the only solution is for him to go as far away as possible.

“We have our own demons to think about,” Gabriel says calmly, still refusing to look at Thomas. He knows that the moment their eyes meet, he will stay. Or he will do something else equally stupid. “There are nests all over the city, we can't both leave. Thomas will stay and take care of those.”

There are still so few of them – re-population being a very slow process – that demons are proliferating and demon activity has spiked in the past few years. They don't have enough people to face a real invasion if it comes to that, so they better keep the demon population in check as long as they can. And he knows his father knows that.

“I'm not gonna stay here if you go—“

“Gabriel is right, Thomas. We can't afford to send you both,” Alec intervenes as Gabriel thought he would. “But I still think he needs a team.”

“I do not,” Gabriel stands up, making clear that he won't discuss this any further.
And even if he feels a sadness, which is not his own, and a raging fury, which he shares in part, he leaves the room without sparing a single glance to his parabatai.

*

It turns out that there are several Mantid nests throughout London and that the demons are chipping away at the city's foundations to make room for more of them. The head of the London's institute is so in over his head in bureaucracy, children's training and the general impossibility of running such an important Institute alone that he shares with any other head of institute nowadays that he doesn't dwell on the fact that Gabriel is alone, he's just happy that he came. He apologizes because he doesn't have any back-up to offer him and sends him on his way.

But Gabriel needs no back up. He can smell those things from miles away and he follows their stench down in the sewers. He hunts them down one by one, leaving a subterranean trail of ichor from Westminster to Mayfair. Mantid nests are hard to find, though. They are always hidden and well protected, made not to lure preys in, as Mantids devour their food on the spot and don't set it aside for later, but to hatch eggs and take refuge when they need to.

So Gabriel finds a group of those creatures. There are six of them in total, enough to wipe out a whole team of nephilim in such a small space. He doesn't even care to move silently to take them by surprise. He just steps into the tunnel, something making a bone-crunching sound when he crashes it with his boots. All six demons turn at the same time, cocking their triangular heads to the side, almost in confusion. They look like giant, monstrous nuns with their long arms joined as if in prayer.

It's only a moment, then they open their mouth, showing rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth and they launch on him. They click all excited, knowing that he can't outrun them in their home now that they saw him. But Gabriel doesn't want to run. He doesn't even move. He lets them fall upon him, scratch and bite because the closer they are, the easier it is to severe their limbs and heads.

His seraph blade cuts through their chitinous bodies like butter and he rejoices in the screeching sounds they make as they collapse on the ground all around him. The ichor burns his skin wherever he's not protected by the gear, but he doesn't care. He uses that pain to fuel his anger, to become more aggressive, more vicious, more merciless, until he's not happy unless they seem to cry and plead with him to stop with their pallid milky eyes. They start to retreat and he goes after them. He came here to seek and he will destroy.

For a long blissful moment he's at peace, lost in training and war and the sacred purpose the Angel gave to him and those like him. Until he realizes that there's a second heartbeat to his heart. Suddenly, he can feel another energy filling his body and making his legs swifter, his cuts more neat. Thomas is as graceful as he's massive, together they are a perfect machine that can impact on the enemy with surgical precision.

They kill all the Mantids but one, so it can run and guide them to its nest.

There are hundreds of those creatures, but they don't care. They smile and they unleash themselves upon the demons like the wrath of God they are supposed to be. Within seconds it is a bloodbath the Mantids can't escape. It's hard for those creatures to keep slashing at them if they don't feel pain and keep marching on despite the cuts and bruises, easily avoiding the worst attacks and simply welcoming the smaller ones on their skin. They feel no pain as the energy pulsates stronger within their body.

Gabriel wakes up as the last demon is still twitching on the ground. Some time along the night, he relieved it of its legs and arms and its screeching is reverberating eerily against the tunnel's walls.

Thomas is still there, Gabriel can feel him in every fiber of his body, confusing his thoughts and yet making him complete. It's not an alien presence, but something of his that was missing and now is back. It's hard to shrug it off himself – if it's even possible – when he feels that without it, he would crumble and die.
A parabatai bond is strong, but never follows you across an ocean like this.

*

Oren is there when he comes out of the sewers, drenched in ichor and blood. He reaches out for him and Gabriel grabs his hand because he needs something real to hold on to, however real a fairy can be. As he touches his fair skin, he feels Thomas receding within himself, and yet raging harder.

Silently, Oren leads him away from the blood, somehow. They were on the streets one moment and now there's a garden, and Gabriel doesn't know, nor he wants to know, how they transitioned from one place to the other. He wouldn't care if the stretch of water now wetting their feet had boiled up from the ground.

Oren's skin is pale and almost glowing under the moonlight, which is so much more favorable to fairy people. He looks unreal as he sheds his clothes, remaining only in what would pass for bathing shorts if they weren't made of leaves. “Come,” he invites him.

Gabriel takes off what's left of his own clothes and follows him in the water.

Oren wants to bathe him, Gabriel only wants to touch him, and so he does as the fairy cleans his wounds and washes away the traces of what happened in the sewers. “Make it all go away,” Gabriel whispers in his ear as he leans forward to kiss his neck.

Oren doesn't speak – he never does when they have sex, unless Gabriel asks him to – and he works his magic on him, making him anew. Gabriel's hands find their way under Oren's pants, they tear them apart, and he feels them dissolve in water. He doesn't stop to think how that works. As many other times tonight, he doesn't care.

Oren feels soft under his callous hands, and Gabriel can pretend he also feels right. Oren is comfort more than desire, lust more than affection, and he's certainly not love, but he is what Gabriel needs right now. A yielding body that doesn't fight him for every inch of skin to conquer. Lips that welcome his kisses. Legs that part for him, willingly and compliantly. Oren is something he doesn't have to fight for, with or against. Something that he took for himself some months ago and that now remains his to do what he pleases with whenever he wants.

There's no complicity between them, just Gabriel's need and Oren's natural ability to welcome it.

Oren's body feels full in his hands and yet he weighs nothing, as if his bird-like bones were hollow. He pulls him up, the water splashing softly around them. Oren dutifully latches his arms and legs around him as Gabriel thrusts hard inside of him, once, twice, three times, just to make room for himself. The smallest whimper escapes his fairy lips as he hides his face against Gabriel's neck.

“Be quiet,” he growls, thrusting harder once again. Oren's voice would destroy the shard of peace he has found between his legs. In his moans of pleasure, Thomas would scream louder. Silence scares him away, instead, as it makes it easy to feel everything.

Oren shivers as he holds onto him tighter. His knees dig into Gabriel's hips, his nails into his back as Gabriel forces his way into his body, one thrust after the other. Oren is so small that he looks like Gabriel could break him, which is what pushes him forward, makes him hungrier: the fact that he could destroy him and that he won't because fairies are tougher than they seem.

However small, however frail.

Gabriel holds the smaller fairy by his hips and pushes him upon his erection, barely coming out of his body every time. He finds his rhythm in breaking Oren's breathing. He moves at the erratic sound of his heartbeat, at his gasps and wheezes. At some point the fairy throws his head back in bliss, but Gabriel keeps on going and going. Only when Oren's body is limp in his arms, he's finally content and he releases himself. As he fills him up, he can feel the rest of the energy leave his body as well.

He's finally alone again.
*

“How did you find me?” Gabriel asks as they get out of the water. They're both naked and unashamed of it. That kind of awkwardness between them was lost the first time Gabriel assaulted him months ago, if there ever has been.

“I followed the smell of your despair,” Oren says, lying on the grass next to him. He presses his body against Gabriel's in search of warmth and he welcomes him in his arms. “You reeked of it, you know? That is your way of calling upon me.”

The greatest thing about Faerie is that you can access it from anywhere as it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “Are we still in London?” He asks.

Oren shrugs. “Yes and no,” he answers, and Gabriel knows it's the truest answer he can give him, even if it's probably not the most exact. “Did you come all the way across the pond to escape temptations or have you already succumbed to them?”

“I came here to do a job.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

Gabriel groans and rolls over, covering him with his massive body. “Can we not talk about it?” He asks against Oren's neck. As he was so gracious to ask nicely, he expects to be obeyed, but he should know better. Oren is only obliging when Gabriel has something to give him, and merciless when it's over.

“That energy won't go away, no matter how many times you mount me,” he goes on.

“By the Angel,” Gabriel groans again and he rolls away from him.

“I'm serious, Gabe.”

“Don't call me that.”

Oren sighs and gets closer again. He drapes himself against his back and strokes his hair, gently. “Lightwood,” he corrects himself. “Is that any better? But the facts don't change. It will grow in time and it will feed on you two.” Gabriel grows very still under his fingers. “It already did, didn't it?”

“Can we not—“

“I'm just worried!”

Orien hits him on his head and Gabriel winces. “You have a very weird way to show it.”

“The same you have,” Oren sighs. “Running away from him will only break his heart as this connection between you two certainly won't break. Staying and facing it is the only way out you have.”

Gabriel remains stubbornly quiet. He opened up in the lake – in the only way he knows how – and now he's back inside himself, his body an impenetrable fortress. “Just promise me something, alright?” Oren says softly, leaving butterfly kisses along his spine. “If it gets worse than this, come to me. I can help.”

As many other times before, he can't promise him this.
So he doesn't.

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.