Gabriel awoke to a sound that greatly resembled someone flushing marbles down a toilet. Blinking back the rush of hang-over gremlins that threw themselves to the front of his brain, he looked around himself. He was in his Neitherworld villa, in his bed, with a couple of very naked, very attractive young ladies he couldn't remember conjuring up, meeting, or even being introduced to.
This all seemed fairly standard.
The gurgling, hacking, crunching sound, however, was not.
Beetlejuice stumbled through from the ensuite bathroom, sounding like he was not just coughing up a lung, but also fragments of his diaphragm which he was attempting to sculpt into a replica of the Venus De Milo whilst they were still lodged in his oesophagus. Gabriel saw the ghost, in a stained and shabby pair of maroon boxer shorts and a white fest top, and he was not pleased.
"Oh dear God! What the hell are you doing in my bathroom?"
Beetlejuice blinked, partly from the shock of being so dramatically addressed, and partly from the sudden, stabbing pain that raced through his brain.
"Ow."
"What." Gabriel growled, only remaining seated because he wasn't sure exactly how clothed he was at that moment, "The. Hell. Are you doing? In. My. Bathroom."
"I'm using the can." Beetlejuice reciprocated in tone and timbre, "What else does one do in a bathroom?"
"One normal person or one messed up son-of-a-bitch like you?" Gabriel zapped himself into pyjama bottoms and a lounge robe, so he could get out of bed and confront the ghost.
"Calm down, you little closet case." Beej yawned, sending a putrid waft of morning breath across the room. "I was only using your bathroom because the guest one isn't working."
"The... guest one?" Gabriel blinked again, as this time the hang-over demons brought with them a few memories of last night. The gala.
They had gotten blind drunk.
They had gotten lucky.
He had let Beetlejuice use one of the guest rooms.
He made a mental note to clean said guest room. Clean it with fire.
"Man..." The ghost chuckled, rolling his shoulders as he stretched out his arms and neck, walking past Gabriel. "You angels sure know how to drink, huh?"
"Did... did we try to out-drink each other?"
"Uh... yup." Beetlejuice nodded, suddenly wearing his jeans and Hawaiian style magenta shirt. "And then you convinced the stuffed shirts running the gig that they could take bets on who would win. Raise money for their cause or whatever."
"Huh... And... Then we met the girls." Gabriel grinned, the memories returning properly now.
"Well, we met two of them." Beetlejuice nodded, eyeing the bed suspiciously. "A blonde and a redhead. I took the blonde because you didn't like how she'd..." he drew a finger across his throat, grinning wickedly. "May I say, you missed out on a fine one there? She can do tricks like you wouldn't believe."
"Oh, and the redhead..." he strained for the name. Carly? Candy? Something like that, he was sure. Or, then again, maybe it was Imogen? "Yeah, she had a few tricks of her own... So, wait, who's..." He motioned to the brunette, her face obscured by the way she clutched the covers of the bed. Beetlejuice shrugged.
"I didn't see her. Maybe red wanted to spice things up a bit?"
"That... does sound vaguely familiar. Eh." Gabriel shrugged. "If I stop paying attention to her, she'll leave whether I made her up or not."
"A wise decision." Beetlejuice nodded, suddenly holding a bottle of beer. "I think it's time for a little hair of the dog. Want one?"
"No, I'm good."
"Fair enough. Better go see if Blondie's still hangin' around, maybe I can get another round out of her."
"You're disgusting." Gabriel shook his head as Beetlejuice left, smirking to himself. Gabriel sighed, moving towards the bathroom before thinking better of it. He zapped on the extractor fan, and decided he'd wait a while before going in there. Sitting on the bed, more thoughts of the night before began to flick through his mind.
Beetlejuice had said... something. Something that had raised Gabriel's interest... and then Beetlejuice had been so keen to get him off the subject that they had started the drinking competition. What was it?
Something about the Winchesters? No, he would have made a point to remember that.
Something about the Apocalypse-that-wasn't? No, he was pretty sure nothing could surprise him about that any more.
It was... Norway.
Gabriel's eyebrows shot up, as he suddenly recalled the conversation.
"What did that schmuck just call you?" Beetlejuice had snorted, as a ghost in a highly polished suit of armour and a furry helmet had backed off.
"Loki." Gabriel had sighed, finishing his third scotch. "I had a work placement." It was a lie, and an obvious one, but that was all the ghost needed.
"You were Loki? As in, Loki the Norwegian god of mischief?" The ghost had snorted derisively. "Go figure."
Gabriel had thought the conversation would end there, but then the ghost had surprised him. "And here's me thinking you were still tied to the tree."
"The tree? You know Norse myth?"
"Know it? I lived it." Beetlejuice had chuckled at that point, draining his drink. "I've spent more time running up and down the branches of Yggdrasil than most of these losers can comprehend."
"Seriously?" Gabriel had chuckled, incredulously, suddenly very intrigued by the ghost. The ghost had seemed almost embarrassed, glaring into the space around him as if he could drag the words back out of the air. Gabriel was not to be deterred. "You don't seem the type. What were you?"
After a long pause, Beetlejuice had relented, sighing.
"I was one of the first Einherjar to be taken to Valhalla. I was one of the first to be kicked out, too."
Gabriel had found this a hilarious and outlandish statement.
"How do you get kicked out of Valhalla? The place is one big, drunken party."
"Yeah, well, maybe I got kicked out, maybe I left... they booted me down to Hel, and she taught me a thing or too." He had shrugged, grinning wickedly. At this, Gabriel had been stunned into momentary silence.
"Hel?" He had not heard his daughter's name in countless centuries. And now, to be sat at a Neitherworld gala, being told that this poltergeist had known her...
"She taught me everything I know..." Was that wistfulness in Beetlejuice's eye, as he stared into his empty glass? "How to use these powers, how to break the rules... Of course, I was the worst manservant she ever had, but she was looking more for company than decent help, I always thought." Here, Beetlejuice had chuckled, before waving for a waiter. "I guess she takes after you in that respect, huh Gabey?"
And with that, the ghost had convinced Gabriel to drink so much that he had almost forgotten the entire conversation. Almost, but not quite.
Gabriel gazed around his room, watching as the brunette faded from existence. Well, that was one problem solved. He moved into the bathroom, deciding he might feel more tangible if he splashed water onto his face.
It had been a long time since he'd been to Asgard. It was only relatively recently that he had been discovered as Gabriel, true, but once they'd started cracking down on punishing him, he'd slipped away fairly smartish. It figured, though, that in his attempt to avoid Ragnarok, he had only had a couple of centuries before witnessing the start of the apocalypse. Out of the frying pan, into the Judaeo-Christian fire. He stared at himself in the mirror, taking in his bed-hair, his bloodshot eyes, his messy feathers. He had been so intent on returning to heaven, or to the human world... he had not spared a moment's thought for his children, or his other family. Of course, the pagan gods would not speak with him; not after discovering he had been lying to them. Not now they thought him a dead Angel. But...
"Hey, Beej... Beetlejuice!" Gabriel, in a moment's decisiveness, teleported himself to wherever the ghost was. He didn't care what he interrupted; right now he felt this was more important.