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If holding Cas was like calming a thunderstorm, then holding Gabriel was like taming a hurricane.
Castiel’s power sat just below the surface, stormy and restless, all dark clouds promising rain that may or may not break. His rainclouds were ever-present, rumbling softly with carefully contained power, but they seldom spilled over; his storm was a soft and homey drizzle, all petrichor and wet leaves and the gentle sounds of rainfall and distant thunder. Castiel’s weather was predictable, safe, and easily controlled.
His brother was anything but.
Gabriel’s stormfront was an untameable force of nature, his aura constantly surging in swirling clouds of furious wind and destruction. He raged in chaotic gales of unstoppable power, his grace a neverending cacophony of hyperactive noise. Gabriel’s power was the fury of the heavens. It was uprooted trees and flying cows; it was the pandemonium of lashing rain and screaming wind. While his seas were normally calm and placid, they ran deeper than anyone knew, and when they were stirred, they were beyond control. Gabriel was a terrifying Category 5, a rare beast of unbridled carnage punctuated with moments of tense and fearful calm, a false sense of security before the crash of the final wave.
Even when the ocean of his grace was mild and peaceful, the threat was always there. The very air around him hummed with energy and with power, a reminder that within his unassuming form, one of the mightiest powers in the heavens lay dormant.
So how could it be that the hurricane had been stilled so completely by the most humble of hands?
Lying with them in the dark, Gabriel’s power did not scream and rage. The immediate atmosphere still vibrated with electricity, but it was the gentle hum of a congruent current that had found its equal. For once his chaos was stilled; the tsunami was no more than a gentle lapping of contented waves.
He was warm, peaceful, domestic; the gentle weight of his body was a piece of themself they hadn’t known they were missing. His head on their chest, his fingers twined with theirs, it was nearly impossible to believe that this was a damaged archangel capable of such amazing destruction. He didn’t seem like a great celestial warrior; in fact, he felt small and disconcertingly human. In their arms, he was no longer a god of chaos but a simple man, devoid of a hunger for discord or the need to exact justice on an unjust world. Gabriel was quiet. He was quiet, and what’s more, he was happy.
To outside eyes, Gabriel was always “happy”—he was a destructive creature of ironic insanity, yes, but he was also quick-witted and bright, a smug smile never leaving his face. It was only when the hurricane raged out of control that the mask was blown away for a moment, and his true fury was laid bare.
And while his fury was frightening, his depression was worse. While his storms surged, he was powerful, in control; but when they were finally calmed, the rain left behind a flood too full of refuse and rejection to ever be fully cleansed.
When he was sad, they could sense his melancholy like an ache in their lungs, his desperate loneliness choking the air from their throat. So when he had laid next to them, an uncharacteristic timidness in his normally confident demeanour, something in them had stirred. A quiet sense of wanting had turned into a yearning so intense it was agonising, a furious need to hold him and soothe his pain, to test the floodwaters for signs of life.
Without warning they’d taken the remains of the storm into their arms, felt his normally insurmountable strength go weak in their embrace. He had buried his face in their shoulder and breathed deeply, gasping for air he hadn’t known he’d needed until this moment. He was their protector, their warrior, their ever-present shield; but right now, for one small moment, they were guarding him from his own raging tempest. Wrapped in the arms of his human, Gabriel was suddenly sheltered from the lashing winds of his own self-loathing, the biting rain of loneliness suddenly unable to reach him for the first time in centuries.
They stroked his hair and the wind calmed. They took his hand and the rain stopped. They said his name, and the hurricane within him was stilled.
It was impossible to see his face clearly in the darkness, but they could feel his smile like a ray of light peeking through ragged clouds, gently forming perfect dimples that cut through the fog. His eyes were nearly closed, but they knew that beneath his lashes, gold-flecked hazel was fighting back the dark. The tempest in their arms smiled the first genuine smile in hundreds of years, and it was as if the entire sky smiled back.
The weather had changed. This was not the eye of the storm, but the sun coming out.