Chapter 6: The Fallen Angel's Bar
The bar was called The Empty, which Dean figured was either profound or profoundly lazy. The place stank of ammonia, cheap beer, and the faint, copper-tinged fear that clung to places where things went to hide. Raziel was at the far end, slumped over a glass of something clear that wasn’t water.
“Let me go first,” Dean said, eyeing the former angel. “He sees you two, he might bolt. Or try to smite something. Not sure what he’s packing now.”
“He packs a liver that’s about to fail,” Chuck muttered, his gaze fixed on his former scribe. The galaxy swirl in his eyes had dimmed to a stormy gray. “And regret. He’s definitely packing that.”
Jesus squeezed Chuck’s shoulder. “Let Dean work.”
Dean adjusted his jacket, the familiar weight of a blade against his ribs a comfort. He approached the bar like he owned it, sliding onto the cracked vinyl stool next to Raziel. He didn’t look at him. He just flagged the bartender, a grizzled man with tattoos climbing his neck.
“Two of whatever he’s having, and a beer for me. Something that doesn’t taste like recycled regret.”
The bartender grunted, poured.
Raziel finally turned his head. His human face was sharp, handsome in a drained, ethereal way, but his eyes were raw. Red-rimmed and blazing with a fury that had nowhere celestial to go.
“You,” he slurred. “The Father’s pet mongrel.”
“Dean,” Dean corrected, pushing one glass toward him. “And you’re the guy drinking bottom-shelf vodka at eleven in the morning. We’ve all hit lows, man. I once got so drunk I tried to exorcise a toaster.”
Raziel stared at the fresh drink. “He sent you to mock me.”
“He sent me to buy you a drink. There’s a difference.” Dean took a long pull of his beer. It was awful. “He feels like crap about it.”
A bitter laugh escaped Raziel. It sounded like glass breaking. “He feels. How novel for Him. I wrote the celestial laws He’s now breaking for you. I inked the cosmic order onto scrolls of light. And now I have to piss every twenty minutes and my back aches from this chair.”
“Mortality’s a bitch,” Dean agreed easily. “The back pain is the worst. Wait till you get a hangover. This?” He tapped Raziel’s glass. “This is nothing. The real punishment hits tomorrow.”
“Why are you here?” Raziel’s voice dropped, losing some of its drunken edge. “To gloat? To recruit me for your… your bizarre trinity?”
Dean swiveled to face him. “I’m here because a pissed-off, knowledgeable ex-angel is a loose end. And in my line of work, loose ends get people killed. You can sit here dissolving your new liver, or you can be useful.”
“Useful.” Raziel spat the word. “To Him?”
“To yourself. You know things. You wrote things. Things are stirring, Raziel. Things that might not like the new management. You think you’re the only one pissed off?”
The former angel’s eyes flickered. He’d thought exactly that. His fall had been so personal, so catastrophic, he hadn’t considered a wider rebellion.
Dean saw the crack. “You want to wallow? Fine. But if there are other angels out there who want to even the score, who do you think they’ll come for first? The big guy, who’s basically a fortress? Or the one He cast out, sitting drunk and alone in a dive?”
The color drained from Raziel’s face. The paranoia of mortality was setting in.
“I can’t protect you,” Dean said, finishing his beer. “But we can. And you can protect us with what you know. It’s not forgiveness. It’s a job. A hunt.”
“I am not a hunter. I am a scribe of the Lord.”
“Were,” Dean said, not unkindly. “Now you’re a guy with a headache and intel. So what’s it gonna be?”
Raziel’s hands shook as he lifted the fresh vodka. He drank it in one go, grimacing. “I don’t want His apologies.”
“He’s not great at giving them. But he’s trying.”
As if on cue, the bar’s door creaked open. Jesus stepped in, the dim, neon light seeming to bend around him. He walked over, ignoring the stares, and placed a hand on Raziel’s shoulder.
Raziel flinched, but didn’t pull away. A tremor went through him.
“Brother,” Jesus said, his voice low, a resonance in it that made the bottles behind the bar hum faintly. “You are not abandoned. You are relocated. The story is being rewritten. Help us write it.”
That did it. The last of Raziel’s resistance crumbled. His pride was immense, but his loneliness was bigger. He gave a stiff, nearly imperceptible nod.
Chuck remained outside, a shadow against the brick wall. When they emerged, Raziel couldn’t meet his eyes.
“There’s a diner three blocks over,” Chuck said, his voice carefully neutral. “Their pie is a lie, but their coffee is effective. We should talk.”
Back in the Garden, the tension didn’t dissolve; it changed form. Raziel had been given a small bower of his own, after sharing everything he knew about disgruntled mid-level angels and the whispers in the celestial ether. He was now sleeping off the vodka and the shock.
Chuck stood at the edge of their clearing, staring into the perpetual twilight. He was rigid, a statue of self-loathing.
“He wouldn’t look at me,” Chuck said, to the air.
“He will,” Jesus replied, coming up behind him. He didn’t touch him, just stood close. “Give him time. Give yourself time.”
“Time is what I have,” Chuck shot back, the bitterness surprising. “An infinite amount of it to remember the look in his eyes when I unmade him.”
Dean walked over, stopping in front of Chuck. He didn’t offer platitudes. He simply took Chuck’s face in his hands, his thumbs rough on the high cheekbones. “You did what you thought you had to. Now we fix it. Together. That’s the job.”
He kissed him then, a hard, claiming press of lips meant to ground, to shock out of the spiral. Chuck gasped into it, his hands flying up to clutch Dean’s wrists.
When Dean broke the kiss, Chuck’s eyes were wide, the galaxies spinning fast. “Dean…”
“No more talking,” Dean said, his voice gravel. “You’re in your head. We need you here.”
Jesus understood. He moved to Chuck’s side, his lips finding the pulse point on Chuck’s throat. His hands worked at the simple ties of Chuck’s tunic, pushing the fabric from his shoulders. The exposure was deliberate, a vulnerability demanded.
Chuck shuddered, a low whine escaping him. He was letting them steer, his infinite power yielding to their mortal direction.
They lowered him to the moss. Dean kissed his way down Chuck’s chest, his beard scraping sensitive skin, while Jesus continued to worship his mouth, his neck, whispering in Aramaic too ancient for Dean to understand. The words weren’t for him anyway; they were a balm on a divine wound.
Dean prepared him with fingers coated in oil that smelled of frankincense, his touch firm and insistent. Chuck arched into it, his breaths coming in short, sharp pants. His usual control was gone, shattered into pure need.
When Dean entered him, it was with a slow, relentless push that made Chuck cry out, his back bowing off the ground. Jesus held him, one hand cradling Chuck’s head, the other splayed across his pounding heart.
Dean set a deep, punishing rhythm, each thrust a silent argument against guilt. You are here. You are with us. This is real. Chuck clutched at Jesus, his fingers digging into his arms, his face a mess of tears and desperate pleasure.
Jesus kissed the tears away. “Let it go,” he murmured against Chuck’s lips. “Give it to us.”
The command undid him. Chuck’s release ripped through him with a force that seemed to dim the Garden’s light for a second. He sobbed, a raw, ugly, human sound of utter surrender as he spilled between their bodies.
The shockwave of it tipped Dean over. He followed, burying his face in Chuck’s neck as he fell, his own groan muffled by skin.
Silence, broken only by the ragged symphony of their breathing and the distant waterfall. They lay entangled, sweat and release cooling on their skin.
Chuck was the first to speak, his voice wrecked. “The diner coffee was terrible.”
Dean barked a laugh, the sound strange and wonderful in the quiet. “Told you the pie was a lie.”
Jesus smiled, tracing the shell of Chuck’s ear. “Raziel mentioned a name. Duma. The angel of silence. He’s been gathering whispers.”
The momentum shifted. The personal grief was acknowledged, momentarily purged. Now, a name. A target.
Dean rolled onto his back, looking up at the first evening stars appearing in the fake sky. “Duma. Okay. What does the angel of silence want?”
“To be heard,” Chuck said, his voice already hardening, the Creator returning to the problem at hand. “They always do.”
They lay there, planning in hushed tones as the Garden darkened around them, three points of heat in the cooling night, bound by touch and a growing list of names.