gabriel big bang : drawing down the ocean
Drawing Down the Ocean
Inside, the boys sit together on the edge of a worn gray motel comforter with the light of the ancient television dancing through the spectrums of visible color along their faces. Outside, there is Gabriel. The sun has faded, the last of its light dying in the gold amber halo of his vessel’s hair. His (stolen) fingers catch the neck of a beer he’d taken from the room before ceding it to the brothers. It’s gone cold again, not the ice cold of refrigeration, but the indifferent temperature of evening that leeches heat from bone.
Clouds cluster together for safety. Tomorrow will be gray, he already knows, tastes the resignation of rain on his lips and in the air. For now, though, the skies wait and the breezes bring only anticipation.
“Hey,” Dean’s voice drifts from the earth, catching Gabriel’s wandering attention. There’s a bottle dangling from his fingers, too, condensation still sweating off the glass. “Sam’s heading to bed. Not real thrilled with you at the moment.”
“Because normally he’s my biggest fan,” Gabriel drawls, watching Dean. He simply shrugs, steps closer, stands shoulder to shoulder before taking a sip. There’s a place just behind his jaw that smells like apples and draws out curses like psalms. Gabriel turns his gaze away. “Doesn’t matter much now. Tomorrow we corner Death and the Devil, ain’t none of us coming back from that.” He drains his beer, feeling Dean’s attention like a heat haze before turning to smile at him, all golden eyes and sharpness. “Besides, he’s not really the Winchester I’m, mm, attached to.”
The light of motel sign only casts Dean’s face deeper in shadow, leaving his green eyes black. He takes Gabriel’s bottle and sets them both on the cracked asphalt at their feet. Then he’s standing in front of Gabriel again, lips curving but the uncertain light plays tricks with expression. Then he’s leaning in, breath turned into a gentle ghost on Gabriel’s lips. “You want to fuck me Abaddon? Just ask.” So close, Dean’s face seems open, a quirk at the lips, a flash of teeth, gentle voice.
“Oh, really?” Taking a risk, Gabriel lets his hand go to Dean’s shoulder, pours himself easily into place, curving into the spaces of Dean’s body and is rewarded for boldness with his hands on Gabriel’s hips. It’s never quite enough, though, and Gabriel brushes his lips over the rough curve of Dean’s jaw and drinks in the shudder and sharp breath. He kisses his way back, behind Dean’s ear, nuzzles along the delicate shell. “And what if,” breathe, kiss, nuzzle, “what if I said I wanted to spend my last night with you.”
Dean shoves him back, pinning him against the Impala with thunder dark eyes and Gabriel lets him. “Don’t. Just-don’t.”
As Dean starts to pull away, think about returning to an empty bed, Gabriel catches him with a hand on the back of his head, pulling him in close again. Gripping so tightly to Dean (always, always gripping him tightly) Gabriel nips behind his jaw and devours the harsh gasp and sudden jerk. “Yes, Dean,” he purrs in hard angle, “I want to fuck you. I gave up heaven because you’re just that fantastic in bed.” His lips map the forming bruise with every word.
Dean shoves him back again and crowds immediately into his space. The Impala is a cold weight behind Gabriel, Dean a blistering pressure in front of him. “Don’t you ever know when to shut up?” His voice isn’t even a whisper, lips giving shape and meaning to an unhappy sigh.
Gabriel curls his hands in Dean’s shirt, there’s no closer to pull him in, so Gabriel just holds him in place. “No.”
Dean laughs once, a sharp bark of sound before he tugs Gabriel’s hips against his own, fingers leaving imprints on skin. The kiss is messy, faces tilted at desperate angles as they smash their mouths together. Dean presses down against Gabriel, pulling the angel to him and moving, slipping, falling into the angel. Gabriel shifts his weight, surrenders his stability to Dean, who uses his size to advantage, lifting Gabriel’s slighter vessel. Braced between the car and Dean, Gabriel wraps his legs around Dean’s hips.
They should get inside. Dean’s hands have found their way under Gabriel’s shirts, rough calluses skimming over the smooth skin of his sides. Gabriel’s kissing Dean like he could drown in the taste of cheap beer and bitter coffee and summer apples. Part of him wants this. Wants the world watching while Righteous Man, spends his last night on earth screwing an angel on the hood of his car. (Only Dean.)
He pulls away from Dean’s mouth, kisses a wandering road over the plane of his cheek and line of his jaw, easily avoiding all Dean’s efforts to recapture the angel’s mouth. “We should really get inside,” Gabriel murmurs to Dean’s temple.
He laughs, a little breathless, happy, and scrapes his teeth over open column of Gabriel’s throat. “You’re the angel.”
“I was wondering when you’d remember that.” Gabriel doesn’t move, one hand curled around the back of Dean’s neck and the other resting along the side of his face. And they’re in a motel room at the foot of a king sized bed with silk sheets and cascading mountain ranges of pillows. Dean huffs out a breath of disapproval. When he lowers Gabriel to the bed, the comforter is gray and worn there’s a single pillow behind his head.
It’s worth it the moment Dean holds back, sliding out of his jacket and shirts with the ease of a magic trick. Grinning, Gabriel lays back to watch the show. Dean’s fingers suddenly turning clumsy with the button of his jeans as he scowls at the angel in (his) bed. The denim slides to the floor and Dean steps free, Gabriel has half a second to wonder about his magical, disappearing boots before Dean’s licking his way into Gabriel’s mouth again. He can only cling to Dean’s shoulders, arching against him. There’s a moment of naked skin against naked skin where Gabriel drinks in the sound of Dean’s surprise. And then he’s grinding down, thrusting against Gabriel who just tips his head back and sighs.
“Okay, maybe this was worth giving up Heaven for,” his voice comes out steady, a little wry which surprise him. Dean huffs, again, dips his head to lap at one of Gabriel’s nipples. All he can do is moan, melting into the awful motel bed just as Dean takes it into his mouth, sucking sweetly before working the sensitive nub with his teeth.
There are quite a few design choices in the human body that Gabriel’s never understood, but then, understandings not really required.
A familiar, half-forgotten pressure builds in the pit of his stomach and weighs on the base of his spine. Dean’s rocking gently as he presses deep kisses across Gabriel’s chest, barely enough friction but neither of them will last with more.
“Dean,” he says or sighs, nails scraping over the dips and planes of Dean’s back. He shivers above Gabriel, kissing desperately at the side of his throat and underneath his jaw. Gabriel moans, reaching between them but as his fingers brush the crisp hairs between Dean’s thighs, he pulls away. Leaving Gabriel to watch as Dean, still straddling Gabriel’s hips, hangs over the bed to rummage through discarded clothing. Sweat highlights the curvature of muscles beneath skin and Gabriel fits his fingers along Dean’s ribs, tracing inwards to brush against one of his nipples. Dean shudders, swears and sits upright with the jacket in one hand, still digging through a pocket. Once he’s pulled out lube and a condom, Dean tosses the clothing aside. Gabriel just raises his eyebrow.
“Something you want to tell me, Deano?”
Dean grins and Gabriel’s grace hushes into stillness. Leaning back over him, Dean kisses his mouth and it’s so much better than their first kiss, than any other kiss they’ve shared in its tenderness. “Yeah,” he says against Gabriel’s mouth. “Stop talking.”
Gabriel laughs in surprise and feels Dean’s grin, silly-stupid-huge, against his cheek. “You know if you really want to shut me up, you’d get on with it,” Gabriel teases, nips at Dean’s ear and then licks, slowly, at the bruise he’s left before going back to sucking on the skin. Gabriel expects Dean to growl or push or bite, a thousand different responses but all the same-in answer to the challenge in Gabriel’s tone.
Dean does none of those things. Instead, he grabs the nape of Gabriel’s neck, fingers curling into his hair as he’s guided back to Dean’s mouth for a honey sweet soft kiss. It leaves Gabriel bereft of words, leaning with forehead resting against Dean’s while the human brands circles into Gabriel’s hip with his thumb. Now, Dean pushes Gabriel back against the bed sheets with the flick of fingertips. They whisper down his chest in curved lines, detouring to let Dean’s knuckles brush against Gabriel’s nipples and then edging, whisper light, down his stomach.
The cap of the lube clicks open with the crack of embers. Dean’s fingers are slick as they slide across the junction of Gabriel’s thighs. Shameless, he spreads his legs wider, drawing the soles of his feet up the bed, rustling blankets. Dean pauses, drops his head to press a kiss to the side of Gabriel’s knee, another mid-thigh and the last against the crease of his hip. Gabriel runs his fingers over Dean’s head in benediction, while he shudders.
Dean prepares him slowly, sliding his fingers into the tight heat of Gabriel’s body one at a time while raining down kisses on his stomach. The pressure is building in rolling waves, a continuous crash of thunder that bends Gabriel’s body into curves-the arch of his back, toes digging into the soft mattress, palms pressing into the strength of Dean’s shoulders.
And somehow Dean knows, just always like he always does (did) and Gabriel whines as he loses Dean’s fingers, is left empty and exposed and raw. Then, cock slick, Dean sinks back into Gabriel, gripping his thighs and curves over him to engrave hymns into his throat with kisses. Quiet, broken off sounds die in the damp space between Dean’s lips and Gabriel’s skin. He throws his head back, thrusting back against Dean, who holds him tighter, sinks deeper.
The skin of Dean’s hand is rough, where it wraps around Gabriel’s cock; he’s lost to it. existence contracts to just Dean, the scrape and burn of his stubble and calluses, the sweet bitter tang of his skin and spider silk caress of his moans. Gabriel’s body resonates with the roll of thunder, cracking, finally breaking with a cry that bursts the bedside lamp and shatters street lights for miles.
Dean thrusts two, three more times melts into Gabriel with a quiet, “fuck” that steals his voice. Laying in the dark, Gabriel draws protections sigils in the drying sweat of Dean’s back. The silence, like the sky outside, is waiting.
When Dean slips from his arms, Gabriel shares a bitter smile with the ceiling. He listens to the slap of bare feet, the texture changing as Dean leaves the worn down carpet for cheap linoleum. The uneven rush of water from the sink makes Gabriel frown, but he refuses to stir himself from his nest of sheets.
A few moments later and Dean is padding back across the room with one of the motel towels in one hand and the bathroom wastebasket in the other. There’s a moment where Dean teeters at the edge of the bed, weighing the two objects he carries and unable to drop either. In the end, he drapes the towel over his shoulder and sweeps the ruins of the lamp in the basket, picking up pieces that fell to the ground. Once he’s satisfied, crawls back into bed, nuzzling at Gabriel’s shoulder until he rolls onto his back again and Dean’s able to wash him clean.
Tasks accomplished, Dean slides into his place against Gabriel: head on his chest, arm across his stomach, leg over his hips.
#
They began in the empty moments of ever changing rooms, when no one lay in the second bed.
Sex was, as Gabriel predicted, simple. Easy to be found and easy to be dismissed. Seals broke, people died, hunts ended and he always found his way to the same bed in a thousand different rooms; that was easy. They came together in slick thrusts and fevered skin, unrestrained sighs and moans and bitten out curses that defied the empty bed at the other side of the room to comment. When it was done, Dean sank back into his rumpled sheets without a word while Gabriel slid out of them. Each night, Dean’s edges seemed a little more worn down. Each day, he gave a little more ground.
It was the sounds that changed first, turned softer, whispers against his vessel’s hair while clever fingers mapped the span of his ribs. Gabriel had found that the space of skin between the corner of Dean’s jaw and ear was inexplicably sensitive. A lick would make him a shudder. A kiss would make him moan. The first time Gabriel pressed his teeth there, sucking sweetly, leaving a bruise, Dean had come apart beneath him.
Afterwards, suddenly gentled hands had turned restless, even after they’d pulled apart, Dean held them together.
That first night, when he’s pulled Gabriel back to bed when he would have left should have felt like triumph. After all, Dean, laid bare and still bliss faced from sex, had reached for him. Had smiled, soft as spun sugar and full of relief, when Gabriel had laid back in bed and gathered Dean into his arms. Everything had fallen into place then, Dean’s limbs settling over Gabriel like they’d always belonged, always owned the spaces of his borrowed body.
During his escape on earth, Gabriel’d thoroughly enjoyed wringing pleasure from his human vessel. Not much had changed about the mechanics since then. But this was, undeniably, different. Watching Dean’s back rise and fall with every breath, feeling those tease his skin while Dean stretched and shifted, getting comfortable, was different. Gabriel had held like he was precious (and he was), changing in increments with him, to keep them fitted into place.
In moments, Dean had fallen asleep without the weight of Hell to his memories to push cries out of his mouth. Instead, he’d slipped into a dream of water and sky, light cradled in waters that wouldn’t be touched by frost. As the clock ticked past, Gabriel had run his fingers through Dean’s hair over and over again and each touch felt different from the last. Stretching outwards in Gabriel’s mind, a thousand more nights appeared, taunting and seductive, filled with just this; Dean in his arms, content.
The room grew too small; Dean was too warm a weight pressing down on him. For the first time, Gabriel turned his eyes to the window and compared the soul in his arms to the song of the Host. It wasn’t doubt, precisely. Gabriel knew what he was gaining, the beauty and terribleness of his brothers. And he was starting to know what he was sacrificing. When Dean shifted in his sleep, Gabriel’s turned all his attention back to him, smoothed his hands over Dean’s back and toyed with the fine hairs at the nape of his neck.
The soft sounds of his breathing slowed, evened out and in the hush of the motel room, Gabriel realized that Dean breathed in rhythm to the beating of Gabriel’s heart.
#
The rain comes in a riot of whispers never reaching crescendo. They drive in a hushed world; the Impala, bare of music, carries the weight of silence stretched taut as a heartstring. Gabriel curls inward on himself in the backseat, gathering together all the jagged pieces of his grace, tattered memories of wings and light and depths now run dry. There’s not enough for this, to throw at Lucifer, there might never have been but Abaddon’s broken wings are all he has to work with.
With his head bowed, Gabriel reaches for another ephemeral thread that’s spun out of him somewhere along the way. He begins to wind it back towards his center, pulling gently, coaxing as a riptide when the thread tugs back. Glancing up, he catches Dean’s leaf soft gaze on him in the mirror. The thread slides from his tenuous hold, smooth as silk, settling into place again. Dean smiles, soft as the rain, and turns his attention to the road.
They’re in a dead town, not even ghosts can gather. Dean parks the Impala in the middle of the empty road and they wait, each holding their breath and listening to the fall of rain.
“Okay, then. Let’s do this.” Dean exhales and Gabriel is sure he’s the only one to hear how Dean’s breath trembles. Sam nods, resolved into precise movements. He flicks his gaze to the mirror - to Gabriel - and when he smiles, it’s a lightning fast offer of understanding. Gabriel bows his head deliberately and it’s done, all sins washed clean.
Three doors to the Impala click open at once. Dean’s hand lingers on the wheel as he steps outside, his own private goodbye to home. Gabriel brushes his fingers over the back of the driver’s seat as he stands, makes his own promise to send the boys back, if he can. (Just that, please. Please, just let me do that. Father, please.)
#
It ends.
Ruby, who in so many ways was Gabriel’s doppelganger that year that Dean came back from hell. Ruby, who got out of that Church while Sam rushed to let his brother in (too, too late). Ruby, with a pack of hellhounds at her side, called out to Sam on one of the empty streets of Carthage and Sam went to bury her knife in her.
Abaddon is less of an angel than he used to be, and so much less than Gabriel ever was, but he’s still enough to turn the hellhounds back. Dean walks safely in the shadow of his grace, but it costs energy that Gabriel can’t afford to lose.
Except, it’s not a question. It’s Dean and the one thing, the only thing that matters beyond killing Lucifer is that Dean walks away from Carthage. Gabriel, after all, is dead and has been since the first war, the war that began everything. There’s a nice symmetry going, the neat bookends that fate reserves for prophecies.
With every step closer, he can feel Lucifer’s grace burning so damn bright it scours the shadows and open wounds of Abaddon’s ruined wings. But the first sight of his brother, trapped inside the ill fitted and decaying meat suit still catches Gabriel off guard. It’s been so long and his useless human throat shuts itself tight, strangling whatever pathetic sound had tried to escape. His vessel has become heavy, cloying, the skin too tight and the eyes prickling with sudden pain.
Lucifer is glorious, as always. The soul of his vessel is nothing more than an impression of ash stuck to the least of his wings. Beneath the crackling skin, Gabriel can see the dragon’s head turning on its serpentine neck to stare at him and the recognition is too much to bear. Unlike War, who knew and mocked, Lucifer sees and the blistering radiance of his grace cries out in sorrow.
Abaddon could go to him now, fall at his feet and weep and rise again as Gabriel. The offer hangs between them, fills the notes of Lucifer’s song, the wine-dark thrum of power. Each step that Abaddon takes close to his brother (beloved, cherished, most favored) the deeper the shadows in his own grace become. The voids of his wings, open wounds that will never heal while he’s cut off from heaven, ache with a sharper cold than Hell. The chains that Michael had woven, which Gabriel’s lived with for so long, take up weight again and it’s crushing. He can feel the ghosts of his other wings, the pain where they’re forced into each other and the stinging bite from where the chains bind them.
A few feet away and he has to stop or crawl the remaining distance. The pain is too much and he’s bowed beneath it, swaying on the feet of a vessel he barely feels. Lucifer is so close, so close that if he just crawls-a few steps-and it can all be forgiven and made right again.
As suddenly as the thought is there, so is Dean, standing in front of him and taking Gabriel’s weight into his arms. There are demons and Lucifer, Lucifer, who is so close and calling, promising, going to make everything, everything better, but Dean just crushes Gabriel to his chest.
Holding him like he’s something precious that needs to be saved, Gabriel shudders in Dean’s arms. He kisses Gabriel’s temple, whispers something fiercely but Gabriel can’t hear anything but his brother’s song-only feels the movement of Dean’s lips. Gabriel shakes his head, trying to clear away the longing and the pain but it’s the wrong move to make because Dean turns his head to shout over his shoulder-shout at the Devil. Somewhere, sometime, Gabriel thinks he’d laugh.
Whatever Dean’s said makes Lucifer frown, though. He’s studying the two of them with a casual interest that Gabriel knows too well. Instinctively, he wraps his wings around Dean as though they could protect him. Under Lucifer’s anger, they’re little more than rice paper before the fire. And Lucifer is so very angry under his smile and his charm. The dragon rears back, hissing, and Gabriel pulls Dean closer to him. It lasts only a second and then he’s being ripped away, flung into stand of trees presiding over the mass grave. Dean crumples to the ground and is still.
“There now,” Lucifer coos and he’s cupping Gabriel’s face in gentle hands. “Isn’t this so much better, little brother?” He smells of darkness, the cold-damp of caves sealed away from the sun, and the human sweat of his vessel. There’s dirt on his palms and Gabriel can feel the smudges it leaves on his cheeks.
“I missed you,” he says and it’s true. He spoke to the cage for several thousand years, just for the sake of speaking to someone and terrified that he’d be stripped of his voice, too. For the first time, Gabriel wonders if his brother heard him. If his voice was a comfort or an annoyance during those long years.
But Lucifer smiles, kisses the lips of his vessel chastely and turns back to the grave he’s digging. Gabriel follows and his steps feel lighter, the pain pushed down under the warmth burning in his grace.
“I’m glad you’re here.” Lucifer stands at the edge of the pit, beaming proudly. A distant part of Gabriel wants to preen-Lucifer was always so much harder to impress-but he settles for bowing his head. Humility does the trick and Lucifer squeezes his shoulder gently. “Together, we’re going to do so much.”
“You know, there’s only one problem with that. I’m not on your side.”
In the silence, Gabriel can hear the demons fidgeting in their places, probably wishing they were anywhere but here, watching their “Father” squabbling with his brother. Gabriel empathizes. And below, he hears the shift and rustle of a restless sleeper.
“Are you serious?” Lucifer stares at him, the mouth of his vessel parted slightly in shock while all four faces hiss and spit beneath the skin. “Michael, after all he did to you? You’re going to fight for him?”
“Don’t be an ass, Lucy, of course I’m not on his side,” Gabriel snaps, flaring his entirely unimpressive wings in his brother’s face. “I’m on his side, that guy you just threw into a tree. The one I pulled out of Hell, who makes all of us look bad.”
Lucifer tilts his head, studying Gabriel with a frown before exhaling slowly. “You don’t want to do this; you know that you can’t win.”
Shrugging expressively, Gabriel spreads his hands and smiles. “Maybe not, but who would I be if I didn’t try?”
Lucifer shakes his head and looks away for a moment before his blade slid soundlessly into his hand. “Please, Gabriel,” he whispers and the sound of his name rips a shuddery breath out of Gabriel’s throat. He still shakes his head, denies the offer while he offers a silent thanks. Lucifer’s given him his name; he won’t die as Abaddon and Gabriel’s whole being sings softly in gratitude.
Between the heartbeats of a humming bird, the birth of light particles in lightning, the whispers of rain, it ends.
Gabriel explodes out of his vessel, throwing himself (multidimensional, two winged, sweet voiced, oceans deep, fractured, flawed, imperfect prisms of captured glory) against Lucifer. The blade bites into Gabriel, cuts the already frayed threads he’d so carefully stitched back into the place and then the world dissolves into the gaping howl of hurricanes around them. Together, they tumble down, down, deep beyond the snap of Lucifer’s vessel hitting the bottom of the pit. They keep falling into an onrushing blackness: the darkness hungry for its final sacrifice.
Lucifer screams only once, all his bright radiance consumed in an instant by Death, who always wakes hungry. There’s no chance to mourn for maybe’s, remember the brother who he’d love, who’d given him back his name, at the end. Already, phantom fingers are rifling through Gabriel, sweeping through the collection of atoms and strings that compose his true self. It’s useless, but he fights, desperately clawing at the darkness that closes tight around him, forcing him deeper. Michael’s chains fall away, Gabriel’s grace finally pulled free just as Lucifer had been pulled apart.
They aren’t teeth that sink into him, but even an archangel can’t see all of Death, shuffles Him into a more comfortable shape and being devoured is so much better than being consumed in the ways Death consumes. Gabriel twists, cries out and the sound is swallowed whole.
There is only silence.
And then, “Gabriel!”
Suspended in the dark, a single silken thread unwinds.
“Please, God, please Gabriel!”
Dean’s voice giving shape to the syllables of his name echoes through the darkness, every dream that Gabriel never had. He shudders, wrapping himself in his six regained wings and shuts his thousand eyes to listen. In the emptiness that tightens around him, he remembers Dean’s hands which were always gentle on his vessel’s skin, and his mouth as it offered up new hymns inside kisses. It gets worse, pulling him away in pieces; Gabriel holds tight to laughter rumbling in the distance. The smell of apples, tasting of skin and copper-stained sweat. Breaths in time to Gabriel’s heartbeat. Leaf green eyes. Softroughwarm. Warm. Dean.
The human body is a simple thing: warm and soft and hard. It has vulnerable skin stretched over bone, perishable meat held together by the frailest filaments. It feels pleasure and pain more than is practical and needs so much, all of it with a force that can strip civilizations clean. It is a small, finite thing which contains all of infinity within its delicate hooks.
Gabriel opens his eyes to rain. It seeps past his lips, carrying a metal-salt tang to his tongue. Under his cheek, the dug up ground as turned to mud and it reaches up to hold him as he struggles to sit. The grove of trees are splinters. The demons are dead. Less than a foot away is the mound of earth that Lucifer had dug, already turning soft and melting back into the land.
Something cold and heavy pins his legs to the mud. Gabriel reaches out to shove it aside without looking; his fingers brush against familiar hair. The falling rain becomes quieter, a distant sound below his own breathing (he doesn’t have to breathe) as he stares at the wreckage of the grove. Count the trees, count the splinters, breathe, breathe, just don’t look down. The mantra repeats over and over in his head, but it’s useless; he doesn’t even have to look.
The hair’s dark in the rain, but the barest suggestion of light will turn it gold. It’s fallen across the body’s face, long enough to obscure most of the features-Dean’d liked that, running his fingers through it instead of counting sheep. Gabriel swallows, forces his stolen hand to move, brushing back the wet hair. His vessel’s head lolls brokenly in Dean’s lap. Under Dean’s fingers. An awful, bitten off wail breaks the pattering of rain and it’s his, Gabriel’s, in Dean’s voice.
“What did you do?” His vessel-his old one-doesn’t answer. It’s cradled in Dean’s lap, trapping him in the dirt and Gabriel nearly shoves it aside. Except. Carefully, he lifts the body that Dean had cared for, laying it aside so that he can stand. Dean’s jeans are caked in mud and the cling stiffly to his legs. There’s more drying on his cheek and Gabriel brings up a hand to wipe it away (not his cheek, not his hand). The skin feels too tight, suffocating, he has to leave, has to get out, has to, now.
He’s pulled himself to the surface, when he hears the cry, Dean’s soul folding in on itself under the pain. Instantly, Gabriel freezes and lets his grace pool back into place. After a moment, his stolen heart starts beating again. He’s trapped.
The only option left is the one that scares Gabriel the most, but he has to try. Turning inwards, he builds the landscape he remembers from a dream. Water front, the lake deep and peaceful, stretching past the horizon line. An old dock, familiar down to it’s weathered boards and splinters with an ancient deck chair waiting at the edge. Red gold dawn extends across the sky, bringing piercing breezes, wet with dew. Waves peak and ebb the surface of the lake in faint rustles.
This time, Gabriel hears Dean’s footsteps crunch the sand beneath his feet as he walks up behind him. In the space between atoms, an infinite plain housed inside human skin, Gabriel feels Dean’s soul as it reaches for him and that comes close to bringing him to his knees.
“Oh Dean, what am I going to do with you?” Gabriel’s voice is deceptively light as he takes a step towards Dean, stops, steps back. It’s too much, being here, every second that ticks by and every action that brings his grace closer to Dean’s soul is more than is safe. There is no safe. Not yet, but maybe, maybe, if Gabriel just holds back and steals seconds by keeping his grace close-maybe. He saved Dean once, after all. If only maybe didn’t sound so frail. And if only the whole landscape wouldn’t darken with Dean’s hurt. Even he can’t keep his emotions hidden here, but he does keep his distance. For now, that’s enough. Worry for ‘later’ keeps Gabriel frozen.
“Dean,” his own voice is so gentle, it hardly sounds like him. Dean is watching the lake lapping at the pier. “Dean,” Gabriel can’t step closer, won’t shout, just makes his voice softer. Dean’s shoulders still slump like he was struck. “Dean, what did you do?”
Dean looks back at Gabriel, finally, frowning with that tilt of his mouth reserved for Sam’s stupid question. “I said yes.” Idiot, goes unspoken as Gabriel stares because that can’t-but it has to be. There’s only one way to take a vessel. Dean’s watching him, lunges as Gabriel stumbles and falls, pulling him into his arms.
For the second time, Gabriel’s cradled against Dean’s chest but now it’s not his brother’s song that echoes but the faint lapping of waves, his grace wearing away Dean’s shape.
“You can’t-do you get what you did? Dean. You know what happens to vessels. An archangel’s vessel, you know-” Even in the nowhere place, Dean’s lips are slightly chapped and taste of diner coffee.
“I know,” he says against Gabriel’s mouth.
“I’ll fix this,” Gabriel promises, feels Dean’s aborted laugh on his lips and catches his face in his hands. “Dean,” his name falls easily from Gabriel’s lips, suddenly the most important word in the world. He has to hold onto it, cling, it’s the one thing that can’t slip away. “Dean, I swear to you; I’ll find a way out that won’t-”
“Turn me into a vegetable?” Dean’s lips form a smile that Gabriel doesn’t want to see. He kisses it away, desperate and sloppy as he runs his fingers over Dean’s face. “Okay.” Dean catches his hands, holds them gently and kisses each finger, both palms and wrists. “Okay, I believe you. But I need you to promise me something.”
Gabriel should know better, but he doesn’t, not with Dean.
“Anything,” he says.
The first thing that Gabriel hears when he slips from the between place of souls and energy is the distant song of thunder. It rolls, gentle as a tide, deep voiced and resonant. And then come the choirs of angels, singing, screaming, shouting over each other. Gabriel! Gabriel! He aches under the burden of their voices and their joy as they greedily reach for him, his place in the song.
Michael’s cold fury is a comfort. The notes hang high above the hearing of any but archangels, shrill condemnation that whistles at the edges of the Host. As though he has right to be angry.
Gabriel’s reply is heard by all of Heaven, howling through the carefully arranged ranks of obedient little soldiers. Fuck you, you lying, back-stabbing, goat-mouthed douche waffle, doesn’t translate particularly well into Enochian, so he layers the words with Abaddon, pain and pettiness and then Dean, who becomes a clear, crystalline note to shake the light of Heaven.
All the Host fall silent.
Michael’s rage, when it comes again, is formless and dark while Dean’s soul outshines the fire of even Michael’s sword. And Gabriel, who has fallen so many times (been thrown), has emerged from Death’s hunger and stands unbent in Michael’s vessel; it halts the attack before it can begin. For the moment, there’s a reprieve. The impasse won’t last long, but Gabriel doesn’t need it to.
He turns his back on his brothers. Spreading his wings wide, he walks away from the song, broken bodies, the ruins of the Apocalypse. In his shadow, buildings crumble into ash and the smoke of demons rise and disappear in the rain-clear air. He tucks his wings away, standing on the empty street to let the worsening drizzle wash his (Dean’s, always Dean’s) face of the dirt still streaked across his cheek. Slowly, he curls his wings around himself and in, pushing at the awful weight of his grace until it settles in as small a corner as he can manage.
Bare of his strength, he feels the sting of rain in his eyes again and the cold as water seeps past the collar of Dean’s jacket to freeze against his neck and back. The dirt lodged under his fingernails feels tight, ground in and immoveable. He remembers to breathe, deep breaths that carry the smell of Dean’s shampoo mixed with sweat to him. The stinging is worse, making his eyes burn even though he’s turned his face away from the sky. Unthinking, he rubs his hands over his eyes and the touch is so familiar and wrong that he curls them into his fists at his sides.
When the sound of footsteps reach him, Gabriel raises his head and waits. The steps are uneven-limping-something whispers in the back of his mind, a voice filled with worry that isn’t his. That makes the choice for him.
Sam’s smile at the sight of his brother is brief. He’s bloody, cradling his arm to his chest and favoring his right side, but still rushes those last few steps to reach Dean. The moment he’s close enough, Gabriel presses his fingers to Sam’s forehead and the blood and wounds are gone.
So is his smile.
#
Gabriel stretches his wings on the infinite plain tethered in blood and flesh. The light (not a sun, never really a sun or a moon or stars of time any longer) is low in the distance, a dull gold caught in the water’s reflection. The pier was shorter than it had been, the wood paler and brighter than real wood could ever be. He tries not to let that worry him (more). Standing at the dock’s edge, Dean turned his head just so - watching Gabriel with less wariness and more welcome than he deserved.
“Hey there, sunshine. You miss me?” Gabriel smiles, strolls slowly and unconcerned to his (charge, lover, friend, vessel,)Dean. Wearing the face of his old vessel, Gabriel appraises Dean slowly, gaze from rising from his feet and lingering over his hips and hands and lips.
Dean only looks at him, unimpressed and deafening with it. Some things were still and still were. Gabriel’s smile is a little easier, lighter as they stand toe-to-toe. “Kind of hard to miss you, Gabriel. You’re sort of… everywhere.” And oh, doesn’t Dean just sound so adorably put out about the inescapability of Gabriel’s presence? The angel’s grinning now, sharp and bright as any trickster ever could and with more heart beside.
“Yeah, well. I’m a little late this time. Sammy’s wedding. The kid’s all grown up.” There’s a moment (too long) where Dean’s expression flickers. ‘Sammy’ is a word with no meaning. Gabriel reads that absence in glass brittle green eyes before memory pulls out… something. An image that still has Dean frowning, gathering pieces together from the unraveling threads.
“Sammy… Sam. Told him he should marry that girl.” Gabriel cringes at how softly Dean speaks. An empty sentence, composed of half-remembered words, echoing without the certainty he once would have spoken them.
Gabriel swallows and steps closer; sliding easily into Dean’s arms and space as easily as he’d slid into Dean’s body too long ago. “Well, he married somebody.” Gabriel trails his fingers along Dean’s jaw, brushing them softly against the rough curve. “And don’t worry; I didn’t let him see me.”
Dean drops his head, eyes shut tight while he rests his mouth and nose in Gabriel’s hair, breathes with all the senses still left here, in the infinite coming untethered. “Mom always says angels are watching over us,” and Dean knows this, Gabriel can hear that and clutches to him tighter. He tucks his head beneath Dean’s chin, breathes deep and catches only a whisper of something sweet, that’s faded past recognition. But Dean’s hands are sure and strong where the hold Gabriel’s hips, rubbing familiar circles through the unnecessary layers of clothing. When Dean kisses him, Gabriel looses track of his thoughts in the sweet bitter glide of their lips, fitting perfectly together. Stroking the nape of Dean’s neck, Gabriel pulls away to mouth along Dean’s jaw, dropping kisses at random until he reaches the place where his pulse pounds, strong as ever.
“There are,” Gabriel whispers to the curve of Dean’s jaw. “There are.” His voice falters and Dean’s just there (always, always there), cradling Gabriel’s face in his hands and rebaptizing him in a gentle rain of kisses across his cheeks and eyelids, both corners of his mouth and the cupid’s bow above and small dip below, the point of his chin, then the tip of his nose, and finally his forehead, lingering.
In the quiet of the in between place, where the lapping of the water has lost it’s sound under the burden of Gabriel’s grace, his fingers find comfort in the hollow above Dean’s clavicle. Two fingers slip down, hooking into the collar of his shirt, tugging lightly. Dean’s huff of laughter stirs Gabriel’s hair as he presses a kiss to Dean’s Adam’s apple.
When Dean’s hands slip under shirts to brush against Gabriel’s skin, they’re smooth as silk, the familiar calluses worn away. Gabriel’s grip tightens for a moment, pressing his cheek against Dean’s chest and just holding on until his breath stops crushing his lungs.
Dean’s soul still burns brighter than the Morningstar’s grace ever could; it will always burn. But the edges (oh, the edges) are past fraying and Gabriel can see where it’s worn thin, only that impossibly incandescent light without the memory of Dean, who made it burn. Gabriel has to fight not to hold tighter, cling with arms and wings and grace, which will obliterate all but the light faster.
This is the violence of an archangel’s grace, what Gabriel longed for and missed (and still can’t be without). Dean is scarred from that first moment of heat and grace and depths plummeting into him like the oceans emptying into a grain of sand. It is worse in reverse, a wound that drags and rips and turns a soul inside out and insubstantial. And every day of the brush and touch of grace wears down a little more of what is human and singular.
“Gabriel?”
Dean’s lips press against his temple and Gabriel makes a quiet, questions sound in reply.
One day a year, though time is meaningless here, in the infinite, is all they have. But for that one day a year, Gabriel can touch his thumbs to the stubborn lines of Dean’s jaw and drink in his strength (as much as it can be called touch), and drown in the cheap-whiskey rough melody of his voice (he projection of it, anyway), and hold him (grace and soul) even while it kills him.
“Promise me something?” Gabriel holds onto him a little tighter (just as he always does), burying his face in the curve of Dean’s neck.
One day a year that was all Dean asked for, so long ago, one day a year with Gabriel.
“Anything,” he says.
The six great wings (status and power; loss and hope) of an archangel restored fan out, trap the reflected light in their depths and envelop Dean. They stand together, wrapped so tightly in one another that only they are able to see where one begins and the other leaves off; and only then, because they’ve always been able to see each other.
Dean breathes, slowly, and it’s in perfect rhythm to the beating of Gabriel’s heart.
Inside, the boys sit together on the edge of a worn gray motel comforter with the light of the ancient television dancing through the spectrums of visible color along their faces. Outside, there is Gabriel. The sun has faded, the last of its light dying in the gold amber halo of his vessel’s hair. His (stolen) fingers catch the neck of a beer he’d taken from the room before ceding it to the brothers. It’s gone cold again, not the ice cold of refrigeration, but the indifferent temperature of evening that leeches heat from bone.
Clouds cluster together for safety. Tomorrow will be gray, he already knows, tastes the resignation of rain on his lips and in the air. For now, though, the skies wait and the breezes bring only anticipation.
“Hey,” Dean’s voice drifts from the earth, catching Gabriel’s wandering attention. There’s a bottle dangling from his fingers, too, condensation still sweating off the glass. “Sam’s heading to bed. Not real thrilled with you at the moment.”
“Because normally he’s my biggest fan,” Gabriel drawls, watching Dean. He simply shrugs, steps closer, stands shoulder to shoulder before taking a sip. There’s a place just behind his jaw that smells like apples and draws out curses like psalms. Gabriel turns his gaze away. “Doesn’t matter much now. Tomorrow we corner Death and the Devil, ain’t none of us coming back from that.” He drains his beer, feeling Dean’s attention like a heat haze before turning to smile at him, all golden eyes and sharpness. “Besides, he’s not really the Winchester I’m, mm, attached to.”
The light of motel sign only casts Dean’s face deeper in shadow, leaving his green eyes black. He takes Gabriel’s bottle and sets them both on the cracked asphalt at their feet. Then he’s standing in front of Gabriel again, lips curving but the uncertain light plays tricks with expression. Then he’s leaning in, breath turned into a gentle ghost on Gabriel’s lips. “You want to fuck me Abaddon? Just ask.” So close, Dean’s face seems open, a quirk at the lips, a flash of teeth, gentle voice.
“Oh, really?” Taking a risk, Gabriel lets his hand go to Dean’s shoulder, pours himself easily into place, curving into the spaces of Dean’s body and is rewarded for boldness with his hands on Gabriel’s hips. It’s never quite enough, though, and Gabriel brushes his lips over the rough curve of Dean’s jaw and drinks in the shudder and sharp breath. He kisses his way back, behind Dean’s ear, nuzzles along the delicate shell. “And what if,” breathe, kiss, nuzzle, “what if I said I wanted to spend my last night with you.”
Dean shoves him back, pinning him against the Impala with thunder dark eyes and Gabriel lets him. “Don’t. Just-don’t.”
As Dean starts to pull away, think about returning to an empty bed, Gabriel catches him with a hand on the back of his head, pulling him in close again. Gripping so tightly to Dean (always, always gripping him tightly) Gabriel nips behind his jaw and devours the harsh gasp and sudden jerk. “Yes, Dean,” he purrs in hard angle, “I want to fuck you. I gave up heaven because you’re just that fantastic in bed.” His lips map the forming bruise with every word.
Dean shoves him back again and crowds immediately into his space. The Impala is a cold weight behind Gabriel, Dean a blistering pressure in front of him. “Don’t you ever know when to shut up?” His voice isn’t even a whisper, lips giving shape and meaning to an unhappy sigh.
Gabriel curls his hands in Dean’s shirt, there’s no closer to pull him in, so Gabriel just holds him in place. “No.”
Dean laughs once, a sharp bark of sound before he tugs Gabriel’s hips against his own, fingers leaving imprints on skin. The kiss is messy, faces tilted at desperate angles as they smash their mouths together. Dean presses down against Gabriel, pulling the angel to him and moving, slipping, falling into the angel. Gabriel shifts his weight, surrenders his stability to Dean, who uses his size to advantage, lifting Gabriel’s slighter vessel. Braced between the car and Dean, Gabriel wraps his legs around Dean’s hips.
They should get inside. Dean’s hands have found their way under Gabriel’s shirts, rough calluses skimming over the smooth skin of his sides. Gabriel’s kissing Dean like he could drown in the taste of cheap beer and bitter coffee and summer apples. Part of him wants this. Wants the world watching while Righteous Man, spends his last night on earth screwing an angel on the hood of his car. (Only Dean.)
He pulls away from Dean’s mouth, kisses a wandering road over the plane of his cheek and line of his jaw, easily avoiding all Dean’s efforts to recapture the angel’s mouth. “We should really get inside,” Gabriel murmurs to Dean’s temple.
He laughs, a little breathless, happy, and scrapes his teeth over open column of Gabriel’s throat. “You’re the angel.”
“I was wondering when you’d remember that.” Gabriel doesn’t move, one hand curled around the back of Dean’s neck and the other resting along the side of his face. And they’re in a motel room at the foot of a king sized bed with silk sheets and cascading mountain ranges of pillows. Dean huffs out a breath of disapproval. When he lowers Gabriel to the bed, the comforter is gray and worn there’s a single pillow behind his head.
It’s worth it the moment Dean holds back, sliding out of his jacket and shirts with the ease of a magic trick. Grinning, Gabriel lays back to watch the show. Dean’s fingers suddenly turning clumsy with the button of his jeans as he scowls at the angel in (his) bed. The denim slides to the floor and Dean steps free, Gabriel has half a second to wonder about his magical, disappearing boots before Dean’s licking his way into Gabriel’s mouth again. He can only cling to Dean’s shoulders, arching against him. There’s a moment of naked skin against naked skin where Gabriel drinks in the sound of Dean’s surprise. And then he’s grinding down, thrusting against Gabriel who just tips his head back and sighs.
“Okay, maybe this was worth giving up Heaven for,” his voice comes out steady, a little wry which surprise him. Dean huffs, again, dips his head to lap at one of Gabriel’s nipples. All he can do is moan, melting into the awful motel bed just as Dean takes it into his mouth, sucking sweetly before working the sensitive nub with his teeth.
There are quite a few design choices in the human body that Gabriel’s never understood, but then, understandings not really required.
A familiar, half-forgotten pressure builds in the pit of his stomach and weighs on the base of his spine. Dean’s rocking gently as he presses deep kisses across Gabriel’s chest, barely enough friction but neither of them will last with more.
“Dean,” he says or sighs, nails scraping over the dips and planes of Dean’s back. He shivers above Gabriel, kissing desperately at the side of his throat and underneath his jaw. Gabriel moans, reaching between them but as his fingers brush the crisp hairs between Dean’s thighs, he pulls away. Leaving Gabriel to watch as Dean, still straddling Gabriel’s hips, hangs over the bed to rummage through discarded clothing. Sweat highlights the curvature of muscles beneath skin and Gabriel fits his fingers along Dean’s ribs, tracing inwards to brush against one of his nipples. Dean shudders, swears and sits upright with the jacket in one hand, still digging through a pocket. Once he’s pulled out lube and a condom, Dean tosses the clothing aside. Gabriel just raises his eyebrow.
“Something you want to tell me, Deano?”
Dean grins and Gabriel’s grace hushes into stillness. Leaning back over him, Dean kisses his mouth and it’s so much better than their first kiss, than any other kiss they’ve shared in its tenderness. “Yeah,” he says against Gabriel’s mouth. “Stop talking.”
Gabriel laughs in surprise and feels Dean’s grin, silly-stupid-huge, against his cheek. “You know if you really want to shut me up, you’d get on with it,” Gabriel teases, nips at Dean’s ear and then licks, slowly, at the bruise he’s left before going back to sucking on the skin. Gabriel expects Dean to growl or push or bite, a thousand different responses but all the same-in answer to the challenge in Gabriel’s tone.
Dean does none of those things. Instead, he grabs the nape of Gabriel’s neck, fingers curling into his hair as he’s guided back to Dean’s mouth for a honey sweet soft kiss. It leaves Gabriel bereft of words, leaning with forehead resting against Dean’s while the human brands circles into Gabriel’s hip with his thumb. Now, Dean pushes Gabriel back against the bed sheets with the flick of fingertips. They whisper down his chest in curved lines, detouring to let Dean’s knuckles brush against Gabriel’s nipples and then edging, whisper light, down his stomach.
The cap of the lube clicks open with the crack of embers. Dean’s fingers are slick as they slide across the junction of Gabriel’s thighs. Shameless, he spreads his legs wider, drawing the soles of his feet up the bed, rustling blankets. Dean pauses, drops his head to press a kiss to the side of Gabriel’s knee, another mid-thigh and the last against the crease of his hip. Gabriel runs his fingers over Dean’s head in benediction, while he shudders.
Dean prepares him slowly, sliding his fingers into the tight heat of Gabriel’s body one at a time while raining down kisses on his stomach. The pressure is building in rolling waves, a continuous crash of thunder that bends Gabriel’s body into curves-the arch of his back, toes digging into the soft mattress, palms pressing into the strength of Dean’s shoulders.
And somehow Dean knows, just always like he always does (did) and Gabriel whines as he loses Dean’s fingers, is left empty and exposed and raw. Then, cock slick, Dean sinks back into Gabriel, gripping his thighs and curves over him to engrave hymns into his throat with kisses. Quiet, broken off sounds die in the damp space between Dean’s lips and Gabriel’s skin. He throws his head back, thrusting back against Dean, who holds him tighter, sinks deeper.
The skin of Dean’s hand is rough, where it wraps around Gabriel’s cock; he’s lost to it. existence contracts to just Dean, the scrape and burn of his stubble and calluses, the sweet bitter tang of his skin and spider silk caress of his moans. Gabriel’s body resonates with the roll of thunder, cracking, finally breaking with a cry that bursts the bedside lamp and shatters street lights for miles.
Dean thrusts two, three more times melts into Gabriel with a quiet, “fuck” that steals his voice. Laying in the dark, Gabriel draws protections sigils in the drying sweat of Dean’s back. The silence, like the sky outside, is waiting.
When Dean slips from his arms, Gabriel shares a bitter smile with the ceiling. He listens to the slap of bare feet, the texture changing as Dean leaves the worn down carpet for cheap linoleum. The uneven rush of water from the sink makes Gabriel frown, but he refuses to stir himself from his nest of sheets.
A few moments later and Dean is padding back across the room with one of the motel towels in one hand and the bathroom wastebasket in the other. There’s a moment where Dean teeters at the edge of the bed, weighing the two objects he carries and unable to drop either. In the end, he drapes the towel over his shoulder and sweeps the ruins of the lamp in the basket, picking up pieces that fell to the ground. Once he’s satisfied, crawls back into bed, nuzzling at Gabriel’s shoulder until he rolls onto his back again and Dean’s able to wash him clean.
Tasks accomplished, Dean slides into his place against Gabriel: head on his chest, arm across his stomach, leg over his hips.
#
They began in the empty moments of ever changing rooms, when no one lay in the second bed.
Sex was, as Gabriel predicted, simple. Easy to be found and easy to be dismissed. Seals broke, people died, hunts ended and he always found his way to the same bed in a thousand different rooms; that was easy. They came together in slick thrusts and fevered skin, unrestrained sighs and moans and bitten out curses that defied the empty bed at the other side of the room to comment. When it was done, Dean sank back into his rumpled sheets without a word while Gabriel slid out of them. Each night, Dean’s edges seemed a little more worn down. Each day, he gave a little more ground.
It was the sounds that changed first, turned softer, whispers against his vessel’s hair while clever fingers mapped the span of his ribs. Gabriel had found that the space of skin between the corner of Dean’s jaw and ear was inexplicably sensitive. A lick would make him a shudder. A kiss would make him moan. The first time Gabriel pressed his teeth there, sucking sweetly, leaving a bruise, Dean had come apart beneath him.
Afterwards, suddenly gentled hands had turned restless, even after they’d pulled apart, Dean held them together.
That first night, when he’s pulled Gabriel back to bed when he would have left should have felt like triumph. After all, Dean, laid bare and still bliss faced from sex, had reached for him. Had smiled, soft as spun sugar and full of relief, when Gabriel had laid back in bed and gathered Dean into his arms. Everything had fallen into place then, Dean’s limbs settling over Gabriel like they’d always belonged, always owned the spaces of his borrowed body.
During his escape on earth, Gabriel’d thoroughly enjoyed wringing pleasure from his human vessel. Not much had changed about the mechanics since then. But this was, undeniably, different. Watching Dean’s back rise and fall with every breath, feeling those tease his skin while Dean stretched and shifted, getting comfortable, was different. Gabriel had held like he was precious (and he was), changing in increments with him, to keep them fitted into place.
In moments, Dean had fallen asleep without the weight of Hell to his memories to push cries out of his mouth. Instead, he’d slipped into a dream of water and sky, light cradled in waters that wouldn’t be touched by frost. As the clock ticked past, Gabriel had run his fingers through Dean’s hair over and over again and each touch felt different from the last. Stretching outwards in Gabriel’s mind, a thousand more nights appeared, taunting and seductive, filled with just this; Dean in his arms, content.
The room grew too small; Dean was too warm a weight pressing down on him. For the first time, Gabriel turned his eyes to the window and compared the soul in his arms to the song of the Host. It wasn’t doubt, precisely. Gabriel knew what he was gaining, the beauty and terribleness of his brothers. And he was starting to know what he was sacrificing. When Dean shifted in his sleep, Gabriel’s turned all his attention back to him, smoothed his hands over Dean’s back and toyed with the fine hairs at the nape of his neck.
The soft sounds of his breathing slowed, evened out and in the hush of the motel room, Gabriel realized that Dean breathed in rhythm to the beating of Gabriel’s heart.
#
The rain comes in a riot of whispers never reaching crescendo. They drive in a hushed world; the Impala, bare of music, carries the weight of silence stretched taut as a heartstring. Gabriel curls inward on himself in the backseat, gathering together all the jagged pieces of his grace, tattered memories of wings and light and depths now run dry. There’s not enough for this, to throw at Lucifer, there might never have been but Abaddon’s broken wings are all he has to work with.
With his head bowed, Gabriel reaches for another ephemeral thread that’s spun out of him somewhere along the way. He begins to wind it back towards his center, pulling gently, coaxing as a riptide when the thread tugs back. Glancing up, he catches Dean’s leaf soft gaze on him in the mirror. The thread slides from his tenuous hold, smooth as silk, settling into place again. Dean smiles, soft as the rain, and turns his attention to the road.
They’re in a dead town, not even ghosts can gather. Dean parks the Impala in the middle of the empty road and they wait, each holding their breath and listening to the fall of rain.
“Okay, then. Let’s do this.” Dean exhales and Gabriel is sure he’s the only one to hear how Dean’s breath trembles. Sam nods, resolved into precise movements. He flicks his gaze to the mirror - to Gabriel - and when he smiles, it’s a lightning fast offer of understanding. Gabriel bows his head deliberately and it’s done, all sins washed clean.
Three doors to the Impala click open at once. Dean’s hand lingers on the wheel as he steps outside, his own private goodbye to home. Gabriel brushes his fingers over the back of the driver’s seat as he stands, makes his own promise to send the boys back, if he can. (Just that, please. Please, just let me do that. Father, please.)
#
It ends.
Ruby, who in so many ways was Gabriel’s doppelganger that year that Dean came back from hell. Ruby, who got out of that Church while Sam rushed to let his brother in (too, too late). Ruby, with a pack of hellhounds at her side, called out to Sam on one of the empty streets of Carthage and Sam went to bury her knife in her.
Abaddon is less of an angel than he used to be, and so much less than Gabriel ever was, but he’s still enough to turn the hellhounds back. Dean walks safely in the shadow of his grace, but it costs energy that Gabriel can’t afford to lose.
Except, it’s not a question. It’s Dean and the one thing, the only thing that matters beyond killing Lucifer is that Dean walks away from Carthage. Gabriel, after all, is dead and has been since the first war, the war that began everything. There’s a nice symmetry going, the neat bookends that fate reserves for prophecies.
With every step closer, he can feel Lucifer’s grace burning so damn bright it scours the shadows and open wounds of Abaddon’s ruined wings. But the first sight of his brother, trapped inside the ill fitted and decaying meat suit still catches Gabriel off guard. It’s been so long and his useless human throat shuts itself tight, strangling whatever pathetic sound had tried to escape. His vessel has become heavy, cloying, the skin too tight and the eyes prickling with sudden pain.
Lucifer is glorious, as always. The soul of his vessel is nothing more than an impression of ash stuck to the least of his wings. Beneath the crackling skin, Gabriel can see the dragon’s head turning on its serpentine neck to stare at him and the recognition is too much to bear. Unlike War, who knew and mocked, Lucifer sees and the blistering radiance of his grace cries out in sorrow.
Abaddon could go to him now, fall at his feet and weep and rise again as Gabriel. The offer hangs between them, fills the notes of Lucifer’s song, the wine-dark thrum of power. Each step that Abaddon takes close to his brother (beloved, cherished, most favored) the deeper the shadows in his own grace become. The voids of his wings, open wounds that will never heal while he’s cut off from heaven, ache with a sharper cold than Hell. The chains that Michael had woven, which Gabriel’s lived with for so long, take up weight again and it’s crushing. He can feel the ghosts of his other wings, the pain where they’re forced into each other and the stinging bite from where the chains bind them.
A few feet away and he has to stop or crawl the remaining distance. The pain is too much and he’s bowed beneath it, swaying on the feet of a vessel he barely feels. Lucifer is so close, so close that if he just crawls-a few steps-and it can all be forgiven and made right again.
As suddenly as the thought is there, so is Dean, standing in front of him and taking Gabriel’s weight into his arms. There are demons and Lucifer, Lucifer, who is so close and calling, promising, going to make everything, everything better, but Dean just crushes Gabriel to his chest.
Holding him like he’s something precious that needs to be saved, Gabriel shudders in Dean’s arms. He kisses Gabriel’s temple, whispers something fiercely but Gabriel can’t hear anything but his brother’s song-only feels the movement of Dean’s lips. Gabriel shakes his head, trying to clear away the longing and the pain but it’s the wrong move to make because Dean turns his head to shout over his shoulder-shout at the Devil. Somewhere, sometime, Gabriel thinks he’d laugh.
Whatever Dean’s said makes Lucifer frown, though. He’s studying the two of them with a casual interest that Gabriel knows too well. Instinctively, he wraps his wings around Dean as though they could protect him. Under Lucifer’s anger, they’re little more than rice paper before the fire. And Lucifer is so very angry under his smile and his charm. The dragon rears back, hissing, and Gabriel pulls Dean closer to him. It lasts only a second and then he’s being ripped away, flung into stand of trees presiding over the mass grave. Dean crumples to the ground and is still.
“There now,” Lucifer coos and he’s cupping Gabriel’s face in gentle hands. “Isn’t this so much better, little brother?” He smells of darkness, the cold-damp of caves sealed away from the sun, and the human sweat of his vessel. There’s dirt on his palms and Gabriel can feel the smudges it leaves on his cheeks.
“I missed you,” he says and it’s true. He spoke to the cage for several thousand years, just for the sake of speaking to someone and terrified that he’d be stripped of his voice, too. For the first time, Gabriel wonders if his brother heard him. If his voice was a comfort or an annoyance during those long years.
But Lucifer smiles, kisses the lips of his vessel chastely and turns back to the grave he’s digging. Gabriel follows and his steps feel lighter, the pain pushed down under the warmth burning in his grace.
“I’m glad you’re here.” Lucifer stands at the edge of the pit, beaming proudly. A distant part of Gabriel wants to preen-Lucifer was always so much harder to impress-but he settles for bowing his head. Humility does the trick and Lucifer squeezes his shoulder gently. “Together, we’re going to do so much.”
“You know, there’s only one problem with that. I’m not on your side.”
In the silence, Gabriel can hear the demons fidgeting in their places, probably wishing they were anywhere but here, watching their “Father” squabbling with his brother. Gabriel empathizes. And below, he hears the shift and rustle of a restless sleeper.
“Are you serious?” Lucifer stares at him, the mouth of his vessel parted slightly in shock while all four faces hiss and spit beneath the skin. “Michael, after all he did to you? You’re going to fight for him?”
“Don’t be an ass, Lucy, of course I’m not on his side,” Gabriel snaps, flaring his entirely unimpressive wings in his brother’s face. “I’m on his side, that guy you just threw into a tree. The one I pulled out of Hell, who makes all of us look bad.”
Lucifer tilts his head, studying Gabriel with a frown before exhaling slowly. “You don’t want to do this; you know that you can’t win.”
Shrugging expressively, Gabriel spreads his hands and smiles. “Maybe not, but who would I be if I didn’t try?”
Lucifer shakes his head and looks away for a moment before his blade slid soundlessly into his hand. “Please, Gabriel,” he whispers and the sound of his name rips a shuddery breath out of Gabriel’s throat. He still shakes his head, denies the offer while he offers a silent thanks. Lucifer’s given him his name; he won’t die as Abaddon and Gabriel’s whole being sings softly in gratitude.
Between the heartbeats of a humming bird, the birth of light particles in lightning, the whispers of rain, it ends.
Gabriel explodes out of his vessel, throwing himself (multidimensional, two winged, sweet voiced, oceans deep, fractured, flawed, imperfect prisms of captured glory) against Lucifer. The blade bites into Gabriel, cuts the already frayed threads he’d so carefully stitched back into the place and then the world dissolves into the gaping howl of hurricanes around them. Together, they tumble down, down, deep beyond the snap of Lucifer’s vessel hitting the bottom of the pit. They keep falling into an onrushing blackness: the darkness hungry for its final sacrifice.
Lucifer screams only once, all his bright radiance consumed in an instant by Death, who always wakes hungry. There’s no chance to mourn for maybe’s, remember the brother who he’d love, who’d given him back his name, at the end. Already, phantom fingers are rifling through Gabriel, sweeping through the collection of atoms and strings that compose his true self. It’s useless, but he fights, desperately clawing at the darkness that closes tight around him, forcing him deeper. Michael’s chains fall away, Gabriel’s grace finally pulled free just as Lucifer had been pulled apart.
They aren’t teeth that sink into him, but even an archangel can’t see all of Death, shuffles Him into a more comfortable shape and being devoured is so much better than being consumed in the ways Death consumes. Gabriel twists, cries out and the sound is swallowed whole.
There is only silence.
And then, “Gabriel!”
Suspended in the dark, a single silken thread unwinds.
“Please, God, please Gabriel!”
Dean’s voice giving shape to the syllables of his name echoes through the darkness, every dream that Gabriel never had. He shudders, wrapping himself in his six regained wings and shuts his thousand eyes to listen. In the emptiness that tightens around him, he remembers Dean’s hands which were always gentle on his vessel’s skin, and his mouth as it offered up new hymns inside kisses. It gets worse, pulling him away in pieces; Gabriel holds tight to laughter rumbling in the distance. The smell of apples, tasting of skin and copper-stained sweat. Breaths in time to Gabriel’s heartbeat. Leaf green eyes. Softroughwarm. Warm. Dean.
The human body is a simple thing: warm and soft and hard. It has vulnerable skin stretched over bone, perishable meat held together by the frailest filaments. It feels pleasure and pain more than is practical and needs so much, all of it with a force that can strip civilizations clean. It is a small, finite thing which contains all of infinity within its delicate hooks.
Gabriel opens his eyes to rain. It seeps past his lips, carrying a metal-salt tang to his tongue. Under his cheek, the dug up ground as turned to mud and it reaches up to hold him as he struggles to sit. The grove of trees are splinters. The demons are dead. Less than a foot away is the mound of earth that Lucifer had dug, already turning soft and melting back into the land.
Something cold and heavy pins his legs to the mud. Gabriel reaches out to shove it aside without looking; his fingers brush against familiar hair. The falling rain becomes quieter, a distant sound below his own breathing (he doesn’t have to breathe) as he stares at the wreckage of the grove. Count the trees, count the splinters, breathe, breathe, just don’t look down. The mantra repeats over and over in his head, but it’s useless; he doesn’t even have to look.
The hair’s dark in the rain, but the barest suggestion of light will turn it gold. It’s fallen across the body’s face, long enough to obscure most of the features-Dean’d liked that, running his fingers through it instead of counting sheep. Gabriel swallows, forces his stolen hand to move, brushing back the wet hair. His vessel’s head lolls brokenly in Dean’s lap. Under Dean’s fingers. An awful, bitten off wail breaks the pattering of rain and it’s his, Gabriel’s, in Dean’s voice.
“What did you do?” His vessel-his old one-doesn’t answer. It’s cradled in Dean’s lap, trapping him in the dirt and Gabriel nearly shoves it aside. Except. Carefully, he lifts the body that Dean had cared for, laying it aside so that he can stand. Dean’s jeans are caked in mud and the cling stiffly to his legs. There’s more drying on his cheek and Gabriel brings up a hand to wipe it away (not his cheek, not his hand). The skin feels too tight, suffocating, he has to leave, has to get out, has to, now.
He’s pulled himself to the surface, when he hears the cry, Dean’s soul folding in on itself under the pain. Instantly, Gabriel freezes and lets his grace pool back into place. After a moment, his stolen heart starts beating again. He’s trapped.
The only option left is the one that scares Gabriel the most, but he has to try. Turning inwards, he builds the landscape he remembers from a dream. Water front, the lake deep and peaceful, stretching past the horizon line. An old dock, familiar down to it’s weathered boards and splinters with an ancient deck chair waiting at the edge. Red gold dawn extends across the sky, bringing piercing breezes, wet with dew. Waves peak and ebb the surface of the lake in faint rustles.
This time, Gabriel hears Dean’s footsteps crunch the sand beneath his feet as he walks up behind him. In the space between atoms, an infinite plain housed inside human skin, Gabriel feels Dean’s soul as it reaches for him and that comes close to bringing him to his knees.
“Oh Dean, what am I going to do with you?” Gabriel’s voice is deceptively light as he takes a step towards Dean, stops, steps back. It’s too much, being here, every second that ticks by and every action that brings his grace closer to Dean’s soul is more than is safe. There is no safe. Not yet, but maybe, maybe, if Gabriel just holds back and steals seconds by keeping his grace close-maybe. He saved Dean once, after all. If only maybe didn’t sound so frail. And if only the whole landscape wouldn’t darken with Dean’s hurt. Even he can’t keep his emotions hidden here, but he does keep his distance. For now, that’s enough. Worry for ‘later’ keeps Gabriel frozen.
“Dean,” his own voice is so gentle, it hardly sounds like him. Dean is watching the lake lapping at the pier. “Dean,” Gabriel can’t step closer, won’t shout, just makes his voice softer. Dean’s shoulders still slump like he was struck. “Dean, what did you do?”
Dean looks back at Gabriel, finally, frowning with that tilt of his mouth reserved for Sam’s stupid question. “I said yes.” Idiot, goes unspoken as Gabriel stares because that can’t-but it has to be. There’s only one way to take a vessel. Dean’s watching him, lunges as Gabriel stumbles and falls, pulling him into his arms.
For the second time, Gabriel’s cradled against Dean’s chest but now it’s not his brother’s song that echoes but the faint lapping of waves, his grace wearing away Dean’s shape.
“You can’t-do you get what you did? Dean. You know what happens to vessels. An archangel’s vessel, you know-” Even in the nowhere place, Dean’s lips are slightly chapped and taste of diner coffee.
“I know,” he says against Gabriel’s mouth.
“I’ll fix this,” Gabriel promises, feels Dean’s aborted laugh on his lips and catches his face in his hands. “Dean,” his name falls easily from Gabriel’s lips, suddenly the most important word in the world. He has to hold onto it, cling, it’s the one thing that can’t slip away. “Dean, I swear to you; I’ll find a way out that won’t-”
“Turn me into a vegetable?” Dean’s lips form a smile that Gabriel doesn’t want to see. He kisses it away, desperate and sloppy as he runs his fingers over Dean’s face. “Okay.” Dean catches his hands, holds them gently and kisses each finger, both palms and wrists. “Okay, I believe you. But I need you to promise me something.”
Gabriel should know better, but he doesn’t, not with Dean.
“Anything,” he says.
The first thing that Gabriel hears when he slips from the between place of souls and energy is the distant song of thunder. It rolls, gentle as a tide, deep voiced and resonant. And then come the choirs of angels, singing, screaming, shouting over each other. Gabriel! Gabriel! He aches under the burden of their voices and their joy as they greedily reach for him, his place in the song.
Michael’s cold fury is a comfort. The notes hang high above the hearing of any but archangels, shrill condemnation that whistles at the edges of the Host. As though he has right to be angry.
Gabriel’s reply is heard by all of Heaven, howling through the carefully arranged ranks of obedient little soldiers. Fuck you, you lying, back-stabbing, goat-mouthed douche waffle, doesn’t translate particularly well into Enochian, so he layers the words with Abaddon, pain and pettiness and then Dean, who becomes a clear, crystalline note to shake the light of Heaven.
All the Host fall silent.
Michael’s rage, when it comes again, is formless and dark while Dean’s soul outshines the fire of even Michael’s sword. And Gabriel, who has fallen so many times (been thrown), has emerged from Death’s hunger and stands unbent in Michael’s vessel; it halts the attack before it can begin. For the moment, there’s a reprieve. The impasse won’t last long, but Gabriel doesn’t need it to.
He turns his back on his brothers. Spreading his wings wide, he walks away from the song, broken bodies, the ruins of the Apocalypse. In his shadow, buildings crumble into ash and the smoke of demons rise and disappear in the rain-clear air. He tucks his wings away, standing on the empty street to let the worsening drizzle wash his (Dean’s, always Dean’s) face of the dirt still streaked across his cheek. Slowly, he curls his wings around himself and in, pushing at the awful weight of his grace until it settles in as small a corner as he can manage.
Bare of his strength, he feels the sting of rain in his eyes again and the cold as water seeps past the collar of Dean’s jacket to freeze against his neck and back. The dirt lodged under his fingernails feels tight, ground in and immoveable. He remembers to breathe, deep breaths that carry the smell of Dean’s shampoo mixed with sweat to him. The stinging is worse, making his eyes burn even though he’s turned his face away from the sky. Unthinking, he rubs his hands over his eyes and the touch is so familiar and wrong that he curls them into his fists at his sides.
When the sound of footsteps reach him, Gabriel raises his head and waits. The steps are uneven-limping-something whispers in the back of his mind, a voice filled with worry that isn’t his. That makes the choice for him.
Sam’s smile at the sight of his brother is brief. He’s bloody, cradling his arm to his chest and favoring his right side, but still rushes those last few steps to reach Dean. The moment he’s close enough, Gabriel presses his fingers to Sam’s forehead and the blood and wounds are gone.
So is his smile.
#
Gabriel stretches his wings on the infinite plain tethered in blood and flesh. The light (not a sun, never really a sun or a moon or stars of time any longer) is low in the distance, a dull gold caught in the water’s reflection. The pier was shorter than it had been, the wood paler and brighter than real wood could ever be. He tries not to let that worry him (more). Standing at the dock’s edge, Dean turned his head just so - watching Gabriel with less wariness and more welcome than he deserved.
“Hey there, sunshine. You miss me?” Gabriel smiles, strolls slowly and unconcerned to his (charge, lover, friend, vessel,)Dean. Wearing the face of his old vessel, Gabriel appraises Dean slowly, gaze from rising from his feet and lingering over his hips and hands and lips.
Dean only looks at him, unimpressed and deafening with it. Some things were still and still were. Gabriel’s smile is a little easier, lighter as they stand toe-to-toe. “Kind of hard to miss you, Gabriel. You’re sort of… everywhere.” And oh, doesn’t Dean just sound so adorably put out about the inescapability of Gabriel’s presence? The angel’s grinning now, sharp and bright as any trickster ever could and with more heart beside.
“Yeah, well. I’m a little late this time. Sammy’s wedding. The kid’s all grown up.” There’s a moment (too long) where Dean’s expression flickers. ‘Sammy’ is a word with no meaning. Gabriel reads that absence in glass brittle green eyes before memory pulls out… something. An image that still has Dean frowning, gathering pieces together from the unraveling threads.
“Sammy… Sam. Told him he should marry that girl.” Gabriel cringes at how softly Dean speaks. An empty sentence, composed of half-remembered words, echoing without the certainty he once would have spoken them.
Gabriel swallows and steps closer; sliding easily into Dean’s arms and space as easily as he’d slid into Dean’s body too long ago. “Well, he married somebody.” Gabriel trails his fingers along Dean’s jaw, brushing them softly against the rough curve. “And don’t worry; I didn’t let him see me.”
Dean drops his head, eyes shut tight while he rests his mouth and nose in Gabriel’s hair, breathes with all the senses still left here, in the infinite coming untethered. “Mom always says angels are watching over us,” and Dean knows this, Gabriel can hear that and clutches to him tighter. He tucks his head beneath Dean’s chin, breathes deep and catches only a whisper of something sweet, that’s faded past recognition. But Dean’s hands are sure and strong where the hold Gabriel’s hips, rubbing familiar circles through the unnecessary layers of clothing. When Dean kisses him, Gabriel looses track of his thoughts in the sweet bitter glide of their lips, fitting perfectly together. Stroking the nape of Dean’s neck, Gabriel pulls away to mouth along Dean’s jaw, dropping kisses at random until he reaches the place where his pulse pounds, strong as ever.
“There are,” Gabriel whispers to the curve of Dean’s jaw. “There are.” His voice falters and Dean’s just there (always, always there), cradling Gabriel’s face in his hands and rebaptizing him in a gentle rain of kisses across his cheeks and eyelids, both corners of his mouth and the cupid’s bow above and small dip below, the point of his chin, then the tip of his nose, and finally his forehead, lingering.
In the quiet of the in between place, where the lapping of the water has lost it’s sound under the burden of Gabriel’s grace, his fingers find comfort in the hollow above Dean’s clavicle. Two fingers slip down, hooking into the collar of his shirt, tugging lightly. Dean’s huff of laughter stirs Gabriel’s hair as he presses a kiss to Dean’s Adam’s apple.
When Dean’s hands slip under shirts to brush against Gabriel’s skin, they’re smooth as silk, the familiar calluses worn away. Gabriel’s grip tightens for a moment, pressing his cheek against Dean’s chest and just holding on until his breath stops crushing his lungs.
Dean’s soul still burns brighter than the Morningstar’s grace ever could; it will always burn. But the edges (oh, the edges) are past fraying and Gabriel can see where it’s worn thin, only that impossibly incandescent light without the memory of Dean, who made it burn. Gabriel has to fight not to hold tighter, cling with arms and wings and grace, which will obliterate all but the light faster.
This is the violence of an archangel’s grace, what Gabriel longed for and missed (and still can’t be without). Dean is scarred from that first moment of heat and grace and depths plummeting into him like the oceans emptying into a grain of sand. It is worse in reverse, a wound that drags and rips and turns a soul inside out and insubstantial. And every day of the brush and touch of grace wears down a little more of what is human and singular.
“Gabriel?”
Dean’s lips press against his temple and Gabriel makes a quiet, questions sound in reply.
One day a year, though time is meaningless here, in the infinite, is all they have. But for that one day a year, Gabriel can touch his thumbs to the stubborn lines of Dean’s jaw and drink in his strength (as much as it can be called touch), and drown in the cheap-whiskey rough melody of his voice (he projection of it, anyway), and hold him (grace and soul) even while it kills him.
“Promise me something?” Gabriel holds onto him a little tighter (just as he always does), burying his face in the curve of Dean’s neck.
One day a year that was all Dean asked for, so long ago, one day a year with Gabriel.
“Anything,” he says.
The six great wings (status and power; loss and hope) of an archangel restored fan out, trap the reflected light in their depths and envelop Dean. They stand together, wrapped so tightly in one another that only they are able to see where one begins and the other leaves off; and only then, because they’ve always been able to see each other.
Dean breathes, slowly, and it’s in perfect rhythm to the beating of Gabriel’s heart.