[SPN/Avengers Fusion Fic]: In a Relationship (But It's Complicated) - T - 1/1
A/N: Happy early Martin Luther King day, 
morganoconner. I'd say happy holidays, since I started this for your holiday stocking, but that ship has unfortunately sailed. This is in honor of you and
synnerxx, the only two people I know who write Castiel/Gabriel. I think it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever written (not the pairing, the story), which is saying something, so I'd apologize in advance, but I'm shameless. I only hope it makes you smile. :)
Title: In a Relationship (But It's Complicated)
Disclaimer: I,
ladyknightanka, do not own Supernatural or The Avengers. Be very, very thankful. Please don't replicate my silly work without permission. Pop-culture references aren't mine.
Warnings: T for coarse language, implied sexual content, incest, angelcest, uncensored crack and other things.
Other Notes: ~2800w. Avengers fusion. Thor!Castiel/Loki!Gabriel, Captain America!Sam/Iron Man!Dean and mentions of Superman!Michael/Spiderman!Adam. There might be more someday. God spare us all.
Summary: In which homicidal tendencies are simply a staple of the dating process, the terrible younger generation of superheroes are all juvenile delinquents enthralled by their newfangled technology, and love is a more horrible foe than the worst megalomaniac. Also known as, how to tell when your arch-nemesis is courting a member of your superhero team before anyone dies.
-
In a Relationship (But It's Complicated)
-
It's after the third time the Avengers' mansion has been ransacked, the second time a historical city landmark is defiled by a fake pair of boobs, and the fourth time Iron Man almost loses his life in some horribly humorous way, only that week, that Captain America decides enough is enough.
"A fucking baby," Iron Man grits out, as he polishes drool off his otherwise gleaming gold armor with a dirty rag. It had previously been an unidentifiable acid substance, till Spiderman got back to them via text-message with the negating agent they needed to suppress it. "A baby monster! Who the fuck does that?"
There is a pause. Then, with an inkling of regret in his otherwise passive tone, Castiel says, "Well...Gabriel is the mother of monsters, Dean. I am not certain why you expected otherwise of him." He hasn't spoken since the battle's end, since Captain America grabbed Gabriel by the horns and tossed him off into the distance. Instead, Castiel has been trailing behind them in forlorn silence, his gargantuan wings dredged along the beat up path that leads to their mansion, a shining sword clutched in one fist.
Iron Man - Dean Winchester, genius mechanic, actually - gapes at him. Captain America reaches out a star-spangled hand to help snap the jaw of Dean's helm shut before he can ask about Gabriel's apparent child-bearing abilities. He does it for Dean's own good, because Captain America is really Sam Winchester and Sam Winchester is a good brother. He's read The Prose Edda. Dean will thank him later for halting his inquiries.
"What I don't understand," Sam begins slowly, "is why Gabriel has been acting up. He's always harassed us since the two of you-" He looks now to Castiel, who still seems unperturbed, "-arrived from Heaven, but why the sudden escalation? Nine attacks in one week is a bit much, isn't it?"
Castiel shrugs his shoulders and his wings heave. Dean grumbles, "A bit much? A bit too much!" under his breath. The three men finally stop in front of their mansion's gate. It isn't their mansion at all, to be honest, but the property of one Bobby Singer, who is both the Winchesters' surrogate father and their handler. Though Dean's auto-mechanical innovations have recently put him on the international market, and though Sam is doing very well for himself as a lawyer on the days he actually has time to visit his firm, they can't afford to flash their money around like frivolous billionaires. In fact, Bobby can't, either. If he hadn't inherited his rustic, isolated, warily guarded abode from a dead, paranoid friend, the Avengers probably wouldn't have a home base to work from.
Dean lurches toward the security box on the gate and inserts a code. Immediately, a familiar voice filters through it, surly as ever. "Who is it?" Jo Harvelle, the owner of said surly voice, is less Dean's secretary and more a fellow grease monkey, though her previous experience with her mother's business has come in handy with keeping Dean's disorderly books.
"It's me, Jo," Dean says, leaning one armored shoulder against the gate. Iron impacts on iron.
"What's the password?" Jo asks.
Another clanging sound echoes when Dean clenches a metal gauntlet, but before he can punch a hole through the security box, as he is wont to doing after a particularly vexing reunion with Gabriel, Sam interjects, "Anything Dean can do, Jo can screw better," deadpan because he, unlike his older brother, finds this kind of wit tasteless. A buzz of confirmation rewards his noble sacrifice.
"Ya gotta stop humorin' the little demon," Dean huffs, shoving past him. Castiel, on the other hand, waits for Sam to go ahead, but Sam shakes his head and allows the angel to proceed, though all he wants to do right now is take off his stifling mask, set his heavy shield aside and sleep for fifty years. Castiel nods in thanks and primly enters the mansion after Dean.
The second Sam makes to follow, however, he almost collides with another person - another person hanging upside down by a thin thread of web, whose unmasked face and curious blue eyes are level with Sam's own. "What's up, Cap'n Samerica?" Adam is still in his civie clothes, jeans and a university hoodie that dwarfs him somewhat endearingly. Sam sometimes wonders how Spiderman, his scrawny little half-brother, managed to defend a whole city all by himself prior to his admittance into the Avengers, but Adam assures him he did fine. Then again, Windom, Minnesota's not exactly a hot spot for crime. Maybe a better question would be, why are they called Avengers if John Winchester spawned most of them? Perhaps because Colt's Kids sounds more like a charity organization than a syndicate of superheroes.
Adam cocks a head and his eyebrow at Sam, who scowls. He's too tired for this crap. "You know, Adam, you're going to out me to all of my arch-nemeses if you keep calling me that," he snaps.
Adam whistles, shrill and unimpressed, then uses his web to lower himself close enough to the ground that he can do a ten out of ten flip and stand. It would make a ballerina jealous. "Touchy, touchy. What's got your red, white and blue panties in a bunch?"
"Gabriel," Sam says with a sigh.
Adam shuffles his sneaker-clad feet and replies, "Uh, yeah, sorry I couldn't help out today. Got a final tomorrow, dude, and Gabe's kind of an asshatt, but not too bad, right? Not enough that I have to fail at my non-vigilante life?"
"No, that's fine," Sam answers. He finally pulls off his mask and runs a hand over his sweaty face, carding large fingers through long, limp strands of dark hair. "You really saved our hides with that chemistry stuff, anyway. I'm more worried about why Gabriel has been on a rampage lately. It's like he actually wants to kill us now, rather than just screw around."
Adam stares. Sam blinks back at him. Adam stares even longer, but before Sam can succumb to his pique and slap him upside the head, the younger hero relents with a put upon sigh. "Guess I've gotta show you, then."
"Show me what?" Sam asks. He's only more bemused when his younger brother extracts a phone from his back pocket with one hand, takes Sam's hand by the other, and leads him over to one of the couches in the foyer, comfy enough to swallow them both and still leave ample room once Sam plops down after him.
"This is my facebook," Adam says, proffering a blue and white screencap. Sam's forehead scrunches in affront. He's not Dean or Castiel; he knows what facebook is. "I've got a bunch of friends. Some are people I knew in Windom, some go to the university here with me, and others..." Adam scrolls through a list of tiny icons, but stops on one, which he selects till it zooms. He hands the phone to Sam.
"Is that Gabriel?" Sam cuts in loudly, wide eyes riveted to a familiar, grinning face, pointy headgear and all. "You're friends with our arch-freaking-enemy on facebook?"
"And I follow the guy on twitter, too," Adam says with a glower, as if Sam's interruption is more terrible a transgression than any he could commit. He ignores how Sam works his jaw to continue, "Now, are you done with the potential freak out? Because there's actually more to this story."
Sam sucks in several deep breaths, then nods. It hurts to do, it's so annoying. "Tell me," he replies, teeth bared in a not-quite-smile. Meeting Adam has been a lesson in patience. Sam reminds himself how much he loves to learn. Repeatedly.
Adam taps the screen of his phone again. Gabriel's profile info pops up. There's a lot of intriguing stuff in it that Sam, when he doesn't feel like stomping through the nearest village, will eventually be fascinated by and pick apart analytically. Gabriel calls himself the Pizza Man, claims to work in America's leading porn industry, and is, no surprise, an anarchist, to name a few choice bits of content.
What's really a sucker-punch, however, is a line of text that reads, "In a relationship with Castiel and it's complicated."
"H-he's in a, uh, uh," Sam sputters. Although his mind reels, he's not quite sure what affects him most. He would ask why Castiel seems to have his own facebook, but the little image that bubbles over his angel-friend's name is wearing lipgloss and mascara, so Sam assumes Gabriel has photoshop abilities and leaves it at that. It's better for his sanity. "But they're brothers!" is what he eventually manages.
Adam gives him one of his infamous, you-are-so-dumb looks. The superior gleam in his eyes only brightens with his accompanying smirk. "So are you and Dean," he reminds Sam, "and that doesn't stop you from bunkin' together every other night." It's obvious he's been glutting on this knowledge, hoarding it for the most optimal moment, and Sam flushes a garish red.
"We have nightmares sometimes," he mumbles, more to himself than Adam, who won't quit leering at him. How he can look so baby-faced and innocent, Sam has no idea. "So what does this mean?" he asks, to change the subject.
"They're an alien race of super-powered humanoids with a different set of morals than us," Adam explains. He accepts his phone back from his older brother and tucks it away. It's an advanced piece of technology that one of Dean's foreign associates had gifted all of the Avengers, but Adam is the only one who uses his obsessively. Then again, no one but Adam is a teenager in the group. "Gabriel's actions up until now can be deduced as simple courtship. Lingerie, infants, him redecorating the manor while we were out, it's classic girlfriend 101. In layman's terms, he's mackin' on our angel, dude."
"No," Sam says.
Adam quirks his eyebrows again. "Yes, Sam, and you've gotta talk to Cas. He obviously doesn't know yet. Someone has to clue him in before lover-boy goes too far. Wouldn't want Dean to end up Tybalt in this Romeo and Juliet, wouldja?"
"Then why doesn't Dean do it?" Sam exclaims, gesticulating his arms. If their mansion wasn't so far from the rest of civilization, someone would look through the window and assume two big, muscular flags were billowing in the wind. Or something like that. "He's Castiel's best friend! Or, or, you know, you could talk to him, since you figured it out, smartass!"
"Dean doesn't know what he's feeling, half the time," Adam says, then falters. "And me...I'm a scientist. I made a hypothesis and I supported it, that's all. I'm not good with all that love crap." He sinks back into the sofa cushions behind him and sulks. "I can't even get fucking Michael to call me back. Honorable leader of the Justice League, my ass."
Sam drops his head into his palms. In retrospect, considering his barely suppressed desire to sob into the appendages, it's a pretty tame motion. Superman. Of course Adam's sleeping with Superman. Sam won't broach that with a thousand foot stick, at least yet, so he says, "Uh, I guess I'll talk to Cas."
With a last pat on his baby brother's knee, he starts toward the grand staircase that leads to their personal quarters. Well, he tries and eventually succeeds, but there's an awkward moment when his hand, thanks to the webbing beneath Adam's skin, is stuck to the kid's jeans. Nevertheless, it's hardly something new in the Avenger household and Sam soon extracts himself.
Upstairs, he passes Adam's bedroom, which is closest to the ground floor. It has a skull and crossbones on it, a do not enter sign, and several other childish gimmicks Sam suspects may have caused Michael to rethink a decision Sam never would have wanted him to make in the first place; he's going to challenge Superman to another show of patriotism later, definitely. Not far from Adam's room are his brothers'. Their doors are actually very close, which helps when they want to bunk, as Adam says. Bobby's room is farthest from the steps, nearest to the office floor above, where Jo works. That leaves Castiel's in the center.
There's nothing special about his door, nor the room behind it. Castiel is spartan to a fault, as even the other adults aren't. Dean has bits of metal everywhere, tools, operational manuals, movies no innocent eyes should ever see, and the mullet-rock tapes that he allows to boom even when he's not in. Sam and Bobby have their books, at the very least.
Sam stops at the threshold of Castiel's door and raises a fist to knock. He pauses at the sound he hears behind it, at muted sighs, and wonders if his friend is okay. As his knuckles rap against scuffed wood, he says, "Cas, you all right in there?" and starts to turn the doorknob with his free hand.
"Captain?" Castiel's voice echoes back. There's something urgent beneath his usual aplomb, a new pitch, but Sam ignores it and throws the door open, then gawps. Castiel's armor is piled in the corner. It's armor in the truest sense of the word, comprised of palrands and vambraces and greaves, as one would see on a period warrior, unlike Dean's high-tech contraptions. Sam has never seen Castiel without it, which means... "Hello, Captain," a shirtless Castiel sighs from the bed, his wings hung over either side, large enough that they can brush up against the circling walls.
"Hey, good lookin'," an equally naked Gabriel chirps, from his place atop Castiel, a person-shaped blanket over the taller man. "Hm, I thought you'd have less hair," the trickster barrels on, when Sam doesn't immediately speak.
"I'm...gonna go," Sam says by way of answer, thumbing toward the exit. Before he can carry through, Gabriel sits up. Thankfully, for the sake of Sam's long-suffering sight, the bedsheets are still mostly draped over him and Castiel, leaving nothing but their torsos bare.
"Nah, I should jet," Gabriel replies. It's all quite amicable, too friendly, even. Gabriel snaps his fingers and disappears in a pink puff of strawberry-scented smoke. His armor, heaped next to Castiel's, vanishes with him.
"So..." Castiel stares. It's all too surreal for Sam. They're all in the fucking Twilight Zone, as far as he's concerned. Nothing else makes sense.
"I, uh, I take it you knew his plan all along?" Sam inquires. "That he was, I dunno, seducing you?"
"Not all along," Castiel reveals, the set of his chapped lips contrite. "I will talk to him about his...methods, if that helps?"
"Good," Sam says. It's really the only thing he can say. "I think I'll go play poker with Adam." Or curl into Dean's arms for half a century, till this all stops being so weird, he decidedly doesn't disclose.
Castiel nods like he's relieved. That's relieving in itself. Sam has had his fill of too much information for one lifetime. He doesn't think he could handle another ground-shattering heart-to-heart today. As he makes to retreat, however, he pauses and murmurs, "Cas?"
"Yes, Captain?" the angel responds. Although he and Gabriel are evidently a thing, it's obvious he doesn't want to reveal Sam's identity, in case the trickster hasn't quit invisibly hanging around. Sam is grateful for his restraint. He's a good angel-man-creature.
That's part of the reason why Sam continues, "If Gabriel is...making you happy, you have my blessing. Dean's, too, though he'll bitch about it for a while, and Adam probably wouldn't find this whole thing strange, in the first place."
There's a pause as Castiel mulls over this. Finally, on a exultant breath, he whispers, "Thank you. You don't...you'll likely never know how much that means to me."
Sam nods and makes a hasty escape. Adam has ducked out of the mansion, but Dean is in his room upon Sam's entrance and shoots a grin at the taller man. He sits, donned in only a pair of sweatpants, on the bed.
"Bit early, ain't it?" he laughs.
Sam flops onto the empty space on the mattress beside his older brother. "I had a nightmare, Dean. While awake." His words are muffled into Dean's cotton bedspread.
The eldest Winchester chuckles again, recognizing their cover, and falls back, too. His hand finds Sam's, skin still spotted in some areas by grease from whatever he was working on. "Big bro will make it all better, Sammy," Dean promises, upbeat in a way Sam's satisfied with, that he needs right now. "Believe it or not, I am a superhero."
"I never would have guessed," Sam says, his own smile tugging at his lips. He allows his fingers to interlace with Dean's and relishes in the warmth. At long last, he can take his costume off.
-
The End, Thank Odin
-
A/N: I know, I'm so weird... I had fun, though, so I hope it was at least slightly funny? Maybe? Next time, my next foray into a new pairing, I'll be completely serious, I swear! *shamefaced*
morganoconner. I'd say happy holidays, since I started this for your holiday stocking, but that ship has unfortunately sailed. This is in honor of you and
synnerxx, the only two people I know who write Castiel/Gabriel. I think it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever written (not the pairing, the story), which is saying something, so I'd apologize in advance, but I'm shameless. I only hope it makes you smile. :)
Title: In a Relationship (But It's Complicated)
Disclaimer: I,
ladyknightanka, do not own Supernatural or The Avengers. Be very, very thankful. Please don't replicate my silly work without permission. Pop-culture references aren't mine.
Warnings: T for coarse language, implied sexual content, incest, angelcest, uncensored crack and other things.
Other Notes: ~2800w. Avengers fusion. Thor!Castiel/Loki!Gabriel, Captain America!Sam/Iron Man!Dean and mentions of Superman!Michael/Spiderman!Adam. There might be more someday. God spare us all.
Summary: In which homicidal tendencies are simply a staple of the dating process, the terrible younger generation of superheroes are all juvenile delinquents enthralled by their newfangled technology, and love is a more horrible foe than the worst megalomaniac. Also known as, how to tell when your arch-nemesis is courting a member of your superhero team before anyone dies.
-
In a Relationship (But It's Complicated)
-
It's after the third time the Avengers' mansion has been ransacked, the second time a historical city landmark is defiled by a fake pair of boobs, and the fourth time Iron Man almost loses his life in some horribly humorous way, only that week, that Captain America decides enough is enough.
"A fucking baby," Iron Man grits out, as he polishes drool off his otherwise gleaming gold armor with a dirty rag. It had previously been an unidentifiable acid substance, till Spiderman got back to them via text-message with the negating agent they needed to suppress it. "A baby monster! Who the fuck does that?"
There is a pause. Then, with an inkling of regret in his otherwise passive tone, Castiel says, "Well...Gabriel is the mother of monsters, Dean. I am not certain why you expected otherwise of him." He hasn't spoken since the battle's end, since Captain America grabbed Gabriel by the horns and tossed him off into the distance. Instead, Castiel has been trailing behind them in forlorn silence, his gargantuan wings dredged along the beat up path that leads to their mansion, a shining sword clutched in one fist.
Iron Man - Dean Winchester, genius mechanic, actually - gapes at him. Captain America reaches out a star-spangled hand to help snap the jaw of Dean's helm shut before he can ask about Gabriel's apparent child-bearing abilities. He does it for Dean's own good, because Captain America is really Sam Winchester and Sam Winchester is a good brother. He's read The Prose Edda. Dean will thank him later for halting his inquiries.
"What I don't understand," Sam begins slowly, "is why Gabriel has been acting up. He's always harassed us since the two of you-" He looks now to Castiel, who still seems unperturbed, "-arrived from Heaven, but why the sudden escalation? Nine attacks in one week is a bit much, isn't it?"
Castiel shrugs his shoulders and his wings heave. Dean grumbles, "A bit much? A bit too much!" under his breath. The three men finally stop in front of their mansion's gate. It isn't their mansion at all, to be honest, but the property of one Bobby Singer, who is both the Winchesters' surrogate father and their handler. Though Dean's auto-mechanical innovations have recently put him on the international market, and though Sam is doing very well for himself as a lawyer on the days he actually has time to visit his firm, they can't afford to flash their money around like frivolous billionaires. In fact, Bobby can't, either. If he hadn't inherited his rustic, isolated, warily guarded abode from a dead, paranoid friend, the Avengers probably wouldn't have a home base to work from.
Dean lurches toward the security box on the gate and inserts a code. Immediately, a familiar voice filters through it, surly as ever. "Who is it?" Jo Harvelle, the owner of said surly voice, is less Dean's secretary and more a fellow grease monkey, though her previous experience with her mother's business has come in handy with keeping Dean's disorderly books.
"It's me, Jo," Dean says, leaning one armored shoulder against the gate. Iron impacts on iron.
"What's the password?" Jo asks.
Another clanging sound echoes when Dean clenches a metal gauntlet, but before he can punch a hole through the security box, as he is wont to doing after a particularly vexing reunion with Gabriel, Sam interjects, "Anything Dean can do, Jo can screw better," deadpan because he, unlike his older brother, finds this kind of wit tasteless. A buzz of confirmation rewards his noble sacrifice.
"Ya gotta stop humorin' the little demon," Dean huffs, shoving past him. Castiel, on the other hand, waits for Sam to go ahead, but Sam shakes his head and allows the angel to proceed, though all he wants to do right now is take off his stifling mask, set his heavy shield aside and sleep for fifty years. Castiel nods in thanks and primly enters the mansion after Dean.
The second Sam makes to follow, however, he almost collides with another person - another person hanging upside down by a thin thread of web, whose unmasked face and curious blue eyes are level with Sam's own. "What's up, Cap'n Samerica?" Adam is still in his civie clothes, jeans and a university hoodie that dwarfs him somewhat endearingly. Sam sometimes wonders how Spiderman, his scrawny little half-brother, managed to defend a whole city all by himself prior to his admittance into the Avengers, but Adam assures him he did fine. Then again, Windom, Minnesota's not exactly a hot spot for crime. Maybe a better question would be, why are they called Avengers if John Winchester spawned most of them? Perhaps because Colt's Kids sounds more like a charity organization than a syndicate of superheroes.
Adam cocks a head and his eyebrow at Sam, who scowls. He's too tired for this crap. "You know, Adam, you're going to out me to all of my arch-nemeses if you keep calling me that," he snaps.
Adam whistles, shrill and unimpressed, then uses his web to lower himself close enough to the ground that he can do a ten out of ten flip and stand. It would make a ballerina jealous. "Touchy, touchy. What's got your red, white and blue panties in a bunch?"
"Gabriel," Sam says with a sigh.
Adam shuffles his sneaker-clad feet and replies, "Uh, yeah, sorry I couldn't help out today. Got a final tomorrow, dude, and Gabe's kind of an asshatt, but not too bad, right? Not enough that I have to fail at my non-vigilante life?"
"No, that's fine," Sam answers. He finally pulls off his mask and runs a hand over his sweaty face, carding large fingers through long, limp strands of dark hair. "You really saved our hides with that chemistry stuff, anyway. I'm more worried about why Gabriel has been on a rampage lately. It's like he actually wants to kill us now, rather than just screw around."
Adam stares. Sam blinks back at him. Adam stares even longer, but before Sam can succumb to his pique and slap him upside the head, the younger hero relents with a put upon sigh. "Guess I've gotta show you, then."
"Show me what?" Sam asks. He's only more bemused when his younger brother extracts a phone from his back pocket with one hand, takes Sam's hand by the other, and leads him over to one of the couches in the foyer, comfy enough to swallow them both and still leave ample room once Sam plops down after him.
"This is my facebook," Adam says, proffering a blue and white screencap. Sam's forehead scrunches in affront. He's not Dean or Castiel; he knows what facebook is. "I've got a bunch of friends. Some are people I knew in Windom, some go to the university here with me, and others..." Adam scrolls through a list of tiny icons, but stops on one, which he selects till it zooms. He hands the phone to Sam.
"Is that Gabriel?" Sam cuts in loudly, wide eyes riveted to a familiar, grinning face, pointy headgear and all. "You're friends with our arch-freaking-enemy on facebook?"
"And I follow the guy on twitter, too," Adam says with a glower, as if Sam's interruption is more terrible a transgression than any he could commit. He ignores how Sam works his jaw to continue, "Now, are you done with the potential freak out? Because there's actually more to this story."
Sam sucks in several deep breaths, then nods. It hurts to do, it's so annoying. "Tell me," he replies, teeth bared in a not-quite-smile. Meeting Adam has been a lesson in patience. Sam reminds himself how much he loves to learn. Repeatedly.
Adam taps the screen of his phone again. Gabriel's profile info pops up. There's a lot of intriguing stuff in it that Sam, when he doesn't feel like stomping through the nearest village, will eventually be fascinated by and pick apart analytically. Gabriel calls himself the Pizza Man, claims to work in America's leading porn industry, and is, no surprise, an anarchist, to name a few choice bits of content.
What's really a sucker-punch, however, is a line of text that reads, "In a relationship with Castiel and it's complicated."
"H-he's in a, uh, uh," Sam sputters. Although his mind reels, he's not quite sure what affects him most. He would ask why Castiel seems to have his own facebook, but the little image that bubbles over his angel-friend's name is wearing lipgloss and mascara, so Sam assumes Gabriel has photoshop abilities and leaves it at that. It's better for his sanity. "But they're brothers!" is what he eventually manages.
Adam gives him one of his infamous, you-are-so-dumb looks. The superior gleam in his eyes only brightens with his accompanying smirk. "So are you and Dean," he reminds Sam, "and that doesn't stop you from bunkin' together every other night." It's obvious he's been glutting on this knowledge, hoarding it for the most optimal moment, and Sam flushes a garish red.
"We have nightmares sometimes," he mumbles, more to himself than Adam, who won't quit leering at him. How he can look so baby-faced and innocent, Sam has no idea. "So what does this mean?" he asks, to change the subject.
"They're an alien race of super-powered humanoids with a different set of morals than us," Adam explains. He accepts his phone back from his older brother and tucks it away. It's an advanced piece of technology that one of Dean's foreign associates had gifted all of the Avengers, but Adam is the only one who uses his obsessively. Then again, no one but Adam is a teenager in the group. "Gabriel's actions up until now can be deduced as simple courtship. Lingerie, infants, him redecorating the manor while we were out, it's classic girlfriend 101. In layman's terms, he's mackin' on our angel, dude."
"No," Sam says.
Adam quirks his eyebrows again. "Yes, Sam, and you've gotta talk to Cas. He obviously doesn't know yet. Someone has to clue him in before lover-boy goes too far. Wouldn't want Dean to end up Tybalt in this Romeo and Juliet, wouldja?"
"Then why doesn't Dean do it?" Sam exclaims, gesticulating his arms. If their mansion wasn't so far from the rest of civilization, someone would look through the window and assume two big, muscular flags were billowing in the wind. Or something like that. "He's Castiel's best friend! Or, or, you know, you could talk to him, since you figured it out, smartass!"
"Dean doesn't know what he's feeling, half the time," Adam says, then falters. "And me...I'm a scientist. I made a hypothesis and I supported it, that's all. I'm not good with all that love crap." He sinks back into the sofa cushions behind him and sulks. "I can't even get fucking Michael to call me back. Honorable leader of the Justice League, my ass."
Sam drops his head into his palms. In retrospect, considering his barely suppressed desire to sob into the appendages, it's a pretty tame motion. Superman. Of course Adam's sleeping with Superman. Sam won't broach that with a thousand foot stick, at least yet, so he says, "Uh, I guess I'll talk to Cas."
With a last pat on his baby brother's knee, he starts toward the grand staircase that leads to their personal quarters. Well, he tries and eventually succeeds, but there's an awkward moment when his hand, thanks to the webbing beneath Adam's skin, is stuck to the kid's jeans. Nevertheless, it's hardly something new in the Avenger household and Sam soon extracts himself.
Upstairs, he passes Adam's bedroom, which is closest to the ground floor. It has a skull and crossbones on it, a do not enter sign, and several other childish gimmicks Sam suspects may have caused Michael to rethink a decision Sam never would have wanted him to make in the first place; he's going to challenge Superman to another show of patriotism later, definitely. Not far from Adam's room are his brothers'. Their doors are actually very close, which helps when they want to bunk, as Adam says. Bobby's room is farthest from the steps, nearest to the office floor above, where Jo works. That leaves Castiel's in the center.
There's nothing special about his door, nor the room behind it. Castiel is spartan to a fault, as even the other adults aren't. Dean has bits of metal everywhere, tools, operational manuals, movies no innocent eyes should ever see, and the mullet-rock tapes that he allows to boom even when he's not in. Sam and Bobby have their books, at the very least.
Sam stops at the threshold of Castiel's door and raises a fist to knock. He pauses at the sound he hears behind it, at muted sighs, and wonders if his friend is okay. As his knuckles rap against scuffed wood, he says, "Cas, you all right in there?" and starts to turn the doorknob with his free hand.
"Captain?" Castiel's voice echoes back. There's something urgent beneath his usual aplomb, a new pitch, but Sam ignores it and throws the door open, then gawps. Castiel's armor is piled in the corner. It's armor in the truest sense of the word, comprised of palrands and vambraces and greaves, as one would see on a period warrior, unlike Dean's high-tech contraptions. Sam has never seen Castiel without it, which means... "Hello, Captain," a shirtless Castiel sighs from the bed, his wings hung over either side, large enough that they can brush up against the circling walls.
"Hey, good lookin'," an equally naked Gabriel chirps, from his place atop Castiel, a person-shaped blanket over the taller man. "Hm, I thought you'd have less hair," the trickster barrels on, when Sam doesn't immediately speak.
"I'm...gonna go," Sam says by way of answer, thumbing toward the exit. Before he can carry through, Gabriel sits up. Thankfully, for the sake of Sam's long-suffering sight, the bedsheets are still mostly draped over him and Castiel, leaving nothing but their torsos bare.
"Nah, I should jet," Gabriel replies. It's all quite amicable, too friendly, even. Gabriel snaps his fingers and disappears in a pink puff of strawberry-scented smoke. His armor, heaped next to Castiel's, vanishes with him.
"So..." Castiel stares. It's all too surreal for Sam. They're all in the fucking Twilight Zone, as far as he's concerned. Nothing else makes sense.
"I, uh, I take it you knew his plan all along?" Sam inquires. "That he was, I dunno, seducing you?"
"Not all along," Castiel reveals, the set of his chapped lips contrite. "I will talk to him about his...methods, if that helps?"
"Good," Sam says. It's really the only thing he can say. "I think I'll go play poker with Adam." Or curl into Dean's arms for half a century, till this all stops being so weird, he decidedly doesn't disclose.
Castiel nods like he's relieved. That's relieving in itself. Sam has had his fill of too much information for one lifetime. He doesn't think he could handle another ground-shattering heart-to-heart today. As he makes to retreat, however, he pauses and murmurs, "Cas?"
"Yes, Captain?" the angel responds. Although he and Gabriel are evidently a thing, it's obvious he doesn't want to reveal Sam's identity, in case the trickster hasn't quit invisibly hanging around. Sam is grateful for his restraint. He's a good angel-man-creature.
That's part of the reason why Sam continues, "If Gabriel is...making you happy, you have my blessing. Dean's, too, though he'll bitch about it for a while, and Adam probably wouldn't find this whole thing strange, in the first place."
There's a pause as Castiel mulls over this. Finally, on a exultant breath, he whispers, "Thank you. You don't...you'll likely never know how much that means to me."
Sam nods and makes a hasty escape. Adam has ducked out of the mansion, but Dean is in his room upon Sam's entrance and shoots a grin at the taller man. He sits, donned in only a pair of sweatpants, on the bed.
"Bit early, ain't it?" he laughs.
Sam flops onto the empty space on the mattress beside his older brother. "I had a nightmare, Dean. While awake." His words are muffled into Dean's cotton bedspread.
The eldest Winchester chuckles again, recognizing their cover, and falls back, too. His hand finds Sam's, skin still spotted in some areas by grease from whatever he was working on. "Big bro will make it all better, Sammy," Dean promises, upbeat in a way Sam's satisfied with, that he needs right now. "Believe it or not, I am a superhero."
"I never would have guessed," Sam says, his own smile tugging at his lips. He allows his fingers to interlace with Dean's and relishes in the warmth. At long last, he can take his costume off.
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The End, Thank Odin
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A/N: I know, I'm so weird... I had fun, though, so I hope it was at least slightly funny? Maybe? Next time, my next foray into a new pairing, I'll be completely serious, I swear! *shamefaced*