Fic: Secrets in the Dark (Or: Part Three - Fanboy Sam Has a Plan)
Title: Secrets in the Dark (Or: Part Three - Fanboy Sam Has a Plan)
Author: tawg
Word count: ~ 5,200
Rating: PG
Pairings/characters: Past Balthazar/Castiel, mentions of Sam/Balthazar and Gabriel/Balthazar. General Sam/Cas/Bal-ness.
Notes: Thank you to princess_aleera and rrrowr for enabling me, and hello to everyone getting spammed with my Fallen 'verse tags over on tumblr.
Summary: Sam has a great idea that backfires completely. Except for the parts where it doesn't.
ETA: Now with bonus fanart(!!!) by the lovely mendelian aka wing-hugs. He is a god.
Sam was looking forward to the filming hiatus. Most people on set seemed to be. The first season of Fallen had only been sixteen episodes, so doing a full season for the second seemed to be tapping more energy than people had counted on. For Sam, being his first and only experience working in television, the whole experience had just been a whirlwind. Working on set, even as something lacking in physical labour like doing rewrites, meant long hours and high pressure. They were only getting a two week break, with the set people coming back a few days earlier and the writers working through the halt in shooting, but Sam was dreaming about whole days spent on the couch. Of whole weeks of waking up and falling asleep at the same times every day. A whole two weeks without any night shoots.
“You just be ready for everyone to be grumpy as hell when we get back,” Ellen warned him. “Everyone’s going to be missing all that free time, and we’ll be heading into the hardest stretch.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Second half of the season? That’s where everyone gets sick, people burn out, the actors get all weird and angry, the writers freak out, the executives start panicking about ratings and getting renewed. No one’s gonna want to come back from the break.”
“I’ll want to,” Sam replied. “I love this job.”
Ellen gave Sam a fond look, and a cookie. “No one sane,” she corrected.
Sam double-checked Ellen’s theory with Gabriel, who had his fair share of experience working on shows. “Well, I won’t have a holiday,” the prop-maker replied. “I’ve got things to fix, things to design, things to explode. Here, hold this.”
“No,” Sam replied, pushing Gabriel’s hand and the proffered wax apple away. “But is it like that?”
“Oh sure,” Gabriel replied, as he pulled the wax apple apart and pulled out what looked like a dye pack. “And every little quibble? Gets so much worse.”
“What? How come?”
“Because- here, hold this. For real this time. Because people either spend their break thinking ‘hey, that guy isn’t so bad,’ in which case they’re super disappointed when they get back and learn that, actually, that guy is a total jerk. Or else they spend the break nursing their grudge and they come back meaner and pissier than before.”
Sam leaned away as Gabriel clipped a few small parts to the dye pack, though it failed to explode as he was expecting. “So it’ll be like that here?”
“Oh yeah. It was hard coming back to film this season, you know? Ellen and Jo live together, so they were sick of each other. Becky and Cassie? They were at each other’s throats. And Bal and Cas, woah, that was super awkward.”
“How come?”
Gabriel shrugged, and his next words were muffled by the tiny screwdriver he gripped between his teeth. “Dunno. It was like they’d just forgotten how to be around each other. Wasn’t that bad when we first started.”
Sam turned that over in his mind. “Do you think something happened during the break?”
“No,” Gabriel replied. “I think they just don’t like each other. Can you put your finger on this?”
“That’s so weird,” Sam said, putting his finger on a piece of wire. “They spend so much time working together, you’d think they’d make some kind of effort to be friends.”
“Pfft, not likely.”
“Well, why not? I mean, it’d make coming to work more fun, right?”
Gabriel shrugged again, more focused on his fingers than the conversation. “Why don’t you ask them? One of them probably screwed the other over at some point and they’re both holding a grudge.”
After a moment of thought, Sam decided to lay the cards flat for Gabriel. “Balthazar said there was nothing going on between them.”
Gabriel snorted. “Cas is probably the only person Balthazar doesn’t have something going on with.” Gabriel looked up at Sam then, all golden eyes and content smirk. “But you’ve got personal experience with that, right?”
Sam pulled a face. “Do you?” he challenged.
Gabriel looked back down at his tinkering, a smile on his face. “Oh yeah. Drunken handjobs during a Super Bowl party. I don’t know if it’s a European thing or if he has a sex addiction or what. Now hold these two together, that’s right.”
“And Cas isn’t like that at all,” Sam replied.
“Nah, I think he hates everyone. He’s just weird. They’re too different to get along, really. And they know it so, whatever. They’re not going to willingly meet up and hug it out or whatever. Watch your fingers.”
“Well, that really sucks,” Sam replied.
“It’s the way it is. Not everyone in the world has to like each other. You’d have to lock them in a room together to make them put up with one another.” Sam stared openly at Gabriel. “What?”
“That’s a great idea.”
“Of course it is, it’s one of mine. It’ll never happen though.”
And Sam grinned, and went straight for Gabriel’s pride. “What? You mean that you couldn’t trick them into it?”
“Nothing would come of it,” Gabriel replied. “They’d just sit there all night ignoring each other. You’d need a counsellor or a referee in there with them.”
“Well,” Sam replied airily, “if it’s too hard for you.”
Gabriel glared up at Sam. “Are you challenging me? Me?” Sam smiled, and nodded. “... Alright, but you’re the bait.”
~*~
Sam liked to think that he was friendly to both Balthazar and Castiel. Whenever he had to deliver pages to Balthazar, they would smile, and Balthazar would usually touch Sam’s wrist, holding him in place for a brief exchange about a co-worker, or some recent news. It was friendly, and a little bit flirty, and Sam had come to realise that that was pretty much how Balthazar was. He liked it, and whenever he had to leave quickly he’d make a joke about it. “Got to leave you wanting more, right?” And Balthazar would smile, and tease right back. “I always want more, Sam.” Sam honestly wished that he had even half of Balthazar’s easy confidence.
And Castiel, he was another story. While Balthazar spent his free time being a social butterfly, Castiel usually tucked himself quietly into a corner with a puzzle book and a bottle of water. He was oddly anti-social for an actor, but Sam suspected that it wasn’t exactly intentional. Cas spent most of his time around people with his hands shoved in his pockets and his gaze fixed on something in the distance. It were as though he had a bubble around himself and didn’t know how it had gotten there. Sam poked holes in it in little ways - he’d start the Times crossword and pass it on to Cas when he got stuck. Sam found a battered copy of one of the Twilight books on set. He made a cipher of page and word numbers and stuck it to the front, a ridiculous amount of effort considering the secret message was merely asking Cas if he were a cat person or a dog person. Castiel responded in kind (he was a dog person) and the two of them played a little game of it until Becky took her book back. (Sam also learned that Castiel didn’t watch television, his favourite instrument was the piano, and he liked vegetables more than fruit.)
So, in all honesty, Sam was a pretty good choice to be bait. It was easy enough for Gabriel to rig up a speaker that crackled, and for Sam to say to Balthazar, “Hey, it might be your phone. Want me to put it in your trailer?” (Castiel had a Nokia 3315, which was barely even a mobile phone as far as Sam was concerned, and he always left it in his trailer during shooting.) And it was perfectly normal for Sam to tell Castiel that Chuck wanted to see him in the production office while Gabriel told Balthazar the same thing.
Dean stopped Sam halfway through escorting Castiel to the entrapment point. “Hey, can I grab your phone? Jo wants me to give you her number for the pool marathon.”
“Sure,” Sam replied, shoving his phone at Dean. “I’ll be right back.” Because he had a job to do, damnit. He had to get Castiel and Balthazar to the same place at the same time, and do everything he could to prevent them from flouncing off before Gabriel could lock them in the office together. So Sam didn’t think that it was at all strange for Dean to take his phone rather than just give Jo Sam’s number. Not until two hands shoved him squarely in the back, sending him stumbling into the office after Castiel and Balthazar, and the door slammed shut behind him.
“Oh,” Sam said, as the two actors spun around at the unmistakable sound of a door being locked and then padlocked from the outside. “Crap.”
~*~
As far as master plans went, this was not one of Sam’s finest. It wasn’t his worst (that had been his master plan of getting Ruby to move in with him and Jess so their money would stop getting eaten up by rent. That had been a really fucking bad plan, in retrospect). The production office had two small couches. Castiel was sitting stiffly on one, Balthazar was lounging on the other with his feet up on one armrest and his back against the other. Sam was sitting on a wooden chair that was, possibly, the least comfortable thing to sit on in existence. He was also getting really hungry. He deserved it. It had been his idea to make sure no one had a phone with them, making it impossible to call for help.
Sam decided that he should stop making plans. They always blew up in his face. He snuggled more deeply into his jacket. The production office was heated during shooting, but not out of hours. It would cost too much, battling the Canadian winter when there was no one to keep warm. Sam had his hands tucked up under his armpits. He thought longingly of summer in Lawrence, and reading books in the sun.
“It’s not that cold,” Balthazar snapped, glaring up at the ceiling. “It’s not even snowing.”
“That’s because we’re indoors,” Sam shot back, trying to make his jacket stretch enough to wrap around him two or three times. It stubbornly stayed the same size.
“How can you work in television and not be used to Vancouver weather?” Balthazar replied, his nose wrinkling in distaste.
“I don’t normally spend my evenings locked inside a freaking storage container with carpeting.”
“No, you just make a habit of getting other people into this mess, hmm?”
“Shut up,” Castiel said in a flat, quiet voice. He had his chin cupped in one palm, staring at a blank wall like it was fascinating. Balthazar glared at his costar, but he pressed his lips together and then returned his attention to the ceiling.
Sam slouched down on his chair, glaring at the locked door opposite him. He jiggled one of his legs, trying to keep his body moving enough to keep warm. Why had Dean decided to get a job in Canada of all places? Why had Sam been stupid enough to follow him when everything in his life went to hell and Dean offered him a couch to sleep on? Why had he gotten caught up in all this mess? Sam scowled, and cupped his hands in front of his face, huffing on them.
“Come here,” Castiel said, sounding a little exasperated. When Sam glanced over, Cas was giving him a look so pointed you could use it to skewer fruit. Sam glanced over at Balthazar, who was intently staring at the ceiling with his jaw clenched, and then back to Castiel who was looking perfectly warm in his overcoat and jacket and jumper and probably had a shirt on under that. Sam tried to be strong, and manly, and generate his own body heat. But he’d been sitting on that wooden chair for about three hours. His ass was numb and he couldn’t feel his toes. He gave up, and stiffly scuttled over to Castiel’s couch.
They sat with a good two inches between them but Sam could feel the aura of warmth around Castiel, who had returned to glaring at the wall. He sank down into the couch, tried to relax. They’d be locked in together all night, and the sooner Sam could fall asleep, the sooner he could stop feeling like an awkward awful cold person. He tried to distract himself with story ideas, like Michael and Lucifer trapped together in a space. It would make a good episode, he thought, but Castiel and Balthazar trapped in a space together? It kind of killed any kind of optimism Sam had. It was like they were both quietly angry enough for the fury that rolled off them to kill small animals. Which could be a good thing, given that the couches they were squished onto were as old as dirt and probably had a few surprises living in them. Sam shuddered. Angels and demons and werewolves and witches he could handle. Bedbugs? Not so much.
Castiel noticed Sam’s shudder and looked over at him. Sam pressed himself against his arm of the couch, trying to make his gigantic frame small enough for him to be overlooked. Cas sighed through his nose and stood up, stripping his tan overcoat off. Sam opened his mouth to ask what the hell he was doing, taking his clothes off in a room that must have been somewhere near freezing, but Castiel sat neatly down beside him and draped the coat over their laps. Sam touched one of the worn shoulders. It wasn’t exactly toasty, but it was warm to the touch and he could feel it trapping in the body heat around his thighs.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. Balthazar snorted from his sprawl on the other side of the room, and Castiel didn’t dignify either of them with an answer.
Sam closed his eyes and slouched down until he could lean his head back against the couch. He mentally worked his way through the lyrics of all of his favourite songs. (He’d gotten into a lot of new music when getting into the Fallen fandom, so most of them were already tagged as being Michael songs or Lucifer songs or shipper songs. Sam took a moment with each song to try and find some other value in it, some other person he could apply it to. After reassigning four of Michael’s songs to his dad and three of Lucifer’s songs to himself, Sam noticed an awkward trend and gave up.) He tried to recreate scenes from movies in his head, complete with backgrounds and costumes. He tried to conjugate Spanish verbs, anything to keep himself occupied enough that he wouldn’t notice the tension in the room that was completely his fault.
“Careful,” came Balthazar’s voice. “If you keep thinking that hard you’ll hurt yourself.”
Sam gave up on the Spanish with a sigh. He had change in his pockets. He could count his change and organise the notes and coins into sequences. He always had at least one toonie in his pockets because he liked the two-toned coin. Between the slouch, the awkward angle he needed in order to get his hand into his jeans pocket, and the shitty design of the couch, Sam ended up losing most of his coins between the cushions. He sighed. Great. But he was committed to the great change-counting plan, and shoved Castiel’s coat to one side, twisting around and shoving his hand down between the cushions. Then he paused, stood up, pulled his cushion off the couch.
“What are you doing?” Balthazar asked, as if Sam’s movement was an intentional aggravation.
“It’s a fold-out couch,” Sam replied.
Castiel looked down at the exposed frame and mattress. “We have a bed.” Sam looked at Cas, and raised an eyebrow. Cas stood up, dropped his coat to the floor beside the couch, and helped Sam fold the bed out.
“One blanket,” Sam said, tugging the blanket that had been folded up with the mattress straight. “No pillows.”
“I’ve slept on worse,” Castiel replied, sitting on one side and unlacing his shoes. Sam hesitated, then followed suit, leaning back against the wall and bringing a knee up to his chest. It was perfectly normal, taking you shoes off before lying down to sleep. And then he glanced over at Balthazar, who was watching the two of them intently, sprawled back on the little two seater with his hands laced behind his head, making no attempt to hide the way his eyes roamed over their bodies. Sam flushed and looked away, over to Castiel who had stood up and shrugged his jacket off. Then peeled his jumper off. Then pulled his belt out from the loops of his jeans and untucked his shirt. Sam swallowed thickly.
“What are you doing?”
“The sweat that gets soaked up by your clothes during the day cools with the ambient temperature. It’s better to take of the damp, core layer and then bundle dry layers around you,” Castiel replied, matter-of-factly. Then he dragged his shirt off his shoulders and grabbed the tee he was wearing underneath by the hem, stripping it off in a fluid movement that had Sam staring at the flex and stretch of his back muscles, the handsome angles of his shoulder blades and the curve of his spine as he leaned forwards and shucked his jeans off.
He had a tattoo. That was something that Sam hadn’t known (one of the many things). It was on his right shoulder blade, and Sam could make out a small pair of wings and some elegant script before he realised that he was staring. Sam looked away, looked down at his own socked feet. They were cold, and a little damp. Castiel was probably right about the sweat. Sam counted his layers, cringed, and then sighed. Stripping down and then climbing into bed with Castiel Milton. Sam would have once been willing to give up a kidney for this experience. Well, maybe one of his fingers. Almost definitely a toe. He could feel Balthazar’s eyes on him as he shrugged out of his coat and flannel. He pulled his tee off with awkward movements, his skin going tight with the cold. He pulled the flannel back on and hastily buttoned it up before shoving his jeans down and kicking them off.
Sam grabbed his jacket and clumsily climbed onto the bed, getting under the thin blanket and wriggling about until he had his jacket wrapped around his naked legs. He lay on his side, looking at the back of Castiel’s neck, the blanket pulled up around their shoulders, both of them curving in on themselves. He wondered if Castiel could feel Sam’s breath against the top of his spine. He wondered if Castiel was glaring a hole in the arm of the couch or if he had his eyes closed and his face slack, imitating slumber. Castiel could sleep just about anywhere, Sam had once seen him dozing standing up. Maybe Castiel was already asleep, doing something productive.
And then Sam heard Balthazar stand up, and felt the way Castiel’s body stiffened, and he knew the other man was awake. There was a click as Balthazar turned off the light, plunging them into complete darkness in the windowless trailer. Sam could hear him kicking off his shoes, shrugging off his jacket. The clink of his necklace as he peeled off the tight v-necked shirt he wore. The sound of a leather belt sliding through a steel buckle. Sam squeezed his eyes shut but that just made every sound louder as Balthazar crossed the small room, made the smell of old blanket and worn couch and Castiel more intense as Sam sucked in a breath of cold air. He felt Balthazar sit on the edge of the mattress, feel his way along the boundary and then the lump of Sam’s body before carefully lowering himself down.
Sam wasn’t lying neatly in the middle, not having wanted to crowd Castiel, and that left Balthazar only a small slice of space at Sam’s back. He shuffled closer to Castiel, trying to leave a modest distance between them in the dark, brushing up against Cas and feeling the intoxicating heat from the bare patches of his skin bleeding out into the spaces beneath the blanket. Sam had one arm tucked under his head for a pillow, and the other stretched awkwardly along his side, because if he draped it over his stomach his knuckles would be pressed against Castiel’s back, and given how pissed everyone was with his, and that Cas had been a black belt in judo and had done eight years in the army, and-
And then Balthazar pressed his chest against Sam’s back, grasped Sam’s wrist and draped his arm over Castiel’s waist before cupping his own hand over Sam’s hipbone. “Apologies,” he said in a drily, “but I’m far too pretty to freeze to death.” Castiel huffed a breath out of his nose, probably the closest he came to a disdainful laugh. Balthazar was a wonderful warm weight against Sam’s back, and Castiel was like a man-sized piece of toast pressed to Sam’s chest. Sam made a small, happy noise that sounded far too loud in the dark stillness of the trailer. He could feel Castiel curl in a little on himself, felt the scratch of scruff against flannel as Balthazar nuzzled the space between Sam’s shoulder blades. It was a weird experience, being mostly naked and sharing a bed with people who were incredibly pissed at you and would most likely never speak to you again come morning. Sam licked his lips, and spoke to the darkness.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just want us all to be friends. I figured that if you two couldn’t avoid each other, maybe you’d figure things out. Yell or talk or kiss or whatever.”
There was a long silence, before Balthazar let out a considerate hum. “You know, I’d be up for-”
“Go to sleep,” Castiel said firmly. “Both of you.”
The three of them lay in silence for a long moment, maybe an hour. Sam enjoyed the sensation of being warm, of being wrapped up with other bodies. He’d been sleeping alone since before he’d moved to Canada, and that had been about eighteen months ago. He allowed his mind to drift, to think about Jess, and Ruby. He’d done everything he could to push that whole mess out of his mind but right then, in the dark, bracketed by the subjects of the posters Sam had stuck on the wardrobe of his shitty little apartment, Sam felt removed enough from reality to turn the events over. He had fucked up royally with Jess, and then he’d bounced straight back to Ruby and fucked up all over again. He was probably the least qualified person on the planet to judge anyone else’s relationships. Sam frowned, and ducked his head down until his forehead was pressed against the warm skin of Castiel’s shoulder. Balthazar’s arm tightened momentarily around his waist, and when Sam sucked in a shuddery breath Castiel reached up to gently grasp Sam’s hand with his own fine fingers.
“Sam?” Balthazar asked, his voice warm and close. But Sam didn’t have words, not for this problem.
“What happened to you two?” he asked instead. He swallowed thickly, trying to remove the odd quaver from his voice. “What went wrong?”
Balthazar sighed. “It’s a long, complicated-”
“Balthazar happened,” Castiel cut in.
Balthazar snorted, an indelicate sound that tickled Sam’s back. “Of course, because it’s all my fault.”
“You’re the one-” Castiel started, but he never finished the sentence, cut himself off and bit back the words. Sam felt Balthazar press his face against Sam’s shoulder.
“I wanted to forget that we were fighting all the time,” Balthazar confessed into the cold darkness.
“You slept around,” Castiel replied bluntly.
“You didn’t want a relationship,” Balthazar replied quietly. Castiel made an angry, dismissive sound. “Monogamy isn’t a commitment in and of itself,” Balthazar returned tersely. Sam could feel Balthazar consciously relaxing against his back, one body part at a time, breathing slowly and evenly.
“Imagine this handsome thing,” he said, his lips brushing against Sam’s shirt, a warm series of shapes against his shoulder blade. “Barely into acting but he’s got plenty of method to him. A year out of the army and growing his hair out. He looked ridiculous, but... But.” Balthazar sighed, a small sad noise. “And I wanted him, and then I fell for him. He wasn’t so hard back then. Like an open book. But he was still this boy from the Bible Belt, and he wanted all of the perks with none of the work. And he spent the whole time, the months and months,” Castiel gripped Sam’s hand then, a reflexive jerk against the coming words, “trying to figure out if he was going to leave. If he wanted to go to that neat little life back home. And I just thought... why fight it? He’s not going to risk it all for me. He’s looking for a reason. And I turned enough heads without trying. Why not be loved by someone, just for an evening?”
Sam pressed back against Balthazar, trying to offer some comfort, and Balthazar’s arm slipped around Sam’s waist, under the shirt so that his broad hand sat against Sam’s stomach, hugging him in a way that was completely natural and so aching.
“It wasn’t,” Castiel started haltingly. “It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that,” Balthazar mumbled into Sam’s broad back.
“I was warned about you. People pulled me aside and told me what you were like. And then you had to go and live up to their expectations.”
“You’re the one who should have come with a warning,” Balthazar replied, and Sam couldn’t help but smile at the sulk in his voice.
Sam sighed, pulling Castiel closer and threading one of his legs through Balthazar’s. “You are both so, so stupid.”
“Are you happy?” Castiel asked, a bitter twist to his voice.
“No,” Sam replied. He pressed his nose against Castiel’s neck, dragged it down along the line of his spine. Sam’s voice was soft and slow, his body relaxing into the warmth and dragging his brain along with it. “You both have all of these feelings. Is that why you’re so angry? Because it’s easier?”
Castiel rolled forwards, pressing his face against the thin mattress, curling away from Sam and his awkward questions. Sam ran a hand down the exposed line of skin, shoulder to hip and then back up again, a soothing motion as if Castiel were an animal that needed to be calmed. “I didn’t want any of this,” he said quietly.
“I wanted all of it,” Balthazar sighed, slumped lazily against Sam.
“You’re both liars,” Sam replied, his voice clear in the darkness.
“Go to sleep,” Castiel said, sounding so very tired all of a sudden.
“Sweet dreams,” Balthazar whispered.
Sam thought that he would never sleep, with the new knowledge swimming around his head and his limbs tangled up with Balthazar and Castiel. But he did. He woke up what felt like hours later, some light leaking in under the door, flat on his back with Castiel tucked under one arm and Balthazar curled against Sam’s other side. Balthazar and Castiel’s fingers were entwined, their joined hands resting low on Sam’s stomach. Balthazar was lazily mouthing at Sam’s shoulder, still mostly asleep while Castiel slowly dragged his thumb back and forth across the tanned skin of Sam’s stomach. Sam’s body felt good, was in the resting stage that came before arousal, was ready to get very interested in proceedings should they head in that direction. A sleepy pile of men, lazy and content for the moment. And then there was a click, and a long hum. The sound of the heater coming on. The working day would be starting soon, and Castiel pulled away.
They got dressed awkwardly and silently in the darkness. Sam got halfway into a pair of jeans before realising they were too small for him. Balthazar shuffled back and forth across the room with small steps, looking for his shoes. Castiel cast around the sofa bed for his blazer, which had been pushed to one side during the course of the evening and never seen again. The three of them were mostly dressed when the sounds of a key moving in a padlock filtering through the closed door. Sam blinked as the light to the trailer was switched on from outside, his eyes still protesting as the door was pulled open.
“Hey guys,” Gabriel said brightly. “Sleep well?” Castiel stalked up to the props manager, making Gabriel stumble backwards, and stalked a few more steps forward until he and Gabriel were nose to nose. Sam couldn’t see Castiel’s expression, but he heard the low growl that came from Castiel, and saw the panicked expression that remained on Gabriel’s face as Castiel stalked past him.
“You’ll keep,” Balthazar muttered, knocking Gabriel with his shoulder as he forged on to his own trailer.
Sam just glared at Gabriel, the effect no doubt lessened by his bed hair, rumpled clothes, and mild shivers. “Coffee,” he said. “Now. And then I am going home, and having a bath, and having some goddamned dinner, and-”
“Sam! Sam, there you are!” Becky sagged with relief as she hurried over. “House of El aired a scene last night almost identical to the car scene we’re shooting today, and you need to fix it.”
“Becky, look, I’d love to. But I really need to-”
“Chuck asked for you specifically.” Sam paused. He felt gross, looked like hell, and was honestly considering eating Gabriel if the man didn’t point him towards a pastry in the next thirty seconds. “Wait. Did you sleep here last night?”
“Got locked in,” Sam replied, glaring at Gabriel.
“Happens to the best of us,” Gabriel replied with a smirk.
“Well, get cleaned up and then get over to Chuck, he’s freaking out.” And then Becky was speeding off, her trainers making no sound on the concrete floor.
“Come on,” Gabriel said. “We’ll steal you a shirt from wardrobe and you can get cleaned up in one of the guest trailers.”
“Breakfast?”
“Last I heard Jo was cooking you up something with a lot of bacon.”
Sam nodded, scrubbed at his face, and sucked in a deep breath of clean, morning air. He hadn’t realised how stuffy the office had gotten during the course of the night. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was until the smell of hot breakfast hit him and he nearly drowned in his own saliva. “Alright. Lead on.” Because as much as Sam just wanted to call in sick and crawl home, there was work to be done.
“Any success with Sleazy and Grumpy?” Gabriel asked as he pushed Sam into the wardrobe storage area.
“Nah,” Sam replied, accepting a hooded jumped that looked like it would fit and a t-shirt that would probably be too small. “I guess they just don’t like each other.”
“Told you,” Gabriel replied, giving Sam a what-can-you-do kind of smile. Sam nodded, and kept his mouth shut.
Author: tawg
Word count: ~ 5,200
Rating: PG
Pairings/characters: Past Balthazar/Castiel, mentions of Sam/Balthazar and Gabriel/Balthazar. General Sam/Cas/Bal-ness.
Notes: Thank you to princess_aleera and rrrowr for enabling me, and hello to everyone getting spammed with my Fallen 'verse tags over on tumblr.
Summary: Sam has a great idea that backfires completely. Except for the parts where it doesn't.
ETA: Now with bonus fanart(!!!) by the lovely mendelian aka wing-hugs. He is a god.
Sam was looking forward to the filming hiatus. Most people on set seemed to be. The first season of Fallen had only been sixteen episodes, so doing a full season for the second seemed to be tapping more energy than people had counted on. For Sam, being his first and only experience working in television, the whole experience had just been a whirlwind. Working on set, even as something lacking in physical labour like doing rewrites, meant long hours and high pressure. They were only getting a two week break, with the set people coming back a few days earlier and the writers working through the halt in shooting, but Sam was dreaming about whole days spent on the couch. Of whole weeks of waking up and falling asleep at the same times every day. A whole two weeks without any night shoots.
“You just be ready for everyone to be grumpy as hell when we get back,” Ellen warned him. “Everyone’s going to be missing all that free time, and we’ll be heading into the hardest stretch.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. Second half of the season? That’s where everyone gets sick, people burn out, the actors get all weird and angry, the writers freak out, the executives start panicking about ratings and getting renewed. No one’s gonna want to come back from the break.”
“I’ll want to,” Sam replied. “I love this job.”
Ellen gave Sam a fond look, and a cookie. “No one sane,” she corrected.
Sam double-checked Ellen’s theory with Gabriel, who had his fair share of experience working on shows. “Well, I won’t have a holiday,” the prop-maker replied. “I’ve got things to fix, things to design, things to explode. Here, hold this.”
“No,” Sam replied, pushing Gabriel’s hand and the proffered wax apple away. “But is it like that?”
“Oh sure,” Gabriel replied, as he pulled the wax apple apart and pulled out what looked like a dye pack. “And every little quibble? Gets so much worse.”
“What? How come?”
“Because- here, hold this. For real this time. Because people either spend their break thinking ‘hey, that guy isn’t so bad,’ in which case they’re super disappointed when they get back and learn that, actually, that guy is a total jerk. Or else they spend the break nursing their grudge and they come back meaner and pissier than before.”
Sam leaned away as Gabriel clipped a few small parts to the dye pack, though it failed to explode as he was expecting. “So it’ll be like that here?”
“Oh yeah. It was hard coming back to film this season, you know? Ellen and Jo live together, so they were sick of each other. Becky and Cassie? They were at each other’s throats. And Bal and Cas, woah, that was super awkward.”
“How come?”
Gabriel shrugged, and his next words were muffled by the tiny screwdriver he gripped between his teeth. “Dunno. It was like they’d just forgotten how to be around each other. Wasn’t that bad when we first started.”
Sam turned that over in his mind. “Do you think something happened during the break?”
“No,” Gabriel replied. “I think they just don’t like each other. Can you put your finger on this?”
“That’s so weird,” Sam said, putting his finger on a piece of wire. “They spend so much time working together, you’d think they’d make some kind of effort to be friends.”
“Pfft, not likely.”
“Well, why not? I mean, it’d make coming to work more fun, right?”
Gabriel shrugged again, more focused on his fingers than the conversation. “Why don’t you ask them? One of them probably screwed the other over at some point and they’re both holding a grudge.”
After a moment of thought, Sam decided to lay the cards flat for Gabriel. “Balthazar said there was nothing going on between them.”
Gabriel snorted. “Cas is probably the only person Balthazar doesn’t have something going on with.” Gabriel looked up at Sam then, all golden eyes and content smirk. “But you’ve got personal experience with that, right?”
Sam pulled a face. “Do you?” he challenged.
Gabriel looked back down at his tinkering, a smile on his face. “Oh yeah. Drunken handjobs during a Super Bowl party. I don’t know if it’s a European thing or if he has a sex addiction or what. Now hold these two together, that’s right.”
“And Cas isn’t like that at all,” Sam replied.
“Nah, I think he hates everyone. He’s just weird. They’re too different to get along, really. And they know it so, whatever. They’re not going to willingly meet up and hug it out or whatever. Watch your fingers.”
“Well, that really sucks,” Sam replied.
“It’s the way it is. Not everyone in the world has to like each other. You’d have to lock them in a room together to make them put up with one another.” Sam stared openly at Gabriel. “What?”
“That’s a great idea.”
“Of course it is, it’s one of mine. It’ll never happen though.”
And Sam grinned, and went straight for Gabriel’s pride. “What? You mean that you couldn’t trick them into it?”
“Nothing would come of it,” Gabriel replied. “They’d just sit there all night ignoring each other. You’d need a counsellor or a referee in there with them.”
“Well,” Sam replied airily, “if it’s too hard for you.”
Gabriel glared up at Sam. “Are you challenging me? Me?” Sam smiled, and nodded. “... Alright, but you’re the bait.”
~*~
Sam liked to think that he was friendly to both Balthazar and Castiel. Whenever he had to deliver pages to Balthazar, they would smile, and Balthazar would usually touch Sam’s wrist, holding him in place for a brief exchange about a co-worker, or some recent news. It was friendly, and a little bit flirty, and Sam had come to realise that that was pretty much how Balthazar was. He liked it, and whenever he had to leave quickly he’d make a joke about it. “Got to leave you wanting more, right?” And Balthazar would smile, and tease right back. “I always want more, Sam.” Sam honestly wished that he had even half of Balthazar’s easy confidence.
And Castiel, he was another story. While Balthazar spent his free time being a social butterfly, Castiel usually tucked himself quietly into a corner with a puzzle book and a bottle of water. He was oddly anti-social for an actor, but Sam suspected that it wasn’t exactly intentional. Cas spent most of his time around people with his hands shoved in his pockets and his gaze fixed on something in the distance. It were as though he had a bubble around himself and didn’t know how it had gotten there. Sam poked holes in it in little ways - he’d start the Times crossword and pass it on to Cas when he got stuck. Sam found a battered copy of one of the Twilight books on set. He made a cipher of page and word numbers and stuck it to the front, a ridiculous amount of effort considering the secret message was merely asking Cas if he were a cat person or a dog person. Castiel responded in kind (he was a dog person) and the two of them played a little game of it until Becky took her book back. (Sam also learned that Castiel didn’t watch television, his favourite instrument was the piano, and he liked vegetables more than fruit.)
So, in all honesty, Sam was a pretty good choice to be bait. It was easy enough for Gabriel to rig up a speaker that crackled, and for Sam to say to Balthazar, “Hey, it might be your phone. Want me to put it in your trailer?” (Castiel had a Nokia 3315, which was barely even a mobile phone as far as Sam was concerned, and he always left it in his trailer during shooting.) And it was perfectly normal for Sam to tell Castiel that Chuck wanted to see him in the production office while Gabriel told Balthazar the same thing.
Dean stopped Sam halfway through escorting Castiel to the entrapment point. “Hey, can I grab your phone? Jo wants me to give you her number for the pool marathon.”
“Sure,” Sam replied, shoving his phone at Dean. “I’ll be right back.” Because he had a job to do, damnit. He had to get Castiel and Balthazar to the same place at the same time, and do everything he could to prevent them from flouncing off before Gabriel could lock them in the office together. So Sam didn’t think that it was at all strange for Dean to take his phone rather than just give Jo Sam’s number. Not until two hands shoved him squarely in the back, sending him stumbling into the office after Castiel and Balthazar, and the door slammed shut behind him.
“Oh,” Sam said, as the two actors spun around at the unmistakable sound of a door being locked and then padlocked from the outside. “Crap.”
~*~
As far as master plans went, this was not one of Sam’s finest. It wasn’t his worst (that had been his master plan of getting Ruby to move in with him and Jess so their money would stop getting eaten up by rent. That had been a really fucking bad plan, in retrospect). The production office had two small couches. Castiel was sitting stiffly on one, Balthazar was lounging on the other with his feet up on one armrest and his back against the other. Sam was sitting on a wooden chair that was, possibly, the least comfortable thing to sit on in existence. He was also getting really hungry. He deserved it. It had been his idea to make sure no one had a phone with them, making it impossible to call for help.
Sam decided that he should stop making plans. They always blew up in his face. He snuggled more deeply into his jacket. The production office was heated during shooting, but not out of hours. It would cost too much, battling the Canadian winter when there was no one to keep warm. Sam had his hands tucked up under his armpits. He thought longingly of summer in Lawrence, and reading books in the sun.
“It’s not that cold,” Balthazar snapped, glaring up at the ceiling. “It’s not even snowing.”
“That’s because we’re indoors,” Sam shot back, trying to make his jacket stretch enough to wrap around him two or three times. It stubbornly stayed the same size.
“How can you work in television and not be used to Vancouver weather?” Balthazar replied, his nose wrinkling in distaste.
“I don’t normally spend my evenings locked inside a freaking storage container with carpeting.”
“No, you just make a habit of getting other people into this mess, hmm?”
“Shut up,” Castiel said in a flat, quiet voice. He had his chin cupped in one palm, staring at a blank wall like it was fascinating. Balthazar glared at his costar, but he pressed his lips together and then returned his attention to the ceiling.
Sam slouched down on his chair, glaring at the locked door opposite him. He jiggled one of his legs, trying to keep his body moving enough to keep warm. Why had Dean decided to get a job in Canada of all places? Why had Sam been stupid enough to follow him when everything in his life went to hell and Dean offered him a couch to sleep on? Why had he gotten caught up in all this mess? Sam scowled, and cupped his hands in front of his face, huffing on them.
“Come here,” Castiel said, sounding a little exasperated. When Sam glanced over, Cas was giving him a look so pointed you could use it to skewer fruit. Sam glanced over at Balthazar, who was intently staring at the ceiling with his jaw clenched, and then back to Castiel who was looking perfectly warm in his overcoat and jacket and jumper and probably had a shirt on under that. Sam tried to be strong, and manly, and generate his own body heat. But he’d been sitting on that wooden chair for about three hours. His ass was numb and he couldn’t feel his toes. He gave up, and stiffly scuttled over to Castiel’s couch.
They sat with a good two inches between them but Sam could feel the aura of warmth around Castiel, who had returned to glaring at the wall. He sank down into the couch, tried to relax. They’d be locked in together all night, and the sooner Sam could fall asleep, the sooner he could stop feeling like an awkward awful cold person. He tried to distract himself with story ideas, like Michael and Lucifer trapped together in a space. It would make a good episode, he thought, but Castiel and Balthazar trapped in a space together? It kind of killed any kind of optimism Sam had. It was like they were both quietly angry enough for the fury that rolled off them to kill small animals. Which could be a good thing, given that the couches they were squished onto were as old as dirt and probably had a few surprises living in them. Sam shuddered. Angels and demons and werewolves and witches he could handle. Bedbugs? Not so much.
Castiel noticed Sam’s shudder and looked over at him. Sam pressed himself against his arm of the couch, trying to make his gigantic frame small enough for him to be overlooked. Cas sighed through his nose and stood up, stripping his tan overcoat off. Sam opened his mouth to ask what the hell he was doing, taking his clothes off in a room that must have been somewhere near freezing, but Castiel sat neatly down beside him and draped the coat over their laps. Sam touched one of the worn shoulders. It wasn’t exactly toasty, but it was warm to the touch and he could feel it trapping in the body heat around his thighs.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. Balthazar snorted from his sprawl on the other side of the room, and Castiel didn’t dignify either of them with an answer.
Sam closed his eyes and slouched down until he could lean his head back against the couch. He mentally worked his way through the lyrics of all of his favourite songs. (He’d gotten into a lot of new music when getting into the Fallen fandom, so most of them were already tagged as being Michael songs or Lucifer songs or shipper songs. Sam took a moment with each song to try and find some other value in it, some other person he could apply it to. After reassigning four of Michael’s songs to his dad and three of Lucifer’s songs to himself, Sam noticed an awkward trend and gave up.) He tried to recreate scenes from movies in his head, complete with backgrounds and costumes. He tried to conjugate Spanish verbs, anything to keep himself occupied enough that he wouldn’t notice the tension in the room that was completely his fault.
“Careful,” came Balthazar’s voice. “If you keep thinking that hard you’ll hurt yourself.”
Sam gave up on the Spanish with a sigh. He had change in his pockets. He could count his change and organise the notes and coins into sequences. He always had at least one toonie in his pockets because he liked the two-toned coin. Between the slouch, the awkward angle he needed in order to get his hand into his jeans pocket, and the shitty design of the couch, Sam ended up losing most of his coins between the cushions. He sighed. Great. But he was committed to the great change-counting plan, and shoved Castiel’s coat to one side, twisting around and shoving his hand down between the cushions. Then he paused, stood up, pulled his cushion off the couch.
“What are you doing?” Balthazar asked, as if Sam’s movement was an intentional aggravation.
“It’s a fold-out couch,” Sam replied.
Castiel looked down at the exposed frame and mattress. “We have a bed.” Sam looked at Cas, and raised an eyebrow. Cas stood up, dropped his coat to the floor beside the couch, and helped Sam fold the bed out.
“One blanket,” Sam said, tugging the blanket that had been folded up with the mattress straight. “No pillows.”
“I’ve slept on worse,” Castiel replied, sitting on one side and unlacing his shoes. Sam hesitated, then followed suit, leaning back against the wall and bringing a knee up to his chest. It was perfectly normal, taking you shoes off before lying down to sleep. And then he glanced over at Balthazar, who was watching the two of them intently, sprawled back on the little two seater with his hands laced behind his head, making no attempt to hide the way his eyes roamed over their bodies. Sam flushed and looked away, over to Castiel who had stood up and shrugged his jacket off. Then peeled his jumper off. Then pulled his belt out from the loops of his jeans and untucked his shirt. Sam swallowed thickly.
“What are you doing?”
“The sweat that gets soaked up by your clothes during the day cools with the ambient temperature. It’s better to take of the damp, core layer and then bundle dry layers around you,” Castiel replied, matter-of-factly. Then he dragged his shirt off his shoulders and grabbed the tee he was wearing underneath by the hem, stripping it off in a fluid movement that had Sam staring at the flex and stretch of his back muscles, the handsome angles of his shoulder blades and the curve of his spine as he leaned forwards and shucked his jeans off.
He had a tattoo. That was something that Sam hadn’t known (one of the many things). It was on his right shoulder blade, and Sam could make out a small pair of wings and some elegant script before he realised that he was staring. Sam looked away, looked down at his own socked feet. They were cold, and a little damp. Castiel was probably right about the sweat. Sam counted his layers, cringed, and then sighed. Stripping down and then climbing into bed with Castiel Milton. Sam would have once been willing to give up a kidney for this experience. Well, maybe one of his fingers. Almost definitely a toe. He could feel Balthazar’s eyes on him as he shrugged out of his coat and flannel. He pulled his tee off with awkward movements, his skin going tight with the cold. He pulled the flannel back on and hastily buttoned it up before shoving his jeans down and kicking them off.
Sam grabbed his jacket and clumsily climbed onto the bed, getting under the thin blanket and wriggling about until he had his jacket wrapped around his naked legs. He lay on his side, looking at the back of Castiel’s neck, the blanket pulled up around their shoulders, both of them curving in on themselves. He wondered if Castiel could feel Sam’s breath against the top of his spine. He wondered if Castiel was glaring a hole in the arm of the couch or if he had his eyes closed and his face slack, imitating slumber. Castiel could sleep just about anywhere, Sam had once seen him dozing standing up. Maybe Castiel was already asleep, doing something productive.
And then Sam heard Balthazar stand up, and felt the way Castiel’s body stiffened, and he knew the other man was awake. There was a click as Balthazar turned off the light, plunging them into complete darkness in the windowless trailer. Sam could hear him kicking off his shoes, shrugging off his jacket. The clink of his necklace as he peeled off the tight v-necked shirt he wore. The sound of a leather belt sliding through a steel buckle. Sam squeezed his eyes shut but that just made every sound louder as Balthazar crossed the small room, made the smell of old blanket and worn couch and Castiel more intense as Sam sucked in a breath of cold air. He felt Balthazar sit on the edge of the mattress, feel his way along the boundary and then the lump of Sam’s body before carefully lowering himself down.
Sam wasn’t lying neatly in the middle, not having wanted to crowd Castiel, and that left Balthazar only a small slice of space at Sam’s back. He shuffled closer to Castiel, trying to leave a modest distance between them in the dark, brushing up against Cas and feeling the intoxicating heat from the bare patches of his skin bleeding out into the spaces beneath the blanket. Sam had one arm tucked under his head for a pillow, and the other stretched awkwardly along his side, because if he draped it over his stomach his knuckles would be pressed against Castiel’s back, and given how pissed everyone was with his, and that Cas had been a black belt in judo and had done eight years in the army, and-
And then Balthazar pressed his chest against Sam’s back, grasped Sam’s wrist and draped his arm over Castiel’s waist before cupping his own hand over Sam’s hipbone. “Apologies,” he said in a drily, “but I’m far too pretty to freeze to death.” Castiel huffed a breath out of his nose, probably the closest he came to a disdainful laugh. Balthazar was a wonderful warm weight against Sam’s back, and Castiel was like a man-sized piece of toast pressed to Sam’s chest. Sam made a small, happy noise that sounded far too loud in the dark stillness of the trailer. He could feel Castiel curl in a little on himself, felt the scratch of scruff against flannel as Balthazar nuzzled the space between Sam’s shoulder blades. It was a weird experience, being mostly naked and sharing a bed with people who were incredibly pissed at you and would most likely never speak to you again come morning. Sam licked his lips, and spoke to the darkness.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just want us all to be friends. I figured that if you two couldn’t avoid each other, maybe you’d figure things out. Yell or talk or kiss or whatever.”
There was a long silence, before Balthazar let out a considerate hum. “You know, I’d be up for-”
“Go to sleep,” Castiel said firmly. “Both of you.”
The three of them lay in silence for a long moment, maybe an hour. Sam enjoyed the sensation of being warm, of being wrapped up with other bodies. He’d been sleeping alone since before he’d moved to Canada, and that had been about eighteen months ago. He allowed his mind to drift, to think about Jess, and Ruby. He’d done everything he could to push that whole mess out of his mind but right then, in the dark, bracketed by the subjects of the posters Sam had stuck on the wardrobe of his shitty little apartment, Sam felt removed enough from reality to turn the events over. He had fucked up royally with Jess, and then he’d bounced straight back to Ruby and fucked up all over again. He was probably the least qualified person on the planet to judge anyone else’s relationships. Sam frowned, and ducked his head down until his forehead was pressed against the warm skin of Castiel’s shoulder. Balthazar’s arm tightened momentarily around his waist, and when Sam sucked in a shuddery breath Castiel reached up to gently grasp Sam’s hand with his own fine fingers.
“Sam?” Balthazar asked, his voice warm and close. But Sam didn’t have words, not for this problem.
“What happened to you two?” he asked instead. He swallowed thickly, trying to remove the odd quaver from his voice. “What went wrong?”
Balthazar sighed. “It’s a long, complicated-”
“Balthazar happened,” Castiel cut in.
Balthazar snorted, an indelicate sound that tickled Sam’s back. “Of course, because it’s all my fault.”
“You’re the one-” Castiel started, but he never finished the sentence, cut himself off and bit back the words. Sam felt Balthazar press his face against Sam’s shoulder.
“I wanted to forget that we were fighting all the time,” Balthazar confessed into the cold darkness.
“You slept around,” Castiel replied bluntly.
“You didn’t want a relationship,” Balthazar replied quietly. Castiel made an angry, dismissive sound. “Monogamy isn’t a commitment in and of itself,” Balthazar returned tersely. Sam could feel Balthazar consciously relaxing against his back, one body part at a time, breathing slowly and evenly.
“Imagine this handsome thing,” he said, his lips brushing against Sam’s shirt, a warm series of shapes against his shoulder blade. “Barely into acting but he’s got plenty of method to him. A year out of the army and growing his hair out. He looked ridiculous, but... But.” Balthazar sighed, a small sad noise. “And I wanted him, and then I fell for him. He wasn’t so hard back then. Like an open book. But he was still this boy from the Bible Belt, and he wanted all of the perks with none of the work. And he spent the whole time, the months and months,” Castiel gripped Sam’s hand then, a reflexive jerk against the coming words, “trying to figure out if he was going to leave. If he wanted to go to that neat little life back home. And I just thought... why fight it? He’s not going to risk it all for me. He’s looking for a reason. And I turned enough heads without trying. Why not be loved by someone, just for an evening?”
Sam pressed back against Balthazar, trying to offer some comfort, and Balthazar’s arm slipped around Sam’s waist, under the shirt so that his broad hand sat against Sam’s stomach, hugging him in a way that was completely natural and so aching.
“It wasn’t,” Castiel started haltingly. “It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that,” Balthazar mumbled into Sam’s broad back.
“I was warned about you. People pulled me aside and told me what you were like. And then you had to go and live up to their expectations.”
“You’re the one who should have come with a warning,” Balthazar replied, and Sam couldn’t help but smile at the sulk in his voice.
Sam sighed, pulling Castiel closer and threading one of his legs through Balthazar’s. “You are both so, so stupid.”
“Are you happy?” Castiel asked, a bitter twist to his voice.
“No,” Sam replied. He pressed his nose against Castiel’s neck, dragged it down along the line of his spine. Sam’s voice was soft and slow, his body relaxing into the warmth and dragging his brain along with it. “You both have all of these feelings. Is that why you’re so angry? Because it’s easier?”
Castiel rolled forwards, pressing his face against the thin mattress, curling away from Sam and his awkward questions. Sam ran a hand down the exposed line of skin, shoulder to hip and then back up again, a soothing motion as if Castiel were an animal that needed to be calmed. “I didn’t want any of this,” he said quietly.
“I wanted all of it,” Balthazar sighed, slumped lazily against Sam.
“You’re both liars,” Sam replied, his voice clear in the darkness.
“Go to sleep,” Castiel said, sounding so very tired all of a sudden.
“Sweet dreams,” Balthazar whispered.
Sam thought that he would never sleep, with the new knowledge swimming around his head and his limbs tangled up with Balthazar and Castiel. But he did. He woke up what felt like hours later, some light leaking in under the door, flat on his back with Castiel tucked under one arm and Balthazar curled against Sam’s other side. Balthazar and Castiel’s fingers were entwined, their joined hands resting low on Sam’s stomach. Balthazar was lazily mouthing at Sam’s shoulder, still mostly asleep while Castiel slowly dragged his thumb back and forth across the tanned skin of Sam’s stomach. Sam’s body felt good, was in the resting stage that came before arousal, was ready to get very interested in proceedings should they head in that direction. A sleepy pile of men, lazy and content for the moment. And then there was a click, and a long hum. The sound of the heater coming on. The working day would be starting soon, and Castiel pulled away.
They got dressed awkwardly and silently in the darkness. Sam got halfway into a pair of jeans before realising they were too small for him. Balthazar shuffled back and forth across the room with small steps, looking for his shoes. Castiel cast around the sofa bed for his blazer, which had been pushed to one side during the course of the evening and never seen again. The three of them were mostly dressed when the sounds of a key moving in a padlock filtering through the closed door. Sam blinked as the light to the trailer was switched on from outside, his eyes still protesting as the door was pulled open.
“Hey guys,” Gabriel said brightly. “Sleep well?” Castiel stalked up to the props manager, making Gabriel stumble backwards, and stalked a few more steps forward until he and Gabriel were nose to nose. Sam couldn’t see Castiel’s expression, but he heard the low growl that came from Castiel, and saw the panicked expression that remained on Gabriel’s face as Castiel stalked past him.
“You’ll keep,” Balthazar muttered, knocking Gabriel with his shoulder as he forged on to his own trailer.
Sam just glared at Gabriel, the effect no doubt lessened by his bed hair, rumpled clothes, and mild shivers. “Coffee,” he said. “Now. And then I am going home, and having a bath, and having some goddamned dinner, and-”
“Sam! Sam, there you are!” Becky sagged with relief as she hurried over. “House of El aired a scene last night almost identical to the car scene we’re shooting today, and you need to fix it.”
“Becky, look, I’d love to. But I really need to-”
“Chuck asked for you specifically.” Sam paused. He felt gross, looked like hell, and was honestly considering eating Gabriel if the man didn’t point him towards a pastry in the next thirty seconds. “Wait. Did you sleep here last night?”
“Got locked in,” Sam replied, glaring at Gabriel.
“Happens to the best of us,” Gabriel replied with a smirk.
“Well, get cleaned up and then get over to Chuck, he’s freaking out.” And then Becky was speeding off, her trainers making no sound on the concrete floor.
“Come on,” Gabriel said. “We’ll steal you a shirt from wardrobe and you can get cleaned up in one of the guest trailers.”
“Breakfast?”
“Last I heard Jo was cooking you up something with a lot of bacon.”
Sam nodded, scrubbed at his face, and sucked in a deep breath of clean, morning air. He hadn’t realised how stuffy the office had gotten during the course of the night. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was until the smell of hot breakfast hit him and he nearly drowned in his own saliva. “Alright. Lead on.” Because as much as Sam just wanted to call in sick and crawl home, there was work to be done.
“Any success with Sleazy and Grumpy?” Gabriel asked as he pushed Sam into the wardrobe storage area.
“Nah,” Sam replied, accepting a hooded jumped that looked like it would fit and a t-shirt that would probably be too small. “I guess they just don’t like each other.”
“Told you,” Gabriel replied, giving Sam a what-can-you-do kind of smile. Sam nodded, and kept his mouth shut.