Work Text:
Kali, strictly speaking, doesn’t particularly dislike her life.
There’s no reason to, really. She could complain about all silly stereotypes connected to female alphas, but she doesn’t exactly want to – after all, she has always been more than able to prove those idiots wrong when needed, and if seeing them defeated and useless as they are made something warm dance in her chest, good.
So really, all things considered, she is rather content.
She has a job that she enjoys and that pays enough that she could buy a middle-sized European country should she want to, and she has a beautiful apartment in downtown Los Angeles, and she has a Morningstar at her beck and call.
(The last one can be considered both amusing and exasperating, in addition to empowering and simply hot, and it was never intentional. She didn’t know who this guy she had brought home from the club was until the next morning, but he spilled the beans rather willingly and… well. Parts of her family are crazy too, and between Gabriel being completely smitten with her and him not being an active participant in the trade, deciding that him being a Morningstar is hot and not disgusting wasn’t exactly a hardship.
She can’t fix the world and she isn"t a martyr.)
And so, somehow, she ends up seeing Gabriel once or twice a week for the next eighteen months before everything gets complicated and before his family gets to influence her life in any way that isn"t a diamond necklace.
(She can’t help not feeling sorry about Gabriel’s father, and it helps that he doesn’t either. It’s just another silent reassurance between them that he isn"t going to start owning people out of the blue.)
After Gabriel returns from the funeral she isn"t invited to (and thank God for that, she can’t imagine what she would do there, except for accidentally spilling her champagne into Michael and Lucifer Morningstar’s faces), he doesn’t call her for two weeks. She doesn’t really mind – they are still dancing on the sheepish line, and she can’t tell for sure if she is also his girlfriend or only his domme (not that she minds it. If she wanted to be sure, she would have brought it up), and if he needs some time alone to deal with his complex feelings and whatever his father left him, she can tolerate that.
Still, the call is a nice surprise and they agree on getting dinner and that works great, as far as Kali is concerned.
The dinner goes over splendidly, and she pays, and he drives her to his place and she is really looking forward to the night and she had a scene in mind that she thinks he’s going to enjoy so much and-
The omega, truth to be told, catches her by surprise.
She freezes for a second, trying to decide her next move. She can tell the man must be terrified of her, if the smell of badly concealed panic is anything to go by, and that’s disturbing, to be quite frank, because as much as Kali enjoys seeing men trembling before her when they deserve it, and as much she enjoys seeing men on their knees before her when both she and them feel like it, she is annoyingly sure this isn"t the case.
She could ask Gabriel what the hell is this supposed to mean. She should ask him, because if he has decided to take his brother up on the “why don’t you become a monster?” offer, then this whole thing is going to end up extremely soon, and Kali is going to wash her hands off of him, probably after making him bleed a little first. But, quite frankly, she can still smell her own arousal, and she really doesn’t want to explain things to that, clearly terrified, omega while she smells like she wants to fuck him. Not to mention that maybe, just maybe, she should give Gabriel the benefit of doubt and let him bring it up himself, before she (probably metaphorically) crucifies him.
And so she doesn’t call him out just now.
Instead, she takes a better hold of his tie and leads him upstairs and it’s almost easy to forget about the terrified omega one floor down, when Gabriel drops to his knees immediately when they reach the bedroom door, and it’s good they have been doing this together for so long, because damn, but the man knows what gets her going.
-
“You could stay the night,” Gabriel suggests quietly, face pressed into her chest, and purring softly when Kali keeps stroking his hair.
The offer is tempting. She doesn’t really want to drive home right now, and she doesn’t really like the idea of leaving him alone after a scene, even though she has stayed long enough that she is fairly sure he’ll be alright without her.
But, if she stays, she is going to meet the omega in the morning.
Worse, she might meet the omega while he is cooking breakfast for Gabriel like the unpaid labour he is, and he might expect Kali to hurt him, and then Kali might be forced to strangle her date right there and then, and she doesn’t really want to do that just now.
Probably.
And so she kisses him goodnight and sneaks out of the house and tries to ignore the way her hands are shaking and the way she grips the wheel hard enough that her knuckles are white, and she calls Gabriel in the morning and asks him out for dinner on Monday and if he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it.
-
Gabriel looks happy and excited to see her and she almost regrets this evening might end up very abruptly very soon if she doesn’t like his answers.
She leans back against her chair. Takes a sip of wine. Fixes Gabriel with a look.
“I do not support slavery, Gabriel,” she says quietly instead of a hello and his face falls. “And I was very sure we shared this viewpoint. If that’s what you want, go and fuck whoever you want, I don’t care about it – hell, if you want to bring someone in, that’s negotiable. But if you’re fucking that guy against his will, then I need you to delete my number from your phone and don’t be surprised if the door smacks your ass on the way out.”
By the time he’s done hastily explaining herself, she wants to strangle him for slightly different reasons, and she really hates his brother.
-
She makes him promise he’ll introduce her to the omega – Balthazar – soon. She’s fairly sure the guy expects to be forced to become a part of a scene sooner rather than later and she doubts Gabriel will be willing to explain to him it won’t happen.
-
Somehow, they never get to it.
-
She’s curled up in bed, reading and munching on chocolate because she has had a long day and there’s a storm outside and she deserves nice things, damnit, when Gabriel calls her, shaken and completely out of his mind, and rambling about his brother and his slave and removing his collar and Kali is dressed up and in her car before she can even understand what exactly has happened.
She parks her car on the beach, right next to his terrace because she can’t find it in herself to look for the spare garage key and she knocks until he opens the glass door, looking completely dishevelled and drinking wine straight from the bottle and she thinks she should be considerate.
“Why did he make me the monster in all of this?” Gabriel asks her instead of a hello, and Kali dismisses her initial plan of approach.
“I don’t know, maybe because you almost let him get raped, again. I suppose that could do it,” she says, none too gently.
Gabriel throws the bottle against the wall. It doesn’t make Kali flinch, not really, not in between knowing Gabriel wouldn’t hurt her and knowing she could take him if it came to that, but the fact that he resorts to violence, however harmless, tells her a lot about how out of it he is.
“Why do neither of you ever listen?” Gabriel asks her, eyes wild and hands shaking. “I fucking saved him, Kali, so why the fuck am I the bad guy in this? Why couldn’t he just be thankful? Why couldn’t he just be normal?”
Oh, God. This is going to be a long talk. Kali wonders, briefly, if she shouldn’t just send him to bed now, and demand they talk in the morning.
She can’t. Not when her clothes are clinging to her skin, dripping wet even though she just walked from her apartment to her car. Not when the omega is apparently out there, alone and terrified and traumatised. Not when Gabriel is breaking apart right in front of. Between the state she knows Balthazar must be in and the state she can see Gabriel being in, her instincts are going crazy with protect protect protect.
“I am going to need you to sit down and listen to me,” she says quietly. She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t let herself, and it wouldn’t help anyone. She understands that Gabriel is angry with the world because he isn"t ready to be angry with himself, but they don’t have time for that.
“Why? So you can tell me it is all my fault? If it weren’t for me, Balthazar would be fucking dead, you weren’t there, you have no idea what Michael- and now? He’ll do it again, Kali! He’ll come over again and he’ll want to play and I couldn’t – I can’t – I had to send him away, and I freed him, so I don’t know why you’re trying to make me feel bad for saving his fucking life again!”
Kali sighs. Doesn’t even bother to close the door behind her; she doesn’t exactly mind having a visual aid right now.
“You really don’t?” She asks, her voice painfully calm. “God, Gabriel, you’ve just forced a sexually assaulted person into the fucking rain! Alone, without any resources, or money – shut up – or shoes! Excuse me if I don’t find that exactly comforting!”
Gabriel winds around to look at her and for a second, Kali is sure he is going to start yelling at her again. Then he lets his gaze wander behind her, where his expensive rug near the terrace is cheerfully getting wet.
It should terrify her, she thinks, that she knows Gabriel well enough that she can pinpoint the moment his worldview shatters.
“Jesus,” he whispers.
He reaches into his pocket, seemingly on automatic, and pulls out his phone and – oh, damn.
“What are you doing?” she asks, painfully slowly. She’s almost scaring herself, by now.
Gabriel, however, stares at her as if she’s the one completely acting in an unreasonable way.
“What you wanted me to do, obviously!” he says, his voice frantic as he types something into the device. “Goddamnit woman, make up your mind! I’m calling the police – tell them he’s missing so that-“
She moves faster than she expected. She isn"t exactly proud of her next move, but she grabs Gabriel’s phone and throws it against the nearest wall.
The thing breaks with a rattling sound.
“What the fuck?” Gabriel yells.
“You can’t call the police, Gabriel,” she growls. She isn"t exactly proud of that either, but her brain is slowly but surely responding to the scents she has been trying so hard to ignore.
Mint and lemon and arousal and fear and pleasure and pain and sadism and terror and she has never been so thankful for a storm that worries her at the same time.
She inhales the fresh air as though her life depends on it.
She thinks she would be annoyed with herself for having such a strong protective reaction over the scent of an omega’s fear if she wasn’t too disgusted by the vivid proof that there are alphas that find it arousing, and too thankful that she doesn’t belong to them.
“Jeez, can you calm down? And what the fuck you want from me?” Gabriel asks her. “You were angry I let him go and now you’re angry I want the police to find him? Make up your mind, Kali!” He swears. “Please tell me you aren’t saying I should go search for him myself! It ain’t like I can fucking track the collar now after all. Since I freed him. Jesus.”
“No, what I’m saying is that, if you make that phone call, then police won’t be who’s going to search after him, and we both know that.”
For the longest five seconds of Kali’s life, they are both silent.
They are standing in the living room that is slowly but surely getting damp, and they’re both breathing heavily and as if they’ve just ran a marathon and Kali’s head is pounding with protect protect protect that doesn’t make sense and she is exhausted and how can she be the closest thing to protection they both have? She never planned to care this much. She takes a small step closer to the door, closer to the fresh air, closer to sanity.
“What do we do?” Gabriel asks her eventually, his voice suddenly very small, and just for a moment Kali doesn’t feel angry. Just for a moment, she sees through all his bravado and all his devil-may-care attitudes, and she has seen him vulnerable before, countless times, they both enjoy it when he’s vulnerable, for God’s sake, but not like this, never like this, never outside of a scene, never over something that truly matters.
He all but collapses to the ground, sliding to his knees in front of the sofa, and then he curses, and bursts out laughing, hysterically and without a trace of humour, until it shifts into sobs and Kali wishes, almost, he had called her earlier last night, because she would like a word or two with his brother. She wishes, with the same intensity, she had taken that job in Paris when she had the chance.
“Nothing,” she replies. “We do nothing.”
“But-”
“Gabriel,” she says. She doesn’t move from her position near the terrace door. She can’t. Not yet, because the moment she hugs him, she loses all control, and she isn"t ready to lose all control just yet.
Not when he needs her.
Not when Balthazar needs her.
“We do absolutely nothing. We wait. I’ll check the morgues in the morning. Check the auction houses websites and I’ll put his vague description listed as might be interested in, so that I get an email should that happen. We will not do anything if the we includes you, Gabriel. If Michael finds out he’s gone…”
“What have I done,” Gabriel whispers, horrified, and somehow that’s what makes her move and before she knows it, she has crossed the space between them. When she is close enough, he reaches towards her, puts one of his hands on her hip, and pulls her closer, desperate.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice broken, and face buried into her belly where he’s kneeling in front of her and she rests her hand on his shoulder and finds that she has no idea what to tell him, for a second. That it isn"t his fault? It is. That she doesn’t blame him? She does. That Balthazar will be alright? He won’t.
“I know,” is what she ends up saying, in the end. “I know.”
(If they spend the rest of the night like this, with Gabriel breaking apart in her arms, and rain hitting the windows, and Kali’s mind going through all the possible endings, well. It isn"t like she had better plans, anyway.)