(no subject)
Title: While You're Making Other Plans
Rating: R
Pairing: Sam/Gabriel, established relationship
Genre: Character Study/Romance, ambiguous AU - I have no idea when this is set; post-'Changing Channels', that's as much as I can narrow it down.
Warnings: Genderswap, Het(sort of), Slash(sort of), gratuitous abuse of Christian mythos re: angels, pregnancy (NOT mpreg)
Wordcount: 1,982
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it; no profit is being made, no copyright infringement is intended, please don't sue.
Summary/ Author's Notes: Somewhere along the line he'd started classifying the face and form he knew best as the real Gabriel and anything else as just an illusion. Sam and Gabriel decide to have a baby.
This was inspired by a line from gedry 's fic In Babysitting.
***
Sam spent the vast majority of his life to date considering himself straight; then he fell in love with Gabriel. That is how he thought about the transition - he did not have some enormous life-changing realization, where he figured out that he was gay. He just fell in love with a person, and that person happens to have the same general anatomical features that he does, as opposed to the opposite set, and that's all. (Given that those anatomical features are, in Gabriel's case, entirely a matter of personal preference in and of themselves, it seemed even less relevant than it might otherwise have been.) Sam is sort of quietly proud of himself for this - there's not much Sam has to be proud of, but he's got this. He may be a walking advertisement for the entire mental health industry on everything else, but on gender issues, Sam's cool. He's well-adjusted, which for him, is a fucking accomplishment.
Which is why his reaction to this whole let's-get-pregnant thing is just freaking him the hell out.
It sounded like a good idea when Gabriel suggested it; they want kids. Gabriel's physical form is variable and, ultimately, multiple-choice. So, Gabriel assumes a female form, they do what they'd be doing anyway (only it's suddenly kinky in a way that vanilla, heterosexual intercourse really, really never was before), and they make a baby the plain old fashioned way. More or less. It involves so much less in the way of wading through red tape and bigotry than adoption would, and Sam has to admit there's a certain appeal to the idea of a child that's biologically theirs, a combination of the two of them.
Or at least there would be, if he had any fucking idea what that even means anymore, which he really, really doesn't. He's seen Gabriel assume other forms before, but somewhere along the line he'd started classifying the face and form he knew best as the real Gabriel and anything else as just an illusion.
But now a very pissed off and frustrated, very naked, very female Gabriel is sitting up next to him in bed, and it's not illusion, it's going to be carrying his child for nine months. You don't get much more real than that - of course, that's extremely hypothetical and getting moreso by the minute because Sam's never been less turned on in his life.
It's not that he's - she's - shit - it's not that Gabriel's not still attractive to him. There's a small, rather terrified part of Sam's brain that suspects Gabriel would still be attractive to him if he assumed the form of a 90-year-old, androgynous Yeti, and that's a huge part of the whole problem here. That freak-out he didn't have before, when he realized he was maybe not so straight? Yeah. Here it is, live and in surround sound.
He takes a small amount of comfort in the fact that he can still call himself well-adjusted on gender issues - he's a fucking mess on angel issues, though. He's about to make a baby (or not, as some portions of his anatomy are voting) with someone he's never really seen. He's in love with someone who does not have a gender, or anatomy that he can even look at, much less touch, without burning his fucking eyes out. Can he even really say he knows him? Her?
“What is your problem?” Gabriel demands.
“Nothing, I've just got a headache,” Sam says, and tries not to cringe visibly, because hey, while we're screwing with gender lines here, he might as well turn himself into a bad stereotype of a sexually disinterested housewife. He wants a desk to bang his head on.
“Sam,” Gabriel says, and despite the slightly higher pitch of her - shit shit shit - voice, she still sounds exactly like Gabriel. “Maybe you forgot that I can read your mind. You don't have a headache.”
Shit.
“Would it be better if I just looked completely different?” Gabriel offers - at present, she's looking very much like the twin sister of the male vessel Sam knows so well, and gee, isn't that a further-mood-killing thought.
But regardless of that, Sam snaps, “No!” instantly, because he can hear the edge of something like uncertainty in Gabriel's voice, and she's crossing her arms over her breasts, and they're sorta small breasts. Gabriel didn't make himself into some porn-star knock-out. He isn't being funny or outrageous or pushing any lines right now, or at least, not the lines Sam's come to expect him to push. Maybe he's pushing a different line altogether. He made himself . . herself . . hell, the only way Sam can think of it is that he . . she . . shit fucking goddamnitall - it's still Gabriel.
And it's suddenly blindingly obvious that this has fuck all to do with the physical process of making a baby, and everything to do with things that people should know about each other before they even consider reproducing.
“No,” Sam repeats more quietly, and reaches a hand out to brush Gabriel's hair away from her face. It's still short and sorta floppy, and she's got less chin but still a fair amount of nose, and that lopsided grin, the one that's half leering and half too damned sincere, that's still exactly the same. “What's it feel like?” Sam asks.
“I could show you,” Gabriel offers, and the tone she's going for is halfway between mischievous and threatening. “Up for some girl-on-girl action, Sammy?”
It's about one hundred and ten, maybe a hundred and twelve percent bravado. Gabriel's good at that, but Sam's good at seeing through what Gabriel's good at.
“Not what I'm asking,” Sam says, tone still serious. Gabriel's grin falters, wavers its way through unsettled, finishes back at annoyed.
“I could just as easily turn you into the girl, let you walk around looking like you've swallowed a watermelon for a few months,” Gabriel grouses.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “I know.” His hands are playing with her hair, then trailing down over her smooth cheek, her jaw, the slim line of her throat. “But on me, it wouldn't be real.”
“Real is relative,” Gabriel grumbles.
“No, it's not,” Sam insists, then goes ahead and says it. “If we do this, will it be real? Would you really be . . I don't know, contributing . . part of what's really you? Or would it be just whatever random genetics you happen to like in a vessel?”
Possibly, Sam realizes as he sees the look on Gabriel's face, he should have found a more tactful way to phrase that.
“I wish I could see you,” Sam blurts.
Gabriel's face is very blank for a very, very long moment.
“Me too,” Gabriel finally responds, sighing, shoulders slumping. She flops back down into the pillows next to Sam, staring at the ceiling. “This is so not happening tonight, is it?”
But the weird thing is, Sam thinks that maybe, actually, it might. It's not so much that he's done having his freak-out - so, so not done with that - as that it's turned into not his freak-out but their freak-out, and he's kinda glad that they're having it, actually.
“Answer's yes, by the way,” Gabriel tells the ceiling. “Our vessels aren't random, even a made-to-order special like mine; it's not like we can just go around grabbing any warm body, like -” she stumbles.
Like a demon, Sam's brain supplies.
“ - like it's nothing,” Gabriel finishes awkwardly, and shoots him an apologetic look, but she's not going to say that she knows that he knows what she didn't say, despite, y'know, the mind-reading.
Sam wonders if all relationships are this weird dance of intimacy and discretion, and he thinks, remembering Jess, that maybe they are - the thought is at once comforting and full of the dull ache of grief that never quite goes away, like an old injury that hurts when it rains.
“So, the vessel really is you? Sort of?” Sam asks, and tries not to sound like he wants that to be true as badly as he does.
“Sort of,” Gabriel allows, lips quirking and shoulders hitching in a way that lets Sam know that it's the kind of sort of that actually means not really, no, but . . but, sort of. That's something.
“Anyway, souls are a whole 'nuther thing,” Gabriel goes on hurriedly. “That part? That'll be entirely equal-opportunity. Every bit as much me as you. Kid might even get a little bit of grace - hopefully not too much. That could make the terrible twos awkward.” She's grinning, but it's the sort of grinning that's a bit like begging.
“How about -” Sam stops, swallows, draws a deep breath, “How about we hold off on the kid thing, for a bit? I mean that,” he hurries to add when he sees Gabriel's face closing off, going that careful, nothing-can-touch-me blank again. “I don't mean we're never actually going to do this, I just mean maybe I'd like to just . . ” His hand seeks her out again, not sure where to touch, just wanting contact. He finds her shoulder, lets the slope of it send his fingers across her chest to her breast. “ . . just do this, for a while. First.” He stops, watching her body reacting and her face not, not yet, she's still hiding - it's what Gabriel's best at, better even than the tricks or the trippy metaphysics.
“Angels in your true forms having four faces . . that doesn't mean faces on all sides or multiple heads or whatever, does it?” Sam guesses. “It means this. Multiple choice.”
“Sometimes,” Gabriel says, slowly and carefully, “I think I'd like you better stupid, Sammy.”
That gets a surprised chuckle from him, and a smile that's a great deal more genuine from her.
“So am I right?” Sam presses.
“It'd serve you right if I sprouted four heads and bit your smug ass,” Gabriel retorts, “with all four sets of teeth. Especially the lion ones.”
“But am I right?” Sam says.
“Sort of,” says Gabriel, sitting up and swinging around so that she's suddenly in his lap, straddling him. They end up with the sheet still between them, but it's a pretty thin sheet. “So. No baby-making? This is strictly a trial run?”
“It doesn't feel like the right time anymore,” Sam says, and is rather proud of himself for how level his voice comes out, given what she's doing with her hips. “Not yet.”
“You are such a girl,” Gabriel sighs, which makes Sam quirk a brow at the irony, and she responds by by cupping her own breasts in both hands, like she's offering them up. “You remember what to do with a set of these, or do you need to go find an instruction manual?”
Sam answers that by rolling them over and demonstrating that he's just fine at improv - because, anatomy aside, even love aside, there's nothing to remember. This thing where you know everything about someone, all of however many faces they've got, and you let them know you right back? Yeah, he's so never done that before.
Two weeks later Gabriel's pregnant anyway, and swearing up and down that that should be impossible unless she intended for it to happen, which she didn't; Sam says it's a miracle. Gabriel says that's not funny. Sam's not sure how to explain to Gabriel of all people, one-time messenger of God, that he really wasn't joking.
***