Fic
Title: You Can Choose Your Friends
Author: websandwhiskers
Rating: PG-13
Genre: vignette, friendship/family, genderswap
Characters/Pairings: Dean, girl!Gabriel (Sam/Gabriel)
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it. This is a work of fanfiction; no profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: genderswap, family issues, pregnancy . . . uh, obnoxious drunk dude in bar?
Summary: Sequel to While You're Making Other Plans - a brief glimpse of Gabriel adjusting to life as an honorary Winchester.
***
Saying family's a sore subject for Gabriel is sort of like saying it's a tiny bit cold and dark at the bottom of the ocean. Or, you know, out in space.
Gabriel visited both places, shortly after leaving Heaven; the quiet appealed.
She has no earthly idea how those not-precisely-carbon-based life forms ended up in those trenches, though. Really. No idea. She was positively not at all wanting to try her own hand at Creation, because damn it, if a self-important, deadbeat ass-hat like her Dad could do it, she could do it better.
And it was not at all harder than it looked.
And she's pleading the 5th.
Now here she is, trying her hand again at creating life - if in a rather derivative way. Also, being a she. Haven't done that in a few millenia.
She - or rather, he, at the time - and Sam had talked long and hard about children. About John and Mary Winchester. About the Nephilim. About Dad.
Sam wanted children in roughly the same way Gabriel wanted the quiet of deep space; as proof that there's something else out there, beyond the fucked-in-the-head mess of everything he's ever known. And maybe a little bit in the way that Gabriel wanted to Create. There's this need, this push and pull and spark of a need, to make things be good, for someone, somewhere, just to prove that they can be good. It's not about leaving some little piece of themselves behind - it's about everything that's entirely opposite of that. It's about saying fuck the rules and starting the hell over, is what it's about.
Gabriel's been around long enough to recognize, well and thoroughly, just how shitty those are as reasons to bring a whole new person into existence.
Gabriel sort of specializes in that brand of stupid, though, and Sam wants. Wants like drowning. It makes Gabriel want too - want to try again.
To have a family, again.
This is, without a doubt, the stupidest idea that Gabriel's ever had. She tells her still-flat stomach so, nightly, while Sam sleeps - says things like, “How's Mommy's little bad idea tonight? Are your kidneys developing nicely? Oh yes the are!” And probably to someone else, it'd sound horrible, but that's not how Gabriel means it. It's affectionate, and it's honest, and if there's one thing she's going to be with this child, come hell or high water and with every last filament of being until she's fucking unmade, it's honest.
Sam would probably get it. Probably.
The point where she decides maybe this wasn't her stupidest idea ever has nothing to do with Sam, though. It's Dean.
Dean who hasn't looked at her head-on since she grew herself a pair of breasts, and who seems to slam things more lately, which results in Sam slamming more things too, and Gabriel feels entirely justified in ignoring the pair of them and eating more chocolate-covered jalapenos - and seriously, why did she never think of chocolate-covered jalapenos before?
But Gabriel's moment of revelation is about Dean, not the chocolate-covered jalapenos, sadly. (This is one of the things she'd do differently, if she remade the world - chocolate and capsaicin would have religious significance, especially in combination.) They're walking into a bar, which sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and maybe it is. They're arguing, which really doesn't require stating as they're breathing within hearing of each other. Sam's back at the hotel, doing something research-like (or looking at real estate in South Dakota; he doesn't think she knows. Right.) and Gabriel is bored, and decides some people-watching will solve that, and if it comes with bonus opportunity to annoy Dean, all the better.
So they walk up to the bar, which is rather crowded, and some potbellied loser with a blood-alcohol level higher than his IQ grabs Gabriel's ass and says something like, “Hey baby, lemme buy you a -”
- and he doesn't say 'drink' because his face is busy making a closer acquaintance of the bar and a bowl full of peanuts, courtesy of Dean's grip on the back of his skull.
Gabriel probably would have gone for something less obvious, something with a little more flare and a little less ensuing barroom brawl, but mostly she's just struck speechless, standing there staring while the first punches get thrown because Dean just did that. It wasn't that big a deal, really. And she can take care of herself, and Dean, of all people, ought to know that. And besides that, Dean doesn't even like her. So what the fuck?
Eventually Gabriel's brain returns, and she snaps them out of there, not into the hotel room but to the parking lot outside the hotel, because she really needs to stare at Dean in a shell-shocked fashion some more, without a Sam-shaped audience. When Dean gets his equilibrium back, and finishes cursing her out for preventing him from having his ass handed to him by about six guys bigger than he is, he stares back.
“What?” he finally demands. “Douchebag should keep his hands to himself.” And then he stomps into the hotel room and slams the door behind him, leaving Gabriel alone in the parking lot. She hears Sam inside, asking where she is.
Her hand goes to her stomach and there's this warm, sort of dizzy feeling. It's quiet out there, in the summer dark, but not deep space quiet. Not bottom of the ocean quiet. The asphalt is still giving off the heat of the day that's just passed. There's traffic going by behind her. Life is carrying on. It's not grand; it's not even pretty. It's just there, just an impulsive, bad idea that's way fucking harder than it looks, seriously.
But there it is anyway; she has a brother again.
Author: websandwhiskers
Rating: PG-13
Genre: vignette, friendship/family, genderswap
Characters/Pairings: Dean, girl!Gabriel (Sam/Gabriel)
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it. This is a work of fanfiction; no profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Warnings: genderswap, family issues, pregnancy . . . uh, obnoxious drunk dude in bar?
Summary: Sequel to While You're Making Other Plans - a brief glimpse of Gabriel adjusting to life as an honorary Winchester.
***
Saying family's a sore subject for Gabriel is sort of like saying it's a tiny bit cold and dark at the bottom of the ocean. Or, you know, out in space.
Gabriel visited both places, shortly after leaving Heaven; the quiet appealed.
She has no earthly idea how those not-precisely-carbon-based life forms ended up in those trenches, though. Really. No idea. She was positively not at all wanting to try her own hand at Creation, because damn it, if a self-important, deadbeat ass-hat like her Dad could do it, she could do it better.
And it was not at all harder than it looked.
And she's pleading the 5th.
Now here she is, trying her hand again at creating life - if in a rather derivative way. Also, being a she. Haven't done that in a few millenia.
She - or rather, he, at the time - and Sam had talked long and hard about children. About John and Mary Winchester. About the Nephilim. About Dad.
Sam wanted children in roughly the same way Gabriel wanted the quiet of deep space; as proof that there's something else out there, beyond the fucked-in-the-head mess of everything he's ever known. And maybe a little bit in the way that Gabriel wanted to Create. There's this need, this push and pull and spark of a need, to make things be good, for someone, somewhere, just to prove that they can be good. It's not about leaving some little piece of themselves behind - it's about everything that's entirely opposite of that. It's about saying fuck the rules and starting the hell over, is what it's about.
Gabriel's been around long enough to recognize, well and thoroughly, just how shitty those are as reasons to bring a whole new person into existence.
Gabriel sort of specializes in that brand of stupid, though, and Sam wants. Wants like drowning. It makes Gabriel want too - want to try again.
To have a family, again.
This is, without a doubt, the stupidest idea that Gabriel's ever had. She tells her still-flat stomach so, nightly, while Sam sleeps - says things like, “How's Mommy's little bad idea tonight? Are your kidneys developing nicely? Oh yes the are!” And probably to someone else, it'd sound horrible, but that's not how Gabriel means it. It's affectionate, and it's honest, and if there's one thing she's going to be with this child, come hell or high water and with every last filament of being until she's fucking unmade, it's honest.
Sam would probably get it. Probably.
The point where she decides maybe this wasn't her stupidest idea ever has nothing to do with Sam, though. It's Dean.
Dean who hasn't looked at her head-on since she grew herself a pair of breasts, and who seems to slam things more lately, which results in Sam slamming more things too, and Gabriel feels entirely justified in ignoring the pair of them and eating more chocolate-covered jalapenos - and seriously, why did she never think of chocolate-covered jalapenos before?
But Gabriel's moment of revelation is about Dean, not the chocolate-covered jalapenos, sadly. (This is one of the things she'd do differently, if she remade the world - chocolate and capsaicin would have religious significance, especially in combination.) They're walking into a bar, which sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and maybe it is. They're arguing, which really doesn't require stating as they're breathing within hearing of each other. Sam's back at the hotel, doing something research-like (or looking at real estate in South Dakota; he doesn't think she knows. Right.) and Gabriel is bored, and decides some people-watching will solve that, and if it comes with bonus opportunity to annoy Dean, all the better.
So they walk up to the bar, which is rather crowded, and some potbellied loser with a blood-alcohol level higher than his IQ grabs Gabriel's ass and says something like, “Hey baby, lemme buy you a -”
- and he doesn't say 'drink' because his face is busy making a closer acquaintance of the bar and a bowl full of peanuts, courtesy of Dean's grip on the back of his skull.
Gabriel probably would have gone for something less obvious, something with a little more flare and a little less ensuing barroom brawl, but mostly she's just struck speechless, standing there staring while the first punches get thrown because Dean just did that. It wasn't that big a deal, really. And she can take care of herself, and Dean, of all people, ought to know that. And besides that, Dean doesn't even like her. So what the fuck?
Eventually Gabriel's brain returns, and she snaps them out of there, not into the hotel room but to the parking lot outside the hotel, because she really needs to stare at Dean in a shell-shocked fashion some more, without a Sam-shaped audience. When Dean gets his equilibrium back, and finishes cursing her out for preventing him from having his ass handed to him by about six guys bigger than he is, he stares back.
“What?” he finally demands. “Douchebag should keep his hands to himself.” And then he stomps into the hotel room and slams the door behind him, leaving Gabriel alone in the parking lot. She hears Sam inside, asking where she is.
Her hand goes to her stomach and there's this warm, sort of dizzy feeling. It's quiet out there, in the summer dark, but not deep space quiet. Not bottom of the ocean quiet. The asphalt is still giving off the heat of the day that's just passed. There's traffic going by behind her. Life is carrying on. It's not grand; it's not even pretty. It's just there, just an impulsive, bad idea that's way fucking harder than it looks, seriously.
But there it is anyway; she has a brother again.