Angel and Gabriel || The Easter Bunny's Little Helper

[x-velocidad.livejournal.com]

Angel delivers a morning-after-Easter gift to Gabriel.

Angel was humming as she made her way through the halls, stopping and knocking on the door she was looking for. "Deliveryyyyyy," she called, drawing out the last syllable. "Three pounds of chocolate for a one Gabriel Cohuelo!"

After a minute, the door opened, and a bleary-eyed Gabriel stood in front of her clad in boxers and a T-shirt. "Do you have any idea what time it is?" Not that he had any idea what time it is. Somewhere in between the Real Housewives of Somewhere and The Rich Divorcees of Somewhere Else, he'd fallen asleep on the couch. "Come in, come in."

"It's ten in the morning, dude," Angel said brightly as she stepped in, holding up an Easter basket. "Besides, you can't hate me, I come bearing chocolate. And other chocolate-like things that are actually not chocolate at all and aren't even pretending to be chocolate and are alcohol but it's a belated Easter gift so I'm trying to keep up a theme."

"Oh, awesome." Gabriel gestured to the couch while he stepped into his bedroom to retrieve a pair of basketball shorts. "How was your Easter?" He called out.

Angel flopped back on the couch, setting the basket down and digging a piece of candy out of her pocket to munch on. "It was alright. Lots of eating and a couple kids organized an Easter egg hunt on the lawn so that was pretty cool. Yours?"

"Sorta weird." Gabriel exited his bedroom and crossed to the kitchen. "I mean, good, but weird. Miles invited me to dinner with his parents. Easter dinner, with the Moraleses. Very normal and wholesome and... I dunno. Christian." He opened the fridge and pulled out a Diet Coke. "You want anything?"

"Normal?" Angel asked in mock disbelief. "What kind of holiday is normal? That's blasphemy." She was grinning. "Yeah, I'll take a Coke if you've got one."

"Sure." He grabbed a can of Coke out of the fridge and used his powers to appear next to her, placing the Coke on the coffee table. "You know what I mean." Actually, maybe she didn't. It was weird - Angel was his closest friend here, but it's not like Gabriel had totally let her in. "Our lives aren't... we live in a place where boring, ordinary stuff seems kind of extreme now." It wasn't exactly what he'd found disarming about a normal Sunday dinner, but it helped.

"Thanks." She cracked the soda open. "But no, I do get it. It's like a couple years ago when demons attacked the mansion. At that point it was less 'ohmygoddemons!' and more 'Jesus Christ I just finished putting up the Christmas decorations and now you bastards are ruining them' because we all just get so used to the weird crap that happens around here. And then when you see something normal it's like, 'Wait...you mean demons don't crash every holiday? What the hell?'"

"Yeah, well, 's why we drink." He shrugged and opened his can of Diet Coke before plopping onto the couch. Last night's jeans laid in a heap next to his feet, and he kicked them aside. Then, he looked over here, not saying anything for a few seconds. "Molly and the other two - what's-her-name and what's-his-name - come back from fucking Asgard, and it's like..." He shrugged. "Business as usual. I dunno."

"The hotel I was staying in in Vegas was nearly leveled by a frost giant and I'm more worried about the fact that I'd been about to hit a jackpot on the slot machine when it happened." Angel took a long sip of her drink. "Our world is messed up sometimes. If we didn't learn how to roll with it we'd all be in the hospital with liver failure."

"Yeah, and I want to hear more about that, by the way. But first things first..." He reached over her toward the Easter basket in the hopes of liberating some chocolate.

"You want to hear more about liver failure?" Angel asked with a smirk. She knew exactly what he was talking about but she couldn't resist being a smart-ass. "Or did you want to hear more about my almost-jackpot? I still have nightmares when I think about how close I came..."

"Should have set the machine on fire." He grabbed two egg-shaped candies from the basket, then pelted one at her stomach. "Come on, come on. Fire queen. Ice giant. Snow Miser. Heat Miser."

Angel laughed as she grabbed the piece of chocolate he'd thrown at her and unwrapped it, popping it in her mouth. "Fire Queen. I like that." She made a note to see about having her codename changed. "It wasn't as thrilling as it sounds, honestly. I threw a lot of fireballs and made one pass out from heat exhaustion. It's actually really boring when you think about it."

"Okay, yeah, but," he said mid-chew, "still." He grabbed a healthy glug of Coke and swallowed. "Fire queen. Someone should go as a drag version of you for Halloween, all I'm saying. Rhinestone flames."

Angel's eyes lit up a bit at the thought of that. "I can think of three people off the top of my head who could probably be easily bribed into doing that."

"Really? Huh." Gabriel tried to imagine who that'd be. Angelo or his boyfriend didn't figure to be tough sells. Neither did Wade, come to think of it. And Molly'd be easy enough to make up into some kind of RuPaul-meets-Angel sort of thing. "Who do you have that much dirt on? Pass me a Reese's."

"Nah man." Angel grabbed a Reese's out of the basket, tossing it to him. "Gotta keep something under my belt. Some kind of deep dark secret that I can use when I inevitably turn evil."

"There's a reason to trust you." Gabriel ripped the wrapper off.

"Hey at least I'm upfront about it," Angel pointed out. "What would be really evil would be if I tried to hide it."

"That what you tell the kids they're letting you mentor?" Gabriel smirked before taking a bite of the peanut butter egg. "Hoo boy, those poor young minds you're molding."

"They're going to be my minions, didn't you know? I'm going to take them all and use them to help me with world domination."

"Yeah? Xavier know you're planning to indoctrinate the youth like that?" He thought that the question came out with a more judgmental, bitter edge than he'd anticipated, which was less about Angel than other things, but maybe it was all in his mind. "Useful power sets you've got there, though. Bet you're gonna do pretty cool things."

If it was judgmental, Angel took no notice. It was all in good jest, after all. She'd hope Gabriel would know that. "Nah, Xavier doesn't know. If you promise to keep it secret I'll keep you supplied in chocolate for the rest of your life."

"Uh, major deal."