asoncalledgabriel | (no subject)

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Gabriel didn't know if he was just engaging in silly superstition, or if he was attempting to connect to things he remembered his family doing, or if he just-- He didn't know.

But for about a month, he'd been leaving things on the edge of a window that went out to the fire escape. It was little pieces of things he got for himself: some bread, cheese, and a bottle of beer, usually. His grandmother left out a saucer of cream religiously, and on Christmas in particular she made sure to leave out porridge with a bit of honey in it. As faithfully Catholic as she was, she'd always say something like it never hurts to have friends whenever Gabriel asked if Jesus would be angry with her for leaving offerings to faerie-folk. Jesus preached kindness, Gabriel Harkin. And don't be telling your mother about this.

He didn't know if Sweeney was really a leprechaun like he said he was, but he'd been thinking about it ever since they met. And whether it was true or it wasn't, the things he left always disappeared. Sometimes he wondered if it was just one of his neighbors, or if a crow had gotten wise and made off with things. But he didn't let himself question it. Somehow that just seemed wrong.

He'd just gotten home from classes and some grocery shopping,and once he had everything put away he ripped off a hunk of the baguette he'd gotten and put it in a plastic bag. He tucked in a few slices of good cheese and a thick slice of honeyed ham. He plucked a bottle of beer out of the six pack he'd just brought and headed to the window to set it out.

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"Have you been really climbing up that escape every time?" he asked as he set everything down on the low coffee table in front of the couch. Hands free, Gabriel pushes his fingers through his hair and tries to take stock of the fact that there is a very tall leprechaun in his living room.

His grandmother would have a fit.

Not sure what else to do with himself, Gabriel went back into the kitchen and got a second bottle of beer. Maybe it would help. Once he had the top off, he offered the bottle opener to Sweeney.

"The fuck else d'you expect me to do?" he asks, taking the bottle opener so he can get the top off his beer. "I'm not fuckin' Spider-Man, lad, I can't scale the damn walls. It'd be a useful fuckin' talent t'have, but it's not one of mine."

There are some who could do it, he's sure of that. Gods who would figure out a way to make it work, those who can fly or who could just bring down the offering to their level, but he's not one of them. What he needs to do is climb the bloody fire escape and take what's been left for him and hope, in some small way, he's in possession of enough luck still to give something back.

If he had his coin, that'd all be a moot fucking point, but he doesn't and so it's not.

"Pardon me, I've not ever seen the comings and goings of leprechauns," he huffed, and he wondered if he ought not be a bit more polite. He was still stunned that Sweeney was there at all.

Gabriel looked down at his bottle. "I'd thought of leaving it somewhere else. On the roof or lower to the ground. But I thought something else would take it if I did that."

Never mind that his grandmother had always put a bowl on the back step of her house, trusting that neither cat nor crow nor dog would trouble it.

Mad Sweeney shrugs at that and says, "Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. Intention's still the same, ain't it?"

It does matter, ultimately, whether or not he receives the offering, but it's not as if he has much luck to give these days anyway. There are times when he feels like a bit of a dick, taking what's being given to him and offering so little in return, but it's been so bloody long since anyone's given him anything at all that he convinces himself it's fine.

It's the belief that matters. The luck can come when he figures this bullshit out.

"So how's your luck then, lad?" he asks with a smirk. "Any difference?"

Gabriel offered a wry smile. "Not sure," he admitted. "We'll see if I pass all my finals, I suppose."

He thought of Neil and he wondered if that was luck or just blind fumbling and not making too much of a mess of things. He still had no idea what he was doing to that end.

"It's not been bad," he added, because that was also true. "Is that your doing, then?" Luck of the Irish sounded like the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, but more than one person had joked about it since he got here. He didn't feel lucky.

"Don't really know," Sweeney admits, then takes a swig of his beer. "Not these days. I do what I can, but without my lucky coin it's all a bit hit and miss."

He does not bad by Greta. And he'd done well by Hild, but she's gone now and he's not sure where that goes. If it goes anywhere at all. Maybe he's keeping it for himself, which isn't the worst thing. He fucking needs it, given just how close he'd come to dying more than a few times since the months since he'd lost the coin.

"I get that coin back, though, and you'll fuckin' know it, lad," he says. The coin isn't coming back. He knows it.

"It's all in a coin, then?" Gabriel lifted his eyebrows, giving the leprechaun a bit of a look over his beer. What was a leprechaun, then? Was that the supposed gold they protected, luck locked in a coin?

He wished now he'd paid more attention to the way his grandmother talked about the little folk. He somehow felt she wouldn't be at all surprised to see one that was seven feet tall.

"It is for me," Mad Sweeney admits with a shrug. Without the coin, he's gotten into shitty situation after shitty situation and there doesn't seem to be a whole hell of a lot he's able to do about it. People around him die, they get hurt and mostly he doesn't much give a shit, because it is what it is. People die one way or the other and it's not his bloody fault Shadow gave his coin to Laura.

"There's a coin and that's where my luck lies and it's gone." He shrugs. "And whether or not that's the end of the story, I don't rightly know. Not yet."

"Is that what makes a leprechaun, then? Someone that's just happened into a lucky coin?" There had to be more to it than that.

Gabriel finally sat down, because standing and staring seemed rude after a point, and he had invited Sweeney in. There was no point in being anything but comfortable.

Edited 2017-12-30 03:19 (UTC)

"Not what I fuckin' said, is it, lad?" Mad Sweeney asks in return, looking at Gabriel. "Said it's where my luck lay, not that it's what made me what I am. You'd have to speak to Mother Church about that, wouldn't you, and I don't much think she's taking requests these days."

When it comes to others, he's never bothered to find out the hows or whys of their existence. Leprechauns are solitary creatures and Sweeney has always found what little connection he's allowed himself in people, not in others like him. It's always been for the best, though, because people like him, fucking gods and the like, they tend to be assholes.

"The making of leprechauns isn't exactly covered in school anymore," Gabriel huffed back. He supposed, though, that wasn't entirely true. He knew the name Sweeney, attached to an ancient king.

"Were you really cursed by a saint? Or is that not true either?"

"No, that bit's true," he says. "Spent a long fuckin' time as a bird because of it."

And it had driven him mad as a result. Looking at himself now, Sweeney doesn't think he's terribly insane, not compared to most folks, but he also knows he's not entirely stable either. Whether it's having been a bird that's done it or the fact that he's still alive after all this time, he doesn't think it much matters.

"That's what happens when a king runs away from battle," he says with a shrug. "They get fuckin' cursed."

"Sounds like something out of the Mabinogion, but I think that was in Welsh."

Not that he'd ever learned Welsh. He'd gotten interested in Arthurian legends at one point and some well-meaning teacher had recommended it to him, perhaps forgetting some of the stories that were in it. To this day he still had fevered dreams about Gwydion and Gilfaethwy.

"Why did you run away?"

Edited 2018-01-06 04:47 (UTC)

"Didn't want t'die, did I?" he says. "But then, who the fuck wants to die?"

There are people who do, people who end their lives, people who find ways to make other folks end them. That's their business, though, Sweeney's never much bought into the mortal sin bullshit and if they're ready to shuffle the fuck off this mortal coil, then they're welcome to it. Hell, more and more often lately, he feels like he might be ready, too. It's been a long life.

"I saw it the night before. Looked into the fire and there it was, my death. So I fucked off."

Gabriel thought of the times he'd considered ending his life, and thought of how quickly he'd put it out of his mind for fear that it would be counted a mortal sin, among the others he felt were piling against him.

"And then you were a bird, and then a-- a leprechaun? Do leprechauns really protect things or is that just a not-right-fairy-story too?"

Sweeney shrugs, looks at his beer and says, "Protect people more than we protect things. Their things come with the territory, I suppose."

And they only receive that protection so long as they remember the offerings, so long as the leprechaun's not forgotten. The moment the offerings dry up, that luck and protective is revoked, replaced with something darker and Mad Sweeney thinks he ought to feel bad about that, but he doesn't. It's what they made him to be, he's only fulfilling the requirements of their stories of him.

They told the stories, after all, passed them down through generations. He only acted as they dictated he must.

"Does that mean the other things I've heard in stories are real, then? All the fairy tales, the things the Church says are just pagan nonsense?"

Gabriel frowned a bit and finally sat down, thinking hard about that. If God and the saints were real, was it a far thing to suppose maybe leprechauns or bean sidhe were? He wasn't sure how long he wanted to dwell on that particular thought, as if his mother would appear from nowhere and box him for even thinking it.

"If someone believes in it, then it's real," Sweeney answers, which is probably not what he wants to hear, but it's the best response he has. The truest answer, too.

"Are y'asking about somethin' in particular?" he asks in return, smirking a little. "Want to know if nymphs were watchin' you from the forest or if a banshee's shriek really foretells of a death or if the selkies must truly stay human when their skins are stolen?"

He pauses, then adds, "Probably, yes and yes, for the record."

"Christ," he breathed, a little dazed by the prospect of nymphs and selkies and bean sidhe all being real somehow. He sank back in his chair, frowning a bit as he considered his beer.

"I just always thought-- I was told none of it was real. I've spent my entire life wanting desperately to be... good. To be enough, to avoid eternal damnation."

"Well, ain't that just a boring fuckin' way of lookin' at life," Sweeney answers. "By whose fuckin' rules d'you play, then? Catholics? Muslims? Fuckin' atheists?"

Eternal damnation is so fucking broad, too. People who are so obsessed with telling kids they have to be good or they'll go to hell tend not to be the best sort of people. At least, that's what Mad Sweeney has found and he's always been an asshole himself.

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