#maggie took the wrong approach to confronting the demons

[sunderwight]

Thinking about the weird camaraderie that exists between demons but not angels in GO.

Have we ever seen two angels who are actually friends? Or even friendly to one another? We have met angels with a capacity to be friendly in general, but I think the closest we've come to two angels actually getting along would be Gabriel making a point to laugh at Sandalphon's terrible "can't have a war without War" line in S1.

Most scenes between the angels actually seem to have an undercurrent of absolute hostility. Teeth-clenched teamwork. No wonder it took them so long to notice that Aziraphale wasn't on the same page as the rest of them! The rest of them are barely on the same page as one another, either! When Gabriel goes against the majority vote, no one bats an eye at demoting him and wiping his memory. Michael and Uriel immediately begin vying for his job. The only times we've seen angels team up is when they're working together to bully someone else, like when they're trying to intimidate Aziraphale in S1 or going to the aftermath of the bookshop raid in S2.

Saraqael's overall neutrality towards Muriel is the closest we get to two angels in Heaven getting along, and it's more a lack of hostility than any kind of friendliness. At least until Gabriel loses his memories and Muriel shows up to spy on Aziraphale, and Aziraphale decides to be kind to both of them.

Demons, on the other hand, actually seem to form alliances and even friendships among one another. Hastur and Ligur are awful, but Hastur seems genuinely distraught over Ligur's death, not just fearful of suffering the same fate. Shax and Furfur conspire together and even though the 1940's investigation into Crowley's fraternizing doesn't work out for Furfur, it's not due to any double-crossing on Shax's part. Unlike the angels, who stick almost exclusively to making threats until the Metatron decides to try dangling a carrot at the end of the season, demons actually offer rewards to other demons when trying to work together. Beelzebub offers Crowley a promotion if he can bring them Gabriel, Furfur offers to back Shax up politically if she goes for the Duke position opening, and Crowley successfully stalls Hastur in S1 by pretending everything was a test and he's going to be put in charge of a legion as a reward for passing. They're still not great at socializing, but they're significantly ahead of the angels.

Of course, it's a fact that demons are awful to one another (Eric's treatment is really bad, they throw that random demon into holy water just to test it, "it'd be a funny world if demons went around trusting one another", etc) but they still seem more capable of forming friendships than the angels do.

I think that's because Hell cramps and crowds everyone together to try and increase their suffering and hostility, whereas Heaven isolates angels to decrease the odds of questioning or rebellion. Hell's methods are unpleasant, but it still ends up putting demons together, and some of those demons inevitably forge alliances and make friendships. Because as Crowley and Beelzebub demonstrate, demons are still social creatures with the capacity for love and affection, even if it's strongly discouraged and buried under nine million layers of trauma and a cultural mandate against kindness.

Angels are the same, but isolation makes is harder to form connections than overcrowding. Muriel and Jimbriel are both so eager to make friends, but Muriel's spent the past millennia shut in an empty office, and Gabriel has been distanced from his peers both through his position and also through Heaven's culture of fear and surveillance. He only breaks away from it when he finds something that's stronger than "choosing sides" (stronger than the fear of being rejected by Heaven and Falling, in fact strong enough that Falling seems worth it if he gets to be with someone he loves). Both Muriel and Gabriel are only able to start forming connections when they're away from Heaven.

I just think it's interesting that demons, despite being supposedly devoid of love, have an advantage in forming relationships compared to angels. Angels are supposed to love, but have far fewer opportunities to actually do so. Demons aren't supposed to love, but they make connections anyway.

#good omens #ineffable bureaucracy #both angels and demons are suckers for a bit of kindness too #even if they pretend otherwise and even if there are exceptions to the rule #like yeah you're probably not gonna win over the likes of hastur or michael with a nicety #but according to word of god furfur would be highly susceptible to a kind word #and well we see how it is with muriel and jim #i think this is why shax also weirdly toes the line between getting crowley destroyed and being almost-friends with him #that's just how it works in hell when you don't actually despise somebody #you can't be nice to them but you're still also kind of helpful and non-hostile a lot #don't let it interfere with your goals but sure deliver their mail and get their help with your boiler issues why not #maggie took the wrong approach to confronting the demons #if she'd been nice instead of telling them off they wouldn't have known how to handle it i bet #they're USED to being mocked and yelled at #should have given them jim's tray of canapes and offered them tea and stuff #not that I expect anyone to intuit that under the circumstances just that it might have actually held them off a lot longer #bunch of demons sitting outside of a bookshop passing around a tray of tiny little dinners and listening to records playing from inside

[tea-and-cardigans]

Tell Me How You (Really) Feel - Harry x Macy

Read on Ao3

Summary: Harry comes to find Macy after the events of 2x08 to see how she is. Macy confronts him about his kiss with Abigael and things get messy.

Rating : M

Macy can feel the anger building within her, vying for dominance over the overwhelming sadness she feels inside. She paces around her room, trying to reconcile what she has just seen with her own eyes, still difficult to believe. 

 But the tearing feeling in her heart tells her that it is true. She has just seen Harry kissing Abigael in their command center, their supposed Safe Space has been infiltrated by that harpy and she has corrupted what she would have believed was incorruptible. 

 She was glad that she took the walk around the city before returning home as Maggie and Mel were nowhere to be seen when she returned. She didn’t have to face the inevitable questions of what had happened, sure that Maggie, ever the romantic, would want every detail. She wasn’t even sure what she would tell them. 

 She notices then that her hands are shaking by her sides, clenched in two tight fists, that want to unleash the power inside of her clamoring to get out. 

 She wants to hunt her down, consequences be damned and stop her from ever setting foot near her family again. 

 And it is that precise moment that she hears the gentle knock on her door. 

 Had she still had her powers she would slam it right in his face, but instead, she continues to stare at herself in the mirror. Noticing his head duck around her door to see why she hasn’t answered him yet. 

 He edges his way around the door, standing on the edge of her bedroom, still waiting for an invitation to enter. 

 “What do you want Harry?” Macy asks, unable to keep the anger out of her voice, and she sees a look of confusion cross his face. 

 “I,” he pauses, and Macy bites the inside of her cheek the only thing she can do to stifle the rage she wants to unleash on him. 

 “I wanted to see how you were, how Maggie is?” He crosses over the threshold as he speaks and Macy lets out a laugh. 

 “How we are?” her voice is low, as she approaches him, moving behind him to shut the door. Conscious that her two sister’s bedrooms are just down the hall. 

 “Maggie has had her heart torn into two, but she is strong and is going to be okay. She has her family to support her.” She feels the edge cutting into her tone, and he quirks an eyebrow at this. 

 “And you?” he asks, and Macy tries not to focus on the tie undone hanging loose around his neck, the undone buttons of his shirt. The way his hair looks like it has had fingers running through it. 

 Because it has. 

 Only moments ago. By that treacherous little - 

 “I’m fine,” she lies, clenching her fists tighter.

 He gives a nod, turning to leave and she can’t help herself.

 “How’s Abigael?” she asks. 

 He stops his movements, turning to face her. 

 “After her ordeal?” she adds, sarcasm dripping on her words.

 Harry sighs, the same look on his face as at the wedding, “She saved Maggie, Macy. Saved us all from Parker. He was dangerous and -”

 “So you thought you should show her some gratitude,” she says as she advances on him, pushing herself into his personal space, and it makes her stomach turn when she sees that his lips are still swollen and the images that she has been trying so desperately from seeing flood her mind. 

 She watches as the realisation crosses his face. That she knows. 

“How did?”

 “I saw, Harry. I came to talk to you and I saw-” her voice chokes on her words, unable to get them out because she can feel those hot tears start to prickle against her eyes again and she can’t bear it. 

 She turns away from him, her arms wrapping around her body.

 “Macy, I-” he reaches out with his hand, to rest on her shoulder like he has done so many times before and she snatches it out of his reach. 

 “Don’t.” She snarls, briefly wondering whether her eyes have flashed red and that’s the reason he backs away from her. Or could he be feeling something else, regret, concern, she pushes these aside focusing instead on bringing her demon side under control, so that she doesn’t set the whole house on fire. 

 “You’re just a plaything to her. A rare item for her collection.” She spits out to him, her anger no longer just bubbling under the surface. And she knows it’s cruel, the words that leave her lips but there is a part of her that wants to wound him. That wants him to feel even half of what she is. 

 “Perhaps, but at least she wants me.” 

 “She’s killed witches Harry. She tried to kill me. And if you think that she is any kind of victim, you’re deluded and you have put all of us in danger.” 

 “She wanted me Macy, I felt it. When she kissed me.”

 “I don’t need to hear this.” She makes a move toward her bedroom door, ready to get him out of her room. But in a snap his hand is on the crook of her elbow, pulling her back, keeping her in place. 

 “I think you do. I felt something, something primal.” He removes his hand from her, turning to look at his reflection in the mirror in the corner of her room. “I have spent all of this existence with one purpose, being told what to do, what to think, how to act.” He turns away from the mirror to face her and he looks so tired, so… broken, and there is a part of her that feels like she should have noticed sooner. “And now the Elders are gone, my purpose murky and I feel lost. If I’m not a whitelighter, a soldier anymore, what am I? Just an empty shell. An empty vessel that has been filled with parts and pieces.”

 He removes his hand, running it through his hair as he begins to pace around the room. 

 “You don’t want that. You want the real thing. The one with the memories, the one who is bold, charming, selfish enough to see what he wants and take it. So when I felt that, the temptation, that something I thought was lost, was still there, I gave in.”

 “So you'll prove a point by jumping in bed with a demon?” She can’t help the abruptness of her tone, despite the pettiness of it all she wants him to hurt, even a quarter of what she is feeling. 

 “Half-demon,’ he corrected.

 “Like me.”

 “Like you.” And there is a sadness in his voice, as he looks down and Macy wonders if she could be wrong. Whether what she heard those months ago, is still there, that Mel’s words were true, that he might still feel something for her despite his actions to the contrary. 

And it is now or never. If she lets him walk out that door without finally laying all her cards on the table, she’ll regret it. 

 “You’re wrong you know,” she can’t bear to look him in the eyes, “I don’t want him. He was an easier choice. As crazy as that sounds. He made his intentions clear, a mistake I could afford to make.” It was crazy, what she had felt for James, a poor reflection of the man that she wanted. The man that she had been too afraid to want. Knowing that pursuing anything would change everything and whether she could do that again. Open herself up for possible heartbreak. 

 James, or Jimmy, on the other hand, was a guilty pleasure. A mistake that could be made and walked away from. A simple indulgence that would not lead to her heart getting broken as there were no real feelings involved. It was lust. Clear, simple. But with Harry it was something else, something more. 

 She looks up from her hands, meeting his eyes, “And you’re.”

 “I’m what?”

 “You’re Harry. You are the one who has been by my side since we started this journey, even when Mel and Maggie were afraid of what I was, when I was, even consumed by the source you were there. I didn’t want to lose that.”

 He places his hand on her forearm and she let him, his fingers moving slowly over the material of her jumper. 

 “I don’t want Abigael.” 

 Macy can’t help but feel that moment of relief that washes over her. 

 “I wanted what she represented.”

 “Which is?” she asks, hesitantly. Her eyes catching the movement of his hand, moving up her arm to cup her cheek, and with that touch, she can almost feel the demon in her retreat back within herself, dormant for the time being. 

 “Not always doing the right thing.” 

 She doesn’t have time to process his words or their meaning before his lips crash into hers, as his arm wraps around her pulling her flush against him. Her fingers move to his hair, tangling themselves as she tries to pull him closer. Needing him to be as close as humanly possible. Needing to stake her claim on him, to wash every trace that ‘she’ was ever there from his mind, his body. 

 His hands settle on her hips, fingers grasping into the material of her jeans, and she feels as though her skin is on fire and she can’t get enough. 

 They are a tangle of limbs and lips, as they make their way to her bed, clothes falling to the floor. Their lips only briefly disconnecting to pull her sweater from over her head, as his eyes greedily rake over her body.  

 Her lips move over each newly exposed patch of skin as he does the same. Exploring her body until his lips find that spot, the one that has her hips bucking into his and she can feel his arousal against her core, a moan slipping from her lips, at the delicious pressure. 

 “Harry,” she murmurs against his skin, and his hand comes to cup her cheek, staring her in the eyes, as he breathes deeply. A thumb traces over her lips and she moves her hips against him again, her eyes closing as he grinds himself against her. 

 “Please,” she begs as his fingers trail from her cheek to her shoulder, skirting over her stomach, teasing her hip bone as her hips rise, eager for him to continue, impatient at his movements. He smiles at her frustration and just when she is about to tell him to hurry up, his fingers reach their destination and she moans his name again, her nails digging into his back as she feels a pressure building between her legs as he gives her everything that she needs. Everything that she has been desiring, better than anything she could come up within her dreams. 

 It is not long until she finds her release and she barely has time to catch her breath before he enters her. It is soft at first, gentle and loving like she would imagine her Harry to be. Her hand reaches to the back of his neck as she pulls him down, his lips meeting hers in a kiss and when her teeth pull on his bottom lip he groans in response. His hand grips her hip as he holds her in place, his pace becoming more brutal as she murmurs against his lips for more. 

 She wants all of him, she wants the Harry who has sat on her bed and offered her comfort, the one who has been there, who isn’t afraid to challenge her, who is willing to give in to his darkness for her.

 He says her name over and over again, like a prayer, until he stills inside her, his head resting against her shoulder and his heavy breath ghosts against her skin. Her fingers move against his hair, pushing it away from his face as he looks up at her, before pressing a kiss against her lips. 

 And she knows, he is and always be her Harry.

#hacy #hacy fanfiction #harry x macy #rating: m #charmed 2018 #charmed cw #macy vaughn #harry greenwood #confrontation #post ep: 2x08