Chapter 47: 6.2.1
koen sees gabriel touching his journal and that was the last straw. koen just goes off ranting about and insulting gabriel, describing in visceral detail just how badly he wants to hurt gabriel and how he would do it
The silence in the house after a hunt always felt different now. It wasn’t peaceful; it was a held breath. Koen stood at the sink, scrubbing black, oily blood from under his nails. The water ran hot, steam rising. He focused on the crevices of each knuckle, the coarse brush scraping skin that would heal before morning. His own reflection in the dark window over the sink was a stranger—a set jaw, orange eyes glowing faintly like banked coals.
He’d taken three bounties this week. Usually, he’d space them out, recharge between the messy work. But a restlessness prickled under his skin, an itch only violence seemed to scratch. The last one, a swamp-dwelling horror with too many teeth, he’d dismantled with a fury that left even the guild marshals quiet. He’d come home still buzzing with it, the adrenal surge souring into something darker.
He dried his hands, the towel rough against his palms. The house was a mess. His mess. A dismantled pistol lay in greasy pieces on the coffee table beside a stack of Gabriel’s pristine, celestial correspondence. A demon-hide jacket was slung over the back of an ornate angel-wing chair. It was their normal chaos, but tonight it felt abrasive, like everything was too loud, too close.
A thought, clear and cold, slithered through his mind: Gabriel’s feathers would come off so easily. Just a good grip and a sharp pull.
Koen blinked. He shook his head, physically trying to dislodge the image. Where the hell had that come from? He loved Gabriel’s wings. He loved running his fingers through the primaries, the softness of the coverts. The thought felt like a oily stain on his own brain.
He walked, restless, to the bookshelf cluttered with oddities—a cursed talisman, a first-aid kit, a stack of cheap pulp novels. His journal sat there, a battered leather-bound thing. He’d kept one for years, a habit started by a therapist after a particularly bad demon-rage blackout. “When the thoughts get loud,” she’d said, “give them a place to go that isn’t your fists.”
He snatched it and a pen, sinking into the couch. He flipped past sketches of monsters, past fragmented notes on bounties. The last dozen pages were newer. He started writing, the pen digging into the paper.
The fuck is wrong with me lately. Another easy hunt today. Felt good to break its neck. Too good. Keep thinking about the sound.
He paused, chewing the inside of his cheek.
Gabe’s been on me about taking a break. That smug tone. Like he knows better. He always knows better. I see him looking at me from over his glasses, all superior. Thinks I don’t notice.
His hand moved faster.
He was humming some heavenly hymn while making tea. Wanted to tell him to shut up. Wanted to put my hand through the wall next to his head. Just to see him jump. Just to see that perfect composure crack.
He touched my shoulder yesterday and I almost threw him through the window. Wouldn’t that be something? An archangel smeared on the paving stones. His fault for being so fucking fragile.
Koen’s breath hitched. He stared at the words. His own handwriting, but the voice… the voice felt like it belonged to something else, something crouching in the marrow of his bones. A deep, shameful heat washed over him. This wasn’t him. This couldn’t be him.
He scribbled out the last line so violently the paper tore. He slammed the journal shut, heart hammering against his ribs. He needed air. He needed to move. He shoved the journal onto the side table, half under a stack of unopened mail, and stalked out into the night, slamming the door behind him.
Gabriel finished sealing the last missive with a brush of celestial light. The administrative drone of Heaven was endless. He preferred it here, amidst the chaotic, lived-in warmth of the house Koen made. He stood, rolling the stiffness from his shoulders, his wings a phantom weight he kept carefully folded away from the mortal plane.
The silence was wrong. Koen had been too quiet when he came in, a storm contained in a human-shaped vessel. Gabriel had felt the residual violence clinging to him like static.
He moved to tidy up, a futile but comforting ritual. He gathered the gun parts onto a tray, wiped the table of grease. His hand brushed the stack of mail, and the battered journal slid out, falling to the floor with a soft thump.
Gabriel picked it up. He knew about the journal. Koen had mentioned it once, offhand. A private thing. Sacred in its own way. Gabriel would never have considered prying.
But it was open. The page had fallen open to the most recent entry.
His eyes, capable of perceiving the myriad layers of creation, scanned the harsh, anguished script. The words about the hunt. Then the words about him. The “smug tone.” The desire to see him jump, to see his composure crack.
The line about throwing him through the window.
Gabriel’s blood went cold, a chill that had nothing to do with mortality. This wasn’t Koen. This was a poison. He flicked back a page. Then another. The entries over the last two weeks traced a terrifying descent. The early ones were just restlessness. Then irritation at Gabriel’s habits—his neatness, his quiet humming, the way he offered advice. The irritation curdled into vivid, violent fantasies. Each one involved Gabriel. Each one was more detailed, more brutal.
A cold, analytical fury settled over Gabriel. This was not natural anger. This was a targeted, meticulous corruption. Someone was inside Koen’s head. Someone with a very specific focus: to turn Koen’s fierce, protective love into a weapon aimed directly at Gabriel’s heart.
He heard the front door open, heavy boots on the floorboards. Koen was back, smelling of night air and damp earth.
Gabriel didn’t move. He held the journal, the evidence trembling slightly in his grip.
Koen rounded the corner into the living area, his frame filling the doorway. “Couldn’t sleep. Went for a walk,” he mumbled, not meeting Gabriel’s eyes. Then he saw what was in Gabriel’s hand.
Everything inside Koen went very still, then very hot. The air in the room thickened, tasting of ozone and old blood. His vision tunneled, focusing on the cracked leather cover pinched between Gabriel’s slender, stupidly perfect fingers.
“What the fuck,” Koen said, his voice low and scraping.
Gabriel opened his mouth, his eyes wide with an expression Koen hadn’t seen before—not anger, but a kind of horrified understanding. “Koen, listen—”
“No.” The word was a gunshot. The calm shattered. “You don’t get to talk. You’re holding my journal. Were you reading it?” He took a step forward, and the floorboard groaned like a living thing. “Of course you were. Couldn’t help yourself, could you? Got to snoop, got to be in charge of every single goddamn thing.”
“It was open. I saw my name.” Gabriel’s voice was careful, measured, the tone he used to defuse celestial disputes. It poured gasoline on the fire in Koen’s skull.
“Oh, you saw your name! Big deal!” Koen’s laugh was a harsh bark. “Yeah, your name’s in there. Wanna know why? Because you’re in everything. You’re in my air. That sanctimonious, holier-than-thou look you get when I track mud in. That little sigh when I don’t get some heavenly paperwork metaphor. You think I don’t see it? You think I’m too dense to notice your disgust?”
Gabriel flinched. “I have never been disgusted by you. Ever.”
“LIAR!” Koen roared, and a vase on the mantle cracked. He was trembling, his hands curling into fists so tight his knuckles popped. The awful, delicious pressure that had been building for weeks blew its seal. The words tore out of him, hot and jagged. “I want to rip that look right off your face. I want to see what’s under it when you’re not in control. I think about it when you’re lecturing me. I think about my hands around your throat, thumbs right on your windpipe, feeling it collapse. I want to see those cold blue eyes go wide and scared for once.”
He took another step, driving Gabriel back against the bookshelf. “I’ve calculated it. Your celestial density, the tensile strength of mortal walls. I could do it. I could put you through that window over there so hard you’d skip across the cobbles like a stone. Would you heal? Probably. But it’d hurt. It’d hurt so bad, and you’d lie there in the dirt and finally know what it feels like.”
Gabriel hadn’t moved. His face was pale, a stark canvas. He wasn’t afraid. He was grieving. “Koen, that isn’t you talking. Someone has gotten into your mind.”
“Shut up! This is me! This is what you get for tying yourself to a demon! You wanted a pet monster? Well, congrats, it wants to bite!” Spittle flew from Koen’s lips. His orange eyes blazed, his canines sharp against his mouth. “I wanna break your fingers. One by one. That delicate pen-holding hand. I want to hear the snap. I want to find out if archangel bones make the same sound as human ones.”
The images flooded him, supplied by a distant, gleeful presence in the dark corners of his psyche. They were vivid, technicolor. He gave them voice. “I want to pin those gorgeous wings of yours to the floor with my own knives and see if the feathers stain. I want to see you struggle. I want you to try to smite me, just so I can feel it and keep coming. Nothing would make me happier than seeing you finally, truly try to hurt me back.”
His breath came in ragged gasps. The room was silent except for the sound of it. He was empty, hollowed out by the venom. He saw the journal, still in Gabriel’s hand, and a last, cruel thought surfaced.
“You love your rules, your order. So here’s a new rule. Don’t touch what’s mine. Don’t read my thoughts. Don’t pretend you care. You’re just a bored angel slumming it. And I’m done being your novelty.”
Gabriel slowly, deliberately, closed the journal. He set it down on the shelf beside him. The movement was final. When he looked up, his blue eyes were no longer cold. They were deep, and ancient, and full of a fire that had ignited stars.
“Finished?” Gabriel’s voice was soft, but it carved through the silence like a blade.
Koen blinked, the red haze receding a fraction. His own words echoed back at him, monstrous and alien. A sick, churning shame began to pool in his gut.
“Good,” Gabriel said. He straightened his jacket, a minute, human gesture. “Now I know the shape of the poison. And I will find its source. You will stay here.”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” Koen muttered, but the fight was draining, leaving a cold, hollow terror.
“For once in your life,” Gabriel said, walking past him toward the door, his movement fluid and inevitable, “you will do exactly as I say. This isn’t a bounty. This is a declaration of war. And it was delivered through you.”
He paused at the threshold, not looking back. “The house is warded. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out. Including you. When I return, this will be over.”
The door closed with a quiet, definitive click. Koen was alone, the echoes of his own hatred the only thing left to keep him company.
Koen stared at the closed door, his fists still clenched. The silence that rushed in to fill the space where Gabriel had been was absolute and heavy. He could still hear his own words hanging in the air, a toxic fog.
He looked at his hands. They were the hands that had stroked Gabriel’s wings, that had carefully cleaned his favorite coffee mug. Now all he could see were the instruments of the violence he’d just described. A violent shudder ripped through him. He stumbled to the sink and was violently sick.
The house felt like a tomb. The wards Gabriel had mentioned hummed at the edge of his perception, a faint celestial buzz that made his demonic blood itch. He was trapped, not just by magic, but by the aftermath of his own voice. He paced, a caged animal, the images from his rant playing on a loop behind his eyes. He saw the shattered look on Gabriel’s face not of fear, but of pained recognition.
He had to fix it. He had to explain. But how do you explain that you didn’t mean the graphic, meticulous fantasies of harming someone you love? He grabbed his journal from the shelf. He would write an apology. He would untangle the sickness in his head and show it to Gabriel, proof it wasn't truly him.
He sat at the kitchen table, the wood grain blurring under his unfocused gaze. The pen felt foreign in his hand. He wrote Gabe, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s happening to me.
The ink seemed to pool and darken on the page. The letters of ‘sorry’ twisted, looking weak and pathetic. A voice in his mind, slick and familiar, whispered. Sorry? For what? For finally speaking the truth he’s too holy to admit? You saw his face. He believed every word. Koen scratched the sentence out until the paper tore.
He started again. Something’s wrong with me.
The whisper came faster, internal, a thought that felt like his own but tasted rotten. Of course there is. Look at you. Half a thing. A monster he keeps in a pretty house. You stain everything you touch. His handwriting grew jagged, pressing deep furrows into the paper. He wrote that down too. I stain everything I touch.
The first day bled into the second. He didn’t sleep. He barely moved from the table. The journal became a confession booth with a malevolent priest on the other side of the grate.
He’s too good for this place. For me. He should be in a palace of light, not picking up my spent cartridge casings. I leave a trail of filth. Literal and moral.
He touched my shoulder and I felt such rage. Why? Because his touch is clean and mine isn’t? His hands will never have black blood under the nails. Mine always will.
He deserves more. He deserves everything. He got a thing that breaks everything it touches. A stupid, violent dog that can’t even control its own thoughts.
He should have smited me when I said those things. Why didn’t he? Pity. It has to be pity. Or maybe he’s just documenting the corruption for one of his celestial reports. ‘Case Study: The Degradation of a Half-Demon.’
I’m the bounty now. I’m the thing in the dark. He’s just waiting for the right moment to put me down.
I’m so tired.
I am poison.
I am a broken, disgusting thing.
I don't know why he stays.
He shouldn’t stay.
On the third day, the pen stopped moving. Koen slid from the chair onto the floor, his back against the cool wood of the cupboard. He had scratched out the last of his coherence, leaving only a final, stark sentence in the center of a page, surrounded by a chaotic vortex of self-directed vitriol. He would be better off if I was gone.
He lacked the energy to even flinch when the front door unlocked. The wards sighed and dissolved. Light from the hallway cut across the floor, framing Gabriel’s silhouette. He stepped inside, his usual crisp demeanor frayed at the edges. A faint, otherworldly scent of ozone and scorched sulfur clung to him.
His blue eyes scanned the dark, quiet living room, then tracked to the kitchen. He found Koen slumped on the floor, limbs splayed like a discarded marionette. The journal lay open, face-up, on the floor beside him.
Gabriel approached, his footsteps silent on the tiles. He saw the hollow, fixed look in Koen’s orange eyes, staring at nothing. He saw the journal, its pages a dark scribble of anguish. He knelt, the motion slow and deliberate.
Koen’s gaze didn’t shift. He made no move to cover the exposed, hateful text. He just watched, a passive witness to his own exposure, as Gabriel’s eyes dropped to read the last, desperate words his partner had written.
Gabriel’s eyes moved across the final page, a slow, painful traverse. He saw the chaotic scribbles, the self-loathing that had curdled into a lethal plea. His jaw tightened, a muscle feathering along his temple. He closed the journal gently, as if it were a wound.
“Koen.”
The name hung in the stale air. Koen didn’t look up. His gaze remained fixed on a scuff mark on the floorboard, a mark he’d probably made himself. The silence stretched, brittle and thin.
“Look at me.”
It wasn’t a request. It was the voice Gabriel used to command lesser angels, full of a resonance that vibrated in the bones. Koen’s eyelids fluttered.
Koen’s eyelids fluttered. He dragged his gaze upward, the movement slow as cold tar. Gabriel’s face swam into view, blurred at the edges. He looked different. A thin, smoking cut traced his jawline. His usually immaculate shirt was torn at the shoulder, revealing a lattice of glowing, golden skin beneath—a healing wound. He smelled of thunder and burned sugar.
“There you are,” Gabriel said, his voice softer now, all the celestial resonance gone. It was just a voice. Tired.
Koen said nothing. His head lolled back against the cupboard door. He could feel the grime from the floor seeping into his clothes, a fitting sensation. He was supposed to be on the floor. He waited for the pronouncement, for the holy light to consume him from the inside out. It would be a kindness.
“I found him,” Gabriel stated. He didn’t move to touch Koen. He just stayed there, kneeling in the mess. “The one who was in your head. A minor duke with a grudge and a particularly nasty parlor trick.” A cold, satisfied smile touched his lips. “He won’t be visiting anyone’s mind again.”
A flicker, something that might have been relief, tried to spark in Koen’s chest. It drowned in the thick, black oil of his exhaustion. It didn’t matter. The things he’d said, the things he’d written—they’d come from his own hand, his own mouth. The poison was gone, but the stain remained.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Gabriel murmured. He shifted, sitting fully on the floor, disregarding the dust. He pulled his long legs up, resting his arms on his knees. He looked human in that moment, just a man sitting in a kitchen after a long fight. “You’re thinking the thoughts were yours. That the words were yours. That this,” he gestured loosely at the space between them, at the journal, “is some fundamental truth you’ve uncovered.”
Koen’s throat worked. “Yes,” he whispered, the word scraping raw.
“It’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
Gabriel let out a long, controlled breath. “Listen to me. His entire power was mimicry. He found the fears you already carried—the fear of being too much, of not being enough, of being a monster in a saint’s house—and he gave them a megaphone. He turned volume knobs in your brain. He didn’t create new material. He just amplified the static that was already there.”
Koen stared at the scuff mark again. The explanation was logical, clean. It didn’t penetrate the numb shell around him. Knowing the radio was hijacked didn’t un-hear the broadcast.
“Say something,” Gabriel said, a faint crack in his command.
“Smite me.” The words were flat, empty. A simple request.
Gabriel went perfectly still. The air in the kitchen chilled by several degrees. “What did you say?”
“You should.” Koen’s eyes lifted, meeting Gabriel’s glacial blues. There was no challenge in his gaze, only a profound, weary certainty. “It’s the practical solution. I’m a security risk. I’m unstable. I told you I wanted to break your fingers. I described it.” His voice was a monotone recitation of facts. “You heard me. You read it. The correct answer is to neutralize the threat.”
For a long moment, Gabriel just looked at him. His expression was unreadable, a marble mask. Then, he did something entirely unexpected. He laughed. It was a short, sharp, utterly humorless sound. “Neutralize the threat. You colossal idiot.” He leaned forward, his eyes blazing. “Do you have any idea what I just did? I descended into a sub-basement of Hell that smells exclusively of burnt hair and regret. I negotiated with three different record-keeping demons who hate me. I then located a demon duke who specializes in psychic mutilation, and I dissolved his corporeal form back into primordial spite.” He was inches from Koen’s face now. “I didn’t do that for a ‘security risk.’ I did that for you. Because someone dared to lay a finger on your mind. Because they tried to take you from me.”
Koen heard the words. They washed over him, failing to soak in. “You fixed it. Now you should fix the rest.”
“There is nothing to fix.” Gabriel’s hand snapped out, not to strike, but to cup Koen’s cheek. His palm was warm, shockingly alive against Koen’s cold skin. “The sickness is gone. The rot was never yours to begin with. What’s left is just you. Tired. Hurt. And so fucking stupid it takes my breath away.”
Koen leaned into the touch, not in comfort, but in defeat. A final testament. “I meant the things I said.”
“No,” Gabriel insisted, his thumb stroking a slow arc over Koen’s cheekbone. “You meant the fear. The fear is real. The rest was just the fear wearing a ugly mask and screaming. I know your fear, Koen. I live with it too. The fear that this is all too good, that you’ll ruin it, that you don’t belong.” He shook his head, a strand of blonde hair falling across his forehead. “You think my hands are clean? I incinerated a being tonight. I un-made him. There’s ash under my nails, too. It’s just a different kind.”
A single, hot tear escaped Koen’s eye, tracing a path through the grime on his face. He hadn’t known he could still produce one. It felt alien.
“I’m not going to smite you,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping to a whisper that vibrated in Koen’s very core. “I’m going to pick you up off this floor. I’m going to clean you up. And then I’m going to put you to bed. And tomorrow, we’re going to start again. Not from where we left off. From here. From this mess.”
Koen wanted to argue. He wanted to curl tighter into the dark. But the will for it was gone, incinerated along with the demon duke. All that remained was a hollowed-out shell, too tired to resist. He gave the slightest, almost imperceptible nod against Gabriel’s hand.
“Okay,” he breathed, the agreement passive, devoid of any true belief.
It was enough. Gabriel moved then, his strength undeniable but carefully applied. He slid his arms under Koen, one behind his back, the other under his knees. He lifted him from the floor as if he weighed nothing. Koen’s head lolled against Gabriel’s shoulder. He caught the scent of his own shampoo on Gabriel’s neck, a mundane detail that felt shatteringly intimate.
Gabriel carried him past the journal, past the dark living room, down the hallway. Koen kept his eyes closed. He was a thing being carried. A problem to be managed. He waited, even now, for the other shoe to drop, for the gentle hands to become instruments of retribution.
They never did. Gabriel laid him on the cool sheets of their bed. The familiar weight of the quilt settled over him. He heard the faucet run in the attached bathroom, the soft sound of a cloth being wrung out. Then Gabriel was back, sitting on the edge of the mattress. The warm, damp cloth passed over Koen’s forehead, his cheeks, his neck. It wiped away the sweat and the grit and the track of the single tear.
No one had done this for him since he was a child. The sheer, unadorned care of the act was a different kind of violence. It broke something loose inside his ribcage.
Gabriel didn’t speak. He just worked methodically, cleaning his partner’s face with the same focused precision he applied to his celestial seals. When he was done, he set the cloth aside. He didn’t leave. He toed off his own shoes and lay down on top of the covers, on his side, facing Koen. He didn’t pull him close. He just stayed there, a solid presence in the dark.
“The thoughts will come back,” Gabriel said, his voice a low rumble in the stillness. “The fear doesn’t just vanish. But next time, you’ll tell me. You’ll say ‘Gabriel, the radio is playing static again.’ And we’ll turn the dial together. Do you understand?”
Koen stared at the ceiling. He understood the instruction. He believed in Gabriel’s resolve. He did not believe in his own ability to comply. He was so tired. He just wanted the silence, or the end.
“Say you understand,” Gabriel prompted, a gentle command.
“I understand,” Koen whispered, because it was easier than resistance.
“Good.” A hand found his under the quilt, fingers threading through his. “Now sleep. I’ll be here.”
And Koen, having no fight left, having agreed to everything asked of him, closed his eyes. He lay there in the dark, waiting for a sleep that wouldn’t come, listening to Gabriel’s steady breathing, and wished, with a quiet, endless fervor, that the angel beside him would just get it over with.