title: I don't think you know (what you think you know baby)
author:
calembourspairing: Gabriel/Chuck
rating/warning: NC-17, time paradoxes, UST, dual hand job
wordcount: ~ 1700
prompt: from
someblazingstar with face-to-face with the man who sold the world.
a/n: Let's pretend that this is waaaay back in the day when Chuck was just a prophet. Thanks to S for the beta ♥
summary: It's probably best if Chuck didn't write this into the next book. The verb tenses alone would make his editor cry.
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His eyes close before his head even hits the pillow, and yet Chuck can feel the pull, the strange direction to his awareness, like someone's taking hold of his head and forcing him to look a certain direction. There's a park and a path, with the crunch of gravel beneath his feet - Who is he? He looks down at his hands... and oh, that's odd, they're actually his.
There's a sign at the side of the path that shows the park name in worn letters, but Chuck doesn't recognize it. He's aware of the sun that lingers overhead in the seamless sky, like some beacon over the trees. When he looks up, Chuck can see the top of a water tower, the town name scrawled along the side. He feels too calm and altogether too detached, walking to the center of the park with a confidence that he hasn't felt in months.
Someone is walking a dog. It's not unusual, but it makes Chuck pause. He glances at his watch and the cracked screen reflects at him. 2:16PM. The date reads Wednesday and Chuck can feel himself reading all these things far too carefully. It occurs to him that maybe he's leaving himself clues to his location, the when and where, so that his past self can know.
Thinking about how this is even possible is far too complicated for a dreaming prophet to handle.
There is someone walking a dog and Chuck moves closer. His hands are clenched in the pockets of his jacket, converses dragging on the lawn. "Hey," he calls out, far too quietly. Clearing his throat, Chuck tries again, a little louder and a little clearer. "Hey!"
The man turns, and oh shit oh fuck Chuck knows that face - knows the curl of the smile and the mischievous hazel eyes, the way they are sharp with amusement that altogether looks too human and feels too old. One eyebrow lifts slightly, head canting to one side as he examines Chuck, and Chuck desperately tries not to squirm under the scrutiny. His confidence wavers.
"You actually showed," Gabriel drawls. He pauses on the path, but the beagle he's walking twines around his legs, sniffing after crickets in the grass.
"I can't believe you're walking a dog," Chuck hears himself say. After he pauses, he makes a nervous sound in the back of his throat and stammers, "I m-mean, that… is a dog, right?" What if it's a person? What if it's someone Chuck knows?
Gabriel laughs at him and favours Chuck with a smugly amused smile. "Wouldn't you like to know. C'mon." With a tug on the leash, Gabriel recaptures the beagle's attention and starts back down the park path. After a belated moment and a tossed glance over his shoulder, Chuck realizes the archangel was talking to him. Not the possibly-a-human dog.
Time smudges in the way that visions and dreams do, with a blur of motion and colour that leaves Chuck at the next point of interest. He and Gabriel sitting on a park bench together. Chuck's finishing off a banana split that's so ridiculous in its construction that he couldn't have possibly asked for it himself. Gabriel's halfway through what looks like a ninja turtle ice pop, and Chuck takes comfort in the way neither of them are talking or looking at each other.
He realizes, then, that the dog is gone. He doesn't want to ask, and Chuck pleads silently with his future self, willing some sort of crazy flashback thing, except if he was already in the future, wouldn't he know how it already went when he saw it in the past? Chuck's still figuring out how that would work when he feels himself ask, “Wh- where’s - ”
“Doggy-sitter,” Gabriel says, snapping his fingers with a movement sudden enough that Chuck jumps.
He wakes up, just for a moment, sees discarded sheets of typed pages, and the wood grain of his desk in his living room. A headache presses in insistent and Chuck winces, lets sleep take him again even if it's some strange porno wrapped in a nineties B-movie.
They're walking again. Chuck's thirsty - ice cream does that to him - and he eyes each water fountain they pass like they hold eternal youth. They're all on Gabriel's side of the path and Chuck slows and ducks behind him when he can't take it anymore, leans over the fountain to gulp water noisily. Chuck can hear Gabriel stopping and turning in front of him, but he's still drinking water. This is where the vision's going to end, he thinks, with Gabriel turning him into a goldfish to flap in the fountain. Maybe he'll be turned into a statue, or maybe a fountain himself - maybe all the fountains in the park are secretly people, and Gabriel is the medusa of summer with his ice cream thirst and high sugar intake.
Gabriel's a respectable distance away when Chuck resurfaces, and he crumbles a little at the bemused look on his face. "What?" Chuck says, and he can't believe he asked it so casually, like he didn't just have a mild panic in the last few seconds, vision or not.
"Looking in your brain is like finding the last cookie in the jar," Gabriel said in that smug way of his, "And then finding out there's another cookie underneath."
Chuck watches himself recoil, edge around Gabriel and continue down the path. He can feel their thoughts in unison this time, wondering - Is this where he divides by zero and I can finally get some sleep?
Gabriel laughs, loud and long like Chuck's surprised him. Considering everyone knows what's going on and when, and who's listening, Chuck thinks he does well not reading too much into it.
-
The next night is Tuesday night and Chuck falls into something he's fairly sure is a dream.
That's being kind to himself. It's a dream. There are hands pushing his jacket off, sliding clever under his shirt and pressing hot over his skin. His eyes are closed, squeezed shut because he's thinking this is too much and the feeling is unfamiliar enough that Chuck doesn't question it being anything other than not real.
It's about damn time, Chuck thinks, opens his mouth to the skin pressed beneath his cheek, fumbles with zippers on a jacket, on the front of someone's jeans. Teeth press into the curve of Chuck's neck and he gasps, works a hand down a pair of boxers (wait what) and curls over what is decidedly, undeniably, someone's hard cock.
"Okay," Chuck says, because that's not what he was expecting. But if he's honest with himself, it's a dream, and he's finally getting off with someone other than his hand in the shower for the first time in a long tme (even if it could be argued that since it's his subconscious, it's practically the same thing). "Fine, less clothes, please."
The clothing doesn't fade away so much as simply vanish. Chuck congratulates himself on being prompt, and opens his eyes to see what else his mind has in store for him.
It's Gabriel, dressed in a smirk and a faint glow to his eyes. He nips at the tip of Chuck's nose when he stares blankly at him, doubts starting to cloud in. He looks around, as if it's suddenly important, and sees the edges of trees and bushes, the red-and-black checkerboard of a blanket that they're lying on in the grass. They're in the park.
"You're going to ruin it," Gabriel says, sounding a little like he was trying not to pout.
Chuck can't help himself, and he should know better by now, but he has his hands on Gabriel's junk and he has to wonder, "Is this a d-"
"You're ruining the moment and a perfectly good hard-on." Gabriel rolls his hips into Chuck's hand, one long shivery slide that reminds Chuck that they are very naked. "If you want lady parts, I can do lady parts."
Chuck's leg hitches over Gabriel's hip, either to keep him close, or to stop him from saying horrifying things like I can do lady parts. He means to say something about not wanting to see Gabriel change shape over top of him, but it comes out like, "I am not knocking up an angel," instead.
Gabriel's response seems tailored to make Chuck's brain explode. "I already have three kids anyway. Lift." He taps Chuck's sprawled leg and fixes it up over his hip to mirror the other. He must hear when Chuck gives up, because he offers a pleased smile, like the kind cats give in cartoons.
Time doesn't blur here, every moment is stuck in Chuck's mind like it's more important than anything, each drag of their skin together matching every shared breath and touch. Chuck twists under Gabriel and can't find a lull to examine his choices, too caught up in sex that's too easy to be real. He's rubbing himself off against the smooth curve of Gabriel's belly, hands tangled in Gabriel's hair, and he breathes in the smell of fresh-cut grass with every gasp into Gabriel's shoulder.
They stay curled together as Gabriel gets them off. His hand curls around their cocks, tight and slick - a perfect vice for them both to work their hips into. Chuck hears himself make a soft noise like a surprised cry, and with his fingers pressing hard into Gabriel's skin, he comes shaking between them. He's too dizzy and loose in his limbs to do much more than watch wide-eyed as Gabriel finishes, a stricken pant tinged with the ringing echo of an angel's voice. Chuck licks the sweat from Gabriel's throat and doesn't think he would've heard it if he didn't have archangels screaming at him in his dreams.
"There," Gabriel murmurs, and Chuck is lying on the grass, staring up at the sky between the trees. He's dressed in his clothes and a dog barks somewhere along the park path. "Got all that?"
Chuck wakes up and it's Wednesday afternoon. He checks his watch and the time reads 1:43PM. He doesn't know where the park is, but he knows for certain that he'll be right on time.
-
Just for fun, the vid containing their theme song.
Click to view
And for my own reference, posted at:
spn_gabriel salt_burn_porn