Gabriel's weight upon Paul was the only thing that kept him grounded, anchored him so that he did not float away into the abyss. It took so long, so achingly long, but Paul managed to come back to himself in bits and pieces.<br/><br/>He found himself wrapped in Gabriel's arms, his soft hands spread wide against Paul's skin, pressing tightly as if he would never let go. There was Gabriel's lips kissing at Paul's tear stained cheeks, lush and soft after such abuse. There was Gabriel's smile, so rare and precious and only ever bared for Paul, like a secret against the world, a hidden wonder, a glimpse of the divine.<br/><br/>Paul could find religion in the curve of Gabriel's smile.<br/><br/>And then Paul was being kissed, and he kissed back with all the small withered parts of himself until he felt whole again, until he felt revived.<br/><br/>"My angel," Paul murmured, the tears now dry and tacky on his cheeks, but he did not bother to wipe them away. He hoped that this was enough. He hoped that he could fill the emptiness that laid in Gabriel's eyes, he hoped that he could save his angel from the grief that had been dredged up today like the rotting corpse of something that should have stayed at the bottom of the ocean, festering and forgotten in the darkness.<br/><br/>Because Gabriel had deserved better than that. He deserved better than this ugly life that had shaped him, had sliced and slashed and carved into him with its blunt, cruel and crude tools. If Paul could make it so, he would have spared Gabriel from all his suffering, would have protected him from everything that had ever hurt him, even if the resulting boy did not become the Gabriel that he knew.<br/><br/>It was not his pain that made him beautiful, he had simply always been. Gabriel was a masterpiece of the old world, when gods were captured in stone and worshipped as they were meant to be. It was the ravages of time and life that had flawed him, had broken him, but even in pieces his beauty endured. He was like the pitted faces of the sphynx and pharohs. Like the limbless Venus, the decapitated Nike of Samothrace. Like the stolen heads of buddha, their serene visage cleaved from their bodies poised in meditation. He was perfection marred by the carelessness and greed of men too stupid to recognize the value of what they've destroyed. They had never deserved Gabriel, and Gabriel deserved better than to be left in ruins.<br/><br/>"Gabriel, my angel," Paul murmured between kisses, and held onto the other as if that alone could keep him safe from the pain of the world. Paul knew that it couldnt, but still he would try for his angel.