Cold Silence
A Oneshot based a little bit before Lucifer fell, taking place at the archangels' dinner table.
Disclaimer- I don't own anything but my own ideas.

There's an impatient tapping at the dinner table. It breaks through the heavy silence that smothers the room. Eyes that had been firmly attached to their plates look up and towards the creator of the noise.

Lucifer sits at the end of the table, a cold smirk on his face and wicked mischief in his eyes. He taps his spoon to the table in a chaotic rhythm.

"Would you stop that!" Michael snaps. Gabriel just rolls his eyes, preparing himself for the upcoming argument.

"No. I don't think I will." Lucifer inspects the nails of his free hand with exaggerated nonchalance. Guaranteed to make Michael want to punch him in the face.

Raphael hides a smile behind a hand. He enjoys the fights between his brothers. He'll always pretend to support Michael but he usually wants Lucifer to win. He just knows better than to make his eldest brother angry at him and just what to do to expand whatever the argument of the hour is.

Gabriel frowns at him, hating the constant fighting. He tries to play peacemaker but chaos was always his element. Usually, anything he tries to say backfires. He can't fix anything. It makes him shrink to shadows and long for the days of the past.

He remembers when Michael and Lucifer were the unbreakable duo. Those days he'd had trouble with just how close they were, he never got attention from them if they were together. He'd have to wait until Michael had a mission of some sort to learn magic from Lucifer. He used to get so annoyed with Lucifer's fixation on Michael and feel so lonely.

Now he'd give anything for them to be able to be in the same room without fighting.

Why did Lucifer always provoke Michael? Why did Michael always rise to the bait?

Gabriel was getting so frustrated that he just wanted to yell at both of them to get along. He composed long rants in his head and wished he could shout some sense into his brothers. However, he never said a word from them. He knew they'd never listen to him. He was pretty sure that they'd get mad at him too and he'd forever lose his already precarious position as neutral ground.

Neutral. Ha. He wasn't neutral, no matter what he pretended to be.

Gabriel was another army entirely. His views were closer to Michael's than Lucifer's but he thought they were both wrong. Michael was nothing but a puppet, not personally believing his own side, and Lucifer was just throwing a tantrum because he couldn't deal with change. Neither of them seemed to get the point of humans or cared. They fought from sheer stubbornness.

Because he knew both of his brothers, Gabriel never voiced his true opinions. He avoided them and their arguments if at all possible. It was much safer for his sanity.

He also stayed far away from Raphael. That particular brother was an inch away from getting punched in the face. Or worse. Gabriel knew how to pull some rather nasty pranks and was sorely tempted to do so. But that wouldn't help anyone, even if it'd make him feel better momentarily. It would just lead to more fighting and more headaches.

"You should follow orders!" Michael was saying and Gabriel almost growled. Did Michael have to bring the Big Argument into everything? Now there was a good chance that this could end badly.

"Like you? Without thinking about anything? Come on Michael! Is this really what you want to get into? Right now?" Lucifer asked coldly, "Because I'd much rather play my music."

"How about those potatoes?" Gabriel interjected brightly, putting a spoonful of the mashed tubers into his mouth.

Silence. Cold silence.

Lucifer looked at his brothers with a blank expression.

Except for Michael. Michael made him rage, made him feel so betrayed, so hurt, so weak... He couldn't under Michael's motivations, why his brother would never stick up for him. For some reason that he couldn't quite understand, he wanted him to hurt. It was confusing.

Lucifer felt sorry for little Gabriel but also wished that brother would help him out. Instead Gabriel seemed to shrink back and hide from the conflict. Lucifer tried to be sympathetic to him, they certainly had no direct quarrel, but his frustration was growing with his little brother. You couldn't hide forever. It was time for him to pick a side.

Raphael just bothered Lucifer to be honest. He hadn't missed that brother's hypocrisy. But since he'd never cared much about him, he wasn't hurt by it. Just annoyed.

So Lucifer continued to poke and prod at Michael, trying to find how far he'd go. Trying to punish the traitor. No matter how much Gabriel was uncomfortable with it.

He banged his spoon on his glass now, adding a chiming to the tapping.

Michael's glare increased. Why couldn't his brother behave? He had been acting like such a brat recently. Lucifer had been completely unreasonable and not doing what he was supposed to. He hated fighting with him but Lucifer had to see the error of his ways! He just couldn't continue acting like that.

It didn't help Michael that none off his other brothers were backing him up like they should be. Raphael tried but he never seemed to get through to Lucifer. In fact, when ever he spoke, the yelling got louder. But maybe it needed to get louder because Lucifer had not seemed to hear him yet. Gabriel was being especially bothersome with him trying to ignore the whole quarrel. Didn't he understand that Lucifer couldn't get away with his behavior? Bringing up potatoes of all things showed how far his previously mischievous brother had sunk. Gabriel couldn't ignore Lucifer's misdeeds forever.

"Lucifer, stop that now." Michael commanded, subconsciously begging his brother to listen to him.

The only response was that the drumming got louder.

Gabriel wondered if he could sneak away from the table.

A\N: This is my first ever Supernatural fic (I discovered this show last month and love it!) and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. For one, I really doubt the archangels even have a dinner table since they don't even eat... Well, besides Gabriel with his sugar addiction... But for some reason I was inspired to write this to try to delve into the complicated relationships of the angels. My own nit-picky tendencies point are going berserk with some points in this story but I think it works. It shows the characters and actually got me to write something. So yay!

So, opinions? Reviews are nice. Very nice in fact.